A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN TOLEDO

The Q'eqchi' and Mopan have long struggled for recognition of customary land rights to traditional territories in the Toledo District, but the battle has been an uneven one, moving in fits and starts along with changes in local leadership and the proximity and strength of threats (Figure 2). In 1868, the Lieutenant Governor of British Honduras recommended that Maya people be prohibited from owning titles to the land they occupied.Footnote ⁶ The British colonial government put the recommendation into action in the late 1880s and 1890s with the establishment of Indian reservations for Maya people in western and southern Belize. Though short-lived in the west, sparsely populated but extensive Crown land holdings in the southern Toledo District were the ideal location for the colonially conceived Indian reservations and remain in use today. On Indian reservations, Maya people have historically been prohibited from owning land and thus have no legal recourse to government infringements of their land rights via parceling, leasing, and the granting of concessions to natural resources without consent.Footnote ⁷

Figure 2.

Timeline of Maya land rights history.

In 2006, the movement to secure indigenous rights to land experienced a renaissance that responded to unilateral actions taken by the government years before. In the mid-1990s, the Belizean government granted a concession to U.S. Capital Energy-Belize Ltd. for oil exploration on nearly 750,000 acres in the district's lowlands with the caveat that, if commercially viable amounts of oil was located, the exploration concession would automatically convert to one of extraction. In November 2005, U.S. Capital Energy-Belize began negotiations to conduct seismic testing in the region; five months later, in April 2006, the company entered the Sarstoon-Temash National Park to begin work.Footnote ⁸

The Belizean government independently established the Sarstoon-Temash National Park as a nature preserve in 1994, failing to consider the longstanding presence of Maya communities in the territory, and their traditional use of land and natural resources within park boundaries. The Sarstoon-Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (SATIIM) was created by local leaders to mitigate the effect of park regulations on the local indigenous communities. In negotiations with the government, SATIIM succeeded in securing a comanagement agreement that required the government to consult with affected villages in decisions about the park, an arrangement directly violated by granting permission to U.S. Capital Energy-Belize to explore for oil. SATIIM responded to the 2006 arrival of U.S. Capital Energy-Belize in the Sarstoon-Temash National Park by suing for judicial review in the Belizean Supreme Court. Though the lawsuit succeeded in halting seismic testing, it did so based on the fact that the company began its work without conducting an environmental impact assessment (a requirement under the 2000[1992] Belize Environmental Protection Act). The suit failed to make the direct argument that U.S. Capital Energy-Belize violated the customary rights to land and resources of Maya people within the Sarstoon-Temash National Park.Footnote ⁹

Figure 3.

Group B structure at the Classic Maya site of Uxbenká. (Photograph by Shoshaunna Parks)

This lawsuit highlighted what had long been seen among leaders as primary to the survival of Maya people in the Toledo District—the need to secure collective and individual rights to local land and natural resources. Q'eqchi' and Mopan activism aimed at securing indigenous autonomy over their territory began as early as 1976. Though this early iteration of the movement never managed to gain significant momentum among the Maya populace, interest in securing land rights resurged in the early 1980s with the creation of the Toledo Maya Cultural Council (TMCC). The TMCC turned its focus to land rights in 1985 following the proposal of the Toledo Agricultural Marketing Project to establish 50-acre private agricultural plots on traditional Maya land.Footnote ¹⁰ The Toledo Agricultural Marketing Project was intended to stimulate commercial cultivation and improve local infrastructure, but by affecting the customary system of land tenure practiced by Maya communities, it also threatened to further impoverish underprivileged families. As an alternative, the TMCC proposed the creation of a 500,000-acre Maya territory within which the organization would work to foment traditional artisanship and entrepreneurship in indigenous ecotourism at the local archaeological sites of Lubaantun, Uxbenká, and Nim Li Punit, located on the so-called Ruta Maya.Footnote ¹¹

The TMCC's proposal was rejected by the Belizean government but the desire remained to secure a Maya homeland where customary land use would be protected. Throughout the 1990s, under the charismatic leadership of Julian Cho, the TMCC continued to work toward government recognition of indigenous rights to land and natural resources in Toledo.Footnote ¹² In late 1997, the TMCC, the Toledo Alcade Association, and other Maya individuals filed a lawsuit declaring that Toledo land concessions granted to a Southeast Asian logging company by the government in the mid-1990s was an infringement on Maya land rights. But the lawsuit stalled in court and, when no action had been taken by 1998, the claimants petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an agency of the Organization of American States, to intervene.Footnote ¹³

TEN POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND THE SANTA CRUZ AND CONEJO LAWSUIT

With the Inter-American Commission's assistance, Ten Points of Agreement, a framework to guide future negotiation between the Toledo Maya and the Belizean government, was signed by Prime Minister Said Musa in October 2000.Footnote ¹⁴ Negotiations failed to advance, however, and in 2003, the Commission issued a recommendation that the government of Belize adopt the measures necessary to clarify and protect Maya land in accordance with their customary land tenure, to abstain from all activities affecting Maya territory until the land had been demarcated and titled, and to repair environmental damage from the logging concessions granted in the 1990s.Footnote ¹⁵ By the time SATIIM filed its lawsuit to halt oil exploration in the Sarstoon-Temash National Park in 2006, the government of Belize still had not addressed the Commission's findings; Maya land was no more secure than it had been a decade before.

The Belizean Supreme Court interpreted SATIIM's injunction as representative action taken by the five communities located within the Sarstoon-Temash. But in the months following the ruling, some villagers went to great lengths to express their dissatisfaction with SATIIM's actions. In May 2006, more than 100 Q'eqchi' and Garifuna (indigenous descendants of Carib and African mix) protested in front of SATIIM's Punta Gorda office claiming that they favored the job opportunities that U.S. Capital Energy-Belize promised to bring to their communities over the protection of the park forestland and natural resources. U.S. Capital Energy-Belize found a particularly vocal supporter in the Q'eqchi' chairlady of the village of Crique Sarco, Beatriz Bo Canelo. That week, the Amandala newspaper published a lengthy article in which they interviewed Canelo, then on a media tour financed by the company, in which she claims that the environmental impact of oil exploration in the Sarstoon-Temash National Park would be minimal and that the company would employ up to 70% of the men in her village.Footnote ¹⁶ Rather than successfully undermining Maya leadership in Punta Gorda, however, these incidents fanned the flames of the land rights issue. Working with the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona College of Law and Belizean lawyer Antoinette Moore, two communities—Santa Cruz and Conejo—were selected as “test cases to obtain a judicial affirmation of customary land tenure that would serve all Maya communities.”Footnote ¹⁷

In June 2007, the two cases against the Attorney General of Belize and the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment went to trial. Facing the formidable expert testimony and multinational assistance afforded the communities of Santa Cruz and Conejo in their litigation, the government's lawyer sought to clearly illustrate their position that the recent migration of Mopan and Q'eqchi' people to Belizean territory negated their indigenous status. Invoking archaeological evidence that the Classic Maya people of Belize were ethnically Chol'an (a fact confirmed by the director of the Institute of Archaeology in the second land rights case), she attempted to communicate the injustice of granting nonnative ethnic groups specialized rights to national territory and the threat such a decision might pose to the Belizean nation by both internal and external (i.e., Guatemalan) forces. The government lawyer further expressed the political nature of the lawsuit and the challenge it posed to state authority. The fact that legal assistance in the case came primarily from North America bolstered her assertion that this national issue was being influenced by those outside the Belizean state.

By October, a judgment had been made. The ruling concluded that, “… the defendants [the government of Belize] are bound, in both domestic law … and international law … to respect the rights to and interests of the claimants as members of the indigenous Maya community, their lands and resources…” and ordered that members of the villages of Santa Cruz and Conejo hold collective and individual rights in the lands and resources they use and occupy according to Maya customary practices. The ruling directed,

Among its specifics, the ruling also ordered the government to abstain from “issuing any lease or grants to lands or resources under the National Lands Act or any other Act” and from “issuing any regulations concerning land or resources use.”Footnote ¹⁹

The emotion and excitement of winning, for the first time, rights to traditional territory and protection for customary land use was, unfortunately, short-lived. Soon after the ruling, Attorney General Wilfred Elrington publicly stated that the Supreme Court's ruling for Santa Cruz and Conejo would not be extended to other Maya villages in Toledo until each established their indigenous status before the court. Maya leaders had no choice but to once again, seek legal recourse to secure the land rights of all Toledo Maya communities. The second lawsuit was filed in July 2007 and asked that the government of Belize stop granting leases or other land permits in the Maya villages of Toledo without villagers' consent until a mechanism was put in place to allow villages to demarcate and register their communal lands.Footnote ²⁰ Nearly 2 years later, on 28 June 2010, Maya claimants were finally granted the same rights to customary land tenure that Santa Cruz and Conejo won in 2007.Footnote ²¹

IMPLICATIONS FOR RIGHTS TO PREHISPANIC MAYA HERITAGE

Though never explicitly addressed in the land rights trials of 2007, the question of indigenous rights to Maya heritage—namely, archaeological resources—closely parallels that of the right of Maya people to customary land tenure. The recognition of rights to indigenous territory is dependent on the establishment of precolonial relationships between communities and the past. Conversely, pre-Hispanic archaeological remains are indicative of a precolonial relationship between indigenous communities and local territories. Establishing the antiquity of Maya people in Toledo was a major consideration in the 2007 land rights ruling, as it was in the 2004 ruling of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. A number of witnesses—Richard Wilk, Elizabeth Mara Grandia, Grant D. Jones, and Joel D. Wainwright—experts in a variety of aspects of Toledo Maya history, ethnography, geography, and land use testified as to the presence of customary Maya land tenure and the inhabitance of Maya people in the region from time immemorial.Footnote ²² Although the Q'eqchi' and Mopan are not the same Maya groups that inhabited the region during the Classic period, which were most likely ethnolinguistically Chol'an or Ch'olti'an (see Houston et al. Reference Houston, Robertson and Stuart2000), many Maya people and their advocates feel that present national borders and geographic boundaries of linguistic communities falsely represent Maya peoples who, in the past, would have moved freely across a shared landscape. This historical perspective is part and parcel of the “cultural agency” of Maya people working toward the “reconfiguration of cultural spaces that enable subjects…to empower themselves.”Footnote ²³ In a variety of contexts, including political conflict in the Lacandón Forest of Chiapas and the building of a democratic state in Guatemala,Footnote ²⁴ Mayan ethnolinguistic groups have successfully established a collective political identity rooted in a common origin, “cultural logic,”Footnote ²⁵ and colonial-postcolonial experience. This identity is supported by the testimony of Wilk, Grandia, Jones, Wainwright, and others whose independent investigations were witness to the self-determination of the Toledo Maya as descendants from precolonial peoples whose land and natural resources were not constrained by present-day geopolitical boundaries.

Community members testifying on behalf of their land rights, particularly those from Santa Cruz, confirmed their cultural agency referencing descent from the ancient people who once occupied the landscape in their affidavits. “I think we are related to the ancient Maya people,” stated Higinio Teul, an elder and traditional healer, “but we are also different. Columbus and the Spaniards changed the Maya people so that now they are poor.”Footnote ²⁶ Another community member, Raymundo Sho, a recent alcalde (mayor) of the village, testified as to the historic value of ancient Maya places to their people,

Presently, according to Article 4 of the Ancient Monuments and Antiquities Act passed in 1972 and amended in 2000, “all ancient monuments and antiquities however situate, whether upon any land or in any river, stream or watercourse, or under territorial waters of the country, and whether or not before the date of the commencement of this Act in private ownership, possession, custody or control, shall absolutely vest in the Government.” Title to the land on or in which an ancient monument is situated may be granted to private owners, but the resources granted through the title include neither ancient monuments nor antiquities. This policy is similar to those which vest the rights to subsurface resources such as oil in the government regardless of their location on private or public lands. This type of antiquities legislation is also not unique to Belize. Nearly every nation-state has a law placing antiquities under governmental protection as a means of holding them in trust for the people of the nation. The legal protections afforded by the Ancient Monuments and Antiquities Act is both literal (i.e., protecting monuments and antiquities from vandalism, destruction, and removal from the country) and metaphorical. For many government officials, as well as archaeologists and other stakeholders, the contemporary migration of the Toledo Maya into southern Belize betrays their legitimacy as descendants of the region's precolonial Maya and is indicative of political motivations rather than cultural and spiritual ones. As one representative of the Belizean Institute of Archaeology commented in 2006, “it's not debatable whether or not they are descendants of ancient culture or Mesoamerican culture … what is debatable is the degree of that relationship [to] Belize, specifically.”Footnote ²⁸ Although this conception of Maya descent echoes the historical construction of Maya identity by anthropologists and archaeologists that noted the strength of community and linguistic affiliations among Maya people it fails to take into consideration recent victories in the recognition of Maya cultural agency that has created a space for self-determination in the construction of cultural and ethnic affiliation and descent. With a government dominated by individuals that self-identify as Creole, Spanish (mestizo), or of mixed ethnicity and an archaeological record dominated by pre-Hispanic Maya remains, there is an obvious disconnection between those who “own” precolonial antiquities and those Maya communities that consider themselves descendants of the ancient Maya in Belize.

HERITAGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Though the 2007 trial was intended to secure customary Maya land tenure, it was also a trial to win recognition of collective and individual indigenous and human rights. A number of international declarations and conventions, beginning with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948, have sought to define the rights of all human beings. As Helaine Silverman and D. Fairchild Ruggles point out, heritage too is an “essential component of human rights” because its recognition in tangible and intangible forms demands respect and protection for individual and group identities.Footnote ²⁹ Recalling the Declaration of Human Rights, in 1989 the International Labor Organization (ILO)'s Convention No. 169, Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries applied the standards of human rights directly to the unique situation of disenfranchisement shared by indigenous and tribal peoples around the world. Among its terms, Convention No. 169 establishes that “the social, cultural, religious and spiritual values and practices of these peoples shall be recognised and protected.”Footnote ³⁰ In Article 6, the document goes on to assert that, in their application of the Convention, states shall

Belize has never ratified the ILO Convention No. 169 but its principles are heavily cited not only in the 2007 judgment of Claims 171 and 172, but in the 2004 ruling against the State of Belize by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. In his 2007 ruling, Chief Justice Conteh grants the villages of Santa Cruz and Conejo “collective and individual rights in the lands and resources they have used and occupied.”Footnote ³¹ More importantly, in Section D of Article 136, Conteh grants,

Although this trial did not specifically address the archaeological resources located within the geographic area occupied and used by the communities of Conejo and Santa Cruz, could it logically be expanded to grant these villages a voice in the investigation and management of the pre-Hispanic remains in their territory?

“THE TIME HAS COME …”

Presently Maya people in Belize have no privileged rights to consultation or comanagement of pre-Hispanic Maya sites. Officially, archaeological resources belong equally to all Belizean citizens, and are protected and managed by the democratically elected government (presently, under the authority of the Institute of Archaeology, an arm of the National Institute of Culture and History [NICH]). To officials at the Institute of Archaeology, the ubiquitous pre-Hispanic remains of Belize are a valuable national resource. As one official commented, Maya sites give “us a sense of who we are, where we've been, and what we're capable of … [they] give us a sense of what we can still achieve.”Footnote ³³ For this official, pre-Hispanic sites are representative first, and foremost, of “the struggles, the achievements, the successes, [and] the failures of people … the fact that they're Maya … is often secondary.”

State representatives are wary of the language of descent employed by the Toledo Maya to discuss their indigenousness to Belize. As a form of identity construction that is relatively new to the Belizean sociopolitical landscape, they envisage the potential implications of the indigenous land rights movement for archaeological heritage as a political power play that could “balkanize” the population and, ultimately, have negative repercussions on national places of cultural heritage.Footnote ³⁴ These considerations influence the Institute of Archaeology's position that as the protectors of Belizean archaeological heritage, they must maintain strict control over the Maya past. Past attempts at shared management of pre-Hispanic sites with nongovernmental organizations have created a variety of difficulties resulting, ultimately, in poor stewardship over archaeological resources. The fear of site destruction or mismanagement also guides the Institute's unwillingness to negotiate comanagement agreements with descendent communities. This decision is true to the Institute of Archaeology's responsibilities to the archaeological record. At present, the Maya communities of Toledo lack the resources, education, and administrative skills that are necessary to properly protect finite and uniquely valuable ancient sites in Belize.

In recent years, the Institute of Archaeology has tolerated limited assertions of the relationship between the Toledo Maya and local pre-Hispanic sites. For example, the performance of traditional dances at the Classic site of Lubaantun, including the Deer Dance in 2008, the Moro Dance in 2009, and the upcoming Monkey Dance, are permitted. Other demands are ignored, such as those made by the village of Indian Creek in 2006 that the Institute of Archaeology respect village land use and inform and include the community in any future development at the local site of Nim Li Punit.Footnote ³⁵ But, the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision in favor of customary land rights in Toledo has pushed the relationship between Maya people and the pre-Hispanic past in to national dialogue about Maya archaeology via questions of indigenousness and national belonging

On 30 June 2009, 1 day prior to the annual Belize Archaeological Symposium, a forum for the presentation of permitted research in the country almost entirely carried out by North American researchers, the Julian Cho Society and the Maya Leaders Alliance, two major indigenous rights organizers in Toledo, released a statement intended for the participants of the Symposium. Read aloud at the meeting, the statement condemns Dr. Jaime Awe, the director of the Institute of Archaeology, for presenting a 2009 affidavit before the Supreme Court indicating that the Toledo Maya are not indigenous to Belize. The message goes on to appeal to the archaeological community to help educate Belizeans about the continuity between ancient and living Maya people to advance “the truth” of Maya cultural heritage and indigenous rights. It points out that,

“The time has come,” the statement finishes, “for a new form of engagement, one based on respect and indigenous rights,”Footnote ³⁷ referring both to the ethical responsibilities of archaeologists and advancing indigenous rights rooted in the acquisition of customary land tenure.

SANTA CRUZ AND UXBENKÁ IN CONTEXT

The Toledo District of southern Belize is home to four “major” Classic Maya sites—Lubaantun, Nim Li Punit, Pusilha, and Uxbenká—and a vast number of smaller spiritual, residential, and production sites. Nim Li Punit and Lubaantun were both initially developed for archaeological tourism in the 1970s and remain the only two archaeological parks (i.e., reconstructed sites open to the public) in Toledo. Investigators from the United States working at Pusilha during the mid-2000s, engaged with the local Q'eqchi' community of San Benito Poite and the Institute of Archaeology to develop a small-scale cultural and archaeological tourism program, but the remoteness of the site and the precariousness of community organization have deterred the Institute of Archaeology from investing in an archaeological park at the site. Only at the site of Uxbenká does the real potential exist for new government-endorsed archaeological tourism development in Toledo. Coincidentally, Uxbenká is also located wholly within the territory of the Mopan community of Santa Cruz, one of the winning claimants of the 2007 customary land tenure trial.

The residents of Santa Cruz have a long and complex relationship with the site of Uxbenká.Footnote ³⁸ According to The Maya Atlas,Footnote ³⁹ the community of Santa Cruz was established in 1950, but oral histories recorded by an anonymous Peace Corp worker in 2001, suggest that Santa Cruz began as a hamlet in 1918. In interviews with residents in 2006 and 2007, many claimed they were not aware of the existence of Uxbenká prior to its recognition by archaeologists in the mid-1980s (although looting at the site predates this period, suggesting that local people have long been aware of the site and its potential economic value). Archaeological investigation was undertaken at Uxbenká by the Southern Belize Archaeological Project in the late 1980s. Some residents were in favor of the archaeological presence but others were unhappy and provoked the project to withdraw after its second field season. From the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, the government (then the Department of Archaeology) opened Uxbenká to the public and installed a caretaker but the position was dissolved and the site “closed” after community factionalism led to the damaging of structures and carved stelae. Archaeological and state interference at Uxbenká was minimal from 1996 until the 2005 arrival of the Uxbenká Archaeological Project from the United States.

Uxbenká is an important aspect of the indigenous identity of Santa Cruz villagers because, unlike oral traditions that have slowly disappeared over generations, the site is a physical aspect of their ancestral heritage. Residents of Santa Cruz perceive Uxbenká as one of the resources to which their village is entitled because it falls within the boundaries of their land. Residents also recognize Uxbenká as a part of their history and identity even though they, themselves, have retained little knowledge of their ancient ancestors, and know even less about Uxbenká, specifically. Nevertheless, because Uxbenká is located on Santa Cruz land and its residents are descendants of the ancient Maya, they believe it belongs to them.

The assertion that Uxbenká belongs to Santa Cruz directly confronts the legal definition of ancient monuments and antiquities as belonging to the state. As stated previously, according to Article 4 of the Ancient Monuments and Antiquities Act, “all ancient monuments and antiquities … whether upon any land or in any river, stream or watercourse, or under territorial waters of the country … in private ownership, possession, custody or control, shall absolutely vest in the Government.” Adding to this is the fact that the community of Santa Cruz is located on an Indian Reservation—land owned by the government until Santa Cruz was granted customary land title in 2007. For the Institute of Archaeology, not only did the community not own the ancient cultural remains in its territory, it did not even technically own its basic subsistence resources until 2007.

From the perspective of the Belizean government, the Ancient Monuments and Antiquities Act is a legislative tool intended to protect the nation's invaluable archaeological and historic resources. Pre-Hispanic remains in Belize are under constant threat of damage and destruction by archaeological looting, urbanization, and mechanized agriculture, as they are throughout the Maya region. With limited resources to monitor the safety of Belizean heritage places, this legislation provides recourse for punishment and restitution when national monuments and antiquities have been compromised. Although many communities and private landowners would (and in some cases do) provide excellent stewardship over archaeological resources, there is also a significant proportion of the population that would (and in some cases currently doFootnote ⁴⁰) prefer to capitalize privately from such places, or destroy them altogether to make space for industry, agriculture, or residences.

Nevertheless, the recategorization of Santa Cruz territory as customary land owned by an indigenous community, a land classification never before used in Belize, could pose a challenge to the 2000[1972] Ancient Monuments and Antiquities Act. The customary land title granted to Santa Cruz is unique in that it recognizes that Santa Cruz, as an indigenous community, engages in traditional forms of land use that differ from Western ones. Negotiations with the government in the transfer of customary land title to Santa Cruz must, thus, also take in to account the community's ability to establish and maintain “traditional” relationships with natural and cultural resources within their boundaries. Just as the people of Santa Cruz maintain a distinct relationship with rivers and forestland informed by indigenous worldview and subsistence, so too do they maintain a distinct relationship with Uxbenká and other places of pre-Hispanic heritage on the local landscape such as Oke'bal Ha' Cave.

The site of Uxbenká is strategically positioned to become a locus for new discourse about the role of Maya people in the investigation, interpretation, and management of all pre-Hispanic heritage in Belize. Winning “traditional” title to land was a major first step in the impending struggle for rights over the pre-Hispanic past but a number of obstacles remain before the Toledo Maya can establish themselves as legitimate stewards of local archaeological resources, let alone authority over them. First, Maya leaders acknowledge that, because the Maya communities of Toledo are some of the poorest and least educated in the nation, Maya people are at present not prepared to take over the responsibility of managing the nation's fourteen archaeological parks and ubiquitous unprotected sites. Presently, there are no self-identified Belizean Maya individuals with a graduate degree in archaeology or a related field; a requirement for conducting investigations in the country. Whereas the recognition of Santa Cruzenos as stewards over the site of Uxbenká would be more plausible, given the proximity of the site and the community, the village is not equipped at this time to take responsibility over the site. Second, it is important to reiterate that the Q'eqchi' and Mopan of Toledo are not the only individuals in Belize that self-identify as Maya. Yucatec and Itzaj communities in northern and western Belize have been more integrated into mestizo and Belizean national identity than the Toledo Maya, but language and tradition remain an important part of life for many. There is little cooperation between Maya leadership in Toledo and that in the north and west. Though the issue of customary land rights was specific to existing Indian reservations in Toledo, pre-Hispanic archaeological remains are located throughout the country. In order to establish their legitimacy over the pre-Hispanic past, indigenous Mopan and Q'eqchi' communities must work in collaboration with all self-identified Maya communities.

Yet a third obstacle, perhaps the largest of those mentioned thus far, stands in the way of securing indigenous rights to ancestral heritage in Belize: the government. As discussed in the beginning of this article, the Toledo Maya have long attempted to acquire recognition from the government for their rights to traditional land. While this land is a lucrative resource for the government in terms of its logging potential and, more recently, possible oil reserves, historically the interior of Toledo has been too distant from the country's major population centers to be of any significant development value for the state. Conversely, Maya cultural heritage is extremely lucrative—both in its economic potential through archaeological tourism and in its historical value as the monumental roots of a burgeoning nation. Gaining greater access to the interpretation and management of pre-Hispanic heritage will undoubtedly be a more immense struggle, even than that required to gain title to a resource in which the state has more limited ideological interests.