Norman Schwartz is retiring as Full Professor of Anthropology at
the University of Delaware after 36 years of service which include 2 years
as Acting Chair and 3 years as Chair of the Anthropology Department. His
many grants and yearly research trips to the Peten in Guatemala--interspersed
by other trips to Panama, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Morroco and Spain--are
testimony not only to his love of his work and the Peten, but also of his
internationally recognized expertise in conservation and natural resources
management. He has served many years as consultant to the World Bank/Global
Conservation Fund and US AID/Conservation International among others.
In 1999, Dr. Schwartz and I founded the Delaware Review of Latin American
Studies under the auspices of the Latin American Program of the University
of Delaware, serving as its first co-editors. I have felt privileged to work
with Norman these past few years, not only because of his great sense of
humor and excellent advice, but also because our working meetings always
included retellings of his experiences in the Peten. My own students of Latinamerican
literature and culture have much to thank him--unbeknownst to him or them--as
I’ve incorporated his life lessons into my classes.
What first interested you in Anthropology as a field of study/research?
In my senior year in college, Dr. Abraham Edel, whose wife, May Edel, was an
anthropologist, suggested that I consider going to grad school in anthropology
because the field was a wide one, ranging from human physical evolution to highly
symbolic matters. Since my own interests were somewhat broad, it seemed a natural
sort of choice. Dr. Edel also sugested I read Edward Sapir's book Language,
and Sapir simply swept me off my feet. Also, I had worked for a physical anthropologist,
Dr. Stanley Garn, who made human evolution endlessly fascinating and was a mentor
in more ways than one. So, all in all, it seemed a good choice.
How did you first become involved with Latin America and/or the Peten?
I spent part of my childhood in Arizona and became interested in Mexico. Then,
when I was in grad school, Dr. Ruben Reina invited me to work with him in Peten.
At first, I was reluctant becasue I wanted to go to Sonora, Mexico, just south
of Tucson, Arizona, but Ben, that is, Ruben, said the people of Peten were descended
from Mexican groups, more or less, and so I went off with him. And it was at
the right time, because in 1960 the Guatemalan government was just opening what
was then a sparsely populated lowland forest region to colonization and development,
a process I've been able to observe over the years. Ben is a very fine ethnographer,
and I learned a great deal about what anthropologists call
"participant observation" from him.
You sometimes mention that your type of anthropology deals with the living.
Explain.
It's a sort of silly joke. I'm not too interested in antiquity as such, although
I think one has to know the history of a process or region to understand it fully,
but I enjoy the social give-and-take of ethnography, of observing and listening
to people who, at the same time, are observing and listening to you, the observer.
That makes for all sorts of complexities that are interesting to unravel, insofar
as one can.
What brought you to UD?
Much as I enjoyed and benefited from teaching at Middlebury College in Vermont,
I couldn't take the weather and couldn't live on the salary ($5,000). For personal
and professional reasons, Delaware is an ideal location, and the salary offer
was double what Middlebury was paying, and UD was planning to create a separate
department of anthropology, so there was a chance to contribute to shaping a
program from scratch.
How did you become interested in environmental issues?
Beginning in 1959, the Guatemalan government opened Peten to colonization and
development, and by the mid-1960s there was a great deal of spontaneous migration
from other parts of Guatemala to the northern lowland tropical forests of Peten.
By the 1970s it was clear that spontaneous colonization of Peten, even more than
government-sponsored colonization, was leading to forest conversion on a vast
scale. In fact, in 1975 I wrote a letter to the U.S. AID (Agency for International
Development) mission in Guatemala City expressing some concern that Peten might
be heading down the road the Classic Period Maya had taken. I was invited to
the mission to meet with two of the staff who said that although they shared
my concern, population in Peten was still low and the mission had more pressing
priorities elsewhere in Guatemala. By the late 1980s conservationists in Guatemala,
international conservation groups, the Guatemalan government and several foreign
governments became alarmed at the pace of deforestation in Peten (and elsewhere
in Central America), and they initiated programs to do something about the situation,
and I was given an opportunity to become involved. I did want to do something,
because of a concern for social justice, curiosity about whether it was possible
to find the right balance between conservation of natural resources and economic
development, and also, to tell the truth, because of my children. You know how
children raise their parents as much as parents raise them, and I wanted my children
to know that I shared their concerns about the environment and was trying to
make some small contribution to deal with those concerns in a region I knew something
about.
Tell us about your involvement with international organizations like the
World Bank.
Under Title XII and other auspices, I did some applied anthropology in Panama
between 1980 and 1984. Trying to use anthropological concepts and methods to
implement development projects and solve real-world problems is challenging,
and in Panama I was lucky enough to work with some fine fresh-water-fish biologists
and agricultural economists. I think I learned a lot from them, especially Dr.
Len Lovshin from Auburn. In some ways, he reminds me of Ben Reina--one of those
people who sets the standard for fieldwork. Then, in 1990 I published a lengthy
book on the social history of Peten, and, as luck would have it, at about that
time, as I mentioned before, the Guatemalan government, our government and a
host of international conservation groups began to mount so-called
"integrated development-and-conservation programs" in places like Peten, where
there was a threat of deforestation and all that implies. Because of the internal
conflict in Guatemala during the 1980s, there weren't many other ethnographers
working in Peten, as I had been doing. That, and the timing of the book, gave
me some credibility, and I became a consultant for Conservation International's
program in Peten. It was supposed to be a six month consultancy, when a dear
friend, the late Carlos Soza, became head of the program, and he asked me to
continue working with him. So, the consultancy went on for more than two years,
and the University was generous enough to let me remain off campus for some time.
In one way or another, the work with CI and Carlos led to other consultancies,
with the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, NASA, and so on. All
very challenging, sometimes frustrating, but always interesting both in terms
of the people with whom one works and the problems to be solved, if they can
be solved.
Obviously a lot of this has to do with the question you asked before about
the environment. When Conservation International's Guatemalan project, called
ProPeten, became an independent NGO, Carlos Soza asked me to serve as vice
president of the board, so my direct involvement with the conservation and
development in Peten is on-going. In many ways it's more satisfying to work
with a local NGO than with big international organizations.This isn't the place
to go into it, but I think that an independent group of Peteneros concerned
about the welfare of their own region and their own people (and that includes
environmental sanity) has a better chance to achieve socially just development
and conservation goals than a group of outsiders who tend to want to dictate
to them how to get the job done. Of course, there are no guarantees that local
people will succeed, and outsiders can help, but only if they're willing to
take the lead from the people who have to live with the results of project
activities day by day.
You said that in the 1980s, because of the internal conflict, there weren't
many ethnographers working in Peten. How were you able to go back so often
during that period? And why did you do that?
There was a good deal of violence in Peten in the early 1980s, though not as
much as in the western highlands of Guatemala. The scariest time for me was when
I was called into military intelligence in Guatemala City and asked why I was
so interested in land tenure and related matters in Peten. I tred to explain
that ethnographers need to know about daily life and most people in Peten were
farmers, so I was interested in land, and so on. I was told I could go to Peten
but had to report to G2 down there -- as I recall that was the name of the branch
of the military I had to see -- and couldn't travel anywhere in the region without
the OK of the G2 office. When I got to Peten I spoke with the G2 officer and,
to my relief, he said something to the effect that "those guys up in the City
worry too much; do whatever you want; it's hard enough to travel around this
region, so you can go wherever you can."
Although I was stopped by military patrols once or twice and saw some of the
violence, by and large some knowledge of the region and a lot of dumb luck kept
me out of serious trouble.
You also ask about why I keep going back. Part of it has to do with the friendships
I've made with Peteneros over the years. So, the visits to Peten are always
social. But also it is intellectual interest. No matter how much I learn about
things like tropical ecology, traditional ways of gardening and so on, there's
always some surprise, something new to learn. In addition, by continuing to
retun to Peten -- and it is now going on forty-four years of travel there --
I've been able to observe a good many of the complex processes that go into
so-called frontier development -- the politics, economics, ecology, sociology
and culture of that development, as well as how the world at large intrudes
on the processes. And every time I think I've reached a conclusion about one
of another of these processes, something happens to let me know that there's
more to learn.
There's something else, too. Since about 1990s an increasing number of graduate
students, not to mention seasoned professionals, from a wide range of countries
-- the US, France, Germany, Spain and, of course, Guatemala itself -- have
been doing research on an equally wide range of topics in Peten. There is a
lot to learn from them, especially the graduate students who are up on the
latest theories and have a lot of fresh observations to make. Because the students'
interests are so diverse, there's a lot of opportunity for cross-disciplinary
learning and research.
What did you have in mind when you founded DeRLAS?
As I implied, I've had a chance to work with some very talented and dedicated
people, including very fine scholars in Peten, Guatemala and Veraguas, Panama.
But in both places, students and scholars don't always have access to the library
and journal material they'd like to have, but they do have access to the "net".
So, an academically sound, peer-refereed electronic journal helps give them broader
access than they woud otherwise have. And the cost is a lot less than paper journals.
In addition, since the journal publishes in Spanish and Portuguese as well as
English, it encourages sbumissions from Latin American scholars who might not
otherwise think of publishing their material in a USA-based journal. For example,
as the first editor of DeRLAS, you'll recall that in our first issue, Licenciado
Amilcar Corzo published an impressive essay on the fate of one community in Peten.
What do you feel is your greatest achievement?
At my age, probably surviving is OK. I'm not too good at looking back at things
I've done or, more often, left undone. I think I've played a small part in helping
a few young people become what they had it in them to become, and that's a big
achievement, even if one's own contribution was small. As luck would have it,
I've also been able to work with graduate as well as undergraduate students.
But, it's easier to think of what's ahead.
Do you have any special advice for scholars who want to concentrate on
Latin America?
I suppose one would have to know exactly what particular topics or themes and
what particular geo-cultural areas catch their interest. Aside from the obvious
-- like reading as much history, geography, anthropology and so on that then
can, that is, learning as much as they can about their area -- I think young
people ought to be sure that they really enjoy their concentration -- simply
enjoy and be truly interested and curious about the area. The external rewards
finally don't mean much, but the intrinsic ones do. Of course, that sometimes
entails frustration and even pain, but the sense that there's always something
more to learn has its own rewards.
In your dealings with local or native populations and the international
agencies in the Peten, what changes would you deem necessary for the situation
to improve?
I think that local groups have to learn to negotiate more with international
agencies and not simply go along with an this or that agenda because it brings
in money and because they feel powerless to negotiate. I know that's easier to
say than do, but local groups have to avoid accepting funding and development
or conservation programs that do not fit their own ideas of how to solve problems
in their own region. It takes a lot of self-confidence to negotiate and even
reject the scheme that a powerful, wealthy international agency would like to
impose (I can't think of another word than "impose" at this moment) on the people
of a given region, but somehow local groups have got to find the strength to
do that. Corzo's essay shows what happens when local groups feel powerless, but
just the fact that he wrote what he did demonstrates that there are people who
are not passive in the face of powerful outside groups, and that essay is simply
one example of the hopeful changes going on in Peten.
On the other side, international organizations have to learn to listen to
local groups and not be so quick to think and feel they have the answers, even
answers to technical matters like bio-diversity conservation. All too often
international donors, their experts and consultants appear to be arrogant over-bearing
know-it-alls who impose their will on others. Some donor agency staff, and
in particular high-ranking officers of this or that organization, tend to think
that compliance, especially courteous compliance is agreement, even though
field staff may know better. For all the talk about "participatory processes,"
there often is a lack of genuine willingness to co-manage conservation, development
or other projects, and that usually means the projects, which local people may
have accepted rather than helped create, are not durable and tend to collapse
shortly after a donor agency departs -- and they do depart, to follow the funding
trails and fads wherever they lead. So, insofar as the international agencies
really want to realize their stated goals, rather than merely enhance their own
roles and coffers, they have to be willing to share decision-making authority
with local groups, and local groups have to find the confidence to negotiate
rather than simply comply.
I know I'm oversimplifying because it is extremely complicated hard work,
and there are all sorts of pitfalls that attend managerial parity. Just to
mention one example, even when everyone agrees to sharing authority, there
may be radically different meanings attached to concepts of "sharing" and "authority." That
is, what anthropologists call "culture" really does count. At the same time,
as Saul Alinsky taught, there is a shared human capacity for laughter, and
if by some magical stroke of luck all the parties involved can appreciate the
comic side as well as the serious side of what they are doing, there's a chance
things will work out. As I said, I know I'm leaving a lot out, but words like
co-management and shared authority catch at the direction in which I think
things should go.
What are your plans for the future?
I have some writing obligations to wrap up. I will continue to travel to Peten
since it seems that there's always some new development, some new puzzle that
catches my attention. My wife and I also will continue to visit Israel, where
my daughter lives, but we'd also like to see more of this country, and spend
time with our children who are scattered across the country. I may do some teaching
in Peten and also in Nicaragua, but without having to hand out grades and all
that uncomfortable adminsitrative stuff. I'll be able to mentor students without
forever having to judge their performance. There'll also be time to learn a little
about subjects I've neglected, probably out of laziness more than lack of time.
But now I can be lazy and still study them: things like Hebrew, plant biology,
more Spanish-American literature -- things like that. It's sort of like putting
out the sign that says "Gone fishing." |