Farmers embrace Maya traditions

Yucatán villagers are reconnecting with milpa growing methods despite a changing landscape

- Imogen Lepere

Teresa de Jesús Cen Requena is washing burgundy okra and a rainbow of freshly dug carrots at Mestiza de Indias, a regenerative agricultural project hidden down a dirt track in the jungle near the Maya village of Espita. "You used to be able to live from your milpa," the farm worker said, referring to the traditional smallholding. "But now many people from the village go to Cancún because they want modern luxuries.

"You can't buy a mobile phone with a bag of beans but I don't care - I am connected to this land."

At first glance, life appears largely unchanged in this village on Mexico's Yucatán peninsula. Women wearing huipiles (embroidered tunics) steam tamales (stuffed maize dough) over open fires in houses thatched with palm; men melt into the jungle with guns over their shoulders to hunt deer.

However, instead of the traditional maize, their milpas (farms organised on a pre-Hispanic land system) are more likely to be sprouting a new crop: smouldering mounds of plastic. With the community no longer self-sufficient, those left in Espita have to rely on the local supermarkets, and with no rubbish collection in this remote area of the Maya Forest - the second largest in Latin America - packaging, including the plastic, is often burned.

The exodus of people looking for work in the ever-expanding tourist resorts along the Riviera Maya has put milpa farm production under severe strain, and experts fear this could intensify when a new and controversial Maya train launches in December, doubling the number of tourists expected to visit the peninsula.

"It will prove very damaging when it comes to preserving the milpa tradition in the mid and long term," said Dr Javier Orlando Mijangos Cortés, senior researcher at the Yucatan Scientific Research Center.