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Shirley Mai White, Candidate for Village Council, Blackman Eddy
"Myself born Belizean 42 years old and don't have a land."

Jules Vasquez reporting
And she wasn't alone; many other villagers from Blackman Eddy shared her predicament. So, this morning they came here to this area at the back of the village.

Shirley Mai White
"I heard and know about this land but then I came and told them; I showed two persons. They want back and tell the others. News in Belize flies faster than the media. When I look this morning there was a heap of people here."

Word is that 40 lots for villagers had been set aside here for distribution, but years passed and nothing happened. And so today, a group of over a hundred villagers took matters into their own hands, they started clearing the area:

Ronnie White, Villager, Blackman Eddy
"We need and deserve a piece of land. You go to the Lands Department for a piece of land and they turn you around; probably you end up in 3-5 years without getting a piece of land. People start decide that they will come together as a community, villagers; Spanish, Garifuna; doesn't matter what color you are. You are a Belizean, you 18 years old and you deserve a piece of land - you can't get it and so you need to stand up and come out here to this place that was prepared for land issue."

"The people decide that they will come out here and clean this place and measure it off, we will put streets where they are supposed to go, we have people that wants land to put churches; they can come and clean out a piece of lot individually and then we will follow the process after the government gets involved."

And they are confident that government will get involved, but someone has to at some point to bring order to this effort.

Jules Vasquez
"In the absence of order/supervision, if somebody say that they cut this piece and another says the same thing and everybody have a machete, you could have problems."

Shirley Mai White
"Not the way I see it, when people are desperate - they desperate for land and not to get aggressive. That's two different things; you can be desperate to fight, but desperate for land. All I am seeing out here from this morning is that they are desperate for land."

And so they pushed forward today - with the steady thwack of machetes - they're making progress but also defying authority - in the attempt to force a positive outcome:

Kevin "Dre" Derek Gordon, Villager
"As you can see right now everybody out here is really in need of something. I mean we can't get a job and we understand that this is for the government. If you notice over there is gringos - only the gringos are buying out the place. We understand right now that because all of us are here they don't want to give us the land because the white man doesn't really want us in the neighborhood - they want their own space. We have to understand that we are from here too and some way somehow we need a piece of land. The way I see it then is that you can't get 25 acres of land lease because you are black like me but a white man can come and get so many pieces of land."

And while it is a community and family effort - even toddlers had on their hardhats - there's also politics involved. Mai-White is running for village chairlady:

Jules Vasquez
"You are running for chairperson? You are not the chairperson. Then it could be seen in professional politics electioneering."

Shirley Mai White
"Jules, I've been around and as I could recall politics is a nasty game and the best player wins. That is all i got to say."

And while she has her ambitions, it is an interesting racial and power dynamic for a place called Blackman Eddy to see immigrant families and creole families working together:

Shirley Mai White
"Blackman Eddy is a 50/50 and we unite. We learn to unite; it's a 50/50 as you can see the Hispanic and the creoles are out here. In fact the way how they are doing the land they say that they want a Spanish and Creole and they agree. I want to learn to speak Spanish; those people are half of me and I am half of them."

And right now they are shoulder to shoulder, trying to force power to make some concession:

Ronnie White, Villager, Blackman Eddy
"If you go personally to Lands Department you would take long. But if you try to stand up like this - like what everybody is doing now - this is across the world. You have to stand up because if you don't stand up you will end up with nothing."

The villagers will continue to work the land on Sunday.