By now, we’ve probably all heard of the historic victory that the Maya of southern Belize scored in the Supreme Court in October of 2007, when Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh recognized customary land tenure as a legal right – meaning that the communities of Conejo and Santa Cruz should be entitled to ownership and administration of their traditional lands. In June of last year, they expanded that to include 38 Mayan villages in the Toledo District. The suit is presently before the courts, but there is an important divergence now appearing in the official Mayan position on communal land rights.
The Toledo Cacao Growers Association an economically powerful group representing 1070 cacao farmers and it claims – impacting the lives of seven thousand households – seems to want private titles for their farmlands. A release issued today states that “the right to own” is important to their members and farmers have quote “longed for that day when titles are given.”
As we understand it, cacao farmers would like to be able to take their land titles to the bank to allow them to access credit. And their economic power is real as the growers sell their product to a company in the United Kingdom under fair-trade terms – which means they get a higher value for their cacao product.
Christina Coc of the Mayan Leaders Alliance stressed today that the lawsuit that they have in the courts does not impinge on the cacao farmers or the deprivation of his plantation. She said that of the land remains in the hands of the community the community can then decide to parcel these lands and create a system that would allow the farmers to access credit. A fair argument, but we’re not sure it will soothe the farmers association whose release refers to the quote “capitalistic values of subsistence farmers.”
