Between coffee landscapes and tradition: The participation of a nahua society in the preservation of biocultural heritage

Abstract

The coffee-growing territories of Mexico are home to 32 ethnic groups that have resisted the economic and environmental crises as a result of the release of quotas in 1988 and the rust disease in 2012. The study population corresponds to one of these regions, it is the group Nahua ethnic group from Tlecuaxco, located in the high mountains in the Sierra de Zongolica, Veracruz. The objective of the manuscript is to analyze the resistance and adaptation of an indigenous people to the economic and environmental crises that affect coffee production. The analysis is carried out from the theoretical concepts: human geography, agrarian landscape and tradition, in dialogue with ethnographic data from a methodology in which qualitative and quantitative methods were used from ethnographic techniques and tools: diary of field, interviews, survey, field trips, landscape reading and direct and participatory observation.

The results of the research demonstrate the difficulties (internal power relations and the neoliberal coffee market), the alternatives (short-circuit marketing networks) and the decisions (work in agriculture or migrate) that coffee-growing families have to adapt and resist the changes. economic and environmental crises in coffee production. The limitation of this research is that it only refers to one case study; However, the originality and value of the work lie in demonstrating a strategy of socio-environmental resistance. The conclusions show the importance of the socio-environmental conservation of the coffee landscape and the agricultural traditions of native peoples as part of the preservation of biocultural heritage.