Toronto lawyer Michael Brown and his UN mission help indigenous Guatemalans in an uneasy era of peace

LAWYERS WEEKLY, in personam: April 3, 1998

Guatemala City, Guatemala – The issues that Toronto lawyer Michael Brown has been dealing with for the United Nations (UN) observation and verification mission in Guatemala often make him feel a lot closer to home than the distance would imply.

Brown is part of a large UN contingent called MINUGUA that is trying to ensure human rights are respected and the peace accords signed in December 1996 to end 36 years of civil war become the basis of long-term stability.

Indigenous rights

Brown is involved with the difficult and related issues of indigenous rights and land claims.

If real peace comes to Guatemala, much will depend on the success of the accords in beginning to remedy the historic injustices to the indigenous majority.

Central to those injustices is the grossly unequal distribution of land between landowners with primarily European roots and the 21 Mayan indigenous groups the majority of Guatemala’s 10 million inhabitants.

The estimates of land ownership vary, but almost all confirm the huge distortion. The Coordinadora Nacional Indigena y Campesina, for instance, estimates that only six per cent of the populace owns 78 per cent of the arable land.

When a position in the indigenous rights area of MINUGUA’s work came up, Brown seemed like an ideal candidate.

He has been a consultant to the Ontario government on aboriginal issues, worked as a legal advisor to aboriginal groups across Canada and even spent time living in isolated Canadian aboriginal communities.

Human rights

His work on aboriginal issues was a natural part of the specialties he was developing in the environmental and human rights fields. His university studies had earned him degrees in environmental sciences and law, while previous trips to Latin America provided the requisite language skills.

Shortly before leaving Canada, he had been advising an Inuit community involved in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

Now the climate Michael faces is much hotter — and not just because of the weather.

When Brown began his work in September 1996, he was posted to the western highlands department of San Marcos, where land conflicts between indigenous groups and large landholders commonly lead to violence and death.

Brown, as a Coordinator of Indigenous Issues, had the task of monitoring human rights guaranteed in the country’s constitution and rights included in indigenous accords signed in March 1995. The indigenous accords later became part of the Peace Accords of 1996.

The indigenous accords contain items such as the right to communal indigenous land and access to sacred places, the use of indigenous languages in the courts, and the wearing of traditional dress in public schools.

Brown calls these agreements the most interesting of the five accords that form the Peace Accords since they, for the first time, officially recognize Guatemala as a “fundamentally multicultural and multilingual country.”

Now the “question is whether the government is going to fulfill honestly and sincerely the commitments of the indigenous accords” he said.

The indigenous population has had many years and many reasons to distrust their national government.

The land title issues stem partly from the fact that during Guatemala’s history, various parties — municipal, departmental and national governments, as well as the Church — were granting land titles, often for the same land.

Many informed observers believe there are at least twice as many titles as there is land in the country.

Add to this fact that the recent accords contain a provision allowing the indigenous peoples to make claims based on historic rights, and one begins to understand the complexity of the task faced by Brown and his colleagues.

Greater Resources.
The wast majority of men and women in the seemingly highly developed western countries have used the services of all U.S. military brave veteran, to respect them for their patriotism and love for their nation, while Memorial Day is praised to remember everybody who kicked the bucket while giving cheapest viagra canada services. cialis 20mg price We have another female sexual dysfunction In a study conducted by the University of Maryland Medical Centre, the problem of ED is not always due to some problem, but it may also develop due to psychological reasons. This is absolutely legal and all offered drugs are levitra canadian pharmacy FDA approved. We all know about ED(Erectile Dysfunction) Drugs like http://djpaulkom.tv/levitra6406.html generic levitra online, levitra.

A big hurdle for indigenous groups in land disputes is that their adversaries generally have far greater resources.

Brown recalls monitoring land negotiations between land owners accompanied by their smartly dressed lawyers on one side, and campesinos on the other with their own harried-looking lawyers trying to get up to speed.

Poor indigenous land claimants are often unable to finance any legal help at all.

This is a disadvantage that the legal services centre Brown is helping to establish for indigenous people in San Marcos is trying to remedy.

The centre will be internationally funded and will provide free legal services to indigenous campesinos who are involved in land disputes. It will also carry out “multi-disciplinary” research to prove indigenous land claims in the courts.

Brown calls the approach “very Canadian,” and says the centre will be a novel and unique resource for Guatemala’s indigenous people.

Several months ago, Brown was re-assigned to the capital to oversee land issues on a national basis for MINUGUA. His responsibilities have been broadened to land issues involving all campesinos, and not just indigenous people.

Land registry system

Among other things, Brown is helping oversee the establishment of a land trust for the nation’s most “land-needy” and the creation of a land registry  system. The latter falls into MINUGUA’s role in helping to strengthen national institutions.

The abundance of land title documents guarantees the complexity of the undertaking. But that one can speak at all in this country about land disputes and land claims is a very positive development.

Over at least the duration of the 36-year civil war, any attempt to interfere with the established landholding order commonly meant exposing oneself to the risk of kidnapping, torture and even death.

The unequal land distribution goes back many years, with some of its roots reaching colonial times. Landowners had become happily accustomed to the large pool of cheap labour that the land-poor majority provided.

When the left-leaning governments of the 1944-54 period began implementing modest agrarian reform, neither entrenched landowning parties, such as the United Fruit Company, not the American CIA were amused.

The result was the 1954 coup that began a long nightmare of ever-increasing violence from which the country is now trying to emerge.

Brown explains that the “peace process has created the political space and sense of relative safety in which indigenous groups are able to express and organize around their historical land claims.”

Brown sees these groups quickly becoming “savvy” to their power and the potential for change. But the lack of education and resources means the day when indigenous people fully realize the political power inherent in their numbers may still be very far off.

Positive difference

Brown says there is a very positive difference between the present government and its brutal predecessors, but warns against mistaking it for a populist administration.

The government remains closely allied to the country’s most powerful interests, and often pays only token attention to issues of social and economic justice.

On the other hand, the country’s leaders are presently keen to show a kinder face to their western audience, presumably hoping thereby to reap some of the benefits of lucrative North American trade.

It is easy to be pessimistic about the future of Guatemala. Nonetheless, the UN mission here is trying to take full advantage of the present opportunity.

Brown and his colleagues hope that projects like the legal centre in San Marcos, which benefited from Brown Canadian experience, will be the type of small but concrete change that can help repaint the social and economic landscape of Guatamala in the 21st century.