7 News Belize

The Peten Situation
posted (December 21, 2009)

And what’s happening in the Chiquibul is just a microcosm of the Peten Region of Guatemala. That’s the area that adjoins the western part of Belize. As Ambassador Martinez explained the population in the area is being systematically pushed eastward to find new places with arable farmlands. And inevitably that means the green areas of the Chiquibul Forest Reserve.

Fred Martinez, Ambassador to Guatemala
“The sad situation in that country is that the best land or the biggest portion of land are in the hands of few. The vast majority of people do not have land so they have moved into the Peten trying to find land but then they don’t find it either and so what is there us Peten is land that has been bought by major landowners or land that is distributed to previous military personnel as retirement benefits and they set up these huge pastures. So Peten has ended up being one big pasture, one green now to brown.

And now the people that try to get a piece of land enter these major land holdings in the Peten and rent a piece of land and are told you can rent here and farm but next year you have to move out but you see that green area there, maybe you can find somewhere and that green area is Belize. And these people naturally begin drifting into Belize and clearing some of our national forest. We do not have the manpower to catch every single one of them and I must say that our Belize Defense Force people are doing a remarkable job of being out there, tracking and trekking throughout those areas and you’ve been to some of those.”

Tomorrow – we’ll tell you what measures are being taken to control the trade and movement of illegally harvested Xate in Belize and Guatemala.

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