Illegal settlers concerned over relocation
This is the week that according to the agreement signed in Washington, several hundred illegal Guatemalan settlers are supposed to return across the border from three sites in Belize. To find out exactly how the people involved feel about it, News 5’s Stewart Krohn and Amandala’s Melvin Flores traveled to the settlement of Machaquila. Located deep in the rainforest of Toledo, the journalists found that the fastest way to get there was not necessarily a straight line.
Stewart Krohn, Reporting
To get to Machaquila, or Tres Puentes as the settlers call it, you travel west into Guatemala. An hour’s drive from the border finds you at Santa Elena, then another hour, along a smooth U.S. quality highway, and you’re at Poptun. That’s where it starts to get adventurous. For the next hour or so we bump along a gradually narrowing limestone road, which heads east, back toward the Belize border.
Stewart Krohn
“The bush is getting thicker, you can see where people have cut and burned to try and make some milpa. It’s getting quite a bit curvy and steeper.”
At the end of the road lies a tiny village called Carrizal… and that’s where we head out on foot.
Our guide, Antonio, tells us it’s a seven-kilometre walk. The beginning of the trek takes us through pasture and land that was once cleared, but is now returning to bush.
There is evidence of logging, although we pass dozens of towering sapodilla trees, the grooves in their bark still reminding us of the days before much of Peten’s forests were cleared, when chicle was king.
As we get closer to the border, the bush gets thicker. The people who settled Machaquila cleared this trail by hand… and after every rain it turns into a muddy quagmire.
Somewhere we crossed the border into Belizean territory, but since there’s no marker we can’t be sure exactly where we are… A massive tree, cut down to form a bridge over the creek, is our only indication that the settlement is close by.
Sure enough the village that the OAS has declared to be one point eight kilometres inside Belize, comes into view.
The tiny community whose existence has brought two nations close to armed conflict is about as basic as life on the planet gets: a dozen or so rudimentary buildings surrounding a flagpole, which on this day, at least, is appropriately devoid of a national symbol.
Although recent weeks have brought dozens of officials from Guatemala, Belize and the OAS, the sight of strangers in such a remote place can’t help but stir interest.
A crowd quickly gathers and after introducing ourselves, Melvin Flores of the Amandala newspaper, explains why we’re here and offers details of the recent agreement in Washington to return them to Guatemalan territory. The news is not well received.
Jose Xol, Settler (Translated from Spanish)
“We don’t know where to go. The only place we know is this area.”
Adolfo Tun, Settler
“We came here because… the motive is that we don’t have any land where to work and to live. That’s why we’re here suffering.”
Stewart Krohn
“Do you realise that this land is on Belize territory?”
Adolfo Tun
“That’s what they told us, but we don’t see a boundary line, that’s why we’re here.”
And what will they do when the Guatemalan government says they must move?
Jose Xol
“If he tells us to move we’ll move, but first they have to find some area where we can be relocated.”
Felix Tun, Settler
“And if they would find us a piece of land where we could move and work, we move because we want to work. That’s all we want.”
And the work never seems to end. Carving a village from the high bush of the Columbia River Forest Reserve has not been easy.
The longer we stay, the clearer it becomes that although these people have no legal right to live here, the root of their problem lies not in failed diplomacy, but deep in the reality of Guatemala’s history.
Stewart Krohn
“Walking here through all the bush, it seems like there is plenty land and Peten is full of land.”
Adolfo Tun
“We are being told by Guatemala that there is no land for us to work in Guatemala. All the land is being owned by farmers, big farmers.”
Santiago Chuc, Settler
“What we are thinking is that we’re going to stay here. Like my brother said, we don’t have land to go back to. What are we going to do? We cannot steal. If we leave from here, we have no where to go, we stay empty handed I guess.”
Stewart Krohn
“But why is it that the government of Guatemala can’t find you land?”
Santiago Chuc
“We don’t know.”
Stewart Krohn
“Sometime this week, a delegation from Guatemala and Belize will come and break the official news to the people of this village. At that time, they’re going to have some tough decisions to make. Reporting from Machaquila, Stewart Krohn for News 5.”
Under the Washington agreement, a binational team will be sent to the settlements of Machaquila, Rio Blanco and Valentin Camp by Wednesday evening at the latest. At that time residents will be offered compensation and asked by the Guatemalan government to leave. If they do not accept the offer, the Belizean authorities will then have no choice but to forcibly evict them. It is not known what plans, if any, the Guatemalan government has to find land for the settlers. It should be noted that at no time during the trip were News 5’s reporters treated anything but courteously by the Guatemalan army, police and civilians.
