SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Last Friday, 67-year-old Desmond Baker and his neighbours in Park, just west of Santa Cruz, did something he now contends they should have done decades ago.

They took to the street with placards in a peaceful demonstration to protest what they describe as an attempt to rob the community of a playfield which they say dates back to the 1930s.

The playfield, says Baker, was a designated recreational “reserve” provided when the property known as Santa Cruz Park was cut up and sold to small farmers as part of the British Colonial Government’s land settlement policy just prior to World War II.

But businessman Lee Stewart, who is acting on behalf of an uncle, armed with documents to show registered land ownership and authorisation to build, has an opposite perspective. Stewart identified his uncle, Noel Stewart, who bought the parcel of land in 1984 as the real victim.

Lee Stewart said that his uncle wanted to subdivide the land to build a house and to share with his children but through no fault of his making, finds his efforts being blocked by the actions of locals.

“We have everything (legal documents), land title, we have diagram, we have (approved) building plan, tax receipts everything … we have all documents right on hand here,” he told journalists Friday.

He conceded that taxes for the last two years had not been paid because of the “dispute” with the community.

Baker, who claims to remember a sign identifying the piece of land as a reserved recreational area insists that it could only have fallen into private ownership as a result of “white collar criminality” dating back to the mid 1950s and possibly even earlier. Baker claims that two adjacent lots which should have served as a cemetery for the community and as a “road reserve” were also sold in mysterious circumstances decades ago.

Matters came to a head early last week when Stewart arrived with a truckload of marl and a tractor which begun excavation. Angry residents quickly put a stop to that.

“We went down there trying to drop material,” Stewart told journalists, “but people object, throw stone, knock out the glass from the tractor and things like that.”

The Santa Cruz police were able to quickly restore calm.

However, Stewart said that he and his uncle are now uncertain as to what next should happen, even while noting that they would be prepared to sell the land to the Government.

“I don’t know what is the next move,” he said. “Government want money for tax but we are not able to pay the tax because we are not able to claim the land. So if the Government is willing to purchase the land we are willing to sell it to them,” he said.

Baker, who heads a loosely organised citizens group at Park, set about seeking help and advice from local authorities including the St Elizabeth Parish Council. Dissatisfied with the responses, he and his neighbours resorted to last Friday’s demonstration.

He told the Sunday Observer that he and other group leaders ensured that the demonstration was orderly; that traffic was not impeded; and that school children from the nearby Park Mountain Primary School who also use the playfield as a recreational area were kept away from the protest.

“Children must be in school, not in demonstration and we told everyone that anyone wanting to break the law by blocking road must stay away, don’t come,” said Baker.

The placard-bearing protest was motivated, he said, by the question”where will the children play if they take away the playground? You would be driving them to crime”.

As part of the search for solutions, Member of Parliament for North East St Elizabeth, Raymond Pryce has organised a meeting for Thursday at 4:00 pm in the Park community.

Pryce, who spoke to journalists at the opening of the Centre of Excellence (phase two) Santa Cruz Health Centre on Friday made it clear that the solutions won’t come easily.

“What I do know is that Government cannot spend resources on private lands in an unauthorised way, so without authorisation from legitimate land owners what we can continue to do is to make representation for the actual land owners to convert ownership of the land or vest ownership of the land in the community,” Pryce told journalists.

Last Friday, a pensive Baker told the Sunday Observer that while the community had let itself down by not doing all it could to dramatise the situation over many years, governments and political representatives had also failed the people of Park.

“Successive governments have turned their backs on us,” he complained.

He showed the Sunday Observer correspondence dating back to the early 1990s relating to letters, sent and received, involving the administrations of prime ministers Michael Manley and PJ Patterson and ministers Seymour Mullings and Roger Clarke. The government at the time promised to assist but no help came, he said. Just over two years ago, Baker said, a petition “with over 200 names” was handed over to Pryce, also with no result.

According to documents shown by Stewart and Baker, the parcel of disputed land, said to be just over three acres was bought by Stewart in 1984 from one Karl Johnson. The latter had bought the parcel in 1976 from Errol Lewison, whom Baker claimed had been a lands officer. The documents appear to suggest that Lewison acquired the land in 1955.

What is not clear is how Lewison came to own the land. It’s a mystery referred to in a letter dated December 1992, credited to the late Roger Clarke, then MP for NE St Elizabeth and a Minister of State with responsibility for lands, sent to the citizens of Park.

Having outlined ownership by Lewison, Johnson and Stewart, the letter, said to bear Clarke’s signature says “we are now in the process of trying to ascertain how Mr Lewison came by the land”.

According to Baker, there was no follow up message from Clarke as to how the probe turned out. Worse, the community never followed up to find out.

Yet, he believes it is not too late for the authorities to do the appropriate document trace to find out how land, which he insists was reserved for recreation, became private property. Such a search, he insists, is necessary to validate the claims of the community.

More to the point, Baker believes that if the community had been doing public demonstrations instead of just writing letters, the matter would have been resolved “a long time ago”.