G.O.B. to Meet with Garifuna Nation About Issues

Dolores Balderamos Garcia

On Wednesday, the Garifuna community spoke out about struggles surrounding communal land rights.  In that press conference, its representatives spoke of land issues affecting three Garifuna communities in the south, between the villages of Barranco and Midway, Seine Bight and Placencia and Georgetown and Maya Mopan.  It’s about the preservation of the cultural heritage of the Garinagu. Today, Minister of Indigenous People’s Affairs, Dolores Balderamos Garcia told the media that the government is meeting with three groups in the south to see how the issue can be addressed.

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Indigenous People’s Affairs

“It was a long struggle of the Maya people to have gotten to the point of 2015 when the Caribbean Court of Justice ruled in the consent judgement. That was a long struggle. Now will the Garifuna people do the same? That is a question that you may want to ask them. But for my part and for the part of our ministry, I can say to you that we will do our very best to treat both indigenous groupings of people with equal respect. I do not wish to see that we will be favouring Maya over Garifuna or Garifuna over Maya. And we have had good meetings. We have had meetings with the National Garifuna Council, the Indigenous Foundation of Hopkins. We have also visited last week, we were down in Georgetown and Hopkins and Dangriga and we do plan to visit Toledo as well. But I want to say to you in relation to the matter that is arising now between Midway Village and Barranco Village, our commissioner Gregory Ch’oc is on top of the situation. I think a meeting is convened for Monday and we will listen.”

The various groupings include the Garifuna Nation, the National Garifuna Council and the Hopkins Indigenous People Foundation.