6 January 2012

Quad Helps Mercy Corps Resolve Land Conflicts in Guatemala

Jamie Grant, WildFox PR Manager, reports back from a trip to see Mercy Corps work in Guatemala

I arrived with Mercy Corps staff in the indigenous community of Santa Isabel Se’kaaq in the north of Guatemala to a deafening volley of fireworks. The whole village had turned out to greet us. They thronged around a simple terrace decorated with balloons and sung the Guatemalan national anthem as three young women arrived holding up the country’s blue and white flag. A priest stood up to give us an elaborate blessing.

And then the round of impromptune speeches started, many of them by community elders in their native Chi’che. Even with the language barrier it was clear that the people of Santa Isabel Se’kaaq have much to celebrate. Formed in 2001 by a group of 25 families seeking land on which to live and grow food, the community suffered a long and bloody conflict with two local landowners. Finally Mercy Corps’ helped them enter into peaceful negotiations with one of the farms, resulting in the purchase of their own land in 2005.

One of the community leaders Gustavo Coc Saquil told me a little more of their story after the meeting. Their community ‘illegally’ occupied land after their attempts to buy it were frustrated. The police burnt down several of their houses in attempt to evict them. Three men were murdered during the conflict, including one of the landowners. It sounded to me like to the plot of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.

Gustavo told me that thanks to Mercy Corps’  ‘Secure and Productive Land’ project they now can “live a life with dignity.” Like all of the families in the community he now owns his own plot of land with is wife Usmelda to plant maize, bananas and other crops on. Mercy Corps staff continue to support the community in developing new products such as yucca for the market. Gustavo was very grateful for this support, saying that the future of his three children, together with the community of Santa Isabel Se’kaaq, is now assured.

With a weak government and the country awash with guns following 35 years of brutal civil war, land disputes are a major cause of conflict and violence in Guatemala. Many of these disputes are border disagreements between neighbours or entire communities. In recent years foreign multinational companies have also been pushing communities off land to exploit natural resources such as minerals and African Palm for bio-diesel. The winners in these conflicts tend to be those who can afford to pay a lawyer to draw up a legal document awarding them the land.

Mercy Corps’ approach is simple. Cut out the lawyers and get both parties to sit around a table to thrash out their own agreement. This saves on legal fees and often leads to a compromise, rather than winners and losers. This has proved to be a very effective with some 52 cases amicably resolved in the past two years. As a result 2,656 families have been able to take positive steps towards securing their own land. The project has been so successful that Mercy Corps has sent up a series of exchanges between Guatemala and Colombia to share learning and experience of land conflict resolution.

Mercy Corps’ work with communities in Guatemala extends far beyond land conflict resolution. The NGO also provides developmental support in a number of areas such as sanitation, infant health, strengthening women’s voices and crop diversification. But it is the land conflict work, funded in part by the Great Kindrochit Artemis Quadrathlon, that is having the biggest impact. Only with access to their own land can remote rural communities such as Santa Isabel Se’kaaq truly take their destiny into their own hands.

See images from Jamie’s visit to Guatemala on Flikr