Maya Land: Listening to the Bees

media release: Screening of “Maya Land: Listening to the Bees” and Panel Discussion: Tech(k)nowledges in Dialog: Indigenous Wisdom and Global Productivity

As the feature event of the 2023-24 Holtz Science & Public Series, the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center is proud to present the documentary Maya Land: Listening to the Bees followed by a panel discussion with Maya activists Bernardo Caamal Itzá and Inaytah Victoria Caamal Sabido, filmmakers Katarzyna Beilin and Sainath Suryanarayanan, College of Menominee Nation’s Rebecca Edler and the Hawaiʻi Vistors & Convention Bureau’s Destination Education Manager Kahōkū Lindsey-Asing.

Maya Land is a film about the role bees are playing in the revival of Maya culture in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The film tells the story of how between 2011-19, Mayan beekeepers opposed agricultural technologies involving monocrop plantations of genetically engineered soy used in the model of development introduced on their ancestral land in Yucatán. The protagonists of the film, Mayan activists and allied scientists, reflect on how bee health and the health of Mayan symbiotic relations with bees, maize, forests and water should be considered as a criterion of sustainable development.

The public panel discussion will feature Mayan public intellectual Bernardo Caamal Itzá, main protagonist of Maya Land, and the narrator of its Spanish version, and his daughter Inaytah Victoria Caamal Sabido. Arux, as they know Bernardo in Yucatan, is a graduate of the Autonomous University Chapingo (UACh) in Agronomy. He is a social communicator, radio producer, and a promotor of the culture and rights of the Mayas. His first well known show in Mayan language, “Arux K’at,” was broadcasted on Mayan radio stations in the Yucatán Peninsula in 1997 and is currently re-transmitted on various radio stations. For his radio work, he was awarded the 2003 Atkins International Rural Communication Award by the Community Radio Network based in Toronto, Canada. With a team of collaborators, known as Xok k’iin collective, for the last 20 years, Bernardo has researched and practiced Mayan ancient knowledge of weather forecasting. Bernardo and Inaytah are co-authors of the book Tsìkbalo’ob yaan ichil u sáastun Arux (Stories in the sáastun of Arux, 2023), that relates stories of their family, community and presents their visions of Mayan resistance.