Three weeks after Alcalde Marcus Canti was reportedly abducted, the MLA and the TAA held a joint press conference along with elders and authorities from Indian Creek and other nearby villages. This press conference was to clear up several issues: one of them being the alleged attack on Canti. Then they dove into the deeper issues: that of the controversial tract of land in Indian Creek, the tensions with Ya'axche Conservation Trust, and the CCJ consent order.
It was a more than three hour press conference and Courtney Menzies has an overview. Here is that story.
Back in April, tensions rose to a boiling point in Indian Creek after the alcalde was reportedly abducted and beaten. This came after Marcus Canti illegally subdivided the Ya'axche managed land near Bodden Creek and distributed fake land certificates to the villagers. However, that comes after a decades long battle between the Maya villages and the government of Belize to implement the 2015 CCJ consent order.
And today during a press conference, Canti spoke out for the first time since the incident:
Marcus Canti, Alcalde, Indian Creek
"On April 13th I made one wrong decision, to quickly go to my farm by myself to pick up my tomatoes. And I can only suspect that they were monitoring my movements because before that time, I always have someone I trust with me but I wasn't there for more than a few minutes and I had already picked my tomatoes when I was suddenly attacked, hit, and forcefully taken. The first four men came to grab me and they were joined by a 5th who held me at gunpoint and took me to a truck waiting on the roadside and I later realized there was a 6th person in the vehicle where I was pushed up, tied up, and bound."
"These men wore face masks but I was able to identify a few of them by voice ID."
"This means that my life is at high risk."
"I want to say though that I am very concerned at the slow pace that the police is taking. I am concerned that there is no regular updates from the investigating unit."
"Every time we have to try to call to ask for updates and not much is being done. it appears to me that they are not taking this matter seriously."
"A crime happened against me, I have no reason to make this up."
Canti refrained from answering any further questions but, like those who attended today's conference, they believe their problems really began when Ya'axche Conservation Trust moved into Golden Stream.
Lorenzo Pop, Elder, Indian Creek
"When Ya'axche started to come close to us because they established their station in our neighbor's land in Golden Stream land. We didn't think too much of it, they said they do conservation. They said they help farmers, but next thing we know that they are taking away our land."
"They are sending their rangers to stop us from collecting our resources."
Sebastian Shol, Former Chairman, Indian Creek
"During our leadership, the village lived peacefully on our land because the chairman and the alcalde were working together, hand in hand. Until Ya'axche begin to hire our own people as rangers to attack us when we are using the land and the government is not helping us, instead they want to help third parties to finish taking our land."
Mateo Chub, Former Alcalde, Indian Creek
"When I worked for four years, we worked together with the chairman and I work with my own Maya people and from there, when we walk through the land, it belongs to Indian Creek, it's 18,000 acres but now while I am the Alcalde at that time, Ya'axche rangers started to come in. So they started to harass people. They took people out of their farm, they chased them out of their farm, so that's what I call harassment."
And MLA spokesperson Cristina Coc emphasized again that they're not in a battle with the other villages, the public, or the landowners.
Cristina Coc, Spokesperson, MLA
"So now we are faced with a situation where now you have those who were given our land by the government of Belize in the same area that we are using customarily. Now these people, these companies, these third parties they now have what we have a competing interest in our lands."
"It is our tax dollar that have already been using to pay many competing interest settlements before now, why should it be different now? Because we are Maya? There should be no bias in treatment when it comes to resolving these same kinds of competing interests just because it touches and concerns Maya customary land rights."
"We are not fighting private landowners, we are fighting for the security of our customary lands. This fight has always been between us and the government of Belize who failed to protect us in the first place."
"All of this is what has escalated to point we are here now, make no mistake the unlawful targeting and abduction of Mr Canti is not an isolated matter."
And while this battle is more than a decade old, there's no end in sight just yet, but the Mayas aren't giving up.
Pedro Teul, President, TAA
"We have no regrets for going to the courts for protection. For this reason, we the Alcaldes and the village council together along with our Maya villages, we will continue to stand and united to defeat."
"We will never stop and we will never cease, but we will continue from now on forward, until we get to the top."
"We will continue to stand united to defeat villains that remains in each of our villages."
We reached out to Christina Garcia, executive director of Ya'axche Conservation Trust for a comment. She told us that she cannot comment until she hears the entire presentation.
