The perspective is intriguing and, of course, more complex in procedure than it appears, but what it really got us to thinking was how little we Belizeans really know about Mexico, and how seldom we really involve Mexico in our analyses with respect to the Guatemalan claim.

We think of the United States; we think of Great Britain; we even think of Cuba with respect to the Guatemalan claim, but most of the time it is as if Mexico does not even exist. But Mexico is much larger and more powerful than Guatemala. And even though it is for sure that Mexico?s northern neighbor, the United States, is the most powerful nation in the world, Mexico is firmly independent and inexorably nationalistic in her own right.

We are not educated about Mexico in our school system. We have never been. We were always taught about Great Britain and Europe, and since television in 1982 our young people have been bombarded with the culture, sports and news of the United States.

We knew that the ?Spanish? invasion in 1798 came from Mexico, and that the various battles in the latter half of the eighteenth century between the ?Spanish? and the Baymen of Belize were taking place with hostile forces based in Mexico.

Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, and then in that part of Mexico?s territory immediately to the north of Belize, the Yucat?n, a fierce and bloody war broke out in 1847 between the ruling ladino class and the oppressed indigenous Mayans. The ladinos, generally speaking, were descendants of the Spanish conquistadores and those who had come from Spain afterwards. The ladinos were Roman Catholic in religion and Spanish in culture. They were, to repeat, the ruling class. The Mayans had been there for centuries before Cortes arrived in 1519, and they were suppressed. Their holy books were burned and their religion forced underground by the Catholic priests. Their best lands were appropriated by the ladinos, and the Mayans had to pay crushing taxes.

The Caste War changed Belize (British Honduras) in an important and permanent way. The British rulers in Belize chose to accept Caste War refugees, from both the warring sides, in the northern districts of Corozal and Orange Walk. This was a time, entering the second half of the nineteenth century, when the settlement of Belize was completely dominated by the mahogany extraction industry, which featured travel from the capital of Belize along to Belize Old River into the Cayo forests. The trees were cut down, and the logs were chained together and floated down the Belize Old River to the mouth of the Haulover Creek, for shipment to the United States and Great Britain. This was the same route ? to Cayo and back, followed by the first Holy Saturday Cross Country race in 1928. And you understand now why it was as if Cross Country had begun a long time before 1928, where the vital consciousness of Belizeans was concerned.

In 1859, when the Caste War refugees had already begun to settle in the Corozal and the Orange Walk districts, the British, who were the most powerful nation in the world at that time, signed a treaty with the Guatemalans called the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. Guatemala was a nonentity in 1859 compared to the British. The Guatemalans subsequently claimed that the British had violated the terms of the treaty, and so they claimed the territory of Belize, a claim they began to push after World War II, a war which Great Britain won over Germany, but which weakened her to the point where the United States would become more powerful than the British.

Between 1910 and 1930, the people of Mexico fought a great civil war which is known as the Mexican Revolution. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, a neo-European class of Mexicans had emerged whose power was represented by the presidency of Porfirio Diaz. Under the so-called porfiriato, foreign investors and the Mexican oligarchy enjoyed a regime which allowed the brutal exploitation of Mexican workers and peasants. The results of forty years of the porfiriato, was the Mexican Revolution.

The Mexican Revolution was an incredible series of episodes, featuring legendary figures like Emiliano Zapato and Pancho Villa, and a succession of leaders who usually ended up assassinated. But out of the revolution came a leader, L?zaro C?rdenas, who was confident enough and Mexican enough to nationalize the Mexican petroleum industry in 1938. This historic and courageous move lay the foundation for the Mexico the world knows today ? a nationalistic, industrious and industrialized regional powerhouse.

The Mexicans in the post-revolutionary era have never been aggressive in their attitude to Belize, even when the Guatemalans have rattled their sabres in the west. The Mexican attitude towards Belize, a sort of laissez-faire, always puzzled us, primarily because, after all, it was from the territory to the north that all the incursions had come in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The British acceptance of all the Caste War refugees in the latter half of the nineteenth century has also always puzzled us. The diplomatic correspondence between the British and the Mexicans in the century after the beginning of the Caste War must be very interesting indeed, not to mention voluminous.

We cannot end the essay without recalling the intriguing statement made by Belizean leader, George Cadle Price, to the foreign press sometime in the late 1950?s. He said that if his push to independence for British Honduras failed, he would give the southern part of the country to Guatemala and the northern part to Mexico. Mr. Price never explained or elaborated. In those days British Honduras did not have the sophisticated and hard-nosed media corps we have today in Belize.

These are some of the thoughts sparked in us by Mr. Cutlack?s idea of a Mexican defence guarantee for Belize. His idea is original. We would like to see intellectual discussions of a proposal, which, to the best of our knowledge, no one has ever introduced before.