Nature Regimes in Southern Mexico: A History of Power and Environment

Abstract

This article explores the popularized history of a state-peasant conservation alliance in southern Mexico. Following poststructural calls, it treats this history as a locally constructed "regime of nature, " a story that condenses and attempts to direct the intersection of history, cultural mediation, and ecology. Using ethnographic and archival material, it examines what factors made capitalist interventions aimed at exploiting local forests possible. It compares former regimes with structures and discourses linked to conservation to comment on the relationship between protected areas and state formation. Through this exploration, I suggest compatibilities between poststructural and political-economy approaches to political ecology. (Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, ejido, violence, globalization, migration, frontier colonization) Research on agricultural frontiers emphasizes national policies that frame colonization as well as the local economies and ecologies shaping peasant land use. At Calakmul, located near Guatemala and Belize on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, these concerns coincide with a popularized local history. ' In both cases, a series of capitalist interventions opens the way for colonization and farmers ' engagement with local