A short history of Belize

The Maya

Long before any European ship, this was Maya country. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs dates the flowering of Maya civilisation here to between 2500 BCE and 1000 CE: farming, mathematics, astronomy and cities joined by trade routes, among them Caracol in the Cayo hills and Lamanai on the New River. The temples are still standing, and the Maya are still here. More than one Belizean in ten was counted as Maya in the 2022 census (see People).

Ambergris Caye was part of that world. The island’s first known inhabitants were the ancient Maya, and the rich black soil on the Basil Jones plateau in the north may have been carried there by them to grow crops, according to the island history by Glenn Godfrey.

Logwood, mahogany and the Baymen

Under the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) Spain and Portugal divided the Americas between them, but other European powers soon moved in, Britain among them. Through the 1700s the economy ran on timber, first logwood, used for dye, and later mahogany, shipped to London from Belize Town, today’s Belize City. The settlers were known as the Baymen. The Treaty of Paris (1763) and the Treaty of Versailles (1783) recognised their right to cut logwood between the Rio Hondo and the Belize River.

The work was done largely by enslaved Africans, shipped here from Jamaica after being brought across the Atlantic. In 1765 the settlement adopted Burnaby’s Code, a set of rules to keep order.

The Battle of St. George’s Caye, 1798

In 1798 Spain tried to drive the Baymen out and lost. The fight is remembered as the Battle of St. George’s Caye, and 10 September, St. George’s Caye Day, is a public holiday. St. George’s Caye is in the same constituency as Ambergris Caye today, Belize Rural South.

British Honduras

Slavery was abolished in 1834, followed by four more years of “apprenticeship” before full freedom. Over the century the Baymen and Creoles were joined by refugees from the Yucatán and Nicaragua, by Garifuna, whose ancestors had been forced off the island of St. Vincent, by indentured workers from India and China, and later by Mennonites and Central Americans.

San Pedro is part of that story. It was settled in 1848, during the Caste War in Yucatán, by Mestizo refugees who crossed to Ambergris Caye and built on the high, narrow stretch of land where the town stands now.

In 1871 the settlement became a Crown colony, British Honduras, with a Lieutenant-Governor answering to Jamaica; from 1884 its Governor reported directly to London. Timber gave ground to sugar, bananas, coconuts and chicle.

The road to independence

The modern political story starts in the 1930s. The Labourers and Unemployed Association (1934), led by Antonio Soberanis, pressed for better pay and conditions; the General Workers Union followed in 1943. After protests over the devaluation of the currency in 1949, the People’s Committee formed, and from it the People’s United Party (PUP) in 1950, led by Leigh Richardson, George Price and Philip Goldson, with independence as its aim. Universal adult suffrage came in 1954 and self-government in 1964. In 1973 the National Independence Party and two smaller parties merged into the United Democratic Party (UDP), giving the country the two-party system it still has.

On 1 June 1973 the Belize Act renamed the colony: “On and after 1st June, 1973 the name of the Territory which immediately before the said 1st June constitutes the Colony of British Honduras shall be Belize.”

Hurricane Hattie struck in 1961 and destroyed around 75% of the houses in Belize City, then the capital. A new capital was planned inland: the site was chosen in 1962, building began in 1967, and government moved to Belmopan in 1970.

In 1980 a United Nations resolution supported Belize’s independence and called on the United Kingdom to keep guaranteeing the country’s security. On 21 September 1981 Belize became independent. George Price, the country’s only Premier and its first Prime Minister, is remembered as the Father of the Nation; 15 January is George Price Day.

The Guatemala claim

Guatemala has long claimed territory in Belize. The two countries agreed in a Special Agreement, signed on 8 December 2008, to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to settle “any and all legal claims of Guatemala against Belize to land and insular territories and to any maritime areas pertaining to these territories”, and to fix the boundaries between them. Each country put the question to its voters first.

• Guatemala voted on 15 April 2018. Turnout was about 26%, and 96% of those who voted said yes.
• Belize voted on 8 May 2019. According to the official results reported by the San Pedro Sun, 53,388 people voted yes and 43,029 voted no, about 55% to 44%. Belize Rural South, the constituency that includes Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker, voted 2,373 yes to 1,857 no.

The Court was seised of the case on 7 June 2019. Written arguments ended when Belize filed its Rejoinder on 7 June 2023.

Where it stands (checked 23 September 2026): on 17 September 2026 Prime Minister John Briceño announced that the ICJ registrar had informed Belize that oral hearings in the Guatemala case will run from 22 to 26 February 2027. The date has been reported by Belize media and announced by the government; we had not yet found it on the Court’s own case page when we checked. After the hearings the Court deliberates and then delivers a judgment. No judgment date has been set.

A second case runs alongside it. In November 2022 Belize took Honduras to the ICJ over the Sapodilla Cayes, in the far south, which Honduras has claimed since 1981. On 19 March 2026 the Court allowed Guatemala to intervene in that case as a non-party, limited to sovereignty over the Sapodilla Cayes and related fishing rights; the government said the decision “does not in any way affect the legal rights or claims of any of the parties.” Hearings in that case are scheduled for 1 to 5 March 2027.

We will keep this section current as the cases move. For the day-to-day, see News.