Search

Environmental and agrarian changes are proceeding rapidly in southern Belize. Despite common recognition of these changes, little research has attempted to examine the class processes involved in social and environmental change. We trace how capitalism has transformed household reproduction over the past four decades, focusing on two key pathways by which these changes unfold: the commercialization of land use and the education of the labour force. Emerging class processes in the Maya communities undermine subsistence agriculture, generate inequality between households and genders, and magnify conflicts over land. These effects complicate struggles for communal land rights and class solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an overview of an Indigenous‐led participatory research project, The Future We Dream, co‐developed by rural land defenders in Central America and the Caribbean. To engage in recent dialectics concerning complicity and decolonising methodologies, we centre Indigenous Maya conceptions of health, wellbeing and what 'living well' means to community members. For context, The Future We Dream responds to the 2015 landmark ruling made by the Caribbean Court of Justice affirming the land rights of the Maya people of Southern Belize. Amidst tensions with the state that followed the ruling, an autonomous movement composed of grassroots organisers turned their attention towards imagining and constructing a self‐determined future. In turn, the communities initiated a research exercise inspired by desire‐based methodologies (Tuck, 2009) to articulate a collective vision of a healthful Maya future outside of colonial‐liberal worldviews, and notably, formulating Maya visions of healthful, sustainable worlds. In reporting on this one example of grassroots, anticolonial health research that departs from the hierarchal knowledge production practices of liberal academia, this paper details the collaborative process/project; the complexities/complicities of research involving Indigenous communities; and how Indigenous epistemologies are generative vis‐a‐vis unsettling conventional knowledge production practices in the contentious field of global health research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the se' komonil concept of living in respectful togetherness and reciprocal dignity and human-environment interdependence and sahil ch'oolej concept of holistic joy, mutual flourishing and shared upliftment for the Maya of Southern Belize amid efforts to safeguard and renew Indigenous ways of knowing, living and being. Topics discussed include the land rights movement of the Maya, threats to the culture of the group, and the meaning of joy for Maya youth.

While most scholars working on resistance and decolonisation in Latin America and the Caribbean are familiar with the Zapatistas, far fewer have afforded committed attention to the parallel Maya land rights struggle and autonomous social movement in the region. Notably, a movement that is currently advancing in both Central America and the Caribbean, namely, Belize—a former colony of the British Crown. Accordingly, this piece offers a summary of the struggle of the Qʼeqchiʼ and Mopan Maya communities of Toledo District, Southern Belize. More specifically, it introduces readers to the Maya Leaders Alliance (MLA)—an ever-evolving grassroots coalition of Maya organisations, land defenders, and human rights activists that comprise the movement. We start by illustrating the current context of heightened tension that exists between the Maya and the state, and then share an overview of the movement's political aims and programme of activities in the face of the historical, structural, and ongoing colonial forces the Maya are up against. Ultimately, this profile will demonstrate how Maya communities in Belize are practising 'non-metaphorical decolonisation' and engendering 'Indigenous resurgence' whilst mobilising for land, dignity, and a peaceful future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of an autonomous social movement defending and struggling for Indigenous land, dignity, and self-determination in Central America and the postcolonial Caribbean. More precisely, it highlights how Maya communities in Toledo District, Southern Belize are mobilising to protect and continue to breathe life into their culture, customs, cosmovisión, and communities. In doing so, we introduce readers to three of the primary organisations that partially constitute the social movement; the Toledo Alcaldes Association (TAA), Maya Leaders Alliance (MLA), and Julian Cho Society (JCS). In addition to historicising and profiling these groups, their ground-breaking land rights victory, and the unity they have galvanised amongst Maya villages, the piece demonstrates how Indigenous youth are engaging in and actively redefining development within the region. We do this by sharing a synopsis of an action camp that was organised by-and-for Maya youth. Before describing the undertakings and outcomes of the camp, we detail how the gathering was informed and shaped by calls being made for desirebased research. To this end, we explain how our methods and field activities were guided by decolonial, community-based, participatory-action, and creative approaches. Ultimately, the piece reveals how dignity-anchored, dream-driven, desire-based research that is animated and co-created by Indigenous youth not only can contribute to building pathways out of structural and slow violence-but also can at once counter and transform development. Notably, Maya youth are co-authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, however, state-sponsored industrial logging, mining, and agribusiness activities have increasingly threatened Maya land rights as the government has granted concessions to multinational corporations without consulting Maya villages. At present, the Toledo Alcaldes Association (TAA), consisting of 78 leaders from 41 Maya communities in Toledo District, is the main representative body of the Maya people. Citing the MLA and TAA's claim that the alcaldes represent a form of customary communal governance sanctioned by Maya communities collectively, the government asserted: "We do not believe that there is such "collective governance system" of the Maya people.". [Extracted from the article]