Mayans in Belize Seek IDB Help to Protect Land
12/4/97
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Mayans in Belize Seek IDB Help to Protect Land
Source: InterPress Third World news Agency
Date: 12/4/97
Author: Abid Aslam
Copyright 1997: InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights
reserved
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) - Mayan Indians in Southern Belize are
appealing to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for help in
protecting their lands from multinational timber companies.
The bank's executive directors arfe scheduled to vote Dec. 10
on a 28-million-dollar loan to help the Belize government expand
and pave the country's Southern Highway. This road cuts a swathe
through traditional Mayan lands and connects logging operations in
the luxuriant hinterland to the Atlantic coast.
The Mayans have appealed to the Belizean supreme court for
recognition of their right to lands which are being parceled out
to the logging companies - in some cases for less than one dollar
per acre. The forest's indigenous inhabitants want financing for
the road held up pending the outcome of that case.
Next Monday, Julian Cho, Chairman of the Toledo Maya Cultural
Council, will meet IDB President Enrique Iglesias in Washington.
''We hope that at least the record will reflect that we met
with Mr. Iglesias, so he can never claim he didn't know the Mayan
position before approving the project,'' said Armstrong Wiggins,
Central America director at the Indian Law Resource Center, a non-
profit law firm representing the Mayans.
''I speak to you as a man who has unconditional love for
Belize. I am asking you to suspend giving the loan to pave the
Southern Highway until the land tenure for all the Maya villages
is completely settled,'' Cho, a Mayan leader from Belize's Toledo
district, wrote to IDB executive directors on Nov. 21.
''The struggles that the Mayas face in the context of a
developing Belize is common to all indigenous poeple in the
hemisphere: recognition of ancestral lands, culture, justice and
the environment,'' Cho declared. ''We are at risk particularly
because the status of our land tenure is so tenuous. We have no
legal rights to any of our land.''
That message may be lost on the executive directors, who are
said by well-placed analysts to be overwhelmingly in favour of the
loan, for which Belizean Prime Minister and Minister of Economic
Development Manuel Esquivel has pushed hard.
Esquivel, who also represents his country on the bank's board of
governors, last year took the highly unusual step of traveling to
Washington to lobby in person for the loan. Frustrated by delays
in processing the loan, however, he withdrew the loan application
in september in an apparent bid to force Iglesias's hand.
The ploy worked, according to well-placed sources and copies of
correspondence obtained by IPS.
IDB staffers had followed to the letter the bank's loan
application policies, insisting that Belmopan implement an
Environmental and Social Technical Assistance Project (ESTAP)
consisting of eight ''Accomplishments'' to be completed before any
companies could be invited to bid for contracts to pave the
highway.
Bank operations officials in a Sep. 5 letter noted that only
four of these had been fulfiled to their satisfaction. Belmopan
had yet to: demarcate key protected forest areas; show it could
protect those areas; establish the ground rules for community
consultation; and collect data on land leases, titles, and pending
applications in Mayan villages.
''With respect to the Mayan land tenure issue, we will need to
be able to assure our Board that the Government is committed to
seeking a fair and transparent resolution,'' IDB Operations
Manager Miguel Martinez emphasised in the letter.
The government's response - a one-sentence, Sep. 9 letter from
Yvonne Hyde, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Economic
Development - was to withdraw the loan request. For the Mayans'
supporters, however, this was a hollow victory: Belmopan, they
feared, would go ahead with funding from bilateral sources in
Europe, Asia, and the Middle East - and none of this money would
come with the environmental and social conditions tied to IDB
financing.
Instead, ''the IDB blinked,'' said one analyst.
Esquivel and Iglesias met behind closed doors in Hong Kong in
late September, during the annual meetings of the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF). On Oct. 6, Iglesias wrote to
Esquivel: ''I understand that your decision to withdraw (the loan
request) was in part a reflection of yoru concern that the Bank
was adding conditions to the loan. I wish to assure you, Mr. Prime
Minister, that this is not the case.''
The IDB president said he was ''encouraged'' by Belmopan's
decision to release logging documents previously withheld, adding:
''We trust that you will also be able to provide us with
information so that we may better understand and inform our Board,
if necessary, of your Government's approach to the land tenure
issue.''
Esquivel replied Oct. 14, asking Iglesias to send the loan to
the board before the end of the year. ''Belizeans have accepted
the existence of forest estates which have been, from their
creation, managed by the Government for forestry purposes,
including primarily the production of timber,'' he asserted.
''All Belizeans in the region have been accommodated on these
forest reserves for such traditional uses as hunting, fishing,
gathering of leaves for thatching houses, but always under the
strict control of the Forestry Department. Where these activities
do not conflict with the primary goals of forest management, they
continue to be allowed for the benefit of all Belizeans,'' he
added.
While rejecting any settlement with the Mayans that would
''balkanise the country,'' Esquivel argued: ''No less an example
of government's commitment is that of the ESTAP, which has been
designed to take account of the 'rights, assets and cultural
integrity' of the people in the southern regions of Belize,
including the Mayan Indians.''
Those assurances have been disputed by bank operations staff,
and by Cho, who wrote to the executive directors: ''Consultation
of the Mayas, even with the ESTAP, has been minimal and one-
directional. The government has effectively excluded from the
process the key issue of indigenous land rights.''
The Belizean supreme court is not likely to hand down a
decision in the Mayan case soon, as national elections are
scheduled for next year, said the Indian Law Resource Center's
Wiggins, who is a Miskito Indian from Nicaragua.
Copyright 1997, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
All rights reserved
May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or
service outside of the APC networks, without specific
permission from IPS. This limitation includes distribution
via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists,
print media and broadcast. For information about cross-
posting, send a message to . For
information about print or broadcast reproduction please
contact the IPS coordinator at .