Senior officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Honorable Minister Lisa Shoman (vacation), the Ministry’s Chief-Executive-Officer, Ambassador Amalia Mai (vacation), and the Ministry’s Senior Director of International Affairs, Mr. Alfonso Gahona (out of office until Friday), were not around to tell us what’s what as of today, Thursday, December 27, 2007, with the illegal settlement on the Belize border – Santa Rosa.
Minister Shoman had promised on an October visit to the KREM WUB morning show with Mose and Kalilah that the settlement, which has been on our Belizean soil it seems forever, should be gone, absolutely, by year’s end.
Calls to the OAS’s director at the border office, Miguel Angel Trinidad, a major player in the relocation of the illegal squatters, also fell on deaf ears. A senior government official later told us that he too is on vacation.
Interim Charge d’Affaires at the Guatemalan Embassy, Mr. Alejandro Fajardo, said he really would have liked to help us but he was not “allowed to speak on this information.” He informed that His Excellency, the Guatemalan Ambassador to Belize, Manuel Tellez, was on vacation until mid-January, 2008.
Price Barracks directed us to Major James Requena of the Belize Defence Force. As of the week before Christmas, Major Requena told Amandala, yes, they were still there! A team from the OAS was working in the area to assist the families with the relocation, he told us. It is his informed opinion that the 8 families that are still on our soil were getting ready to leave.
As of this writing there are 4 days left for the OAS and our Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deliver on the relatively simple task of escorting 8 renegade families out of Belize territory.
Belizeans have been waiting expectantly to see if our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the OAS, would deliver us from this disrespect to our territorial integrity and national dignity.
On Thursday, September 13, 2007, Amandala Assistant Editor, Ms. Adele Ramos, asked the question on everyone’s mind in the title of her headline article in issue #2175: So what the hell is going on with Santa Rosa?
She continued: The illegal occupation of 134 Guatemalans at Santa Rosa — on Belizean territory — has been a major point of contention in the OAS-mediated negotiations to settle Guatemala’s unfounded territorial claim on Belize, and for the past three days all attempts by our newspaper to get clarification from both OAS officials in Belize and the Belize Ministry of Foreign Affairs on this highly sensitive and nationally important issue have proved utterly futile….
Last Friday, September 7, the OAS issued a press release, indicating that the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) had given a report to “Friends of Belize and Guatemala.” The release refers to a “progress report” on the relocation of Guatemalans who had settled at Santa Rosa on the Belize side of the border, but it gave no specifics on what that report really entails.
The press release mentioned the purchase of land to which the community is to be resettled, but it did not indicate where exactly these lands are located, who will purchase them and at what cost…
Our newspaper thought that certainly we could turn to our Ministry of Foreign Affairs for clarification, but unfortunately we still have no answers to our questions after three days of trying… Similarly, we have been unable to get information from the OAS office here in Belize, located at the border…
We note that when the Ramphal/Reichler proposals were presented in August of 2002, that report noted that there were 19 Guatemalan families of 134 Guatemalan citizens who had settled on the Belize side of the border at Santa Rosa, established in the late 1990’s. The document proposed that the Guatemalans should be allowed to remain there until they die. There was also a proposal to relocate the villagers who chose to leave Santa Rosa to elsewhere in Belize, where they would be given free land from the Government.
The Santa Rosa issue was a key bone of contention, and Belizean nationalists sternly rejected the proposals to allow illegal settlers these special land rights. Subsequently, the OAS initiated a project to have the villagers resettled in Guatemala.
On Wednesday, September 19, 2007, in a story titled Belize Ministry of Foreign Affairs still silent,Adele wrote: Amandala has finally been able to get an update on the status of the Santa Rosa relocation project being conducted under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS)… The bottom line is, not much has changed. In fact, indications from the OAS are that no family has been relocated to Guatemala under the OAS project to date, even though two families have evidently moved away…
A press release issued by the OAS in Washington, USA, on Friday, September 7, 2007, indicated that a progress report had been given to “Friends of Belize and Guatemala.” That is when our newspaper asked for more details and a copy of the report.
We asked (Miguel Angel) Trinidad to describe the progress with the relocation project. He informed us that the population of Santa Rosa, according to the updated Census and Registries that the Office of the Organization of American States in the Adjacency Zone (OAS) carried out, is 102 persons (17 families): 20 women, 29 men, 28 girls and 25 boys. The census indicates that there are only two families less living at the village since the last report was given in 2002—five years ago…
“The most important topic in the resettlement of Santa Rosa is the final phase of the work with the community of Santa Rosa and the identifying, assessment and acquisition of the land that is intended for the final resettling of the community,” Trinidad wrote.
We understand that the relocation should take place at the end of October.
Well, it is past 9 p.m. on December 27, 2007, and there has not been a peep out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On Friday, October 12, 2007, Minister Lisa Shoman went on the WUB, and promised, “absolutely,” that the illegal settlers at Santa Rosa would be breaking camp and heading back to where they belong. Maybe our dear ladies from Foreign Affairs, Miss Lisa and Miss Amalia, are on vacation from that ministry for good. Or at least until promises made are kept.