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Before 1968, Blue Creek Village was comprised of Mayan Indians living their traditional way of life, growing corn, beans, and rice, caring for their homes and family. The years following 1968, Blue Creek Village began to see development and change. Between the years of 1968-1971, a road, Catholic Church and an ecotourism site were built, the International Zoological Expedition (IZE). Three years later a primary school was built (1974-75) and finally in 1978 an agriculture building was built. Only 9% of the people living in Blue Creek Village had no formal schooling. Two generations of the Blue Creek Village people experienced and were affected by developmental changes occurring in their community.During the summer of 1999 (May 13 - August 8), I studied the Mayan Indians to determine how ecotourism, education, and gender influence the cash income earned by the Mayan people and how education is influenced by ecotourism, gender, age, individual, family/generational or community decisions. Blue Creek Village, Belize, was chosen as the site of study because Mayan Indians lived a traditional lifestyle and it was adjacent to an ecotourism location, the IZE Blue Creek Rainforest Preserve in the Maya Mountains. Ethnographic interviews and participant observations were used to obtain responses and demographic data of the local Mayan people. From these responses the statistical analysis revealed that education does influence the cash income of the local Mayan people in Blue Creek Village. Prior to the IZE Rainforest Preserve, the Mayan men's only source of cash income was through rice production, and women were unable to earn cash. The cash earned from the visiting tourists assisted families by providing cash income to pay for an education for their children. / Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management

Maya Mopan farmers in southern Belize face socio-economic hardships, persisting environmental constraints, and an unfavorable political climate that has prevented land tenure stability on reservation lands. This thesis describes the agricultural practices of a group of Mopan farmers and examines farm-site diversification and its relationship to ecological knowledge, out-migration, agricultural markets, and indigenous political systems. I also examine how modernization, religious conversions, and the Mopan's introduction into a capitalist economy have led to a decline in cultural practices and the augmentation of non-traditional behaviors among the younger generations. Data were obtained during my fieldwork in the Cayo and Toledo Districts of southern Belize from June-November, 2002. I conducted informal interviews with farmers and NGOs, engaged in participant observation techniques, documented 17 diversified Mayan farms, and formulated a self-administered questionnaire that was given to 38 students in the San Jose Village School. Additional data was acquired through voluntary work in farmers' fields and from available anthropological and agricultural literature. The results of this study indicate that Mopan farmers have diversified their farming systems by adopting new crop varieties, developing more sustainable agricultural techniques, increasing the production of cash crops, and adjusting their traditional labor systems. These findings are significant because they demonstrate ways in which farming communities throughout the tropics can improve their environments and economies amidst the influences of modernization, unsustainable development, and discriminatory government policies. / Graduation date: 2005