Page 74 - Visitor Guides

Belize History, Ambergris Caye History

Through 1964, the co-operative exported through local agents. This kept the
price down, and the market was $1.04 a pound, despite rising prices in the
U.S. These years also brought the beginnings of the export of conch and scale
fish as well, providing an alternate product for the fishermen of Ambergris
Caye to sell. A four month lobster season was also mandated.

In 1964, negotiations for a freezer plant were finally completed. Thus plant
allowed annual production to hit 179,132 pounds in 1965. The record high of
184,000 pounds was in 1984. The co-operative and its 217 members were then the backbone of the community,
which nearly put a halt to coconut farming and work in the bush.

Making a living became easier with the unity and the co-ops but the island’s industry was about to shift to tourism.
A growing scarcity of product and the growth of tourism have resulted in a decline in the membership of the co-
operative today. Production in 1992-1993 was an annual low of 18,000 pounds. Today, tourism is the economic
heavy. Beginning with the Holiday hotel, started by the Grief family in November of 1965 and built with a
foundation of ground conch shells, began attracting the tourism that is the mainstay of the economy now. In 1967
the Paradise opened, and by 1970 the Coral Beach Hotel had established the first dive shop. Tourist
accommodations started popping up all over the place, and some local folks converted rooms or build small guest
houses on their land. Visitors remember this personalized atmosphere and laid-back style. It became a trademark
for San Pedro.

More and more fishermen began to add to their income by serving as fishing or diving guides for tourists. Guiding
came naturally to them, as it involved things that are important to their way of life- fishing, snorkeling, sailing. As
fishing declined, tourism increased.

Ambergris Caye has a past full of contrasts. The Maya who settled throughout the island and developed an
economy based on trading and exploitation of the marine resources had practically nothing in common with the
pirates who succeeded them, or with the British agriculturists who marshalled their slaves in a futile attempt to
convert the island into a cotton plantation. And, of course, all these were distinct from the Mestizo refugees who
fled the war in Yucatan for the tranquility of the caye.

Conditions in the island have also differed greatly from time to time. The way of life of the first permanent
residents of San Pedro was quiet and unpressured. The villagers fished, farmed their milpas and tended their
chicken and livestock with almost no outside interference. They had brought with them their Yucatan culture and
customs, their diet of beans and tortillas, their simple homes of thatched roofs and walls plastered with white lime
and mud.
Then the unexpected advent of the Blake dynasty radically changed the life of
the San Pedranos. Overnight they found themselves without any legal rights
to remain on the land they had lived on and farmed for several decades. From
independent small fishermen and farmers they became wage labourers working for a triumvirate of ruling families
in a succession of new industries - logwood, chicle, coconut - their lives transformed into a grinding monotony,
guided only by their employers' need to accumulate more wealth.

This was a time when ownership of almost the whole island was concentrated in the hands of a few people.
Virtually any person on the island could be orders to vacate, for the flimsiest of reasons and at a day's notice, the
house in which he or she had been born, raised and lived all their life. This was the case of the local midwife,
Desideria, who was ordered to dismantle her home because its rustic condition detracted from the elegance of the
Casino which was being built on the lot next door.

Those were the days when a desperate bachelor such as Natividad Guerrero could get a bride from the transient
Maya settlements at Basil Jones in exchange for a box of groceries from Belize City.

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