The Second Mapping Workshop

The Second Mapping Workshop was led by Julian Cho and Diego Bol (TMCC), and Santiago Coh (TAA).

Food preparation and cooking was done by men and women in the community of Maya Centre, 7 kilometers down the often muddy road. They were assisted by Clara Bol, Teodora Castellano, Sophia Cho, and Linadora Bol who had worked at the First Mapping Workshop.

This nine-day workshop focused on training the village researchers to rectify, conform and transform their 1:25,000 maps for greater accuracy. Additional symbols and colors were selected and voted upon for land use and vegetation types. The village researchers were taught how to do a second draft and a final map using their 1:25,000 field map, redrafting it using an overlay sheet of .005 inch frosted mylar, permanent ink drafting pens and colored pencils to fill in land use and land type categories. The UC Berkeley Geo-Map team taught and assisted during every stage of this workshop. By the end of the ninth day, every village map had been crosschecked, redrafted in ink and colors, and used to make several thematic 1:250,000 maps of for Maya lands in the Toledo and Stann Creek Districts, such as land use, threats to Maya lands (destructive logging, orange tree plantations, and foreign-owned lands located within the Maya territory).

We had planned to reduce the completed 1:25,000 maps to 1:250,000 using "similar squares", that is, a process by which grids of different sizes are used to redraw maps to different scales. This is done by eye, square by square, line by line, sometimes with 300-400 squares per map. This method proved to be much too time consuming and inaccurate.

As happened throughout the project, when a major problem came up, we held a meeting, described the problem and asked for solutions. Invariably, someone would suggest a solution that not only got us past the problem, but it often was a totally new idea. In this situation, it was suggested that the problem was due to asking the Maya researchers and cartographers to divert their skills and labor from things they are now good at doing -- drawing on traditional knowledge to draw maps -- to something nobody is good at -- the tedious and mind-numbing process of making maps at smaller scales by eye and pen. Instead, it was suggested, the map reduction problem was a technical problem that could be solved with technology (photography, xerography, and computer scanners). Therefore, the researchers and cartographers skills should be directed to making their maps better, not smaller. As a result, the workshop plan changed, the village researchers and cartographers were provided with new sheets of mylar and new sets of colored pens and pencils, and were encouraged to use their skills and knowlege to make their maps better. And they did; this is why the maps in the Maya Atlas came to be colored and filled in with more detail and accuracy. Another lesson in community-based mapping was learned: flexibility not rigidity produces solutions.

As with the first workshop, ILRC's Deborah Scaaf worked to keep transportation and communication flowing between the workshop participants and other places and people. Deborah Scaaf, along with ILRC colleague Jim Anaya and TMCC's attorney Lisa Shoman gave a seminar to TMCC and TAA leaders on indigenous land rights and international and Belizean law.

UC Berkeley graduate Heidi Quant assisted by using Hi-8 video to document the second workshop and to interview Maya women.