When I saw an article in the FINANCIAL TIMES this weekend to the effect that Great Britain was permitting oil companies to look for oil in the Falkland Islands, I was intrigued, for various reasons.
It was only after some thought that it occurred to me that the anniversary of the Heads of Agreement uprisings had come and gone this year with nary a word. This was perhaps because the HoA anniversary came this year while Belizeans were focused on the controversial PUP leadership convention in Belmopan on Sunday, March 30.
Uprisings in Belize City and Corozal Town in late March and early April of 1981 had convinced the then British Governor to call a national state of emergency in Belize on Thursday, April 2, 1981. There are as many as two generations of young Belizeans who did not truly experience the Heads, and do not really know the circumstances and implications of those frightening days and weeks.
There was a time during that emergency when it seemed that Belize had been left on its own, abandoned by the rest of the world except for those in Washington, London, and Belize who had decided that the Guatemalan claim to Belize should be settled according to their prescription – the Heads of Agreement, so that Belize could then move on to political Independence.
In the months following the declaration of the state of emergency, the major issue for Belizeans in connection with the proposed and approaching Independence, was the question of a defence guarantee. The British, in the person of Nicholas Ridley, refused to give Belize a defence guarantee. They were only willing to leave their military support here “for an appropriate period.” It was under that shadow of uncertainty that the Belize government moved on to Independence on September 21, 1981. I say “that shadow of uncertainty” because, when you strip the situation down to its nuts and bolts, Guatemala is 40 to 50 times larger than Belize where population and armed forces are concerned.
In Belize, we therefore watched with keen interest the following year, 1982, when Britain sent its warships, fighter planes and troops 6,000 miles to the very southern extremity of South America to defend the Falkland Islands against an invasion by the military government of Argentina. Argentina insists that they own the Falklands, which Argentina officially refers to as the “Malvinas.”
In Belize, it immediately occurred to us that the Falkland Islands were white, whereas we Belizeans were black. There was also more informed comment about in Belize to the effect that the Falkland Islands were oil and mineral rich. It was not just a case of Whitehall deciding to protect some sheep herders off Argentina who happened to be British citizens.
The thing about the Falklands/Malvinas issue is that the whole of so-called Latin America (South and Central America, including Caribbean islands like Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic) are outspoken and passionate in their support for Argentinian rights. The implications for Belize are huge, because our situation is historically viewed in this region as a case of Guatemala claiming its “rights” from Great Britain, while the Falklands/Malvinas issue involves Argentina demanding its Western Hemisphere “rights” from that same imperial entity – Great Britain.
I think it is important for Belizean leaders and thinkers to observe and consider carefully the perspective and role of Mexico in these two matters. Belize’s northern neighbour, Mexico, is 8 times larger than Guatemala in population and military. In the late 1950’s, Belizean Leader, Hon. George C. Price, had made the incredible statement to foreign newsmen, that if his drive for Independence failed, he would give the southern half of the country to Guatemala and the northern half to Mexico. That statement is never publicized, but it is for sure that all of us older Belizeans remember it. The statement was near traumatic for many of us. It was during the time of the Guatemalan presidency of Ydigoras Fuentes, who was probably the most aggressive Guatemala City proponent of “the claim” in our lifetime.
It has been an extraordinary aspect of Belizean political and diplomatic history in the post-World War II era that the reality and role of Mexico are never discussed with respect to the Guatemalan claim. Remember that the September 1798 naval invasion of Belize came from what is now Mexican territory. Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821, but the government in Mexico City had always experienced problems with the ruling elite in its southernmost province – the Yucatan. Secessionist tendencies and movements in the Yucatan continued after independence, and then the territory experienced the hell of the Caste War, which began in 1847 and lasted for the rest of the 19th century.
There are very few Belizeans who have studied what was going on in the Yucatan in the 19th century. All that the vast majority of Belizeans know is that the citizens of Belize’s Corozal and Orange Walk Districts are mostly descended from refugees of the Caste War who were allowed to settle in Belize, beginning in the 1850’s/1860’s.
What very few Belizeans understand is that there was a huge area between British Honduras and the Yucatan which became a real no man’s land once the Caste War began. To begin with, the majority “Creole” population of the British colony did not differentiate between the Spanish and the Maya, whereas that difference was at the very root of the Caste War violence. In fact, the Spanish word for Creole (“criollo”) refers to citizens of Spanish blood who were born in the New World. “Creole” meant one thing in B.H., and another thing in the Yucatán.
The British and the Mexican government did not agree on a northern boundary treaty until 1897, which is almost a hundred years after the Battle of St. George’s Caye. The major feature of the Caste War was the rebellion of oppressed Maya against the Spanish elite who ruled from Valladolid and Merida. Those Spanish elite accused the British of selling guns and ammunition to the Maya rebels. So that what the 1897 boundary treaty resulted in was a decree by the British governor in Belize prohibiting the export of arms, ammunition and gunpowder for two years without a license from himself. This was a deadly blow to the Maya rebels, and essentially constituted an agreement between the Mexican and British governments to cooperate against the Maya insurrectionists.
It appears that the 1897 treaty between Mexico and Belize remains in effect, and the reason it does is because the treaty suits the interests of Mexico City and the interests of London/Belize.
The Mexicans and the British cooperated to quell the Maya a hundred years ago. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, one must conclude that the Mexicans have been relatively quiet all those years about the Guatemalan claim because they needed and need the British to maintain stability in their South. In a sense, it is the Maya, then, who have been the cause of all this.
I close with an interesting and relevant quote from pages 378 and 379 of Don E. Dumond’s THE MACHETE AND THE CROSS: CAMPESINO REBELLION IN YUCATAN, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 1997. The quote, it would appear, tells the story of how Chetumal began
The boundary treaty was stalled by the Mexican senate until Foreign Minister Mariscal proposed a further provision that would guarantee Mexican rights to navigation through British waters to Chetumal Bay and the mouth of the Río Hondo. With the British-imposed condition that this would apply only to merchant vessels, the logjam was broken, the additional article was signed on April 7, 1897, and ratifications of the final treaty and addendum were exchanged in July. A copy reached Belize in October and was immediately published in the gazette. In November, the governor decreed a two-year prohibition on the export of arms, ammunition, and gunpowder without a license from himself.
In Mexico, completion of the critical agreement revivified two immediate interests: peaceful enticement of the rebels to submit, and control of the growing illicit export of logs from Mexican territory. The first of these led to the novel expedient of sending Mexican troops to hang notices in trees and other visible places along the western masewal frontier, notices offering amnesty and grants of lands to those who surrendered and threats if they did not. In addition, efforts were also made to encourage trade between rebels and Mexicans on the east coast and to increase trade between bravos and the British in the south, with a view toward accustoming the recalcitrant masewalob to regular, peaceful contacts.
The second interest produced an equally novel floating customs station on the Rio Hondo. Preparations for this had begun nearly a year before the boundary convention was ratified, when the Mexican navy sent Lieutenant Othon P. Blanco to New Orleans to oversee the building of a special vessel of shallow draft that could be anchored at the river mouth. It was to be sixty-five feet long, with a twenty-four foot beam, and built of cyprus planks. Drawing less than three feet, it would provide headquarters for smaller launches and be manned by fifteen marines and their officers. On December 24, 1897, the sixty-four ton pontoon Chetumal, armed with a Hotchkiss cannon and a Metralliuse machine gun and carrying Winchester repeating rifles as small arms for its crew, was towed into harbour at Belize. Lieutenant Blanco announced publicly that the purpose of the vessel was fiscal only, in that it was designed to ensure the collection of legally imposed duties on items crossing the Mexican border.
On January 22 the pontoon was again under tow, this time headed out of Belize, and within a week was anchored at a point at the mouth of the Hondo immediately off the Mexican shore. There the main channel and only entrance to the river lay north of the newly determined international boundary, running close under the Mexican shore, thus forcing all boats entering or leaving the river to pass through Mexican waters beside the new Mexican customs station. There the pontoon sat, headquarters to a small sailboat and a steam launch, collecting duties and ensuring that any export of wood products was under a legal permit from the Mexican holder of the logging concession or his agent.