by Marie-Therese Belisle Nweke

Continued from page 21 of Amandala dated Friday, July 4, 2025    

Sadly, the only crime that Belize, in its innocence, has committed, is that it faces the Caribbean Sea as well as the mighty Atlantic Ocean, which obviously denies Guatemala this highly strategic and coveted location. All this, unfortunately, limits Guatemala to the less consequential Pacific Ocean, whose trading network had shifted to the Atlantic, and places Guatemala in the unenviable position of being trapped between Belize and Honduras for easy access.

Then, let us throw into the equation Belize’s 400 cayes, or offshore islands; and lest I forget, its Great Barrier Reef, which is the largest in the Western Hemisphere. This is second in size to Australia’s Barrier Reef, which is now heavily affected by coral bleaching and habitat damage. And, then there is Belize’s famed Great Blue Hole. Since 1996, both Belize’s Great Barrier Reef and its cayes have become UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites. As a matter of fact, Belize’s Barrier Reef is so distinctive, it is easily visible from outer space.

Those who know and understand colonial history, would acknowledge that whatever errors or misdeeds the British had made in the course of empire and colonization, fortuitously none extended to Belize in respect of Guatemala. It needs to be emphasized that neither Spain nor Guatemala had ever settled and occupied Belize. Spain, which had occupied the whole of Central America, except for Belize, had no presence of any kind in Belize. Guatemala, which was merely one of Spain’s six colonies in Central America, had never settled in any part of Belize.

In fact, the hostile and armed incursions against the British settlers in Belize for years, all emanated from what is now Mexico and never from Guatemala. The last of these culminated in the Battle of St. George’s Caye on September 10, 1798, and was victorious for the British settlers. Whatever one may wish to think about this event, which is celebrated in Belize to this day, it was the end of all marked military campaigns from the Spanish colonists in Mexico against the “Baymen”, as the British woodcutter settlers were called. The Baymen did not succeed on their own, but had asked for military assistance, which was obtained from the nearest British colony, Jamaica.

It is a known historical fact too that the only colonial power which has been in effective occupation of Belize for more than 200 years, was Britain. In addition, the reason why Belize for centuries, until around the late 1970s or early 1980s, was proudly the only Black African majority nation in Central America, with the Kriol and English languages being the most dominant in that nation, was that the Baymen were forced to obtain mainly second and third generation creolized African slaves from Jamaica, in order to conduct their lucrative trade in harvesting and exporting the over 700 varieties of wood from Belize’s famed forests. Chief of these at the time was the logwood, which was used in Europe in making dyes. And, until 1981, when Belize became independent from Britain, the British had always governed Belize.

Hence, Belize was not subject to violent political upheavals, military rule, autocratic regimes, civil wars, pogroms, and thousands of refugees fleeing from violence and stark poverty, as has been the case in much of Hispanic Central America. Even in Mexico, many of its Maya and Mestizo inhabitants fled to the British colony of British Honduras to escape the deadly Caste Wars waged there between 1857 and 1915. It should be noted too, that for many years, only Belize and Costa Rica had the highest literacy rates in Central America.

If you consider the ICJ case between Nigeria and Cameroon (a much smaller and relatively poorer nation than Nigeria, the acclaimed “giant of Africa”), Cameroon did not in the view of one school of international legal jurisprudence and colonial history really have a case in its goal to claim and occupy part of Nigeria’s vast territory. This was the oil and natural gas-rich Bakassi Peninsula. The dispute between these two West African nations had escalated into border incidents, military clashes and competing claims. However, the ICJ in 2002 ruled in favour of Cameroon, which had brought the case in 1994 against Nigeria; and awarded Bakassi to Cameroon. However, despite Cameroon’s relative economic disadvantage vis a vis Nigeria, it had carefully researched, discovered and hired the best legal experts in international law, as well as globally respected historians. They took all these experts to the ICJ to present their case.

Meanwhile, big, rich and confident Nigeria, with its 250 million people compared to Cameroon’s 30 million, believing in the obvious validity of its case, cut financial corners, and relied chiefly on local Nigerian lawyers, among whom were expired politicians, who were neither acclaimed scholars in international law, nor possessed any relevant ICJ experience. As for eminent historians to add to their team, there were none.

Nigeria lost the case and its citizens were summarily displaced from the area, with Nigeria forced to withdraw its administration as well as military and police forces from Bakassi and the Lake Chad region. Actually, Cameroon was once a part of Nigeria, and trade and ties between their people, even after they had split into two countries, were once extremely close. The aftermath of this case still reverberates in Nigeria 22 years after the ICJ judgement.

From various accounts of the legal team representing Guatemala, it seems to have taken a leaf from Cameroon’s book, as any pragmatic government would. When I saw the list of those apparently representing Belize, I limited my response to this evocative Nigerian exclamation: “okokororu”.

Thérèse Belisle-Nweke writes from Lagos, Nigeria