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Capital: Belmopan
Area: 22 960 kmē Population:230 000 Currency: 1 US$ = 1.97 B$ GDP: 98 / 4 300$ HDI: 83/ 0.732 TSI: 0.069 1998 data |
Protestant anglophone Belize is an anomaly in Catholic hispanophone Central America. Swampy lowlands along the shore and impassible forests inland had little to attract the Spanish in 17th-century. Moreover, it's extensive barrier reef, which is now a major tourist attraction, was such a hazard to navigation that only British pirates preying on the Spanish fleet of galleons settled here. They were followed only by small numbers of British loggers attracted by exotic hardwoods. Later, free Garifuna blacks arrived from the nearby island of Roatan where 5000 of them had been deported from St. Vincent. The Garifuna, descendants of Carib Indians and escaped slaves, lived free on St-Vincent until subjected to ethnic cleansing and deported by the British in 1797. The British relinquished Roatan and its mainland settlements to Spanish Honduras and Nicaragua in 1899 but it held on to British Honduras until it became the independent nation of Belize in 1981. Thus, the inhabitants of Belize remained free of the influence of the Catholic Church and of the Spanish absolutist heritage that has plagued its neighbours with the chronic liberal - conservative struggle. Democracy in Belize has consequently developed more closely according to the Anglo-Saxon model than to the Latin approximation observed in Central and South America.
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The majority of rural housing in Belize conforms to the indigenous model found everywhere in Maya territory.
There are of course exceptions such as this wooden house on stilts.
Housing in the cities tend to be more like that of the Caribbean islands than that found in its neighbours, Mexico, Guatemala and the Honduras.
This street scene, reminiscent of island architecture would appear quite alien in Tegucigalpa, Quetzaltenango or Mérida!
Belize's famous Swing Bridge can be seen in the background of this picture of Hawlover Creek.
Belize City has a bad reputation for street crime and drugs but it cannot be avoided as it is the hub of bus travel north and south and of ferries to the cayes (reef islands).
Orange Walk in the north would be a good place to improve one's spoken English more cheaply than in the USA or Canada. Ideally by boarding with a local family.
Corozal, my last stop before entering Mexico confirms how Belize is culturally an isolated island in Latin Central America.
The Corozal cultural center is the last anglophone outpost before entering hispanophone Mexico.
I was just going through Belize to get to Mexico on this trip so I did not take many photos and I don't have much to say about it but I'll try to compensate with this beautiful picture of the waterfront on Corozal Bay.
