In 2007 the Chief Justice of Belize, Dr. Abdulai Conteh, issued the landmark ruling that the Maya of Toledo had rights to communally own land in and around the villages they occupied in the Toledo District. The Prime Minister of Belize at the time, Said Musa, had said that he would not oversee the Balkanization of Belize.
The battle for communal ownership of land by the Maya of Toledo began in earnest under the leadership of Julian Cho, after a Belize government had given a Malaysian company a logging concession that covered 500,000 acres in the district. Más o menos, the amount of land the Maya of Toledo petitioned to communally own, was similar in size to what was granted under the logging concession the Malaysian company received.
After Cho died, Greg Cho’c and Cho’s sister-in-law, Cristina Coc, picked up the cause and, with the assistance of Indian experts from the USA, and their brilliant attorney, Antoinette Moore, they won the celebrated and controversial judgment. Yes, Belize was divided over the Conteh decision.
Thirteen years later, Mayan lands still have not been demarcated, and I don’t think that is fair to our Mayan brothers and sisters in Toledo, nor to the Belizeans in the district who own or lease land in the part of the district that fall más o menos in the sphere of the ruling; neither is it fair to our country.
During the past thirteen years there was another unfortunate story. It is accepted, known, that when people are negotiating, outrageous statements/demands will be made. The UDP challenged the ruling, all the way to the CCJ, and lost. The UDP, in a negotiation tactic, said, unfortunately and ignorantly, that the Mayans were kohn ya. The fact is that Mayan villages were in existence long before they were “officially” recognized in the late 1800s.
It was a shocking betrayal by the UDP, to label the Maya as kohn ya. The Maya of Toledo Rural aren’t watered down. The governance system in their villages, their marriage ceremonies, the way they go about earning their daily bread, the food they eat, the strong stuff they drink, the way they dress, are 100% indigenous.
You remember when the only out-district threat to PUP hegemony was Toledo Rural and Cayo West? Check the ballot story. In 1965 the blue won over the red 16-2, with PSWG winning in Belize City, and Edwin Morey in Toledo. In 1969 only PSWG won for the red, but remember that was a snap election — abuse of the electoral system. In 1974 the reds won Toledo Rural with Vicente Choco. The reds won Toledo Rural in 1979, and if I’m not mistaken Vicente Choco, who had shifted over to the blue, ran for George Price that year. (I couldn’t verify that, because the Elections and Boundaries website is having some problems.) The reds won Toledo Rural in 1984, in 1989, and again in 1993.
The fact is that the Maya of the south felt protected by the Crown, protected from hostile regimes west of us, and that was more important than the independence dreams the blue was selling.
Bah, the Barrow UDP of 2008 to 2020 seems to have been sweating fever for some big people in the district who own some huge tracts. Let’s talk a little about these huge parcels. These huge tracts originated in slavery/colonial days, and a lot of them remained intact because we never had a bloody revolution. The PUP, during self-government, addressed many land issues in the north and west, but the party didn’t do much in the south.
Turning to the negotiation, the Maya Leaders Alliance and the Toledo Alcaldes Association, the umbrella groups that took the case to the Supreme Court, quite likely will want the 38 villages mentioned in the ruling, to fall in a single block. I say quite likely, because people usually want all they can get, and we only have to look to the Spaniards who came, and the greedy ones in Guatemala who persist in a mad claim for Belize, to grasp that.
Belizeans who own or lease land that could be affected by the ruling will want things to continue exactly as before. We have to believe that, because that is the way of the status quo.
On this matter I stand the same place I stood when the matter went to court. I noted that had our Mayan brothers and sisters in Toledo been pastoral, that first tribe of Belize would have had much or all of the entire area they claim, under fence and livestock. Get the sense: if our brothers and sisters who came here in the 1950s, the Mennonites, had landed in Toledo, and no other tribe was there, that reality of bulldozed forests, fences, corn as far as the eye can see, grand cattle ranches, all owned by Mennonites, would have been the story in the lands down south.
The Maya of Toledo, much respect to their vision, saw the Southern Highway coming through, saw that “modern” progress was coming down south, and they knew they would have a problem, because roads make land accessible, and the history of Belize is that this land would not be distributed equitably. To compound the threat, the sale of economic citizenship and the coming of a new wave of “developers” meant huge land pressure in the district.
Okay, here we are 13 years later, and the new government absolutely must resolve this matter. At the beginning, Said Musa said no Balkanization, and a contiguous block amounts to that. There are, however, some villages that could form a solid block. My knowledge of the district is that from San Antonio to Jalacte could form a 100% grouping that falls under communal law, but I can’t see any other area that could escape “mix up.”
My take is that all villages should have some communal land. We must respect private properties and leases, but where there are these large thousands-of-acres tracts that have been sitting there, their “owners” can’t be allowed to disrupt such a noble process. The history of all these massive parcels must be checked, and where there is some legitimacy, a “reasonable” solution must be achieved.
Some not-so-little notes
There’s a lot of land obscenity in our country, and the most recent one made it to the news because the people of this country are plumb tired out. A company got a piece of national island land at a gifted price, less than $30,000, and a decade or so later we must pay this company over $5,000,000 because another government thought the previous one was being way too kind. In the next sentence I write I will ask you to put the appropriate expletive. Dat da r—!
Without communal land rights, the Maya have no royalties to get when oil and other mineral wealth are found in the district. Note that the Mennonite group in Spanish Lookout, one of the few groups in our country that has no need of more material wealth, collect(ed) royalties from the oil find called BNE.
Slash and burn agriculture must be done ritually, not commercially, because it is NOT a good practice. Some hills have deep soils. Anyone who cuts a hillside must practice terrace agriculture. The government must assist our small farmers so that they can drain their lands, irrigate their lands, and build the soil on their lands, because the end is for the glory of all Belize.
Chief Justice Conteh is a brilliant man, and now we have the opportunity to complete the vision with a Belizean solution. Belize is not the USA, a country that massacred the Indians and took their best lands. The Father of the Nation was at least 35% Mayan, and the present PM luk like hihn baan da Pueblo Viejo.