3
BELIZEAN HISTORY

PRE-COLUMBIAN BELIZE

Long before white men came to the New World, Belize was inhabited by a people called the Maya. Dozens of ruined cities in fertile river valleys and throughout the northern plain show that in Mayan times, Belize was far more densely populated than it is today. The Mayan way of life was a stable one: at least one settlement, Cuello, was continuously inhabited for more than 2500 years. And the Maya were in some ways more advanced than the Europeans of the Middle Ages, for they practiced mathematics and astronomy with astonishing facility.

The ancestors of the Maya probably came to Belize some 4000 years ago, as part of the great migration of peoples over the Bering Strait from Asia. They were hunters and seed gatherers; but gradually, they developed a settled way of life based on the cultivation of food crops, the most important of which was corn. Abundant corn harvests eventually allowed the formation of larger communities, as labor was freed to create permanent buildings and to administer laws.

As settlements developed, simple thatched structures took on religious use, were set apart from common houses on low platforms, and eventually evolved into temples raised on pyramids. Utensils were manufactured that were beautiful as well as utilitarian. Clay was worked into simple figurines, and later baked to form longer-lasting sculptures.

The early communities probably differed in their ways from each other. But as trade developed, as new peoples migrated into the area and mingled with or conquered their predecessors, a more or less common Mayan way of life came to prevail throughout the lowlands of Belize and adjacent lands. Cities were built with basically similar structures and styles over a wide area. While those of present-day lowland Belize never reached the height and extent of cities in Yucatan and the Peten, they appear to be older, indicating that Mayan culture might have penetrated to the interior of Central America from the Belizean coast.

The more important Mayan cities, such as Xunantunich, in western Belize, and Lubaantun, in the south, consisted of a main plaza and several lesser plazas, each surrounded by temples set atop mounds, or pyramids, and such lesser structures as palaces with interconnecting rooms, ball courts, and sweat baths. Massive as they sometimes were, these structures were built by the most rudimentary, labor-intensive techniques. Not knowing the practical use of the wheel, the Maya carried tons of rubble for pyramids and platforms on the backs of humans. This fill was faced with limestone blocks joined by lime mortar. Not having the true arch, the Maya used a primitive version, called the corbel. Successive stones on each side of a doorway or hall projected inward, until they could be capped by a single stone. The corbelled arch, with its limited span, resulted in interior spaces that now seem claustrophobically small.

In the cities, carved stones, or stelae, and altars, were set in paved plazas, carved with glyphs that recorded dates, names of rulers, and births, deaths, and other significant events. As well, the Maya sculptured the landscape. When a hilltop got in the way of a city plan, it was leveled. When water supply was undependable, plazas were sloped to catch runoff in reservoirs. Throughout the Mayan area, cities were built and rebuilt, reaching their greatest development during the Classic period, from about 300 to 800 A.D.

The centers of the Mayan cities were probably ceremonial precincts, populated by nobles and priests, for there was only limited interior space in Mayan stone buildings. Commoners lived in simpler houses on the outskirts, to judge by the remains of many small platforms that could have been house foundations. Daily and occasional activities included ceremonial ball games, sacrificial decapitation (evidenced by finds of skulls), and, of course, building, carving, and decorating, and making art objects for the elite. At Xunantunich, archaeologists discovered a complete jeweler's workshop. Trade must have been carried on with other areas, for jade from highland Guatemala, beads of gold from southern Central America, and Pacific seashells have all been found at Mayan cities in Belize. Raised limestone causeways cut through the jungle, and cargoes were carried along them on the backs of men, for there is no evidence in the murals of Mayan temples or the scenes painted on pottery that the Maya used pack animals. Trade also followed the rivers of the Petén and the Gulf and Caribbean coasts. Cacao grown in Belize and elsewhere along the coast served as the currency of the Mayan world.

Outside of the city centers, agriculture flourished. The Maya took seemingly dreadful swamps, with their store of water, and reworked them into resources that supported large population centers. Raised fields, laboriously created, were drained and irrigated by man-made canals, which might also have served as transport routes. Corn and possibly cassava and yams were cultivated intensively, to provide a nutritious diet, along with breadnuts and forest fruits.

While much of the way of life of the Maya remains mysterious, their mathematical and calendrical system is fairly well understood. The Maya used a zero long before the Europeans, and a system of dots and bars to represent the digits from zero to nineteen.

It often seems that the Maya were obsessed with time, but that impression could result from a hazy understanding of most other aspects of their way of life. As a farming people, they needed a reliable way to measure time, though they refined their system to an accuracy unsurpassed in the ancient world. The Yucatán Maya, for example, figured that the planet Venus passes between the earth and the sun every 584 days. Modern astronomers, using precise instruments, put the figure at 583.92 days.

The basic Mayan year, sometimes called the vague year, was made up of 360 days, along with an extra period of five days. A shorter, sacred year, sometimes called the tzolkin, consisted of 260 days, each tagged with one of the 260 possible combinations of twenty day names and thirteen day numbers. Any one day would have a name composed of its position in each of the two years (for example, 4 Ahau 2 Cumku), and any such compound name would be repeated only once every 52 solar years.

The Mayan calendar system, and the 52-year cycle, or calendar round, were also used by the other peoples of Mesoamerica. But the Maya had as well a third calendar, the long count, which kept track of the number of days elapsed since a date equivalent to 3113 B.C. This date was used in much the same way that we now use the birth of Christ as a starting point for reckoning time. Long-count dates inscribed on stelae give the most reliable information about the development of Mayan cities.

The Maya had the most advanced native system of writing in the Americas. It was once generally accepted that each symbol, taken from nature, represented a single word or idea or number, as in Chinese. For decades, only numbers, dates, names, places, and glyphs recording significant milestones in the lives of rulers were understood. But in the last few years, scholars have made new discoveries about Mayan writing, in some cases by finding links between contemporary Maya-related languages and the ancient texts. It is now known that some glyphs are phonetic syllables that spell out words—there can even be different symbols for the same syllable. Two-thirds of the 800 or so known glyphs, and a third of the phonetic syllables, have been deciphered. And with rapid progress in decoding the remainder, along with the structure of the Mayan language, more and more inscriptions are making sense to modern observers.

Despite its grandeur, the Classic civilization of the Maya went through a sudden and swift decay, starting in the ninth century A.D., when all city building in Belize and the adjacent lowlands came to a halt, to judge by the lack of later inscribed dates. What disaster took place at that time can only be imagined, but speculation brings up war, revolt, drought, epidemic, and exhaustion of the land as possibilities. Reduced populations lived in and around the decaying ceremonial centers for some hundreds of years, as Mayan civilization moved northward to the Yucatan. But the settled existence of large groups had all but disappeared by the time the first Europeans came to Belize.

THE EUROPEANS ARRIVE

From the arrival of the Europeans almost to the present, the history of Belize is one of neglect and plunder. This, of course, is the story of many a colony. But in Belize, the neglect was made worse by the territory's uncertain legal status. The plunder of resources went on unbalanced by any concern for the future of the land.

Belize was at first under Spanish dominion. The explorers Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Juan Díaz de Solís passed through in 1506 or 1508 on their way from Honduras to Yucatan, which gave Spain title by right of discovery, at least in European eyes. But in the subjugations of native empires, Belize was bypassed. There were few inhabitants, no obvious treasures, and no harbors, and a treacherous reef obstructed the maritime approach.

Later in the colonial period, the boundary between Yucatan and Guatemala in what is now Belize was never clearly defined, and officials in neither colony took responsibility for the remote area at the outer reaches of their authority. There was some missionary effort on the western fringes of Belize in the seventeenth century, and in the south, the recalcitrant Chol Indians were deported to lands more accessible to colonial administrators in Guatemala. But the Spaniards, who elsewhere sought to re-create the society of their homeland, left in Belize hardly a dent.

PIRATES, WOODCUTTERS AND SLAVES

Britain's reluctant acquisition of Belize traces back to the early seventeenth century, when Puritan settlers from Providence Island, off Nicaragua, set up trading outposts along the coast of Central America. The Spanish chased away the Puritans in 1641, but other, less peaceful Britishers were more difficult to uproot. These were the English and Scottish buccaneers who preyed upon the Spanish ships that carried gold and the raw materials whose trade Spain sought to monopolize. Many a Spanish cargo of logwood, a source of dyes, was brought to market by buccaneer capitalists. Belize, with many rivers along which to shelter, and a barrier reef to snag the larger ships of the Spaniards, became a buccaneer haven. A Scottish captain, Peter Wallace, set up a camp at the mouth of one of the rivers, and some say that his name was corrupted into "Belize," the name of the river and country.

Unable to rid its territories of the intruders by force, Spain sought a diplomatic solution. A 1670 treaty provided for English cooperation in the suppression of buccaneering and piracy. The adaptable buccaneers, however, turned to cutting logwood themselves in the forests of Campeche and Belize. Britain wavered between cooperating with the Spanish and supporting the woodcutters in areas that Spain had not settled. Meanwhile, intermittent Spanish attacks on the Belize camps resulted in only temporary evacuations.

By the latter half of the eighteenth century, the British government became more amenable to helping out the woodcutters in what came to be called the Bay Settlement. Britain's presence in the Caribbean was increasing. A protectorate was established along a part of the Central American coast called the Mosquito Shore, where the Indian population remained unconquered by the Spanish. The treaty that ended the Seven Years' War affirmed Spanish sovereignty in Belize, but granted the British permission to cut wood in the north, and a 1783 treaty extended the woodcutting concession to the Belize River. In fact, that area had already been cut over, and the logwood entrepreneurs were by then operating to the south. Attempting to catch up with fact, English and Spanish diplomats in 1786 extended the woodcutting concession to the Sibun River in the center of present-day Belize. This last treaty allowed the British to export logwood and mahogany, but prohibited the cultivation of crops—a sign of permanent settlement—and the formation of a government. The settlers ignored the treaty, and soon codified their own laws.

Spain's last efforts to recover Belize came in 1798. When the Spanish fleet appeared off St. George's Caye, the Baymen, as the resident woodcutters had come to be called, were ready. The larger Spanish force was driven off on September 10, still celebrated as Belize's national day.

BOOM

The population of the Bay Settlement at this time was probably no more than a couple of thousand, most of whom lived in the town of Belize, when they were not off cutting wood. The entrepreneurs of the wood trade were mainly Scottish, but their laborers were black slaves, brought over from Jamaica. Slavery in Belize, however, was not the harsh system that it was in other locales. Slave and master worked side by side, ate the same food, slept in the same rude huts in forest camps. Few slaves took up the Spanish offer of freedom for runaways, and many joined in the defense of the settlement against the Spanish in 1798.

Even after slavery was abolished in the Bay Settlement in 1838, most blacks continued to labor in the forests. At the beginning of the timber season, in December, they were given an advance on their wages. The money was intended for provisions, but in practice, the funds financed a drinking orgy. In the forests, the laborers cut logs and dragged them to rivers, to be floated down to the coast. In May or June, logs were loaded aboard ship for export, and rum was unloaded for another round of the spreeing that, in only slightly subdued form, is still a Belizean tradition.

The commitment to the wood trade in the Bay Settlement was total, and agriculture never had a chance. The swamps around the town of Belize were unsuitable for cultivation, and with a small, transient population, the local market was limited. Agricultural labor was unavailable, for the best money was to be made from the timber merchants, to whom laborers were under exclusive contract.

The settlement grew slowly, without really developing. Beans and rice to feed the populace were imported, along with rum for amusement. Logs moved by river, so no roads were cut to the interior. Formal education was useless for woodcutters, so schools were not built. Town life had a temporary quality, and the population lived in tumbledown shacks that might have been abandoned at any moment.

Nevertheless, with some good luck, the Bay Settlement prospered for many years. The logwood market became glutted at the end of the eighteenth century, and later collapsed, when synthetic dyes were developed. But fortunately for the woodcutters, a new market was opening for mahogany, which was coming into use in fine furniture and cabinetry, and in ships and railroad coaches. Mahogany grew more sparsely and farther from the river banks than logwood, and had to be cut over a greater area. By 1826, the timber harvesting area had expanded to the Sarstoon River, the present-day southern boundary of Belize.

The independence of Central America also gave an economic boost to Belize. British manufactured goods were transshipped from Belize along the coast to the new republics, which lacked their own ports and fleets for the transoceanic trade.

. . . AND BUST

Eventually, luck ran out, and boom times in the Bay came to an end. The Central American nations developed direct trading links with the United States and Europe, and coastal shipping declined. The cost of removing mahogany rose dramatically, and supply fell, as woodcutters ventured farther from the rivers. Meanwhile, African mahogany entered the European market, and steel replaced wood in railroad coaches and ships. Prices tumbled. Exports fell from 13 million board feet in 1846 to 3 million in 1900. With no new bonanzas to exploit, Belize became a backwater.

Over the years, the status of the settlement was regularized. Spain stopped protesting the British presence after losing her American colonies. An 1859 treaty confirmed the boundaries that still exist between Belize and Guatemala. Meanwhile, the United States recognized British claims in Belize in return for the termination of the British protectorate over the Mosquito Shore and the Bay Islands, off Honduras. In 1862, British Honduras formally became a colony at the request of its inhabitants, although Britain did not take over administration until 1871.

NEW ARRIVALS

Throughout the nineteenth century, the population of Belize was transformed. The original British and blacks intermarried and formed the Creole class that still dominates Belize. On the fringes of the colony, immigrants appeared in what had been unpopulated territory.

Between 1848 and 1858, a race war raged in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, to the north. Indians rose up and slaughtered their mestizo and white masters, and all central administration broke down. Those mestizos who could, fled across the Hondo River into British territory. Later, it was the turn of the Indians to flee from the avenging mestizos. The battles spilled over into northern Belize, while the merchants of Belize City, ever with an eye toward opportunity, went into the arms trade.

The lasting result of the turmoil was the settlement of the north of the colony. By 1850, the north had a population of about 5000 persons, four fifths of them recently arrived. Most importantly, they were farmers, who produced both subsistence and market crops.

In the south, the population grew with immigration from neighboring lands. Black Caribs, a people of mixed African and American Indian ancestry, entered the south of British Honduras from Guatemala and Honduras, starting in 1802. Kekchi and Mopan Indians found refuge in the south from forced labor on coffee plantations in Guatemala. A curious addition to the region were refugee Southerners who left the United States after the Civil War, rather than submit to Reconstruction. Their Toledo settlement, near Punta Gorda, flourished for a number of years.

Others came in small numbers from distant lands. Sepoys deported from India after the 1857 rebellion, and a few Chinese, worked on sugar plantations in the north. Nevertheless, after the immigration of West Indian plantation laborers and retired soldiers toward the end of the nineteenth century, Creoles were firmly established as the majority.

Efforts to diversify the economy of Belize started and stopped over the years. Bananas and sugar cane were planted in the Stann Creek valley of central Belize, and chicle was bled from sapodilla trees in the forests. But high costs, transportation difficulties and disease brought these and other developments to grief. British Honduras stumbled along, seeing only occasional prosperity when the price of mahogany temporarily recovered, or when war created work opportunities abroad. The introduction of mechanical equipment cut forest employment even in the good times, and a series of hurricanes in the 1930s and 1940s caused severe damage and left the colony increasingly dependent on British subsidies.

INDEPENDENCE

It was the continuing economic crisis that spurred Belize's independence movement. The colonial administration devalued the currency in 1949, bringing on a sudden increase in the cost of living. Belizeans protested vehemently and without effect, but the People's Committee formed at that time turned into a political party that agitated for independence. Gradually, a domestic democratic system took shape, and by 1965, Belize had full internal self government.

The only obstacle to complete independence was Guatemala. When the boundaries between Belize and Guatemala were set in 1859, Britain promised to help construct a road from Guatemala City to the Caribbean. Britain helped plan the road, but it was never completed, and a renegotiated treaty that defined British obligations more clearly was never ratified by Guatemala.

The matter was largely forgotten until the 1930s, when Guatemala claimed compensation from Britain to dispose of the road issue. Later, Guatemala demanded that Britain hand over Belize.

As Belizeans began to demand independence, Guatemala became at times histrionic about its claims, and threatened to invade. The matter was negotiated, and even conditionally settled, with Britain offering Guatemala at various times money, a veto over Belizean foreign policy, and chunks of Belizean territory and seabed that might contain oil. Belizeans, wary of a traditionally anti-black Guatemalan government, rejected all agreements.

In the end, Belizean independence was proclaimed on September 21, 1981. Despite some trepidation and a closed border, no Guatemalan invasion took place. British troops remained in Belize to defend the new nation for as long as necessary. In 1988, Belize and Guatemala reached a tentative agreement to normalize relations, but distrust between the two countries continues.

Independent Belize, like the colony of British Honduras, is dependent on foreign aid, and unable to feed itself without imports. But Belize is also a land without sharp contrast between rich and poor, where social tensions are lacking despite the mixture of ethnic groups, where life is benign, if not bountiful, for most of the inhabitants.

Belizeans are better off than many peoples in the developing areas of the world, though they lag far behind Americans and Europeans. In towns, tumbledown houses without running water are the norm. Gastro-intestinal ailments are a major public health problem. But public sanitation is improving, and the malaria, smallpox and yellow fever that once scourged the populace have now been wiped out or brought under control. The literacy rate in Belize is strikingly high, with more than 90 percent of the population able to read or write at a minimum level. And in politics, Belizeans are particularly fortunate in comparison with their Central American neighbors. In Belize, violence in politics is generally confined to vicious verbiage.

Over the years, the economic base of Belize has broadened. Sugar, cultivated largely in the northern, Spanish-speaking region, is the major export, followed by citrus fruit, grown in the Stann Creek valley. Lumber remains an important business, though much of the export trade is now in pine, rather than hardwood, and in the form of sawn lumber, not logs. Bananas and fish are also important earners of foreign exchange. Unofficially, marijuana has been a big export, but the government is making a serious effort to hinder the trade.

Export revenues, however, don't pay all the bills for the food that Belize imports, let alone the petroleum products, machinery, radios, and just about every modern product that a tiny country cannot make for itself. The difference has been financed for years by British loans and grants, and by remittances from Belizeans working abroad.

One of the major goals of the government of Belize is to increase local production of food, and to find markets for it in an economy geared to imports. More than 80 percent of cultivable land is idle, much of it held privately in large tracts, a legacy of the amassing of great timber reserves. Taxes on unused land have encouraged private owners to sell off their holdings, while the government makes its own land available for farming, and guarantees prices for staple crops.

The other major national task is diversification of the economy. Poor roads, lack of port facilities, distance from markets, insufficient local demand, lack of a mobile labor supply and high costs all have held back foreign investment. Nevertheless, those who bring some capital to Belize and provide regular employment receive encouragement and tax concessions.