Earlier this week, we told you about Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Dolores Balderamos's letter to the Maya Leaders Alliance and the Toledo Alcalde Association which spoke against, quote: "expansionist practices" in the Toledo district. Tonight you'll hear how those words have settled on the ground in the neighboring villages of Yemeri Grove and Laguna.
I was there yesterday right in the thick of the rising tensions that have escalated around land usage and ownership between Mayan and non-Mayan southern communities.
This is Yemeri Grove, a multicultural village whose residents are Creole, Garifuna, East Indian, and mestizo right on the road to PG.
The village is over 60 years old but the villagers say that Yemeri's very existence is under active threat by the nearby village of Laguna-whose residents are claiming Yemeri's lands as their customary lands.
This encroachment, they say, is being carried out under the guise of mayan land rights but in so doing is displacing one of the last non-maya villages in this part of the south.
Harold Usher, Chairman, Yemeri Grove
"What happened is that villagers are upset, I am upset as the leader of this village, my council is upset, right and the honest truth that because we have been reaching out to all ministries that we believe should be involved with anything having to do with land and land issues and the movements of people coming into our village, and we have written, we have called on the phone and we haven't gotten any response except for one I will say that we got last year and it came from the office of Mr Greg Choc, stating that we must all be reminded that the Mayans are pre-existence and for me that is an insult thank God I was not the chairperson at the time, that is a big insult, however, the Minister had sat down with us, the Minister had promised us that she would have written a letter to the MLA and she did so. I must say, I must give her credit on that, she did write, I got a copy of the letter and she reminded them that it is illegal to do what they are doing at present, however, now. We appreciate the letter but as you can see that."
"As you can see obviously they don't respect the rules of law, they believe that the mayan alliance is the supreme law of this country and not, not the law of our country, not the constitution, they believe that they can be violating every aspect of the Belizean constitution to suit themselves. Now, what I want to say to you, that most of these people that we are calling indigenous and we are saying that they are mayans, most of them came from across the border."
And if you hear the chairman's mother tell it, hers and the Gomez family first settled this area.
Gloria Swift, Yemeri Grove Villager
"The place was like a town, it was a fine place it even had a burying ground over the river but the place was called Topco. The first house, two houses were from Topco when they had the project, my husband bought one, the Gomez bought one and then Will Maheia's father bought one too."
"A lot of Garifuna was here, people from Mango Creek, Barranco, a lot of them. East Indian also, a lot. I grew up amongst the East Indian them. I just feel like they are taking chance of us."
And for these villagers, that sentiment is palpable as multiple generations living on "family land" experience the intense need to strike out on their own.
Arden Edwards, Villager, Yemeri Grove
"There is a high high stem for violence, every time we have a village council meeting the villagers want to come out with sticks and machetes and we are currently armed in Yemeri Grove, it's not only stick and machete but we are. A single minded people and we want the government to.. It's a one or two week notice we are going to give them, because when Greg Choc from the, gives a stop order to us, the government knows that these people are putting cement pillars into our boundary, they can't put cement pillars into the. Communal lands because it's communal lands, but because it is Yemeri Grove they can come and put cement pillars in our village."
Eton Gomez, Treasurer, Yemeri Grove Village Council
"Right now we still see movements with the people in Laguana from the natural boundary lines, that they are still working on these lands."
"From we were small my dad used to do sawmill and we used to go on the borderline and I used to keep it clean with the tractor going straight to the swamp and to the river and since now that the communal land has. Since they claimed the communal land it gets so dangerous. We can't go back there now, these people are like violent people."
But we also travelled to Laguna village and rather than the violent natures described we found a civil chairman who claims to be confused about the tensions but says that he's willing to dialogue.
Sebastian Itch, Chairman, Laguna
"I cannot speak on Yemeri Grove but I can speak for Laguna, we know where our lands are, we have been using our lands from when it was established in 1959 that was when we came to exist by two families and since then we have established more or less our boundaries, where we work, we occupy and we use our lands so there is where we are working, we are extending, we are developing, so I don't see where Yemeri Grove is claiming that we are encroaching on their lands but if that is the case then they might need to show us where is their lands and let's see, let's dialogue and we can see where we can meet because if they are claiming for land that is not occupied by them that is for Laguna, so I don't see how they are claiming on our land."
"I don't understand where the confusion is but I can say it's because maybe Yemeri Grove is getting bigger. You have other young people coming up and they need space, so there is where they see the need for that and now they are claiming for our land. We can dialogue, that is what we want, we can dialogue and let's see how we can solve these issues because one side claiming and the other side counter-claiming, we will never meet anywhere."
And as we were leaving Laguna we stopped in to see deputy Alcalde Monica Coc Magnusson. According to her, tensions have much less to do with village boundaries and much more to do with the encroachment currently being carried out by the government of Belize.
Monica Coc, Deputy Alcalde, Laguna Village
"I don't think there is any confusion as to where the boundaries of our lands are. The lands that we use and occupy have always been ours since time in memorial, they are our ancestral territories if you will and have always belonged to our people. So, whether or not there are third parties living on those lands now, that doesn't negate our rights over these lands."
"To create this narrative that we are actually the ones taking away lands from people, that is very wrong, and that is very, untrue and as a Maya person I take umbridge to that fact."
"The government, the minister, she referenced auto-elimination methodology and principles and in there, they will have to deal with third party interests. So, for her to say that there are expansions and they are encroachments going on, it's really the government that has the responsibility under paragraph four of the consent order to ensure that third parties aren't encroaching on our lands. So, for her to say Maya people don't do X,Y,and Z, that to me is disingenuous, it creates divine narratives and it, and I think in the end, what it does it allows other people to discriminate against us as Maya people as we assert our rights to our lands and territories that we use and occupy."
"In fact it is the very same government that is encroaching on our lands by bringing thier agents their surveyors onto our land without first consulting us, without getting our consent, without even notifying us."
All in all, the issue of Land between these two communities is very complex, and until the government sees fit to complete delimitation exercises between them, the question of which communities own what will persist.
Nevertheless, villagers from both sides continue on with the certainty of the boundary lines that they each say they've always been sure of.
From Yemeri Grove in the Toledo District, Cherisse Halsall, 7 News.
