In Dr. Laurie Medina’s new book, Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize: Indigenous Rights, Markets, and Sovereignties, she examines the decades-long struggle by Q’eqchi’ and Mopan Maya communities in Belize to win state recognition of their Indigenous right to lands on which they have depended for generations.
During the 1990s, in response to a debt crisis, the Belizean government looked to generate revenue by exploiting its natural resources. The government issued concessions for logging and oil exploration on lands claimed by the Maya. The state also established protected areas to attract ecotourists on lands claimed by Maya communities.
Medina said that these events were unfolding alongside efforts by Indigenous activists to win recognition for Indigenous rights on a global scale, a process covered in the book. As they engaged in this international movement, Belizean Maya leaders found allies from North America who helped them petition the Belizean courts to demand that the government rescind the concessions and recognize these lands as belonging to the Maya communities. When the government ignored their lawsuit, the Maya and their allies took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The case was one of the first Indigenous land rights cases decided by the commission and it played an important role in developing a jurisprudence on Indigenous rights to lands in the Americas. In 2004, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled in favor of the Maya.
“The most important part of the commission’s decision was the determination that Maya communities’ practice of customary tenure to manage these lands – essentially their practice of culture – rendered those lands Maya collective property.” Medina said. “It didn’t matter if the Belizean government didn’t recognize these lands as Maya property under the state property system.”
Medina was surprised by the enthusiasm of legal experts expressed toward these judicial decisions compared to their reception in Belize.
“The decision set important precedents and they were cited in petitions and decisions from across Latin America that came later,” Medina said. “It was game-changing, but in Belize, the decision was simply not implemented.”
In response, Maya communities returned to the Belizean courts, which affirmed the decision that Maya communities’ practice of customary tenure over the lands they claimed made these lands Maya property. After a decade of litigation, Belizean courts demanded that the executive branch recognize and protect this property, just as the government protects property created through the state property system. However, these legal decisions have still not been fully implemented.
Medina’s book explores the strategies pursued by Maya leaders to advance implementation and by state actors to hinder it. She said that unlike many Indigenous communities in Latin America, Maya communities in southern Belize continue to reside on the lands they claim and continue to manage those lands through their customary tenure practices despite the government’s continued failure to officially grant them titles.
“It’s the practice of customary tenure that brings the community into existence and continues to reproduce it,” Medina said. “As long as that continues to be the case, those communities have stability that many other Indigenous communities in Latin America lack.”