Belize

A 1997 newswire article posed the question: Is Belize Caribbean or Central American? The comment was made in May, when Belize sent its deputy prime minister, Dean Barrow, to a historic Caribbean-U.S. summit in Bridgetown, Barbados, attended by U.S. president Bill Clinton, while Prime Minister Manuel Esquivel chose to attend a Central American summit in Costa Rica. As the only Central American country in the fourteen-member Cari-bbean Community (CARICOM), Belize has sometimes been described as being a "remote" state of the Caribbean. Barrow commented that while trying to draw closer to Central America, CARICOM re-mained more important for this former British colony, because it was Belize's first line of support in its longstanding diplomatic struggle with Guatemala. On September 25, 2006, Belize joined the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), established by the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua with the aim of contributing to the social and economic development of the region. Prime Minister Said Musa noted that Belize's integration in the Central American region had been much slower, "but we are well poised to take advantage of our geographic position in the Central American isthmus" (http://channel5belize.com/archive).

CONTEMPORARY BELIZE

In the early twenty-first century, Belize has moved ethnically, religiously, and economically from a Caribbean perspective to a more Central American one. In the 2005 mid-year updates to the decennial 2000 census, Belize's population stood at 291,800, up 3.3 percent from the previous year and almost equally divided between urban (50.2 percent) and rural (49.8 percent). In 2000 the Cayo District in the west was the fastest-growing district, with population up 29.3 percent over the census of 1991. Belize and Stann Creek, two districts that had experienced high rates of emigration, grew substantially over the decade as well, yet it was unclear whether this represented a slowing of emigration or high levels of immigration. Belizeans began immigrating to the United States in the 1970s, first to New York and afterward to Los Angeles. Approximately 45,000 to 55,000 Belizeans and their U.S.-raised children currently reside in greater Los Angeles, representing about 45 percent of the total number in the United States.

Demography

Mestizos (the term originally applied to individuals of mixed Spanish and Yucatecan Mayan descent but now applied to immigrants from Guatelamala and El Salvador as well) are now the largest ethnic group in Belize, making up 48.7 percent of the population, followed by Creoles (individuals of mixed African and European ancestry), accounting for 24.9 percent. This continued a pattern noted in the 1991 census. For the first time, both urban and rural areas were predominantly Mestizo. Of Belize's six districts, Mestizos were the largest ethnic group in Corozal (76 percent), Orange Walk (77 percent), and Cayo (63.7 percent), while Creoles predominated in Belize (59 percent), Garifuna (Black Caribs) in Stann Creek (31 percent), and Mayas in Toledo (65.4 percent). Almost half of the population (49.6 percent) was Roman Catholic. Surprisingly, only 53.6 percent claimed to speak English well, whereas 52 percent claimed to speak Spanish well. The literacy rate was 76.5 percent in 2000, up 5.2 percent from 1991. Some 85 percent of the population was native born, with the remainder being immigrants from the Central American countries of Guatemala (42.5 percent), El Salvador (17.6 percent), and Honduras (14 percent).

Economy

With an economy based primarily on tourism and the export of primary products, a small domestic population base, weak infrastructure, and heavy consumer demand influenced by the saturation of cable television from the United States since the 1980s, Belize has struggled in its efforts to grow its economy. After World War II the economy became more diversified, and sugar replaced mahogany as the leading export. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the leading exports were citrus (orange and grapefruit concentrate), marine products (white farm shrimp and lobster), sugar, bananas, garments, and papayas. These totaled US$206.64 million in 2005. These were dwarfed by imports totaling US$592.92 million. The United States was Belize's leading trading partner, taking 52.27 percent of its exports and providing 39.11 percent of its imports. While the inflation rate at 3.7 percent was up more than a percentage point in 2005, unemployment at 11 percent remained a serious problem. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 3.7 percent.

Belize was once a colonial backwater, but tourism has become a major source of revenue over the past several decades. While most of the tourists have been attracted to the offshore islands for skin and scuba diving, recent governments have encouraged ecotourism and archaeological exploration. By 2004 approximately 42 percent of Belize's land area was under some form of protective status. This included 988,000 acres of forest reserves, 408,000 acres of national parks, 388,000 acres of wildlife sanctuaries, 306,000 acres of private reserves, 111,000 acres of nature reserves, and 28,000 acres of archaeological reserves. In the late 1990s Belize began cooperating with Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras to promote Mundo Maya, offering tourist ventures in the former Maya areas. In 2000 Carnival Cruise Lines joined Norwegian and several smaller lines in making Belize City a stop on their Caribbean cruises. By January 2007 the Belize Tourism Board reported tourist arrivals at the Philip Goldson International Airport up 2.9 percent from 2005 to about 250,000. Cruise passenger arrivals, which reached a peak of 850,000 in 2004, declined to 650,000 in 2006. The opening of a new Southside cruise port planned for 2008 might help, but the future of the cruise industry remained uncertain. There is also fear that the big-spending adventure travelers will go elsewhere if Belize becomes a mass tourist spot. The average cruise passenger spends only $45 in Belize. The $18 million Las Vegas Casino opened in Corozal in September 2006. Located between the northern border checkpoint and the commercial free zone in Corozal, it is designed to cater to

thousands of Mexicans visiting the free zone. Tourism revenues were estimated at BZ$312.4 million (US$158.36 million) in 2003.

Crime and Health

Serious social problems of recent vintage also threaten the country and its tourist industry. Once a small domestic producer of marijuana, Belize has become an important transshipment spot in the Colombian cocaine trade. Los Angeles-style gangs began to appear in Belize City in the 1990s, accompanied by crack cocaine. The murder rate soared. While the police department has been reluctant to make crime statistics public, both murders and burglaries were on paths toward record highs in 2007. Channel 5 Belize reported 87 murders in 2006. This was up from 2005 when there were 81 murders and 1,660 burglaries. By July of 2007 there had been 49 homicides, many gang related. One reporter dubbed Belize the "big league of flying bullets" and spoke of an epidemic of violence plaguing the country. In less than twenty years AIDS has become a very serious problem. The national prevalence rate now exceeds 2 percent of the population. Men and women were equally affected in the 434 new infections reported in 2005. AIDS was the number one killer of those aged thirty to forty-nine. One optimistic sign was that more Belizeans were being tested.

Oil

One of the most positive economic developments in recent years was the discovery of oil near Spanish Lookout in western Belize in 2006. Dating back to the colonial period, the oil and gas industry experienced more than fifty dry wells before striking pay dirt. Belize Natural Energy Ltd. (BNE), made up of more than seventy small investors from Ireland, drilled five successive wells before hitting a dry hole. Production has stabilized at 2,700 barrels of oil per day. With no infrastructure in place, getting the oil to refineries will require new investment. Belize joins Guatemala and Cuba as the only oil and gas producers in the western Caribbean.

HISTORY

Once referred to as a "colonial dead end" or "the place that is no place," by the twenty-first century Belize was a struggling democracy dedicated to ecotourism and a center of intensive archaeological investigation. It was the setting for countless mystery novels, whose killers drifted off to Belize never to be seen again.

The Maya

Projectile points discovered near Ladyville tend to confirm the presence of early humans in Belize around 9000 bce. Settled farming communities began to appear between 2500 and 2250 bce. There is evidence of maize cultivation, pottery production, and trade in jade and obsidian at several pre-Classic sites (1250 bce–250 ce). There are indications of terracing and canal building at Pulltrouser Swamp and Cerros, in northern Belize, and at Nohmul, near Orange Walk Town. A manufacturing industry produced oval axes, hoes, and adzes at Colha, near Cerros. Pyramids typical of the Classic period of Maya architecture were constructed at Nohmul.

Excavation of Maya sites in Belize is ongoing and accelerated during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. The major sites include Actun Balam, Altun Ha, Cahal Pech, Caracol, Cerros, Cuello, Lamanai, Lubaantun, Nim Li Punit, Nohmul, Pusilha, Uxbena, and Xunantunich.

At Altun Ha, a site near the north coast of Belize that flourished from c. 800 bce to 925 ce, with a later reoccupation in the fifteenth century, archaeologist David Pendergast, from the Royal Ontario Museum, discovered large quantities of carved jade, including a 5.9-inch-high, 9.74-pound, full-round head of Kinich Ahau, the sun god. In 2007 Arlen and Diane Chase of the University of Central Florida began their twenty-third excavation season at Caracol, the largest known Classic Maya city in the southern Maya lowlands. In 650 ce the urban area of Caracol had a radius of approximately six miles and may have boasted a population of 140,000 people. These were supported by an immense agricultural field system and elaborate planning. Lamanai in the Orange Walk District was also excavated by the Royal Ontario Museum from 1974 to 1986. It is the first known southern Maya lowlands site with continuous occupation from c. 1500 bce to 1650–1700 ce. In 1997 Belize's largest speleo-archaeological project was launched as part of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project directed by archaeologist Jaime Awe. He has also conducted excavations at Cahal Pech, Baking Pot, and many other sites. Some of the most exciting research by Heather McKillop from Louisiana State University describes salt production along the eastern Maya littoral. While searching underwater for evidence of these salt factories in the Punta Ycacos Lagoon in the Toledo District in 2004, her crew discovered the first completely intact, full-sized Maya canoe wooden paddle.

Most Maya centers in the lowlands of Belize experienced political and economic decline in the tenth century for reasons still not understood. Some populations dispersed along lakeshores and rivers. However, the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century found many communities still flourishing and engaging in an extensive trading network.

The Spanish

Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) may have passed through Belize en route to Honduras in 1524–1525. However, it was not until 1544 that the province of Chetumal, which included portions of Belize, was successfully conquered. Belize was incorporated into the two newly created provinces of Chetumal (north) and Dzuluinicob (south). A contributing factor in the ease of conquest may have been pre-Conquest population decline. Population in the region went down between 1517 and 1542 from about 800,000 to about 250,000.

For almost a century, from 1544 to 1638, the Spanish dominated communities at Tipu in the west and Lamanai in the northwest. Indians in these areas were granted in encomienda to Spaniards and were forced to supply labor and cacao beans. Anti-Spanish rebellions occurred during 1567 and 1568. In 1638 Lamanai and Tipu joined in a widespread rebellion that expelled the Spaniards from most of Belize until after 1695.

The Bay Settlement

The date of the first British settlement in the Bay of Honduras has not been documented. Legends tell of a settlement along the Cockscomb Coast in the 1630s, whereas others argue that a Scottish-born privateer, Peter Wallace, founded a settlement in 1638. Sustained settlement by British settlers owed its origin to the logwood tree. According to The Dyer's Assistant by James Haigh et al. (1870), logwood—when cut into small shavings or chips—was useful for making a great number of colors and shades, from sedan blacks to shades of gray to fine violets, but most commonly for purples. These were used in the European woolen, linen, cotton, and hat manufacturing industries.

While the Treaty of Madrid (1670) between England and Spain marked the first acknowledgement that England had some rights in the West Indies, these were never clearly defined. If logwood cutters viewed this treaty as supporting their territorial claims along the Central American coast, neither the British or Spanish governments ever supported their claims.

This illegal settlement in the heart of the Spanish Empire was under frequent attack from Spanish authorities in Yucatán, and it was abandoned and resettled several times. Article 17 of the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of 1763 gave the settlement some legitimacy by legalizing the cutting, loading, and carrying away of logwood. By the time logwood cutting was legalized, the baymen had turned to the more profitable cutting of mahogany. Mahogany, used in shipbuilding and in the English furniture industry, remained the principal export of the settlement until the mid-twentieth century. Because the baymen were said to prefer hard liquor to hard labor, they began importing African slaves after 1724 to cut timber. Several slave revolts between 1765 and 1773, plus the large number of runaways who sought asylum in Yucatán, suggest that while slavery in Belize may have differed from slavery on the sugar plantations in the Caribbean, it was probably no less onerous. In 1769 Lieutenant James Cook made a trip from the Belize River to the Rio Hondo and thence cross-country to Merida. He wrote that "in traveling through the swamps it is very troublesome, the mules being knee deep, in the dry season, in a stiff blueish mud, often times nearly sticking fast, and the boughs of the logwood trees so low, as to oblige you to lay flat on the mules shoulders whilst the animal is all that time plunging in endeavoring to extricate himself from the mire" (Cook 1769, n.p.).

The earliest form of government in the settlement was the public or town meeting. In these gatherings, magistrates were elected to administer a code based on common law and ancient usage called Burnaby's Code, written by Admiral Sir William Burnaby, commander in chief at Jamaica.

By 1779 the bay settlement consisted of plantations along the banks of several rivers, with settlers numbering about five hundred and slaves totaling about three thousand. Saint George's Cay, a small island just off the coast, was the nominal capital. The Spaniards successfully attacked the cay in 1779, forcing the settlers and their slaves to march overland to Mérida. Four years later, in compliance with the Treaty of Versailles (1783), the Spanish granted the British logwood concessions between the Hondo and Belize rivers. Three years after that the treaty was extended by the Convention of London (1786) to permit the extraction of both logwood and mahogany as far south as the Sibún River. The treaty also forced the British to abandon settlements at Roatán and along the Mosquito Coast. Some 2,214 settlers and their slaves from these settlements moved to Belize.

A writer for the Britannic Magazine (1794) stated that trade with "Honduras" was far greater than imagined. He estimated that it involved fifteen hundred seamen shipping twelve thousand tons, giving employment to thirty thousand cabinetmakers and dyers in an enterprise worth one and a half million pounds annually. Annual exports were between five and six million feet of mahogany, two thousand tons of logwood, fustic, ironwood, lignum vitae, zebrawood, brazilwood, cedar and several other woods, turtle shell, sarsaparilla, deerskins, gums, and live turtle. The number of inhabitants in 1790 amounted to about four thousand, of whom four-fifths were slaves. The principal food was salt beef, pork, turtle, and fish.

In 1798 the Spanish, under the command of the captain-general of Yucatán, Arturo O'Neil, launched an unsuccessful attack on the bay settlement, known since as the Battle of Saint George's Cay. The settlers' success in this battle is commemorated on September 10th. Well-prepared and armed with advance intelligence from spies in Havana, the British repelled a much larger Spanish force, although one weakened by yellow fever. This represented the last serious attempt by the Spanish to dislodge the Baymen from their settlement.

The Central American Republics

With the onset of the independence of Central America in 1821, the British threat had been reduced to the single settlement of Belize (they had largely abandoned settlements in Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Bay Islands). The thirty years after independence saw the reestablishment of the settlement of the Bay Islands, the reassumption of the British protectorate over the Mosquito Coast, the expansion of the boundaries of Belize, and a tremendous expansion of commercial relations between Great Britain and Central America, with most of the trade passing through Belize. The absence of any deepwater port along the Caribbean coast dictated that British goods be shipped to Belize and then transshipped in coastal vessels to Central American ports. The British entrance into the Central American retail trade coincided with the appearance of commission houses and branches of British commercial companies in Belize. By 1831, considering the British Caribbean as a whole, Belize ranked second only to Jamaica as an importer of British manufactures. However, unable to induce the British to relinquish their position in Belize and unable to develop a satisfactory alternate commercial route, Central Americans became increasingly hostile over the status of Belize.

In 1828 Great Britain claimed the territory of Belize on the basis of conquest, long use, and custom and in 1835 asked Spain to cede the territory. When no response was forthcoming, the British began to exercise more formal jurisdiction over the territory. By the time the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) between Great Britain and the United States was negotiated, Britain's position was that it had acquired rights of possession.

To legitimize its jurisdiction, Britain signed a treaty with Guatemala on April 30, 1859. The first six articles defined the boundaries of Belize. Article 7 provided for the construction of a road from Guatemala City to the Caribbean coast. Guatemala viewed this as compensation for its loss of territory. When Guatemala failed to ratify a supplementary convention to this treaty in 1863, the end of the stipulated period, the Britain felt that it was now released from the obligation under Article 7. This was disputed by Guatemala. The dispute has festered for more than a century and a half. Guatemala continues to question whether Britain legitimately occupied the territory of Belize.

The bay settlement formally became the Crown Colony of British Honduras in 1862. It was administered by a lieutenant governor who was under the nominal supervision of the governor of Jamaica. When this tie with Jamaica was severed in 1884, the position of lieutenant governor was elevated to governor.

A Depressed Economy

After 1850 Belize's lucrative reexport trade to Central America declined severely and the economy became dependent on the country's own natural resources. The mahogany trade dominated the economy until well into the twentieth century. The peak year in the nineteenth century was 1846, when exports totaled 13.7 million feet. Thereafter, the wholesale cutting of young trees and the exhaustion of almost all accessible trees seriously depleted the country's timber resources. The increased costs of extracting less accessible reserves combined with declining prices in Europe led to declining profits. By 1870 exports totaled only 2.75 million feet. Levels of exports equal to those of 1846 were not reached again until 1906, when 11 million feet were exported.

Land ownership was increasingly monopolized by a small number of families that developed partnerships with metropolitan companies. Four companies—Young, Toledo and Company; Sheldon Byass and Company; John Carmichael; and the British Honduras Company—owned most of the land by 1870. In 1875 the British Honduras Company became the Belize Estate and Produce Company. That same year, after it acquired property from Young, Toledo, and Company, it became the largest landholder in the colony, owning about half of all privately held land.

The emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s brought little economic improvement in their lives. Through use of a "company store" approach, the freedpersons were kept permanently in debt to the lumber companies. Advances on wages were paid to mahogany workers just prior to the Christmas season. This money being quickly expended, supplies for the cutting season had to be purchased on credit from the employer at exorbitant markups.

A limited trade in chicle, the coagulated latex of the sapodilla tree, began in the late nineteenth century. This tree extract, used in the manufacture of chewing gum, was shipped to the United States. Wrigley's was the predominant purchaser. Exports reached a peak in 1930 with more than four million pounds. Thereafter, the industry went into a decline brought on by overtapping of the trees, the world depression, and a switch to synthetics.

Bananas were first exported in 1890. Between 1896 and 1912 annual exports averaged 500,000 bunches. Prospects appeared bright until 1913, when Panama disease struck the area and exports began a rapid decline. In the same area of the Stann Creek Valley where bananas had previously been grown, a grapefruit industry was established in the 1920s. By 1933 more than 13,000 cases were being exported. Although several attempts were made to develop the sugar industry prior to World War II, none proved very successful.

By 1890 Belize had a population of about thirty thousand. Twelve thousand people (largely Creoles of African and Caucasian descent) lived in Belize City. Another ten thousand Spanish-speaking Mestizos, refugees from the Caste War in Yucatán, were living in the Corazal District. Four thousand Kekchi and Maya were living in the southern and western regions. Three thousand Garifuna, who had arrived in the colony in the early 1800s from Honduras, lived in Stann Creek and Punta Gorda and surrounding villages. Small numbers of East Indians, imported to work on sugar estates, lived in the south.

However, for most of the period the capital, Belize City, was the colony. The Creoles dominated the political and social life of the colony, and together with a small group of Europeans, they also controlled the economy.

From Colony to Independence, 1862–1981

In 1871 the crown colony system of government was introduced. The Legislative Assembly was replaced by a Legislative Council composed of five official and five unofficial members, all appointed by the lieutenant governor. This council remained in existence until 1936, when elections resumed. By 1945 six members of the council were elected and four were appointed by the governor. New constitutions in 1954 and 1960 increased the role of elected officials vis-à-vis the governor. Membership in the Legislative Assembly, which included six cabinet ministers, was expanded to eighteen, eleven of whom were elected. The governor's powers were curbed, and he was required to act with the advice of the ministers.

The 1964 constitution granted internal independence. However, the continuing dispute with Guatemala delayed the event until 1981. In preparation, a new capital, Belmopan, was constructed some fifty miles west of Belize City. Disastrous hurricanes in 1931, 1955, and 1961 had made this a necessity. On September 21, 1981, Belize achieved full independence with a parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster system.

A prime minister and cabinet make up the executive branch, while a twenty-nine member elected House of Representatives and an eight-member appointed Senate form a bicameral legislature. The British monarch is the titular head of state and is represented in Belize by a governor-general, who must be a Belizean.

Political Developments since 1945

Considerable labor agitation was provoked in the 1930s by the rapid decline in the mahogany industry during the preceding decade, the Great Depression, and a hurricane of September 10, 1931, which killed one thousand people. Antonio Soberanis Gómez (1897–1975) lobbied for improved wages and work for the unemployed. A barber by trade, he created and led the laborers and unemployed association in the 1930s. The country's first trade union was founded in 1943. It later merged interests with a growing nationalist movement to form Belize's first political party, the People's United Party (PUP), in 1950. Shortly thereafter, George Price, one of its founders, was elected party leader. Price won an unbroken series of local and national elections until 1984. Over a thirty-year period the PUP obtained continuous mandates from the electorate, first to launch a final attack against colonialism and then to lead the new nation into economic prosperity.

The principal opposition party, the United Democratic Party (UDP), was founded on September 27, 1973, from three smaller parties. Manuel Esquivel served as party chairman from 1976 to 1982 and party leader from 1982 to 1998. In 1984 he led the UDP to a stunning victory (twenty-one of twenty-eight seats) and became Belize's second prime minister. During a five-year term, sound fiscal management and encouragement of foreign investment in tourism and manufacturing helped invigorate the country's economy. However, intraparty wrangling, charges of corruption, and a series of contested party caucuses led to a surprising electoral defeat in 1989. By winning fifteen of the twenty-eight seats that year, the PUP was restored to power and George Price once again became prime minister.

Following the PUP's return to power, the government led by Price steered a course similar to his predecessor's by encouraging agricultural exports and expanding textile manufacturing. Belize took a leadership role in the new ecotourist movement, which seeks to promote preservation of flora and fauna while providing expanded opportunities for the ecologically minded traveler. Several major new hotels were completed in Belize City and a new deepwater port completed at Big River. Improvements were also made in the country's infrastructure, although construction of a much-needed hospital in Belize City suffered repeated delays. By 1992 Belize's economy was suffering from a worldwide recession.

Buoyed by the municipal elections of March 1993, Price decided to call a general election before the end of his term. Soon after this fateful decision, though, a series of events developed in rapid succession that contributed to his government's defeat on June 30. These included Britain's announcement that it would withdraw all of its defense forces from Belize by January 1994 and a 25 May coup in Guatemala. Before the June election, the opposition UDP attacked the Price government for failing to address satisfactorily the security implications for Belize of these two events.

The UDP won sixteen of twenty-nine seats in the new parliament and on July3, Manuel Esquivel was sworn in again as prime minister. He quickly made good on several of his campaign promises by introducing free education at all levels and announced structural reforms to depoliticize the public service. Seeking long-term solutions to Belize's economic problems and under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Esquivel government in October 1995 announced plans to cut government spending by eliminating civil service jobs and freezing teacher wages. This prompted protest marches on Belmopan in October and November. Unmoved, in December the government fired seven hundred public servants, just before Christmas. At the Equivel government's behest, a Value Added Tax (VAT) was passed on April 1, 1996. While these moves appeased Belize's foreign creditors, they were unpopular at home and sealed the fate of the UDP for more than a decade.

Despite predictions of a tight election, on August 27, 1998, the PUP, with its new leader, Said Musa, crushed the Esquivel government, winning twenty-six of twenty-nine seats in the House. The former prime minister lost his own seat and resigned as party leader in favor of Dean Barrow. The new prime minister, a native of San Ignacio, had served as a cabinet minister in the previous Price administrations and was a lawyer trained in the United Kingdom. He had played a key role in drafting Belize's Constitution of 1981. Having campaigned hard on the theme of the need to get the economy moving again, that became a top priority.

During its first term (1998–2003) the Musa government approved the establishment of the University of Belize, made up of five tertiary institutions. At the September celebration of independence in 2000, it recognized the former prime minister, George Price, now senior minister, as a National Hero of Belize. Complaining of the economic mess it had inherited, the government was cautious in introducing measures to spur investment. With the opposition still in disarray, Musa, running on a platform of "No Turning Back," led his party to a resounding victory in the national and municipal elections of March 5, 2003. Winning twenty-two of twenty-nine legislative seats, his became the first government to win two consecutive elections. Because of frequent rumors of corruption at high levels, Musa asked all cabinet members to sign a code of conduct.

Thereafter, the government made a series of economic blunders that further weakened the economy. In 2004 it allowed the Social Security Board (SSB) fund to invest in more than eighteen hundred private mortgages valued at more than $53 million and loaned a further $43 million through a newly created Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to promote economic development. When some borrowers defaulted, Belizeans began to worry about future pensions. Economic woes worsened when the government decided to raise money by selling its majority share in BTL (Belize Telecommunications Ltd) to an American company, Innovative Communication, chaired by Jeffrey Prosser, on April 1, 2004. In November of that year, Forbes magazine reported that Prosser had a mountain of debt and was in Washington, D.C., trying to stave off creditors and regulators. Several months later, on February 10, 2005, the government announced that it had taken back BTL and ousted Prosser, who had defaulted on payments. Continuing economic problems, investigations of misconduct at the SSB and DFC, and lowered credit ratings prompted civil unrest and widespread protests and strikes by teachers, students, and public employees in April 2005, with protestors no doubt egged on by the opposition UDP.

On March 2, 2006, this growing economic crisis led to a UDP landslide in the municipal elections. The UDP captured a majority of seats in two cities and seven towns, winning sixty-four of sixty-seven council seats and capturing 60 percent of the popular vote. It now seemed poised to reclaim the national government in the elections of 2008. While Belize signed a partial scope agreement with Guatemala on June 28, 2006, aimed at increasing trade, no progress was made on the long-standing boundary dispute. A report from the International Narcotics Control Strategy complained that Belize continued to be a transshipment point in the cocaine trade in partnership with Mexican and Colombian drug dealers.

As Belize celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary of political independence on September 21, 2006, Prime Minister Musa noted that his government was implementing a comprehensive package of fiscal, monetary, and financial-sector reforms. These included a 10 percent general sales tax introduced on July 1. For Belize's creditors, however, it was a case of too little, too late. With external debt reaching US$1.1 billion, Belize was forced to default and seek cooperation from the country's private creditors. The government blamed the costs associated with rebuilding from four hurricanes and two major storms between 1998 and 2002. Financial critics blamed fiscal recklessness on the part of the government. In February 2007 Belize became the first country in seventy years to use a collective action clause to restructure a sovereign bond governed by New York law, thus quickly restructuring half of its debt.

See alsoAltun Ha; British-Latin American Relations; Caracol; Caribbean Common Market (CARIFTA and CARICOM); Cerros; Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850); Creole; Drugs and Drug Trade; International Monetary Fund (IMF); Madrid, Treaty of (1670); Mestizo; Musa, Said; Price, George.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

General and Pre-1900 Diplomatic Histories

Cook, Lieutenant James. Remarks on a Passage from the River Balise in the Bay of Honduras, to Merida. London: Printed for C. Parker, 1769.

Dobson, Narda. A History of Belize. Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago: Longman Caribbean, 1973.

Grant, C. H. The Making of Modern Belize: Politics, Society, and British Colonialism in Central America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Humphreys, R. A. The Diplomatic History of British Honduras, 1638–1901. New York, Oxford University Press, 1961.

Recent Sources on the Maya

About Caracol. Available from http://www.caracol.org.

Chase, Diane Z., and Arlen F. Chase. Studies in the Archaeology of Caracol. 1994. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute (Monograph 7), 1994.

Garber, James F., ed. The Ancient Maya of the Belize Valley: Half a Century of Archaeological Research. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

McKillop, Heather. Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.

McKillop, Heather. In Search of Maya Sea Traders. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005.

Spain, Britain, and the Maya

Jacobi, Keith P. Last Rites for the Tipu Maya: Genetic Structuring in a Colonial Cemetery. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000.

Jones, Grant D. Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1984.

Jones, Grant D. The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Naylor, Robert A. Penny Ante Imperialism: The Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras, 1600–1914: A Case Study in British Informal Empire. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989.

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Bolland, O. Nigel. Colonialism and Resistance in Belize: Essays in Historical Sociology, 2nd edition. Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize: Cubola Productions, 2003.

Clegern, Wayne M. British Honduras: Colonial Dead End, 1859–1900. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967.

Finamore, Daniel. "Pirates of the Barcadares: Early Mariners in Belize Left Archaeologists Tantalizing Traces of Their Lives but No Buried Treasure." Natural History, November 2002.

Johnson, Melissa A. "The Making of Race and Place in Nineteenth-Century British Honduras." Environmental History 8, no. 4 (2003): 598-617. Also available from http://historycooperative.press.uiuc.edu/journals/eh/8.4/johnson.html.

Simmons, Donald C., Jr. Confederate Settlements in British Honduras. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.

Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Arvigo, Rosita. Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.

McClaurin, Irma. Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

Macpherson, Anne S. From Colony to Nation: Women Activists and the Gendering of Politics in Belize, 1912–1982. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Palacio, Myrtle. Who and What in Belizean Elections: 1954–1993. Belize: Glessima Research, 1993.

Roessingh, Carel et al. Entrepreneurs in Tourism in the Caribbean Basin: Case Studies from Belize, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Surinam. Amsterdam: Dutch University Press, 2005.

Shoman, Assad. Party Politics in Belize. Belize: Cubola Productions, 1987.

Shoman, Assad. 13 Chapters of a History of Belize. Belize City, Belize: Angelus Press, 1994.

Sutherland, Anne. The Making of Belize: Globalization in the Margins. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1998.

Wiegan, Krista E. "Nationalist Discourse and Domestic Incentives to Prevent Settlement of the Territorial Dispute between Guatemala and Belize." Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 11 (2005): 349-383.

Ethnic Studies

Koop, Gerhard S. Pioneer Years in Belize. Belize City, Belize: G. S. Koop, 1991.

Loewen, Royden. Diaspora in the Countryside: Two Mennonite Communities and Mid-Twentieth-Century Rural Disjuncture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

Palacio, Joseph O. The Garifuna: A Nation Across Borders—Essays in Social Anthropology. Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize: Cubola Productions, 2005.

Roessingh, Carel. The Belizean Garifuna: Organization of Identity in an Ethnic Community in Central America. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001.

Wilk, Richard W. Household Ecology: Economic Change and Domestic Life among the Kekchi Maya in Belize. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991.

Wright, Peggy, and Brian E. Coutts, comps. Belize. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara, CA: CLIO Press, 1993. Also a Net Library e-book (2002).

Online Sources

Attorney General's Ministry. Available from http://www.belizelaw.org.

Belize Free Press. Available from http://belizefreepress.com.

Central Statistical Office (CSO). Available from http://www.cso.gov.bz.

Elections and Boundaries Department of Belize. Available from http://www.belize-elections.org/index.html.

Government of Belize. Available from http://www.belize.gov.bz/index.php.

                                        Brian E. Coutts