It's No-Decision Day on Belize

And so referendum day is upon us. Even though it beggars belief that the ICJ would decide in Guatemala's favour, one presumes that a great many Chapines will be out celebrating democracy today. The outcome will be irrelevant unless Belizeans choose to waste their time and money in a similar manner at some point in the near future. The use of plebiscites by nationalist-populists for questionable ends is definitely a thing now in global democratic politics. Let's probe a little deeper into this problem than the article seems willing to do. 'Guatemala' used to refer to the Spanish captaincy general which stretched from the Mexican state of Chiapas down to the southern border of what is now Costa Rica. Santiago - today La Antigua - was the capital. Cosmopolitan opportunists operating out of the UK and other European states in the 18th century encroached at various points along the Caribbean coast of this section of the Spanish empire. 'Belize' said by some to be a corruption of the name Wallace, was under the de-fato control of pirates, buccaneers and loggers, the latter bringing in substantial numbers of Africans to extract wood like mahogany from the forests around the Maya Mountains. There appears to have been a preponderance of Scots involved, which is why the Guatemalan government's consistent use of 'ingleses' to refer to the ne'er-do-well's that 'stole' Belize from them rankles a bit! This group was collectively known as the 'Baymen' of Belize and in 1798 they fought off a Spanish fleet tasked with purging the area of protestant interlopers. This decisive victory is celebrated today in Belize as St George's Caye Day every tenth of September. Independence for Guatemala came in the form of joining the Mexican empire. Then that fell apart, and so did Guatemala, into the various modern nation states of Central America. Tellingly, Guatemala is currently making no official claim for Chiapas or indeed Honduras and El Salvador*. When the American diplomat-explorer John L. Stephens visited Belize in 1839 he was gobsmacked to find the territory effectively run by educated locals, many of whom were of African descent. There was a small garrison of red coats but did not formally belong to the UK, and this remained the case when Guatemala signed a treaty with the Brits in 1859. The Guatemalan legal case for 'recovering' a large part of the southern part of Belize rests on the fact that they claim the UK made a commitment in that treaty to construct a road linking the Caribbean zone to the more inhabited part of Guatemala, which they did not keep. Three years later, in 1862, Belize became a crown colony and would be known from then until 1981 as British Honduras. Like many other colonies in the mid-to-late 20th century, Belize experienced the development of an indigenous movement for national self-determination (under George Price) and once the basic goal was achieved, took the view - as did most other former members of the British empire (such as India, say) - that any prior commitments made by imperialists were now null and void. I can see how the modern nation state of Guatemala could put together a legal case that castigated the UK for defaulting on the 1859 treaty - asking the Brits to either build the road or pay compensation - but that one member of the UN could effectively invade another by means of an ICJ ruling is complete and utter nonsense. The southern part of Belize that acquisitive Guatemalan eyes are fixed on has had a colourful history. It is where the country's most substantial communities of Maya reside - Mopan and Kekchi - many of whom came as refugees from Guatemala's genocidal approach to diversity in the 1980s. It is also features one of the larger concentrations of Garifuna, a cultural group that claims descent from the Carib indians of St Vincent, who had mixed their blood with shipwrecked would-be African slaves and resisted British control for many years until forced to evacuate en-masse to the northern Caribbean coastlines of Central America. These 'Black Caribs' still speak an Amerindian tongue and retain synchretic religious beliefs blending West African notions and rituals those of the Caribbean indigenes. (Guatemala sports a 'Garifuna' community in Livingston and other parts of Izabal, but my suspicion is that most of the these folk are actually descended from the Jamaicans brought in to work there by the United Fruit company. When Stephens visited Livingston in 1839 he described it as a small township of pure-blooded Carib Indians.) Belize has played host over the past few centuries to an eclectic bunch of refugees, such as Mennonites seeking the promised back of beyond and a portion of the defeated Confederate army.

* Though Jimmy does seem a bit confused today about whether the consulta popular is about Belize or Mexico.