April 05, 2005
Flat world, Naha to New York


Thanks to Doc Searls for this link:

The New York Times > Magazine > It's a Flat World, After All, Thomas Friedman's essay on global opening and leveling through communications.

It has resonance for me at the moment, just returned to the Maya highlands from Naha, in the Lacandon jungle. 24 hours ago I was watching young Lacandones struggling to dock their dugout cayuco, a transport technology now being forgotten after thousands of years of Maya navigation. 48 hours ago I promised a traditional elder and his son both VHS and DVD copies of my footage of them from 25 years ago, then went to see the incense burner gods in Antonio's temple, and visit his jungle milpa to pick up maize from the corn crib.

I traveled with a team of potters and artesan advisers from Na Bolom, former home of Frans and Trudy Blom, early explorers and protectors of the Lacandon selva. Our guardian angel, cook, and link to those early days - Doña Betty, the soul of Na Bolom and adopted grandmother to all Lacandones. She traveled with Trudy into the jungle on horseback many times, 2 days each way in contrast to our easy if a bit bumpy 6 hour drive. The people of Naha, young and old, came over to our jungle camp to see her all through the day, but especially in the evening when she gave everyone hot chocolate and animal crackers. An old tradition and a 50-year record of friendship. Today, in San Cristobal, behind Na Bolom and just over the fence from us, there are rooms devoted to all Lacandones who come to town, for medical or any other reason.

Yes there is leveling but I have to believe there are still sharp divides, between two places a 6 hour drive apart, or between two neighborhoods in New York. Managing this frontier will occupy many of us in the next years.

What interests me is the persistence of culture and cultural differences through these world-flattening phases. It happened here to the Maya in the Spanish conquest, the exploitation of the jungles, and the diffusion of roads and communication. But the old ways remain embedded in the new. Remix on a global scale.

More from Chiapas and the "Gringo Collapse" Tour:

The Daily Glyph: Gringo Collapse Archives

From Nicco Mele:

nicco.org: Travels Archives

And Nicco's recent post on our JungleCast! on his blog, As If It Matters.

Posted by Dave at April 05, 2005 01:20 PM