[Aztlan] Why is the U.S. military sponsoring fieldwork in indigenous villages in Oaxaca?

[Elaine Schele]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for this interesting post.  The first instance of this kind of
mapping, i.e. empowering local people by training them to use GPS and
GIS and thus helping them decide where their tribal/family
landownership boundaries are located, seems to have begun in 1998 by
Peter Dana and others at the University of Texas, Department of
Environment and Geography.  View this article from GPS World, 1998:
http://www.iapad.org/publications/ppgis/GPSWSep98.pdf.  If others know
of something earlier, please let me know.

Elaine


On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Michael Smith<Michael.E.Smith.2 at asu.edu> wrote:
> Some academic geographers from the University of Kansas are conducting field research on indigenous landholdings in the Mixteca, with funding from the U.S. military. The program is called "México Indígena," and it is part of a broader military-funded endeavor (called "the Bowman Expeditions") of mapping and data gathering in rural areas around the world. For a discussion, see the recent post, "Human Terrain in Oaxaca" on the Savage Minds blog:
>
> http://savageminds.org/2009/06/05/human-terrain-in-oaxaca/
>
> There are links at the bottom of that post to the home site of the Bowman Expeditions and to some works critical of the project. A number of indigenous activities are strongly critical of this work.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> Michael E. Smith, Professor
>
> School of Human Evolution & Social Change
>
> Arizona State University
>
> www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9
>
> http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com
>
> http://calixtlahuaca.blogspot.com
>
>
>
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