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 | |  |  |  | | Develop the El Pilar archaeological site as a model for conservation, sustainable development and cooperation | | Anabel Ford has spent almost two decades bringing together diverse disciplines, priorities and people at El Pilar, a vast ancient Maya city straddling the border between Belize and Guatemala. With her multidisciplinary team of researchers, this American archaeologist and anthropologist is developing the site into a model for conservation, sustainable development and cooperation. She is now closer than ever to realising her ultimate vision for a single, unified El Pilar. To achieve this, she has implemented the El Pilar Program, a strategic plan that transcends a troubled international boundary and establishes the long-term foundation for preserving the site’s cultural heritage. |
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Archaeologists have searched for decades to explain the rapid demise of Maya civilisation. But not Dr Anabel Ford, a 48-year-old research archaeologist and anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who has dedicated most of her professional life to establishing what made the Maya so successful for so long.
Ford, who was selected as an Associate Laureate in the Rolex Awards 2000, admits that she has charted an unconventional path in order to understand the ancient Maya – including spending nine months in 1978 mapping a 30-kilometre route through dense Guatemalan jungle. |
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Jungle fires in Petén, Guatemala have caused much damage. Ford wants to conserve forest resources.
©Susan Gray |
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"Relying on local knowledge, I came to appreciate the powers of the environment and how much the ancient Maya had to have learned to manage over four successful millennia," Ford says. "By the end of that year, I had gathered not only valuable data on Maya settlement patterns, but an experience that was to influence all my thinking thereafter."
Ford spends half of every year in the tropical forests of Central America, seeking answers to questions about the society and lifestyle of the former inhabitants of El Pilar, a vast Maya archaeological site straddling the border between Belize and Guatemala – countries with a territorial dispute dating from colonial times. |
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Her approach at El Pilar breaks with archaeological tradition, in that she concentrates less on excavating monuments and more on the evidence of ancient farming methods. Ford maintains that the successful development of Maya civilisation was achieved primarily through the knowledge of its farmers and not, as is widely believed, through warfare. She also disputes the common belief that the Maya relied largely on slash-and-burn cultivation. Given that the region was up to 10 times more densely populated than it is now, she argues, this would have soon led to soil degradation and famine.
For the past decade, Ford has been coordinating the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Fauna and Flora, a project based at the El Pilar site. In addition to cataloguing plants and animals, she and her colleagues are gradually recreating a forest garden – a type of multi-layered polyculture of vegetables, grains and shrubs growing in the sun and in the shade of fruit trees. |
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Ford trekking on "La Brecha Anabel", a Maya trail linking Tikal and Yaxhá that she reforged in 1978.
©Susan Gray |
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She wants to demonstrate to farmers in Belize and Guatemala, some of whom are direct descendants of the Maya, how their ancestors’ methods worked. Forest garden techniques, she contends, not only reverse the effects of deforestation and environmental degradation, which are fairly widespread in the region, but they also provide a concrete example of sustainable agriculture and enhance the pride of the indigenous people.
But the most significant aspect of her El Pilar Program, Ford insists, is the local collaborative component. "The population needs to maintain an active voice in order for the project to be fully achieved. Hence the formation, in both Belize and Guatemala, of the cooperative association Amigos de El Pilar. Aimed at developing community enterprises in tourism and agriculture", Ford explains, "it will increase villagers" cultural links and economic stake in the reserve, while incorporating their wisdom into the vision for El Pilar." |
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Cacao, an important Maya food. With model gardens Ford is showing how the Mayas used agriculture.
©Susan Gray |
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Ford with Heriberto Cocom, advisor to the forest garden project, near Bullet Tree Falls, Belize.
©Susan Gray |
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Ford has also extended her skills for promoting cooperation beyond the local community, by helping bridge long-standing political differences between Guatemala and Belize. Following talks between the two countries from 1996 to 1998, at which she played a pivotal role, there is a move to consider the entire 16-square-kilometre site as common territory.
Not surprisingly, Ford’s efforts have attracted praise from both sides of the divide. Belize’s Prime Minister Said Musa admits to being very impressed with her work: "Not only has she brought life to many of the secrets of the ancient Maya," he says, "but her commitment is a marvellous experience for the country." |
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And on the other side of the border, Elena Diez Pinto, director of the on-governmental organisation Vision Guatemala, whose mission is to increase community participation in the political process, is just as enthusiastic: "Thanks to Anabel’s tenacity," she says, "we are now able to imagine the plans that she has outlined. Not many people could see the potential for creating a friendship park on a troubled border, but if anyone can do it, she can."
"The El Pilar Program is now at a critical juncture", says Ford. "The Rolex Award will provide essential recognition and basic funding to firmly unite our diverse team across borders and disciplines so that, together, we can bring the ’one El Pilar’ model to fruition." |
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Dr Anabel Ford
UCSB office
Email: ford@marc.ucsb.edu
ISBER/ MesoAmerican Research Center University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-2150
Website: www.marc.ucsb.edu and www.espmaya.org
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