Browsing by Author "Racelis, Alexis"

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Tenure, Tourism and Timber in Quintana Roo, Mexico: Land Tenure Changes in Forest Ejidos after Agrarian Reforms
(2010) Barsimantov, James; Racelis, Alexis; Barnes, Grenville; DiGiano, Maria
"We present and apply an analytical framework for understanding land tenure change in the wake of radical land policy modifications in Mexico’s communal tenure system. We posit that the changes in land tenure vary as a result of a complex interplay of drivers external and internal to the land tenure unit. Using interview and socio-economic data, we apply this framework to six ejidos in Quintana Roo, Mexico in order to understand the extent to which these ejidos have shifted towards private individual property as promoted in the 1992 amendment of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution. In our case study ejidos, we conclude that external factors, including community forestry, tourism, and urbanization, have synergized with factors internal to the ejido (including governance, existing resource base, ethnicity, livelihood strategies, migration, and attitudes about property), leading to different trajectories in land tenure arrangements."
Un-common Goods in Forest Commons Management: The Case of Polewood Commodification in Mayan Forests of Quintana Roo, Mexico
(2008) Racelis, Alexis
"For millennia, the Maya of the southeastern Mexico have depended on the health of their forest resources both for cultural identity and economic well-being. Traditional and institutional forms of forest commons management in this area have been credited as a major factor in maintaining forest health, but the recent and precipitous commercialization of small diameter tropical trees (5-35 cm dbh) as polewood have had considerable social and ecological implications on the future of forest management. I combine concepts from common property theory with data from structured interviews conducted randomly in twelve forest communities in central Quintana Roo, and semistructured interviews with forest government officials and regional forestry technicians in order to explore the relationship between the future of forest management and a dwindling forest resource base. Although government officials have responded to the commercialization of polewood by creating minor modifications to existing forest policy, polewood has proven difficult to manage as a common good based on its small size and its relative difficulty for enforcement, leading to widespread exploitation and decreasing populations of polewood species and diminishing availability for local use. This trend represents a growing incongruence among existing forest policies, current market conditions, and local users' needs and realities. Points of both conflict and consensus between local communities and government officials suggest that the sustainability of polewood exploitation from forest areas depends strongly on strengthening the capacity for local adaptation of forest management framework to emerging markets of forest goods that are difficult to manage communally. Certain recommendations for increasing ability for adaptive management include increasing access to market information, carefully defining and enforcing boundaries for polewood extraction, and exploring the potential for reforestation of threatened species."
The Varying Effects of Neo-Liberal Land Policy on Communal Property in Rural Mexico
(2008) DiGiano, Maria; Racelis, Alexis; Barnes, Grenville; Barsimantov, James
"In 1992 Mexico amended its constitution and passed a new Agrarian Law that altered the fundamental tenure rules of the communally titled ejidos that covered over half the country. These reforms removed various restrictions and created the possibility of converting ejidos into private property. The expectation at the time was that widespread parcelization and conversion to private property would occur, resulting in the disappearance of the ejido as a form of communal property. While less than four percent of ejidos in southern Mexico have chosen to formally dissolve, others have chosen various degrees of legal and extra-legal individualization of common lands, and still others remain unchanged. In this paper we analyze why the response to neo-liberal land policy introduced in 1992 has had such varied responses. In our analysis we identify both internal and external factors that explain why these responses have varied within ejidos in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo. Certain external factors, such as tourism, appear to be driving ejidos towards increased parcelization and individualization. Other external factors, like community forestry, have had the counter-effect of consolidating and promoting communal tenure. These external factors are either accelerated or retarded by internal factors, such as governance, culture, existing resource base, livelihood strategy and attitudes towards property. Our six case studies include two ejidos with successful community forestry, two waterfront ejidos under tourism pressure, and two control ejidos that are neither forestry nor tourism ejidos. Through this analysis we present a general framework to understand changes in land tenure and explain how policy goals are derailed or diverted as they move from the national stage to the local community level."