Minister Dolores Balderamos – Garcia weighs in on Indian Creek Village Alcalde Ouster

Since the start of the week, we’ve been following the situation in Indian Creek Village in the Toledo district where the residents ousted their alcalde. The village’s former leader, Jose Choc and his deputy, Felipe Sam say that they intend to challenge the decision in court. Today, Minister of Indigenous People’s Affairs, Dolores Balderamos Garcia, weighed in on the controversy, saying that the court challenge would help to legally define the roles of an alcalde. 

Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Human Development, Families and Indigenous People’s Affairs: “In early November a sizeable amount of the village got together and said we don’t want you anymore Mr.Alcalde because you are not representing our interest, you are trying to take decisions without consulting us and they really dumped him and defacto they dumped him, it was like an ouster they dumped him, brought in a new alcalde and now we have a situation where the legal counsel for the MLA grouping Ms.Mendez has written to the Attorney General saying well if this isn’t reversed we’re going to take court action. And actually I can tell you that I spoke with the Attorney General and he was saying that perhaps a legal challenge might be welcomed because it really has to do with roles, with responsibilities, with whether those have been defined and whether the role of the alcalde is something that we can define in law and it would be good to have a court pronouncement on it. But really defacto what happened is that they ousted the now ex alcalde and they have a new one and there is some stuff going on there in terms of the roles.”

The minister noted that the villagers of Indian Creek have had a history of being divided on major issues and pointed to the 2022 visit of Prince William and his wife Kate as an example. During the Princes visit to Belize, factions in Indian Creek vehemently opposed the Prince’s visit, and another faction later publicly apologized for the rejection and said they hoped that the prince would still visit.