The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

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5.2.2 Agricultural symbolism
The cultural context of biodiversity conservation
And so then they put into words the Creation,
the shaping of our first mother and father.
Only yellow corn and white corn were their bodies.
Only food were the legs and arms of man.
(Popol Vuh) 44
The milpa cycle is an example of a cultural framework for resource management that
carries considerable symbolic meaning. Within this productive sphere, maize represents
one of the most common cultural markers of Mesoamerican societies and provides
a means to understand the links between religious and economic realms (Flores
Arenales 1999: 141). For the Q'eqchi' and other Mayan groups, spiritual links to nature
are particularly expressed in beliefs relating to maize. Building on the myth that the
first humans originally were made of corn, the people have a strong sense of identification
with their milpa and it is of great value to have one's own land on which to cultivate
maize, because doing so is a vital aspect of cultural identity; it provides economic
security and maintains the relationship with the local landscape. 45 This sense of
identification finds a linguistic equivalence in the expression *nink'alek which translates
to ›I clear the milpa‹, but literally means ›I convert into milpa‹ (Hatse & De Ceuster
2001a: 53). Likewise, it became evident in the words of a young informant in San
Benito who said: »Without maize we cannot live« (field notes, 2002). Maize is the essence of
life or, as Nigh puts it, the »central axis of community cultures« (2002: 456), from
which the entire cultural, social and religious life of the Q'eqchi' evolves. As mentioned
above, the term Q'eqchi' originally refers to the common language rather than to the
entire ethnic group with shared cultural attributes. The people refer to themselves as
*ral ch'och, which means »sons and daughters of the earth« or as *aj k'aleb'aal, which
can be translated as »people of the cornfield« (Wilson 1995: 309). 46 As these expressions
indicate, cultural identity is linked with location and points to the significance of
maize and associated activities. Its production is the primary work of the men, just as
the processing of the grains is one of the main occupations of the women. All informants
we worked with considered the cultivation of maize as a highly esteemed and
preferred occupation.
44 Cited in Carrasco (1990: 24). In addition to the remains of ceremonial centres and iconography of
the writing system that survived the conquest, a series of documents remain from the colonial period,
including such accounts as the Popol Vuh. This is the Book of Council of the Maya-Quiché, discovered
in 1701 in the western highlands of Guatemala. It contains information about the indigenous
worldview, related symbols, ritual actions and human destiny on earth and in the afterlife as perceived
in the Maya religion of pre- and post-conquest times.
45 According to the Mayan genesis, humans were not created first. Plants and animals were the first
beings and they later helped in the creation of humans (Montejo 2001). The Popol Vuh describes the
story of the creation of humans: after two failed attempts to create the human body from clay and
wood, God finally succeeded in moulding the first Maya, four men and four women, out of maize
dough (Gómez & Pacay Caal 2003).
46 It is worth mentioning here that the Q'eqchi' word for ›person‹ is kristian, which is derived from the
Spanish christiano.