On a normally tranquil stretch of northern Belize’s coastline surrounding Warrie Bight, a heated dispute over public land rights has erupted, as fed-up residents of the nearby coastal village of Sarteneja draw a line against what they call systematic “land grabbing” of critical public access routes to the sea.
The conflict first began to take shape in September 2025, when the Sarteneja Alliance for Conservation and Development (SACD) sounded an official alarm to Belize’s Minister of Natural Resources Cordel Hyde, alerting authorities that public lands in the high-priority coastal zone were being quietly transferred to private ownership. At the core of the community’s grievance is the reallocation of designated road reserves—legally protected parcels explicitly mapped to guarantee the general public unimpeded access to Warrie Bight’s shoreline. According to the SACD, multiple tracts of land set aside for public use have already been erased from official public land registries through illegal or improper reclassification. Two high-profile examples have become the flashpoint of the movement: a planned public access road that has been reclassified and renamed as private parcel Lot 1955, and a second public right-of-way wedged between private Lots 85 and 86, both originally granted and zoned to serve the entire Sarteneja community.
For local villagers, the fight extends far beyond bureaucratic land-use paperwork. Losing these public access routes means being cut off from the coastline that has shaped their traditional livelihoods—from small-scale fishing to cultural coastal activities—and feeds widespread fears that all public shoreline in the area will gradually fall into private hands, closing off a resource that has been shared by generations.
That long-building frustration boiled over into direct action over the weekend of March 29-30, 2026, when dozens of Sarteneja residents traveled to Warrie Bight to stage a physical protest, vowing to defend the remaining public seafront they say legally belongs to the community.
In an interview Monday with this outlet, Florencio Marin Jr., the area representative for Corozal Southeast—where Warrie Bight and Sarteneja are located—confirmed that the community’s anger has been building for months, and noted he has been raising the alert with national authorities long before the protest. “I have been on top of this issue. I have been communicating directly with Minister of Natural Resources Cordel Hyde, and we have been highlighting all these concerns to him for a long time,” Marin explained. “In one way, I think what occurred on Saturday was a culmination of people’s reaction to the ongoing inaction, and that gives voice to how serious this problem is. But we have been on top of it and we’ve been working very closely with the Minister of Natural Resources to ensure that what is public space remains public space.”
This report is adapted from a transcribed broadcast of the outlet’s evening television news, transcribed for online publication as originally released on March 31, 2026.