Joint Patrol Locates Guatemalan Settlement within Belize

There is another illegal Guatemalan settlement in Belizean territory near the border between the countries. That news came via release from the Ministry of National Security in the wake of a month-long operation in the area of Valentin Camp. According to the release, the settlement consisting of twenty Guatemalans was found in the area of Retiro by a joint patrol consisting of B.D.F., Police, FCD, Forestry and Human Development personnel. B.D.F. Acting Deputy Commander Louis Sutherland told News Five about the operation which included the destruction of marijuana and other illegal farming.

Lt. Col. Louis Sutherland, Acting Deputy Commander, B.D.F.

“I don’t know if you can refer to it as a community because there were only six families consisting of twenty persons. Over the last two weeks, a joint B.D.F. patrol supported by members of the Police Department, Forestry Department, Ministry of Human Development and Friends for Conservation and Development launched a patrol from the twenty-eight of May to the ninth of June and that’s when we discovered the families living in the area.”

Isani Cayetano

“What steps have been taken to either have these families removed from the area or what is the B.D.F. doing at this particular point in terms of addressing the issue?”

Louis Sutherland

Lt. Col. Louis Sutherland

“Protocol in place to deal with situations like this is that we send this report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who in term will ask the O.A.S. to do a verification to confirm that these huts are in Belize. Once they have confirmed that yes, they are in Belize; they are normally sent an order to leave the settlement. Now the timeframe for that; it will take anywhere from two weeks to a month depending on the personal effects, depending on the stage of where their crops area—normally they would give them time to harvest—so we can’t really put a set time when this order to leave will be in effect.”

Isani Cayetano

“Now there is a routine patrol o that area. Was this something that was discovered prior to this particular patrol or is it something recent where the officers who were working in the area happened upon this group of houses if I may?”

Lt. Col. Louis Sutherland

“From the reports that I have read, we have never encountered this settlement before, but looking at the huts and the thatch, I would say this could not be there anything longer than eight to nine months, maximum a year. The patrol destroyed six hundred and fifty marijuana plants so we can tell you that illegal activities are taking place. We did not see any kind of xaté cutting, but we presume that these are the same people, who would come deeper into Belize and do those kinds of things: poaching and the illegal extraction of the xaté.”