VULNERABILITY CONTEXT: CAMPESINO HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECOLOGY IN JOCOTáN^[13]

The Municipality of Jocotán lies in the catchments of the Copán-Ch’orti’ watershed close to the border with Honduras. The area is characterized by high population density, with about 215 people per square kilometer, and rugged and sloped lands^[14]. The overall picture is of a "dynamic" and fragile eco-system inhabited by too many people, with too little land.

Hurricane Mitch and the 2001 drought highlighted the environmental vulnerability of this territory. However, the environmental crisis in Jocotán cannot be ascribed only to natural shocks. The root causes of environmental degradation in the area can be found in the economic and political relationships that have shaped land tenure and use arrangements in the past^[15].

The Spaniards founded the town of Santiago de Jocotán after defeating the Maya Ch’orti’. At that time, most of the watershed was covered by forests (sub-tropical rainforest in the valley, acacia forest on the sloped hillside, ocote pine woods in the highland). The fertile land of the valley was intensively exploited by Spanish encomienderos to produce cocoa, tobacco, sugar cane, salzaparilla, indigo, and cattle. The Ch’orti’ campesinos were forced to establish their subsistence milpas (maize parcels) on the sloped, stony, fragile and dry hillsides. The need to rotate this land every few years meant that this campesino hillside agriculture was a key cause of deforestation in the watershed.

During the 19th century, liberal reform overhauled the land privileges of the encomienderos, transferring indigenous communal land titles to the Municipality, and enabling the Spanish-speaking entrepreneurial elite to increase its control over arable land and campesino labor. By the end of the century, Ladino and European immigrants expanded towards the uplands where iron mines and coffee plantations were established. The Ch’orti’ retired further towards the less accessible and less productive areas of the territory and diversified their household economy. Subsistence agriculture in small plots (sometimes rented from Ladino landowners) was complemented with the selling of small agricultural surpluses, handicraft production (textile, pottery, and fiber work) and sharecropping or wage labor for the pueblo’s landowners.

By 1920-1930, after two centuries of continued deforestation, the land was insufficient to maintain a consistent rotation pattern and pressure on soil intensified. Less and more erratic rainfall was reported in the region. In the 1950s, hillside campesinos began sowing drought-resistant sorghum as a "security crop" associated with traditional maize and beans. At the same time, men began to migrate seasonally to the fruit plantations of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts or to the big estates of Petén, where the daily wage was higher than that paid by Jocotán landowners.

By incorporating sorghum and seasonal migration, the campesino livelihood strategy proved capable of achieving its primary goals to satisfy immediate needs and to maintain the campesino family on-farm.

However, unfavorable terms of trade prevented most families from fully entering the market. Instead, the last three or four decades have seen a continued fall in households’ natural, physical and financial assets, with rising population pressure and the further fragmentation of plots. This has led to the over-exploitation of soils and to a progressive decline in crop yields, which the use of chemical fertilizers has only partially alleviated. Moreover, a lack of cash, labor and know-how prevent campesinos from investing in soil conservation and water harvesting activities. The patches of ocote forest still covering the mountains have also begun to be degraded by small-scale timbering and daily fuel wood collection.

Vegetation coverage is inadequate to retain rainfall, humidity and soil. The beginning of the rainy season has been delayed by one month and canículas (the pauses in the rain during the wet season) have become longer and more frequent. When rain falls, huge amounts of fertile sediment are washed away and landslides threaten infrastructure, crops, property, and life. Under these circumstances, campesino livelihoods in Jocotán are increasingly at risk and the need to identify sustainable development alternatives is recognized by local people and institutions.