Sundberg, Juanita (2004)

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Gender, Place & Culture
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Identities in the making: conservation, gender and race in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala
Juanita Sundberg
To cite this Article Sundberg, Juanita(2004) 'Identities in the making: conservation, gender and race in the Maya Biosphere
Reserve, Guatemala', Gender, Place & Culture, 11: 1, 43 66 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/0966369042000188549 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369042000188549
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Gender, Place and Culture Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2004
Identities in the Making: conservation, gender and race in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala
JUANITA SUNDBERG
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
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ABSTRACT This article examines how the daily discourses, practices, and performances of conservation projects are instrumental in mapping ways of life that are gendered and racialized. With the goal of bringing a feminist approach to the study of conservation, I present an ethnographic account of identities-in-the-making in three conservation encounters in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a protected area in northern Guatemala. In the first two encounters, I examine the ways in which gender and race are constituted in the relations between the Women's Group for the Rescue of Itza' Medicinal Plants and a United States-based international environmental non-governmental organization. The third encounter highlights the relations between the Women's Group and myself, the researcher, to analyze how social-science, through methods such as ethnography, is also implicated in (re)configuring social identities.
Introduction In her recent book on technoscience, Donna Haraway (1997) takes a fresh look at the story of Robert Boyle, the father of the experimental method, to ask if gender, with all its tangled knots with other systems of stratified relationships, was at stake in key reconfigurations of knowledge and practice that constituted modern science (p. 27). Although Boyle's story has been told many times, Haraway questions how previous studies treat race and gender, at best, as a question of preformed beings who are present or absent at the scene of action, but are not generically constituted in the practices choreographed in the new theaters of persuasion (Haraway 1997, p. 29). To address this issue, Haraway rewrites the story to show how science-inthe-making is also gender-in-the-making. In this article, I extend Haraway's argument to examine the ways in which gender and race are at stake in conservation projects: how is conservation-in-themaking constitutive of identities-in-the-making? Drawing upon my ethnographic research in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a protected area in northern Guatemala, I analyze how the daily discourses, practices, and performances of conservation projects are instrumental in mapping ways of life that are gendered and racialized. Specifically, I present a case study analysis of identities-in-the-making in the encounters between the Women's Group for the Rescue of Itza' Medicinal Plants
Correspondence: Juanita Sundberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia; Tel: 604 822 3535; Fax: 604 822 6150; e-mail: sundberg@geog.ubc.ca ISSN 0966369X (print)/ISSN 13600524 (online)/04/01004324 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/0966369042000188549
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and a United States-based international environmental non-governmental organization (NGO). To examine how conservation-in-the-making is also identities-inthe-making, I frame conservation projects as a site of encounter and action, informed by unequal power relations stemming from the differing social, institutional, and geographical locations of the individuals and collectives involved (i.e. the state, North American NGOs, grassroots actors, researchers). These relations, as articulated in discourses, practices, and performances, are understood as productive of socio-spatial identities. Framing conservation in this way implies abandoning men/women, white/non-white, modern/traditional, and North/South as a priori and stable categories and instead, asking how these identities are brought into being and enacted in time and place. In pursuing this line of analysis, I bring feminist political ecologyconcerned with exploring the convergence of gender, science, and environment(Rocheleau et al., 1996, p. 7)into conversation with Latin America and Caribbean studies scholars such as Diane Nelson (1999), Linda Peake and Alissa Trotz (1999), and Sarah Radcliffe (1994, 1999), who draw upon feminist, post-structuralist, and postcolonial theory to forge new ground in the analysis and representation of subject formation in the region. In so doing, my goal is to introduce a fresh set of questions to the study of environmental protection and protected areas. Generally speaking, conservation projects are viewed as necessary steps to prevent environmental degradation and scholarly inquiry tends to ask if and under what conditions environmental policies achieve their stated goals (MacDonald et al., 1997; Adams, 2001). Conversely, environmental regulation is analyzed as a site of struggle over contested resources, and scholars seek to determine the impacts on differently situated social groups (Peet & Watts, 1996; Bryant & Bailey, 1997; Zerner, 2000). While important, such approaches tend to assign individuals and collectives coherent identities prior to their entry into the social relations that constitute conservation (but see Sletto, 2002)1. Precluded from analysis are the myriad ways in which social identitiesnot only for local people but also transnational actors are at stake in the daily discourses, practices, and performances of natural resource management, struggles over access and control, as well as the very definition of whose environmental knowledge counts. Identities-in-the-making as a research and writing practice requires a language and a set of tools. Therefore, I begin this article outlining a framework for studying how social identities are constructed and performed in time and space. I then turn to my case study in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, where I present an ethnographic account of three conservation encounters. In the first two, I examine the ways in which gender and race are constituted in the relations between the Women's Group for the Rescue of Itza' Medicinal Plants (henceforth shortened to Agrupacin after the Spanish name) and Conservation International, an environmental NGO with a mandate to encourage environmentally sustainable micro-enterprises in the Maya Biosphere Reserve2. The third encounter highlights the relations between the Agrupacin and myself, the researcher, to analyze how social-science-in-the-making, through methods like ethnography, is also implicated in (re)configuring social identities. This article draws from research undertaken in the Maya Biosphere Reserve between 1996 and 1997, with subsequent fieldwork in 1999, 2000, and 20033. The reserve was created to protect 2.5 million acres of what environmental organizations
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call unaltered lowland forest in Guatemala's northernmost department, the Petn (CONAP 1996)4. Although the Guatemalan National Council of Protected Areas is responsible for the reserve's management, between 1990 and 2001 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) co-funded the implementation of the reserve and contracted three US-based international NGOsthe Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and Care Internationalto carry out conservation and sustainable development projects. In the first six or seven years of its existence, North Americans came to dominate the reserve's management (MacFarland et al., 1994; Sundberg, 1998). Using ethnographic methods, including participant observation and structured and unstructured interviews, my research set out to understand the implications of the newly created reserve in the lives of local residents5. Between November 1996 and March 1997, I focused on the Agrupacin, whose members live in San Jos, a historically marginalized indigenous village located within the reserve6. As I explain below, my relationship with the Agrupacin was based upon collaboration. However, the terms of the collaboration did not extend to the writing and dissemination of the research results; although I have discussed the argument with some of the group members, I alone am responsible for the analysis presented here7. To ensure confidentiality, I have changed the names of all individuals. Identities-in-the-Making: a Framework-to-be-Enacted In November 1996, Doa Amelia8 invited me into her thatched adobe house. As I sat on a hard bench in the cool darkness, she eagerly told me about her October trip to the Guatemalan highlands to visit Maya-run businesses harvesting and packaging medicinal plants. Doa Amelia described her reactions:
When they took me to Totonicapn, then I saw how they have all those medicinal plants, and I saw how they have to plant them and harvest them later. And here, we just have to go around collecting, then put them out to dry, and prepare them. I said, we have to take advantage of this because we won't have anymore since the plants are being lost.
Doa Amelia expressed surprise that the highland businesses have to cultivate the needed herbs, whereas in Guatemala's northern lowlands the plants have been widely available, although endangered because of increasingly high rates of deforestation. Upon her return home, Doa Amelia suggested to a male community leader that they form a women's group; I said to myself, this is an opportunity to develop all the medicinal plants unknown to many people. The women subsequently formed the Agrupacin to harvest, plant, process and sell medicinal plant remedies. Their initial goal was twofold: to rescue traditional knowledge and use of medicinal plants, and to create a source of income for the participating women. After speaking with Doa Amelia, I dedicated my remaining time in the field to documenting the process of group formation. My initial goal was to examine if the women's interactions with North American conservation organizations would transform their environmental discourses and practices. As such, I began my research with indigenous woman, NGO, and white North American geographer as isolated, solid categories with pre-existing characteristics. My research experience with the Agrupacin, however, quickly disrupted these notions, leading
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me to seek out new tools for understanding how identities are constituted in the action of knowledge production, not before the action starts (Haraway, 1997, p. 29; emphasis in the original). The approach taken here draws from feminist and post-structural scholars who frame daily discourses, practices, and performances which are embedded in social institutions, as productive of gender, race, and class in-the-making, not simply as reflections of them (Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1990). In Haraway's words, this necessitates a shift away from the assumption that (1997, p. 26):
gender is a preformed, functionalist category, merely a question of preconstituted generic men and women, beings resulting from either biological or social sexual difference and playing out roles, but otherwise of no interest.
This approach implies discarding identity as singular, homogeneous, and fixed and embracing the notion that every identity is reconceived as uncentered, as in process and transition, as having no essence to which it will tend or revert (Gibson-Graham, 1996, pp. 28, 63). It also implies understanding identity as relational, as constituted in articulation with others (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Fuss, 1989; Nelson D., 1999). Taking an anti-essentialist approach does not entail, however, a facile view of identity as easily taken on or willfully discarded (Nelson D., 1999, p. 5). Rather, the subject is understood as constituted through language and disciplining institutional practices that are dynamic, constantly changing, yet time- and placespecific. Indeed, it is the repetitive performances of particular normative discourses and practices, Judith Butler (1993) argues, that produces gendered (and racialized) bodies, thereby (re)producing gender (and race) as social norms (Mahtani, 2002). While gender is the central analytical category in most feminist research, I follow in the footsteps of feminists who insist upon analyzing how gender intersects with other systems of power to produce multi-faceted, complex, and potentially contradictory identities (Anzalda, 1990; Hill Collins, 1990; Laurie et al., 1999; Nelson D., 1999; Peake & Trotz, 1999; Radcliffe, 1999; Mahtani, 2002)9. For Sherene Razack (1998), it is critical to stress intersectionality, for [i]nterlocking systems need one another, they help to secure one another (pp. 12, 13). In focusing explicitly on gender and race, I am not fully considering other elements of identity formation, such as socio-economic status, geographic location, sexuality, ability, etc. However, I have chosen to concentrate on the categories that are either consciously expressed or strategically mobilized in the encounters analyzed here (after Pulido, 1996, p. 33). For the Agrupacin members, gender and race were the most salient elements of individual and group identities; some also spoke about feeling marginalized within Guatemala's highly unequal socio-economic system. Other aspects of their identities were unspoken. In sum, my view of how identities are constituted through conservation encounters supports Lise Nelson's argument that identity is an iterative process, but one produced through a recursive relationship between power/discourse and critically reflexive, geographically embedded subjects (Nelson L., 1999, p. 348). As such, identities-in-the-making is an approach that is attentive to how disciplining discourses and practices are invoked, enacted, (re)configured, subverted, and
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transformed by individuals who chose to be for some worlds and not others (Haraway, 1997, p. 37; emphasis in original). How to represent the iterative and therefore momentary processes that constitute identity formation in time and place is a challenge in academic research and writing, wherein individual interviews or testimonials are most commonly used as a basis for the production of legitimate academic knowledge (Pratt, 2000). Using my ethnographic research, I have written this article to portray a sense of encounter, of action, of performance, to highlight the moments wherein multi-dimensional identitiesincluding my ownare produced, enacted, and transformed in the action of social relations, in articulation with others. Identities-in-the-making as a representational strategy is an attempt to portray a wider array of research performances (Pratt, 2000)actions, reactions, arguments, laughterin order to shine light on the momentary, contradictory, and unstable processes of subject formation as they are fixed, negotiated, and contested in the context of interlocking systems of power. The Agrupacin in the Context of the Maya Biosphere Reserve 10 The women of the Agrupacin live in San Jos, a small village on the shores of Lake Petn Itz in Guatemala's northern-most department, the Petn. San Jos's history is rooted in the colonial era when the Spaniards congregated indigenous peoples into nucleated settlements (Schwartz, 1990). Currently, only the elderly residents of San Jos speak Itza', their native language, although a recent cultural revitalization movement has inspired the community to offer language classes to youths and adults to ensure that it does not disappear (Hofling, 1996). Historically, the Petn was not closely tied to the culture and economy of southern Guatemala (Schwartz, 1990). Consequently, the Itza' only recently began forming linkages within the Pan-Maya movement, the term for a loosely connected set of organizations dedicated to a variety of cultural and political goals related to indigenous rights, identity, language, and education (Cojt Cuxil, 1997; Warren, 1998)11. In San Jos, land use practices have changed with the times. For instance, most middle-aged to older women participating in the Agrupacin grew up in el monte, a dynamic mosaic of forest patches and orchard gardens, fields in fallow, and land under cultivation. Their fathers were forest collectors, farmers, and fishermen and their mothers tended orchard and kitchen gardens, animals and children. These women's children, however, grew up in town so they could attend school; this shift to urban-based living is the result of socio-economic changes that in turn have produced dramatically different human-land relations. For instance, Sanjoseos increasingly purchase rather than grow their own food. The most recent and significant change in resource management came in 1990, when Sanjoseos were informed that they resided within the newly created Maya Biosphere Reserve. Although many residents were concerned about how the reserve would affect their land-use practices, they shared the worries of the Guatemalan and North American environmentalists working to protect the region's remaining forests. Since the 1970s, the logging and ranching industries as well as maize farmers had cleared about 50% of the Petn's forest.
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Most Sanjoseos, however, did not agree with the methods used to implement the reserve. In their rush to legalize the reserve, environmentalists neglected to include any local residentsdepartmental and municipal authorities and community leadersin the mapping and decision-making processes (MacFarland et al., 1994). These exclusionary measures characterized the initial period of park implementation as well (Sundberg, 2002). Although Sanjoseos were left out of the inner management circles, they were enlisted to participate in a variety of conservation projects. However, locals were given little or no say in project goals, design, and implementation. Consequently, a small group of male leaders in San Jos decided to form their own conservation organization in the hopes of channeling NGO funds into locally initiated and directed projects tied to indigenous cultural values. In 1991, the men formed the BioItz, short for the Association for the Conservation of the BioItz, which then solicited permission to create a 3600 hectare forest reserve within San Jos's municipal communal land-holdings. Women were not included in the BioItz's management structure. During this period in the early to mid-1990s, foreign scholars wishing to document indigenous land use practices made San Jos a beacon of indigenous environmental knowledge12. The study of medicinal plants in particular drew scholars to seek out female residents, thereby elevating their status to possessors of traditional knowledge. One European botanist worked with local women to document their medicinal plant use and to compile existing recipes for local remedies; this individual also funded Doa Amelia's travel to the Guatemalan highlands to visit medicinal plant farms in October 1996. When Doa Amelia sought to create the medicinal plants group, she looked to the BioItz as an example of local initiative and solicited the support of its leader, Don Jaimealso a close relative. Don Jaime, in turn, saw the formation of the women's group as beneficial to the BioItz's goals and sponsored a meeting in its headquarters, inviting a large number of women to attend. As one young woman described the meeting, Don Jaime invited them to join in forming a subset of the BioItza women's group dedicated to rescuing traditional knowledge of medicinal plants and selling the remedies in the community. Elections were held and about eight women were assigned positions within a hierarchical structure, including a president and vicepresident13. I now turn to exploring how the women's gendered and racialized identities were (re)configured through the initial discourses and practices of the medicinal plants project in 19961997. I present an ethnographic account of three conservation encounters detailing the interactions between the Agrupacin, Conservation International, and myself. I refer to Conservation International as CI/ProPetn, which is the name of its satellite office; though under the direction of the Washington office, the majority of the permanent staff is Guatemalan14. I present composite accounts of the three encounters. My goal is to provide as much of the individuals' narratives as possible to allow readers to get a feel for the interactions and perhaps construct their own interpretations. However, it is important to note that the meetings outlined in these conservation encounters were not taped; rather, I recorded natural conversation in my fieldnotes, using quotation marks to indicate direct quotes (Emerson et al., 1995).
Identities in the Making The First Conservation Encounter: un poco de chicle
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Shortly after the Agrupacin was formed a meeting was called to prepare the women for an upcoming encounter with CI/ProPetn, who had expressed interest in supporting the project. Don Jaime led the meeting and served as an advisor on NGO relations; as leader of the BioItz and key informant for numerous scholars, he is an expert on North American and European perceptions of indigenous peoples. As the meeting was over three hours long, the following composite highlights only those moments wherein the women and Don Jaime construct a vision of the group's goals and through it, their own gendered and racialized identities. After the description, I turn to an analysis of the discourses and performances enacted during the meeting. The preparatory meeting was set for 4:00 p.m., yet few had arrived. Time was tight as the women had responsibilities at home to prepare for All Saints' Day, including food for the following two days. As the minutes passed and we waited for the group to assemble, those present began to gossip about the women who had resigneddespite the fact that they had just been elected into office. Fragments of conversation floated by me: Some say that they want to wait and see how it goes before joining; she says that she might poison someone [with the plants], killing them and then she will be thrown in jail; she says she regrets having gotten involved; people are mistrustful, even of themselves. At last, Rosalia, the President, called the meeting to order. She introduced Don Jaime as the group's advisor and leader of the BioItz. Don Jaime encouraged the women to familiarize themselves with the goals of the Agrupacin and memorize their statements. The committee must be unified, so that all of you say the same thing, he advised, as ProPetn could be a linkage to other organizations. He also warned the group against giving too much authority to the president, suggesting that all the women need to be involved and be prepared to hold forth on the project. Laughing, he suggested that the group pad their message a little [abonar un poco] to give ProPetn something to chew on [the expression he used was, to offer a bit of gum (un poco de chicle)]. At the same time, he suggested that no one should assume that they know everything:
If a botanist comes, don't try to say that you know everything learn from that person, and let them learn from you. Its like when they [an NGO] came to give us [the BioItz] capacitacin [training/capacity building] in carpentry, they asked us if we could measure, if we could cut. We said no, we aren't carpenters. That is how we learned. Even if you are a great curandero [healer], you still need to learn, to receive capacitacin.
Since many of the men in the BioItz are skilled carpenters, Don Jaime may be suggesting that locals should take advantage of capacitacinone of the primary means through which NGOs transfer knowledge and skills through training or capacity buildingto learn new skills or to improve skills one already possesses. Returning to the primary issue at hand, Don Jaime suggested that the Agrupacin should first indicate to CI/ProPetn that they are a new group without financing; only then should the women outline their specific needs such as bags in which to package the medicinal plants. At this point, Rosalia said that the NGO would most likely ask each of the women about the group's goals. Don Jaime then asked each woman to state the group's goals as outlined in a previous meeting.
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Doa Amelia stated that her goal was to continue using the medicinal plants she has always used and to show others the value of what they are clearing [i.e. deforesting]. Another woman hesitated, fidgeted in her seat and in a quiet, unsteady voice, gave her opinion: to rescue the medicinal plants that weren't used in the past, or that were used in the past but are no longer used. With a confused grin on her face, she began to laugh; the others joined her. She then added that plants may be used when there is no money for pharmaceuticals. Don Jaime, her uncle, responded insistently: You need to say, so that we don't use chemical medicines, because otherwise they [the NGO] will think that if we have money we will buy pharmaceuticals instead and lose our traditions. This comment apparently amused the other women as they began laughing. Don Jaime spoke over their laughter, saying Now don't go saying that I said this, you have said these things! Agreeing that the goal was to rescue the use of medicinal plants, Rosalia suggested that the group had a second goal: that women succeed in forming a group women rarely participate and when you see an organization, it is always directed by a man. I think that this is why you all wanted to come together. Nodding his head, Don Jaime began a lengthy monologue about women's roles; he mentioned that rescuing a community's traditions touches on many elements. and there are a lot of women who know them. The BioItz wanted the women to participate in this aspect of conservation, he said, because women are more involved in healing. The larger goal, however, was to understand the ways of the ancestors. The meeting went on for several hours as the women discussed their long- and short-term plans, and debated the steps they needed to take to achieve these goals. As the last rays of sunlight shifted across the floor, Don Jaime moved to close the meeting: I don't think you have any more doubts. So, I have an idea. Suddenly, he addressed me and congratulated me for attending the meeting. Although I had planned to discuss my desire to begin research with the group, I had remained silent up to that point, recording the meeting. Don Jaime suggested that since, in part, the project would be directed at tourists, the Agrupacin needed help labeling the remedies in English. Here is your first collaborator, he told the women, don't waste what you have15. Don Jaime stipulated that the relationship should be characterized by give-and-take and that I was expected to actively participate, not simply observe16. I agreed to the terms and volunteered to assist in every way possible. Although a number of interesting dynamics emerge, I want to highlight how the narratives and performances enacted in the meeting (re)configure gender and race in contradictory ways. One of the most striking elements of this encounter is the (re)assertion of male superiority. Although Rosalia directs the meeting, Don Jaime interrupts at will. He advises the women on how to perform their gendered and racialized identities and he mediates the Agrupacin's relationship with me, the researcher (to be discussed in the third encounter). When Rosalia asserts that the women wished to change their gendered behavior through participation in the group, Don Jaime responded by subsuming the Agrupacin within the BioItz and its wider goals for cultural revitalization. Indeed, he is suggesting that women are important to the revitalization movement because of their gender specific activities. Ultimately, his narratives act to discipline women's gendered behavior and reproduce patriarchy in the name of preserving cultural traditions.
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In part, Don Jaime's dominant role in the meeting stems from his position as an elder and community leader in a patriarchal society that privileges men as leaders and decision-makers17. However, his position as advisor and authority figure is also tied to his prior contacts with NGOs, which tend to privilege men as the primary agents of social and environmental change. In the Maya Biosphere Reserve and indeed throughout Latin America, conservation and sustainable development projects are designed for menas though ungenderedthereby naturalizing their status as the primary or only decision-makers (Kabeer, 1994). In short, Don Jaime's position of power also stems from the privileges NGOs have accorded to men; this is not to say that without NGOs there would be no patriarchy in Guatemala, but to suggest that NGOs play a role in sustaining male dominance. Yet, gender relations are in flux in this encounter. Paradoxically, the emergence of conservation projects in the Maya Biosphere Reserve has brought new actors into the area with differing values that disrupt pre-existing power dynamics. For the European botanist, the women in San Jos are just as important as men in terms of their environmental knowledge. Moreover, NGOs desire to work with women to please donor organizations; thus, CI/ProPetn expresses an interest in supporting the project. Even as Don Jaime asserts power in the interaction, shifting power dynamics empower the female leaders of this group to articulate goals that challenge established gender relations. For instance, Rosalia affirms that one of the group's goals is to create a space where women participate in, and indeed, direct an organization. While it would be unwise to ascribe such motives to all the participants, some of the women are clearly motivated to transform gender relations. Another important aspect of this encounter is the production of individual and collective racialized identities. At this point in the group's formation, the women had not identified themselves as an indigenous group; indeed, the word Itza' was not added to the group's name until several weeks later. Don Jaime, however, had come to embrace an Itza' identity through his involvement with the cultural revitalization movement in San Jos and the Pan-Maya movement in southern Guatemala. Moreover, he understands the cachet of all things indigenous within environmental NGOs (Turner, 1992; Jackson, 1995; Conklin, 1997). Thus, he advises the women to carefully construct and perform an indigenous identity that will meet the NGO's expectations. For him, this involves enacting helplessness and creating the space for the NGO to provide helphence his suggestion that they should not pretend to know everything. It also involves padding the group's message, to add a touch of the exotic. Don Jaime instructs the women not to mention their use of pharmaceutical drugs; if they wish to be attractive to and compatible with NGO visions of authentic indigenous women, then they must emphasize the naturalness of their traditions. Don Jaime's narratives are shaped by centuries old discourses that construct indigenous people in Guatemala as unequal to Europeans, Anglos, as well as white and white-aspiring Latin Americans (Bianchi et al., 1999; Arriola et al., 2002; Casas, 2002). In the Maya Biosphere Reserve, for instance, conservation projects position indigenous peoples as objects or repositories of knowledge, or as threatened and in need of protection and help, but not as subjects capable of managing the environment18. Ultimately, histories of racism within Guatemala and between North and South create a context wherein one mode of performing indigenous
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identity is to enact discourses of humility, helplessness, tradition, and authenticity. Ironically, this strategy may be successful if it provides indigenous groups the means to achieve goals consistent with their own values. In sum, in this first conservation encounter, interlocking systems of power, shaped by histories of sexism and racism, produce gendered and racialized subject identities as unequal. Although Don Jaime helps the group by providing advice, he also sustains his privilege as a male authority figure and leader. Moreover, his narratives constitute indigenous identities in ways that emphasize inferiorityfor women, this is compounded by gender inequality within the community. Yet, as Rosalia suggested, the medicinal plants group creates a space wherein women have the opportunity to disrupt male dominance and (re)configure gender relations.
The Second Conservation Encounter: creating a space for capacitacin The day after their meeting with Don Jaime, eight women elected to positions of responsibility in the Agrupacin gathered in the BioItz house to meet with CI/ ProPetn. The Agrupacin saw this as an important event and hoped that the NGO would agree to help them jump-start their project. In this composite, I highlight how the encounter is productive of gender, race, and social status. The visitors from CI/ProPetn arrived in a navy blue pick-up truck; the town folks looked out their windows and doors as it crept to the top of the hill. As vehicle ownership is rare in San Jos, they are regarded as a symbol of statuseven an association with those in the vehicle awards status. The truck's arrival drew out the neighborhood children, who proceeded to play soccer around a group of threeweek old piglets sniffing in the streets. The bravest kids poked their heads through the open doors of the BioItz house, curiously staring at the group of visitors. The NGO, composed of North Americans and Guatemalan ladinos19 sat at the head of the room; the women's group, dressed in their Sunday best, sat in a row facing them. After she concluded that no more women were going to arrive, Rosalia rose to begin the meeting in the gracious Guatemalan style that includes lengthy welcoming and introductory remarks. She explained to the CI/ProPetn staff that as a new group we need your support. Outlining the group's goals, she said that their ancestors had used medicinal plants daily; then, natural things were most important, she said, but now we use chemicals. Rosalia turned to the Vice President and asked her to add something about their goals. The woman fidgeted and looked at the floor; in a barely audible voice she said, we need your support. Without it, she added, when foreigners come to San Jos looking for plants, we aren't going to have any. Rosalia then focused on the Agrupacin's short-term objective, which was to participate in a region-wide Artisan's Fair sponsored by CI; she asked another woman to comment on this goal. Before she could speak, however, a North American member of the CI/ProPetn team interrupted. After making introductory remarks, she explained their position: We don't have many funds for San Jos, but what we can offer is our time, and link our activities with yours. We can help you organize for the Artisan's Fair, give you an analysis of the local market, and advise you on how to market your product. The two groups, sitting opposite each other, then began a detailed discussion about the Artisan's Fair. CI/ProPetn invited the
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Agrupacin to participate; Rosalia then asked about financial support for materials, which were offered in the form of a loan. The group began to discuss the business aspects of the medicinal plants project. The North American consultant abruptly asked, do you have an idea of the quantity of plants you will be able to sell here? You have to have an understanding of the size of your market. A young woman, not present at the previous day's meeting interjected, saying that the Agrupacin had not completed a study of their potential market because they wished to wait and see. She then added, What we want is for CI/ProPetn to instruct [orientar] us. To this, the consultant responded that there are methods for making market projections. Rosalia interrupted, saying that the Agrupacin had planned to start small and then figure out how much they needed to expand. After the conversation had digressed, Rosalia returned to the task at hand and asked if CI/ProPetn could provide capacitacin on group organization, adding as a new group, each woman is uncertain as to her role in relation to the group. At this point, two of CI/ProPetn's extension agents, both ladino males, stood to address the women. The extension agent in charge of ecotourism said, I see that this group is not yet well organized, especially when it comes to the delegation of roles; he suggested they participate in a capacitacin on this topic, already scheduled with the BioItz. The business training extension agent, Juan, a ladino in neatly pressed clothes, then said in an authoritative tone, I have a lot of questions. I see eight women here, but how many are there in the group? The President replied that there were 28 women, but only those holding elected positions were present. I see that you talk the most, Juan said, gesturing to Rosalia. Everyone laughed, and he asked the other women to identify themselves and state their role in the Agrupacin. However, most did not say anything themselves and were very reluctant to speak out. The extension agent for ecotourism then spoke again, suggesting that a business cannot succeed unless its associates are really interested; I'm talking about motivation and sacrifice; time away from home. You have to sacrifice the most when first starting out; it takes time, not just from the leaders, but from all those participating; the business won't succeed if you don't understand these things. After the meeting was over, Juan informally approached the women and began asking more questions. How did the group get started? How long have you had this idea of the medicinal plants? Do you use them in your homes? Rosalia responded, saying No, but our parents used them, so we know about them because we have taken them. Do the rest of you use them? asked Juan. All the women nodded their heads in affirmation. Are you sure that the plants cure? Juan continued, because if you are going to sell a product you must be convinced that it works. He then inquired as to the women's marital status. Are you married? he asked, adding, the married ones are busy with their houses and their husbands. Doa Amelia, married with six children and numerous grandchildren, interjected, saying, if one is interested, one makes an effort. Then Juan asked, what if a man wants to join? One woman commented quietly that they would not let him. A younger woman who had resigned from her elected position blurted out, then we will let him, adding that it would be nice if men participated because a woman can't go to the forest [monte] alone. This comment caught Doa Amelia's attention; she is an accomplished outdoorswoman who loves working in the forest. Rosalia's eyes moved slowly, shifting between Juan and the
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women; smiling; she responded, we could work jointly with men, but always under the women's direction. The group laughed uneasily and Juan thanked them for answering his questions. He then departed with the other CI/ProPetn members. Immediately after CI/ProPetn's departure, the women gathered together to analyze the meeting. Suddenly, the room was alive with their assertive conversation and animated laughterthe symphony of voices stood in sharp contrast to the silence of the majority just a few minutes prior. The discourses, practices, and performances enacted in this meeting are rooted in interlocking systems of power running along multiple axes, including North/ South, modern/traditional, ladino/indigenous, and male/female. As the two groups interact, these axes intersect to produce individual and collective identities in uneven and paradoxical ways. In this encounter, the North American NGO employs the rhetoric of lack and the rhetoric of helping to define the terms of their relationship with the women's group, but also to situate themselves as a collective in relation to the group. According to David Spurr (1993) and Roxanne Doty (1996), the notion of lack figures prominently in colonial and imperial discourses and serves to negate the culture and history of the Other. The Other's perceived absences are positioned in relation to the virtues possessed by the European or American colonizers and effectively create the space for civilizing missions or development projects. Throughout this encounter, the Agrupacin is framed as lacking business plans, marketing skills, internal organization, and potentially, the motivation to accomplish their goals. While some of these abilities may be viewed as technical skills, their necessity and rationality are naturalized by a white-dominated economy of power. More to the point, the rhetoric of lack derives its power from the ways in which it intersects with two other potent systems of social categorization in Guatemala: white/non-white and modern/traditional. Within Latin American countries, including Guatemala, whites are regarded as biologically and culturally superior and whiteness remains the most important element in the organization of racial identity (Bonnett, 1997, p. 51; see also Wade, 1997). Although whites are defined by European ancestry, phenotypic characteristics alone do not determine whiteness (Weismantel, 2000; de la Cadena, 2000). Rather, as Alastair Bonnett suggests, whiteness is linked to the symbols, imaginaries, and practices of modernization as embodied by Europe in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth (Bonnett, 2000). Whiteness and modernity are intertwined20. From this perspective, the capabilities and technical skillsor mentalityassociated with conservation and sustainable development as modernizing projects reflect and confer whiteness upon those that embody or adopt them. Thus, to suggest that the women's group lacks skills associated with modernization is to also position them as non-white, traditional, and inferior. As possessor of these skills and intellectual qualities, the NGO personnel thereby construct a vision of themselves as white, modern, and superior. The power dynamics in the meeting also work to produce ladino as a social and racial identity that is superior to indigenous people. In Guatemala, ladinos have had more opportunities to acquire an education and participate in modernizing social projects (the education system has historically served as a means of assimilation and acculturation to bring indigenous people into the fold of the modernizing
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nation) (Cojti Cuxil, 1995; Arriola et al., 2002). In the last fifteen years, the emergence of conservation as a social project has provided new opportunities for employment and social advancement to educated professionals, of whom ladinos are the majority. As these two educated, male ladinos perform themselves as extension agents, their narratives and practices privilege modernist ways of knowing and cast doubt upon the capacity of uneducated rural indigenous women to acquire those qualities and run a business. Finally, racial formations intersect with gender in Guatemala to produce indigenous women as doubly inferior (Thillet de Solrzano, 2001). Not only were the women defined in terms of what they lacked, their knowledge of medicinal plants, motivation, and ability to participateas womenwas called into question by the extension agents. The extension agents' doubt intersects with the women's own sense of themselves as inferior, an attitude rooted in a life-time of racism, economic exploitation, and culturally sanctioned deference to men. Thus, women in San Jos find it intimidating to speak in front of males, especially educated white professionals; when spoken to, many perform themselves as inferior by adopting a faade of incomprehension or smiling and laughing without speakingas occurred in the meeting. Those women like Rosalia who are confident enough to speak in front of a group tend to be pursuing a posthigh school education. The complex and interlocking systems of power underlying the women's performance of inferiority was made clear after the NGO departed, when the women resumed the lively and assertive speech patterns they practice when in the company of women. Although this encounter works to produce indigenous women as inferior on multiple levels, it also represents a significant step for the Agrupacin members. Rosalia, a young indigenous woman, not only directs the meeting, but she has an agenda and is determined to accomplish the goals established in the previous day's meeting. With her leadership, the group obtains support from CI/ProPetn to get their operations going: they were invited to participate in the Artisan's Fair and they obtained a small loan to help with supplies needed to begin packaging their medicinal remedies. Moreover, the Agrupacin emerged from the encounter as a grassroots organization and thus, participant in civil society. Such small steps represent important accomplishments both for the group and for the individual women involved. Ultimately, interlocking systems of power along multiple axes work to produce gendered, racial, and social identities as unequal. And yet, the encounter's outcomes are contradictory. Although the women's diffidence intersects with and sustains the NGO's belief that they are not capable of taking on responsibilities, the Agrupacin's leaders are empowered by the accomplishment of specific goals. They also are provided with the means to continue their operations on their own terms. The Third Conservation Encounter: social science and identities-in-themaking When Doa Amelia told me about the medicinal plants group, I devoted my research to documenting the process of group formation with particular attention to their interactions with NGOs. As mentioned above, I began my research with indigenous woman, NGO, and white North American geographer as isolated,
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solid categories with pre-existing characteristics. I wanted permission to follow the group and to interview individual women in exchange for my services, but I did not frame the research itself as productive of individual and collective identities. Nor did I see myself taking on an activist role in the relationship. As described in the first encounter, Don Jaime initially mediated my relationship with the Agrupacin. He stipulated that the relationship should be characterized by give-and-take and that I was expected to collaborate, not simply observe. Having had years of experience dealing with foreign researchers, Don Jaime set an example for the Agrupacin to ensure that the research relationship did not simply take from them without giving something back. As he told the Agrupacin, Here is your first collaborator, don't waste what you have. After these parameters were established and I received permission to formally interview each woman one or two times, I did my best to allow the daily practices of the project to shape the research. However, as I accompanied the Agrupacin throughout the first two months of their existence, I began to note several important shifts. In the following brief conservation encounter, I illustrate how the members of the Agrupacin and I struggled with intersecting systems of power. During the initial meeting with CI/ProPetn, the Agrupacin was invited to participate in the Artisan's Fair, scheduled at the end of November 1996at which point the Agrupacin had been in existence for only six weeks. This fair is an initiative of CI to bring people from the region together to showcase traditional crafts and foster exchange amongst the artisans. The main purpose of the fair is to promote and support environmentally sustainable livelihoods. In the weeks leading up to the fair, the Agrupacin members had collected and dried medicinal plants and then packaged them in plain brown paper bags. Attached to each bag was a tag indicating the plants contained therein, instructions for how to use them, as well as a brief description of the group. Given that the Agrupacin did not have access to a computer, I was asked to collaborate with writing and printing the tags in English and Spanish. Together, Rosalia and I developed a one-paragraph statement about the group and designed the tags; after the other women approved of our work, we printed out the necessary number of tags21. Two women were selected to represent the Agrupacin on each day of the fair; I went along as an observer. Doa Amelia was registered for the fair as an artisan in her own right. Once at the fair, we were led into a large room with long tables; the building's thick white washed walls and huge open windows ensured that the artisans would be cool throughout the day. After carefully laying out the remedies, the Agrupacin's representatives and I circled the room to look at the other artisans' wares. Several tables were covered with shiny little canoes, animals, wine cups, and platters carved from richly colored hardwoods. On one table stood dolls of corn-husks, with long glimmering hair out of tassels and skirts decorated with little bits of forest plants, seeds, and feathers. The Agrupacin members then sat at their table ready to answer questions about their organization and the medicinal remedies of their ancestors. I sat at the table as well, with my notebook ready to record any interactions. As marimbas played to celebrate the fair's inauguration, many NGO personnel stopped by the Agrupacin's table. Several asked me if I was the Agrupacin's co-ordinator, a question that was repeated by innumerable tourists. No, I replied, I am here to
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observe and assist. Right. But you are helping them run the project, no? was the response I receivedover and over. Underlying the question posed at the Artisan's Fair is a presumed inequality between North American/Latin American and white/indigenous; in this binary system, a white woman is positioned as more knowledgeable and more capable than a Latin American woman and in particular, an indigenous woman (Mohanty, 1991; Marchand, 1995; Peake & Trotz, 1999). From this perspective, it was natural for me to be in charge because indigenous organizationswomen's groups in particularare not seen as capable of functioning without assistance from whites. The interlocking systems of power articulated at the Artisan's Fair (re)configured my identity in two ways. On the one hand, the event changed my status in NGO circles. Suddenly, NGO personnel were able to situate me into an understood and established role: I was perceived as a white woman fulfilling her duty to help marginalized groups. From that moment on, I received a warmer welcome from NGO personnel, which facilitated my broader research agenda22. On the other hand, the event forced me to take note of several shifts in the relationship between the Agrupacin members and myself. Don Jaime, for instance, had begun to publicly tease me about becoming the group's jefa or boss. His comments stemmed from a number of occasions when I was asked to drive the women to town in the BioItz's pick-up truck, which symbolically placed me in charge and brought my privileged background into relief. Womenand most menin San Jos do not drive because their families do not have access to a vehicle, let alone the financial capacity to purchase one. Obtaining a driver's license is also beyond the reach of most individuals. In addition to these small but important moments, Rosalia began looking to me for advice and instructiondespite the fact that I know nothing about medicinal plants and have no business experience. Initially, I resisted her queriesI was attempting to perform myself as the objective observer or collaborator. However, the North American feminist in me was unable to keep quiet. In particular, I began to voice my opinion when I felt that the women were underestimating their own abilities. In addition, I realized that I have a sense of how authentic products from Third World peoples are marketed to privileged consumers such as myself. This knowledge was useful to the group in understanding their target market and determining how to package the medicinal remedies. Ultimately, my reluctance to help ran up against pre-existing power relations that positioned me, a white North American, as an authority. Thus, the more we worked together, the more I came to perform myself as a white woman helping and the Agrupacin, in turn, performed their identity as indigenous women in need of help. At the same time, however, these dynamics led to productive tensions, as the Agrupacin's leaders shifted between relying upon Don Jaime, desiring my collaboration/assistance, and wanting to make decisions for themselves. Ultimately, these tensions forced the group's leaders to take a more pro-active role in decision-making. Gender and Race are at Stake in Conservation Encounters The three encounters outlined here present a processual approach to identities-inthe-making, thereby pointing to the ways in which gender and race are at stake in
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conservation. However, it is my contact with the Agrupacin over time that allows me to make broader claims about the specific ways in which daily discourses, practices, and performances of the medicinal plants project (re)configured gendered and racialized identities. Since my initial intensive ethnographic research, I have had the opportunity to revisit the Agrupacin in 1999, 2000, and most recently in 2003. In this section, I briefly highlight some of the accomplishments and challenges experienced by the Agrupacin, followed by an analysis of the three most significant factors implicated in transforming gender and race over time and enabling a process of self-empowerment for some of the participants23. I also point to ways in which the research process (re)configured my own identity. By 1999, three years after the group's formation, the Agrupacin had experienced many changes, including significant shifts in leadership and membership. Although they did not continue working with CI/ProPetn, the European botanist helped the group establish linkages with EcoLogic Development Fund, which provides hands-off support to grassroots organizations. With this support, the Agrupacin offered a salary to one of its members, who served as coordinator and liaison officer with other institutions for one year. In addition, the Agrupacin fulfilled its goals of building a production center and establishing a plant nursery. With this infrastructure in place, the group was able to produce tinctures and soaps, store their materials, host events and other women's groups, lead tours, and coordinate volunteers. Three years later, in 2003, the women participating in the Agrupacin had broken into two groups: one group retains the Agrupacin's official name and seal and is directed by Doa Amelia, while the other group is subsumed under the leadership of Don Jaime and the BioItz. Although opinions vary, my analysis of the split locates its genesis in a conflict that is fundamentally gendered. As their successes multiplied, Don Jaime sought to retain control over the Agrupacin in order to appropriate its existing funds and use its accomplishments to solicit new funds for the BioItz. In a moment of crisis, Doa Amelia and her supporters threatened separation in order to ensure that the medicinal plants group be directed by and for women. Unfortunately, the split left Doa Amelia's group with the plant nursery while the BioItz's group retained control over the production center, which was built on BioItz land. At present, the two groups are struggling to retain membership and group cohesion, while continuing to produce and sell medicinal plant remedies as well as botanical soaps, shampoos, and lotions in very small quantities. While the future of these groups is subject to on-going change, my research identifies three important factors that are productive of long-term transformations in some of the participants' gendered and racial identitiesregardless of which group they currently support. While many women identified participation in the Agrupacin as a chance to valorize or regain their knowledge of medicinal plants, the act of participating in and of itself produced quite different effects at individual and collective levels. First, the Agrupacin has created a space wherein its members as individuals and as a collective are able to discuss issues related to women's roles, the community, and political activism. Several participants identified a women-only environment as critical to sustaining their confidence to
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participate in the group and to take on new responsibilities. In interviews, the women explained why. As Doa Flor said, Between women we talk. With a man there, we will give him the prerogative to speak and he ends up directing. Doa Margarita, a middle-aged mother of three girls including Rosalia, criticized those parents who discouraged their daughters' participation in the Agrupacin. As she put it, they don't give their daughters support by saying, look daughterthis is good, you got involved and now you will have more opportunities and God willing, will learn things that I did not learn. As a result, she added, there are girls who do not lose their fear and embarrassment [pena]. In 1997, Rosalia said, I think women are afraid to speak because they have never done so. She framed her commitment to the Agrupacin in terms of creating the space for women to express themselves. In the long term, this women-only space has sparked a process of selfempowerment in that group experiences give women power from within, which Townsend et al. (1999, p. 30) identify as arising from a recognition that one is not helpless, not the source of all one's own problems, that one is restricted in part by structures outside oneself. Today, this power from within is evident in the level of confidence and self-expression manifest in many of the women that once feared speaking in public. Secondly, participation in the Agrupacin asked women to articulate a priority beyond their immediate families. Doa Flor articulates the significance of this move:
We women always occupy ourselves with the house, and only the men leave to work. And a woman can work like men, I mean we don't have the [physical] strength they have, but we have the capacity At home, when you have finished the housework, you may want to go somewhere, but there is nowhere to go. If I go out in the street, people will say, that woman just wanders around. But with this responsibility [in the Agrupacin] I have somewhere to go.
In order to participate in the group's activities, however, individual women have to make changes in their daily practices at home. Women with children have to delegate duties while away from home; teenage children have to feed themselves and their fathers; sisters cover for each other to meet family responsibilities. Doa Amelia runs an extended household, but is able to participate in the group because one of her daughters takes care of all the daily tasks at home'when I come home, she has already given lunch to her father and her brothers'24. In 1997, jokes about their family's reactions to long hours away from home pointed to the anxiety associated with these changes. Articulating and pursuing priorities outside the home has given some women what Townsend et al. (1999, p. 33) identify as the power to, which involves gaining access to a full range of human abilities and potential. This in turn allows women to reconstruct and reinvent themselves, to try new things. Today in San Jos, a significant number of past and present participants (especially the younger women) have embraced the power to as evidenced by their pursuit of higher education and their leadership roles in local organizations. Thirdly, participation in the Agrupacin has put women in contact with researchers and organizations involved in supporting indigenous identity and rights. For instance, the European botanist's project to document women's use of medicinal plants, which primarily involved the older women, specifically identified the women as indigenous and framed them as possessors of indigenous
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knowledge. This project encouraged the older women to revalorize the knowledge and practices of their parents and grandparents and to speak publicly about their denigration by racist government policies and local social relations alike. At the same time, the Agrupacin's relationship with Don Jaime and the BioItz meant that the women were exposed to and involved in the goals of San Jos's cultural revitalization movement, which has ties to the broader Pan-Maya movement in Guatemala. Meanwhile, the women were affected by broader political changes associated with the peace negotiations between the Guatemalan government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity to end the thirty-year civil war. For example, young and old women alike attended a community workshop in February 1997, funded by the Rigoberta Mench Foundation to explain the Peace Accords (signed in December 1996) and encourage people to participate in drafting proposals for change. All these relationships and activities have had two effects. On the one hand, they have led to (re)configurations in some of the women's racial identity and today, many of the groups' participants identify as Itza' and a few have achieved leadership roles in indigenous rights organizations. On the other hand, they have encouraged faith in power with or the capacity to achieve with others what one could not achieve alone (Townsend et al. 1999, p. 31); a sense of power with is a significant source of empowerment for indigenous women in Guatemala, who are becoming actors in civil society for the first time. As for myself, the researcher, my experience with the Agrupacin led me to question many of my assumptions, which had the effect of transforming my identity in a number of ways. First, given that all my initial attempts to write about the Agrupacin ended in paralysis, I initiated a search for a mode of analysis and language that did not essentialize identities and therefore reproduce inequality (see Mohanty, 1991; Radcliffe, 1994; Nelson D., 1999). Hence my engagement with post-structuralist approaches, as outlined here. Secondly, I undertook research on racial formations (Omi & Winant, 1994; Goldberg, 1998)including whiteness (Dyer, 1997; Bonnett, 2000)and on the ways in which geographical research is implicated in the (re)production of racism (Bonnett, 1997; Peake & Trotz, 1999; Kobayashi & Peake, 2000; Dwyer & Jones, 2001). Through this search, I came to identify as white and began to examine the implications of white privilege in my daily life, a first step in changing what it means to be white and exploring what Linda Peake terms a radical white identity (Peake & Trotz, 1999, pp. 3334). Ultimately, I came to embrace anti-racist feminism and feminist geography at personal and professional levels. Concluding Remarks: conservation-in-the-making and environmental degradation In this article, I outline how conservation-in-the-makingthe daily discourses, practices, and performances of conservation as enacted by grassroots organizations and international environmental NGOsis productive of identities-in-the-making. This framing of conservation is based upon the premise that environmental protection involves more than a set of policies for stemming processes of environmental degradation, just as the experimental method is not merely an original approach to science. Rather, as Haraway suggests and this case study hopes to show, the daily
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discourses, practices, and performances of science and by extension, conservation projects reflect and constitute intersecting systems of power that are implicated in producing and (re)configuring social relations and therefore social identities. This means that gender, race, and other elements of subjectivity are at stake in conservation. The specific ways in which they are at stake are best analyzed through geographically situated ethnographic research focused on understanding how individuals and/or collectives do identity in relation to various discursive processes (e.g. class, race, gender and sexuality), to other subjects, and to layers of institutions and practicesall located concretely in time and space (Nelson L., 1999, p. 349). Using ethnographic methods to study conservation as a process of subject formation provides significant insight into how and under what conditions subject/individuals simultaneously exist within and make purposive intervention into social formations (Smith, 1988, p. 5, cited in Nelson L., 1999). At the same time, as my analysis conveys, the negotiation, acceptance, or struggle [with social formations] may be conscious, but the process is never unmediated or transparent, in the sense that conscious action is always encumbered with and influenced by (conscious or unconscious) constitutive discourses (Nelson L., 1999). Such insights are critical to documenting and understanding the complex processes of social change in Latin American countries, while discouraging facile assumptions about the progressive nature of social projects such as conservation. While my approach advances anti-racist feminist praxis, how does it relate to the goals of conservation projects? Indeed, those concerned about environmental degradation in Latin American countries might wonder what identities-in-themaking as an approach will accomplish in the face of such pressing problems. These are important questions. By way of response, I suggest that conservation is about building livable futures. To me, this goal is fundamentally incompatible with sexism, racism, material inequality, and other forms of social exclusion. Thus, it is critical to examine if and how conservation, conservationists (international activists and grassroots actors) and researchers are implicated in the (re)production of unequal social relations in the daily discourses, practices, and performances of conservation. Attention to how inequality is produced through conservation encounters allows each one of us to begin seeing our own role in enacting those social relations. Ultimately, such an approach supports a politics of accountability, for the construction of livable futures depends upon the actions of each and every one of us. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the women of the Agrupacin, who kindly permitted me to participate, observe and collaborate in the making of the medicinal plants projects; without their generosity of spirit, this article would not have been possible. In addition, I thank Alba Huex for her friendship, intellectual engagement, and research assistance in San Jos. Thanks to Minelle Mahtani for supporting my struggle with this article and suggesting many important readings on race. Finally, the three anonymous referees as well as GPC editor Linda Peake provided critical comments and suggestions that significantly improved the article.
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Notes
1. Here, I am drawing on Chandra Mohanty's (1991, p. 70) argument about the effect of essentialist representations, which create Third World women (or men) as a coherent group identity with particular sociocultural characteristics, prior to their entry into social relations. 2. In Spanish, the group's name is Agrupacin Femenina de Plantas Medicinales Itza'. 3. I am grateful to an IIE Fulbright Fellowship, which funded my research in 19961997, and The University of British Columbia for funding subsequent fieldwork. 4. The biosphere reserve model is a unique attempt to make sustainable development compatible with nature protection (UNESCO, 1984). To this end, the reserves are divided into nuclear zones with a high degree of protection; multiple use zones that permit traditional use; and buffer zones wherein sustainable development projects are implemented to improve environmental management. San Jos is located in the buffer zone of the reserve. 5. For details on ethnography as methodology, see Hoggart et al. (2002), pp. 251301. On writing ethnographic fieldnotes, see Emerson et al. (1995). 6. Initially, one of my case studies was meant to focus on Ixchel, a women's group active in San Jos between 1992 and 1995, dedicated to the revalorization of women's cultural and environmental knowledge. Ixchel's founder and director is a middle-class Petenera [of the Petn] of mixed heritage, whose feminist orientations led her to start the group with the goal of creating a space for consciousness-raising efforts. I volunteered for Ixchel in the summer of 1994. When I arrived in San Jos in February 1996, however, I learned that women had stopped participating in the fall of 1995; for a number of reasons, this had not been communicated to me. Therefore, my research shifted to other case studies, which involved working primarily with men. When the opportunity arose to work with women in San Jos through the Agrupacin, I eagerly embraced it. 7. Feminist scholars have developed a number of strategies for collaborating with groups with whom they are doing research to disrupt power inequalities in research relationships. I chose to collaborate with the Agrupacin in ways that had the most impact in terms of its development as an organization, including working directly with the group and donating badly needed funds. Other collaborative strategies range from designing the research with the research subjects as well as participatory action research or activist-research, in which the researcher engages in a research activity with a particular group to accomplish specific social goals (Gibson-Graham, 1994; Pratt, 1998). Textual strategies include some level of co-authorship, which usually means discussing categories of analysis or sharing transcripts or manuscripts prior to publication (as in Pratt, 1998). For further details see Wolf (1995); Nagar (2002); Mountz et al. (2003); and England (1994) and Till (2001) for differing views. 8. The term Don and Doa are the Spanish equivalent of Mr and Mrs and always precede a married individual's first name in formal or polite conversation. 9. For a discussion of the ways in which social identities are potentially contradictory, see Gibson-Graham (1995) and Reed (2000). 10. This section combines research by other scholars with my own interviews, oral histories, and participant observation to assemble a historical narrative that situates the Agrupacin as well as the conservation efforts in the region. 11. See Sieder (1999) for details on the status of indigenous peoples in Guatemala in terms of citizenship; see Hale (2002) for a discussion of the potential limits placed upon the indigenous rights movement. 12. One of the primary reasons that researchers have been attracted to the central Petn relates to its history as home of the Maya civilization's major city-states like Tikal, Uaxactn, and El Mirador. Thus, researchers such as Scott Atran (1993) and others have sought to understand the decline of these civilizations, but also to study the extent to which contemporary land-use practices and environmental knowledge reflect those of the past. 13. The woman elected President of the Agrupacin, Rosalia, had also participated in Ixchel (see note 6). Most of the others had not participated, although they were familiar with the group and many were friends with its director. 14. ProPetn has recently become an independent NGO; more information may be found at their web site: http:/ /www.propeten.org/ 15. Actually, the European botanist was the Agrupacin's first collaborator. 16. My fieldnotes paraphrase this exchange as I was suddenly drawn into the action and was forced to stop writing. 17. Guatemala's social and legal system is similar to other Latin American countries in terms of sustaining patriarchal social relations (Dore & Molyneux, 2000; Thillet de Solrzano, 2001). Increasingly, indigenous groups, activists, and scholars are acknowledging sexism within indigenous communities.
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18. My argument about NGOs is based upon interviews with community leaders such as Don Jaime, coupled with my textual analysis of numerous NGO brochures, videos, and project summaries as outlined in Sundberg (1999). 19. Ladino is the term used in Guatemala to refer to a person of mixed European and indigenous descent; it can also refer to an indigenous person who no longer identifies him- or herself as such. The term, however, is not synonymous with mestizo, used in other contexts such as Mexico, where nation-building projects in the early twentieth century celebrated the notion of mixed heritage. In Guatemala, nation-building was oriented around elevating the status of ladino to that of white Europeans through processes of whitening (Arriola et al., 2002; Casas, 2002; Hale, 2002). 20. Richard Dyer suggests that whiteness is associated with an invisible, internal quality he calls enterprise, which is an aspect of the spirit itselfenergy, will, ambition, the ability to think and see things through and of its effectdiscovery, science, business, wealth creation, the building of nations, the organisation of labour (carried out by racially lesser humans) (1997, p. 31). Similarly, David Theo Goldberg argues that in Western modernity, whiteness is tied to reason; rational capacity as defined by the West, sets the limit upon the natural equality of all those beings ordinarily taken to be human (1993, p. 27). 21. The statement read as follows: The plants in this envelope were gathered by the Women's Association for the Rescue of Medicinal Plants in San Jos, Petn. The women draw from the traditional medicines of the Itza', and have organized to establish an ethnopharmacy and garden. These plants have been shown to be effective in treating this illness since the time of our ancestors. We offer you the best of our traditions. 22. Prior to this encounter, I was perceived as someone evaluating the results of NGO projects, which constrained my welcome and limited my ability to observe the inner world of NGOs. 23. I use the term self-empowerment to reflect the argument made by Townsend et al. (1999, p. 24) that no one can empower another person. As the authors note, if you give someone power, you can take it away (Townsend et al., 1999, p. 24). 24. As this comment reveals, one woman's participation means that the household workload disproportionately falls on another woman's shoulders, while the male members of the family are spared. Even though the workload simply shifts from one woman to another, participation in the Agrupacin allows certain women to (re)configure gender relations within their own households, thereby setting an example to the younger generation.
Abstract translation Este artculo examina como los discursos, las prcticas y las actuaciones de los proyectos de conservacin son decisivos en cuanto a trazar modos de vida que son generizados y racializados. Con el objetivo de traer un enfoque feminista al estudio de la conservacin, presento un relato etnogrfico de las identidades en formacin de tres encuentros en la Reserva de la Biosfera Maya, una zona protegida en el norte de Guatemala. En los dos primeros encuentros, examin las formas en que el gnero y la raza se constituyen en relaciones entre Agrupacin Femenina de Plantas Medicinales Itza y una organizacin no gubernamental internacional del medio ambiente, que es basada en Estados Unidos. El tercer encuentro hace resaltar la relacin entre el Grupo de Mujeres y yo misma, la investigadora, para analizar como las ciencias sociales tambin estn implicadas en la (re)configuracin de las identidades sociales, a travs de mtodos como la etnografa. References
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Gender, Place and Culture Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2004

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Identities in the Making

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Identities in the Making The First Conservation Encounter: un poco de chicle

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Identities in the Making

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