After a month long break, this week the case of the Maya Leaders Alliance, the Toledo Alcaldes Association and others versus the Attorney General and the Ministry of Natural Resources over the issue of indigenous rights to communal lands got underway before Chief Justice Dr. Abdulai Conteh. For the last two days, Senior Counsel Lois Young has presented the Government's defence to the claim. Young has pushed five main points. One, that the original inhabitants of Southern Belize were Chol, not Mopan or Ketchi. Two, that the Chol was a separate and distinct group. Three, that all Chol Maya either died from new diseases introduced by colonists or were forced to relocate to the highlands of Guatemala. Four, that when European settlers arrived in 1862 in Southern Belize, no Maya were living there. And lastly, that when Maya people did move into Southern Belize, they were not descendants of the Chol; they were Mopan and Ketchi Maya from Guatemala.
All this Young says proves that these particular claimants in this case do not have the right of bringing this claim because they are not entitled to indigenous rights. Young told the court, “This claim is not about culture...this is a cry for land and about the equitable distribution of land. They want what everybody else wants. They see the court as a way to get a piece of land." Since Young took the floor on Wednesday morning, Maya rights activist Cristina Coc has been sitting in the court listening to Young's analysis of Mayan history. It’s hit more than a few sour notes and this afternoon, Coc was emotional as she commented on the Government's submissions.
Janelle Chanona,
What is it like sitting there listening to all of this?
Cristina Coc, Maya Leaders Alliance
“To say the very least it is incredibly insulting. It is amazing how one Belizean can have a very narrow and limited interpretation of the identity of a people and it amazes me that this case has boiled down to the question of whether or not the Achi-Chen Mopan Maya, myself included, are indigenous to the Toledo District, what is now known as the Toledo District. It is also incredible that we are being told that our stories, our oral history of our ancestry, are reduced and described by Miss Young as Anansi stories. It is incredibly insulting to have someone talk about your people, about your ancestry, about your way of life as a fake story, a fantasy.
This is the life we live. We are alive, we continue to practice our tradition, our culture is dynamic, we continue to employ a lot of our practices, our traditions, our customs, and it amazes me that Ms. Young continues to insist that those of us that live in southern Belize are recent migrants when my grandfather, my grandmother were born and raised in the Toledo District.
Now we might not be able or might not have said in our affidavits that we are Manchechols but cultural continuity has proven that we have the same practices, the same traditions, the same customs and it amazes me that our government through their legal counsel continues to violate our right as a people by insisting that we are non-indigenous, that in fact we are non Belizean. So essentially they are saying we are a landless people, we are people with no nationality, we don’t even exist in their eyes. Yet Toledo can continue to protect our natural forest, a wealth of culture for the benefit of all Belizeans.
Throughout the last two days and the times that we have spent here in Belize City, sitting listening to people insult us, we have seen our Mayan gifts, our Mayan temples on every label, every restaurant we’ve eaten but we’ve had to listen to listen to the insults. The day will come and I have every faith in the court, I have every faith in the leaders that are here.
We are here because we want to go back home and le our people know that in the eyes of the state, in the eyes of the government through their attorney, we are nobody to them. We have faith.”
The case is set to continue on Friday.
