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The Making of Race and Place in Nineteenth-Century British Honduras
Melissa A. Johnson
| IN BELIZE, a small Central American nation on the Caribbean coast, different "racial" groups historically have been, and sometimes still are, constructed as better suited to some forms of labor-in-nature than others. The process of racial construction intensified in the nineteenth century, when Belize was a British colony and when slavery and an increasingly unequal distribution of land became the chief characteristics of this swampy colonial backwater. The racial discourse of colonial officers and apologists presumed particular relationships to the natural environment for each racial group. Belizean "Creoles" (people of mixed African and European descent) were cast as physiologically excellent woodcutters, but as averse to agriculture, the Maya as indolent and wasteful farmers, the Garifuna as consummate fishermen. Racially based socioecological ascriptions simultaneously became key markers of racial identity and a central component of the colonial apparatus for controlling who was able to benefit from the use and transformation of natural resources. While these racial-ecological categories were a dimension of colonial control, colonial subjects in Belize created relationships to the land that both built upon and challenged colonial racial constructions. Each ethnic group in Belize, both historically and currently, is associated with particular places within the country. Colonial racial discourse has been a critical part of the mutual constitution of place and identity for the different peoples who live in Belize, as well as a critical part of the ways in which each of the ethnic groups in Belize understand and interrelate with the natural environment. |
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In this essay, I explore the mutual constitution of the racial identity of Belizean Creoles and the natural landscapes that have been home to this population.1 The essay focuses on the nineteenth century, when racial discourse sedimented and the Belizean economy was dominated by mahogany extraction. The racial formation of Belizean Creoles was tightly associated with the "bush" and mahogany cutting, and with an "aversion" to agriculture, and served to limit the economic possibilities available for Belizean Creoles. I examine colonial racial discourse in descriptions of the colony at three different moments in the nineteenth century, at the height of slavery and the mahogany economy, shortly before abolition, and in the late-nineteenth century, when the mahogany economy waned. Despite this racial discourse, rural Belizean Creoles developed alternative systems of natural resource use based in part upon small-scale agricultural production. Colonial descriptions, some contained within the same documents used above, along with birth and death registries for the late-nineteenth century, reveal the varied ways in which rural Creole people lived in the natural environment. In some ways, by being excluded from control of large scale agricultural production, Belizean Creoles developed a relatively sustainable socio-ecology, which simultaneously conformed to the connections of Creoles with the "bush," but refuted their status as consummate lumberjacks.2 These racialized ecological associations have interesting implications for contemporary Belizean Creoles, as cultural identity movements take hold in the country and as Belize becomes a central player in the burgeoning industry of ecotourism. |
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