CJ: “The issue of customary land rights was decided conclusively in [the Maya’s] favor.”
The case of the Maya of Toledo against the Government of Belize wraps up this weekend in the courtroom of Chief Justice, Dr. Abdulai Conteh, with submissions from attorney Rodwell Williams and final pleadings by attorney for the Maya, Antoinette Moore, on Saturday.
On Friday morning, Government’s counsel, Lois Young, SC, wrapped up her submissions to the court, spending much of her time reviewing the contents of The Maya Atlas: The Struggle to Preserve Maya Land in Southern Belize, authored by the Toledo Maya Cultural Council and the Toledo Alcaldes Association.
Young demonstrated from the publication she said was prepared by the Maya themselves that at least 30 out of 40 of their villages were founded by recent Mayan immigrants from Guatemala in the 1800’s and up to the late 1900’s.
Young has stressed to the court, the central stance taken by the Government of Belize—that is, that the Kekchi and Mopan Maya living in Toledo are not truly the indigenous peoples of Belize. She also argued that the claimants have not demonstrated that they are the descendants of the Chol Maya, the original inhabitants of present-day Toledo, who were deported from Toledo to Guatemala when the Spanish settlers came to this part of the Americas.
“Of all the villages in Toledo, 30 were started by immigrant Kekchi Maya from Guatemala. This is what the [Maya] Atlas says,” argued Young, adding that another Maya village was said to be founded by a Mennonite, another said to be of half-Mestizo origin, and another said to have been started by a Honduran migrant.
She then turned to cite specific examples from the Maya Atlas, like San Antonio, which is said to have been founded around 1850 by José Paquil and a group that had reportedly been suffering under the regime of the Guatemalan military.
“Their land there [in Guatemala] was sold to foreigners. They were not paid or compensated in any way… Mayas were used to secure Guatemala border with the British even though the border had nothing to do with us,” Young read from The Maya Atlas.
She also noted that a lot of other Mayan villages were established from San Antonio, as was the case with Pueblo Viejo, said to be the first village the Maya had established in Southern Belize.
Pueblo Viejo (Old Town) is only 7 miles from the Belize-Guatemala border, and the date when it was founded was not indicated; however, it was, according to the atlas information, settled by “pure Maya” from San Luis, Peten, in Guatemala.
The accounts also signal the close ties of the immigrant Maya with the Catholic faith, as evidenced in the names they adopted for some of their villages. Santa Elena, Toledo, for instance, got its name from the patron saint of the village, whose statue was taken to that location by those who were moving from San Antonio, an earlier Maya settlement in that district, Young narrated.
Another interesting story is that of the border village of Jalacte, the recent site of contentious incursions by Guatemalans into Belizean territory, and the site of unchecked border crossings and trade between Belizeans and Guatemalans.
The primarily Kekchi and predominantly Catholic village, according to the atlas, was founded in 1972 by Joaquin Cal, Juan Pop, and Doroteo (title unknown), who had previously been living in what is now Guatemala.
Young told the court that the people found settling there by British troops were told to go back to Guatemala. The atlas said the Maya were “confused.” Initially there were only three families, and after a visit from then Premier George Price, they were granted permission to stay.
At this point in the court proceedings, a discussion ensued about the customary lifestyle of the Maya, and the traditional concept of having the entire region as their homeland—no national borders—but having new borders imposed on them by European colonizers.
The Chief Justice himself pointed to human rights abuses in Guatemala as one possible reason why the Maya had to flee a “repressive regime” that he said was known to hunt down leaders and activists and sometimes killed them.
Young indicated that while those abuses are deplorable, the point that she wanted to emphasize was that the migrants obviously knew where the borders were, because they knew where to go in order to escape the persecutions faced in Guatemala.
The attorney set out this historical matrix of the formation of the Maya villagers of Toledo, using the Maya’s own atlas to bolster her arguments as to why the Maya should not, as GOB contends, be allowed customary land rights in the 38 villages they are claiming in Toledo.
Young went on to cite petitions against communal land ownership for Toledo Maya from the Toledo arm of the National Kriol Council and the East Indian Community, claiming that it excludes them from having interest in the land.
Notably, Justino Peck, chairman of the Toledo Cacao Growers Association, entered an affidavit for Government, saying that he is speaking as a businessman against communal land ownership, claiming that it is not conducive to their progress.
The association has 1,070 members from all the villages of Toledo, and benefits from the industry, he said, pass on to their families, together numbering about 7,000 persons.
Peck deposes that although the farmers produced just over 100,000 pounds of cacao total during the last season, the UK buyer they supply is interested in 1,000,000 pounds.
He argues that if the farmers were to accept the communal land tenure system, they would not meet the target, because under communal land tenure system there is no risk-taking; farmers are hesitant to develop the land and are not motivated to good stewardship. They use the slash and burn system, he says, and no one takes responsibility if something like fire damage happens.
Again, the court went into the legal background of the case: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights proceedings won by the Maya back in 2004 and the 10-point agreement with the Government of Belize back in 2000.
Young told the court that the position of the government has not changed, and it has been saying the same thing since 2001, before the change in administration.
Presenting his submissions to the court on Friday morning and afternoon, Rodwell Williams, attorney for interested party, Francis Johnston, took a different stance from the Government’s attorney. He told the court that the Maya claim is res judicata (a matter already settled in court and so cannot be raised again) because the court has already proclaimed on the matters that the Maya Leaders Alliance and the Toledo Alcalde Association have brought up in this action.
It did so, said Williams, when it ruled back in 2007, in the Santa Cruz and Conejo judgment, that there exist Maya customary land rights in southern Belize in the district of Toledo. (The Government of Belize did not appeal the ruling.)
“You are on firm ground,” said the Chief Justice to Williams. “The issue of customary land rights was decided conclusively in their favor.”
What the Maya claimants should have done, said Williams, was to make a claim for ownership of the disputed property—in the case of his client, the Maya dispute ownership to 50 acres in Golden Stream for which Johnston claims to have a paper lease.
Williams said that under the law, someone having peacefully occupied a piece of national land for 30 years can claim rights. Under the Registered Lands Act a basic administrative procedure is open to them for acquiring lands by open, peaceful and uninterrupted possession for 12 years. Williams furthermore explained that through this procedure, they could apply to the Registrar of Lands to be registered as the holder of those lands, superseding even a paper lease. The rules don’t foreclose a collective type application, he added.
Even as he pointed to that administrative route of dealing with land disputes, Williams contended to the court that his client has made significant investments in his 50 acres, first for acquiring the property and second for developing it, and as a consequence of the land dispute and stalemate between him and the Maya villagers of Golden Stream, he has suffered significant losses.
Speaking with Amandala following Friday morning’s session, Francis Johnston told us that he is a Belizean with rights that should be upheld. Were the court to rule in favor of the Maya claimants, said Johnston, then he expects that someone will compensate him for his financial losses, which he estimates would be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Johnston’s wife, Amelia, declined comment to our newspaper. Interestingly, she is Mayan as well. Her husband has told the court, as well as our newspaper, that he acquired the 50 acres he has in Golden Stream Village from Amelia’s brother, Salvador Bochub, an interested party in the case who was undefended in court.
Williams told the court that there were 4 families establishing themselves in Golden Stream in the 1970’s. In 1985, more came from Pueblo Viejo and Santa Cruz. The lease, said Williams, was granted around the same time that the migrants were establishing themselves in the area.
(“The British, in an attempt to subdue the Mayas, created ten Maya Reservations in the 1880’s amounting to about 77,000 acres. The Reserves were never physically demarcated or defined in the country’s Constitution as the communal property of the Mayas,” deceased Maya activist, Julian Cho, wrote in an article titled “Maya Homeland.”)