And the PM wasn't the only one lecturing the Mayas today. Minister of Indigenous Peoples Affairs, Dolores Balderamos Garcia stood up in the House of Representatives to give an update on the progress of the policy. But during her speech, she compared the Mayas to a figure from one of Leo Tolstoy's short stories who essentially killed himself in pursuit of land. Here is how she put it:
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Indigenous Peoples' Affairs
"It reminds me, as an old English and Literature teacher, there is an excellent short story by an author Leo Tolstoy and the name of the story is How Much Land Does A Man Need? And the story says that the owners of a particular piece of land, a huge tract of land, had said to this gentleman, we will grant to you all the land you can walk before sundown but it was already 2 or 3 in the afternoon, so they told him all the land that you can walk by sundown we will grant to you. Well, the man didn't walk, he ran. and he ran and he ran because he wanted all the land. And he ran so hard that he dropped and caught a heart attack and died. and how much land did that man need? About 8 feet so, and four feet so and six feet so, Madama Speaker, what is the moral that I am trying to get to this morning? That the land is forever but we must share. We must remember our children, we must remember other people, we cannot claim the whole of the Toledo District."
