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When professionals in the urban area talk about rural resistance against Xela’s new territorial ordering plan (POT), often the difference between “them” and “us” is mentioned: people in the rural parts don’t understand the plan, and they are not used to follow municipal rules. Supposedly, “they” are also manipulated by their community mayors, who see municipal licensing as a threat to informal arrangements from which they can make an earning.
After three days in the centre, it is time to see the other side of Xela with our own eyes, and visit Pacajá. Community mayor David García shows Michiel, Rutgerd and me around in the peri-urban neighbourhood of zona 10 with 8,000 inhabitants. He explains how the POT has good parts, but the new licenses are complicated, restrictive and expensive, especially for poor families. Once you apply for a construction permit you are also automatically registered for national real estate tax. Unfortunately, these concerns were ignored because communities hardly participated in the design of the POT.
An alcalde comunitario performs many tasks. Don David negotiates with municipal institutions for public services to reach Pacajá, looks for funding for projects, solves problems between neighbours, and takes all kinds of initiatives. Every year, he organizes a litter collection day in which hundreds of people participate, even the policemen of the local station, with whom he holds good relations. For what may easily be a fulltime job, community mayors receive no salary and no budget. But there are other ways of getting things done. When an outsider of Pacajá built a condominium of a few houses, David went to talk to him. Since he would make use of roads built by the community, what contribution could he make in return? Considering David’s reciprocity claim, the investor bought an electricity transformer that now serves several streets.
People in the centre mention the long history of abandonment of Xela’s rural parts, but are they aware how ‘they’ in the communities have built community facilities and arrangements of their own? This would help to understand the resistance against the POT.
Barbara Hogenboom
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