Palenque and waterfalls in Chiapas, Mexico

Here we visited Palenque, Misol-Ha, Agua Azul, Agua Clara.
This is a panoramic shot of Palenque from on top of one of the buildings Giant Bonnie!

One of the most beautiful places we've ever seen.

Masks found inside the ruins.

Misol-Ha waterfall...amazing!

Our home away from home in the jungle.

Agua Clara. This bridge was right out of Indiana Jones...holes everywhere!
Agua Azul
These waterfalls went on for miles, all the way up the mountain.

One idea we had internalized before departing was the concept of the ‘noble savage,’ or the indigenous person who lives in harmony with nature. While we met many indigenous people who were well aware of the environmental impacts of their actions and the need to minimize them, the majority of people we spoke to were not thinking along such lines. The people we met who were most concerned with environmental causes were people who have been privileged enough not to have to worry about their own basic survival. When it comes down to saving a tree, a frog, or a coral reef, it seems that in the eyes of impoverished locals, human needs come first. It is easy for me to sit in my safe and comfortable surroundings in Oregon (with plenty of food in the fridge – which is powered by consistently working electricity) and worry about the plight of other environments such as Central America’s, but I am not the one who is depending on those forests, mountains, rivers and oceans for sustenance. It is in this light that I can see the hypocrisy of our activism from the perspective of poor Central Americans: we have already exploited our own environments (and theirs) and now we are telling them not to use their own resources.
A few glaring examples we noticed follow. In Chiapas, Mexico we observed large swaths of clear-cut forest. When we asked our local friend about the impact on the Lacandón rainforest (which we have heard is substantial) he replied that the forest is fine, that there is no illegal cutting occurring any longer and that they are growing more trees to replace those that have been felled. Besides, our friend explained, the people need the wood for fires and they can’t afford fuel, so what else can they do? In that sentence, our friend revealed that he accepted the Mexican government’s official stance on illegal logging in the Lacandón (that it’s not happening), while simultaneously implying that the poor ought to have the right to cut because their immediate material needs are more important than the long-term welfare of the forest.
In the coastal and island Caribbean communities we visited such as Isla Mujeres in Mexico, Utila in Honduras, Bocas del Toro in Panama and Manzanillo in Costa Rica, we witnessed significant degradation of fish populations and the coral reefs which they depend on. In each case, it was clear to us that although numerous locals who made their livings from the ocean were telling us that they noticed a marked decline in the fish, shark and crustacean populations, along with coral reef decay, they would not stop their own activities which contribute to such problems because ‘this is how they have always lived’ and because even if they stop, others would not, so why bother?
While such attitudes are difficult to accept by outsiders such as ourselves who are so impressed with the beauty of these places, we have come to appreciate the perspective of the locals who feel they have no other choice. Only by having more opportunity and options in the ways they may choose to sustain themselves can we expect a shift away from the kinds of survival strategies that endanger our planet’s ecosystems. The solution to such a problem is complicated and involves changes by those responsible for the structural factors that result in poverty of opportunity on the macro-level such as government and industry, as well as on the micro-level with the responsibility of the locals themselves.