We also asked Bolland to contextualize comments recently made by Prime Minister John Briceno when he said quote, "the Maya will not be happy until we give them the whole of Toledo."
This is an expression of what scholars call "settler colonial logics" - to maintain domination toward Indigenous people and immigrants others.
We asked Bolland for his assessment of the PM's bold statement:
Jules Vasquez
"Prime Minister John Briceno recently said the Maya will not be happy until we given them the whole of Toledo, that is patently untrue but do you view this comment by the prime minister albeit unwittingly to try to foist settler colonial logic on the indigenous people of Belize in the claim to their ancestral lands?"
O. Nigel Bolland - Historian and Author
"We haven't mentioned the word capitalism, part of the colonial inheritance is a capitalist society, capitalist society depends upon laws that protect private property including private property and land. An individual can put up a sign saying this is my land, the other people can keep off it, I will do what I want with it, I will grow things on it or chose not to grow things on it, I will deny other people access to it or I will just abuse it, corrupt it, destroy it, that's my business - it's my land."
Jules Vasquez
"But it's a western system of ownership that has been imposed on that land and that western system of ownership is what the colonialist brought."
O. Nigel Bolland
"But it makes no sense the traditional cultures, the non-capitalist cultures to argue that a person can legally exclude other people from the use the land which belongs to the community. As far as they are concerned, that land was held in trust by their ancestors for the present people. People alive today hold in trust even greater number of people who are not yet born."
Jules Vasquez
"Would you agree that what he said would appear to fall within the context of what we use to hear in settler thinking?"
O. Nigel Bolland
"Yes, I do but I'm setting it in a much broader context."
The show repeats tonight on Channel 7.
