Intensive Agriculture among the Highland Tzeltals

Abstract

Long-term swidden agriculture has clearly exceeded the carrying capacity of the Oxchuc municipality [Chiapas, Mexico] as indicated by soil degradation. There is reason to believe that soil degradation occurs every time a piece of land is slashed and burned, even though it may not be measurable through soil testing or apparent to observers. Any system of farming that is so wasteful of vegetation, has such diminishing annual returns, and requires such a long fallow period for restoration of fertility, is degrading the soil. There are few anthropologists who would agree that milpa agriculturists might go beyond the point of equilibrium in filling the ecological space available to them, as have the Tzeltals, the Kara (Allan), and the Chimbu (Street). This reluctance on the part of anthropologists to criticize swidden farmers may be due to a number of factors. Anthropologists are usually synchronically oriented and do not stay long enough or return often enough to see changes taking place in the environment of the people they study. The approach used is often a structural-functional one emphasizing equilibrium and overlooking change. Anthropology is biased in presenting non-modern people only in positive terms to offset the ethnocentric statements of their detractors. This bias may prevent anthropologists from writing realistic accounts of swidden agriculturists, who, like their modern counterparts, are also despoilers of the environment.