Over a hundred Maya people from Southern Belize gained access to their traditional communal lands that have been expropriated by Texas oil company US Capital Energy in a staged peaceful protest in May.
Over a hundred Maya people from Southern Belize gained access to their traditional communal lands that have been expropriated by Texas oil company US Capital Energy in a staged peaceful protest in May.
Press Release by the Maya Leaders Alliance
June 26th, 2014, Punta Gorda Town. One year after the decisive judgment of the Belize Court of Appeal that upheld Maya Customary Land Rights, Maya people of the 39 villages in southern Belize came together at Indian Creek village, Toledo. This was The Gathering of the Children of the Earth. This historic event led by the Toledo Alcaldes Association and the Maya Leaders Alliance is an affirmation of the Maya Peoples solidarity for creating a more dignified and just Belize!
Punta Gorda Town, Toledo, Belize
On July 24, Andres Bol, an Indigenous resident of Crique Carco village, Belize, stood in front of a room of 115 Mayan villagers, and delivered the following message:
Continuing the legal roller coaster of decisions made regarding the land rights of the Maya people in Toledo district of southern Belize, the Court of Appeal has recently re-affirmed the Maya people’s rights to collective land ownership throughout southern Belize.
Punta Gorda, Toledo District-
The Maya Leaders Alliance and the Toledo Alcaldes Association are once again turning to the courts to hold the government of Belize to its responsibilities and to find the government in contempt of orders issued by the Supreme Court in the Maya Land Rights cases of 2007 and 2010.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has issued a statement condemning the State of Belize for violating the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Toledo district.
The Commission has been closely following the illegal extraction and destruction of natural resources conducted by foreign companies with support from the government of Belize since 2004, when they issued a recommendation that the government “delimit, demarcate and title the [Mayan] territory” and until that has happened, abstain from any projects that might affect these lands.
After traveling almost 2,000 miles to attend a hearing with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington D.C. to speak out on the human rights violations against Maya peoples in Southern Belize, on March 13th, spokeswoman of the Maya Leaders Alliance Cristina Coc was informed that the hearing had been cancelled at the last minute; representatives of the government of Belize had failed to show.
Traditional Maya leaders reported that Texas-based US Capital Energy has made numerous attempts to buy support for their oil drilling project on Maya lands including those inside the Sarstoon-Temash National Park in Southern Belize by infiltrating the Maya leaders’ traditional forms of governance. They declared the the company is blatantly undermining and disrespecting Indigenous governance, in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.