Cristina Coc
According to Cristina Coc, the Mayan Communities have expressed concerns over the lack of commitment by the Maya Land Rights Commission with regards to a work plan. She says that the mistrust between the parties is building.
Cristina Coc, Spokesperson, MLA
“The commission did not meet with us at the commission’s will. The commission met with us after so many times of coming back to this very court and asking the court to have the commission take undertaking to meet with us because they refuse to meet with us. They refused to have good faith negotiations with us particular on the work plan. And because they were pressed to do that they ended up having a few meeting with us where they presented to us a draft framework of a work plan. We continue to give time and time again out inputs. In one point in time they gave us a work plan that came with the Solicitor General and later on told us that that was a wrong version of the work plan. The commission said that that is not the version that they approved. So the commission said that they had a new version but they did not provide us with that version at the time that they informed us. They provided that later. Recognizing that we have court deadlines and court obligations we reported to the court on the draft work plan which was provided to us. When we came back to give feedback on the final version that the commission was the corrected version they told us that this is the final plan about the work plan. ‘We will not take any more of your inputs. We are just going to submit a work plan unilaterally because at the end of the day this is the Government’s work plan’. While the court tried to have us come to a joint work plan, recognizing that this brings no good attempt to bring about trust, to bring about mutual partnership or working relations with the government. We felt that the fighting was over after the courts but it seems that the commission refuses to mend relations with the Mayan people and really act in good faith. That is a disappoint however we are hopeful that as the court continues to maintain supervision over this process, if there is not agreement we hope that the court will for lack of the better word ‘hold our hands’ to really come point by point, to agree on this work plan because this is the bulk of the work that needs to be done. Other issues that we have are that they make u unilateral appointments. For example, hiring consultants that they don’t even talk to us about. Consultations that are inadequate in our point of view because first of all you bring in consultations from Guatemala who speak only Spanish. Understand that the Maya people don’t speak Spanish. Our native language is Q’eqchi’ and Mopan Maya. We learn English and at the same time we are told you are not going to be provided with even your language translator, your native language translator. Then we are compounded with having to deal yet another foreign language on top of the English that we have to contend with.”
Last week, Coc complained that despite the Consent Order, U.S. Capital Energy has applied for a Production Sharing Agreement to carry out oil exploration in and around a specific area of the Sarstoon-Temash National Park. The government has been sending its team to the buffer communities in the area and according to Coc, there is no support for the project.