| 2025 will make ten years since the 2015 ruling of the Caribbean Court of Justice, and it still hasn't been implemented! That means that the process of drafting the Maya Land Policy needs to see major progress in a hurry. In the last Cabinet brief, it stated that they had reviewed the Draft Maya Customary Land Tenure Policy, offering recommendations to enhance key features and calling for further consultations with stakeholders before finalizing and moving towards legislation. On Friday, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples' Affairs explained more.
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Human Development
"We have come up with another iteration of the policy and we're really hoping to finalize it after consultation of course. Everything is free and open. We are acting again, as always, in the best of faith. The reason it's come up recently is that it was considered by cabinet, on the 8th of October. And also we have had the visit of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights and the Commissioner, Mr. Caballero. So the latest version of the policy, again, which will be fully consulted, shows that government is trying to accommodate the comments, especially of the Maya leaders Alliance folks. And we're trying to come up with a formula that will be acceptable, in terms of the amount of land that can be applied for once the legislation is passed as automatic recognition for communal land, if that is what the villagers decide. So, the difficulty with the concentric circles of the one and two and three kilometers is that in our view, in the view of the government, that proposal was twisted. And really, some of the uninformed people were being told that that is all they can apply for, as if the government intends to just maybe put the Maya villages in a box or in just a little corner, you know, farthest from the truth. The truth is that with the proposal of the kilometer radius and also now, with the proposal of a multiplication by population of the village, really what it is is that the people of the village, should they choose and vote to have the communal land, they would be able to apply for that radius of land or that amount of land as an automatic occupation. Now, If they want beyond what is proposed by the government again, once we consult and once we come to a finalization, then they would have to prove like, for instance, a kilometer from your village center is where you have your homes, you might have your milpa close to you, but further than that, further than what can be automatically recognized as in the application for communal land, Further than that, there would have to be proof of use and occupation for about 30 years prior to the ruling of 2015."
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