Well, talking about heritage and ownership,
we have to keep in mind that both concepts were being imported to
the Maya world and inserted into the Maya ontoology, right?
So in terms of heritage, we can define,
in our language, something that is
the legacy from our ancestors.
And it's really broad, and it involves spiritual values as well,
and spiritual values attached to, for
instance, the land, the landscape, mountains.
Not only archeological places, not only temples,
but also the natural environment, yeah?
So this is how we can understand heritage,
it's all this, all the world.
And in relation to ownership, the thing is that,
still today, we have conflicts generated by this concept,
because when you talk about, for instance,
a sacred place or this sacred land,
it means that it has subjective or
spiritual values that are not possible to be owned by anyone, yeah?
But what we know is that ownership is a concept developed in medieval times.
It generated division of land in Europe,
specifically during the enclosure movement in England.
So it generated division of land, and
also division of communities, and
also deracination of people from the land.
But we have to see that the land, in itself, is our heritage.
So we are also being deracinated, or detached from our heritage, right?
And this process is being reproduced nowadays in Maya lands.
During the 80s, there were some neoliberal policies by
the Mexican government, promoting to divide communal lands.
So the idea was that you can own a plot of land,
and then you have a title, yeah?
But this is very recent for the Maya people.
This is a very new notion of the land, or
how to see the land more in economic terms or
more in objective terms.
And still, there are several discussions in the community because
there are people that do not like and do not want the line to be
divided, because there is a conflict, an ontological conflict.
How can you own a sacred place, yeah?
But we, yeah, we have to acknowledge that the national policies,
and actually, the government have more influence in this process.
And actually, they develop policymaking,
they develop the policies to divide the land.
And most of the time, the committee is not being consulted,
so you have a different, [COUGH] not different, unequal relationship,
where you have a institution imposing a notion of ownership to a community.
And nowadays, well, most of the land has been divided
in small plots, but still, there are some resistance.
And sometimes a line is a division of people, not only a division of lands.
And you have conflicts there in the line, or in both sides of the line.
So in my experience, sometimes both communities just
decide to talk to each other and say, hey, well, this is a division.
This is a new line dividing our communities.
Why we just don't consider this,
instead of a line of division, a place of encounter, yeah?
And then, for instance, both communities celebrate ceremonies in this place,
just trying to join together again.