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GOB challenges Belizean Maya heritage

GeneralGOB challenges Belizean Maya heritage
The events transpiring inside the courtroom of Chief Justice Dr. Abdulai Conteh evidenced a deeper souring of relations between some factions within the Toledo Maya community and the Barrow administration, as Government’s attorney, Lois Young, SC, continues to make bold declarations before the court that they are recent migrants of Kekchi and Mopan Maya heritage from the Guatemalan highlands of Alta Vera Paz, and not people with any ancestral link to the Chol Maya, who had inhabited Belize before European colonization.
  
Those arguments, needless to say, don’t sit well with the Maya claimants. The Maya Leaders Alliance (MLA) and the Toledo Alcaldes Association (TAA) have gone to the Supreme Court, asking the court to protect what they contend are their traditional land rights, based on a historical claim to the lands they now occupy in Toledo. They are filing on behalf of 38 villages in Toledo.
  
While the Maya have set out their arguments in court (see our previous coverage on this issue), on Wednesday and Thursday, it was Government’s turn to make its case.
  
“The claim is an attempt to get from Belize what they could not get from Guatemala,” attorney Young told the court Thursday.
  
The Government is relying on affidavit evidence filed by Director of the Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Jaime Awe, in the case. Awe’s thesis is that the Maya who occupied southern Belize before European contact were the Chol Maya, and according to Young, the defendants have not established that they are indeed descendants of the Chol.
  
Referring to Awe’s affidavit, Young stated that in 1697, the Spanish relocated almost all the Chol Maya of the south to Guatemala, and those who remained died off.
  
Guatemala, she says, had been the home of both Kekchi and Mopan Maya, and it is possible that the Chol Maya who had been exiled by the Spanish later intermarried with them, but there is nothing in evidence to establish that present-day Maya in Toledo are descendants of those who had been forcibly removed back in 1697.
  
Turning to 34 affidavits that she said the claimants had filed from the Kekchi and Mopan Maya of Toledo, Young highlighted three observations, upon which she based her arguments: (1) All the claimants speak to their present-day language as a form of their identity – and that language is not Chol, she argued; (2) all say they are subsistence farmers, when the historic and anthological evidence that she referenced indicate that the Maya of the region were involved in a robust regional trade in a variety of commodities such as salt and jade; and (3) the claimants say they want their lands demarcated, but they have not indicated for the record what will happen to the village demarcation if their villages expand.
  
Early in Thursday’s proceedings, Young took issue with a recent affidavit filing the claimants made, submitting new evidence from Bernard Nichman, an expert witness for the Maya, after the claimants had argued their case; but she also made the argument that the Nichman affidavit bolstered the case for the government, because it refers to statements by Maya, testifying to having had contact with living descendants of the Chol Maya, living in caves around Laguna in the “old days,” exchanging cocoa for salt and “walking around at night.”
  
“The very statements they are trying to put in disingenuously support the defendant’s case,” Young said. “They could have said I am a direct descendant of the Chol. Rather they are talking of them as if they are this fantasy group.”
  
Against the backdrop of this case are the Santa Cruz/Conejo judgments Conteh made in 2007, as well as rulings made in favor of the Maya by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the 10-point agreement Government, under the Musa administration, had signed with the Maya leaders on October 12, 2000.
  
Even though such court cases tend to be very technical in their nature—and in this case, provide an intriguing lesson in history—there were a few lighter moments to soften tensions in court today.
  
The Chief Justice made the observation that the Maya calendar ends in 2012, when they believed the world would end.
  
In response, Young said she did not thus understand why the Maya are fighting for these land rights, because they will be worth nothing in a few years.
  
Perhaps in the afterlife, the Chief Justice suggested.
  
Later on in the proceedings, when discussions resurfaced about the ancestry of the Toledo Maya and the assertions by some that they had returned to their ancestral home, the Chief Justice used the analogy of the Jews who, based on biblical accounts, were scattered abroad from their homeland, but who have tried to reclaim what they say is their ancestral territory.
  
“That is why we have the Middle East crisis,” Young responded.
  
In the preceding account, we’ve represented Government’s submissions before the court, but outside the courtroom this afternoon, we sought reaction from Antoinette Moore, the attorney for the Maya claimants.
  
Like lead Maya activist, Crisitina Coc, Moore told us that she took deep offense to the stance that the Government has taken in these proceedings.
  
“I think that it’s very difficult to go back a thousand years and talk about whether people are the descendants of individuals during that time. The Chief Justice mentioned DNA evidence, which is only a recent technological invention in any event. The claimants believe they have put forth a sufficient case, as they did last time,” Moore said, addressing the legal aspect of the case.
  
She also argued that, “…the Maya people of southern Belize, who currently occupy southern Belize, are the descendants of those who occupied southern Belize at the time of contact with the Spaniards.”
  
Moore said it is very difficult to divorce the law in this case from the sociology, anthropology, and historical dimensions.
  
“Although you’ve asked me to speak from a legal point of view, from a human point of view, I am very embarrassed for the Government of Belize, for them to say at this juncture in history that the Maya people of southern Belize are not indigenous to this country. I think it’s disgraceful. The rights of clients have been totally disrespected all this time,” she stated.
  
Moore went on to say that, “My clients are being totally disrespected, their rights have been disrespected all of this time, and that’s why we are in this court.
  
“For them to deny them their essential identity—who they are… The Maya people go to those cave sites that Dr. Awe is mentioning; they still consider those sacred sites of their ancestors; they pray; they have rituals at those sites.
  
“I just think my friend the lawyer for the government raised over and over that she thought one of the pieces of evidence we put in was ‘disingenuous,’ but that word is so appropriate for what they are doing.
  
“It’s dishonest, it’s disingenuous to now say that the Maya people are not the indigenous people of Belize, that they are not descendants of the indigenous peoples of Belize.”
  
The Maya land rights case is set to resume Friday, with further submissions from Young, as well submissions by Rodwell Williams, SC.
  
Williams represents the interested party, Francis Johnston, the landowner of Golden Stream who contends he owns land for which the Maya of the village also claim customary land rights.
  
In related news, leader of the Concerned Advocacy Group (CAG), Reynaldo Ico, reported to us this week that his group is staging a public rally for Sunday, July 12, at The Dump, located almost 15 miles from Punta Gorda Town, Toledo.
  
This is the same group which staged a public protest in the face of the MLA at Battlefield Park when the hearings commenced last month.
  
Ico claimed that he had formed the group because he believes that the MLA has not properly consulted with the Maya and is painting a picture to the nation that they don’t agree with.
  
Interestingly, the Government side is joined by the leading voices in the Toledo Cacao Growers Association. This is the same group of Maya cacao farmers that first declared opposition to the MLA case. Ico told us that the CAG emerged out of the opposition initiated by the TCGA.
  
Of note is that Johnston’s wife, Amelia Bochub, is a Maya woman, and Johnston claimed that he acquired the Golden Stream land from Amelia’s brother, Salvador. This other dimension to the case should make Friday’s proceedings interesting, as the Maya have included Golden Stream among the list of 38 villages they are filing for in the Belize Supreme Court.
  
MLA spokesperson, Cristica Coc, who was angered by Government’s stance taken in court today, has told our newspaper that the question is not whether the Maya have rights to the lands in question.
  
She believes the court had already determined that in the Santa Cruz and Conejo case, but the MLA had gone to court, she insists, because the Government has been carrying out transactions with the lands as if the Maya do not have any rights.
  
She said that individual villages could later decide whether they want to practice communal land ownership or individual tenure.

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