CHAPTER 6 



CHARACTERISTICS OF MAYA GARDENS AND THEIR USE 



BY WILDLIFE IN QUINT ANA ROO, MEXICO 



Introduction 



For the Maya today, as for the past 3,000-4,000 years, daily life is centered around their 

 gardens and the production of com, the principal CTop (Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1962; Steggerda, 

 1941). A successful garden provides esteem to the gardener, as well as abundant food resources for 

 the family and its domestic animals (e.g., cattle, pigs, chickens, or turkeys). In addition, a successful 

 crop harvest is evidence to the gardener, as well as to other villagers, that he and his family have 

 fulfilled their spiritual obligations to the numerous Mayan saints and spirits. Natural events such as 

 crop failures or low crop yields, according to the Maya, have spiritual causes and require spiritual 

 solutions (cf., Bums, 1983:202-225). In this sense, the garden has both a practical and a religious 

 context (Villa Rojas, 1987). 



Recognizing the importance of gardens to the Maya and other subsistence farmers in Latin 

 America, much has been written about gardens and their characteristics (cf. Conklin, 1961; Ewell and 

 Merrill-Sands, 1987; Watters, 1971). These studies suggest that the practice of gardening has changed 

 little in the Yucatan Peninsula over the past 500 years (Hammond, 1982a, 1982b; Landa, 1978; 

 Morley, 1956; Roys, 1972; Turner, 1974, 1990). These studies also give the impression that gardens 

 are important only in terms of providing food to the Maya. Rewald (1989) and Greenberg (1992), 

 however, suggest that Maya gardens and shifting cultivation might be part of a larger ecological process 

 that is dynamic-rather than static-and affects both native plants and wildlife. 



One important ecological process that has been affected by gardens and shifting cultivation is 

 the distribution and abundance of many important plant species in the Yucatan Peninsula. For example, 

 fruits such as huaya (Jalisia olivaeformis; see comment in the Methods section about Maya and Spanish 



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