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Page 3 communal celebrations. In the Selva Lacandona (Lacandón Jungle) of Chiapas, have been forced off their ancestral lands by logging, cattle ranching, the bloody aftermath of the Zapatista uprising, and the more than 70,000 desperate refugees who had fled Central America during the height of civil war. Along the Caribbean Coast of Quintana Roo, the development of seaside resorts has marched southward unchecked from Cancún, replacing the henequen plantations that have historically displaced and enslaved Yucatec Maya. Those who have not fled deeper into the jungles of Yucatán often venture to Merida, once thought of as "Paris of the Western World," or to the crime-plagued colonia of "Mayami" in hopes of getting jobs catering to Cancún's tourists and wealthy elite.
But all is not lost for the Maya. In San Juan Chamula, a Tzotzil Maya stronghold, traditionalists have forcefully driven out fellow Tzotzil who had been Christianized by evangelistas. On another front, near the banks of the Río Usumacinta on the border with Guatemala where the great settlement of Yaxchilan thrived under king Escudo del Jaguar --"Jaguar Shield" -- during the 8th century, Lacandón Maya environmentalists have formed civil patrols to fight smuggling by inspecting trucks leaving the selva. The smuggling market includes parrots, white tortoise shells, and alligator hides; especially popular are macaws which reportedly command $10,000 to $25,000 in the United States. In other cases, people return to tranditional customs; in the "Horn of Mexico," traditional Yucatec Maya still   |
