Losing knowledge about plant use in the Sierra de Manantlan biosphere reserve, Mexico

The purpose of this paper is to document relationships between knowledge of plant use and indicators of modernization in Mexico. The model we are rest ing envisions increasing loss of plant use knowledge with increasing modern ization indicated by loss of indigenous language and acquisition of nontrad itional community services such as literacy and quality of housing. As pred icted, we demonstrate that empirical knowledge about plant use is both more diverse and more evenly shared by people speaking an indigenous language - the Huastec - than by mestizo and Spanish-speaking indigenous populations in the Sierra de Manantlan. Our analyses also indicate that the adoption of modern community services by eight rural communities in the Sierra de Mana ntlan of western Mexico has had notable effects eroding traditional knowled ge about useful plants in some but not all communities. From this we sugges t that even though traditional knowledge about plants probably suffered a d ecline that accompanied loss of the indigenous language in Manantlan, tradi tional knowledge may be able to survive the modernization process today whe re such knowledge has an important role in subsistence.