Today we spoke to Rupert Myles for the first time in 10 and a half years. You may remember the name from June of 2015 - when he was involved in one of the most sensational and shameful scenes Belize has ever witnessed. Myles was handcuffed, tied up and marched out of a Maya village of Santa Cruz in the Toledo District.
The Toledo Alcaldes Association said he had planted his home on top of a Maya mound which was part of the Uxbenka site and that he had bulldozed a road on that mound.
Criminal charges were brought against 13 persons for falsely imprisoning him, while NICH did find that he had planted his house on top of a Maya mound within the Uxbenka site. At the time he was living with a woman from the village.
Since then, he has been pursued in multiple civil suits - which still continue. Myles said he has spent more than thirteen thousand dollars on an attorney and still cannot get away from this charge that has dogged him. He spoke to Jules Vasquez.
Jules Vasquez
"Ten years ago, you went through one of the worst experiences any Belizean or any black man could go through. Then chain you up and then march you out."
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"I would not classify it as one of the worst things that would happen to a Belizean, because they chain up Mr. Budna and they took him too, right? But I believe that I could have lived any part of this country where you choose to live. And then at that time, I never knew what happened with them people or have for their history or nothing."
Jules Vasquez
"Do you still carry the humiliation of that day?"
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"Well, if you - sometime you know, you would use that expression, somebody call you to do a little job and then you would say, boy, I got tied up on this job, and boy, that come right back to the Maya thing. They would say boy, where are you? Are you at Santa Cruz again? you understand."
Jules Vasquez
"So you can't even use the phrase I'm tied up with something."
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"And the next thing that when people meet you, some of your friends asks you - they always bring that up then some of your friend they would call you like ush banka, maya chief, maya king. You understand me and then you meet some maya man now they just hear your name and start hate you."
Jules Vasquez
"You're telling me nine years later you're still in court with this charge?"
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"Yes sir, still there because like what I am saying they are people who are persistent in what they do."
Jules Vasquez
"What is your frustration at this stage? you're more than 10 years later."
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"Well, back a burden for 10 years that's in your mind, you can't clear it because of situation right."
Jules Vasquez
"But you do not dispute that you were living, your house was at the top of an unexcavated Maya mound."
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"Wel like what you said, I can't dispute it, but I will not say that it is true neither, that that that is a Maya mound, because the whole village is a mound. It's hills through the whole village and other people live higher than me, right."
"So the place was already there, the house was already there. I can't say that I was on top of a mound, because there is no proof."
"That is the thing - I am on top of the main ruin and I do this damage here and then nobody is saying where the ruin is, they are only showing this and then they call this the main ruin."
Jules Vasquez
"I understand your frustration, but you had a house on top of a Maya mound. Like that is hard to get rid of. I agree maybe it wasn't the main site at Ushbenka. Maybe it wasn't excavated, maybe you didn't know, but that's what it was."
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"Well if that what it was I asked them give me somewhere else to put the house, right. I wasn't fighting nobody or nothing."
Jules Vasquez
"Do you feel that you were unfairly victimized because it's a Maya village and you are not a Maya, you're a black man."
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"Well from the first time when I went and talk to the chairman, he looked at me he tell me he mister he say um if you look around, these are the first words the man use when I start talk to him, he said if you look around in this village you would see only Maya people, he said. And you come from Dangriga. And he said we can't mix up that here."
"That is what he tell me in the first meeting and while we were talking during that time, a colored man rode on a bicycle go to the next village and he says see, I unhappy when I see a black man in my village. I am unhappy right when I see a colored man in my village much less a come live here."
Jules Vasquez
"Is that the word that was used?"
Rupert Myles, 10 Years Later
"That is the word that he used."
Since then the full boundaries of the site - within which the village falls - have been demarcated. Myles is now defended by the Legal Aid office.
