In The Supreme Court Of Belize A.D. 2007
Claim No.
of 2007
BETWEEN
MANUEL COY, in his own behalf and on behalf of the Maya VILLAGE OF
CONEJO
and
MANUEL CAAL, PERFECTO MAKIN and MELINA MAKIN
Claimants
and
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF BELIZE and THE MINISTER OF NATURAL
RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT
Defendants
FIRST AFFIDAVIT OF RICHARD R. WILK
I, Richard R. Wilk, of 236 Student Building, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana,
U.S.A., MAKE OATH AND SAY:
Qualifications
1. I am a Full Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana,
United States of America. I have a Ph.D. and Masters Degree in Anthropology with
a specialization in economic and ecological anthropology from The University of
Arizona, and a B.A. cum laude from New York University. A copy of my curriculum
vitae is attached to this affidavit as Exhibit “A”.
2.
My work has focused particularly on land use and subsistence among the Kekchi
(also known as Q'eqchi', K'ekchi', and Ketchi) native Americans of southern Belize. I
have conducted archaeological and ethnographic field research in Toledo District in
1976, 1979-1981, 1984, and 1990, and have also done a good deal of historical
archival research on land use and settlement in Toledo during the intervening years
and in 2001 and 2002. While working for the United States Agency for International
Development in Belize I studied land use, road development, and forest resources in
southern Belize (including the Toledo District), as part of the Rural Road
Rehabilitation Project carried out by the Ministry of Public Works of the Government
of Belize.
3. I am familiar with almost every published source on Toledo District's history,
economy, and ethnography, including work on the Kekchi, Mopan (also called
Maya), Garifuna (also called Garinagu, Caribs, and Black Caribs), East Indian, and
Creole population of the area. This affidavit is based on published and unpublished
sources, most of which are cited in my 1991 book and my doctoral dissertation
(1981); more recent sources are cited directly in this affidavit.
History of the Maya people in Toledo District
Pre-colonial settlement in present-day Belize
4. The general settlement history of Toledo District is not very well known by outsiders
and historical documents are incomplete. There are many gaps in our knowledge, and
a good deal of history is based on very skimpy sources, especially for the time up
until the late 19th century. Aside from periodic raids or expeditions, neither the
British nor the Spanish were able to establish a government presence in the Toledo
region during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. For this reason there are no regular
administrative records or other documentation of the indigenous inhabitants of the
area until British colonial administrators established a government presence in the
interior of Toledo District in the 1880s, in response to the founding of two plantations
by the Anglo-German Cramer family. This substantial investment led to the formal
extension of government oversight into the area, though the Cramer family itself
established and ran the local schools and churches. Nevertheless, there is sufficient
evidence to demonstrate that Maya peoples have continuously occupied Toledo since
pre-contact times.
5. Archaeologically, Toledo District provides rich and abundant evidence for dense
populations of people affiliated with the Classic Maya civilization, including
hieroglyphic inscriptions and large cities dating from about 450 AD through about
1000 AD. Amid five large cities there are hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller ruins
of villages and towns.
6. Less abundant archaeological remains attest to continuing occupation of the area from
the collapse of the great cities at about 1000 AD through to the 16th Century (the
post-classic period). At present many Mopan and Kekchi people in Toledo continue
to treat the ancient Maya sites as sacred places built by their ancestors, and they still
perform Mayan religious rituals in the ruins.
7. We do not know exactly which Mayan language or languages were spoken by the
classic and post-classic inhabitants of the region. Because of epidemic diseases that
accompanied and even preceded the settlement of Europeans into their territories, the
populations of these Maya groups declined considerably and their geographic
locations have shifted somewhat. In fact, archaeologists and historians now estimate
that 90 to 95 percent of native peoples in the Americas, including Mesoamerica,
perished within a century of contact.(Mann, 2005) The resulting social, economic,
and political turmoil from these dramatic epidemics make it impossible to draw any
absolute conclusions about ethnic territorial divisions preceding contact.
8. However, Jones (1997) notes that the principal inhabitants of the Toledo District
during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries were Mayas who spoke the
Yucatecan languages Chol and Mopan, and may also have included Kekchi speakers.
In the 16th century when Spanish visitors first passed through southern Belize it was
partially under the political control of the Itza -Mayan state centered in the Peten
region of Guatemala. Parts of southern Belize were independent, and were identified
by the Spanish as being inhabited by a group of people they called the "Manche
Chol," though they also appear in Spanish records under many other names (perhaps
family names) in 16th century Spanish documents examined by Feldman (1975). They
spoke a Mayan language which could be understood by Itza and Yucatec Maya, but
which was not mutually intelligible with Kekchi.
9. The sixteenth-century Chols were employed in the production of cacao, as described
by members of Cortes’ 1525 expedition through their territory near or possibly in the
Toledo District. The Chols and the Mopans continued to produce cacao and vanilla in
orchards throughout the seventeenth century. The Spanish observer who described
such orchards on what is today the Guatemalan side of the Belize-Guatemala border
reported hearing that such cultivations extended all the way east from the Manche
Chol region in Peten to the Caribbean coast - thus incorporating the Toledo
District.(Jones 1997:2)
10. When the Spanish encountered the Kekchi Maya in the early contact period (early to
mid-sixteenth century), the Kekchi Maya lived in what would later become the
department of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Within this region, they lived mainly in the
highland area around what is today the city of Coban and in the lowland areas of what
are today known as the city of Cahabon and settlements along the Polochic Valley.
The Maya groups neighboring the Kekchi included the Mopan to the northeast, the
Manche Chol to the north and northwest, the Pokomchi to the south, the Itza directly
to the north and the Lacandon to the west. Taking advantage of being surrounded by
the Western highlands, the Eastern sea and the Northern lowlands in Guatemala, the
Kekchi Maya have, since the early Classic period (300 AD-600 AD) to the present,
worked in trade and commerce between the Western highlands and the lowlands of
Guatemala and Belize. The involvement of Kekchi Maya people in such trading
practices was documented in the early writings of the Spanish conquerors.
11. The present-day Kekchi town of Cahabon in the department of Alta Verapaz,
Guatemala, was at the edge of the Spanish-controlled zone. Spanish friars failed
repeatedly to convert the Lacandon, Manche Chol and Acala Maya from their church
base in Cahabon. The Spanish decided therefore to forcibly resettle members of these
groups into different neighbourhoods (“barrios”) in the “reduccion” (town) of Coban
in the department of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Upon resettlement, these other Maya
peoples constituted one-quarter of Coban’s total population. Descendents of these
resettled people became assimilated into Kekchi cultural practices, but their last
names remain as proof of prior ethnic affiliations.(Sapper, 1985)
12. Kekchi peoples, unhappy under Spanish rule, undoubtedly escaped into the forest
frontier northwest of Cahabon, that is, into the area that would later become the
modern state of Belize, which the Spanish failed repeatedly to conquer. In 1570 AD,
during their raids into the forest frontier, Spanish troops found Kekchi runaways as
far north as the countryside around the Maya city of Tipu in Belize. Although the
Spanish ostensibly rounded up the Manche Chol and other unconquered lowland
peoples in a series of campaigns culminating in the 1697 conquest of the Itza Maya in
Peten, Guatemala, some of the Manche Chol survivors likely remained in the forests
of the area that would become Belize. (Jones 1998:40)
13. The Spanish first tried to resettle the Manche Chol into towns where they could be
supervised by Spanish priests. They also hoped to protect the Manche from European
and British pirates and buccaneers who roamed the coast at this time, sometimes
taking Manche people as slaves to sell in Jamaica. An entry in the Archives of British
Honduras in 1822 mentions that the Mosquito Indians, allies of the British, had taken
slaves from Southern Belize for more than a century (Burdon 1934:250).
14. In the 1690s, when the Spanish found the settlement policy too costly and difficult
because the Indians kept escaping to the forest to hide, they attempted to round up the
Manche and deport them to the Urran valley near Rabinal in the highlands of what is
now Guatemala (Thompson 1938:593). At about the same time, Mopan people were
gathered up and forcibly resettled in the area of San Luis in Guatemala where they
largely remained until their self-organized return to Toledo, Belize in the 1880s.
There is strong circumstantial evidence to conclude that the Kekchi deeply intermixed
with the Mopan and Manche Chol peoples before and after the arrival of the Spanish
and long before the demarcation of British Honduras.
Historical ethnic fluidity among Mopan, Kekchi, and Manche Chol groups
15. In addition to the strong documentary evidence of ancestral Mopan Maya ties to the
district of Toledo, Belize, there is also significant circumstantial evidence connecting
the Kekchi to Toledo through their close relationships and indeed intermixing with
both the Mopan Maya and the extinct Manche Chol ethnic groups.
16. The renowned Maya historian, Eric Thompson, stated that the Spanish formed a
“reduccion” (town) of Manche Chol people at Campin on the Monkey River in
Belize, but the Spanish apparently failed to maintain control of the settlement and so
the Chol people faded back into the forests of Toledo.(Thompson, 1972) Karl Sapper
(1985) reported that, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, there were Chol speakers
living in the Amatique region “on the banks of the river Sarstoon.” The Manche Chol
people likely also intermarried with Kekchi people settled around the towns of
Cahabon and Lanquin and perhaps also with remnant Mopan groups who escaped the
Spanish raids.
17. The Spanish had tremendous difficulty conquering the greater Peten region. These
unconquerable Maya territories included parts of Chiapas and Yucatan in Mexico,
present-day Peten, Guatemala and parts of Belize. As a zone beyond the control of
the Spanish, the broader lowland Peten region served as a refuge area for other Maya
peoples who refused to be forcibly resettled and Christianized in Spanish
“reducciones” (meaning “reduced” towns in colonial lexicon).
18. While the Spanish attempted for two centuries to conquer them, all the lowland Maya
groups (e.g., Itza, Mopan, Kekchi, Lacandon, Acala, Manche Chol) moved around to
avoid the Spanish and band together with one another. The result of these movements
over many years was significant ethnic mixing, including intermarriage, and the
sharing of cultural customs in both the Spanish reducciones as well as the frontier
forest refuges. (Grandia, 2006)
19. Clear documentation of Maya occupation in Toledo is not available until the 1880s
when significant numbers of Mopan Maya re-occupied parts of Toledo from San
Luis, and there was a surge in Kekchi migration from Guatemala. But there is
circumstantial evidence that Manche Chol, Kekchi, and Mopan people-continued to
inhabit and use the forested interior of Toledo district during this period. There is
much evidence that Kekchi people fled Spanish-controlled Guatemala in large
numbers beginning in the 16th century, and many found refuge in adjacent lowland
forests, including southern Belize, where they intermarried with existing groups. It is
quite possible that Kekchi, mixed Kekchi-Chol, or mixed Kekchi-Mopan habitation
of Toledo goes back to the 1500s.
20. There are many references during the nineteenth century to “Indians” living in the
interior of the colony, though the colonial government made no systematic effort to
contact them. Almost every published traveler’s account mentions native peoples
living in the mostly-unexplored interior of the South and West regions. In the early
1870s, for example, the Colonial Secretary, Henry Fowler, traveled to the
southwestern portion of the colony and noted that they hired Indian porters near the
western border, and heard stories about ‘wild’ Indians (1879:10). Captain George
Henderson, who knew the southern coast of Belize very well, wrote in 1811 that “Not
many years past, numerous tribes of hostile Indians often left their recesses in the
woods for the purpose of plunder… The habitations of these people have never been
traced. Their dispositions are peculiarly ferocious, and they are always armed with
bows and arrows of curious workmanship: the latter are generally thought to be
poisoned. They are without clothing of any kind, and wander over an immense extent
of country but little known.” (1811:26) Charles Swett, who visited the coast near
Punta Gorda in the early 1860s recounts a visit to ‘a native’s plantation’ of 6-8 acres
on the Moho River, several miles up from the mouth (1868:46). Henry Dunn visited
the settlement in 1827-8, and reported many “Indians from the interior” working in
mahogany logging camps along the south coast (1829: 21). Together these accounts
provide very strong evidence that some indigenous people managed to evade Spanish
military and church officials, and the coastal pirates and slave-traders, and continued
to live in what is now Toledo District.
21. Prehistorically the Kekchi and Manche Chol had close political and economic
relationships, and it is quite likely that Kekchi and Manche people intermarried in
Toledo District both before and after the conquest. The British anthropologist J. Eric
Thompson, who studied Kekchi and Mopan people in Toledo District in the 1920s
and 1930s found that the Kekchi spoken at that time had many Manche Chol words
(see also Rambo 1962, 1964). He concluded that some Chol had escaped the Spanish
deportation, and had lived hidden in Toledo until Kekchi migrant entered the area and
intermarried with them in the 1700s. He collected Kekchi stories about the Chol
which gave evidence that the two groups knew each other well, and these stories are
still well known (Wilk et al. 1987). He also used linguistic evidence, arguing that
there were sufficient words of Chol origin in the Kekchi dialect spoken in southern
Belize for him to conclude that the people in this region constituted a separate ethnic
group that he called “Kekchi-Chol.” Thompson goes so far as to state that, “at present
the two races [the Kekchi and Chol] have completely merged.”(1930:36)
22. Grandia (2004:338) cites further evidence of the blending of the Manche Chol and
Kekchi in the region of Cahabon, Guatemala, and northward into southern Belize.
One example is the difference between Kekchi women’s dress between the Central
highlands around Coban and the Eastern lowlands (around Cahabon). In contrast to
the full skirts (“cortes”) and woven blouses (“huipiles”) that were worn by the Central
highland Kekchi women living around Cobán, the Kekchi-Chol women in Cahabon
and southern Belize went bare-breasted and wore rough brown skirts, well into the
twentieth century. Today, one can see continued cultural fluidity in the pastel,
ribboned cotton dresses that both Kekchi and Mopan Maya women wear in Belize.
23. Kekchi folklore includes abundant stories about Kekchi interactions with forest
peoples called “Chol winq,” (Chol people), stories collected and documented by
every anthropologist who has worked in Southern Belize, beginning with Thomas
Gann (1925), and including Richard Wilk et al. (1987) and Liza Grandia (2004c).
The late geographer Bernard Nietschmann heard similar stories as he led a survey
team in preparation of the Maya Atlas. The consistency of these narratives indicates
that the Kekchi sustained long-term interactions with the neighbouring Manche Chol
peoples. The surveys done as part of the Maya Atlas project found that at least a third
of Maya people interviewed in Toledo District asserted having contact with
descendents of the Chol peoples. Grandia (2004) recently collected accounts from
Kekchi elders describing encounters with Chol people in their youth. The depth and
breadth of Kekchi people’s specialized knowledge of hunting, fishing, agriculture,
and botany (especially medicinal plants) in the Atlantic coastal region of Belize
would indicate deep historical interactions with this ecosystem and the Chol, Kekchi,
“Kekchi-Chol” (to borrow Sir Eric Thompson’s terminology), and Mopan peoples
who lived and moved around there for generations.
24. This kind of cultural fluidity can be seen today in Peten, Guatemala in the interaction
of Pokomchi Maya (who migrated from the department of Baja Verapaz) with Kekchi
Maya (who migrated from the department of Alta Verapaz). Having adopted both the
Kekchi language and dress in their new homes in Peten, the Pokomchi Maya blend in
so well with the Kekchi Maya that their original Pokomchi identity sometimes
remains hidden to their Kekchi neighbours. (Grandia, 2006:39 ) Certainly in Belize,
there is a long and well-known history of Kekchi and Mopan peoples living side by
side, sharing agricultural techniques, cooking styles, forest knowledge, and even
political organizations.
The nineteenth century Maya exodus from highland Verapaz
25. By the early 1800s the economic failure of the church government in the Verapaz
became increasingly obvious. Misgovernance, corruption and overtaxation by the
Dominicans led many Kekchi to leave the towns and cities for the countryside;
gradually the reduccion towns melted away. Tax burdens fell more heavily on those
who remained, and in 1807 forced labor was instituted as a penalty for those who
could not pay. A series of crop failures and a decline in the weaving industry from
lack of capital led to more tax deficits, more pressure from the Church, and more
evasion (Escobar 1841). In the closing years of the colonial regime, flight from the
Verapaz into the lowland forests increased rapidly (King 1974:27).
26. After Guatemalan independence from Spain, there is a solid paper trail documenting
the flight of Kekchi peoples into the lowlands in response to political and economic
repression from the new national government. The sale of large tracts of Kekchi land
to foreign coffee planters continued to increase the pressure which drove tens of
thousands of Kekchi into the lowlands, certainly as far as the ill-defined border with
British territory. In 1864 a Kekchi named Melchor Yat led an uprising against
foreign planters and civil authorities. Brutally crushed by the militia, the rebels
dispersed to the mountains and the lowland forests (Kelsey and Osborne 1952:268,
King 1974:29). More recently, research in the nineteenth century municipal archives
in Livingston, Guatemala, has provided more evidence that Kekchi migration into the
lowlands and into Toledo, Belize was longer and more sustained than previously
believed. (Grandia, 2006:59).
27. The cultural confidence demonstrated by Kekchi migrants who walked many days
from their Guatemalan towns to settle deep in these lowland forests would indicate
they had considerable knowledge of the entire lowland region including Toledo either
through earlier settlements of their own or through exchanges with the Manche Chol
and Mopan peoples whose ancestral ties to this region are well-documented. Grandia
(2006:60) cites municipal records in Livingston, Guatemala, demonstrating that by
the late nineteenth century the Kekchi had even formed settlements along the Atlantic
coast of Guatemala just south of Toledo at the mouth of the Rio Dulce in the
department of Izabal. The speed of Kekchi migration northwards indicates that a
well-trodden path had already been established in earlier years.
28. Kekchi Maya migration from Guatemala to Belize since the late nineteenth century
has been deeply tied to repeated land dispossession resulting from land privatization
(originally for foreign coffee investors and most recently for cattle ranchers and
African palm planters). Contrary to derogatory and stereotypical images of Kekchi
peasants as “leaf cutter ants” (or “wee wee ants” as they are known in Belize) moving
chaotically across the forest, like Grandia (2006), I found that Kekchi migration is
patterned and can usually be traced back to some event of dispossession and/or
political oppression. Migration follows long-established routes, which are also the
trails followed by Kekchi merchants and traders from Alta Verapaz, the famous
“Cobaneros” who have carried goods on their backs to and from southern Belize for
well over a century.
29. Since the nineteenth century, Kekchi Maya people from Guatemala have continued to
flee into the lowland forests in much the same manner as they fled from colonial
oppression. The causes of their flight have differed over the years, but the overall
migration pattern is clear. Over the last century the Kekchi people have moved from
their highland department of Alt Verapaz and settled in large numbers in the lowland
district of Toledo, Belize and in the lowland departments of Peten, Izabal, and Quiche
in Guatemala. Approximately 40 percent of the Kekchi people now live in these
lowland areas. Through their numbers and remarkable ability to adapt to new
ecosystems, the Kekchi have truly become a dual highland-lowland peoples. Guided
by natural river travel, the Kekchi migration into Belize was, in many ways, an
extension of their northward migration in Guatemala into Peten and Izabal, an
expansion which began in pre-Hispanic times.
30. Fueled by natural population growth, and the continuing expropriation of land from
indigenous communities, the Kekchi population movement from the highlands into
the northern lowlands continued at a varying rate since first documented in the mid
nineteeth century. There were, however, three peak periods of migration, all of which
were preceded by peaks of political and economic repression in Guatemala.
31. The first peak of northward Kekchi migration involved previously independent
peasant families fleeing indentured servitude as sharecroppers on the large plantations
established by outsiders on their lands. This displacement of the Kekchi began with
the introduction of coffee in the 1860s and intensified under the administration of
Guatemalan President Justo Rufino Barrios (1873-1885) who seized Kekchi lands and
redistributed them to foreign and national elites to establish coffee plantations during
the late 1870s and 1880s. He did so by passing two laws in 1877 that allowed the
Guatemalan national government to confiscate communal, indigenous lands by
calling them “untitled”; and established compulsory labour laws against poor and
indigenous people.
32. In 1882 the Toledo District was created for administrative purposes with its center at
Punta Gorda. Larger groups of Native Americans began to return to southern Belize
shortly thereafter. Over 100 Mopan entered Toledo District in 1886; it is likely that
these Mopan had already intermarried with Kekchi immigrants who had been in the
San Luis area for some time (Gonzalez 1961). About the same time, the Cramer
family imported over 200 Kekchi from Guatemala to work their cocoa and coffee
plantations at San Pedro Sarstoon in the southern Toledo District.
33. There is also evidence, however, that some Kekchi people were living independently
in Toledo District at the same time that Cramer was bringing his workers from Alta
Verapaz. The census of 1891, for example, shows 63 people living on the Moho
River, and a Catholic church was built there in 1908. There is also a good deal of
evidence that the Kekchi who live today along the Temash, Columbia, and Moho
Rivers are heavily intermarried with Mopan people from Pueblo Viejo, San Antonio,
and San Luis (Rambo 1964, Thompson 1930).
34. There are other documented cases of Kekchi groups and villages moving from
Guatemala into Toledo District, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, and there are
also records of villages and families moving back to the Guatemalan side of the
border (Wilk 1991, 1981).
35. The second wave of migration followed policies of the unusually cruel Guatemalan
dictatorship of Jorge Ubico (1931-1944), who forced indigenous people to work
without remuneration on road-building projects under harsh conditions. Several illconceived railroad and road construction projects which used forced Indian labor
brought large numbers of Indians from the highlands into lowland areas around Lake
Izabal, and then northwards towards Poptun.
36. The third wave of migration occurred during and after Guatemala’s civil war (19601996) when the Guatemalan military carried out acts of genocide against the Maya.
These massacres are documented in the Final Report (1999) of the Commission for
Historical Clarification, which was sponsored by the United Nations. This report
concluded that these massacres were part of a genocidal policy against the Maya
peoples.(GCHC, 1999) This conclusion is significant in part because it is the only
finding of genocide that the United Nations has made in respect of human rights
violations in the Americas.
37. When these three waves of migration began in the late nineteenth century, the border
between Belize and Guatemala was still unclear and very much under dispute. When
Kekchi and Maya moved in a north and northeast direction to escape their Spanish
colonial oppressors or to escape slave labor on coffee plantations in the late
nineteenth century, there was no border established between the two countries. It was
simply an unbroken forested region. Indeed, documents from Belize’s national
archive demonstrate that the border between British Honduras (Belize) and
Guatemala was not yet defined at the time of the coffee migrations. For example,
Colonial Secretary Fowler (1879:35) described an exploratory journey he made into
Peten, Guatemala along a trail between the settlements of Dolores, Poptun (Poctum)
and San Luis, and hypothesized that this area might actually belong to Belize. Mr.
Fowler wrote: “I shall not be surprised to hear when the boundary line is cut that San
Luis is found to be very near our frontier, if not within our borders.” If the Colonial
Secretary himself was not clear on the location of the border, then the Kekchi settlers
would certainly not have known or recognized that they were on Belizean territory,
especially given the lack of government presence in the interior of Toledo. They are,
however, likely to have sought permission to settle from the existing indigenous
inhabitants of the area, who were enshrined in local Kekchi and Maya folklore as the
“Chol wink” (Chol people).
38. Some of the Kekchi people moving to Toledo may have been aware of the ill-defined
border between Guatemala and Belize, and indeed sought to settle beyond the reach
of oppressive Guatemalan government policies. Primarily, however, most regarded
their migration as a movement into a forested area without other owners, and regard
their land in Belize as being part of a contiguous Maya territory. Still today, Kekchi
elders believe that the sacred hills in Belize send messages back to the larger thirteen
named sacred mountains around Coban. Elders from Conejo village and other
villages in southern Toledo still participate in ritual and religious exchanges with
communities in Guatemala. Traders, missionaries, elders, healers, and other Kekchi
leaders visit back and forth between Guatemala and Belize. Kekchi residents of
Toledo clearly assert their national allegiance as citizens of Belize, yet they maintain
ties and affinities with an international Kekchi community, as well as a broader panMaya movement.
Settlement history of other groups in Toledo Disctrict
39. Toledo District was also repopulated by other migrant groups in the 19th Century.
Between 1820 and 1830 Garifuna people settled along the coast at present day
Barranco and Punta Gorda. The legislature of British Honduras claimed southern
Belize to the Sarstoon River as the "Southern District" in 1827, and began to allocate
mahogany works. Some merchants who acquired these works later tried to attract
European settlers to the area. In 1867 some ex-Confederate refugees from the
American Civil War settled about l0 km inland from Punta Gorda. A few years later
they imported East Indians to serve as workers in their sugar cane fields. The
settlement did not flourish, and most of the Americans left by 1885.
40. For the above reasons, I conclude that the Maya people are indigenous to Belize,
having lived in this territory before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors and long
before the arrival of British settlers, and that the residents of Conejo village are
members of that indigenous people. In the period after contact with the Spanish, the
Mopan Maya indisputably lived in Toledo until the Spanish removed them against
their will to Peten, Guatemala. The Manche Chol also lived in the Toledo region
until the Spanish removed them to Verapaz, Guatemala. My research shows that
during the Spanish colonial period, the Kekchi Maya intermixed with both these
groups. They intermarried with the Mopan moved to San Luis, Peten and together
these Mopan-Kekchi families organized a return to Belize in 1880. They also
intermixed with the Manche Chol people who are now extinct as a discernible ethnic
group in two regions: in highland Verapaz where the Spanish relocated some of the
Manche Chol; and with remnant populations in the region north and northwest of
Cahabon. I would reiterate here that the political and demographic chaos caused by
the Spanish conquest resulted in widespread ethnic intermixing and cultural fluidity
among all Maya groups. I would further stipulate that the modern ethnic names used
in this report (e.g. Chol, Mopan, Kekchi) were not formulated or established in
common usage until the very end of the 19th century, and that prior to this time
indigenous people did not recognize these ‘tribal’ or linguistic divisions.
Maya customary land tenure in Toledo
Ethnography
41. The Belize 2000 Population and Housing Census indicated that there are about
10,600 Kekchi Maya people living in Toledo district, and perhaps 4,500 Mopan.
Most Kekchi and Mopan live in 37 communities, ranging in population from 40 to
1,200. Communities are widely dispersed; houses are often sited on hilltops far from
neighbors. From two to six houses of close kin may be clustered together, surrounded
by pig pens and chicken coops. Traditional Kekchi and Mopan houses are built
entirely of wood and thatch gathered from the forest.
42. Like most Maya after the Spanish conquest, both groups are predominantly Catholic,
though traditional Maya spiritual beliefs and practices have been woven into their
practice of Catholicism. During the last 20 years, many have converted to various
Protestant sects (see Schackt 1986). They live in villages that are held together by
several governing institutions, the practice of communal maintenance work (Fagina
or Fajina), and a common family and village identity. Villages elect Alcaldes, second
Alcaldes, Village Councils, village police officers, and Mayordomos who keep up the
church. There is often a village health committee, and one or more grain growers
cooperatives based on labor-exchange groups. Alcaldes hold court sessions to
adjudicate land, property, inheritance, and personal disputes, and are empowered by
the government to levy small fines and order short periods of imprisonment in the
community jail (cabildo).
43. The Alcalde system is found in various forms among all Mayan-speaking groups in
Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico as well as Belize. The social organization of the
Kekchi has deep roots in pre-Hispanic practices, as well as in the early colonial era
when Toledo district was a Spanish possession. The British administration adapted its
laws to existing native practice (this was common to the system of indirect rule
practiced throughout the British Empire). The Alcaldes apply customary law, which
has been carefully described by Osborn (1982) and Howard (1974, 1977). In general
practice the Alcaldes adjudicate land disputes within the community, grant or deny
admittance to new families asking to join the community, deal with absences from the
fagina work-groups, and adjudicate disputes over crop damage caused by domestic
livestock and accusations of sorcery.
44. In some communities the Alcalde’s power has been modified by the intercession of
formal elected Village Councils, which generally address financial issues, road
improvement, water supply, ecotourism facilities, and the various development
initiatives which NGOs, government agencies and bilateral aid organizations have
carried out in Toledo. Individual village members have also at times gone to district
courts to dispute the right of Alcaldes to make judgments on land tenure issues, or
those dealing with personal property damage or personal injury. Disputes taken out of
the village in this way have ended up being settled in a variety of ways. This leaves
the exact extent of the Alcalde’s customary power unclear under contemporary
Alcalde Regulations. In general, the goal of the Alcalde is to use traditional
consensus-based forms of mediation to reach settlements that are satisfactory to all
parties, precluding the need to resort to the external judicial system. In the vast
majority of inter-village disputes, the Alcalde is indeed able to reach such a mediated
solution by reference to an evolving body of common principles and understandings.
45. Because of language differences and their isolation from the mainstream of Belizean
society, most Kekchi have kept to their villages, where they value their autonomy and
the freedom of rural life. Mopan people have had more educational opportunities and
have tended to participate more in the Belizean economy and in politics.
Nevertheless, the underlying normative structure governing community relationships
with each other and with the land is fundamentally common to both groups.
46. The Kekchi and Mopan economy has changed often during the last two centuries, in
response to changes in markets and opportunities. They have always sought to feed
and house themselves through their own efforts, and seek wage labor or markets for
their crops in order to get money for taxes, manufactured goods, school fees, medical
costs, and other unavoidable expenses. They have, at various times, raised and sold
large quantities of cattle, pigs, bananas, beans, corn, honey, achiote, and other crops,
though their main cash crop in the last 35 years has been rice. Within villages they
sell poultry, eggs, fish, game, coffee, Pom incense, and pork between households and
in small shops. In recent years cocoa production has expanded, and larger numbers of
Kekchi and Mopan are seeking education and jobs in town. The traditional system of
land tenure has had to respond to these developments, particularly those that alienate
large areas of land from the community commons and convert them into ‘private’
property in the form of cacao groves. Most villages have responded by developing
new regulations that preserve the principles of equity and fair access to common
resources that lie at the base of traditional land use. There has also been some limited
ecotourism and archaeological tourism in the area, though the revenues have been
disappointing for many.
47. In general rural Kekchi and Mopan people have the lowest incomes of any ethnic
group in the country. It is difficult to find reliable economic data for the district; most
does not take into account the value of resources obtained for personal use from the
forest and subsistence agriculture. In 1985 I estimated that average annual household
income in remote villages was about $BZ 400, far below the national average at that
time. The 2000 Population and Housing census indicates that Mopan and Kekchi
respondents represent over half of those with income below the poverty line of
$BZ1,440 annually. Many Kekchi have no access to regular medical care, and cannot
afford to buy more than very basic necessities.
Land Use and the Maya Land Tenure System
48. At the time of the Spanish conquest the Kekchi were intensive agriculturalists who
farmed using an infield-outfield system, which combined permanently cropped
infields (heavily manured, often irrigated, and sometimes terraced) with a series of
outfields that were fallowed from four to 10 years depending on local population
density. The shift from this system to more extensive shifting cultivation probably
took place during the drastic depopulation caused by Spanish-introduced diseases in
the 16th century, which destroyed the economic fabric and household labor system
which were essential to the infield-outfield system. When the growing Kekchi
population of the 19th century began once again to intensify their agriculture by
growing orchard crops and cash crops like coffee and cacao, they were once again
forced back into shifting cultivation by the expropriation of village land and the
disruption of community labor organization though forced labor and enserfdom on
coffee plantations (Wilk 1991). Information on pre-Hispanic Mopan farming is
lacking; though given common crops and demography, it is likely that they used
systems very similar to those of the Kekchi. Even less is known of the Manche Chol
pre-Hispanic farming system, which eventually merged into that used by the Mopan
and Kekchi.
49. Today most Kekchi and Mopan land use in the Toledo district is related to their
production of food and the hunting and gathering of other resources for their own
subsistence. The entire forested region of Toledo District including rivers and streams
have been intensively used for hunting, fishing, and gathering of forest resources by
Mopan and Kekchi people since the Cramer estates were closed down in 1914 and
their population dispersed to form new villages, and probably much longer. Smaller
areas have been used for agriculture for an equal period of time. As the Maya
population of the district has grown during this century, the area used for farming has
expanded dramatically. Those areas not used for farming have been used for fishing,
hunting, and gathering (as detailed below).
50. Both Kekchi and Mopan people are subsistence-oriented farmers who use a longfallow rotation system (also known as the milpa system, or “slash-and-burn”) to grow
corn and rice during the wet season. During the dry season they cultivate permanent
fields located in fertile damp soils located in valleys and on riverbanks. They also
grow permanent tree crops (mainly fruits, cocoa and coffee), vegetables, plantains,
root crops, beans, and a large variety of other plants for home use. Rice, beans, cocoa,
and a few other crops are grown for cash sale. People also raise small livestock and
poultry; pigs are the major source of domestic meat though some people also graze
small herds of cattle in forest clearings.
51. Any disputes about the demarcation of farmland or other rights to land will be
brought before the village Alcalde and/or a meeting of the community as a whole for
resolution. In fact, very few disputes arise under the customary land management
system. Those that do arise are generally resolved within the village. This is not only
impressive in terms of civic participation, but it also saves the Belizean government
financial investments in the state court system.
52. The pattern of land use described here has been documented by ethnographers among
Kekchi (Wilk 1991, 1981), Mopan (Osborn 1982), and mixed Kekchi Mopan
(Howard 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977) during the 1970s and 1980s. Its continued use and
authority was confirmed through an extensive survey by Bernard Neitschmann (1999)
in the late 1990s. It extends back in time to at least 1914, but probably much earlier.
We do know that at the time of the Spanish conquest the Kekchi lived in settlements
ruled by local leaders who were responsible for allocating land for farming as well as
for political leadership. These hereditary offices may have functioned very much like
the modern institution of the village alcalde with his council of elder advisors. More
detailed knowledge on the pre-Hispanic system of land tenure and political
organization is lacking.
53. The basis for the Kekchi and Mopan customary system of land management is the
concept of usufruct rights, meaning the land is for those who use it. In Belize, it is
typical for Maya farmers to have relatively permanent rights to a field for dry-season
crops in comparison to long-term rights to return to fallowed areas for wet-season
crops. Each village has an elaborate set of rules and regulations, some written and
some customary, for regulating land use rights and tenure within community territory.
These rules respond to population pressure on resources; the general rule is that
individuals are allowed to claim ownership of farmland by right of first use, but they
must continue to use a piece of land or a resource, or those rights will lapse and the
property will then return to the community for redistribution (such tenure systems are
common in areas of low population density that practice shifting cultivation, see
Netting 1993). In villages with very high population density, almost every acre is
claimed as personal property.
54. Around every village there are relatively concentric zones of land use. In the village
zone, people raise fruit trees, graze their horses, pigs, and cattle, and maintain a
reserve of Cohune and Bay-Leaf palm trees which provide thatching for house roofs.
The village zone is divided up into house lots, dotted with fruit trees and medicinal
plants, which are considered the personal property of the inhabitants. This village area
is quite large, up to 2 square kilometers, because people prefer to live dispersed
through the forest in small clusters of houses occupied by close relatives. Each family
is responsible for its own agricultural work and each family reaps its own harvests.
Help may be received from other farmers, especially for the tasks of burning and
planting. Nevertheless, the family or household is usually the central organizing unit
within the Maya land management system. People who leave the village for an
extended time usually lose their rights to their house-plot, and have to clear another if
they return. Most villages recognize, however, a permanent right to fruit trees that are
planted in the village zone.
55. Around this village zone is the main agricultural zone, which can extend up to 10
kilometers from the village center. Some fertile spots are permanently cropped and
may be fertilized or planted with mulch and cover crops. Land on riverbanks or lowlying areas that is suitable for permanent dry-season farming (“matahambre” or sak’e
gua) is considered the personal property of farmers, and plot boundaries are marked
carefully on the ground. These dry-season plots can be inherited and are occasionally
rented or transferred between families or individuals within the village (though
transfer to people outside the village is expressly forbidden).
56. In most of the agricultural zone, however, fields are cleared from forest every 6-15
years (depending on the size of the village population), burned, and planted with a
rotation of corn or rice and beans, each of which is inter-planted with root crops,
plantains, and other vegetables and herbs (over 50 crops are cultivated). Animals may
be grazed in the plot for another year or two before it is allowed to grow back into
forest and recover fertility and eliminate weeds. This agricultural fallow zone may
look like untouched forest while it is being rested, but it is still used for many
purposes, and it may still contain tree crops that are regularly harvested. These fallow
areas also attract game animals, and provide many useful economic plants.
57. Within the agricultural zone, people often plant groves of citrus, cocoa, coffee,
achiote, and other economically important tree crops. These trees establish a more
permanent claim to the land, and the groves can be sold, rented, and inherited.
Because one normative underpinning of the Kekchi and Mopan land tenure system is
to distribute farmland equitably, and to ensure that all members of a village have
access to communal or shared forest areas that are used for hunting, fishing,
collecting water and gathering various resources, some communities have restricted
the amount of land that each farmer is allowed to plant in tree crops, in order to
ensure that enough land will remain available for growing food. Even if a farmer does
not tend or harvest the trees, they remain his and his descendants’ property as long as
the trees survive.
58. Draft animals, especially horses, are important to Kekchi and Mopan farmers as a
means of transporting their crops from distant fields over rugged terrain. These
animals are often grazed in recently harvested agricultural fields. Pigs are allowed to
wander and forage in the agricultural zone in some villages. In the 1930s many
Kekchi people kept cattle, which were grazed on fallow fields fenced with barbed
wire (Wilk 1981). This practice is now being revived in some villages.
59. Within the agricultural zone around each village, land use and rights are carefully
regulated by the village Alcalde and village officials. Villages recognize a farmer’s
right to continued use of any land he has cleared from primary forest, but if several
years go by and he has not used that land again, or indicated his intent to do so, the
village Alcalde may let someone else use it. Farmers often transfer land they have
cleared from forest to their sons or sons-in-law, who can also claim their father’s land
after he dies.
60. Thus, families can claim and retain plots over long periods of time in an arrangement
that resembles private property. However, the village government would intervene if
someone outside the village tried to buy one of these plots. Within the customary
land management system of the Kekchi and Mopan Maya, the usufruct rights of
households do not permit individual farmers to sell single plots of land. As
demonstrated by Neitschmann (1999:9), this norm against commodification of land
remains extremely strong. The Alcalde alone could not give permission to transfer
land to outsiders, because in the Kekchi and Mopan vision of community leadership,
a good Alcalde does not dictate his own decisions, but rather acts as a spokesperson
of the general will of the village families. In other words, the customary Maya
system of land management combines a mixture of quasi-private use rights with
collective decision-making.
61. Fallowed forest land for long-rotation swidden farming is usually less tightly
maintained within one family. Farmers typically choose their own plot(s) of farmland.
Farmers will generally clear a path (“mark a line”) to indicate what area they intend
to farm. In the customary land management system, families will tend to claim
farmlands that correspond with their subsistence needs, but also with the amount of
labour that their households can provide that planting season. Within this system,
elders are given the courtesy of selecting their farmland(s) first. Community leaders
will also tend to reserve areas closer to the village for widows and the elderly. To
provide a sense of the size of a plot, some elders still conceptualize the size of their
fields by envisioning how many hundreds of corn cobs can be planted (roughly 100
cobs per “manzana” which is 16 “tasks” or equivalent to 0.7 hectares).
62. Beyond the circle of agricultural land is an area that may still have some primary
rainforest (meaning that it has not been cleared for agriculture within living memory),
which is rarely cultivated: a forest zone. Patches of this primary rainforest also
survive within the agricultural zone on steep slopes, sinkholes, and swampy or rocky
areas. This primary forest is used for hunting and gathering. There are many
medicinal plants essential to traditional curing which are only found in primary forest.
Large trees for dugout canoes, which are essential for commerce during the rainy
season, are found in primary forest. Creeks and rivers in primary forest zones provide
the best fishing and their banks are the preferred areas for hunting most of the
important game animals.
63. Dietary surveys have found that game meat provides the largest proportion of the
protein in the Kekchi diet (Berte 1983). People have little income to spend on
domestic animals, and imported canned meats are too expensive for most families.
Some hunting is necessary to protect crops from animals, but in the more densely
populated areas, hunters have to go as much as 10 kilometers into the forest to find
game. Common game animals are iguanas, deer, peccary, gibnut, brocket, and some
of the larger birds. Children also supplement their diet by hunting small game around
the village with slingshots and traps.
64. Mopan and Kekchi communities depend on fish as a major element in their diet in the
dry season when rivers are low. Fish are caught on hook and line, as well as in traps.
In the larger villages fish are often caught with nets and are sold as a source of cash
income. In more remote villages people gather other foods from waterways,
including snails, crabs, crayfish, and turtles, all of which are key protein supplements
in the diet. Logging is especially devastating to waterways, and has a major impact
on the daily diet among people who are already eating a diet that is low in protein
(Berte 1983).
65. Over 20 different wild plant foods are gathered in forest and agricultural zones on a
regular basis by Kekchi and Mopan men, women, and children. These include palm
hearts, edible shoots, mushrooms, greens, nuts, seeds, and fruits. Cohune nuts are
particularly important as a source of cooking oil in remote villages where alternatives
are not available or affordable. Some fruits and seeds are found only in high primary
forest. A number of these wild foods have a high potential for commercial production
to be sold to the growing number of ecotourist-oriented restaurants and hotels in
Belize, which could be an important source of supplemental income for rural
households (Wilk 2006).
66. Even within the forest zone, customary Kekchi and Mopan land use rules recognize a
variety of rights to different kinds of property. As already noted, groves of Pom
(copal, Procium copao) trees in primary forest are regularly tapped to produce a
fragrant resin that is in great demand for religious services. These groves of trees are
owned by the individuals who first found them, or their descendants through
inheritance. In some cases, rights to tap these trees can be loaned or rented, though
they usually remain within a family. Pom (copal resin incense) is probably the most
valuable material gathered in primary forest, contributing thousands of pounds in
annual production, some of which is exported to Guatemala. In the forest there are
also ancient groves of Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Rubber, Cocoa, and Pataxte (a variety of
cocoa, Theobroma bicolor), which are considered the property of the families whose
ancestors planted them. Sometimes these groves are rented and sold between village
members, but any cases of disputed ownership are settled informally, or by the village
Alcalde in consultation with elders.
67. In addition, trees are cut from primary forest to make dugout canoes (dories). People
regularly visit the forest to burn limestone in basic kilns to produce the white lime
(cal) which is used in every Indian household to prepare corn for consumption. They
gather vines and lianas, as well as strips of specific tree barks (macapal) which are
used as binding and cordage to build houses and thatch roofs, and to make baskets
and numerous other crafts. Kekchi and Mopan also cut some wood, lianas and vines
in the forests for making tools and crafts, to build houses, chicken houses, churches,
and pig pens, and as firewood for home cooking, heating, and drying crops.
68. Perhaps the most important materials gathered from the forest are medicinal plants.
Based on research in San Benito Poite, Boster (1973) reports over 125 different plants
and materials gathered in the forest, each of which has specific medical use in the
bands of highly skilled traditional curers. In many communities these herbal remedies
are still the most accessible and common medicines. Many of these rainforest
medicines have never been scientifically studied or even identified properly, though
others in Belize have begun to bring them to commercial attention, and wild healing
herbs have attracted many eco-tourists to rural areas (Arvigo 1994).
69. While boundaries between village agricultural lands are well demarcated and widely
respected, it is not unusual for gathering, fishing and hunting territories of different
villages to overlap in practice. People generally recognize that animals and fish move
from place to place, and that some wild resources grow unevenly on the landscape,
and expect that hunting, fishing and gathering parties will go to places of abundance,
regardless of precise territorial boundaries. Such transgression would only arouse a
response if it were frequent and obtrusive, for example if people from one village
used fish poison in a stream running through another. If conversation and discussion
does not settle minor territorial disputes, they may escalate to involve Alcaldes, and
lead to inter-village meetings to reach more formal agreements.
70. In addition to economically important uses, within patches of forest in the agricultural
and forest zones there are many places, usually caves, steep hills, and sinkholes,
which are considered sacred by the Kekchi. These are often considered to be the
dwellings of deities who watch over nearby villages and forests. Mopan people feel
more generally that forest and land are sacred to god (Osborn 1982). Whenever
Kekchi or Mopan people clear forests for their farming, they first ask permission from
deities, who are considered the true owners of forest and animals. In general, Kekchi
and Mopan people treat the forest with reverence and respect; they have intimate and
detailed knowledge of many hundreds of its plants and animals.
71. For example, in addition to marking a field so that the boundary lines are visible to
the public, a Kekchi farmer will usually ask gods and the lords of the Hill and Valley
(known as the Tzuultaq’a in Kekchi) for permission to farm a plot of land. This
request for spiritual permission may be made at either a family ceremony or, better
still, at a ceremony involving the entire village. Such a multi-day village ceremony
includes night-time vigils where sacred harp music is played, sexual abstinence is
practiced, special foods are eaten and a pilgrimage is made to a sacred cave where the
lords of the Hill and the Valley are thought to reside. There is sometimes a church
ceremony in place of or in addition to a sacred cave pilgrimage. What is significant
about all of these rituals is that they underscore the deeply held belief of the Kekchi
Maya that land belongs to their Tzuultaq’a gods and therefore cannot be owned by
any one person. To ensure their survival, families must ask for and obtain spiritual
permission to use (as opposed to own) land. Because they see themselves as
borrowing land from the lords of the Hill and the Valley, Kekchi farmers feel a duty
to protect that land through careful environmental stewardship. In this sense, they
protect their collective lands as much, if not more, than private landowners would.
(Grandia, cite; Neitschmann 1997:11-12)
72. It is important to emphasize that few outsiders or government officials have
documented or understood this complex traditional set of land tenure regulations.
Government has made few efforts to survey or regularize land tenure in any area
south of the Moho River, allowing the villages to continue to regulate themselves
according to their customs. In San Antonio, San Pedro Columbia, San Miguel, Big
Falls, Silver Creek, and Indian Creek some sections that were once reservation land,
and other areas of Crown Land or Forest Preserve have been formally surveyed and
distributed to individuals as leaseholds, though even these villages have informally
continued many aspects of the traditional land regulation practices.
73. In practice, all attempts to divide up the customary village land into arbitrary-sized
parcels are doomed to fail to establish a stable land-tenure regime. This is because
each Maya farm family in Toledo requires access to a variety of land types in order to
grow and gather all the crops and resources they need to survive in any given year.
Each family needs several acres of dry-season cornfield land in a wet spot or along a
riverbank, several acres of upland wet-season land for corn, and slightly wetter
upland fields for rice. They also need access to secondary and primary forest for wild
foods, hunting, and construction materials, access to common grazing for livestock
within the village, and access to rivers for potable water, bathing, laundry, food
processing and fishing. No single 40- or 50-acre plot of land can contain an adequate
amount of each of the necessary kinds of resource. The variety of resources available
is therefore often more important than the total amount. It is hard to envision any
other system of land tenure, besides that already in use, which would allow a similar
number of people to survive as relatively independent and self-sufficient farmers in
Toledo District. Evidence of this can easily be found in the newer villages along the
Southern Highway, where private land tenure has led to the breakdown of the
complex self-sufficient farming system still practiced in more remote areas.
History of Official Land Tenure in Toledo
74. Most of the grants and leases of land in Toledo in the 19th century were in fact no
more than logging concessions; there was no permanent possession or settlement by
people of European descent, and no attempt at improving the land or cultivation
outside of very small areas. At one time in the late 19th Century, almost all the land
in Toledo District was claimed by a single land concern – the Young, Toledo
Company, which was mainly engaged in land speculation after the most accessible
mahogany trees were removed. When this company went bankrupt in 1880, some of
their claim was conveyed to other companies, but most reverted to the Crown, which
had never sanctioned the original claims.
75. A reservation system to accommodate and encourage Maya settlement and agriculture
was proposed as early as 1868, and provision for their creation was included in the
Crown Lands Ordinance of 1872. However, it does not appear that any were
formally created in Toledo until 1893. In addition, beginning about 1905 the District
Commissioner in Punta Gorda began to issue leases on land along the Moho,
Columbia, and Temax Rivers to individual Kekchi and Mopan farmers. Other
reserves were established for some of the existing villages in 1924, and these
reservations were amended in 1933 to include some communities that had been
missed in the first surveys. In this process of allocation, some villages were missed
and received no reservations. Other reservations were granted to villages that did not
exist or were subsequently abandoned.
76. After the 1930s and through to the 1960s, the District commissioners and officers
recognized that the reservation boundaries had little relationship to the actual
settlements and land needs in the District, and they made many ad hoc adjustments
and emendations to expand reservations to accommodate increasing population, many
of which were often never formally surveyed or enacted by legislation or
administrative act. Often, the reservations were in practice were not defined clearly,
because of the prohibitive costs of monitoring or surveying land use and boundaries.
The result is that today the reservation boundaries bear little relationship to longestablished customary territories around villages. Many villages have no formal
reservations, though they have used their territories for more than fifty years with
explicit government approval through the appointment of their Alcaldes.
77. While the reservations were drawn on maps in Belize City and Punta Gorda, they
were rarely surveyed or demarcated on the ground. In practice, whether inside or
outside formal reservations, village Alcaldes were allowed to adjudicate land disputes
within areas that they demarcated amongst themselves. As long as they paid an
annual use fee to the government, and complied with other laws of the colony, Maya
villages’ regulation of their own land use was not disturbed. Mopan and Kekchi
villages continued their own system in which each village has clearly demarcated
territories, the boundaries of which are established by meetings of the elders and
village councils of the villages on both sides of the common border. Sometimes
disputes between villages could only be settled by appealing to District
Commissioners, who would then set boundaries (without reference to reservation
boundaries). Each village has effective control over who is allowed to settle within
its territory. This involves requesting permission from the Alcalde, who usually
brings the application to a meeting of the community as a whole. Sometimes there
are other criteria: for example, an entrance fee may be charged, or references from
previous village leaders may be requested. (Neitschmann, 1999) Sometimes villages
have allowed groups to settle new "daughter" villages within their territory in order to
accommodate population growth. Most of the new villages founded in the last 30
years are located in land that was already controlled by another community.
78. There are a few areas, particularly in the swampy southeastern corner of the District
and in the rugged mountains northeast of Jimmy Cut that were not claimed by any
villages. These are common hunting and gathering lands that are used by Kekchi and
Mopan from many communities. On the upper Temax and Sarstoon, and along the
entire Colombia River and Rio Grande, however, all territory is traditionally claimed
and administered by villages. Table I is reproduced from my monograph (1991),
showing the populations of each community as reflected in census records starting in
1921. The territory of Conejo village is part of this larger area that has been used,
controlled, and administered by elected and officially recognized village Alcaldes and
village councils for a minimum of 70 years.
79. I have read the affidavit of Liza Grandia in regard to the land claim of Conejo
Village. The patterns of land use they describe are completely consistent with the
traditional patterns of customary land tenure that I describe here. Any differences
reflect the flexibility and adaptability of a system that has proven an effective guide to
sustainable resource use in the subtropical rainforests of Mesoamerica for thousands
of years.
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SWORN BEFORE ME at the City of
Bloomington, in the State of Indiana on
March
, 2007.
Richard R. Wilk
Notary
This affidavit is filed on
2007 on behalf of the claimants.