Over the last decades, political, economic and environmental
pressures have encouraged changes from swidden
to more intensive agricultural practices, resulting in the
hypothesis that swidden cultivation systems are disappearing.
In Calakmul, southeastern Mexico, communities decreased
the area under milpa, the traditional maize swidden system,
but a collapse did not occur. To document and explain the
persistence of swidden we employ a variety of data: (1) 59
standardized household surveys from 2003 and 2010 in five
villages, (2) in-depth interviews in one village, and (3) coupled
human–environmental timelines in this same village.
Droughts, hurricanes, and remittances were important drivers
of decreases in milpa cultivation. Market crop profitability and
conservation programs were also reported to affect the area
under milpa. Off-farm employment and governmental transfers
have tended to stabilize household economies and decrease
dependency on agricultural production, but have also
allowed households to maintain their milpas for subsistence
and cultural reproduction. Findings in Calakmul point to the
need to consider swidden as an evolving and active response
to changing policy, economic, and environmental conditions