PHOTO of San Jose Succotz Marching Band, Western Belize Recreational Area

San Jose Succotz Marching Band, Cayo District, Western Belize Recreational Area

Credit for photo to Margaret Johnson. San Jose Succotz Village is across the Western Highway and ferry location to the Xununtanich Mayan Temple ruins on the opposite hill above the town and Mopan River which seperates them.

LAND USAGE DISPUTE BETWEEN INDIGENOUS MAYA AND INTELLECTUAL PORT TOWNIES.

TOLEDO DISTRICT MAYA ARGUE THEIR RIGHTS

By Ray Auxillou, Nov., 2008

The argument between the communal village system of land exploitation of the dozen villages that represent the historical Maya control of land in Toledo during British Colonial times, continues to this day. The weekend newspapers again talk about Supreme court cases the Maya are bringing against the government to give them large tracts of land in the historical communal manner. The Maya rotating milpa system worked in a SERF/slavery type feudal aristocracy during the two Mayan Empires we know about over ten thousand years. The Maya were actually slaves owned by their aristocratic feudal lords and ladies. No different than that of Russia under the Tsar aristocracy.

There are parallels in modern Belize, to do with land ownership and usage with that of Russia, or the Dark Ages of European feudalism. The crux of the matter is that the land in Belize is for the most part unfertile and poor. In order to be productive on a modern scale, the agriculture has to be converted by scientific research and methods to something more productive. The new agricultural techniques are known nowadays, or can be found on the internet, though not in rural village areas, but the Maya of Toledo wish to continue their own communal land ownership system, using rotational forest clearing milpa; which while it works on the small scale, is in comparison, unproductive in volumes, compared to that of modern technological methods.

The power class of our political aristocracy making their living off taxes in the government control business, mostly from the port town of Belize City, a city centered bunch of service orientated intellectual academics, who wish the lands of Belize to produce more in crops and in turn the tax increases, that would ensue for their gratification and life styles, a larger share of monies earned from modern agriculture. The port town folk require larger and ever larger amounts of money to satisfy their material lifestyles based on service industries, or taxation. The Maya though extol the virtues of country rural life, living marginally, but with great freedom of TIME and leisure, to enjoy life in harmony with nature. The upshot of the clash between the intellectual new aristocratic elite of mostly the port Belize City, who are reluctant to allow the Maya to waste the land resources, which even at best are of low productivity, using ancient agricultural techniques of rotating forest clearing. The clash revolves around money as most things do. In this case in Belize, the city folks and politicians want more money out of the land. This cannot be done under the wasteful rotational milpa method of ancient times. As population of Belize grows, the land usage question becomes ever more urgent. The Maya do not use the poor lands of Belize efficiently.

Historically, using European and Russian history, we know and it has been confirmed in Belize, that modern agriculture methods increase productivity and the life styles improve materially of bureaucrats and politicians through increased taxation on that productivity. Agriculture productivity also dictates that larger land ownership is necessary to get larger productivity gains and more taxes. Agriculture Department have through the statistical office more up to date statistics these days, on yields per acre over the years. Communal land ownership while inefficient, led to a nice rural peasant life style, based on a communal village system, devoid for the most part in greed for more material things. The conflict is between the intellectuals and service workers of the port Belize City and our growing population in Belize, from higher birth rates that are exponential, against the world of the rural Maya who having rid themselves of their own feudal aristocracy more than nine hundred years ago, do not wish to go back to a serfdom, or slavery system of working under our new aristocracy.

There is the problem, or clash of increased agriculture productivity desires and thus taxes, to support the more material lifestyle of the port Belize City intellectuals, who control the strings of political and government regulatory power and the natural increase of population in Belize, which is already in some areas, seeing agriculture plots decrease in size due to inheritance factors. Yet the conflict between agriculture productivity comes with the ambition and energy of fewer inspired people, accumulating and owning larger consolidated tracts of lands, required of more efficient modern agricultural technological practices or more productivity. The intellectuals of Belize want more productivity, while the Maya want a comfortable rural lifestyle of olden days.

While the Maya of Toledo are judged by the port city intellectuals to be obtuse, secretive, stubborn and ignorant, the arguments of the benefits of different land use and agriculture productivity represent more a clash of cultures of life styles and expectations. The Maya are not stupid and many have migrated seasonally to other parts of Belize, in cities and towns for day labor, or seasonal work in the service industries liked by the port town intellectuals. At root, is the life style, or culture and money and taxation needs of the port town intellectuals who wish merely to see the Maya relegated to a subservient role as slave, or serf labor, or replaced by more dynamic progressive individuals driven by riches and the challenges, while they the intellectuals of Belize City, assume the mantel of the by-gone feudal lords of the ancient Mayan Empires, in a new bureaucratic governing apparatus. The Maya resist enslavement through the court system now, in attempting to protect their large inefficient land requirements of poor soil conditions based on the ancient communal milpa system of land usage, versus the intellectuals of our port city who control the government apparatus who wish to modernize agriculture and land usage to get more taxes. The end result will be the displacement of large numbers of growing Mayan population into a city atmosphere, seeking jobs, in a small nation with no middle level manufacturing and export capacity to support them. The clash is only starting and will get worse as population and shinking land sources available, become more scarce and the arguments become more violent.

The Agriculture Department and Ministry of Natural Resources is in a between position concerning the small farmer. The need of politics requires modernizing agriculture for more taxes, whereas the current large land availability, versus small population levels dictate that the small farmer and the Maya doing casual subsistant farming is still dominant and in the drivers seat. This period of Belizean history is in a transition and will change as population grows exponentially.

BELIZE joins with Guatemala over border Mayan ruins of EL PILAR

Guatemala - BELIZE. The Mayan City of El Pilar was first mapped out by archeologist Anabel Ford in 1983. Anabel Ford had been working in the Mayan jungle since 1972 as a researcher from University of California, Santa Barbara, UCSB. The Archaeological site El Pilar straddles the borders of Belize and Guatemala.

Now the initiative to turn the site into a peace park will become a reality. A Memorandum of Understanding between Guatemalan officials and UCSB will be signed on the 22 of October in Santa Barbara. Guatemalan dignitaries Hector Escobedo, director general of the Directorate of Cultural and Natural Patrimony in Guatemala; Erick Ponciano, director of the Institute of Culture and History; and Vilma Fialko, coordinator of the Project of Archaeological Site Protection of Petén will sign the Memorandum as representatives of the Guatemalan Government.

The El Pilar Peace Park Initiative is a collaborative research project on both sides of the Guatemala and Belize borders. The signing of the MOU marks the 25th anniversary of Ford's discovery of El Pilar.

Several organizations dedicated to the preservation of archeological and cultural heritage will participate, Exploring Solutions Past ~ The Maya Forest Alliance, MesoAmerican Research Center at UCSB and Institute of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, ISBER.

After the signing of the MOU, an exhibit focusing on El Pilar will continue through October 31. The exhibit includes maps of El Pilar, the Maya forest, and the forest garden, and wall-sized panels that feature photographer Macduff Everton's images documenting the research of El Pilar.

Anabel Ford explains that El Pilar at its most vibrant, the period from A.D. 600 to 900, had a population of more than 20,000 people who lived in a mosaic landscape of city homes and gardens. This contrasted with areas of forest reserve and agricultural fields, such as present-day traditional Maya forest gardens. Today, El Pilar is at the heart of a 5,000-acre archaeological reserve linking Belize and Guatemala and celebrating the culture and nature of the Maya forest.

http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize/

Photo of Xununtanich Mayan Ruin pyramid

You can see the size by the group of tourists in the bottom left hand corner of the photo. I first climbed this Mayan temple ruin back in 1962 and it still had jungle trees growing on it. We had to pull ourselves up by bushes and tree roots to get to the top. This is a classic area pyramind. The Mayan people still live in San Jose Sucttoz across the Mopan river and a few miles away also in Benque Viejo Town.

WESTERN BELIZE HAPPENINGS!

We had a guest rode up on his motorbike the other day. Turned out to be a University Student from the UK, who is in Belmopan, living with a family and attending University of Belize for the FALL semester, a no credit semester for Foreign Travel Education. William Pooley is 23 years old and has been in Venezuela he said. He goes to the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, wherever that might be? He had an interesting story of going to El Mirador, an ancient Mayan metropolis of millions of people with a pyramid supposed to be bigger than anything in Egypt or the rest of the world, which is a six day round trip from Flores, in the Peten through difficult jungle. This is a new city archeological escavation of a metropolis that once housed millions of people on the border of Mexico, but in Guatemala northern Peten jungles. Mexico about 20 miles away has another big metropolis buried under the same jungle too. Anyway, El Mirador has teams of archeologists excavating the temples. William took a tour out of Los Amigos Hostel, in Flores, Peten, Guatemala across the border from here in Belize. About 2 hours in a mini-bus. The tour takes you to a jungle village where you camp overnight, then a mule train is organized and you tramp the jungle trails for 6 hours for two days to get to the excavation site. Camping gear, drinking water and food are all carried on mules from the remote village jump off point. William the student said, that the roads in this ancient metropolitan area are wider than a six lane freeway in England. Overgrown with high jungle trees, but flat topped still with clear cut sides and high above the jungle floor. William was off to the Belize Alps and the Mountain Pine Ridge foothills today Sunday and we enjoyed having him, as we were also empty, being in the FALL OFF-SEASON for tourism. This is the time we do renovations and repainting and repairs during the FALL months and go on vacation ourselves.

http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize

WESTERN BELIZE HAPPENINGS!

WESTERN BELIZE RECREATIONAL AREA ( CAYO DISTRICT )
(WESTERN BELIZE HAPPENINGS! )

We have the 2009 tour and expedition rates posted now for the Western Cayo District of the country of Belize. Sept. 1st, 2008

2009 TOURIST VISITOR FAVORITES !

· Xununtanich, Clarissa Falls and Cahel Pech tour - $22 usa

· Caracol pyramids interior day trip -$75—$85 usa

· XIBALBA, the ATM Cave expedition to the Mayan

sacrifical underworld— all day trip- $75—$85 usa

· Horse back riding Mopan River, ferry and climb to Xununtanich hilltop temple ruins by horse. - $40—$75 usa

· Belize Alps foothills, Pine Ridge day trip— $40—$60—$75 usa depending on tour guide, or tour operator.

· Barton Creek Outpost cave canoeing—$60 usa, or use FREE swimming hole with swinging ropes from trees.

· TIKAL all day round trip $135 usa, ( all inclusive )

· Ultra Light Trike flying over Belize River Valley—$$75 -$100 usa

· Guanacaste National Park swimming hole—$2 usa by bus.

· Blue Hole Cenote National Park Swimming Hole

· Crystal Cave and Petroglyphs - $75 usa

· White water kayaking Mopan River -$60—$75 usa

· Canoeing pristine natural Macal River Gorge - $20 usa

· Canoeing and hiking $70 usa

· There are many more attractions from slate carving, music lessons, painting art lessons, archery, Mayan pottery making, wine making, zip lines, cave tubing, ETC.

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Courtesy of: Falconview Backpackers upscale Adventure Hostel

http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventureinbelize/