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Maya subsistence hunters in Quintana Roo, Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2009

Jeffrey P. Jorgenson
Jeffrey P. Jorgenson
Affiliation:
2214 SW 70 Terrace, Gainesville, FL 32607–3793, USA.
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Abstract

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Wild animals have played an important role in the lives of Maya Indians but recent evidence from a small Maya community in south-eastern Mexico suggests that their importance as a source of food may be diminishing. The persistence of subsistence hunting despite low kill rates suggests that hunting is still culturally important to the Maya community as a whole. By combining subsistence hunting with other subsistence and commercial activities, such as gardening and the extraction of chicle latex from sapodilla trees Manilkara zapota, contemporary Maya hunters are preserving a culturally important activity while simultaneously adapting to internal and external pressures to modernize their society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Oryx , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 49 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Fauna and Flora International 1995

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