Surviving in the Rainforest:
The Realities of Looting in the Rural Villages of El Petén, Guatemala

Destruction vs. Conservation. What are the Options?

The protection and conservation of the sites in Guatemala are a major concern for IDAEH ⁵²   and the archaeological world. However, the lack of resources and the need for the government to provide urgent relief in other aspects of social welfare (health, education, roads, etc.), places cultural activities at the end of the list of priorities.

Legally, the administration of the archaeological sites and national parks is shared by IDAEH and CONAP, due to the existence of some National Parks that have both nature reserves and major archaeological remains, such as Tikal National Park, El Mirador National Park, and Río Azul National Park. However, most of sites in the country are protected only by IDAEH. Unfortunately, the cultural heritage has not received the necessary support from the authorities or any other institution. Until a few years ago, only two private entities, Asociación Tikal ⁵³   and Fundación del Banco G & T (a private bank in Guatemala), have provided support for studies and other activities related to the promotion of the cultural past. G & T has recently started to sponsor much of the remodeling of the new exhibits at the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, which will be of great use to the school population, visitors, and researchers.

Of all the approximately 1,400 archaeological sites in Guatemala, only Tikal receives attention because its image is promoted as the main attraction for international tourism. Just showing Temple I and its Great Plaza is enough to make people think that Tikal is the Maya World, rather than a part of it. A nearby site, Uaxactún, 25 km north of Tikal, does not receive the most minimal support from INGUAT or IDAEH. ⁵⁴   El Mirador and El Perú are available only to adventurous travelers who can either contact the communities that provide tourism services (Carmelita and Centro Campesino, respectively) or contact PROPETEN/CI ⁵⁵   to arrange trips. Fortunately, non-governmental organizations that are promoting ecotourism like PROPETEN/CI, ARCAS, TNC, and others are fulfilling, in part, the lack of cultural education by providing training and basic information about archaeology to the local guides.

Environmental education has its widest range in El Petén, Guatemala City, and some smaller communities. Even though that region is sometimes considered the cradle of Maya civilization, there is not a single cultural education project in El Petén. ⁵⁶   IDAEH’s local office is simply a bureaucratic dependency that is not capable of developing its own programs to reach the communities. Archaeologists and their excavation projects are not requested to create a special educational program as part of their work in the area.

The local population has obtained its knowledge about the ancient Maya in different ways. The groups who know most about the physical sites are obviously those that have been in direct and constant contact with Precolumbian objects. They can either be formal and incidental looters, or trained workers of IDAEH in the major archaeological sites. There are also students of Archaeology and tour guides who may obtain and disseminate scarce up-to date information, but most of the knowledge acquired by petenero students is limited to their teachers’ classes, their fieldwork experience, and a few articles and texts edited in Spanish.

In places like El Petén, a vast number of individuals who are hired to work as diggers in the archaeological projects, have been involved in looting in one way or another. This has been addressed by other authors and admitted by archaeologists who, even though they are aware of this, can’t do much about it. Scientific excavations can last from a few weeks to several years, providing economic growth to whole villages, with new jobs and the possibility of tourism. These job opportunities create other economic advantages in which the local population can participate and obtain additional income. But, although archaeological excavation and studies provide these people with a new way of life, they do not last forever. In El Petén, the excavation period is usually during the dry season from February to early May; the rest of the year, the men who are digging with the project, have to go back to xate, chicle, pimienta gathering.

Excavators for the archaeological projects are usually hired from the villages in the vicinity. Contrary to other regions of the country, the petenero workers who are hired to work in a project often have more experience in the field than the archeologist in charge. The professional archaeologist is well aware of this. Workers learn the scientific methodology and often discover valuable evidence, as well as providing protection for the site. They also pick up basic conservation techniques for the objects.

Learning how to interpret their findings or at least knowing what are they looking for and why they are so important, is usually not part of the knowledge they acquire as employees of a scientific project. Very few archaeologists acquaint their crews with the latest information. Archaeological research is limited to excavation, data interpretation, restoration, and the publication of technical reports. No one, as far as it is known, gives back to the community the information obtained from the same grounds where local people live and work.

Consequently, when an archaeological project finishes the excavation research after some years, it leaves the area without providing a sustainable activity for the local population as a product of their many years of investigation. The communities are legally not allowed to participate in the management, protection, and direct tourism benefits of the archaeological sites that exist next to them. So, as soon as the site is discovered, investigated, and its history almost decoded, they are practically abandoned again without any ongoing program of information. ⁵⁷ 

Notable exceptions have been Norberto Tesucún and Neria Herrera, two local people who have provided basic information about their Precolumbian heritage to the school population in El Petén. Mr. Tesucún is now the Museum Coordinator for the Tikal Precolumbian Collections; while Neria Herrera, a teacher from Uaxactún, is the legal guardian of the first private collection of El Petén that is open to the public.

Mr. Tesucún is an example of utilizing trained local people. As an excavation worker with the Tikal Project of the University of Pennsylvania (ca. 1958), "Don Beto" was involved in several discoveries in the core of the site. As time passed he became part of the permanent staff, working in different departments. As Museum Coordinator, he has lectured and given tours to the school children of El Petén. However, there are no resources to provide him with teaching materials and facilities.

Surprisingly, in El Petén there is only one registered collection, located in Uaxactún.  Neria Herrera, a school teacher, collected all the objects that were found by the school children and their parents in the jungle (or maybe looted by them). These objects were not quite good enough for sale, so they were given to her as a gift. For several years she hid the objects because of her fear of being caught and sent to prison. In 1995, she finally had the confidence to ask for advice and now her collection is open to the public, to which tourists, petenero schools, and locals can go and see the objects freely.

Scholars like Dr. Juan Antonio Valdés and Dr. Nikolai Grube have supported the small exhibition with labels, articles, and conservation. Today it encompasses more than 200 objects of ceramics, bone, shell, flint, and limestone. Her purpose has been to provide cultural education through the interpretation of cultural artifacts that can be easily identified by analogy with modern-day utensils.

Endnotes

52. IDAEH was created February 23, 1946 to "improve the organization and administration of the museums; coordinate the dependencies that control the archaeological heritage; start and promote the ethnographic and folklore studies, as well as intensify the historical research…" (Siller, 1992:53). Created first under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, it now belongs to the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

53. Asociación Tikal is a private organization that for several years has sponsored part of the Annual Symposium of Archaeology in Guatemala (organized by the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology), promotes conferences and tours relating to archaeology, and provides funds to archaeology students for research and publications. Besides Museo Popol Vuh and CIRMA, Asociación Tikal has an extensive library on archaeology and Maya art.

54. IDAEH’s Registration Office provided a minimum of support and orientation in the creation of the first privately owned collection of Precolumbian objects in El Petén. The collection, now open to the public, can become a good complement to the archaeological site that surrounds the village.

55. PROPETEN/CI is undertaking projects of the sustainable use of resources, community enterprises, and ecotourism, giving special training, merchandising orientation, and funding to the local population. The Ruta Mirador (for El Mirador) and Ruta Guacamaya (or Macaw Trail, which includes El Perú) are two of the main ecotourism projects that involve community administration and the provision of services.

56. Petencito, the regional zoo of El Petén, is currently developing a plan of paying more attention to the public, which will include the improvement of services like interpretation, environmental education, conservation, and recreation. Culture aspects like the relationship of the Maya with nature will also be included.

57. Cases like these are frequent in the Maya area. Uaxactún is still being looted, as well as the areas surrounding Nakbé and the Petexbatún Region, at the north and southwest of Petén. A well-known case is Aguateca, which has been sacked several times by armed men and its stelae cut with chainsaw. The guard from IDAEH was unable to do anything with his only weapon, a machete.

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