by Marie-Therese Belisle Nweke
Thursday, June 26, 2025
There are a number of YouTube pro-Guatemala and anti-Belize videos, which for some time have been made regularly available to regional and global audiences by an active Guatemalan propaganda machine.
This machine, said to have the tacit approval of the Guatemalan government, is chiefly orchestrated by largely ignorant, but highly zealous and patriotic Guatemalan youths, and their foreign supporters. These videos are clearly preparing the ground for the anticipated ICJ judgement, coming this year, regarding the long-standing dispute between Belize and Guatemala. The imbroglio has Guatemala wanting to take 53 percent of Belize’s territory, which amounts to 12,272 km2 or 4,738 square miles. Should Guatemala get its way at the ICJ, the Toledo and Stann Creek Districts would become Guatemala’s, as well as large swathes of the Cayo and Belize Districts.
However, this is a judgement, like all ICJ judgements, that, while it has the force of law, cannot be enforced, since the ICJ possesses no enforcement mechanism. Therefore, in the current global jungle which characterizes much of international relations, “might is right” and “the strong trample on the weak”.
Hence, if this judgement favours Belize, no one should lose sleep when Guatemala, with Israeli support and American tacit backing, invades and overruns Belize. And, besides the customary handwringing, solemn speeches and vociferous condemnations at regional forums such as CARICOM, the ACS, SICA, CELAC and the OAS, as well as the Commonwealth of Nations and the UN, nothing will change, and Belize, not just 53 percent of it, may well become an integral part of Guatemala. In addition, its current Latino majority population, which has now transformed Belize into another Hispanized Central American state, denuding it of its former uniqueness of being the only Black Creole majority state in Central America, may quietly acquiesce to Guatemalan sovereignty. These latest immigrants, most of whom were allowed into Belize not only from the poorest and most civil-war-torn regions of Guatemala, but also from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, came and settled permanently into Belize in the last five or so decades. They were welcomed by governments unable to foresee that Belize’s future would be affected by this population shift.
I am not interested in the fact that for over a century and a half all Guatemalans have been indoctrinated by every government of theirs, whether dictatorships or psuedo-democracies, to believe that Belize is theirs, by hook or by crook. Or, that as far back as 81 years ago, Guatemala fashioned a new Constitution, in which it was expressly stated that British Honduras (Belize’s former name) is a part of Guatemala, and its integration into Guatemala is in that country’s national interest.
What certainly bothers me is the response of Belizeans to all this! Where are the social media activists in Belize and its Diaspora? Granted, there are local issues about sugar and screwworm, salaries and allowances the long-suffering unions are demanding for teachers, and the feeling of being shortchanged for fat cats in the highest echelons of the civil service. Then, there is the dangerous lacuna in politics, in that Belize no longer has a viable Opposition! Still, where are the ripostes from civil society to these ignorant and menacing videos? Surely, it ought to know that they exist! What is the answer from the ordinary people of Belize, who glory in describing Belize as “The Jewel”, to Guatemala’s creeping annexation of their land, the deforestation within Peten which now impinges on Belize? What do they think about what is happening in Izabal in southern Belize, and the fact that every single day Belize’s border regions and protected areas have been invaded, and are being steadily despoiled by Guatemala’s illegal and destructive encroachments? Of course, these undermine and destroy Belize’s natural resources. Yet the noise throughout the length and breadth of this fabled “Jewel” is muted, and most times there is an eerie silence. As for the publicity surrounding the Sarstoon, this has elicited nothing more than symbolic, and in my view, frustrating, theatre.
But most Belizeans no longer read. They read neither newspapers and magazines nor books, hence there is this vast lacuna which creates swathes of ignorance, triviality and insouciance. But they are into social media! Do they not see how they have been steadily and stealthily balkanized in their own land by strangers from the east, west and north, as well as those next to them? Should one group close down their farms, shops and supermarkets for just one month, Belizeans will know the true meaning of “Gaza” —and that “Gaza” had left the Middle East to berth in Belize!
Indeed, the generation that eloquently protested against the 1968 Webster Proposals is no more. Nor are those who roundly rejected the March 1981 Heads of Agreement recommendations, which led to a State of Emergency. The Webster Proposals were not only blatantly pro-Guatemalan, with the American government in full support, but with deliberate arrogance these proposals insulted the intelligence of the Belizean people and even their British colonizers. Article 9 of the proposals was the most egregious. Why? In effect it sought to make Belize a pseudo-protectorate of Guatemala. Belize would be unable to solely control its external affairs, internal security and defence, and would never be allowed to become a member of the UN. It is necessary to mention here that George Cadle Price, one of Belize’s two most foremost statesmen and its first prime minister, actually in the early 1960s turned down the suggestion by Guatemala’s Ydígoras Fuentes to make Belize an associated state of Guatemala. All Price wanted was full independence from Britain, and he fought tirelessly for this. He first won over Cuba and then Panama, both with consequential Black African minorities, and later Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, to support Belize at the UN.
Perhaps the reason that there was no clause revoking Guatemala’s claim to Belize, is that, if the Webster Proposals had been accepted by the Belizean people, their country would have moved from being a colony of Britain, a once great world power, with the most extensive and longest lasting empire in the history of the world, to being a protectorate of a poor Third World nation, which has always been politically unstable. For Guatemala has been wracked for a long time by civil wars, the legendary discrimination of its underclass by European elites, and the theft of the country’s best lands, once owned by its indigenous Maya population.
To be continued