Belize

Engaged with political ecology and agrarian studies, this dissertation explores the fate of Q'eqchi' migrants who fled highland coffee plantation labor over the past century to establish subsistence farms in the northern lowland Maya forests. Now at the edge of the agricultural frontier, the Q'eqchi' (Guatemala's second largest Maya group, numbering almost a million people) find themselves in conflict with conservationists who established protected areas across the region throughout the 1990s.

This paper analyzes the relationship between demographic dynamics and Hurricane Mitch in Central America, and extracts from this experience lessons that can help reduce vulnerability in the long run. Specifically, it centers on three aspects: How did demographic processes condition the area's vulnerability prior to Mitch? What are Mitch's consequences for population dynamics in the short and long term? What changes must be introduced in population dynamics if the effects of future natural disasters are to be mitigated?