2 - Ungoverned Passions: Mayas and Hispanic Refugees in Belize, 1853–1861

Summary

The decade of the 1850s would mark a watershed in Belizean history. As more and more Yucatecan Hispanic refugees migrated to Belize, the British government struggled to figure out how best to incorporate this new element into society. The colonial government attempted to assuage its anxieties about the political loyalties of these Hispanic newcomers through exclusionary and classificatory tools that expressed latent colonial xenophobia and racism. This chapter traces how Yucatecan Hispanic refugees became perceived by the British government in Belize as “ungovernable” and yet soon proved their crucial importance to Belizean society through their skills in agriculture, which promised to reduce Belizean dependency on timber as the main source of income for the settlement. The chapter also explores the often ambivalent relations of the British government to Maya groups marked by fear but also sympathy in many cases. Indeed, as this chapter shows, the colonial government’s recognition of the Santa Cruz Maya as the dominant political power in the north overrode racial concerns in Anglo-Maya relations in this period.