For Garinagu who dont like to read you may find the last couple of paragraphs interesting. Godfrey Smith tells us more than Ive heard from our own leaders! The Question of a Maya Homeland “The creation of a Homeland under the status of a “Freehold Title” is the ultimate goal of the Mayas… It is in having a small portion of this country and this world that we call our home that will guarantee that our culture can survive in the next century.” – Julian Cho Can guilt be inherited? Over the past fifteen or so years, state apologies and reparation for historical injustices have come into vogue. Indigenous people, holocaust victims, Japanese-Americans and the descendants of slaves have all put forward their cases and have met with varying degrees of success. While some people think that national apologies and reparation are a way of correcting terrible, historical wrongs, others question whether guilt can really be inherited by our generation and argue that all this does is heighten ethnic conflicts. There is a school of thought that there should be a moratorium on reparations for historical injustices committed beyond living memory – roughly 100 years. After World War II, the German government had paid reparations to the state of Israel. In the 1990s, German companies and their government set up a $5.2 billion fund to pay the 1.5 million living victims of 10 million slave-labourers who were exploited during the nazi era. Japanese-Americans incarcerated during World War II received an apology and modest payments from the US Congress. The claims by African-Americans to make similar claims for reparation have so far failed for a variety of reasons. Indigenous people of the world have had moderate success in having their claim for rights to land and way of life recognized. The Maya Homeland project Recent skirmishes between the Government of Belize and the Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) over licenses granted for oil exploration in the Toledo District are manifestations of a more fundamental socio-cultural issue facing Belize. That fundamental issue is the Maya Homeland proposal/project. Under the proposal, the Government of Belize is called upon to grant 500,000 acres of land to the Maya people of Toledo. The homeland would encompass all the Maya villages and geographical areas traditionally used by the Mayas. The Mayas argue that since their ancestors were the original inhabitants of Belize, they have a right by natural law to inherit the land. Their claim is based on law, not on the faddish principle of reparation. As they describe it, under their communal Homeland proposal those who prefer to work the land communally would have that privilege. The Homeland would accommodate Mayas who want to lease land for milpa, tourism, or other meaningful development. Individuals who may want to sell a parcel of land within the Homeland can only sell it to other Mayas or leave the land for the benefit of the community. The Alcaldes and the Land Trust Committee would decide how land would be distributed in the Maya Homeland. They would stress that the Homeland is developed and managed by the indigenous occupants for their economic development. All places considered to be sacred in resources for the community would not be leased. Morality asserted The Maya Homeland project raises tantalizing political, legal, and socio-cultural issues. The project has been alive for at least ten years. It will not go away. Ultimately, it can only be resolved in one of two ways: politically or legally. Politically, the Government of Belize – PUP or UDP – must eventually decide whether to accede to the Maya people’s claim that they have aboriginal rights to land in the Toledo District and concomitantly grant title to 500,000 acres of land already mapped out by the Mayan leaders. Alternatively, governments can refuse to accept the claim or delay making a decision in which case the matter will eventually be decided by the courts. To succeed politically, the Maya people will have to appeal to the enlightened side of politicians and make a moral case for their Homeland. That case goes something like this. The Maya were the original inhabitants of Belize. There was violent confrontation between themselves and the British. They retreated into the interior to accommodate British logging. The British created ten Maya Reservations in the 1880s totaling about 77,000 acres. The Reserves were never physically surveyed nor recognized in the Belize Constitution as the communal property of the Mayas. Despite their marginalization, the Mayas nonetheless survived by being self-sufficient like their ancestors before them. Successive governments have since tried to assimilate the Maya into the mainstream Belizean society. The case would then conclude with the Maya requesting return of land historically occupied by their ancestors. Morality rebutted The moral rebuttal is something like this. Fine, the essence of the Maya’s case is true. But whatever injustice was suffered by the Mayas was at the hands of the British. The British were forebears for some of us, but even so they oppressed all Belizeans, exploited the entire country until we collectively got rid of them on September 21st 1981. No less than the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that “Inheritance of the guilt of the dead is not compatible with the standards of criminal justice in a society governed by the rule of law.” How can one ethnic group be chosen for special treatment when all groups were exploited by the British? “Indigenous Rights 101” Unquestionably, our law recognizes the existence of aboriginal rights. There are certain elements, which must be established before a Court will rule that a community or communities are possessed of aboriginal rights over land. The first question is: what are the precise elements of the test required by law? Having answered that question, the second question is: do the Maya people meet that legal test? To establish aboriginal rights, the Maya have to establish the following. First, that their ancestors were members of an organized society. Second, that the organized society occupied the specific territory over which they assert the aboriginal title. Third, that the occupation was to the exclusion of other organized societies. Fourth, that the occupation was an established fact at the time British sovereignty was asserted. The first and second limbs of the test are a “no-contest.” The third and fourth will unleash heavy, legal bombardment. Difficult questions A fundamental argument against the Maya is that the dates of foundation of many of the Mayan villages illustrate a significant break in the continuity of occupation of the area over which title is asserted. Furthermore, when those dates are compared with dates of foundation for other non-Mayan villages in the area such as Barranco, a Garifuna village founded in the 1830s, it becomes questionable whether the Maya in fact occupied that region to the exclusion of other organized societies. Examine the following foundation dates for these villages: Medina Bank –1989; Golden Stream-1970; Indian Creek-1950; Silver Creek 1969; Jordan –1980; Na Luum Caj-1986; Jalacte-1972; San Vicente –1986; Santa Teresa –1933; Sunday Wood- 1983; Boom Creek –early 1990; Santa Anna 1973; Midway –1992. With the exception of San Antonio and San Pedro Columbia, allegedly founded in 1850, all these villages were founded in the 1900’s some as late as 1992. Caution of the Philistines It is easy, philosophically, to be supportive of the Maya claim to a Homeland. In fact, it is considered p.c. (politically correct) and “enlightened” to support the claim. But the caution of the philistines should not go unheeded. They warn that acceding to the Homeland claim will lead to the balkanization of Belize. Alarmism? Perhaps. The National Garifuna Council (NGC) has for the past four years been pursuing a claim with the government for a homeland on the basis of their historical occupation of southern lands since 1802. The Southern Chapter of the National Kriol Council has also recorded its claim for use of land with the government. Homelands and self-administered reservations have been set up in countries like Australia, United States and Canada. In nearby Nicaragua, there is the Autonomous Region on the Atlantic Coast for the Miskito Indians and in Equador, Bolivia and Peru there are also special areas. Belize is somewhat nuanced in that there are five or six well-defined ethnic groups that tend to be site-specific, that is, they occupy specific geographical areas of the country, creating an environment naturally conducive to splintering. Ultimately, the Maya claim for a Homeland should be resolved politically, but it cannot be resolved in isolation from the fundamental and dynamic multi-ethnic context of which it is a part.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 22:08:45 +0000
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