The Toledo Maya Land Rights Case - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Toledo Maya Land Rights CaseSlide2

‘The ongoing struggles for indigenous land rights are strongly rooted in colonial political economy. These struggles largely concern lands that were claimed by the colonial state and institutions that were established to ‘settle’ the Maya and win hegemony over them: in particular the Alcaldes

and Indian reservations’

Wainwright, 2008'In cruel irony, those same authorities, from the colonial period to the present, have blamed the Kekchi's footloose migratory ways, their inability to invest in permanent agriculture, on what is claimed as their custom of communal and tenure. They have certainly adapted to the system and may now prefer to keep it, but the reserves are not customary or traditional'Wilk, 1991

Wilk, R. R. (1991). Household ecology: economic change and domestic life among the Kekchi Maya in Belize. University of Arizona Press.

Wainwright, J. (2008). Decolonizing development: colonial power and the Maya. Blackwell PublishingSlide3

'The

post-independence state desired territorialisation, the binding of nation and territory…The Maya would be settled to identify with property and the nation'Wainwright 2008

Wainwright, J. (2008). Decolonizing development: colonial power and the

Maya. Blackwell PublishingSlide4

The

M

aya atlas is the first community made atlas. All other atlases are made by professional mapmakers who most often live and work far from the places on the pages… Their decision was prompted by the government of Belize’s claims that the Maya peoples were squatters and immigrants on Crown Lands, and that they had no communal, historic or indigenous land rights, therefore the government of Belize was free to grant logging, toxic waste dumping and road building concessions on what the Maya people said was their land’

'The Maya system is basically still run by the rules of the traditional

Mayas, although this is not recognised by the present Belizean government. The Maya do not know about lease land‘Maya Atlas, 1997Slide5

‘The judgment of the Court of Appeal of Belize is affirmed insofar as it holds that Maya customary land tenure exists in the Maya villages in the Toledo District and gives rise to collective and individual property rights within the meaning of sections 3(d) and 17 of the Belize Constitution.’

The Ruling of the

Caribbean Court of Justice

‘The constitutional authority of the Government over all lands in Belize is not affected by this order.’CCJ Appellate Jurisdiction, 2015

‘The parties mutually recognize and have given legal and constitutional effect to the umbilical relationship between the Maya people of southern Belize and the land and its resources that have long provided physical and spiritual sustenance to them and their forebears’

‘The

Chief Justice went on to hold that the claimants’ rights and interests in lands based on Maya customary land tenure were not “

outwith

the protection afforded by the Belize Constitution” but rather, constituted “a kind or species of property that is deserving of the protection the Belize Constitution accords to property in general.”

‘

‘3

. Whereas every person in Belize is entitled to the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual, that is to say, the right, whatever his race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, creed or sex, but subject to respect for the rights and freedoms of others and for the public interest, to each and all of the following,

namely:

(

d) protection from arbitrary deprivation of

property’

Section 3(d) of the Belize ConstitutionSlide6

What do different people see as the basis for Maya Land Rights?

Nationality?

‘The

desire to qualify as national citizens while staking indigenous claims to territory is an aporia that characterises the postcolonial situation'

Wainwright, 2008Inclusion of

particular villages

in court cases?

Adherence to a customary land allocation system or a way of life?

‘

To me it’s the way how we live and the way how we use our land. We get food, medicines, lots of things from the forest

’

Mayaness

?

Historical occupation/ tradition/ link to particular lands?

‘

Why should I have to go through government process when my ancestors were here already’

.

Wainwright, J. (

2008).

 Decolonizing development: colonial power and the

Maya.

Blackwell Publishing

‘

We raise here, we grow here, we know the lands, and we survive on the land’

‘

It is about land, about culture, about the rules. It doesn’t matter if black, white,

Q’eqchi

’ or Mopan

’.Slide7

What might result from the consultations?

Titling and privatisation?

State power?

‘It is still the government that has the power to deal with the lands in Belize.’ Commissioner

Solutions to suit different types of land use practices?‘A

t the end of the day everyone can benefit’

. Commissioner

Racial tension?

‘Do we have to be involved as Maya people?’ 

‘We

want development. They just want to grow corn

’

‘To be effective in court, the maps that show indigenous land must position those claims within the state’s territory. The possibilities that mapping indigenous lands might reveal the fiction of state claims to sovereignty over a given territory is blunted by the explicit goal of formulating claims that can be recognized by the state.’

Wainwight

and Bryan, 2009

Wainwright, J., & Bryan, J. (2009). Cartography, territory, property: postcolonial reflections on indigenous counter-mapping in Nicaragua and Belize.

Cultural Geographies

, 153–178

.

Hale, C. R. (2005). Neoliberal multiculturalism. 

PoLAR

: political and legal anthropology review

, 

28

(1), 10-19.

‘The most counterintuitive outcome… is the remaking of racial hierarchy… Efforts to set limits on Maya cultural rights, without returning to the “classic” racism of times past, involve a series of loosely articulated approaches, but rarely coordinated or thought through as such’

Hale, 2005