Dangriga woman says govt. took her land to give Taiwanese
If there is one issue in Belize that is sure to ignite the passion of citizens it is the question of land. And as we found yesterday on a trip to Dangriga, there are some passionate citizens who have very definite concepts of what belongs to whom. Patrick Jones reports.
As she walks along an overgrown path on her property, Betty Gabourel Cooper does not look like someone in the middle of a battle. But in fact she is waging a war to keep her two hundred and twenty acres of prime real estate near Dangriga. Who is she fighting? The Government of Belize.
Betty Gabourel Cooper, Land Owner
“This is just crookedness and I think they have picked the wrong person.”
In case you haven’t figured it out… Betty Gabourel Cooper is vex. According to Cooper the move to take away her land goes back to March of 1997. After agreeing to sell thirteen acres to government for expansion of the Dangriga airstrip, she thought that was the end of the matter. A couple of weeks ago, however, it was brought to her attention that a second attempt was being made to acquire, not only thirteen acres, but the remaining portion, roughly two hundred and twenty acres. She headed to the office of Natural Resources Minister Edwardo Juan to investigate.
Betty Gabourel Cooper
“I said, what do you want it for? He said well, it’s to give ten Belizeans. I said, for what? He said for shrimp farming. I said, Mr. Juan, you haven’t paid me for my thirteen acres you acquired last year and now you are taking the rest of it, do you have ex amount of dollars to give me. He looked at me, and I said, I know it’s not for Belizeans because it cost around forty thousand dollars per acre to develop an acre pond. So he said to me, these are two-acre ponds. I said, aha, there you go. And you figure, forty acres, what you need all this acreage for? I said but the Taiwanese told me that this land is for them, that it’s being acquired for them. When he told me that it’s for ten Belizeans, I was taken speechless, because then who am I? I was born – my parents are from here, my father is from here. Then who am I? I’m from some space?”
If the government seems to think Mrs. Cooper hails from somewhere beyond Mars, she has no such doubts about who is behind the move to take her land.
Betty Gabourel Cooper
“Some Taiwanese had approached me to buy this property and I told them no, I wasn’t interested in selling this property. It has been in my family for a long, long time and I have kids and grand kids that will some day acquire this land and use it for shrimp farming.”
Cooper says that she was eventually persuaded by the Taiwanese to agree to a joint venture… and was expecting to receive a formal proposal by the middle of the month. Instead she discovered in the Gazette that her land had been acquired by government… “for a public purpose”. In this case, that purpose was to distribute the land to a newly formed cooperative: D.D.I.C. – the Dangriga Development Initiative Cooperative.
Russell Garcia, Area Representative
“If somebody is telling you we’re trying to strong some land, no that’s not true. It’s a constitutional right for us to seek some land to be appropriated for public purposes. And I have said that the public purpose here has to do with getting Belizeans who want an opportunity to become economic citizens with a partner.”
That partner, it turns out, happen to be the same group of Taiwanese investors who were previously negotiating directly with Cooper. But that didn’t seem to bother area representative and Minister of Agriculture Russell Garcia.
Q: “So you’re saying the Taiwanese have nothing to do with your acquisition of that land?”
Russell Garcia
“No, it has nothing to do with that. This is a joint venture. In other words the Belizeans want to do the work there. The capital comes from the Taiwanese and that is what I am saying to you. The Taiwanese are not buying the land.”
Q: “They’re getting the land from you?”
Russell Garcia
“The Taiwanese, in other words, the Taiwanese and these Belizean people, in other words, these young people, they want to do work on shrimp.”
Q: “Will the Taiwanese own the shrimp operation?”
Russell Garcia
“Listen to me, listen to me good. You see, because you seem to be coming with a line that I must tow the line. I am telling you these young people want to have an operation with shrimp, O.k.? The Taiwanese people, they also want to have an operation also. Then we said to the young people, here it is you have an opportunity; you don’t have the money, these guys have the money, you need to merge your abilities with these people so that these people will be able to then work with you and you with them. In other words it’s a clear thing of cast your bucket down where you are.”
Garcia told News Five that he already has a lease on the land and that the next step is to commence the development process. He says that if in the future the Taiwanese want to purchase the land, government would have no difficulty in selling.
Russell Garcia
“This land, this land, until it is bought, the D.D.I.C. has a lease on the land, O.K.? It is a joint venture. All partners have a lease on the land. It will be a lease, I don’t know up to how long. In other words what needs to be done first is a development process.”
But what Garcia calls a development process, Cooper sees as just one more naked land grab.
Betty Gabourel Cooper
“I first made an appointment with the Taiwanese that Mr. Garcia is dealing with and they admitted to me that it is true – the land was for them. And they also asked me, well, if I told them that I was very angry they would never get this land, no matter they did. Before they get this land they would pack up and leave, because they’ll never get it. So he told me, Mrs. Cooper, if we just forget about your land, will you just, not say anything about the rest? I said oh no, how about those poor people that have five acres and ten acres and three acres, that he has acquired the land for you and they don’t have a voice?”
One suspects that the Government of Belize has not heard the last of Mrs. Cooper’s voice. Patrick Jones, for News Five.
Betty Gabourel Cooper was not the only Dangrigan to lose her land in the transaction. Her neighbor, Bryon Bowman, also lost some two hundred acres, for which he has not yet been paid. Sources in the Ministry of Natural Resources tell News Five that hundreds of people all over Belize have had their land acquired and are still owed several hundred million dollars by Government.
