Paper short abstract:

Focusing on a land claim brought by Mopan and Q’eqchi’ Maya in Belize, this paper analyzes how both radical difference and partial connection between indigenous and non-indigenous worlds have been produced via struggles to define and win recognition for indigenous rights.

Paper long abstract:

De la Cadena (2015) theorizes both radical difference and partial connection between indigenous and non-indigenous worlds, such that they constitute “more than one, but less than two.” Similarly, as indigenous advocates sought recognition for indigenous rights across UN, Inter-American, and state systems of law, they repeatedly produced both the multiplicity that results from radical difference and the partial connection that emerges where distinct worlds intersect. Engaging a land rights claim pursued by the Mopan and Q’eqchi’ Maya of Belize across Belizean and Inter-American judicial systems, this paper analyzes how indigenous advocates mobilized international human rights law, Inter-American system jurisprudence, the Common Law doctrine of Native Title, and the Belize constitution to position Maya customary tenure practices as both a refusal of Belizean property law and the source of Maya collective property in lands. In the process, they interpellated Mopan and Q’eqchi’ complainants as the collective, culture-bearing subjects of indigenous rights, whose customary tenure practices are grounded in reciprocal relations of respect among humans and the lands with/in which they live. Judges ruled in favor of the Maya, issuing decisions that shaped subsequent indigenous rights claims and judgments across Latin America and the Commonwealth. However, recognizing Maya customary tenure as a legal system neither created nor absorbed by the Common Law, judges refrained from dictating the form that partial connection between indigenous and non-indigenous systems should take. Instead, they directed state actors to negotiate this relationship with the Maya, an on-going process I also explore.