Conserving and Digitizing Documents from the Indigenous Maya Movement of Belize

This project, developed in collaboration with the Belize Archives and Records Service (BARS), aims to conserve documents from the Maya movement of Belize. Since the 1980s, the indigenous Maya of southern Belize, living in small villages in the forested landscape of the Toledo District, have fought the government to win indigenous land rights to their ancestral lands. Although the Maya have won several major court cases, the Government of Belize has not complied with the courts’ orders. The project will provide access to the complex historical and social struggle that gave rise to these victories for scholars and activists worldwide. To this end, the project will conserve and begin digitizing documents from Pio Coc, a leader in the indigenous movement in the period 1985-2005, and start conversations about records management with indigenous leaders to expand the archive and complement the Pio Coc collection.