Cabinet meetings are usually held on Tuesdays, but today, all the ministers and other PUP parliamentarians were at the San Ignacio hotel for a special session to discuss the Maya Land Tenure policy.
For months now, you've been hearing about the tensions down in Toledo, specifically between Yemeri Grove and Laguna. But those aren't the only villages at odds. Other non-Maya villages are starting to feel boxed in because of the 2015 CCJ Consent Order - which found that 72% of the district falls under the customary land tenure of 23 Mayan villages.
It's a massive issue to tackle, and one that won't be easy to solve, and that's why the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples' Affairs arranged this one day session. It's to allow the government to delve deep into the issue, voice their concerns, and ask their questions, so that they could have a better understanding, and so that hopefully a solution can be found sooner rather than later.
Today, the Minister explained that the question at the core, though, is how to implement the Consent Order, especially considering the recent Court of Appeal ruling, which she told us more about.
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Indigenous Peoples' Affairs
"You know that there have been many issues on the ground and we're delving into the today with Senior Counsel Marshalleck, Commissioner Greg Choc, all our ministry people, and right now in session we're going into the Customary Land Tenure Policy, the Maya Customary Land Tenure Policy, itself. This morning, and I must say that it is all the representatives, so I think about 23 out of the 26 are here, one or two are out of the country, but the majority of the elected representatives of our government are in attendance because we would like at the end of today, for people to have a clear understanding of all the issues, what the order of the court was, what it entails, how we will have to implement it, and so that is what we are doing. Now, this morning, we looked at the historical context."
"And the fact that even in the Colonial Administration, they had to consider reservations because of the issues of land tenure and land use in the south, now it has evolved and clearly this is an independent country now but what we are trying to do is to see how we are going to marry the land laws of our country, that we inherited from a colonial administration, how are we going to marry that, with having recognized that there is customary Maya land tenure. And also what is it? And a recent ruling of the Court of Appeal, just within the last two months, has said that the Maya Customary Land Tenure is like a different animal, it's not the same as having what we call fee simple private ownership with full ownership and all the rights and everything."
"But it will mean that the government will have to put in place administrative and legislative framework, meaning the laws, what laws are we going to pass, and clearly, if we pass laws recognizing communal land ownership, that communal land ownership cannot take away the rights of land owners, so we'll have to see how we'll marry it and that's a really big, it can be a headache."
