“For Mexico, 2010 is a year of celebration, said Jonathan Kandell in the New York Times. Two hundred years ago, the nation’s war for independence began with a priest’s call to rebellion.”
“The trail begins in Dolores Hidalgo, a provincial town in the state of Guanajuato known as ‘the cradle of independence.’ It was here that Father Miguel Hidalgo uttered his famous cry – ‘Down with bad government!’ – and called for revolt.”
“Hidalgo and his chief co-conspirators were captured and beheaded within the year, but their revolution eventually succeeded.”
– pg. 38, THE WEEK, October 15, 2020
“The ‘Age of Enlightenment’ (or simply the ‘Enlightenment’) is the era in Western philosophy and intellectual, scientific, and cultural life, centered upon the 18th century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority.”
– from WIKIPEDIA, the free enclycopedia
If the previously dominant Creole population of British Honduras/Belize had had any real knowledge of the Caste War in the Yucatán in the second half of the nineteenth century, then they would have understood why the Mestizo and Maya people of the Corozal and Orange Walk Districts tend to view the Battle of St. George’s Caye with skepticism.
It is absolutely incredible to us that the power structure in Belize education has been able to ignore a war, the Caste War, which had so much impact on the history of this country and which has contributed mightily to the divergence in perspective on the Battle of St. George’s Caye, an event which has had very important legal and historical consequences for Belize and Belizeans.
After September 10, 1798, when the Spanish gave up on the naval invasion of Belize which historians have referred to as the Battle of St. George’s Caye, there were no more Spanish attempts to attack Belize from the Yucatán. The history of Mexico in the early nineteenth century began to become unstable and revolutionary. In 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo began a war of independence from imperial Spain, which was having all kinds of problems with the France of Napoleon Bonaparte. The upshot of Hidalgo’s grito was that Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821, but instability continued. European powers, including France, continued to interfere in Mexico.
Transportation and communication in the first half of the nineteenth century were not what they are today. The ladino people in the Yucatán, relatively removed from the center of political power in Mexico City, sought and declared independence from federal Mexico on more than one occasion. Within the Yucatán itself, the rivalry between Mérida and Campeche made for constant quarrelling and fighting. But there was more than that. The prostration of Spain before Napoleon’s France, coupled with the ideas of the “Enlightenment” which had spread across Europe and her various colonies after the American Revolution in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789, contributed to aggressive, sometimes military behavior in Mexico by individuals and groups who believed in conflicting philosophies of socio-political organization and structure. There was serious ferment in the Yucatán throughout the whole first half of the nineteenth century, and then in 1847, the Mayas, who had been recruited to fight in the various ladino conflicts in the territory, began violent and bloody rebellion. This was the Caste War.
The Caste War, which may actually be viewed as lasting from 1847 to 1903, gave the British in Belize the upper hand in the region. The same ladino elements which had historically been involved in the various Spanish incursions into Belize, now found themselves hard-pressed to subdue their former minions, the Mayas, who were purchasing their arms and ammunition from British merchants south of the Rio Hondo. In fact, on more than one occasion, rebellious Maya leaders in the southeast Yucatán asked the British Governor here to become a part of Belize.
The point is that various circumstances contributed to the cessation of Spanish and ladino attacks on Belize. Thus it was that in 1898, Simon Lamb and the ruling class of merchants and mahogany contractors in Belize could celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Battle of St. George’s Caye in grand fashion, not because it was a major military engagement, but because of the contextual historical and legal significance of the events of 1798.
If the Creole spokesmen in Belize had any knowledge of the Caste War, then they would emphasize the legal and historical significance of the Battle of St. George’s Caye and cease to construct some kind of military drama. The Mestizo and the Maya people of Corozal and Orange Walk know what real military drama is, because their grandparents and great grandparents came here as refugees from the Caste War in the Yucatán.
Politicians play politics. They tell people what they want to hear. Thinkers worth their salt have to be operating at a higher level than party politics. It is easy to chant slogans and wave flags. It is not so easy to go against the grain where education and party politics are concerned. The fault line between Belize’s two largest ethnic groups does not have to become a permanent divide. All of us here are Belizeans, or at least that is what we want to be. We need to know the true history of our various ancestors so that we can demolish the demagogues.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.