Guerrero Árido: Dry Tropical Forests as Biomes for Studying Race, Refuge, and Resource Extraction
I propose to create lesson plans for environmental science students on teaching race, colonialism, and climate change through oilseed plants from American seasonal dry tropical forests (SDTFs). With a focus on the SDTFs of coastal Guerrero, Mexico, which are the historical and current home of Mexico’s largest Afro-Indigenous communities, this project will analyze how to use herbarium and botanical primary sources in K-12 and college classrooms. Not only are most of the world’s SDTFs in the Americas, but they are also the world’s most endangered kind of forest because they've been historical and modern sites of slavery and agricultural extraction.
Professional Biography
Jayson Maurice Porter's research specializes in environmental politics, science and technology studies, agrochemicals and agribusiness, food systems, and racial ecologies in Mexico and the Americas. Jayson is an editorial board member of the North American Congress for Latin America (NACLA) and Plant Perspectives: An Interdisciplinary Journal and a staff blogger for Black Perspectives. Outside of the university, he values writing for more-than-academic audiences, especially young people, black environmental advocates, and journalists.