From the Editor

Once again this issue reflects the diversity of research on Latin American geographical topics, indeed such variety can hardly be matched by other disciplines. Ours is a fascinating world of spatial and temporal questions that defies limitations.

Case Watkins initiates the discussions with an overview of the role of the African oil palm in both establishing a contemporary regionally important Brazilian crop, its colonial antecedents, and its future as a model for sustainable agriculture. Too often the significance of the westward transatlantic shifts of tropical crops are underestimated; in this case the study focuses on no less than the most produced edible oil.

Next we step back to the pre-Hispanic period when two Mexican colleagues wrestle with a long-standing question over the stages of the migration of the Mexica peoples from an undisclosed origin in northern Mexico to their establishment in Xochimilco and eventually Tenochtitlan. The documentary base is the Boturini Codex which provides clear evidence allowing a cartographic depiction of the major steps from the northern edge of the basin of Mexico.

From the intricacies of Nahua toponymic analysis we next move to a period that for the general population was probably their first contact with Latin America–the genre of travel writing published in the first half of the twentieth century. In this case a single author, Harry Frank, is used by Steven Driever to exemplify the modes of writing, the themes covered, and the imaginative reconstructions of these travelers who, while not titled social scientists, opened a new world to so many readers. With the immediacy of the Internet's current capacity to carry us to South America it is too easy to forget the significance of travel writing for earlier generations. Unlike erased out-of-date web sites these books can still be purchased often for pennies in flea-markets and the like, a dated but valuable informal perspective on so many places and patterns of behavior.

The following article confronts the questions of how to analyze environmental quality via indices, in this case for the province of Buenos Aires and the federal capital. While socio-economic indicators have been widely used over the past decades the environment has proven to be more difficult to index in any meaningful manner. Here, the authors use multiple variables in two broad dimensions: amenity resources, and environmental problems—the good and the bad sides of the same coin.

The following two authors address an issue that most of us generalize about in our lectures on tropical hunting and gathering—exactly how is it done, and what are the spatial patterns involved? By a complex methodology involving participatory mapping and interviews they are able to demonstrate for Miskitu communities in northeast Honduras that habitat differences, species mix, and harvesting rates, all affect hunting strategies and techniques. Such information is proposed as vital for the further development of wildlife conservation management. No less significant is the active involvement of the local population in such an analysis, after all they are the communities to be affected by planners and regional development agencies.

The next article deals with an issue of international debate—carbon offset projects and their possible use in climate change policy negotiations. Just what are the factors that affect Amazonian farmers' land use practices, and to what extent can insecure land tenure, weak forest governance and other key drivers of deforestation be isolated? The carbon forest offset projects provide a new mechanism to both protect forest cover and maintain local livelihoods but at significant costs. It is those costs that Andrea Sabelli examines in detail. Only by such rigorous contextual analyses shall we be able to verify the utility of carbon offset projects.

Jacqueline Vadjunec continues the Brazilian focus with a detailed examination of the institutional and social dimensions of deforestation in a famous micro-region of Acre, the Chico Mendes extractive reserve. Such extractive reserves have become adopted and implemented as a major federal Brazilian strategy for the conservation and development of Amazonian traditional societies and their ecological settings. The study documents the continued need for more discussions between the residents of such reserves and the multiple agencies...