US Military Mapping Indigenous Lands in Oaxaca

The US military is providing funding for the very detailed mapping of indigenous lands in Oaxaca. This is not the only project of this sort the military is involved with. This certainly seems worthy of investigation.  What is the military's interest?

This has now come to the attention of Michael Smith, Professor at Arizona State University and author of a very good book on the Aztecs. Below in his posting to the Aztlan users' group (link below).

Some academic geographers from the University of Kansas are conducting field research on indigenous landholdings in the Mixteca, with funding from the U.S. military. The program is called "México Indígena," and it is part of a broader military-funded endeavor (called "the Bowman Expeditions") of mapping and data gathering in rural areas around the world. For a discussion, see the recent post, "Human Terrain in Oaxaca" on the Savage Minds blog:

http://savageminds.org/2009/06/05/human-terrain-in-oaxaca/

There are links at the bottom of that post to the home site of the Bowman Expeditions and to some works critical of the project. A number of indigenous activities are strongly critical of this work.
Mike
Michael E. Smith, Professor
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University
www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com

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I translated a small piece on this for Americas Program's March Monthly Biodiversity Report:

Mexico: Geo-pirates in Oaxaca

The Union of Oraganizations from the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO, Unión de Organizaciones de la Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca) denounced a "joint" initiative called Indigenous Project Mexico (Proyecto México Indigena). This project allegedly puts the sovereignty of indigenous pueblos in jeopardy and facilitates the looting of their natural patrimony through the mapping of their territories. Critics call this activity, which involves compiling high resolution geographic information about the precise location of various resources, including water resources and biodiversity, "geo-piracy."

In the words of Silvia Ribeiro of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (ETC Group), "The implications of this type of activity are so vast that it is difficult to summarize them. The detailed and exact mapping of the areas is possible only by obtaining the local knowledge of the people who live there. By processing this data with new technologies such as systems of digitized geographic information superimposed on satellite maps freely available on Google, one can obtain an enormous amount of information which was previously unknown or was not visible. These maps are not only very useful for military purposes and for counterinsurgency efforts, but also for industrial purposes (exploitation of mineral resources, plants, animals and biodiversity, mapping accesses to constructed or 'necessary' highways, sources of water, population centers, social mapping of possible resistance to or acceptance of projects, etc.)."

The critics of the project "Mexico Indígena" note with great concern that among its financiers is the United States Army.

References

UNOSJO, "Geopiteraría y Proyecto México Indígena," http://www.ecoportal.net/content/view/full/84360.

Silvia Ribeiro, "Geopiratería en México," http://www.biodiversidadla.org/content/view/full/47165.

There is a great deal of further information here and a general summary of the issue on Wikipedia here.