The First Mapping Workshop

The First Mapping Workshop was led by Julian Cho and Diego Bol (TMCC) and Santiago Coh (TAA). English was the main language used to teach in the workshops. Most all Maya in southern Belize speak English as a second language to either Mopan or Ke'kchi. Mopan and Ke'kchi speakers use English to speak to each other. Oftentimes, however, it was necessary that cartographic concepts and methods be explained in Mopan and Ke'kchi for greater clarity. Several able people assisted in this. Domingo Choco again assisted in translating directly between Mopan and Ke'kchi.

Food preparation and cooking for the some eighty participants was done by Teodora Castellano, Clara Bol, Sophia Cho, and Linadora Bol.

The UC Berkeley GeoMap team of Bernard Nietschmann, Charles Tambiah, Jennie Freeman, and Tim Norris led the training of village researchers from Mopan and Ke'kchi communities in Toledo and Stann Creek districts. The intensive seven-day workshop covered the basics in field mapping, including map projections, scale and scale transformations, coordinate systems, map reading, map design, data categorization and presentation in map making with symbols and legends, portraying physical and cultural features, locating points and places in the field using compass and map, making transects and orientation with compass and map, and the use of cartographic tools. Additionally, training was given in how to carry out survey questionnaires. The training in survey questionnaires, and field mapping methods and skills was taught by lectures, demonstrations and hands-on exercises.

Workshop participants spent one day designing, selecting and voting on some 30 Maya-made symbols to depict the physical, cultural and historical features of their region, including types of landforms, vegetation, and land use found in the area. Conventional or Maya-invented symbols and colors were used as appropriate. Conventional symbols were selected for such things as roads and rivers; Maya symbols were selected for such things as caves, ruins, traditional healers, hunting grounds, traditional medicine areas, and waterfalls -- all of which have strong cultural and territorial significance. All selected symbols were compiled onto one page, photocopied, colored with appropriate colors, placed in a protective plastic sleeve, and a copy given to each village researcher so that everyone would follow the same system of symbolization for landuse mapping.

The maps in the Atlas are made with democratically selected legends, symbols, colors and land use terms. Whereas professional cartography follows conventions of standardized map symbols, community-based cartography is different because map symbols are almost always designed and selected by "town meeting democracy".

Each village researcher was supplied with a complete mapping and census kit which included mapping materials, a 1:25,000 base map for each village region, a map tube, a clip board and questionnaires, compass, and a cuxtal (woven wool bag) with the MMP letters (Maya Mapping Project) to carry the mapping supplies. The bags were woven made by women in several Maya communities.

Three people -- Basilio Ah, Julio Sanchez and Andres Coh -- with more advanced backgrounds were selected by the TMCC to be trained as cartographers and they received a full kit of professional cartographic equipment and a cartographer's backpack.

The village researchers and cartographers learned very fast, in part because of the way they organized themselves into work groups. The GeoMap team had planned on teaching the researchers and cartographers as in a classroom in the United States, one person per desk, each person responsible for doing the assignment alone. Instead, the Maya researchers and cartographers worked together on cartographic assignments, 4 to 6 to a desk, which meant that when any one person from the group understood the cartographic concept and methods, he would explain them in Mopan or Ke'kchi to the others at the table, who in this manner learned the information and techniques probably ten times faster than they would have worked alone and only in English. This change was done due to the initiative of the community researchers and it was the single-most important reason for the remarkable success of participants in all the workshops. This led to an insight important for those who work in community-based mapping: adapt and invent, don't adopt and prevent.

Videographer Widdicombe Schmidt assisted with logistics and used Hi-8 video to document the workshop.