From the Editor

As everyone who reads articles in journals knows the key process in their publication is the evaluation they are subjected to by external anonymous experts. In JLAG we normally use at least two such persons, sometimes more. I would like to formally thank all of those who have helped us over the past two years; they are listed by name on the final page of this issue. Without their dedicated work we simply could not function, and I would ask all colleagues whom I may ask for their expert advice in the future to note the significance of this key professional role. Before declining my invitation, remember that your article will have to undergo the same process if it is to be published in any quality journal.

Second, I also wish to note here that from July this year JLAG has become available via JSTOR as well as MUSE, a major step forward in providing online access since many universities, both in Latin America and beyond, use this well-known system. This current issue reflects, as usual, the wide variety of investigations being undertaken by geographers on Latin American themes. Sylvain Guyot begins by examining the complexities of how conservation organisations define and instrumentalize local people in their participatory strategies in two contrasting ecological settings in Chile and Argentina. Equally significant is the evidence he provides of the tools local people use to legitimate themselves to gain power and credibility in the participatory management process.

Next, two Mexican colleagues provide an invaluable overview of the study of the concept of landscape used in the Mexican context from three perspectives: the biophysical, the socio-cultural, and the integrated. Such excellent meta-analyses are hard to come by, and are most welcome.

Mexican specialists continue the studies with an innovative analysis of landuse change in a key conservation area of the State of San Luis Potosí. Using satellite data from 1989 to 2005 they are able to predict the probable changes through 2025, once again noting the removal of natural vegetation by the ever-expanding agricultural frontier, which in turn reflects the socio-economic dynamics at a variety of scales.

The next article turns our attention away from the globalizing forces that are the focus of the majority of publications related to current agricultural production and provides a detailed examination of how local smallholder maize production in the Tocuca-Atlacomulco valley has adapted and modernized to confront the changing environments associated with urban expansion. Such localized responses to changing livelihoods often go unnoticed in the sweep of macro studies and such studies are more than welcome.

El Salvador is the context of the next study, concerned with the barriers to the development of Fair Trade in coffee production and marketing. Much attention is paid nowadays by consumers to such items as organic coffee, and the practices of competitive coffee marketing, but few studies such as this have attempted to analyze the complexities of the interactions of state policies and producer responses. It reminds us that when we lift any cup of coffee to our lips to reflect occasionally on just what lies behind its complex journey from field to flavorful stimulant.

Something quite different follows in the next article: an analysis of evidence of long-term climatic change extracted from a site near Huehuetenango in the Sierra de Cuchumatanes. A sediment core provides pollen and charcoal traces over a period of 12,000 years that demonstrate a steadily drying climatic before the rise of the Maya in the lowlands. Only by such laborious field and laboratory work shall we ever know the key climatic and vegetation changes of the prehistoric and historic past, borehole by borehole. But the results are exciting.

Equally exciting, but in another quite different sense, are the details provided in the next article. The new openpit/opencast mining evident all over Latin America has initiated a controversial and conflictive context for economic development. Here the case is located in northern Zacatcas, where a multinational Canadian company has obtained legal permission to mine for gold. The socio-environmental consequences look discouraging: excessive demand for water drying local supplies, as well...