May 20, 2000 New York Times
Guatemalan Squatters Torching Park Forests
By DAVID GONZALEZ
L CEIBAL, Guatemala -- The distant roar of howler monkeys echoed like a ghastly dirge on a recent day in the smoldering remains of a thick forest of palms, cedar and mahogany. Illegal loggers had cut down the best trees and hauled them off at night, while land-starved peasants torched what remained to clear the land for cornfields.
The effect of a population boom here has been disturbingly visible during the peak of the dry season in April and May, with the area's natural beauty shrouded in smoke from countless fires.
Although El Ceibal is a national park that is home to Mayan ruins, it is protected only on paper. The fires were set by invasores, or squatters, more than 200 of whom have lived in the park in two settlements of thatched-roof shacks since 1998.
They are part of an unending internal migration to Guatemala's Petén region, which covers a third of the country. It includes the sprawling, environmentally sensitive jungles of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, which is rich with wildlife, thick clusters of trees and majestic temples. The area's population is estimated to have grown from 20,000 in 1960 to almost a half million today -- not all illegal, but nonetheless harmful.
The fires, by and large, are set; some are from slash-and-burn farming gone awry, and others are touched off by poachers who hunt armadillos and large rodents by smoking them out of burrows and hollow logs. Some are even believed to be set by poor peasants who hope that the local authorities will hire them to help the understaffed local fire brigades.
The migration, with its accompanying fires and deforestation, underscores the problems facing Guatemala as it emerges from 36 years of civil war, ending in 1996. Peasants, including thousands who returned after years of exile in Mexico, scramble to find a patch of land they can farm. In their struggle for self-preservation, conservation is forgotten. And the government lacks money and manpower to fight all the fires, much less arrest wrongdoers.
"The Petén has served for the last 20 years as a pressure valve," said Roan McNab, the Guatemala program director for the Wildlife Conservation Society. "How can Guatemala prioritize conservation in the face of overwhelming pressure? When you're hungry for tomorrow, it's impossible to think 20 years down the road."
Since early April, fires have raged not only in El Ceibal, but also in several larger parks inside the reserve, scaring off or killing wildlife. The Guatemalan government mobilized soldiers and authorized $400,000 to fight the fires all over the country, a small amount for damage that is expected to extend to 125,000 acres, if rains do not start soon. But the aid has been slow to get to the hardest-hit areas.
The United States and Mexico have lent helicopters to help spot the fires and to bring water and food to park workers who have been battling the flames, snatching a few hours of fitful sleep on palm fronds spread on the jungle floor.
While the blazes can be battled, if slowly, it has proved more difficult to stem the flood of people who see the Petén as the promised land. It is a deceptive vision of lush land, since the thin layer of humus is unsuitable for agriculture. Settlers burn trees and bushes to enrich the ground with nutrients, which makes the land arable for three years at most before they have to clear new land.
Petén natives used to earn a living by carefully managing the forests, tapping the sap from chicle trees for export to chewing gum manufacturers or plucking the leaves of xate palms to be used overseas in floral arrangements. The area's remoteness was its best protection.
But in the western part of the reserve, where oil production has been allowed, squatters followed the roads built to carry oil, carving out settlements when they could not find work in the oil fields.
Neria Virginia Guerrero Pinelo, who grew up in the central Petén, remembers how, as a child, she saw planes before she ever saw a car. When a road was built from Guatemala City in the 1960's, the transformation for the worse began. The situation deteriorated further during that era as the government encouraged development through an agency essentially run by the military that cleared land for farms and cattle ranches.
Now, she said, native Peteneros are in the minority, squeezed out by migrants from the south who bundle their belongings into pickup trucks and head to the Petén like later-day Okies.
"They think the Petén is a paradise, and they hear the land is so rich," she said. "They come looking for work, but there is no work, so they take a little piece of land for a cornfield.
There are large groups that go in, and they begin to cut trees and burn."
Some squatters, desperate for money, have been enlisted by illegal loggers who give them chain saws to cut down trees, then use them as security guards, having dozens ride on the trucks with their illegal bounty, ready to confront any authority who would try to stop them.
In several recent instances, policemen or park workers were reported killed or tortured by squatters working for the loggers.
In El Ceibal, the squatters do not bother to hide. Their houses line the road into the park. The buzz of chain saws is common, said park workers, who, fearing attack, try to avoid the squatters. A few months ago, the squatters stole the solar panel that powered the park's only phone to prevent the administrator from calling the authorities.
Recently, while workers were trying to clear areas with machetes to contain a fire, the squatters were right behind them putting fresh wood on the fire, park workers said. There have also been scattered incidents of squatters stealing Mayan artifacts.
"When they finish with the wood, they will throw themselves into excavating the ruins, because that will be all that is left for them to destroy," said William Perlas Pineda, El Ceibal's caretaker.
Conservation has been difficult to promote. When Guatemala established the National Council for Protected Areas, peasants were angered that someone would interfere with their ability to use the land as they saw fit. Most regard the idea of protected lands as something foisted on them by groups from the United States and Europe.
"Some say we are protecting land for the gringos, while we Guatemalans have a right to land," said Marie Claire Paiz, the administrator of the Sierra del Lacanadón National Park.
Ms. Paiz said the peace accords' reference to every Guatemalan's right to land has been broadly interpreted.
"Public land is seen as nobody's land," she said.
Equally new is the idea of enforcing the country's environmental laws, considered the best in Central America. Park workers and the police grouse that when they talk to squatters about their illegal land use, they are quickly told that to remove them would be a violation of their human rights. There is also fear that forcing the squatters to move would be denounced as mistreatment of indigenous peoples.
The government has been working with some international groups to sort out a quagmire of land titles, and it started a program this year of low-interest loans to acquire land. Officials have also enlisted international conservation groups to negotiate with the squatters to relocate them outside of environmentally sensitive areas. The Petén governor is trying to find land in a nearby town to resettle the El Ceibal squatters.
"There have been some positive examples of such moving, but very few," said Goran Fejic, director of the United Nations' mission monitoring the peace accords in Petén. "You need a long-term strategy of social development."
While some people fault the government for a lack of political will to address the problems, some initiatives are seen as a hopeful sign. The government has been granting 25-year land concessions to some communities, letting them live off the area's above-ground resources as long as they come up with management and business plans. The village of Uaxactún has the largest such concession, more than 200,000 acres. Run by a local assembly assisted by outside advisers, the concession has developed plans to sell allspice, xate palm and handicrafts.
To keep squatters out, Uaxactún has been made accessible only by passing through the guarded gates of Tikal National Park, to the south. Anyone wishing to move into the village must be approved by the entire community, though no one has yet to get the nod. Recently, a family whose carelessness led to a fire's getting out of control was expelled. But residents worry that the government may allow oil exploration nearby, which would mean more roads and settlers.
"Other people look at this with an eye to destruction," said Julio César Corado, the vice president of the assembly. "Our plan is to manage and conserve this. Our area is rich, but we are not trying to get rich. We are only looking for equality among the members of our assembly, human rights, health and schools for our children."