Mexican Rural Development and the Plumed Serpent: Technology and Maya Cosmology in the Tropical Forest of Campeche, Mexico

by Betty Bernice Faust

Overview

This is the first ethnography to be written about a Campeche Maya community. It examines the surviving Maya traditional technologies and sacred cosmologies and discusses the potential for combining these with modern knowledge and technologies to form an efficient new system that will not only provide for ecologically responsible development but will also make possible the cultural survival of this threatened indigenous population.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897894821
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/25/1998
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

BETTY BERNICE FAUST is a Researcher and the Academic Coordinator of Human Ecology at the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mérida, Mexico. She is a contributor to Women In Health (Bergin & Garvey, 1988).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: The Plumed Serpent and Rural Development
Fieldwork: Navigating Friendships in the Dark
Maya Cultural Heritage
Past Transformations of Maya Technology
Working for Water from the Earth and the Sky
Growing the Sacred Bread
The Plumed Serpent, Rural Development, and the Future of the Biosphere
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Based on her eleven years in the modernizing Maya community of Pich, Campeche, Mexico, Faust (human ecology, Centro de Investigaci<'o>n y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Polit<'e>cnico Nacional, M<'e>rida, Mexico) describes traditional values and their relevance to maintaining subsistence security during short-term climactic fluctuations. Her detailed accounts describe the manner in which primitive methods of water control, exploitation of game and forest products, beliefs, and rituals reflect and reinforce the integration of humans with other components of the ecosystem. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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