This thesis has probed the influences of selected variables which operated to encourage the development of hierarchy among the Tarascans, but in contrast, acted to the deter any development of the hierarchy among the Mayans. Due to Tarascan successful interaction with their physical world, they developed a centralized state with formal institutions. This fact allowed the Spaniards to easily eradicate Tarascan political and religious power centers, and to replace them with Spanish contemporaries. As a defensive reaction to their complete subjugation by the Spaniards, the Tarascans molded a Spanish religious and political organization to meet their needs for the survival of their Tarascan identity.On the other hand, the Mayans were subject to the harshness of their environment in cultivating and harvesting milpa. These peasant Indians could only maintain their society in a decentralized condition whether political, religious, or social. Their heritage solely revolved around milpa cultivation. The Spaniards found it difficult to subdue them and they could never subvert the cultural core of the peasant Mayans with their religious and social institutions and values. The Mayans had no need to develop the hierarchy as a weapon against the intrusion of Spanish culture. They always found their identity, unity, and independence in their practices of milpa cultivation and ritual.

Social, political, economic, and environmental factors converge in developing countries to stimulate high rates of deforestation. Forest conversion reduces biodiversity, contributes to carbon loading of the atmosphere, alters the global water balance, and degrades the quality of life for rural people. Mexico is the fifth most biologically diverse country in the world and temperate and tropical forests in Mexico are rapidly disappearing with environmental and cultural repercussions for people and ecosystems. This study examines changes in the forest landscape surrounding two communidades indigenas in Michoacan, Mexico over a 15-year period. The research area includes communal forest, pasture, and agricultural land within the adjacent municipal boundaries of two Purepecha Indian communities: Sevina and San Francisco Pichataro. The economies of both villages depend in part on wood products manufacturing with timber harvested in local mixed-pine forests. As a result, forest landscapes surrounding the towns are at risk for potentially rapid land cover change and environmental degradation.