Confessions of a NeoColonist

So I leave in less than a week, and I believe that one of the most important things to do when traveling is to realize the context in which you are leaving and arriving. So here goes:

1. I am a privileged Mexican-American, and as such that means that my ancestors have played the part of both oppressor and oppressed. My ancestors were both the Aztecs and Yaquis who had their homes pillaged and plundered as well as the Spanish and Basque conquistadors who did the pillaging and plundering. My father is an immigrant who wasn't granted US citizenship until I was 9, yet I was raised in the lower-middle class suburbs of Los Angeles. I grew up not knowing Spanish, barely learning about Mexico, and with all of the things which almost define the suburban US for me (materialism, image-consciousness, near-crippling credit card debt, parochial schools, etc). Because I don't know Spanish, a lot of Mexicans don't consider me really Mexican. Yet, I can never (nor would I ever want to) call myself white. I'm proud of being Mexican, but I can't begin to tell you how many times I've heard white friends tell me (completely innocently) "Oh Matt, you're not really Mexican" (which I guess means that if there were a magazine called Assimilation Weekly, I would probably make the cover). Basically, if Ivan Illich ever met me, he'd probably not have great things to say. 

2. This leads to my place as a teacher traveling to a middle income, formerly colonized nation. Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin say that "Education, whether state or missionary, primary or secondary was a massive canon in the artillery of empire". What?! I thought education was just a way to improve social mobility and help kids escape poverty and stuff! Nope. Really, education, no matter which way you slice it and no matter what is being taught, is a way to brainwash and is ultimately "a vital technology of social control" (AG&T). Every successful colonist has known this: missionaries taught people that they needed Jesus and thus introduced (and more often forced with penalty of death) a completely foreign belief system to colonized folks, British colonial administrators taught English lit as a way to not only make people feel a little more English and a part of the empire but also as a way to make subjects believe that they were intellectually inferior to the Brits. Every good colonist knows that the way you keep a people subjugated isn't with military force or trade monopolies, but by brainwashing people to think that they want to be colonized, that colonization is the best possible option. To their credit, the missionaries honestly believed that they were saving souls from eternal hellfire, but that's where you get into intentionality.

     And here I am, a well intentioned young Mexican-American intern from the US hoping to help Belizean schoolchildren write a little better. I come to Belize with the same intentions as the most innocent of missionaries and colonizers. But, as AG&T say "education is perhaps the the most insidious and in some ways the most cryptic of colonialist survivals". The language I will be teaching is not the native language of Belize, it is the language of the negligent colonist. Yet, we can't just magically pretend that the British were never there because the mestizos, Kriols, and Garinagu are all products of colonization and have established a place in Belizean society under what Lamming calls "the fragmentary nature of the different cultures which have fused to make something new". And what of the Maya, who have had their homelands stripped from their control? I will be teaching English because it is the language that brings all of these colonized peoples together. I'll be teaching English because it's the only language I know. 

     I am of the opinion that good intentions don't count for much. People with good intentions (like shouldering the so-called "white man's burden" because the "heathens" aren't "civilized" enough to rule themselves) have had a lot of bad results in history (like stealing millions of people's freedoms and making most of the world dependent on the West for centuries). Ivan Illich would say that I will merely continue this pattern and am mostly just a poster boy for US prosperity and materialism by flaunting to Belizeans that I have the privilege of traveling the world on a whim. That assessment is entirely true, and I won't even try to refute it. I know that my upcoming visit will inherently have both positive and negative consequences. I know that Belize depends heavily on money from the US, but I hope that I am able to contribute in any way toward more Belizean independence. I just hope that in my upcoming months in Belize, that I am able to outweigh the negative effects of my simply being there by simply being there: listening to people, being culturally sensitive, and being open to all of my experiences. 

My Oh Maya

     One of the major parts of my trip while I am in Belize will be going around to Mayan villages and interviewing locals about how their experiences and understandings of Christianity are influenced by their Mayan traditions (for hybridity, see Homi K. Bhabha). The Maya of Belize are not the traditional Manche-Chol Maya who lived there at the time of Spanish arrival and built such fantastic cities as Altun Ha, Lamanal, Labaantun, and Xunantunich. In fact, Xunantunich had been a ruin for about a five hundred years when the Spanish arrived. The Classic period had ended well before Spanish arrival, and many of the Maya in Belize were killed off by warfare or disease at the time of European settlement. There is still a sizable Maya population from Belize of Q'eqchi and Mopan Maya from Mexico and Guatemala. 

                     

Some fool at Xunantunich last year

     PG is actually in an area surrounded by many modern Maya villages. I've heard that they have been able to maintain their traditions and languages quite well, and I'm really excited to see this for myself and learn from the Maya in some way.

     One of the major issues effecting Belize right now, but is of particular concern to PG and the southern Maya of the Toledo district is the border dispute between Belize and Guatemala. This is an age old dispute dating back to Guatemalan independence before Belize/British Honduras had officially been declared a colony of England. Guatemala claimed Belize as a territory so they could have more access to the Atlantic and finally negotiated a treaty in 1859 granting the territory to Britain. Among the things agreed in the treaty was that the Brits would build a road for Guatemala from Guatemala City to the Atlantic. The Brits weren't really interested in the project (as with most projects in British Honduras) and the road never got built. Therefore, Guatemala still claims the southern 2/3 of Belize. 

Yikes!

     The reason that Britain took so long in getting the heck out of Belize in the first place was because of the constant threat of invasion from the west. Several times, Guatemala has tried invading, prompting an increased presence of the British army. One time, the Prime Minister of England hinted that he wasn't that interested in defending Belize if it were to be invaded and the Guatemalan army was on the border the next day. In fact, the British army still has a presence in sovereign Belize to keep the Guatemalans out, since Belize is so tiny it would have one heck of a time trying to defend itself. 

     So, Guatemala still claims Belize and recently both nations have decided to take their cases to the International Court of Justice to have the issue settled once and for all. This is on a lot of Belizean minds these days since Belize has a lot to loose (namely, 2/3 of itself). However, more Guatemalans are intruding into Belize, treating it like it is already theirs and even harming a lot of forest land. This issue is of particular interest to the Mayans, many of whom left Guatemala as refugees because of persecution. They also live in many of the effected areas which could possibly become Guatemalan. Needless to say, not a lot of Mayans are happy about the situation. To conclude, here is an article from a Belizean newspaper that is almost surprisingly comprehensive in its tackling of the complex Mayan history in Belize. Enjoy!

So, Do You Speak Spanish?

One of the most common questions I get asked when I tell people that I am going to Belize is "So, do you speak Spanish?" The short answer is no, which is an entirely different matter all together. However, that's mostly irrelevant since the official language of Belize is English! "Why?" do you ask? Well, because Belize was founded by British pirates, silly!

     While most of the territories in the Americas were originally granted to Spain (with the rest going to Portugal) by the Pope in the Treaty of Tordesillas, Britain had other plans for the wealth coming from Iberian colonies. By hiring English and Scottish pirates such as Sir Francis Drake, Britain quickly got a foot hold on the Caribbean from which to plunder Spanish (originally American) loot. Eventually, the British pirates made their way to what would one day be Belize, a little swamp in Central America that was protected from large, clunky Spanish warships by the lonest barrier reef outside of Australia. The Spanish saw the area as being not worth their effort, since the Mayans in the area were fiercely anticolonial and there was no sign of gold anywhere. Therefore, it was safe for such pirates as Captain Henry Morgan and Blackbeard to seek refuge in the reefs of Belize before embarking on adventures to pillage and plunder from Charleston to Panama City. Whereas most colonies were settled by conquistadors and colonial administrators who were out for a profit at almost any cost, Belize was settled by cursing, licentious, drunken scalawags who were out for a profit at almost any cost.

     

     In a decisive victory at the Battle of St. George's Caye (pronounced "Key") in 1798, the Spanish left the area for good after being defeated by British buccaneers. The pirates, who called themselves Baymen, soon discovered that the wood in the area was quite valuable and decided to stay and capitalize on their newfound wealth. The Baymen thrived on the mahogany trade because of its usefulness in making dyes, and eventually settled in the area permanently. Even today, the mahogany tree and its black and white loggers have prominent places on the Belizean flag (the only national flag in the world with people on it). It was not until 1862, that the territory officially became a colony of the British Empire, under the name of British Honduras. 

     The British treated their only colony in Central America much like their other colonies in the nearby Caribbean. The Mayans in the area had no intention of working for any white colonizers of either the Spanish or English variety, and so the English brought black slaves from Africa and Jamaica to work the sugar cane fields and logging. The Kriol population of descendants of whites and blacks grew rapidly and settled largely in Belize City. The British also had a similar relationship to Belize as to other Caribbean colonies in that it largely used the colonies to extract major resource wealth without funding much in the way of infrastructure or even thinking much of the local inhabitants at all. British Honduras was finally granted autonomy in 1964, and only gained full independence in 1981. In 1973, the colony officially changed its name to its historical name of Belize, which is believed to be derived from either the mispronunciation of a pirate named Wallace or the Mayan word beliz meaning "muddy water". I prefer the later and think it is more likely, but if it is, in fact, the former, that means that Belize is the only nation in the world named after a pirate. Aaargh! Because of its close history with the rest of the British Caribbean, many Belizeans (especially Kriols) consider Belize to be more integrated culturally and economically into the Caribbean than Central America. 

     So there you have it, both Belizeans and I speak English. Or at least we both pretend to speak English. I usually just mumble and use wild hand gestures to get my point across to people. Belize has developed its own English Kriol which uses vastly more phonetic spelling and a slightly different grammatical structure. For example, one of my favorite marketing slogans in Belize is "Dis da fi wi chickin!" For a while I thought this meant "This the for real chicken", but it actually means "This the for we chicken" or "This is our chicken". "Dis da fi wi" is actually a common nationalistic phrase for Kriol Belizeans, claiming ownership for a very proud people. Kriol is, in fact, a very important part of the reclaiming of English away from the often negligent colonizers of the recent past, putting a uniquely Belizean stamp on the language. A growing number (about half) of the population speaks Spanish as more refugees pour into the West. However, for now, Queen's English is still the language of government, the media, and tourists like me. Yay for colonization! 

The Adventure Begins

Hi, my name is Matt Salazar and I am a senior Humanities for Teaching major at Seattle University, a Jesuit university in Seattle, Washington. Beginning in January, I will be spending three months as an intern at St. Peter Claver Roman Catholic School in Punta Gorda Town, Belize. As part of my duties I will be helping out in Standards 5 and 6 (the U.S. equivalent of 7th and 8th grade) in the Confirmation and English classes. In the next month before I leave, I will be sharing little tidbits about Belize and its fascinating history. First of all, a little bit on Belize itself:

Belize

Belize is a country  in Central America south of the State of Quintana Roo in Mexico and east of the Peten region of Guatemala. 

Size: Slightly smaller than Massachusetts 

Population: 301, 270

Ethnic Groups:  Mestizo 48.7%, Creole 24.9%, Maya 10.6%, Garifuna 6.1%, other 9.7%

Date of Independence: September 21, 1981

Government: Parliamentary Democracy

Former Name as Colony: British Honduras

Religion: Roman Catholic 49.6%, Protestant 27%, Other 14%, None 9.4%

Languages:  Spanish 46%, Kriol 32.9%, Mayan dialects 8.9%, English 3.9%, Garifuna 3.4%  (Carib), German 3.3%, Other 1.4%, Unknown 0.2%

Largest sectors of economy: Tourism (including ecotourism), sugar, banana, citrus, garment manufacturing, fishing, lumber 

External Debt: $1.2 billion

Unemployment: 9.4% 

Literacy: 76.9 % (males: 76.7%, females 77.1%)

Education expenditures: 5.3 % of GDP

Belize Fun Fact: Belize is the only country on the North American continent without a coastline on the Pacific Ocean