As a result of academic research into the effects of mass travel, an industry of alternative tourism has emerged. Application of this research has resulted in myriad forms of tourism, two of these being ecotourism and educational travel. Ecotourism represents a response to what is the destructive nature of the mass tourism industry and its damage to host communities' social, economic and environmental systems. Educational travel is an attempt to use tourism for education, such as trips arranged by university study abroad programs. I contend that both forms of alternative travel represent a reactive approach to mitigating the impacts of mass tourism. The potential of educational travel is not realized as it provides no framework or guidelines as to how students can apply the information and knowledge they have acquired on their trip. I will define a new type of tourism, advocacy travel, which seeks to address the shortfalls of ecotourism and educational travel. Advocacy travel is tourism as a strategy used by activists to educate, promote ideological awareness and motivate participants to work for social change. Global Exchange, a non-profit organization, has been using organized tours as one component of their activist strategy since 1989. Tours to destinations that are politically charged are used as a tactic to create a more politically aware and active citizen from an average person living in the United States. The ultimate goal of the tours is to promote change in the participant that will translate into an increased level of activism around the international issue about which Global Exchange is attempting change. This study is specifically aimed at determining whether tourism utilized in this manner can have a successful outcome for the organization employing it. I developed and distributed a survey questionnaire to Reality Tour participants from both the Cuba and Chiapas programs. Results reveal that the trips do promote an increased awareness of general news and world events and, to a lesser degree, serve to make the participant more politically active overall. However, this result is not equally applied to all participants. Those who indicate a previous awareness of the specific situation of their destination or a more general political knowledge are more likely to report that the Reality Tour inspired them to change. Also, I found that the Reality Tour participant differs greatly from the average US citizen in terms of education level, income, area of residence and occupation. / Graduation date: 2002

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-277). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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Forest edges created by scattered-patch clear-cutting have become a common landscape feature in tropical montane forests, including pine-oak and evergreen cloud forests. Forest-edge-pasture gradients were characterised with respect to changes in vegetation structure and ecological function in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. In this study two edge types were recognised by assessing vegetation structure and floristic composition along a gradient from adjacent clearings into the forest interior. The influence of edge type (either “hard” or “soft”) was investigated with respect to acorn production, predation, dispersal and germination, seedling establishment and abundance of small mammals during two consecutive years. There was no significant difference between the forest interior and the edge in plant density and basal area. Floristic richness and composition did not vary with depth-of edge influence. Edge type influenced the relationship between probability of acorn removal by small mammals and distance from the edge in both mast fruiting and non-mast fruiting years. Movements of metal-tagged acorns supported the hypothesis that soft edges are permeable to acorn predators and/or dispersers, and that rodents move acorns up to 15 m into the grasslands in soft edges. In hard edges, acorn dispersal and removal was greater within the forest. Peromyscus spp. were the main acorn predators and/or dispersers of acorns. The intensity and rate of acorn removal varied with the year, demonstrating that in mast-fruiting years some seeds may escape predation by animals, according to the predator satiation hypothesis. Grasslands presented fewer insect damaged acorns and higher seedling emergence than the edge and the forest, emphasising the importance of acorn dispersal. Seedling survival and growth were higher for 12 m into grassland from the soft edges, suggesting that the probability of oak expansion into the grassland increases when the grasslands have been abandoned and have a scattered cover of shrubs. The results indicate that edge structure alters edge function (edge permeability), which determines the probabilities of tree invasion into old-fields. These findings have implications for the conservation of montane forest in Mexico where scattered patch clear-cutting is widespread. Recommendations are made for different restoration practices to accelerate tree colonisation into the grasslands across hard and soft edges.

Seeds have become one of the most contested resources in our society. Control over seeds has intensified under neoliberalism, and today four large multinational corporations control approximately 70 percent of the global seed market. In response to this concentration of corporate power, an international social movement has emerged around the concept of seed sovereignty, which reclaims seeds and biodiversity as commons and public goods. This study examines the relationship between the global dynamics of commodification and enclosure of seeds, and the seed sovereignty countermovement for decommodification. I approach this analysis through an ethnographic case study of one local seed sovereignty movement, in the indigenous central region of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. I spent eight months between 2015 and 2016 conducting field research and documenting the development of the Guardians of Mother Earth and Seeds project, a local initiative focused on seed and food sovereignty that was initiated in 2015 by DESMI, the most established NGO working in this region. It encompasses 25 peasant communities--22 indigenous and 3 mestizo--from the Los Altos, Norte-Tulijá, and Los Llanos regions of Chiapas. I also collected data from 31 other communities in the region involved to varying degrees with this agenda of seed and food sovereignty. This study incorporates both communities affiliated with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and non-Zapatista communities. Three research questions guide this dissertation: (1) How do the increasing industrialization and commodification of seed systems and agriculture affect peasant communities in Chiapas?; (2) How is the local seed and food sovereignty countermovement responding to those processes of commodification?; and (3) How does this case study contribute to understanding the relationship between capital's tendency to enclose the commons and the protective countermovements that attempt to resist such market encroachments? This study found that the development of industrial agriculture and the commodification of seeds at the global and national scales have implied neither the displacement of these communities' native seeds by commercial seeds, nor their privatization--two of the most frequent potential risks denounced by representatives of the national and international seed sovereignty movement. Instead, the main impact of industrial agriculture and Green Revolution policies in the study region has been the chemicalization of peasant agriculture, with attendant negative impacts on the environment and human health. I also found that subsistence agriculture--the main mechanism through which native seeds are reproduced within communities--is undergoing a process of severe deterioration, which partially responds to the neoliberal dismantling of governmental institutions and programs supporting peasant agriculture. A key finding of this research is that the deterioration of subsistence agriculture is the main risk that the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture poses to native seeds. In response to these developments, communities in this study have embraced a project of decommodification focused on enhancing and expanding their subsistence agriculture. This project encompasses agroecology, food production collectives, and initiatives for agro-biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration. I argue that this project contributes to the decommodification of subsistence agriculture in the region, primarily by strengthening the non-commodified structures that are essential for these communities social reproduction.

This thesis deals with issues of indigeneity, warfare and representation as they relate to the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico between the years of 1994-2003 –a period widely known as a period of low intensity warfare. During this period, militants of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) engaged fiercely in the creation and defence of de facto “indigenous” municipalities and territories, posing a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Mexican “state” and its faculty to govern. The environment of war, accompanied by a prevalent Indianist discourse, highly structured the ways in which Zapatista lives came to be represented by activist and academic writings alike. Generic images of Zapatista militants came to dominate the literature. Within this context, my thesis argues for the importance of moving away from images of Zapatistas as public figures and investigating, instead, everyday Zapatista lives. I argue that a refocus on specific-situated-local-everyday politics necessarily entails engaging with “internal” conflict, division, hierarchies, and power differentials. Framed by an ethnographic approach, the analysis presented here is based on 17 months of fieldwork. My discussion on indigenous autonomy and self-determination, therefore, goes well beyond claims to indigenous rights and engages, instead, historical as well as on-the-ground expressions of what self-determination looked like on an everyday basis. My discussion on warfare, moves beyond condemnations of militarization in the area and pays attention to some of the ways in which warfare worked to structure peoples’ lives and daily perceptions as well as outsiders’ understanding of the conflict. While generally my analysis is confined by the particularities of time and space, a generous examination of an ample literature gives it theoretical depth and political relevance beyond the Zapatista case.

This thesis deals with issues of indigeneity, warfare and representation as they relate to the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico between the years of 1994-2003 –a period widely known as a period of low intensity warfare. During this period, militants of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) engaged fiercely in the creation and defence of de facto “indigenous” municipalities and territories, posing a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Mexican “state” and its faculty to govern. The environment of war, accompanied by a prevalent Indianist discourse, highly structured the ways in which Zapatista lives came to be represented by activist and academic writings alike. Generic images of Zapatista militants came to dominate the literature. Within this context, my thesis argues for the importance of moving away from images of Zapatistas as public figures and investigating, instead, everyday Zapatista lives. I argue that a refocus on specific-situated-local-everyday politics necessarily entails engaging with “internal” conflict, division, hierarchies, and power differentials. Framed by an ethnographic approach, the analysis presented here is based on 17 months of fieldwork. My discussion on indigenous autonomy and self-determination, therefore, goes well beyond claims to indigenous rights and engages, instead, historical as well as on-the-ground expressions of what self-determination looked like on an everyday basis. My discussion on warfare, moves beyond condemnations of militarization in the area and pays attention to some of the ways in which warfare worked to structure peoples’ lives and daily perceptions as well as outsiders’ understanding of the conflict. While generally my analysis is confined by the particularities of time and space, a generous examination of an ample literature gives it theoretical depth and political relevance beyond the Zapatista case.

The EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) resistance in Chiapas, Mexico remade the image of San Cristobal, from a quaint tourist destination, to a location of adventure and social revolution. The Zapatista, and their ideas of Zapatismo, according to some North American social activists, was a keystone movement facing off against the pressures of neo-liberal capitalism. One of the most notable contributions has been the stimulation of an overwhelming rise in international solidarity actors to the area. These factors along with a proximity to popular Maya archaeological sites, a high population of Indigenous Maya, and pivotal Spanish history reflected in colonial architecture, combine to lure international tourists to the area. My intention for this project is to examine the confluence of tourist and host as they together set a tourist market based on many things, but in particular on the ongoing Zapatista revolution and how this social movement has become an invitation to perform as activists and humanitarians, as well as tourists. / October 2008

The EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) resistance in Chiapas, Mexico remade the image of San Cristobal, from a quaint tourist destination, to a location of adventure and social revolution. The Zapatista, and their ideas of Zapatismo, according to some North American social activists, was a keystone movement facing off against the pressures of neo-liberal capitalism. One of the most notable contributions has been the stimulation of an overwhelming rise in international solidarity actors to the area. These factors along with a proximity to popular Maya archaeological sites, a high population of Indigenous Maya, and pivotal Spanish history reflected in colonial architecture, combine to lure international tourists to the area. My intention for this project is to examine the confluence of tourist and host as they together set a tourist market based on many things, but in particular on the ongoing Zapatista revolution and how this social movement has become an invitation to perform as activists and humanitarians, as well as tourists.