The 82 hectares of the Xmatkuil fairgrounds that the ejido members of Dzununcán are claiming from the state government are just a portion of approximately 338 hectares that were illegally sold or “assigned” by former ejido commissioners, reports Wilberth Cocom Celis, the current ejido authority for that Mérida district.
Of those lands, they have already recovered 216 hectares, now they are going after the fairgrounds, and another 40 to 50 hectares remain to be claimed, he adds.
In the case of the Xmatkuil land, he recounts that, as far as they know, it was initially sold without the ejido’s authorization to Miguel Hoil for approximately two million pesos, to be resold to another individual, who then sold it to the state government.
However, he points out, “their business fell apart because some residents of ‘La Guadalupana’ showed up at a community meeting to demand the deeds to the land they had been sold, which later turned out to be illegal.”
In a conversation with the newspaper at his modest motorcycle repair shop in Dzununcán, the ejido commissioner says that although they haven’t yet decided how to proceed, the options they are considering are renting the land to the Xmatkuil fair, demanding payment for past years, or considering selling it to the government.
Everything will also depend on the negotiations that have already begun with government authorities.
Cocom Celis recalls that just last March, they took advantage of Governor Joaquín Díaz Mena’s visit to Dzununcán to inaugurate the community’s high school and confronted him to demand their land, where the parking lot and part of the Izamal Plaza of the fairgrounds are now located.
“We had to do it this way, abruptly, because he gave us no other option. We requested it in writing three times, we even went to the Government Palace to ask for a meeting to discuss this matter, and he turned us down. That’s why we took advantage of his visit to Dzununcán and stood in front of him to demand that he not listen to us,” he explains.
According to him, after that protest, which involved interrupting the governor’s event, they managed to get closer to him. On Sunday, March 29, the ejido assembly was informed about this situation. The following day they were contacted, and the next Tuesday they had their first meeting with Moisés Rodríguez Briceño, Undersecretary of Agrarian Affairs for the State.
The ejido leader reveals that as part of that meeting, they went with the agrarian secretary on Monday, April 6, to inspect the lands they are claiming.
There, they conducted a topographic survey requested by the government to confirm the measurements of the disputed land. They haven’t received the results yet, nor have they requested them, because they want to wait for the outcome of the next hearing at the Agrarian Court before deciding what to do.
In the conversation, sitting on a bench in his workshop, a somewhat emotional and annoyed Cocom Celis reveals that “this has a history. It’s not just the 82 hectares of Xmatkuil they’re trying to take from us; it’s more than 300 hectares that previous ejido commissioners had sold behind the ejido’s back. But it was all illegal; we never approved it, nor were we aware of it, and now that we’ve discovered it, we’re reclaiming it.”
Officially, he recounts, what they knew was that in 2003 the federal government expropriated ejido land. In 2015, they were informed that the then-ejido commissioner had illegally assigned plots without the ejido’s authorization.
This came to light because residents of “La Guadalupana” attended a community meeting to demand the documents proving ownership of the land where they live, land that had been sold to them by the previous commissioner.
“During our investigation,” he continues, “we discovered that the then-commissioner was an accomplice and a cover-up for the previous commissioner, the one who initiated the land sales. That’s why he was also covering for him. We began demanding answers, and the community meeting decided to remove him. We started the legal process with the Agrarian Court, but then the pandemic hit, and everything came to a standstill.”
The current commissioner, with a look of disappointment and sadness on his face, recalls, “With the pandemic, there were so many twists and turns and procedures we had to go through. By the time the order to remove him finally arrived, his term was almost over. But with the next commissioner, we began investigating and discovered that it wasn’t just the land in ‘La Guadalupana’; there were many more lands that had been sold behind our backs.”
Source: yucatan
