Independence Villager mad about land issue

Julia Bonilla

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, that’s how one angry woman from Independence Village is feeling tonight. She has a scorching land issue with the Ministry of Natural Resources.   A portion of Julie Bonilla’s property has been affected by a road being built to service new lot owners in the village. Bonilla says, however, that the Ministry wants her to dismantle a building on the land. And despite several trips to the Capital, she says her requests to have the situation remedied have been denied and that’s why she came to our studios to lodge her complaint.

Julia Bonilla, Independence Villager, Claims Unfair Treatment by Min. of Natural Resources

“Mister Vega promised us that they were gonna build the road and say; you know what, Miss Bonilla they not gonna touch no part of your house, they gonna pass right on side of it and they’re gonna give me the lot across. That was the agreement. Well I said, you know what, let me stop coming back and believe in his word. After all, I came back again because somebody tell me, ih say Miss Bonilla, you’re not going to get the lot. The guy that work with Mister Melvin Hulse tell me you’re not getting the lot—ih say you already got and you’re not going to get. And so I come back to Belmopan and I tell him. I do wa next appointment and they tell me, you know what, you’re not gonna get the lot. The only way you gonna get the lot is if you sign this paper. I say but what with this paper. It says the only way I’m gonna get it [is] if I broke down my house—if I agree that they break my house down. They gonna give me two lots as private property which does not worth the money that I have invested in the house. The house have a value of thirty thousand dollars. They are telling me that they are gonna give me two private lots weh equivalent to ten thousand dollars. So where my twenty thousand dollars deh? That’s what I want them to answer me—if they gonna give me my twenty thousand dollars or if they gonna rebuild my house which I don’t want to lose my house. I want them to just give me the go ahead and say Miss Bonilla, we’re gonna give you the lee portion of land weh yoh house fall out on the road and then that’s it and give me the lot across, which they promised. Now I am feeling like I am being discriminated like there is some kind of discrimination to me because all my neighbors they are getting the lot across. Mister McKenzie deh the get it under ih wife name, Miss Pott di get it under ih husband name because I already see it. Now what I don’t like—wah next thing—my ma apply for a lot for herself. Now they are saying that they’re giving my mother the lot in re-compensation in our name.  like u are giving me something but it’s not gonna be in your name, it’s gonna be in your mom’s name. That’s not right. My ma done say she don’t want it. She called them yesterday and tell them that she is not accepting it. That the lot belongs to us and they should give it to us and not to her. She needs a lot of her own. She don’t need to get nothing from nobody in her name for someone else. So I want to get that clear and I don’t like the way they treat us. When I gone to Belmopan just two weeks ago, I get really hurted—as a Belizean I really get hurted. To me, it’s not a matter of colors or whatever, but it is just a matter of justice. It’s a matter that I have to cry and come up all the way here to Belize and make the people they know this dah weh deh di take place.”