Junglepixiebelize - Recollections of a Gringa Pioneer
Nancy R Koerner - Copyright@2021 - All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"Dry Season Slash-n-Burn"
It was now officially “dry season,” and Saturday-morning-marketplace in San Ignacio had begun to take on the air of a social event. With each week, we were discovering other newly-arrived gringos, and came to realize that our arrival was part of the new wave of American homesteaders. Because each respective couple had been living in relative wet-season isolation, unaware of the others’ existence, we’d all been going through similar learning curves, which now created a wonderful commonality of experience. We ate tamalitos and garnaches in the shade, drank ice cold Cokes, and compared notes. Some of us had been better prepared than others. Some had been foolhardy. Failure was easy. Success hard to define. Some gringos had already come and gone, lucky to have made it out alive.
The key was a reliable year-round water source. Some had chosen badly, or been swindled. They’d bought a piece of dry-land during the wet season when artesian springs bubbled with abundance. Others had bought on the flat alongside a quiet creek in the dry season when the water was low and at its most forgiving. But when the artesian springs dried up in the former instance, and the creeks became inundating deluges in the latter – both scenarios could be ruinous, if not catastrophic.
My husband and I had done well in assessing our choice on the Macal. We’d checked with many of the dory men on how low the river would go in the dry, and carefully studied the two distinct flood-plain levels up the hill, demarcating wet-season extremes. The truth was (and still is): judge your Belize property for habitability during its own season of intensity, not in its season of lethargy.
Apparently, the dry season of 1975 had been the worst in memory. Instead of only March, April, and May, the drought had gone on for eight months. The summer rains simply had not come. Artesian springs (“ojos de agua”) had dried up, and previously-reliable creeks had virtually disappeared. The cattle along the Mopan and Macal still, had water to drink, at least, but pasturelands were brown and dead. The desperate animals had simply skirted the perpendicular fencing where it met the river, and trampled the neighbouring property in a desperate search for a single blade of grass. The rains had not come until November, and then flooding had been severe.
So, what was a normal dry? First, it would be hot – really hot, with temperatures in the mid-nineties – that was a given. If you lived in the bush, you might have some blessed shade and, with elevation, the trade winds might provide fair-breeze. The mud would dry up, children could play outside, and laundry on the line dried in about ten minutes. It was the season of mobility. If you had a reliable vehicle, it was possible to visit friends in the bush, or go up to the Mountain Pine Ridge where there were good swimming holes and refreshing waterfalls. But, in the towns and villages, the dry could be miserable. The sticky white marl on the roads turned to powder, then to billowing dust. It sifted through screen doors and windows, and left a white film over everything: floors, walls, furniture. Clean it off, and it was back in ten minutes. Swarms of houseflies clung to screens and found their way through holes in the mesh. And there would be smoke too, because milpaléros would start to burn.
Mílpas were small corn plantations in the bush, created by one man, using only a machete, a file, and a pack of Toucan matches. (“Hey, if one can’t, Tou-can.”) Early in the dry, he would clear-cut an acre or two of virgin high-bush, leveling every living green thing. (No mercy. Every llora sangre, tropical cedar and bullhoff. Every prickle-yellow, rattan palm, passion flower, and sorosi vine. Every niche, nest, or lair, to every tapir, jaguar, gibnut, and harpy eagle. Every burrow and home to every kinkajou, oro pendula, and quash.)
By late May, the fallen bush would look like a litter of desiccated corpses, even the immense trees. Then, with rains clouds on the horizon, the milpaléro would wait for a stiff breeze, and strike a match. In ideal conditions, the whole mílpa would go up in a torrent of hell-fire. A day or two later, the man would return to the black skeletal graveyard of ash-covered nakedness. He would carry a sharpened stick, and a coffee can of seed-corn, tied around his waist with a piece of twine, and take off his gum-boots. Juk a hole, drop the seed, cover with the big toe. Juk a hole, drop the seed, cover with the big toe. The Maya had done it this way for two thousand years. With luck, the rains would fall on time. With luck, the milpaléro would get maybe two bags of corn to feed his family. (Two measly bags…)
Did this mean the man would now have a piece of cleared land for ongoing seasonal plantings? No. The forest giants would never grow back, only a tertiary growth of weeds called wamill, his machete useless against them. It would take a tractor, which he didn't have – or herbicides, which he couldn’t afford. So, each and every milpaléro in the Cayo District would clear-cut a brand new piece of virgin forest every year. The math was staggering.
“Clear the land” said Belizean leaders, for this was “progress.” And it was not going to stop because a few gringos might tell them it was a bad idea. But it also seemed to me, in 1976, that within a couple of decades, the high-bush would be gone. Welcome to the dry-season.
“Slash and burn.” It sounded like something the devil would do to Mother Nature upon her forced descent into hell. Because it was.
Apparently, the dry season of 1975 had been the worst in memory. Instead of only March, April, and May, the drought had gone on for eight months. The summer rains simply had not come. Artesian springs (“ojos de agua”) had dried up, and previously-reliable creeks had virtually disappeared. The cattle along the Mopan and Macal still, had water to drink, at least, but pasturelands were brown and dead. The desperate animals had simply skirted the perpendicular fencing where it met the river, and trampled the neighbouring property in a desperate search for a single blade of grass. The rains had not come until November, and then flooding had been severe.
So, what was a normal dry? First, it would be hot – really hot, with temperatures in the mid-nineties – that was a given. If you lived in the bush, you might have some blessed shade and, with elevation, the trade winds might provide fair-breeze. The mud would dry up, children could play outside, and laundry on the line dried in about ten minutes. It was the season of mobility. If you had a reliable vehicle, it was possible to visit friends in the bush, or go up to the Mountain Pine Ridge where there were good swimming holes and refreshing waterfalls. But, in the towns and villages, the dry could be miserable. The sticky white marl on the roads turned to powder, then to billowing dust. It sifted through screen doors and windows, and left a white film over everything: floors, walls, furniture. Clean it off, and it was back in ten minutes. Swarms of houseflies clung to screens and found their way through holes in the mesh. And there would be smoke too, because milpaléros would start to burn.
Mílpas were small corn plantations in the bush, created by one man, using only a machete, a file, and a pack of Toucan matches. (“Hey, if one can’t, Tou-can.”) Early in the dry, he would clear-cut an acre or two of virgin high-bush, leveling every living green thing. (No mercy. Every llora sangre, tropical cedar and bullhoff. Every prickle-yellow, rattan palm, passion flower, and sorosi vine. Every niche, nest, or lair, to every tapir, jaguar, gibnut, and harpy eagle. Every burrow and home to every kinkajou, oro pendula, and quash.)
By late May, the fallen bush would look like a litter of desiccated corpses, even the immense trees. Then, with rains clouds on the horizon, the milpaléro would wait for a stiff breeze, and strike a match. In ideal conditions, the whole mílpa would go up in a torrent of hell-fire. A day or two later, the man would return to the black skeletal graveyard of ash-covered nakedness. He would carry a sharpened stick, and a coffee can of seed-corn, tied around his waist with a piece of twine, and take off his gum-boots. Juk a hole, drop the seed, cover with the big toe. Juk a hole, drop the seed, cover with the big toe. The Maya had done it this way for two thousand years. With luck, the rains would fall on time. With luck, the milpaléro would get maybe two bags of corn to feed his family. (Two measly bags…)
Did this mean the man would now have a piece of cleared land for ongoing seasonal plantings? No. The forest giants would never grow back, only a tertiary growth of weeds called wamill, his machete useless against them. It would take a tractor, which he didn't have – or herbicides, which he couldn’t afford. So, each and every milpaléro in the Cayo District would clear-cut a brand new piece of virgin forest every year. The math was staggering.
“Clear the land” said Belizean leaders, for this was “progress.” And it was not going to stop because a few gringos might tell them it was a bad idea. But it also seemed to me, in 1976, that within a couple of decades, the high-bush would be gone. Welcome to the dry-season.
“Slash and burn.” It sounded like something the devil would do to Mother Nature upon her forced descent into hell. Because it was.