Strategies for Authenticity, Space, and Place in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Petén, Guatemala Juanita Sundberg Department of Geography University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712-1098 ABSTRACT Conservation and development organizations abound in Latin America. However, few studies have examined how conservation projects are being articulated in discourses and practices at the local level. In this paper I present findings from fieldwork in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Petén, Guatemala, from February 1996 to March 1997, to explore how different groups are engaged in a discursive struggle for control over the Reserve and its natural resources. Connservation organizations began efforts to protect the Petén's remaining tropical forest in 1992; particular communities were represented as authentic forest dwellers and their livelihood activities were said to be appropriate to sustainable development and conservation goals. Other groups, however, are defined as inappropriate inhabitants. Using ethnographic field notes and experience, this paper analyzes how local people incorporate conservationist rhetoric and representations into their narrative strategies and practices. I conclude that this process represents a demand for rights to space, place, and livelihood in rapidly changing regional, national and global economic conditions. INTRODUCTION Conservation organizations are attracted to environmental 'hot spots' in Latin America. 1 Some protected areas attract more attention than others, either by virtue of their natural beauty or because the issues specific to the locale engender compelling narratives; Guatemala, Costa Rica, the Andes, and the Amazon Basin come to mind. The sheer number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) implementing state-supported nature reserves in Latin America begs our attention. With financial support from interrnational donors, political backing from the state, and moral support from the scientific community, NGOs are playing an important role in managing nature and human-land relationships. Moreover, NGOs are capable of generating powerful discourses to explain environmental degradation and land use. In regions where NGOs are prevalent, local people from all socioeconomic groups necessarily interact with these discourses. My interest in how the relationship between NGOs and local people transforms landscapes and identities in protected areas led me to conduct field work in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala (Figure 1). 2 I was immediately struck by the appearance of conservation's new vocabulary in the many voices seeking to be heard in the Reserve. This led me to theorize that certain individuals are appropriating conservationist discourses into their own to achieve goals consistent with their interests. 3 Drawing from ethnographic field notes, this paper illustrates how local people (re)present themselves and their relationship to nature in new ways, thereby articulating new identities to meet changing power structures and values. THEORETICAL APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY Many geographers have turned their attention to the activities of NGOs in Latin America, with a focus on socioeconomic impacts (Adams 1990; Bebbington 1996, 1997; Bebbington and Thiele 1993; Price 1994; Zimmerer 1993). However, few studies have examined how conservation projects are being articulated in the discourses and practices of daily life at the local level (see Zimmerer 1993, 1996). 4 This micro-level approach is critical to understanding how local political ecologies are transformed through their relationnships with international conservation organizations. [end p. 85]