Forecasting Extinction at the Guatemalan Border Forests: El mundo como flor y como invento by Mario Payeras

Abstract

In this article, I examine two short stories written by Guatemalan author Mario Payeras, both included in the collection El mundo como flor y como invento. Through the portrayal of the connections between the environmental vibrancy of the Guatemalan northern highlands and the ongoing presence of colonizing frameworks, the author identifies the key elements that, in the context of a porous border delimitation, participate in the endangerment of the human and the nonhuman alike. As I contend, Payeras’ short stories underscore how the ghostly, yet certain presence of border demarcations helps sustain the centuries-long exploitation of the people who inhabit the Guatemalan rainforests. At the same time, these geopolitical demarcations facilitate the global illegal trade of wildlife. By foregrounding these elements, Payeras’ narratives anticipate the role of borders in facilitating the opening of different paths that lead to and accelerate species extinction.

Keywords:

• Central American literature
• Guatemala
• ecocriticism
• borders
• extinction
• wildlife trafficking

In the context of Central and North America, the most evident example of environmental damage produced by borders is in the Mexico-United States region. This is primarily due to the easy identification of much of the harm created by the wall on the desert landscape.¹ Given that, as Ursula K. Heise states: “the threat of mass extinction now features as one of several global ecological crises, right behind climate change in the urgency of action it requires” (34), ecological-driven discourses against the wall often focus on denouncing its central role in threatening wildlife. Photographs depicting dead animals next to the barrier, digital projections of keystone desert species on it, statues of jaguars in the middle of the desert, and documentaries focused on aerial animal migration are some of the most common mediums that have memorialized the endangerment of the nonhuman in this border setting. Thus, in the U.S.-Mexico divide, the hyper-visibility of physical barriers enables the identification of animal harm, leading to the question of whether wildlife is also at risk in border areas lacking prominent boundary markers.

This article forefronts the unapparent damage to wildlife within border settings that do not possess large built structures. Although the magnitude of the U.S. wall makes habitat destruction evident, this does not mean that borders that do not divide natural landscapes through physical assemblies are environmentally harmless. However, it means that the environmental harm in which they participate is less obvious,² often garnering little to no attention.³ Because of its porosity, I consider the Guatemala-Mexico-Belize border, with a focus on northern Guatemala, where the environmental violence produced by the border demarcation is not readily perceptible, particularly in what pertains to wildlife endangerment. This area is in the Selva Maya, the second largest tropical rainforest in the Americas, which extends across the northern Guatemalan departments of El Quiché, Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Petén, as well as across the southern Mexican states of Campeche, Chiapas, and Tabasco. The Selva Maya encompasses different forests, including the Selva Lacandona, the Selvas de la Península de Yucatán, and the Selva El Petén,⁴ and as has been widely documented, their ecosystems are severely threatened by factors that include habitat loss, deforestation, the expansion of the agricultural frontier, hunting, and wildlife trafficking.⁵ The latter is central to two short stories written by Guatemalan author Mario Payeras, in which he highlights the not-so-visible connections between porous border demarcations and wildlife trafficking. These narratives offer a prescient perspective that anticipates the current damage to wildlife sustained by border demarcations, effectively foreseeing the association between the border’s presence and the extinction of species in the region.

The stories I examine belong to El mundo como flor y como invento (1987), a collection featuring a multiplicity of nonhuman protagonists. The first one is an azacuán found by a curious and compassionate child amidst a relentless hailstorm. There’s also a mousetrap boa, who acts as an ancient vigilant observer of the forest’s ever-changing ecosystem. Another of the stories portrays a pair of enamored pheasants whose lives are tragically cut short at the mere sound of a gunshot. Here, I study “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” and “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia,” both set in Guatemalan border towns nestled inside the Selva Maya. As I observe, these two narratives address the impact of porous border demarcations in the context of extinction. Whereas “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” forefronts how the economic precarity imposed by colonial practices creates a need that is often met through local engagement with wildlife trade, through the portrayal of a trafficked scarlet macaw, “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” highlights the presence of borders as an inviting force that motivates organized crime to diversify and scale up their activity. Because the northern species of the scarlet macaw have “disappeared from much of its former range in Mexico and Central America” (Radwin), this short story is in direct dialogue with ongoing mass extinction events.

El mundo como flor y como invento is framed within the 36-year-long Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996), an unrelenting conflict stirred by three decades of military regimes, which resulted in the killing of more than 200,000 people, most of them Maya, and in the exile of nearly 1 million (Bodenheimer). This period was characterized by discrimination, profound social and economic disparities, genocidal acts, US intervention, and authoritarianism.⁶ In a period of deep social turmoil, Payeras was one of the commanders of the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) and participated in the Organización del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA). Jens Andermann recalls that one of the EGP’s main goals consisted of “implantar en el departamento fronterizo del Quiché una <<semilla>> revolucionaria” (ch. 3). The guerrilla was seeking to recruit Indigenous people, a goal shared by the ORPA. Because Payeras’ literary works were written either during or immediately after the genocidal conflict, this is the main lens through which his books have been studied. In what follows, I deviate from this angle to situate Payeras’ work against the backdrop of border geographies, a frequent presence in his storylines that has not yet been fully explored.

María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo argues that Payeras’ early revolutionary precepts are modeled after Ernesto Che Guevara’s visions. According to her analysis, even though in an “autocritical turn” (91) Payeras’ thinking grew, in the initial stages of his writing he deploys a troublesome understanding of the rainforest and its inhabitants.⁷ Reminiscent of Guevara’s interpretation of revolutionary movements as transformations composed of “death and rebirth” (94), Payeras’ early texts convey that while in the forest the EGP was “creating civilization in an uncivilized world” (97). Jens Andermann also considers Payeras’ work in relationship to Guevara’s. However, Andermann pays more attention to the differences between both discourses, stating that whereas Guevara focuses on retelling the action of the conflict, Payeras is more interested in reflecting on the revolutionary group’s development, “en lugar de la constante acción guevariana narrada en un pasado simple casi monorocorde, predominan así los tiempos verbales que remiten a las duraciones largas y a una semántica de aprendizaje … del proyecto revolucionario” (ch. 3). Also thinking of Payeras’ militancy but focused on his poetry, Tatiana Argüello contends that the author portrays the forest “como un espacio para hacer política” (2). For Ana Lorena Carrillo, this politics is based on an ideology that recuperates “la idea del equilibrio entre naturaleza y cultura” (109) and rejects a capitalist logic. Just as these critical approaches allude to the centrality of the rainforest in Payeras’ thinking, I also foreground its significance. However, whereas the biome tends to be considered a mechanism to understand the development of Payeras’ political ideology, my analysis is grounded on an ecological-oriented prism. Furthermore, although the presence of borders in Payeras’ writing tends to be acknowledged, it is usually seen as a geographic feature or as part of his militant strategy. In contrast, I contend that more than three decades ago, in El mundo como flor y como invento, Mario Payeras addressed some of the key social and environmental elements that have gradually turned the border’s existence into a central accessory to elicit species’ collapse.

Los pájaros de Chilabasún: Human and nonhuman intersections

In “Los pájaros de Chilabasún,” as the title indicates, Payeras portrays Chilabasún, a cluster of mountains nestled in Huehuetenango and a border city in northern Guatemala where the journeys of human and nonhuman figures are intricately interwoven. The story unfolds through three primary thematic threads. The first one focuses on long-distance migratory birds, who arrive at the mountains over the spring when they are on their way north. The second touches on the economic precarity of the rural landscape, which is the result of long-standing colonial frameworks. Mateo Diego, an Indigenous man, is the central character of the third axis. Having experienced poverty during his entire life, the most common methods he employs to survive include sowing wheat and poaching. The narrator describes Mateo Diego as “un indio joven que solo sabía sembrar trigo y atrapar gorriones” (20), specifying that the birds were usually sold for one cent. In what follows, I examine the narrative’s portrayal of the economic and environmental settings of the region to then frame them within the contemporary extinction-related effects of the border’s presence. By considering the continuing socioecological precarity that affects the human and nonhuman existences that coalesce in the Guatemalan highlands, it then becomes possible to identify the border’s aggravating effects.

One of the most notable elements in this story is the specificity of the location where it takes place. Huehuetenango is in the Western Highlands of Guatemala and is one of the four regions bordering Mexico. Before its colonization, it was known as Chinabajul, which in Mam is used to describe something that is situated in between gorges, thus underscoring its environmental features (Pascual). The Mam, part of the Maya civilization, is among the oldest societies that have inhabited western Guatemala and southern Mexico (Monterroso 1) and, as with many Indigenous groups across Latin America, they have endured ongoing economic hardship. The colonization process that started with the arrival of the Spaniards to the region ensured centuries-long exploitation practices and disparity. As Miguel Toledo and Enrique Coraza state: “el sometimiento y la explotación de la fuerza de trabajo indígena mam se acentuó con la conquista y la colonización española por medio de mecanismos como la encomienda, los repartimientos, o el despojo de las tierras agrícolas” (3). The legacy and sustainment of said colonizing practices deepened with the violent political development of the country, “corrupt authoritarian parties have dominated most national elections, derailing reformist efforts and implementing neoliberal economic reforms that have resulted in continuing poverty in the indigenous western highlands” (Copeland 486). As documented in the latest International Fund for Agricultural Development report, in Guatemala eight out of every ten Indigenous people live in poverty, and nearly half of them experience it at extreme levels. In addition, 76% of those who live in rural communities endure economic difficulties. In the rural highlands of Huehuetenango, more than 50% of the population is Indigenous. Situated in the second half of the twentieth century, Payeras’ story echoes this context of prolonged scarcity.

While the economic conditions that permeate the forest are the key elements that Payeras portrays to characterize the social makeup of the Huehuetenango highlands, he simultaneously depicts migratory birds to refer to their ecological vibrancy: “Las montañas de Huehuetenango están marcadas en los mapas de las migraciones como puntos propicios para hacer escala en los itinerarios de la primavera” (19). These mountains thrive as a prime destination for migratory birds because they are situated in the Maya Forests, which stand as a paramount ecological system on a planetary scale.⁸ In recounting the annual influx of a multitude of birds to the mountains, the narrator describes: “Estas circunstancias han dado lugar a una antigua industria de los indios, pues las épocas de pájaros coinciden con el tiempo en que escasea el trigo” (19), thus underscoring how the adverse economic conditions permeating the area affect the forest’s ecological life. Because poverty remains a pervasive challenge among the human inhabitants of the Guatemalan highlands, it functions as a key catalyst driving the hunting of birds. Offering a nuanced approach that considers the economic pressure placed on Indigenous and rural societies, Payeras considers the commodification of nonhuman animals that occurs when the wheat crops are scarce:

Muchos ejemplares de especies cosmopolitas y algunos especímenes de vuelo alto resultan aniquilados durante la temporada … Por los años de nuestra historia, cada gorrión valía en la plaza un centavo o su equivalente en trigo. Es una guerra inmemorial contra los pájaros que se libra por hambre. (19)

The story portrays the trading practice as a fruitful endeavor that, through the employment of ingenious traps, results in the annihilation of multiple birds. This process is depicted as a war on the nonhuman, an unrelenting act without an end in sight. The narration characterizes the practice as “una antigua industria de los indios” (19), an ancient custom that in a context of continual poverty has become increasingly destructive. Even though the author is very intentional in communicating that this engagement is instigated by hunger, “las épocas de los pájaros coinciden con el tiempo en el que escasea el trigo” (19), at times, Payeras appears to be portraying Indigenous people as ecologically unconscious. Thus, the short story runs the risk of perpetuating the stereotypical belief that Indigenous people and other rural community members are “predatory on local fauna” (Collard 42). However, even though in this story residents are depicted engaging in animal trading, often, as Micha Rhader states, many of the people working in conservation efforts are from the region (413), something that is very common in Maya reserves. Furthermore, for the Maya people who have inhabited these highlands for centuries, the practice of bird hunting falls within the realm of subsistence hunting, a medium used to satisfy “the hunter and his family’s—and, occasionally, the community’s—basic needs … which are not only material but also symbolic and religious” (Santos-Fita et al. 2). In the story, birds are caught and sold as a way to survive, which is why the practice can be situated within the context of subsistence hunting, although, given the focus of the story on food insecurity, it only adheres to its material articulation. Thus, Payeras’ approach is profoundly nuanced. He offers a critique of the alarming magnitude of birds being hunted within a single day: “en días de captura abundante, el trampero hábil coge hasta un centenar” (19) and at the same time maintains a keen awareness of the underlying social factors that contribute to the heightened hunting scale:

Aquel año, los ladinos de Los Altos iniciaron la construcción de un ferrocarril … Se proponían vencer, mediante la energía artificial, la gravedad terráquea … Fueron tiempos en que los indios de la tierra fría eran cogidos por centenares y enviados al ferrocarril a trabajos forzados. (19-20)

The author steers away from essentializing representations of the “ecological” or “predatory” Native stereotypes and emphasizes the social perils that have led to unsustainable hunting practices. Just as birds are hunted down by the hundreds, Indigenous people are exploited to a parallel degree. It is not a coincidence that Payeras uses the same numeric word to illustrate both the entrapment of birds and forced labor practices. The connection between one and the other is clear. In the story, birds are being poached at dramatic levels because that is one of the few options left to survive in a framework of intense exploitation. The story foregrounds the economic and social abuses imposed on the human inhabitants of the mountains, which in turn exacerbate the need to rely on nonhuman trade.

Within the configuration of an economic agenda that was seeking to export “textiles, jabón, y licores de Los Altos que habrían de salir al mercado mundial en un ferrocarril” (20), the residents of the area become the prey upon which forced labor is inflicted, and wildlife trafficking gets then situated as one of the only methods through which they can find some sort of economic relief.⁹ In relation to this, Micha Rahder contends that conservationist groups and other foreign actors sometimes place “responsibility for ecological destruction on locals, ignoring both structural pressures and powerful wealthy actors” (14). In the story, these powerful actors are the ladinos that perpetuate an ample set of social, environmental, and economic injustices. This centuries-long abuse and exploitation materialize in Mateo Diego’s character, who is forced to work in the railroad construction that would allow for the global exportation of goods: “la ingratitud de aquel oficio le lastimó para siempre la vida y los recuerdos. Durante muchos meses, el látigo del capataz y el hielo del páramo le quemaron la piel” (20). The repercussions of this violent scheme leave a lasting impact on both the fleshly body of Mateo Diego and the ecological body of the forest:

De las tierras calientes, del ámbito remoto de mariposas y loros que se extendía cordillera abajo, hasta la línea del mar, ascendía una locomotora 1910. Su portentosa maquinaria avanzaba despacio, llenando el aire de campanas y alardes industriales. (20)

Whereas the violence inflicted upon Mateo Diego is evidenced by the form of lifelong scars and unavoidable emotional pain, the harm caused to the forest manifests in the continuing decline of the bird’s sonorous presence, which is replaced by the overpowering propagation of the sound waves of an engine. The immemorial war referred to in the narration is waged against both the human and the nonhuman alike, becoming evident in the description of the irreversible changes imposed on the body of Mateo Diego and the sonorous makeup of an entire ecosystem. Given Payeras’ manifest concern about the high number of birds that are trapped daily, the story is in dialogue with the framework of extinction. Moreover, that concern corresponds to one of the main environmental anxieties of the moment in which the book was written: “scientifically and culturally, the concern over particular endangered species … took a new turn in the 1970s and 1980s with the emphasis on the possibility that a mass extinction was underway in the contemporary age” (Heise 162). In the case of Guatemala, this emphasis was strongly linked to the political upheaval from those same decades:

The Guatemalan environmental movement grew out of the anti-authoritarian and anti-technocentric movements of the 1970s and early 1980s. From 1955 to 1986, the military-dominated politics in Guatemala supported a policy of state development designed to exploit the country’s natural resources. (Berger 99-100)

It is within this context that Payeras writes El mundo como flor y como invento, a text that highlights a pivotal aspect of the intricate interplay between the social and ecological realms within the depicted landscapes of the Selva Maya. As the latest reports on poverty and inequality in Guatemala denounce, the social perils exposed by Payeras have not seen any substantial changes. At the same time, the existential threat to the nonhuman has worsened, “legal and illegal trade in exotic pets has become big business over the last few decades” (Collard 9). This deterioration transpires within the pressing context of species endangerment, which has put humankind facing “a mass extinction of a kind that has occurred only five times before in the 3.5 billion years of life on Earth, but this time would be due to human impact” (Heise 14). “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” is positioned within the larger framework of the Anthropocene, the current geological era defined by humanity’s profound transformation of Earth’s ecosystems.¹⁰ In Payeras’ representation of the Huehuetenango mountains, the effects of the Anthropocene can be recognized as the result of racial capitalist structures that depend on extractive industries. As I examine in the following two sections, the connection between economic scarcity and poaching emphasized in this story becomes increasingly perilous due to the presence of the border demarcation in the rainforest, which turns into a vehicle for large-scale wildlife trafficking at the hands of organized crime.

Betrayals at the forest

As studied above, in “Los pájaros de Chilabasún,” Mario Payeras describes Huehuetenango, a border town situated in northern Guatemala, as a territory afflicted by economic poverty. At the same time, it is portrayed as an ecologically rich space visited by hundreds of migratory bird species every year. After outlining these characteristics, the story lays the foundation to think of the aggravating effects of the border’s ghostly yet important presence. Regarding the connections between geopolitical articulations and the Selva Maya’s complex ecosystem, in the essay collection Latitud de la flor y el granizo (1988), Payeras states:

Las fronteras [de Guatemala], en realidad, caen en un ambiente natural más vasto: el ámbito boscoso central del Nuevo Mundo, que comienza en las selvas y las sierras de Chiapas, incluye las planicies meridionales de Yucatán y se extiende por el este más allá de las murallas del Merendón; el mundo montañoso, de lluvias torrenciales, poblado de caobas, cedros, chicozapotes—la flora gigantesca que compite por la luz y bombea el vapor de agua—, habitado por dantas, jaguares, y venados, drenado en el riñón por ríos. (10)

The ecological vibrancy of the Selva Maya is far more noteworthy than the geopolitical articulations inscribed on it. Furthermore, when Payeras states that Guatemala’s borders are en realidad a much vaster natural landscape, he accentuates the incompatibility of border delimitations and complex ecosystems, criticizing the conflicting association between one and the other. In relation to this, Hilary Cunningham asserts: “the built environments of modern, international borders have been conceived almost exclusively in anthropocentric terms” (133), going against this type of thought, Payeras’ quote emphasizes that border landscapes are first and foremost ecologically distinct areas with complex environmental conditions and ecosystemic processes. Whereas the author makes this stance manifest in his essay, he was already foregrounding it in El mundo como flor y como invento, where each story is situated at different geographical points of the Selva Maya, with most of them in or near a border region.

While in “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” the author refers to the hunger and systemic inequalities that lie behind the intensification of the poaching industry taking place in rural communities, in “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” he centers the nonhuman lived consequences of said industry. This narration tells the story of a colorful bird that is captured in the Central American rainforests and taken to a zoo in Belgium, where he spends the rest of his life. Privileging the perspective of the nonhuman, Mario Payeras integrates a bird’s eye view into the story. This view operates as the main medium through which the book features the ecological and affective consequences of wildlife smuggling across international borders. Furthermore, by presenting one case scenario in which this process occurs, the narration alludes to the role undertaken by non-material border presences in the obliteration of nonhuman life and ways of living. To do this, the author once again focuses on birds, but whereas in the previous story he did not focus on any one specific biological type, this time he considers the emblematic scarlet macaw. At the beginning of the narration, the author quickly introduces the main character:

A los treinta y dos años inició el guacamayo su trayectoria feliz a través de la materia. Aquel año los tramperos de Rubelolom estaban aniquilando las especies pintadas de la selva. La captura de aves con valor mercantil representaba para los monteadores la única posibilidad de obtener sal, anzuelos, fósforos y pólvora. (33)

Parallel to what happens in “Los pájaros de Chilabasún,” this narration also addresses the prevalence of a variety of poaching practices in the Maya rainforest. In addition, the story occurs in Quiché, another border region where the Rubelolom locality is situated. Once again, Payeras mobilizes a border area placed in the Selva Maya to address ecological-based concerns. However, whereas the previous short story provides a general allusion to the trapping methods used for capturing migratory birds, this one offers a more detailed description of one of these methods. Another important difference is that whereas “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” revolves around multiple bird species, “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” not only focuses on the scarlet macaw as a species but does so through one specific individual.

At the beginning, the narration describes the complex process of capturing scarlet macaws: “Eran complicados laberintos de varillas, provistos de mecanismos de alivio, que sorpresivamente transformaban en prisión el espacio … El cebo consistía en el olor de algún fruto prohibido para la especie” (33). Because macaws cannot resist the smell of fruit, they always enter the cage and once inside, the unsuspecting birds cannot find their way out. This multispecies interaction resonates with anthropologist Emily Wanderer’s term “biology of betrayal,” which she describes as the process in which humans take care of pests, “in order to produce knowledge about their characteristics and social behavior, knowledge that [can] then be turned against these animals” (46). In the context of Wanderer’s work, once the habits and preferences of unwanted animals are learned, they are used to exterminate them. Payeras’ short story portrays a practice that can be interpreted as a biology of betrayal; however, the gained knowledge is not about unwanted animals but about those that are desired because of their commercial value. As Collard frames it: “exotic pets [are] lively capital—a living stock of objects from which value, especially encounter value, is (or could be) generated” (20). In the exotic pet industry, scarlet macaws are highly sought after because of their speech capabilities and charming physical appearance.

In the story, the macaw’s love for fruit, in this case, for oranges, is weaponized against him: “su curiosidad natural por las naranjas indujo al guacamayo a penetrar en la trampa solitaria. Por un túnel sin tropiezos llegó hasta el fruto inexplicable; pero ya no encontró el camino de vuelta” (33). By referring to the macaw’s natural curiosity for oranges, the narration accentuates that through disciplined observation, humans have learned their preferences. The gathered information is subsequently used to betray an entire species with a strong set of trusting genetical instincts:

Los guacamayos caían con frecuencia en la trampa del alimento fácil. Hay especies suspicaces que hurtan el alimento sin arriesgarse a movimientos falsos ni sorpresas fatales. Son pájaros dotados de reflejos instantáneos, adiestrados admirablemente por la vida para sortear situaciones difíciles y burlar artificios … Los guacamayos, en cambio, son aves imprudentes, de hábitos bulliciosos y movimientos torpes. (33)

Once the birds have been captured, they are smuggled across international borders to different destinations. The nonhuman protagonist of the story arrives at a zoo in a strange territory: “En los viejos mapas de la materia que utilizan los pájaros no están registradas las rutas marítimas ni se hallan previstos los inventos mecánicos que el guacamayo utilizó en su viaje al hemisferio nublado. La primavera de 1948 lo encontró en el zoológico de Amberes” (34). From this point forward, through the representation of a caged scarlet macaw that was extracted from the tropic and taken to a geophysical space with an oceanic climate, Payeras presents what can be interpreted as a bird’s-eye view somatic shift. The bird’s-eye view concept is employed to refer to the extraordinary visual capabilities of birds, who use their eyes

to search for food, detect predators, and engage in complex and colorful courtship displays. Birds can see objects in fine detail two-and-a-half to three times farther away than people can, and their spectral sensitivity, which spans from near-ultraviolet (UV) to red, is far beyond that of humans. (Anderson et al.)

Payeras’ story brings attention to the scarlet macaw’s visual field to depict the physical and affective damage he experienced: “Trató de orientarse en la realidad diáfana de octubre; pero sus sentidos estaban sincronizados con un régimen diferente del tiempo y no encontró los puntos de referencia habituales. Lo desconcertaba la mutación otoñal del pelo de los ratones” (34). Whereas from large aerial distances, the more-than-human eyes can see and identify even small objects, looking through a zoo cage, the scarlet macaw’s eyes fail to recognize the newfound components that constitute the reality of his captivity. In this way, Payeras depicts the extent of the harm inflicted upon the caged bird: “A mediodía se dio cuenta que había quedado excluido para siempre de los caminos del aire” (34). Imagining the psychological state of a bird that lost his freedom to become a zoo attraction, the story portrays nonhuman sadness, desperation, and melancholy.

The displacement of the scarlet macaw is directly linked to the global wildlife trade, an industry stimulated by a set of complex dynamics that Collard describes as “capitalist interspecies relations [that] form and are embodied by the exotic pet” (16). The scarlet macaw is taken away from his home in the rainforest and transported to a place completely foreign in order to satisfy the needs of the zoo and tourist industries. In addition, the zoo that houses the scarlet macaw belongs to a country that is wealthier than the one from which the bird was extracted. This mimics the core method employed by the logic of a transnational extractivist economy, a violent set of acts undertaken by Global North geographies taking natural resources from the Global South. The previous dynamic materializes in the figure of a scarlet macaw, originally native to the Central American rainforests, transformed into an exotic spectacle within a European country. This occurrence is not an isolated incident, but rather part of a larger pattern:

La jaula donde vivía estaba habitada por pájaros provenientes de todas las latitudes; pero como cada individuo tenía hábitos diferentes, en conjunto no alcanzaban el concierto que en otras circunstancias se logra en un solo árbol. La gran instalación comprendía un trapecio de hierro y un comedero con frutas cosmopolitas. (34)

In the zoo, birds from all over the world populate one single cage. By emphasizing that the birds’ singing can never produce a harmonic melody, the story is not only stating that different bird species do not belong together but also highlights that the capitalist arrangement expressed in the zoo industry is indifferent to the individual and specific existence of each animal. In the words of Collard, these exoticized species “are framed in relation to human usefulness and are part of forming animal fetishism … or the designation of an animal as thinglike—the denial of its complex life history” (25). In denying the multifaceted life of every singular trafficked bird, the zoo erases the social and biological relations and practices that gave meaning and purpose to them. Such a process is central to the commodification of animals, which “depends on the life of the animal but also depends on making the animal thinglike, which impinges on, constraints, and threatens that life” (23). The animal trafficking industry erases the complex singular existences of the nonhuman while remaining dependent on its liveliness. Its life is what gives it a monetary value. Paradoxically, the industry betrays the very life that it seeks to exploit, putting species “at risk of extinction as a consequence of this illegal trading” (Soberanes “Scarlet macaws”). By focusing on some of the most pressing effects of the exotic pet trade, “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” echoes this existential threat, and it does so through a nuanced approach that considers the economic complexities of the region as well as its entanglement with border demarcations.

Extinction geographies: “historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia”

Having once inhabited every rainforest in Central America, by 2019 in the Guatemalan region there were only 150-250 individual scarlet macaws left in the wild, all residing in the Maya Biosphere reserve (Radwin). Written more than thirty-five years ago, “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” anticipates the contemporary reality of the scarlet macaw’s dwindling population and offers a species-transcending approach that challenges human-centered narratives of borders. Regarding this aspect, Sara Moya asserts:

There has been little systematic documentation of the trade at a regional scale, but it is clear that there has been a transition away from sustainable, Indigenous subsistence hunting to unsustainable commercial smuggling … traffickers move wildlife along paths of least resistance, and for wildlife, as compared to other contraband such as narcotics, this movement does not require sophistication. (18)

When considering the different intersections between the social and the ecological at the border sections of the Selva Maya, the multiple fear expressions about the annihilation of entire bird species displayed in the two short stories here analyzed become more relevant. Furthermore, these narratives are in dialogue with Moya’s asseveration regarding how the scale of Indigenous wildlife hunting practices is significantly different from those executed by large criminal networks. As mentioned earlier, in “Los pájaros de Chilabasún,” Mateo Diego is described as a young Indigenous man that knows how to trap birds to sell them and survive (20). Furthermore, Mateo Diego is fascinated with birds, at one point longing for the moment he saw an azacuán “remontando la capa de la atmósfera donde estallan los cohetes” (21). For this character, birds are far more than commodities, he recognizes them as individual beings with lives of their own.¹¹ Whereas “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” accentuates some of the social complexities that lie behind need-based hunting and poaching practices, in contrast, the second story plunges into the intricate world of transnational, large-scale operations involved in illicit wildlife trafficking. “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” portrays an organized network of traffickers who move birds across continents, featuring the trade’s global latitude and foregrounding the crucial role played by borders.

The economic hardship made evident in “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” acquires another layer of complexity when considered within the context of geopolitical limits. The pervasive precarity found in much of rural Guatemala, especially in the Selva Maya regions, becomes exacerbated in border territories. These areas are often occupied by the drug trafficking industry, which simultaneously employs both migrants and locals, frequently through force, to participate in manufacturing and smuggling processes. This activity is closely linked to the context of poverty and vulnerability prevailing in the region. Furthermore, “situated mainly within the forest, the Selva Maya border … has little public performance of border-ness” (Schmook et al. 48), which is why, in resonance with Nixon’s slow violence framework, the geopolitical demarcation’s worsening effects on the ecological and economic makeup of the area tend to go unnoticed.

The illicit distribution of drugs depends on the successful crossing of borders in an unauthorized manner. It is no coincidence that those who have created effective methods and passageways to transport drugs across geopolitical demarcations have also used them to transport hundreds of species all over the world, often exploiting the most vulnerable inhabitants of the area to participate in the enterprise. Regarding this phenomenon, Collard states: “drug trafficking and wildlife trafficking do sometimes go hand in hand—drugs and animals are occasionally traded by the same individuals and networks” (45). However, wildlife trafficking is not a centralized industry; rather, it’s a complex cross-border system in which multiple entities participate. The monetary value imposed on exotic animals such as the scarlet macaw, magnifies existing human and nonhuman precarity and creates more opportunities for exploitation and other forms of susceptibility. For instance, Schmook et al. contend that in the Guatemalan border regions disputes over land use have resulted in the intimidation or forced removal of campesinos, not only by organized crime but also by private companies and the state (47). That type of violence often arises from the extractive-driven ambition to exploit the abundant natural resources found in forested regions. In addition to the battle for territorial control, the systematic marginalization of rural communities can also be attributed to the exploitation of oil, water, wood, and wildlife. Through its depiction of the trade involving the rare and colorful scarlet macaw, Payeras’ short story is addressing a global trade industry sustained by constant disenfranchisement.

“Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia” depicts the aquatic transportation system utilized to move the scarlet macaw, highlighting the initial stages of its involuntary journey: “Por la tarde, con otros cinco especímenes de jaula fue colocado en un cajón con red y trasladado a la aldea. Algunos días después, los traficantes del río sacaron el cargamento por los caminos de Alta Verapaz” (34). Given that Alta Verapaz is very close to the border; Mario Payeras is once again emphasizing the connections between the exploitation of forest wildlife, economic hardship, and international geopolitical demarcations. The border river operates as the main channel used extract birds from the forest, a fact that echoes one of the main methods employed by organized criminal networks to move drugs across borders: “[one of the tributaries] that connects Guatemala with Mexico … has been used for decades to transport drugs” (Lafuente and Sanz). Furthermore, as Moya asserts, drugs are “trafficked through the same air, maritime, and land infrastructure as wildlife” (18), which is why the presence of the border becomes more important in identifying its crucial role in the trade of nonhuman beings. It is also noteworthy that in the short story, the people who move birds are called los traficantes del río, in this way emphasizing the centrality of the border river in the illicit economy sustained by the exotic species market.

Since in Central and North America border corridors are key points of territorial control in the drug and human smuggling process, it is not by chance that they are also mobilized to participate in a transnational industry with an approximate revenue of anywhere between 7 to 23 billion dollars annually (Mavrellis). In addition, as Moya contends, even though “little research focuses explicitly on the intersection between drugs and wildlife … because these activities are often dangerous to study directly” (2), the drug trafficking industry often diversifies into other illegal sources that offer a clear path for economic gain. Situating her work “within the wider spectrum of illicit cross-border trading” (61), Moya asserts that drug trafficking organizations often “absorb other illicit economies with already established networks and routes” (55), notably, wildlife trade. Even though Moya does not directly link border territories with her research, the connection is clear, especially when considering that a large part of the analysis regarding the connections between wildlife and drug trafficking considers the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a protected tropical forest situated in Petén, a Guatemalan border territory.

The reasons behind the influence of porous Central American northern borders on species extinction become clearer. In “El guacamayo que se extravió en la materia,” Mario Payeras recreates a space located in the Guatemala-Mexico borderlands, where a scarlet macaw gets captured, immobilized, and smuggled. The border presence in the Maya rainforests is not devoid of meaning. In the narration, the town is located in a border region and has an organized traffickers’ network that employs a local river to transport species seen as “capital in the sense that they are a stock of possessions generating value” (Collard 6). Even though the plot takes place in the first decades of the twentieth century, the story was written in the 1980s, when the illicit industry was at one of its most prominent stages:

Guatemala has always been a critical location in the geography of crisscrossing drug smuggling routes between Latin America and the United States. When the United States began to target Colombia’s air and sea drug smuggling routes in the 1980s, the cartels were forced to focus more on overland routes through Central America, inevitably reaching into Guatemala. (Skeen)

Owing to Guatemala’s strategic location, the role it performs in the drug smuggling business has been unavoidable for decades, a phenomenon that was already glaringly evident when the story was written. Framed within this context, Payeras’ short stories forefront the social, environmental, and geographic elements that have been used as the vehicle for large-scale wildlife trafficking, in this way participating in current species extinction frameworks. This occurs in a border territory characterized by economic precarity and ecological wealth, a configuration that has transformed an already secluded forest into a tactical location for organized criminal groups. Forecasting the impending consequences of the border’s presence, “Los pájaros de Chilabasún” and “Historia del guacamayo que se extravió en la materia,” address the mechanisms that contribute to the forest’s gradual defaunation process, and to Earth’s irreversible vanishment of species.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily Celeste Vázquez Enríquez

Emily Celeste Vázquez Enríquez is assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, Border Biomes: Ecological Imaginaries of Mexico’s Geopolitical Limits.

Notes

1 One of the most detectable damages created by the wall is its interruption of nonhuman migration corridors and water access to a myriad of species. Furthermore, as Hilary Cunningham contends, “there is a whole host of environmental issues for biota along this border: . . . habitat destruction through land filling, extensive service roads and invasive vehicular patrolling; and circadian rhythm disorders for nocturnal animals owing to the widespread use of stadium lighting. Additionally, poor residents in parts of the Tijuana-San Diego corridors will be likely to be more vulnerable to dangerous mud slides as a result of the dragging and rerouting of water runoff in the estuary” (378).

2 This occurrence embodies Rob Nixon’s notion of slow violence, which he describes as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all” (2).

3 In Reinventing the Lacandón: Subaltern Representations in the Rain Forest of Chiapas, Brian Gollnick describes how an aerial view of the Mexico-Guatemala borderlands makes visible the heightened degree of deforestation in the Mexican side, particularly in the Lacandón forest, evincing the effects of Mexican neoliberal practices over the region (3). Although, as described by Gollnick, when compared to El Petén, the rainforest of Chiapas is markedly destroyed, the damage is far more complex that what can be photographed and is endured by the whole ecosystem, regardless of border separations.

4 Selva El Petén is situated in the northernmost region of Guatemala and accounts for a third of the entire country, sharing large border sections with Mexico and Belize.

5 The presence of the border contributes to many of these environmental issues to varying degrees, however, given that Payeras’ short stories underscore wildlife endangerment, so does this article.

6 The most violent chapters took place during the dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt, who was accused and found guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide. The ruling was overturned only 10 days later by Guatemala’s Constitutional Court (Burt).

7 Saldaña-Portillo studies Payeras’ problematic approach to Indigenous societies in his early 1980s writings, but by 1992, “he denounced the genocidal tendencies in all nationalisms, insisted on territorial autonomy for the indigenous populations of Latin America, and ­recognized that an indigenous-led struggle against racial discrimination was paramount to any successful class based revolutionary struggle in Guatemala” (91).

8 The nearly 38 million acres that make up the Maya Forests extend over northern Guatemala, southeastern Mexico, and Belize.

9 This representation echoes the contemporary reality of rural Guatemala, as Rodrigo Soberanes asserts, to this day: “[in some cases] wildlife trafficking is one of the few ways to make a decent income” (2019).

10 As it has been noted by various scholars, the concept of the Anthropocene fails to acknowledge that different societies do not produce homogenous harm, with the Global North creating the major damage. In Payeras’ short stories, this aspect becomes apparent through the portrayal of diverse groups, which generate environmental degradation on varying scales. For instance, in “Los pájaros de Chilabasún,” with the construction of the railroad, the ladinos change the visual, sonorous, and ecological makeup of the forest in an irreversible way.

11 After he returns from doing forced labor for the ladinos, Mateo Diego no longer hunts birds to survive and instead, “tocaba tambor en un circo ambulante o aserraba marquetas en remotas fábricas de hielo” (21).