Treasures of the Guatemala Rain Forest

...Nevertheless, I'm inclined to agree with Wilbur Garrett: "There are few places where a collaborative effort to improve and promote visitation could so affect local poverty and its attendant political unrest...

...Guatemala has dropped its own plans to dam the river...

...Union leaders remain particular targets of persecution...

...Its aim is not simply to help expand tourism but to encourage the protection of an extraordinary heritage and nature's gifts...

...The people with whom I discussed the subject in Guatemala City displayed a high degree of sophistication about the long-term ecological dangers development poses...

...This threatens to destroy not only an astonishing variety of flora and fauna but the richest archeological treasures in the Americas...

...Such preservation, as the Agency for International Development (AID) demonstrated in a subsequent study, "Biodiversity in Guatemala," is vital to economic progress and therefore to the prospects for democracy...

...But the relevant environmental laws are recent, and the means to enforce them are extremely limited...

...But especially at a time when the contra war in Nicaragua seems to be effectively over, it could serve as the catalyst for a longterm United States strategy focusing on the nonmilitary needs of the region...

...Even with the recent establishment of the 2.5 million-acre Maya Biosphere Reserve, barely 25 per cent of the jungle in the Petén is theoretically protected...

...Of course, support for La Ruta Maya will not alone end human rights violations or solve the myriad Third World problems of Central America...

...Money to carry out the digs is in short supply, though they might indeed eventually prove to be profitable investments...

...Out of what is left for IDAEH, 1 per cent is devoted to protection...

...At Uaxactun, for example, several of the largest masks ever unearthed (they measure more than 33 feet high) are still faced with some of the original pigmented plaster...

...Stories abound, too, about a major oil discovery near Sayaxche in the western Petén...

...Like rain forests elsewhere, this one is being cut down at an alarming rate: roughly 400-625 square miles are lost each year to road construction, logging, oil exploration, cattle ranching, and slash-and-burn farming...

...Alan Wade, a previous contributor to The New Leader, is a freelance writer...

...Every Central American government wants tourist dollars, and an international route like the one that National Geographic's Garrett has proposed would surely be a greater draw than an individual country's sites...

...That could flood and permanently erase dozens of Mayan sites along both shores, including the major ruins of Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras...

...And there are only 30 trained biologists in the whole country...

...It is estimated that the entire forest could disappear in 25-40 years...

...Seven of eight forest engineers in Guatemala work for the private sector...

...In addition, while the limestone temples and carvings of the classical Maya have been preserved for more than a thousand years by the dirt covering them, their very discovery and exposure to the atmosphere can be hazardous...

...The amount of archeological work that needs to be done—even at Tikal, already cleared to several square miles —is staggering...

...Pressure from increased migration into the area is virtually certain to get worse...

...Perhaps worse, Indians continue to be forcibly relocated into " Model Villages" to get them away from border areas where they might harbor Leftist guerrillas—who have been decimated and currently number fewer than a thousand (even by the Army's estimate...

...News that Club Med has bought one of the two luxury resort hotels under construction near Tikal and plans to double its size has been greeted with enthusiasm at INGUAT...

...The universal outcry against the destruction of the Amazonjunglehas alerted the world to the need for preserving its remaining rain forests...

...Unlicensed cutting of mahogany trees is illegal, but we saw widespread evidence of it throughout western Petén...

...There is not much the Institute of Anthropology and History (IDAEH) could do either...

...Nor is it far-fetched to suggest that in Guatemala itself a flow of foreign visitors could contribute to making it possible for President Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo—the first civilian in that office since 1970—to build the economic and social institutions necessary to improve the chances for democracy...

...According to Julio Fonseca, director of the Guatemalan Tourist Institute (INGUAT), the Ruta Maya concept has been embraced by all the governments in the area...

...Edmundo Vâsquez, a technical assessor at the Guatemalan Commission on the Environment, told me steps are being taken to ensure that the new hotels and the oil companies will not do damage to the jungle...

...There may be as many as 2,000 Mayan sites of varying degrees of importance in the Petén...

...This was tempered, however, by a melancholy awareness of the considerable near-term costs of restrictive measures...

...No one really knows what is hidden in the dense jungles...

...On the Mexican side, much of the jungle has already been claimed by agriculture...

...Several regional commissions—as well as private travel agencies—are now working on improving connections among the major archeological sites and developing better accommodations for visitors...

...And hundreds of thousands of Indians are still being forced by the military to join the hated Civil Patrols, specifically outlawed by the Constitution...

...As a result, there are four inspectors charged with catching looters in the whole of El Petén, and three in the rest of the country...

...A number of oil companies have been given permission to drill exploratory wells in the exquisite park surrounding the ancient Mayan city of Ceibal...

...Tourist dollars alone won't be enough to offset those costs...

...There is no question of turning the entire region into a park—the country is too small and poor to contemplate that— but rather of learning to use the forest in a manner that does not lead to its destruction...

...A mere 170 are registered, and just three—Tikal, Uaxactun and Ceibal—are well-maintained and guarded...

...Since the maturity cycle of a rain forest may be as long as 400 years, what is lost today will never be regained...

...Germany has offered to pave the main road to the Petén, to provide the funds to study and control the effects of development, and to aid in compiling an atlas of archeological sites...

...El Salvador, though it has few Mayan ruins, has also been included in the plan...

...The Aro study argued persuasively that the economic future of El Petén will depend on a recognition that the plants and animals of a healthy forest can provide food plus a host of other products...

...The economic pressure to permit more drilling, should sufficient oil be found, will be overwhelming...

...There are at present seven active archeological digs in the Petén, six of which are being run by U. S. universities...

...He covered up the last one in an attempt to hide it, yet there is nothing he could do should the original robbers come back to finish the job...

...Yet like much of Central America it, too, is in a period of difficult transition...

...Three people are charged with preventing wildlife poaching in the entire country, and they are not assigned vehicles...

...The annual population growth rate in Guatemala is 3.2 per cent, the second highest in Central America (after Nicaragua's 3.5 per cent...

...Guatemala will need substantial assistance from abroad if the environment is to be handled responsibly...

...Priceless works of Mayan art disappear every year to private collections abroad...

...Expanding tourism, protecting the environment and preserving the artifacts of a past civilization may seem relatively trivial concerns when one is speaking of a part of the world where people are to this day dying for their beliefs and lack adequate food, housing, employment, transportation, or medical care...

...he Ruta Maya project may also promote cooperation among the nations in the region...

...All along the river on the Guatemalan side, despite laws forbidding them, new settlements are being carved out...

...I spent eight days on the Usumacinta River, which forms the border between western Petén and Mexico...

...Most sites we visited showed signs of looting and vandalism: tombs had been broken into and robbed, steles (carved ritual stones) had been cut up and taken away, the knowledge they contained gone forever...

...Bylaw, a third of the archeologjsts engaged in these explorations must be Guatemalan, so the next generation is finally being given necessary on-site training...

...And in 1987 a large fire destroyed some 580 square miles of forest...

...Leaving aside the tensions caused by various guerrilla wars, their relations have often been difficult: Guatemala has only recently renewed limited diplomatic relations with Belize, whose territory it has long claimed...

...It is part of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, where the bulk of the budget is for sports...

...Given that El Petén is now the least inhabited province, it is the natural destination of those in search of land and opportunity...

...At one finca we visited along the Usumacinta, a farmer told us he discovered several large steles buried in the bush and all except one had been stolen...

...Although human rights abuses have declined since his inauguration in January 1986, and he may yet bring the Army under control, Americas Watch reports that in the first nine months of 1988 an average of 70 people a month were killed or disappeared...

...The government is eager to exploit the value of the jungle and the ruins as tourist attractions—a value it recognizes will be diminished if the forests are indiscriminately cut down...

...So ways are again being sought to prudently capitalize on what may be the country's most important assets: the last remaining tropical rain forest in North America, and the Mayan ruins within its confines...

...one works for the government...

...A proposal he put forward early last year revived the notion of linking the Mayan ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras to create a kind of tourist circuit, La Ruta Maya...

...In Guatemala, the Ruta Maya plan is a key factor...

...The new efforts in this direction have been stimulated by Wilbur Garrett, editor of National Geographic magazine...

...That the project is of some urgency here soon becomes apparent when one travels for a few weeks, as I did, in the jungles of the northern province of El Petén...

...If that were not bad enough, Mexico is considering constructing a series of dams on the Usumacinta...

...The European Community has committed $2.5 million to a preliminary developmental impact study...

...The hope is that the new hotels will spearhead a modern tourist industry in El Petén, for the shortage of decent accommodations has been keeping affluent visitors away...

...Some countries have begun to extend help...

...Of the 1,453 species of vertebrate fauna in Guatemala (a bigger variety than in any other country in Central America), 133 are considered endangered, mainly because of hunting and the destruction of habitat...

...Over the years, most of the archeological work here has been conducted by North Americans, but this is beginning to change...

...They have had to be reburied until a reliable way can be found to treat the plaster against decomposition...

...Thus the total population is expected to double in 21 years...