BELIZE CITY, Wed. Mar. 30, 2022– Over the weekend, the villages of Sunday Wood and Conejo signed a boundary treaty establishing the borders between those two Toledo communities in line with the Delimitation: Principles and Methodology protocol, which calls for auto-delimiting and demarcation of Maya villages in southern Belize. In February we reported on a similar inter-boundary agreement signed by four Maya villages, and over the weekend, the most recent boundary agreement between Maya villages was made possible when a team of Mayan women who received training in GPS mapping took the arduous hike to the boundary location with village leaders, and verified the line between the villages.
“Today is a historic day for me; first time see how they do the boundary signing,” said Rosa Teul, a villager from Conejo and one of the women who took the trek through the swampy jungle to pinpoint the limits. She added, “I was a part of the team that went to do the verification along with the alcalde and chairman of Conejo… [I ] went there to help them to navigate to the area where they want their boundary line; it was a challenge but it was accomplished, we went safely and we came back safely.”
The leaders and some residents of Conejo village met in Sunday Wood, where, after negotiations and some deliberations on the boundary limits of the villages, they came to a final agreement.
Maya Choc, executive director of SATIIM, said that the leaders were impressed with the resilience of the women of the village who took a previous trek about two weeks ago and asked them to accompany them as they undertook this process.
“So the mapping is one component, but there are also the negotiations, discussions surrounding the boundary, because these are legally binding agreements that communities are entering in,” Choc said.
Choc noted that while the discussion about the boundary between the villages has been ongoing since January of this year, there were some challenges before this agreement was finalized.
“There were some challenges within the two communities in terms of conflict areas, but I am very happy that both communities were about to settle that matter with the assistance of community people. We strongly believe that everything should come from the community; we’re only there to support, so when you are having conflict, it is important that you hear from others: how do you go about doing this? And also recognizing that there are times when there have to be a give and take—you lose some, but you win some as well … so I’m happy to see that the leaders were able to sort that out, not on their own. They had to go back to their community and explain to them what transpired, they had to explain their conclusion and why it is that they believe that this is the best way to go, and I think it worked out well because the community said ‘well, we accept it,’ and for that reason, we have now completed that boundary,” Choc said.
As mentioned, the agreement on village delimitation is the 5th of the 8 steps of the Delimitaton: Principles and Methodology agreed between Government of Belize representatives and the Maya communities in Toledo as part of the process that has been laid out for the implementation of the Caribbean Court of Justice’s consent order to clearly define and delimit the territories of the Maya people.
Donicio Shol, mapping expert and Land Tenure Facility Project coordinator, at the Julian Cho Society, said in a February interview that up to 22 villages have consented to auto-delimiting, adding “not to say that others are not in the process, but there are different steps.”
This signing was supported by SATIIM, and according to a representative from the Toledo Alcalde Association, is not a part of the work they lead.