Bøger af David Yetman

Mexico's Valleys of Cuicatlán and Tehuacán provides an accessible overview of an extraordinary region of Central Mexico. Through firsthand experience and engaging prose, the authors provide a synthesis of the environment, plants, and peoples of the valleys, showing their importance and influence as Mesoamerican arteries for environmental and cultural interchange through Mexico.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries northwestern Mexico was the scene of ongoing conflict among three distinct social groups, Indians, religious orders of priests, and settlers. In this study, Yetman examines seven separate instances of such conflict, each of which reveals a different perspective on this complicated world.

The Mayos, an indigenous people of northwestern Mexico, live in small towns spread over southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa, lands of remarkable biological diversity. Traditional Mayo knowledge is quickly being lost as this culture becomes absorbed into modern Mexico. Moreover, as big agriculture spreads into the region, the natural biodiversity of these lands is also rapidly disappearing. This engaging and accessible ethnobotany, based on hundreds of interviews with the Mayos and illustrated with the authors' strikingly beautiful photographs, helps preserve our knowledge of both an indigenous culture and an endangered environment. This book contains a comprehensive description of northwest Mexico's tropical deciduous forests and thornscrub on the traditional Mayo lands reaching from the Sea of Cortes to the foothills of the Sierra Madre. The first half of the book is a highly readable account of the climate, geology, and vegetation of the region. The authors also provide a valuable history of the people, their language, culture, festival traditions, and plant use. The second half of the book is an annotated list of plants presenting the authors' detailed findings on plant use in Mayo culture.