From Plantations to Churches: The Human Relationship to Environment and Space in Chiapas since the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

Das Plantações às Igrejas: A Relação Humana com o Meio Ambiente e o Espaço em Chiapas desde a Segunda Metade do Século XX

Resumo

This article reviews environmental changes in Chiapas in the second half of the twentieth century to better understand how perspectives and interactions with space and places are changing. Using both analytic and philosophical approaches, this work examines two Canadian religious sources from the Provincial Archives of Alberta. The first source is a written account of a 1978 trip by four Canadian Oblate missionaries to Chiapas, in which they comment, from their perspective, on social, economic, cultural, political, and spatial changes affecting the indigenous populations of the state. In the same dossier, a tourist map these missionaries had in their possession showcases exactly what they criticize. The second source comes from the same archives but records a 1989 trip by four lay and Jesuit missionaries. This account presents their perspective and interpretation of the similarities between Canada and Chiapas, as well as their perspective on applying to Canada the spiritual model of assistance they found in Chiapas, pairing both resistance to spatial and environmental change with Samuel Ruiz’s fervor for defending indigenous’ rights. Finally, this article attempts to understand how major changes in spatial paradigms affect local identity and cultural and economic relations with the environment, and how spiritual missionary work can become a form of resistance to these harmful changes.