Page 216 - Central America

n Belize today there are about 200,000 peo- ed on ownership of land since only those who The Peace Treaty of Versailles in 1783 gave them

Iple on almost 9,000 square miles of land. had land could vote. Land owners would also rights to cut only logwood, so the settlers were
This means that there is a lot of land for very decide whether or not to use the land, and so unhappy with the limitations imposed by the

few people - one square mile of land for every controlled the amount of people working and Treaty. In 1786 the Convention of London ex-

22 persons. Jamaica and Barbados have about their wages. tended the boundary southward to the Sibun

1,500 and 500 persons per square mile respec- River, and permitted the settlers to cut mahog-
Ftively. So in Belize, a land scarcity is only possi- any, but Spain still claimed sovereignty. The set-
or more than a century the early British set- tlers did not respect the boundaries defined in
ble if people are excluded from the ownership tlers had no regulations about ownership of

of land. This is what we find throughout our his- land, and each person cut logwood wherever the treaties. By 1799, they had gone as far south

tory. he found it. This lack of regulations was because as Deep River; by 1806 they were as far as the

During the years of slavery, about 12 fami- Spain still held sovereignty over the territory. Rio Grande. In 1814, there were settlers at the
lies owned almost all of the private land But in 1763, Britain signed the Treaty of Paris Moho River. They reached the present southern
with Spain and gained the rights for its settlers boundary of Belize, the Sarstoon River, by 1820.

in the settlement. Very little land was put into to cut logwood. Then the settlers agreed on a
productive use. After the abolition of slavery, Bsystem for regulating the boundaries of their
most of the population still could not own land. elize is the only country in Central America
logwood “works”. On April 10, 1765, the Pub- whose official language is English, though

A few farmers tried to make a living on small lic Meeting agreed that “when a person finds Belizean Creole (Kriol) and Spanish are also

farms without any real guarantees that the land a spot of logwood unoccupied, and builds his commonly spoken. Belize is bordered on the

was theirs. The few landowners were more in- hut, that spot shall be deemed his property”. north by Mexico, on the south and west by

terested in the profits from logging than farm- They also limited the amount of land a person Guatemala, and on the east by the Caribbean

ing. People were not encouraged to farm and could claim to 2,000 yards on the river. No cut- Sea. Its mainland is about 290 km (180 mi) long

so remained dependent on imports. The most ter was allowed to hold more than one “work” and 110 km (68 mi) wide. With 22,800 square

important effect of the monopolization of land in any river or creek. The war between England kilometres (8,800 sq mi) of land and as of 2014 a

was that the power to make decisions depend- and Spain in 1779 interrupted the cutters’ work. population of 340,844,