“…this ‘misguided policy’ to promote the use of the maps annexing Belize ‘will end up with us having to constantly protest and quarrel with them,’” Belize Ambassador says.

Belize Ambassador in Guatemala, H.E. Alfredo Martinez, told Amandala today that the Embassy has still not been able to ascertain whether a move, announced last week by a high-ranking official from the Guatemala Ministry of Education, to push the use of Guatemala maps with Belize annexed, has the official sanction of the Guatemalan government.

“It is indeed alarming and only goes to underscore that the claim is fully alive,” said Martinez.

In an article published last Friday, March 8, Prensa Libre reported that Evelyn Amado de Segura, technical CEO of the Ministry of Education, had written school directors throughout Guatemala, urging them to use the map provided by Gustavo Orellana, former Executive Secretary of the now defunct Belize Commission.

She said via letter that “…this office notes with concern that some publications and media outlets (televised and printed) show a partial map of our country, and excludes Belize.”

“According to the Political Constitution of the Republic of Guatemala and the ruling of the Constitutional Court given on the 27th August 1997, there are no fixed borders between Guatemala and Belize. A territorial differendum exists,” the news report said.

Segura is quoted as saying that “the correct thing to do is to include the territory of Belize in the map of the Republic of Guatemala, dividing it with a dotted line and a sentence that would read : territorial, insular and maritime differendum pending resolution.”

She goes on to say that “…it is indispensable that each and every one of us play a role in the recuperation of the image and the spirit of being Guatemalan, ensuring that no publication—whether it be printed or digital, irrespective of whether they are state owned publications, magazines, brochures, books, texts or any other—be published with the incomplete map.”

The CEO is also quoted as saying that none of the maps excluding Belize should “get into the hands of children in the education system with such an offense to our nationality,” claiming that her order was made after consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Belize Commission, who both gave her the go-ahead and provided her with the map.

Some weeks ago Guatemala’s Ministry of Education decided that all students who will graduate this year should attend seminars on the territorial differendum, the Prensa Libre article said.

Commenting on the latest development, Ambassador Martinez said Guatemala has been urging the use of the map to try to bolster its case before the ICJ.

“Again, the argument of the [Belize] Commission [is] that they must safeguard their legal position to preempt Belize using their maps against them in court,” said Martinez.

However, Martinez said, once the Special Agreement to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) was signed back in December 2008, anything Guatemala would go on to do after that would not boost its case before the ICJ.

He said that this “misguided policy” to promote the use of the maps annexing Belize “will end up with us having to constantly protest and quarrel with them.”

Mario Rodriguez, education analyst at the Instituto de Problemas Nacionales at the University of San Carlos, agrees with Martinez. In the Prensa Libre article, he is quoted as saying that the measure is inadequate, because Guatemala recognized Belize’s independence and sovereignty in 1991.

He added that the use of the new map could confuse students, suggesting that “it is misguided patriotism.”