“This unsustainable industry set into motion another so-called collapse of Maya civilization that continues to have an effect today,” Mathews wrote in Chicle. At least 25% of sapodilla trees in Mexico were killed by the mid-1930s, and the country’s economy swelled, then collapsed. Although the Mayans and Aztecs learned how to cut sapodilla trees to collect resin and create gum hundreds of years ago, the one-two punch of European settlers and American investors exacerbated international demand. International corporations take advantage of the lower costs of doing business in South America, leading to increased port sector development and dredging, water contamination, and deforestation in countries like Brazil.Įven the history of chewing gum, as chronicled in the 2009 book Chicle: The Chewing Gum of the Americans by Mayan archaeologist Jennifer P. The plot nods to the realities of the region’s history: Over centuries, Dole’s banana and pineapple plantations have severely damaged the environment, in particular in Central America. With elements of folk-horror, Tragic Jungle sets up an array of characters fighting over scarcity, performing back-breaking labor for low wages. Set in the jungle along the border of Mexico and Belize in 1920, the fictional Tragic Jungle intentionally places itself in a broader conversation about the ruination of the natural world at the behest of businesses and their masters. Filmmaker Yulene Olaizola puts a spooky spin on this damaging history with her slow-moving, atmospheric, unnerving Netflix fantasy-thriller film Selva Trágica, or Tragic Jungle. The histories of colonization and capitalism are tied up in that ideology, particularly in how those dual forces burned a destructive path through Latin America. The story of human civilization always comes back to this: Our desire to consume outweighs our responsibility to preserve.
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