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Cultivating health: diabetes resilience through neo-traditional farming in Mopan Maya communities of Belize

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Abstract

My research explores Maya perspectives on neo-traditional farming as a source of metabolic health and resilience to the global epidemic of type-two diabetes. This article is based on long-term ethnographic research and interviews in Maya Mountains Reservation (MMR) communities in southern Belize, an area with low diabetes prevalence relative to national and global populations. Research participants see lower rates of diabetes in the MMR as the result of neo-traditional peasant and subsistence farming on ancestral lands. Good metabolic health represents the embodiment of food systems that routinize healthy material and social relationships to the landscape. This research suggests that diabetes is endemic to modern food systems and proposes neo-traditional food ways as a societal antidote to nutritional disease. My research demonstrates and responds to a need for further disaggregated data on diabetes prevalence in Indigenous communities, contributes to the social scientific literature on the importance of small-scale agricultural models for community health, and provides a case study of success in diabetes prevention. I engage Maya perspectives with anthropological literature on embodiment and small-scale agriculture to suggest neo-traditional food ways as healthier alternatives to capitalist agricultural development.

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Notes

  1. In addition to UIUC IRB, this research was approved by the Government of Belize National Institution of Culture and History IRB and the San Jose village council, with whom I regularly checked in over the course of my research.

  2. Activism in the 1990s lead by the MLA and San Jose local, Julien Cho, ultimately led to the support of Maya land tenure claims by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in two Supreme Court rulings against the GOB in 2007 & 2010, the terms of which continue to be negotiated in the present.

  3. In 1978, southern Belize produced more than 75% of the rice in Belize through milpa agriculture. As a result of the Toledo Rural Development Project implemented by the Belize Marketing Board (BMB) and funded by the International Development Bank (IDB) and USAID, the years 1995–1998, saw a 43% reduction in rice producers (Wainwright 2008).

  4. Throughout this text I use commodity foods to refer to foods for purchase that come from outside the village food system. “Shop food” is the common local phrase for these foods used by research participants, while two interview respondents share a geopolitical perspective on shop foods that describes them as “colonial”.

  5. Price caps on staples like sugar (BZ$0.75 per lb), white rice (BZ$0.94 per lb), and flour (BZ$0.95 per lb), make shop foods both more affordable and more accessible than healthier home-produced counterparts. The largest store in the village, proudly referred to as “Wal Mart”, sells upwards of 200 lbs. of white sugar per week.

  6. I use the term “neo-traditional” to denote the evolving nature of tradition, particularly as it is adapted and hybridized with “modern” social forms. Contemporary Maya traditions are constructed from intergenerational folklore, Maya mythology, Spanish followed by English colonization, western science, and religious influences.

  7. San Jose has yet to be connected to the national power grid, though many households (c 75%) now have small-scale solar systems. Solar power supply is primarily for lights and charging phones, and is not reliable enough to run a refrigerator or freezer, so use of these appliances is limited to family-owned stores or bars that can invest in diesel generators. Use of ovens and stoves is likewise limited by the prohibitive cost and intermittent supply of fuel, which is refilled by truck once per month. Even households with ample financial resources regularly cook on fire hearths, which require steady work and wood supply to maintain.

  8. Metformin is an oral medication used to regulate blood sugar levels. It is the main prescription for people with diabetes in Belize.

  9. I only encountered three personal glucometers during my research. However, blood glucose testing is regularly available at the bi-weekly mobile clinic hosted by Hillside Healthcare International (HHI) and through intermittent community outreach by NGOs, the MOH CHWs, and at events like Maya Day, school, and church health fairs. Once identified as at risk for diabetes by a blood glucose screening, A1C tests are available by referral at San Antonio clinic or PG hospital.

  10. Prior to installation of the community water system in the early 2000s, water was carried by 5-gallon bucket from one of ten manual pumps, an artesian well, or brought up from the creek and boiled. Water is now accessible by an outside spigot located in each yard or, in rare cases, a single pipe into the home. In the late 1990s, belt driven diesel corn mills replaced grinding stones and hand mills so that corn can now be ground into smooth, even masa in mere minutes. Despite the introduction of new technologies in the village, household maintenance continues to be labor intensive.

Abbreviations

CA:

Central America

CHW:

Community health worker

GOB:

Government of Belize

INGO:

International non-governmental organizations

MHD:

Ministry of Human Development

MLA:

Maya Leaders Alliance

MMR:

Maya Mountains Reservation

MOA:

Ministry of Agriculture

MOH:

Ministry of Health

NNCDs:

Nutrition-related non-communicable diseases

PG:

Punta Gorda Town

TMCC:

Toledo Maya Cultural Council

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the many people from San Jose and Belize who hosted and participated in this research. Additionally, I appreciate the financial and academic support from the Department of Sociology and the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Eastern New Mexico University, 1500 S. Ave K., Portales, NM, 88130, USA

    Michelle Schmidt

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Schmidt, M. Cultivating health: diabetes resilience through neo-traditional farming in Mopan Maya communities of Belize. Agric Hum Values 39, 269–279 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10245-7

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