Future [Arch]Ecologies | Territory, Identity and Heritage

Abstract

The Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, known by the name of Mayapán by the Mayan civilization, remained an enclosed and remote area during every major historical transition of the country (Colonization, Independence from Spain, Internal Civil War). Located between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, this rich landscape remained forever in the sight of powerful individuals and colonizers who never truly managed to rule the Mayan warriors.

Today, the region is composed of three different states with a complex mosaic of rich biodiversity, fascinating landscapes and important coral reef systems competing for survival against the effects of nature and human actions. For decades, the focus remained mainly on the economic development of the coastal areas without considering the ecological stress and social uncertainty as a result of urban expansion. In the span of merely twenty years, the region was completely transformed following capitalist intentions and we can see the fragile state of the land as a direct result of this. Sadly, the region’s mostly mono-cultural economic practices focusing on tourism services have pushed the locals, from mostly indigenous background to leave their communities and seek job opportunities in the cities created for the new Mayan Riviera.

This set of political, social, economic and natural elements have had enormous repercussions on the physical and social integrity of the landscape, which nowadays is threatened not only by the over-exploitation of resources and climate change, but also by the homogenization and simplification of an ancestral culture.

However, it is in this richness of landscapes, biodiversity and cultural heritage where I see a possibility to think of new ways of co-existing and to imagine new ways of living in sync with our environment. What would be the long durée in this region where everything is the result of a process of legitimization and Disneyfication of the landscape and its culture? The aim of this thesis is to expose the critical issues, assess the damage and recover together with nature with the guiding principle that resources should be managed to reflect the relationships among all ecosystem components, including humans and nonhuman species, the environment in which they live, and physical, biological and socioeconomic interrelationships.