Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how development projects in Belize’s southern Toledo district are bound up in territorial debates over land and other environmental resources at local, national and international scales, involving contestations of rights, identities and livelihoods.

Paper long abstract:

Belize's southernmost district of Toledo is widely referred to as the 'forgotten district', owing in part to its high measured levels of poverty, and its geographical distance from the national centres of economic and political power. The majority of Toledo's population comprises Mopan or Q'eqchi' Maya people, many of whom live in rural villages between the newly-paved Southern Highway and the contested border with Guatemala. The district is also home to Mestizo, Garífuna, South Asian, Creole, Mennonite and Chinese people, among other groups. While numerous rural development projects in the district have been planned and implemented - some with explicit aims to engage with notions of 'community' - it is widely felt that these have for the most part failed to live up to expectations.

Drawing on ethnographic research in southern Belize, this paper reflects on how contemporary projects - involving electricity provision, forest management, and road construction - shape and are shaped by ongoing debates about Maya land rights, indigenous identity, the meanings and practices of 'community', and the international territorial dispute with Guatemala. Understanding these processes involves addressing not only the anticipated costs and benefits of project outcomes, but also the complex relationships bound up with their negotiation - not least for people living in areas expected to be most proximally affected. The supposedly marginal 'forgotten district' emerges as central to deliberations over the potential environmental and political futures of the region.