Belize Constitution 2012

The Constitution of Belize has been amended several times, eight to be precise, since it was enacted on Independence Day 1981. The number of amendments reached a record between 2008-2012 under the first term of the United Democratic Party of Prime Minister Dean Barrow. The government at that time enjoyed a super majority in parliament allowing it to enact any amendment it wanted without the concurrence of the Opposition.

We are pleased to offer for the updated Belize Constitution 2012 for download by researchers, students and any Belizean or person interested in gaining more knowledge about this important document.

Who Drafted The Belize Constitution?

This is frequent question by students and researchers.

The Constitution was drafted by a task force appointed by Rt. Hon. George Price and was made up of his most trusted ministers: V.H. Courtenay, Assad Shoman, Said Musa and C.L.B. Rogers. Courtenay, Shoman and Musa are attorneys at law. My recollection from interviews I conducted is that Harry Courtenay  was the head of this task force and widely regarded as the Father Of The Constitution. The constitution of Guyana (formerly British Guyana) and the constitution of Trinidad and Tobago were his working documents in framing our Constitution. – Manolo Romero former Chief Information Officer to the Government of Belize.

Former Minister of Government Hector Silva stated in a radio interview in 2012:

“On The Constitution. It must be recalled that in 1963 a Constitutional Conference was held in London, between the Secretary of States for the British Colonies, Sir Lennox Boyd, and a delegation, led by Belize’s First Minister, George Cadle Price. The purpose of the conference was to negotiate an advanced Political Constitution for our country.

“The British Government was not too keen in creating an entity called Full Internal Self Government, nor was there a precedence for the Title of Premier. The British suggested to the delegation to GO FOR INDEPENDENCE. But Mr. Price replied, ” We must prepare our people first”. So Self Government was attained. ( I served as one of the Ministers in this conference, today I am the only one alive).

“From this day preparations began towards the attainment of Independence. Appointed to this Political Task Force were: Lindy Rogers, Harry Courtney, Said Musa , Assad Shoman and staffers from the Attorney General’s Office. Bits and pieces were collected from other Commonwealth Countries’ Constitutions. The House Committees were adopted from the Republican System. A few days before D-DAY of Independence) the members of the House of Representatives were summoned to approve The Enabling Legislation also known as The Transitional Powers. Transitional powers are those responsibilities and obligations conferred on a New Nation.”

The following excerpt is from the introduction to the Constitution

PART I

The State and The Constitution

1.-(1) Belize shall be a sovereign democratic State of Central America in the Caribbean region.

(2) Belize comprises the land and sea areas defined in Schedule 1 to this Constitution, which immediately before Independence Day constituted the colony of Belize.

2.-(1) This Constitution is the supreme law of Belize and if any other law is inconsistent with this Constitution that other law shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.

(2) The words “other law” occurring in subsection (1) above do not include a law to alter any of the provisions of this Constitution which is passed by the National Assembly in conformity with section 69 of the Constitution.

Driving to Toledo is challenging what with the deteriorating Hummingbird “Highway”. But for select events such as this magnificent cultural presentation by a Mexican dance company at a real Maya Temple is well worth it.

Dances with Mayas at Lubaantun could be a new event on its own rather than  part of the annual Toledo Cacao Fest that runs during the month of May. The festival, food fair, Maya Dance re-enactments are that good. When it’s not raining that is.

Driving from the City of Belmopan the traveler can leave at 8:30 and be at Big Falls by 11. Add on one hour if you are driving from Belize City or San Ignacio-Santa Elena. It is a long journey not made any better by the once beautiful Hummingbird Highway that the government has allowed to deteriorate over the past ten years. The highway’s safety markings have washed away a long time ago. The road’s top coat is all about gone, and overall the highway has come down to the standards of a normal road here – lots of potholes and vandalized or missing road signage. The Tourist Board under previous owners used to do a good job of erecting signage and maintaining same but now not. Their efforts are elsewhere, like Apocalypse Tourism.

The portion of the highway at Alta Vista in the Pomona Valley is the worst, with many potholes that are desultorily filled with red clay as a desperate repair that gets washed out in a jiffy by the next day’s rain. From the glass half full perspective, driving down south is  a challenge and adventure.

Lubaantun -How To Get There

Getting to the Maya ruin at Lubaantun can be tricky for the first time visitor. At Big Falls which is the large village  just before reaching Punta Gorda you will see a big sign This Way To Lubaantun. Ignore it. This is the long and rough way in. Seven miles through rutted and hilly roads that will shake out your fillings or worse. This road takes you through the villages of Silver Creek and San Miguel – real quaint Maya villages. So if you have time to take it slow and meander through these villages this may be to your liking. Caveat – rains. The Belize rainy season historically runs from June to November which is also the official hurricane season. But changing weather patterns often bring rains as early as May. And Toledo is the area of of the country with the highest annual rainfall.

Most travelers will prefer going to the cut-off or intersection at Big Falls marked by the Shell gas station which is on your right if you are heading south towards Punta Gorda. Take the right and head for San Pedro Colombia – a mere two miles over nice paved highway – this leg of the Southern Highway is known by locals as the road to Jalacte. Then two more miles over a reasonably well maintained dirt road into the village itself. Take your time or you will zip right past the cut-off leading to the village. San Pedro Colombia has a couple convenience shops, comedores and friendly Maya folks who will point out the way to Lubaantun in case the signs have fallen down – again.

Check our review of the Toledo Cacao Festival at Lubaantun.

Wall painting at Xultun Maya site in Guatemala. Image Credit Prensa Libre

Archaeologists at the Xultun Maya site near the western border have unearthed stunning new finds including the oldest known Maya astronomical tables. The find at Xultun includes the first known find of Maya art painted on the walls of a dwelling. Xultun is an early Classic Maya archaeological site located 40 kilometers east of Tikal in northern Guatemala. Xultun is the largest known Classic Maya site and contains a 35 meter tall pyramid, 2 ball courts, and 24 stele the oldest of which dates back to 899 AD.

A report in SCIENE magazine says that the Maya art dates to the early 9th century , and pre-dates other Maya calendars by centuries.
Archaeologists William Saturno from the University of Boston and David Stuart from the University of Texas at Austin presented their findings at a press conference in Washington. “We have never seen anything like this before”, sad Stewart, pointing out that these type of hieroglyphs are found in only one other place: the bark-paper books from the Dresden Codex which the Maya’s wrote much later in 1,250 AD. “The Xultun finds provide the first direct evidence of astronomical information from the summit of Maya glyphic literacy, the Classic period,” remarks archaeologist Stephen Houston of Brown University. He calls the recording of astronomical tables on walls rather than in a book “baffling, even astonishing.”

A report in the Guatemala newspaper Prensa Libre says that the walls of the dwelling discovered practically intact are richly adorned with images of a Maya king, drawings of Maya men, and numerical symbols corresponding with the Maya Calendar. But it notes that this Maya calendar is unique in that instead of the 13 cycles or baktun that were known until recently, it has 17, which according to experts debunks the theory that the Maya Calendar predicts the apocalypse at the end of 2012.

Xultun was discovered in 1915 and the US archeologist Sylvanus Morley (1883-1948) who drew the first rudimentary map of the city. Investigators highlight the importance of the discovery as it is unusual for this type of primitive painting to be preserved in excellent condition in the Maya lowlands “especially in an ancient dwelling buried a mere meter underground”. What is really important is that we can see what the Mayas were doing -  the astronomical tables – and not in books, centuries before they were registered in the codex.

The north wall of the dwelling opposite the entrance depicts the king richly dressed and adorned with blue feathers and Maya glyphs near his visage that according to what has been translated, refer to him as Hermano Minor or Minor Brother. On this same wall are found hieroglyphs representing 813 AD, a time when the Maya civilization was in decline.

A report in the Christian Science Monitor says that the hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for Maya court scribes in A.D. 800 – the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn’t a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012.

“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. “Numbers we can’t even wrap our heads around.”

Artist Terryl Godoy and his summer art winning piece Man At Work 2012 depicting an old time street scene.

Hot and dry weather is the state of the clime in Belize often with not much happening on the art scene in June. But the Bowen and Bowen conglomerate celebrated 50 years as the country’s Coke bottler with an art competition. The theme revolves around its product and 25 schools and 25 professional artists participated. The paintings all have an element of the soft drink somewhere making it a sort of ketchy exercise in art. But the established artists such as Carolyn Carr who won third prize, and Terryly Godoy first prize winner, made an impression by making the soft drink a subtle component of their art pieces. The prize awards and exhibition launch were held at the House Of Culture in Belize City on 8 May.

Terryl is well known as a street artist and musician and he explains his winning painting Man At Work 2012:

“It really caught me as a surprise. I had not a clue that I would have been the winner for this competition. I’m very, very grateful for this. Sometimes I think that the music would take away from painting but today it shows that painting stands for itself and the music.

“I came here to play music for this function, I did not come here to collect a  check or anything, I never thought about that.  We have a little lady on the top and she’s hanging out clothes but she has a Coke in her hand and she has her mangoes downstairs to sell. Then you have this guy that comes with a wooden cart.  In those days  they made their own cart with the type of wheel from an old piece of lumber they cut and put rubber from a discarded tire on. If you notice he has a  drum with water and he is filling up the drum to take back to his village but he also has  his cases of soft drinks. And a little girl is putting a letter in one of those old colonial mail post boxes you used to see around our cCity in the old days. ”

Image Credit: Prensa Libre

Reports in the Guatemala press say that a meteorite may have fallen at Melchor De Mencos a Guatemalan town on the border with Belize. Prensa Libre in its edition of 1 May 2012 says that residents of Melchor De Mencos observed a brilliant comet trail in the night sky around 10:30 on Monday 30 April, followed by a loud bang and earth tremor but that the object has not been found. Neighborhood residents rushed out of their homes to search for the remnants of the meteorite. Some stated that it had fallen in the El Arroyito area, while others said it had landed at El Arenal which is a village that is straddled by the Guatemala adjacency line.

The phenomenon was reported in the Twitter account of Emisoras Unidas of Guatemala and a report in the Latin American Herald says that “The director of Guatemala’s National Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology Institute said Tuesday that authorities are investigating a possible fallen meteorite in the northern province of Peten.

“Edy Sanchez told television stations that the authorities were alerted to the impact Monday night of a supposed meteorite in the Melchor de Mencos region, but that the report has not yet been confirmed.”

The Prensa Libre story says that the fireball was seen by communities that lie between Melchor De Mencos and Dolores, such as EL Cruzadero, La Polvora, La Blanca and Cida 20. The newspaper quotes Mr. Sanchez as saying that the phenomenon could be a meteorite or space debris and than an investigation was underway.

“When it became clear that I was to represent my grandmother in Belize my heart leapt – but for a good reason. Mek wi go pawty”.  Prince Harry’s opening line, and the second, which is Belize Creole for “Let us go and party” immediately put thousands of Belizeans in a good mood and got a good laugh as he prepared to unveil a plaque naming a street in the City Of Belmopan Queen Elizabeth II Boulevard. The Prince who is representing his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee arrived at the International Airport this afternoon on a Falcon 2000Ex private jet tail number N300UJ, met with the Governor General Sir Colville Young, Prime Minister Dean Barrow and Leader of the Opposition Francis Fonseca.

Prince Harry greets Belize child with Union Jack

He then left by motorcade for the City of Belmopan, the capital of the country. At a street festival organised by city elders, Prince Harry ate local cuisine, listened to traditional music, greeted a John Canoe dancer, and danced a little.

Wearing a traditional Latino dress shirt, the Guayabera, Prince harry relaxes in the City of Belmopan with Governor General Colville Young.

One of Prince Harry’s first orders of the day in the City Of Belmopan was a wardrobe change. From a stuffy suit he changed into formal Belize men’s wear, a Guayabera. The Guayabera is a traditional Latino dress shirt of Mexican origin comfortable for tropical climes but fashionable and suitable for everyday and formal events.

Prince Harry with Creole dancer.

See Prince Harry Dancing on the street:

Antillean design fish trap introduced by Jamaican seafood company

Belize has fish, and the Jamaicans want them. After depleting their own marine life using fishing methods such as dynamite, chemicals, and cages, Jamaicans have turned to this country to feed their people. According to the February issue of the Placencia Citizens for Sustainable Development, a source in the Fisheries Department confirmed that Rainforest Seafood of Jamaica has commissioned local fishermen, mostly from Monkey River, to construct and fish with Antillean cages. The Jamaicans are buying these fish from our fishermen.

According to a source in the Fisheries Department, Antillean cages wiped out the fishing industry in Jamaica, and several months ago, Fisheries Department decided to ban them here in Belize, Fisheries is very unhappy with this activity. Fishermen were instructed to pull up and remove all cages by the end of January.

These cages are larger than the cages used locally, have two entrances (local cages have only one) and are too efficient. At the end of the day, the rate of fish taken out is not sustainable. These cages exhaust our resources by removing not only too many fish, but they also disrupt the ecological balance of the reef. You take out too many grazing fish, you also affect the algae. There is a natural relationship in the sea, and the indiscriminate taking of fish from all spectrum of the Sea is disruptive of this balance. Antillean cages are set in the Sea, whereas Belizean traps are usually set in the sheltered bogue, in a deep mangrove channel.

A significant number of these traps are saturating the waters off Monkey River, Punta Gorda, and Punta Negra. Before Antillean cage fishing, Rainforest Seafood used to export one container of fish per month to Jamaica. Now with these cages, they are exporting two containers per week. Fish production is up tenfold, but this practice of cage fishing is not sustainable. Fish being trapped include snappers, groupers and even reef fish (such as doctor fish) that are not consumed locally.

No one has been arrested, but Fisheries will be monitoring and enforcing our demand for the removal of all these cages from our Sea by end of January. Fishermen who have not complied will be prosecuted.

When asked why the export permit for Rainforest Seafood had not been revoked, our source replied,  “It is the local fishermen who are breaking the law, not the Jamaicans.”

Use of Antillean cages in the Caribbean region dates to the early Spanish occupation. The most common cage being used currently is shaped like a Z with two down curving horse-neck entrance funnels. They are dropped to the bottom of the sea, and dragged along. The use of Antillean cages for trapping fish is only the most recent story of Jamaicans making plays for fish in Belize waters.

In December 2009, the Toledo Institute for Development and the Environment (TIDE) sponsored a public meeting in Punta Gorda in response to a joint venture between Rio Grande Fishermen Cooperative (PG) and PG Fisheries Company (Jamaica). That deal would have allowed the Jamaicans to fish in offshore waters by using fish traps to catch 40,000 pounds of fish every month for up to thirty or more years, and export all but 10-15% back to Jamaica.

Because of public controversy, the deal fell apart. However, it seems that Jamaica is still getting what it wants from Belize – fish to satisfy the demand in Jamaica because Jamaica destroyed its own fisheries. And, Jamaica is getting what it wants with the active participation of our own citizens.

Placencia wants no part of cruise ship tourism. We do not want cruise ships in our waters says this sign written in Creole in the town center.

National Geographic Traveler in its October 2011 issue highlights the approach that cruise ship lines take when dealing with small countries such as Belize. Author Costas Christ in the Tales From The Frontier says that small countries face difficult choices – wanting the cash that cruise ships bring but wishing to avoid the pollution, congestion, and concessions cruise line honchos demand:

“Just weeks after reporting nearly $2 billion in profits for 2010, Carnival—the largest cruise corporation in the world—joined other cruise lines in insisting that Belizean tour operators, whose tenders transfer 100 passengers on ship-to-shore excursions, increase capacity to 150 passengers (to provide a smoother and more comfortable ride, according to Carnival). This would cost Belize’s tender owners over a million dollars and take many months to do. To make matters worse, the cruise executives also insisted that Belize abandon a proposed increase in national park entrance fees—from $5 to $10 per person (among the lowest in the world, even with the increase). That increase, Belize officials maintain, is desperately needed to better care for the same parks that receive high traffic from cruise passengers. When the Belizeans emerged from the negotiations, I learned that Carnival warned them that it might pull out of the country if its demands were not met.”

Source: National Geographic

Cruise Ship Tourists Never See The Best Features Of A Country

Cruise ships that come here do not offer visitors the best of our country as they all anchor offshore Belize City, as grungy, swampy and derelict a city as you will find on the Central American isthmus.  Overnight visitors in fact avoid this city entirely on their way to the safer and cleaner areas such as Placencia, Ambergris Caye and inland districts.

The experience of most cruise ship passengers  is limited to a “tourism village” operated by cruise ship interests in what is seen by locals as a cynical strategy to milk whatever dollars cruise ship passengers are trying here. The “village” is a fenced off collection of shops cobbled together from an abandoned government warehouse and in no way offers a genuine local experience. Residents are amused at the strains of music wafting over the muddy waters of the Haulover Creek that empties into the Caribbean sea just past the “village”. Retired local musicians croon American favorites such as My Way and I Left My Heart In San Francisco in the mid morning tropical sun.

The Costas article in National Geographic may inspire the local authorities to find more courage when next negotiating with the cruise ship companies. Last year the country’s prime minister suffered the indignity of having to head to the cruise ship boardrooms of Carnival in Florida to ensure that the ships continued calling on Belize.