CONTIERRA - Office in Guatemala City

By Director Pedro Palma Lau and Carlos Peniras

 

The mission: mediator in situations where 2 parties claim the right to the same piece of land. The parties can be communities or individuals.

 

The organization was created in 1997 as a result of the Peace Accords.

They have had one thousand cases of which 1/3 have reach a stable resolution. 1.108 cases are registered in CONTIERRA at the moment divided into two types:

1)   normal conflicts

2)   conflict of priorities - because of the degree of violence, or because of the number of inhabitants and historical and cultural importance.

 

CONTIERRA is divided into regional divisions and have 5 offices in the interior of the country: 3 in Petén where the majority of the conflicts are, 1 in Cobán and 1 in Huehuetenango. The central office is in Guatemala City, where they have an expert in catastro, a legal expert, a lawyer,  a conciliator and a coordinator.

 

CONTIERRA carries out legal studies, catastros and land registration, which form the basis of the process of negotiation.

 

CONTIERRA uses “round-table negotiations” as the first step in getting acquainted with the conflicts of land. These “tables” are extensive forums where various organizations from civil society participate and are seen as a complementary experience with social impact to the studies carried out by CONTIERRA.

 

The Danish government, via UNDP, is the main external donor to CONTIERRA.

Financing from the central Guatemalan government is only possible if one day there will be political will.

 

CONTIERRA has succeeded in systematizing the methodology of mediation and has strategic planes to establish guidelines for development in the coming years.

 

“Every where you set a foot in Guatemala is a conflict of land!”

The roots of the conflicts are dated 150 years back and concern the drama of property of land:  Many properties are registered according to western legal system, however the indigenous people do not recognize this system and refuses it!. The land has been in the hands of the indigenous people for more than 100 years, but they do not have any documentation of this ownership. The owner of the land is the indigenous community as a single unit.

Hence the conflict is: Historical ownership vs. western registration! Which also has developed into a contradiction between Ladinos and indigenous people.

The legal owners with documentation are the Ladinos, while the indigenous people have lived on the land for centuries.

The legal landowners demand that the government expel the indigenous people from the land, but the indigenous people refuse: “the land is our mother and we have paid for it with our blood”.

 

A case of land conflict which CONTIERRA recently has solved is the case of Chemal-Chancol. Here the Ladinos belonged to the PAC and the indigenous people had been the base of the Guerrilla. This lead to serious problems where the Ladinos attacked the indigenous people.

CONTIERRA took the case in 2000 because the communities were incapable of solving the conflict themselves. The first major step was to make the two parties meet in the same room in spite of the hatred that separated them, and furthermore to get them into dialog. The next problem was the actual negotiation!

 

The proposal for solution came to be that the indigenous people should buy the land from the Ladinos. The indigenous people went to “el Fondo de Tierra” who agreed to lend the money to them so that they could buy their land from the Ladinos.

The Ladinos wanted 56 millions Quetzales - equal to $7 millions. A price which seemed totally unfair to CONTIERRA knowing that it was land with very low productivity, so they decided to look into it and discovered that the real price for the land ought to be Q 3,5 millions. Presented to this reality the Ladinos lowered their price to Q 3,8 millions, of which “el Fondo de Tierra” provided Q 3,5 millions and the indigenous community of Chemal gave the rest.

 

And now these two parties who could not speak together before, are making activities together, e.g. water resources which benefit both communities.

On the first of September there will be a celebration of the conclusion of the conflict and both parties have agreed to participate.

 

The Chemal-Chancol case is a historical conflict and there exist many similar in the rest of the country. However, the case shows us that it is possible to solve such a conflict peacefully and constructively.

OBS - not all conflicts are solved by the selling and buying of land.

 

The important role of CONTIERRA:

·      Open the possibilities for communication and dialog between parties in conflict

·      Attend necessities and demands of the farmers in conflict.

·      Detailed studies, registration of land and catastro.

·      Suggest ways of solutions

·      Verify that solutions are possible.

 

And most important is the fact that the land problem is solved with peaceful negotiations and not violence.

 

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Q and A session

 

El Fondo de Tierra:

·      Social compensation

·      Loans with low interest rate

 

Two ways of distribution of land:

·      Expropriation of land - the democrats in the period of 1944-54 introduced this

·      The market of land and facilitate access to financing  - what CONTIERRA is doing.

 

Expropriation could be used as a legal process but it is a very delicate theme and could generate another conflict.

 

Often the “Minifundas” become property of the indigenous people since it is the less productive land.

 

There does not exist any statistics on all the cases of land conflicts in Guatemala.

 

CONTIERRA try to spread the knowledge of their existence in order to reach more cases.

 

CONTIERRA depends on the willingness of the President and the Ministry of Agriculture. They have autonomy within guidelines.

 

CONTIERRA works with “el Fondo de Tierra” and PROTIERRA. CONTIERRA has some relations with CENOC, and in the executive committee of CONTIERRA all the farmer organizations are represented.

 

CONTIERRA has to focus on being impartial in order to obtain the confidence from both parties of the conflict.

 

CONTIERRA has good communication with MINUGUA - they have given them all the computers.