The debate over whether the Maya should be allowed to have official papers declaring that they are titleholders for lands across 38 villages of Toledo was resurrected inside the courtroom of Chief Justice Dr. Abdulai Conteh Wednesday morning, when the Maya Leaders Alliance (MLA) and the Toledo Alcalde Association (TAA) on the one hand, and the Government of Belize on the other, appeared as dissenting parties to argue the landmark case.
Caught in the middle of the contention between the Maya and the Government, is Belizean rice and citrus farmer, Francis Johnston, whose wife is a Maya woman named Amelia. Johnston, who is in court as an interested party affected by the claim, had said during preliminary court proceedings that he had bought the land from Amelia’s brother, Salvador Bochub, a Maya man. Johnston argues that he has a legal claim to the 50 acres of land for which the Maya of Golden Stream are contending they have customary land rights, and should be allowed to continue their traditional practice of communal land tenure.
In court this morning, Lois Young, SC, appeared for the Government, Antoinette Moore for the MLA and TAA, and Rodwell Williams, SC, for Johnston.
Moore called expert witness Dr. Richard R. Wilk, professor of the Anthropology Department at the Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
On the stand, Wilk challenged the Government’s expert witness, director of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Jaime Awe, who has filed affidavit evidence on Government’s behalf.
Wilk told the court that he was challenging assertions made by Awe that the Maya living in Toledo are not indigenous to Belize, because they are not historically linked to the Maya who had occupied the area centuries ago, and many are recent immigrants from Guatemala.
“It is clear now that there were indigenous people living in [what is now] the Toledo District throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries,” Wilk said.
It still appears in outdated books that the area now known as Toledo District was vacant, but recent research, said Wilk, pointing to 18th century maps, showed what they described as “pagan Indians” in present-day Toledo, when they were supposedly gone.
He told the court that the statements made by Dr. Awe that the Maya had been removed from Toledo by European exploiters is “factually wrong based on updated evidence.”
“There is no question that the Toledo Maya are descendants of those [who were there] 500, 600, 800 years ago…” Wilk told the court. “I don’t think there is any question.”
He did concede that some of the Maya of Toledo are recent immigrants from Guatemala, but argued that some are from a hybrid group descending from the Q’eqchi’ and Chol Maya, but that they also originate historically from places in Belize where the Cholan Maya had settled, so their migration to Belize was, in his view, “a return to ancestral homeland.”
According to Wilk, even though it would be impossible to establish the DNA evidence in this hearing, the languages that the current Maya speak link them back to those ancestors. In addition to the language, they share a common set of customs, agricultural practices, spiritual rites, and a form of Christianity not seen anywhere else in the world, he added.
Wilk also took issue with Awe’s assertion that the Maya did not practice communal land ownership.
The second witness the claimants called was Alfonso Cal, a Maya resident of Golden Stream Village. Cal told the court that he migrated from Guatemala to Belize in 1982, and with the permission of the then head of the village, settled and farmed crops such as corn, rice, beans and later cacao.
Last year, things came to a head in Golden Stream Village when the Maya villagers and Johnston had a dispute over the use of large tracts of land in the village, because Cal and others from the village claimed that under Maya customary land tenure, they had the right to use the village land freely, without the need for a lease.
However, Johnston had claimed that he has official documents for the land he said he had bought from his Maya brother-in-law, Salvador Bochub. (Moore told the media they have yet to see those documents.)
Regrettably, the dispute over the use of Golden Stream lands resulted in armed confrontation in May/June 2008, and the Maya soon afterwards came to the court, asking for legal protection for land they persistently argue is theirs.
This brings into sharp focus another dimension of the dispute – whether those with leases in Maya communities can peacefully co-exist alongside Maya who wish to continue their ancestral heritage to use the land communally.
Moore attempted to have Alfonso Cal tell the court from the dock what financial losses he had suffered as a result of the land dispute; however, because the evidence had not been submitted first via affidavit, attorney for Johnston, Rodwell Williams, objected to the introduction of the evidence in that manner, pointing to court rules, and the Chief Justice gave Moore permission to file a supplemental affidavit with the information, explaining that his concession was in the best interest of justice.
Apart from this new Cal affidavit, the claimants are relying on affidavits from 23 village alcaldes, several farmers and experts—a total of 50.
MLA representative Cristina Coc informed Amandala that the MLA and TAA are furthermore relying on new affidavit evidence from Kent McNeil, a foreign law professor, who, she says, will demonstrate to the court an example of how indigenous land titles were granted in a case in Malaysia.
However, the Maya are relying more on a precedent-setting case from the Chief Justice’s own courtroom.
Back in October 2007, Chief Justice Conteh had ruled favorably in two consolidated cases brought by the Maya of Conejo and Santa Cruz villages.
He granted them “a declaration that the claimants Villages of Santa Cruz and Conejo and their members hold, respectively, collective and individual rights in the lands and resources that they have used and occupied according to Maya customary practices and that these rights constitute ‘property’ within the meaning of sections 3(d) and 17 of the Belize Constitution.
“A declaration that the Maya Villages of Santa Cruz and Conejo hold collective title to the lands their members have traditionally used and occupied within the boundaries established through Maya customary practices~ and that this collective title includes the derivative individual rights and interests of Village members which are in accordance with and subject to Santa Cruz and Conejo and Maya customary law…”
The Chief Justice went on to order GOB to “…determine, demarcate and provide official documentation of Santa Cruz’s and Conejo’s title and rights…”
That decision forms the backdrop of the current case, and in court today, the Chief Justice reiterated his position, that the Maya have customary land rights, which, he said, cannot be created by a document from the Government, but which, he contends, exist in their own right.
Moore told the court that after the ruling, the Government gave instruction to all its departments that the 2007 ruling applies only to those two villages; the other Maya villages would have to prove their rights.
The Chief Justice said that the court’s 2007 ruling stands, and if Government wanted to challenge the ruling, it could have appealed.
He told Moore that the claimants could have simply asked the court, on the strength of the 2007 ruling, for a declaration on the land rights matter where the remaining Toledo villages are concerned, rather than resurrecting the arguments in this case.
Moore noted that there are also Maya villages in the Stann Creek District that are not party to the Supreme Court case; it is only the Toledo Maya who have filed the case, asking for protection for their customary land rights.
Because the Government had been making land transactions for leases and concessions on lands that historically belong to the Maya, said Moore, they were forced to seek redress in court.
Moore told the court that the MLA and TAA are asking for an abstention order, to restrain the government from doing anything with those lands under dispute without first consulting with the respected Maya villages.
Back in 2008, when the Supreme Court was considering whether it should take the matter to full hearing, both Johnston and Attorney General Wilfred Elrington (who appeared on one occasion as GOB’s counsel) gave undertakings to freeze all their activities on the disputed lands until the court is able to hear the case.
After Wednesday afternoon’s session, the case was adjourned to Thursday morning. Wilk was due to be called back to the stand for examination by the attorneys for the defendant and interested party, but the Chief Justice adjourned the matter a further day.
Speaking with Amandala after Wednesday’s session, Moore commented that, “My clients are not asking for anything additional than what they already occupy and have traditionally occupied for many, many years, and so they’re not asking for anything different. They’re not asking to go into everybody else’s village, but they want the protection over the land they occupy. They want the constitutional right that they are entitled to.”