A new home.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle
• Position: OAS - Brief article

IN THE LATEST STEP to help defuse tensions between Belize and Guatemala, the OAS General Secretariat began the resettlement of a small community of Guatemalan families who had been living in the Belize-administered area of the Adjacency Zone between the two countries.

The first eleven families were transferred near the beginning of the year, as part of the Santa Rosa Community Resettlement Project; the remaining six families were expected to move in March. A farm in Poptun, In Guatemala's department of Peten, was acquired for the community of Nueva Santa Rosa, which is some 34 miles away from the previous one. The families will also be able to plant crops on the 650 acres of farmland.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The OAS field office in the Adjacency Zone built a complex of concrete block houses for the resettled families, whose previous dwellings of wooden planks and thatched roofs...