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Three decades of unresolved tension over Maya customary land rights in Belize boiled over this week, as the Maya Leaders Alliance (MLA) issued a direct public challenge to two local elected representatives and senior government ministers to break their silence on pending legislation tied to the issue.

In a sharp rebuke delivered July 31, MLA spokesperson Cristina Coc called out Dr. Osmond Martinez, the Toledo East Area Representative, and Oscar Requena, the Toledo West Area Representative—both of whom also hold cabinet positions as ministers—to publicly outline their positions on the draft land rights law. The demand comes after years of back-and-forth between the MLA, the Belizean government, and regional courts over formal recognition of the Maya community’s customary land claims.

Coc criticized the current public discourse around the legislation, arguing that legal and technical teams have dominated all discussion while the elected officials tasked with drafting and passing the law have stayed entirely out of the conversation. “We’re hearing the legal minds speak, but we’re not hearing the politicians. We’re not hearing the ones that actually write law,” Coc said in her statement. “We call on the leaders, we call on our area representative, we call on Minister Martinez, we call on Minister Requena, let us hear you on this.”

The MLA also accused the Belizean government of negotiating in bad faith across the 30-year history of the dispute. Most recently, that tension came to a head last week, when the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) declined to hear an application for clarification the Alliance submitted, after the government refused to support the request.

For its part, the Government of Belize has pushed back against the criticism, stating that it is continuing to work on draft legislation that will implement the CCJ’s existing consent order on the issue, while also balancing the competing interests of all stakeholders impacted by formal recognition of Maya customary land rights. The long-running dispute remains one of the most high-profile indigenous rights issues in Central America, with the Maya community seeking formal legal protection for territories they have inhabited and governed according to custom for centuries.

On July 31, 2026, a sharp contradiction has emerged between the Belizean government’s branding of southern Toledo District as the nation’s cacao and chocolate capital, and a proposed land policy that indigenous Maya leaders argue would undermine the very farms driving that booming industry. The conflict came to a head following a Thursday hearing at the Caribbean Court of Justice, where the court is considering longstanding disputes over Maya customary land rights.

Cristina Coc, spokesperson for the Maya Leaders Alliance, broke down the group’s objections in remarks after the closed-door hearing, calling out the government’s contradictory policy priorities. Under the current proposed framework for formalizing Maya customary land tenure, the government would automatically recognize legal ownership of only up to five acres of land per individual community member.

This arbitrary cap ignores the reality of how Maya communities have used and stewarded their ancestral lands for generations, Coc argues. Many indigenous cacao farmers in Toledo hold plots far larger than the five-acre limit, meaning those expanded operations would be left without formal legal protection under the government’s plan. That lack of security leaves farms vulnerable to encroachment, seizure, or development that could wipe out the cacao production the government celebrates in its national tourism and agricultural marketing.

“On one hand, the government touts Toledo as Belize’s chocolate capital to draw visitors and investment, but on the other, their five-acre cap leaves our core production lands unprotected,” Coc said. She questioned the practicality of the arbitrary limit, noting that the five-acre restriction would make it impossible for Maya communities to continue their traditional interwoven practices of fishing, hunting, and large-scale agricultural production that have sustained them for centuries.

The Alliance argues that any approach to recognizing customary land rights that relies on a fixed per-person acreage formula is fundamentally flawed, as it fails to account for traditional collective land use patterns that have been passed down through indigenous generations. Beyond policy disagreement, Coc accused the government of negotiating in bad faith, pointing to the indigenous community’s longstanding contributions to Belize’s national development as tax-paying, active citizens who have a legal and moral claim to their ancestral lands.

The outcome of the Caribbean Court of Justice case, and the final shape of Belize’s customary land tenure legislation, will have far-reaching impacts not only for indigenous land rights but for the future of Belize’s fast-growing cacao and specialty chocolate industry, which has become a key economic driver for the southern part of the country.

In a landmark development for Indigenous land rights in Belize, the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) has opted not to step into the ongoing dispute over Maya customary land tenure, declining a request to clarify a key provision of a 2015 landmark consent order that granted formal recognition to Maya land rights. The decision has reignited tensions between the Maya Leaders Alliance and the Belizean government, with Indigenous leaders accusing state officials of basing their entire land policy on invented assumptions rather than centuries of established, intergenerational Maya land use practice.

Speaking immediately after the CCJ released its ruling on Thursday, Cristina Coc, spokesperson for the Maya Leaders Alliance, framed the court’s inaction as a strategic pause rather than a rejection of the Maya community’s claims. She noted that the tribunal has indicated it will only intervene if the Belizean government ultimately passes legislation that conflicts with the 2015 consent order and earlier lower court rulings affirming Maya land rights.

At the core of the dispute is not a question of whether Maya customary land tenure exists – a fact already affirmed by multiple court rulings – but how the state should formally recognize and protect this long-standing Indigenous right. Coc sharply criticized the government’s position, articulated by Senior Counsel Edmund Andrew Marshalleck during court proceedings, for being rooted in what she calls a state-imagined vision of what Maya land tenure should look like, rather than the reality of how Maya communities have managed and used their lands for generations.

Coc particularly pushed back against the government’s proposal to cap Maya land allocations at five acres per person, a framework tied directly to current community population sizes. She argued that this arbitrary cap reflects the disconnect between urban policymakers’ assumptions and the actual land needs of Maya communities, whose traditional practices – including fishing, hunting, foraging and rotational agriculture – require far larger expanses of land than the five-acre per-person limit would allow.

“Maya people don’t imagine our land use,” Coc emphasized. “We are actively using our lands today, we have maintained our traditional practices on these territories for centuries. Those practices are not contained within the arbitrary five-acre boundary the government has drawn from behind a desk.” The CCJ’s decision leaves the ball firmly in the government’s court to draft formal land tenure legislation, with the Maya community poised to return to the court if the final law fails to align with their existing customary rights.