Sacred ground

Indigenous people are gaining rights to their land.

Eric Larson | Jan/Feb 2008 issue

The Toledo district of southern Belize contains more than 1,600 acres of mountains, rivers and dense rainforest. It is also home to the Columbia River Forest Reserve, on which some 38 Maya communities depend to sustain themselves and their culture. About 12 years ago, villagers noticed the drinking water from nearby streams and rivers was becoming polluted. The reason: The Belizean government had granted a concession allowing Atlantic Industries, a Malaysian logging company, to begin cutting trees in the area-without knowledge or consent of the Maya.

"This is a forest that we have protected for centuries," says Cristina Coc, a native of Laguna, a village in the district. "During that time, no one in the communities was aware that [the concession] had been granted. We are subsistence farmers. People use this land on a daily basis. It is their source of drinking water, the water they use to bathe and wash clothes."

So Coc and other activists started legal proceedings. And last October, they won. The Supreme Court of Belize ruled that the people of the Toledo district have a constitutional right to the land their ancestors have lived, worked and died on for millennia. In doing so, the court may well have set a precedent for land rights among indigenous peoples everywhere.

At first, the complaints of the Maya were all but ignored by the Belizean government. So the Toledo Maya Cultural Council, led by Maya activist Julian Cho, began lobbying for support from international human-rights organizations and the Indian Law Resource Center, a Montana-based non-profit group. With the help of these organizations, the Maya brought the issue to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In 2004, the IACHR ruled that the Maya's rights had been violated, and issued three strong recommendations to the Belizean government, which were also ignored. That is what prompted the most recent case.

"We provided [the court with] as many expert reports as possible to provide support for our argument that because we are indigenous to the area, we should be granted native rights and that our constitution in Belize provides protection to native people," says Coc.

This case, says S. James Anaya, the University of Arizona law professor whose team developed the theory and documentation for the case, is different from others that have dealt with land use by indigenous peoples. The legal team argued that by refusing to acknowledge the Maya's claim, the government violated their right to property, their right to land and, therefore, their right to life.

"This," he says, "is a yet-unprecedented view of right-to-life." Coc, in part motivated by the unsolved murder of Julian Cho in 1998, felt a profound sense of gratitude as the judge read the court's final decision, in favour of the Maya on all counts. Some four busloads of villagers sat through the reading, and afterwards took to the streets for a celebration.

"There are so many who were not with us," says Coc. "But their lives were honoured that day. I felt truly appreciative that I lived to see that moment."

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