Geography Is Belize: The English Speaking Central American Country

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Belize is one pof the more fascinating places in Central America. While it's bordered by Mexico and Guatemala, and shares a geopolitical sphere with Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, it's not a dominant-Spanish speaking country. In fact, unlike all the other countries, Belize was actually Britain's lone Central American colony for a long time. In this episode, we explore the history and geography of this unique, and gorgeous, Central American country.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Question for you, Jeff, whatand or where is Mezzo America. Meso
America is, Well, I'm goingto say that it's vaguely in sort of
the centralist central Ish America region,though it's not the same thing, if
I if I, if I remembercorrectly, I think it's if so,

(00:25):
I guess my my idea of it, it's sort of the area that sort
of wraps around the Yucatan Peninsula,right, So it goes a little bit
farther south Guatemala, Honduras maybe evenI don't know, I don't think about
I don't think it goes all theway to Costa Rica, but maybe it
starts getting a little bit over there, and then it also goes up into
Mexico a little bit. Am Iam I close here? Where am I
hit? You're totally more than close. I mean that's pretty much it,

(00:46):
right, So yeah, I meanit overlaps Central America is basically believee Guatemala,
Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua,and Costa Rica, and then meso
America maybe includes Mexico or perhaps thesouthern part of Mexico, certainly the Yucatan
Peninsula. So it's sort of thesame as Central America. There's probably some

(01:07):
contention on this, but that's basicallywhere it is, and that's the region
that we've been talking about today.Specifically, we're going to be talking about.
Geography is Belize, Jeff. Ifyou look on Google Maps, which
I know sometimes you do because Ido that too, right, Because all
the time, if you look onGoogle Maps, most of the borders between
countries are represented with a solid line. However, if you look on the

(01:30):
if you look at it and thenyou look at the border between Belize and
Guatemala, it's represented with a dashedline or a dotted line. Why is
that? I mean, so,I don't know specifically, I don't I'm
not totally included on the history betweenthese two countries. However, I do
know that dash lines on Google Mapstypically are represented due to some sort of

(01:53):
border dispute. So I'm going toguess I'm an hazard of guess here that
Guatemala believe leaves that some of Belizebelongs to it, or vice versa,
or maybe both at the same time. That's that's going to be my takeaway
from that. I have no ideawhere the current standing is, though you
are correct that there is a disputeon the border between Belize and Guatemala.

(02:14):
And it's mostly Guatemala. It's contendingpart of Belize should be part of its
territory. And did you know thatup until the nineties, sometime in the
nineties, most maps of the regionmade in Guatemala showed Belize as part of
Guatemala. Oh wow, the entirety, the whole thing, pretty much bank
Yeah wow, No, so Ididn't know that. So yeah, we

(02:37):
will. I will answer the questionas to why that is in the second
part of the episode. That's alittle bit of a teaser for what's coming
up. But that's maybe a littleknown dispute. Of course, it's very
known by people who live in theregion. But we need to do some
history and talk about some a bunchof other things in order to get to
that point. So let's let's start. So we can we can start,
we can at some point get tothis very interesting question of where the border

(02:59):
is between Guatemala and Belize. Ithink it's absolutely fascinating. I think,
right if you look around Google maps, you're going to find these sort of
border shenanigans, for lack of abetter word, all around right there there's
a lot of border disputes everywhere.Not everywhere, but a lot of different
places. In fact, I thinkeven up until recently, I think Canada

(03:20):
had a little bit of a borderdispute with like Denmark or something over an
island. Anyways, it's just interestingto see these things and how they get
represented on popular sort of map software. I guess Google Maps, maybe Apple
Maps too, because it's it showcasessomething that I think goes it's a little
hidden, it's not it's not obviousthat there's an issue there, but it

(03:43):
is there. This is this isdefinitely I know we say this a lot,
but this is an episode we needto do where we look at not
all the border disputes. That wouldtake too much time, but to look
at border disputes and as you pointedout, how they're represented on maps is
really interesting and significant. And oneof the reasons that Google Maps is representing
these borders is dashed is because theydon't want to. They want to acknowledge

(04:05):
that so that people in both thosecountries will still use their product. Right
Like, if they showed a hardlinewith a particular definition that somebody doesn't agree
with, then maybe somebody says well, this isn't a legitimate map and doesn't
want to do it, so there'sprobably commercial and political reasons for using something
like that. So that's for thefuture. A couple of pronunciation things here,

(04:27):
Jeff, there's a there is ac around the area there that can
be pronounced in a couple different ways. Are you talking about the Caribbean the
Caribbean, Yeah, but some peoplewant to call it the Caribbean, so
it can be pronounced in two differentways. I my my research suggests that
Caribbean is maybe the preferred pronunciation CaribbeanCaribbean right now. The reason for that

(04:57):
is because it's a reference to thecarib people of the areas, and not
the Caribs, but the Caribs,so it's Caribbean. So I didn't know
that. Yeah. Now, Caribbean, I think is a very popular pronunciation
in the United States. And Idon't know this for sure, but my
sense is it may have become popularizedfrom a ride at Disneyland and disney World

(05:19):
called Pirates of the Caribbean. Rightnow, having made this caveat, I
probably say it both ways, butI'm going to try to say Caribbean because
I think that's the preferred nomenclature,the pronunciation, and then another term that
we're going to use is Maya.So the Maya are people of indigenous to

(05:42):
Central America to meso America. Andthe word Mayan itself refers specifically to languages,
and there are many different languages Mayanlanguages that correspond with different ethnicities Uku,
tech, mopon, quecha, momand there's probably thirty or more.
But the term Maya itself refers tothe people or to the culture. So

(06:05):
I will try to use that correctlybecause I'm pointing it out. But anyways,
a few vocabulary caveats before we getstarted. So listener, this would
be a good time to break outyour maps or your atlases of the Caribbean,
did I said? Yeah? Ithink I said that right, the
Caribbean and Central America, so youcan get a sense of what you know

(06:29):
where we're talking about a little bit. With the caveat that maps are not
always they're never correct. Actually theyalways lie in some ways, but there's
some correctness to them. Belize isa country in Central America and it is
east and north of Guatemala and southof the Yucatan Peninsula. In Mexico.
Culturally, Belize is both Caribbean andCentral American, and we'll get into a

(06:51):
little bit why and just a bit. The primary languages there include English,
Belizean, Creole, Spanish, variousman languages, and Garafuna, and I'll
say a little bit more about thatin a moment. Believeze today as a
population of about four hundred and sixteenthousand people, so it's not a huge

(07:13):
country. There's not a giant population, but you know, over four hundred
thousand people today. The largest ethnicgroup are Mestizos, those of mixed Maya
and Spanish heritage, which forms abouthalf the population. And some of those
individuals are from nearby countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
And many of these migrants fled politicalviolence and turmoil and safety in Belize

(07:38):
particularly, I'm thinking of Guatemala,El Salvador, into some degree Honduras as
well earlier on Mexico. Then thereis the Creole people, which is people
who are a mix of African andBritish heritage, which form about twenty five
percent of the population. Brazilian Creoleswere the descendants of enslaved Africans and British
Laggers for the most part, andthe Brazilian Creole language. It's one of

(08:01):
many Creole languages, which means it'sa mix. Is an English based language
with influences from other Creole languages ofthe Caribbean and Central America, West African
languages Garifuna and Maya. So it'sa very syncretic or mixed language. And
when you hear it, if youspeak English, at first you think you

(08:22):
understand what they're saying because there's someEnglish construction, English words, and then
after a while you realize, I'mnot sure, I'm one hundred percent I'm
getting all of this. So itsounds like English but different. It's probably
I'm in a hazard, I guesshere. It's probably similar to the Jamaican
sort of Patois language that they speak, where if you do hear it,
you can hear some variations of whatwould be English words because Jamaica was an

(08:46):
English colony, but they'd also it'salso at this point its own language,
and therefore you're going to miss Youmight pick up on a word or two
here, but you're not you're notcapturing the meaning or intent behind what what's
actually being said. Yeah, it'ssimilar in some ways, as you pointed
out to the sort of creole languagespoken in Jamaica and influenced by that in

(09:07):
some ways as well. Then thereis Maya people which constitute about eleven percent
of the population, mostly yucatec Ccchiand Mopan, but there are many other
groups. And then there's the Garafuna, who make up a smaller percentage,
about eight percent of the population.Garifuna people of Belize descended from an Afro
indigenous population from the island of SaintVincent. About sixteen seventy five, the

(09:33):
survivors of wrecked ships carrying enslaved peoplefrom Africa found refuge on Saint Vincent and
the survivors started families with the indigenousArawak and Kalinago people and subsequently formed a
new culture. And these people becameknown as the Garifuna or the Black Caribs.
So this is the Garafuna fighting.After fighting off European colonizers for over

(09:56):
one hundred years, the British eventuallyconquer the Black Caribs or the Garafuna.
The following year, the British forcedover five thousand Garafuna to move from Saint
Vincent to the island of Rautan,forty miles north of Honduras, and then
many eventually moved to mainland Honduras,and then in eighteen thirties many migrated to

(10:18):
Belize. So political conflict also ledto another wave of migration in Honduras circa
in nineteen thirty seven. So today, in total, throughout the world,
there's about four hundred thousand people whoidentify as Garafuna, and most of them
who live in Honduras or the UnitedStates, but Belize has a sizable population
as well. Yeah, you know, it's interesting when you were when you

(10:41):
were running through the various countries andsort of the geopolitical issues they were hav
in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, even Mexico. Right, it is
interesting because I think, you know, if you're a geographer, you're a
historian of a history fan, you'reprobably aware of some of the issues that
these countries have had over the lastyou know, one hundred and two hundred

(11:05):
years. Right, these are thingsthat sort of bubble up here and there,
So it's not surprising to hear aboutthis. But I would say Belize
has flown under the radar where it'slike, I don't think most people know
what has happened here and to whatextent their population is coming from due to
these other issues. So it's justinteresting hearing about all of this and how
it sort of Belize, how Belizehas evolved, I guess, And we're

(11:30):
about to get into that, andyou're right. It's very fascinating and a
little bit of a different story thansome of the other countries that surround it.
It stands out in certain ways,and we'll get into that because I
think it's really interesting. But beforewe tackle some of that stuff, I
wanted to ask you a question broadbread and butter geography question. What is

(11:52):
a toponym? Jeff? The toponhym. Isn't that just a It's just
a name we give to a place, right, It's a place name,
right, So we've got to comeup with these strange terms for things.
Topo refers to the earth, andthat's the name of a part of the
earth. And we talk about theseall the time. We use them all
the time, and geographers sometimes paypretty close attention to toponyms because they're not

(12:16):
neutral pretty much. Ever, they'reloaded with all kinds of history and particular
histories, and so the origin ofthe name Belize, which is a toponym,
is highly contested, for example.So it was able to read up
about this a little bit. Andthere are several stories told about why the
country is called Belize, but mostof them fall in the side of legend

(12:37):
apparently, so one idea. Andwhat's interesting is that you read a bunch
of different sources and some of themfloat some of these ideas as the default
reasons. Some suggest there's a conflict. And then I read a few academic
pieces which were kind of more recentlypublished, which suggests that some of these
are in fact probably myths. Soone story is that there was an English

(12:58):
pirate or buccaneer named Wallace who supposedlystarted a permanent settlement on the coast of
what is now Belize. The storygoes that the Spanish pronunciation of Wallace would
be something like Balis, and thatmorphrom the word Belize. Twenty first century
academic research suggests that Wallace never evenexisted and that he was a myth,
and that there's a reason for thattoo. And it turns out that this

(13:20):
is part of the English endeavor tosort of establish a lay claim to the
territory of the area by this,and this has sort of worked its way
into something that some people believe.In fact, many Europeans' maps from sixteen
seventeen hundreds failed to even represent belizeat all, Like this just was like

(13:41):
there's an empty space. Basically,the Yucatan was often represented as an island.
They didn't quite have it all figuredout. I mean, that's that's
not surprising. We you know,if you look at historic maps of like
basically anywhere in the quote unquote NewWorld. You know, the Europeans at
the time. I'm talented cartographers,but still obviously very limited in certain ways.

(14:03):
I think I've seen some that youhave depicck Florida as a map,
as an exam or as an asan island in California as well. Yeah,
in California as well. Yeah,and so it's like, yeah,
absolutely, I mean the Ucatam potentiallyyou see a peninsula unless you know,
I guess, unless you know whereit's actually connecting to. You see that
they're oh, there's water in allthree sides. Well, this is an

(14:24):
island. We'll just circle it aroundon the map. And that's that's probably
true. Yeah, And and whyit's significant is because this informs the geographic
imagination of people. Obviously, thepeople who live there are cognizant of what's
going on there and where they are, but for many people in the rest
of the world, they rely uponmaps or descriptions of maps to understand things.

(14:45):
And so one of the things wecan read into this is that the
area that is now Belieze was notthere wasn't a whole lot of importance compared
to some of the other neighboring areasplaced on it by Spain in England in
particular, who kind of vying forcontrol of that area. So and in
some early Spanish maps apparently label theareas depopulated, which when in fact indigenous

(15:07):
people were very much present. Sothat also suggests inner rature of people and
opening up for a future claim.But it's interesting to think that in the
cartographic European cartographic, in the Angloand Spanish history of Belize, that the
cartography has been represented in many differentways, including this conflict that we talked

(15:28):
about earlier with the dashline between Guatemalanand Belize. Another theory was that Belize
was a variation of a Maya wordfor muddy river or muddy water. In
a twenty nineteen studies suggests that thename is derived from a Yucatec Maya phrase
for the road to Iza and Itzarefers to an area in the northern Yucatan
Peninsula, so that some of thelatest research i've I've found out but that

(15:54):
may be the case. But thereit is. It's a complicated history that
has been debated for for a while. I think, I think this is
so interesting because there are there area few places out there where the origin
of the name of the place itis sort of just lost to history.
And the one that immediately springs tomy mind is where we live here currently

(16:15):
in Oregon. Right. Oregon isone of the few states where they don't
actually know where Oregon the name camefrom, and they have some theories out
there, but it's generally thought tohave been lost to history, and we
just call it Oregon now, andit's like, well, why is that?
It's like, well, yeah,I mean I think there was some
research at the University of Oregon thatsuggests that it did derive in some way

(16:37):
for some from some Native American terminology. But yeah, it's amazing that not
much time can go by and youforget why something was named. So,
for example, in Portland, togive you another example, we have what's
sometimes called the Alphabet District because thestreets are named ABCD, you know,
with names after that. And Idid some extensive research on that a few

(17:00):
years ago and found that some ofthe street names which were named probably one
hundred years ago or maybe one hundredand twenty years ago, they just they
don't know, they're not sure whichVaughan Vaughn Street is named after, for
example. It's incredible that that thatwe can lose track of history so quickly,

(17:21):
and in some ways we'll never besure. Sometimes we'll just have some
strong ideas about what happened. Sothat's that's the nature of toponyms in a
lot of ways. So let's let'sgo way back for a little bit,
because we'd like to do that.I think it's really important in most cases,
and certainly in this case for understandingwhat's going on in Belize. And
we're going to talk about the ancientMaya civilization, which was not just in

(17:41):
Belize, but in yucatem Peninsula,Guatemala and then the western parts of Honduras
and El Salvador as well, thereseems to be in the popular imagination.
I remember kind of learning this asa kid, that the Maya mysteriously disappeared,
that there was a collapse of thesociety and that the people disappeared,
and that's just not true. Imean, there was a collapse in the

(18:03):
society, and that was before Europeansarrived. But there's over eight million Maya
who live in Central America today,so the idea that this is a group
of people that has vanished is notcorrect. There's over thirty Maya Mayan languages
which developed from ancient times, whichendure today, and many of these languages
are not mutually intelligible, which Ithink is important to note as well.

(18:25):
If we want to go way back, we can go back four thousand years
or maybe even several thousand years earlier, and we have what we might call
the proto Maya people. So peoplewho became the Maya people settled there.
The Maya civilization emerged in those regionsin the areas that I talked about.
And there's some research that was donein twenty twenty two or published in twenty

(18:48):
twenty two that suggests that the ancestorsof the Maya migrated from as far south
as present day Columbia, but maybefurther north. So there's a group of
people there from Columbia up until themiddle part of Central America that it's believed
that people migrated from there into andbecame Maya. As they settled the proto
Maya people learned to cultivate maize orcorn as a staple crop, which is

(19:15):
extremely important to their society. Theirsymbols for corn that are conflated with just
life itself and the hieroglyphics of Mayacivilization. Subsequently, my people cultivated,
among other crops, squashed cassava,chili, peppers, and beans. So
these are foods that we still associateand crops we still associate with that area

(19:38):
today. Maya refers to various groupsof people. So in ancient times and
even more recently, these people didn'tconsider themselves necessarily be culturally or politically unified.
I think people today may identify thatway to a certain degree, but
generally people are identifying by more specificethnicities, which are characterized by particular language

(20:00):
as well. So there was probablysome separation for a while, and these
different languages form, right, Imean, you see this, this is
not. This is something that youcan see within you know, bringing into
a US or a Canadian context,within the tribes you know, sort of
in our in our area as well, right the Algonquin speaking people's that's I
mean, there's hundreds or thousands oftribes that are different tribes that are part

(20:22):
of that. They all just hada common language or I think even the
Iroquois Confederacy is like seven different tribes. There's probably differences there, they just
happen to have a combined language structureor something like that. And it's funny
how when you go back far enough, you know, we talk about borders
and nations and countries and all thesekinds of things, when you go back

(20:44):
far enough, it's like, no, the binding factor, even though they
might not always agree, and sometimesthey even war with each other, but
the binding factor is the language.And it always, it always seems to
come back to that. Yeah,And that's the way we characterize it today
as well. We might say aChinook speaking people or something like that,
suggesting that these languages is somehow connected, but it's not. Sort of the
political identity that characterizes the world today, you know, the modern state system

(21:11):
we've talked about before on the showthat basically originated in Europe is something that's
sort of exported to different parts ofthe world. It's not that people didn't
have identity, but they were dissimilarfrom the ones that we think about today
as default identities. My peoples havemigrated to what is now Belize circa or
before twenty six hundred BCE. SoI think that's when I was first learning

(21:32):
about the Maya, you know,decades ago. The estimates I read were
more recent, but as more researchhas been done and more deciphering of you
know, archaeological finds has been done, they've sort of predated that, and
so they've realized that this is agroup of people have been on for quite
a long time. Evidence suggests thatthe oldest Maya site was Aquello and northern

(21:53):
Belize, so that one of theas far as researchers know that one of
the first Maya plays was in factin Belize. And so if we move
ahead to what's sometimes called the preClassic or Olmec period, this is like
fifteen hundred to two hundred BCE,And this is because the Maya developed in
very close proximity to a number ofother civilizations. Including the Olmec and the

(22:18):
Omec, is the oldest known peopleand culture in Mesoamerica. Doesn't mean that
there wasn't one before, but that'sas far as we know, that was
the one that the historical record nowis the oldest. And the Maya,
like the Olmec, built large citiesthat had very important religious and ritual significance.
Notable is the construction of pyramid temples. Many of these ruins of these

(22:42):
temples and cities can be visited todayand excavation continues, and some of these
temples may have been into the Classicperiod as well. Maya innovated agriculture,
irrigation, trade networks, writing ina complex calendar, and the ancient Maya
are known for their advanced knowledge ofastronomy and mathematics in particular, so this,

(23:03):
I mean, they have a veryfamous calendar, right, That was
the one that I guess it endedmaybe potentially in twenty twelve, and everybody's
you know, had a little bitof a freak out over it, and
you know, what's going to happenin twenty twelve. I think it was
like December twenty twelve, and ofcourse nothing did. But I think there's
a whole movie about it too,which was funny. Yeah, no,
I'm sure there was, and wecould dig deeper into that. I think

(23:25):
part of it is where a lotof it is misinterpreting the calendar itself by
time researchers, and then also misinterpretingwhat the significance of that year was.
That right, maybe the future waspredicted in that time, and so the
idea was, well, this isthis is probably going to end now,

(23:45):
you know, I mean that theyhaven't recorded anything, they didn't see anything
else coming. Let's let's do this. Let's take a quick break and we'll
come back and we'll get more intoBelize and we'll restart with some more about
the Maya and just a few minutes, all right, we will be right
back, and we're back. It'sthe Geography Is Everything podcast. We're talking

(24:14):
about geography as Belize, and weare talking about the ancient Maya, so
we can talk about the contemporary Mayaas well. The classic period starts around
two hundred to about nine hundred CommonEra, and this is sometimes referred to
as the peak of the Maya civilization. What does that mean when somebody says
the peak of civilization, it's kindof a curious phrase. Yeah, I

(24:36):
don't know. I mean, there'sa part of me that everybody else of
every other generation, right, yes, right, there's a part of me
that wants to suggest that it's theheight of the economic you know, they're
the wealthiest, they have the mostwhatever. But I think when you get
back into some of these ancient cultures, one, the economy is just vastly
different from what we have today.These ideas that we have today, for

(24:59):
like the US being the economic powerof the world, doesn't translate back to
the ancient mine culture. So maybeit's like when the population was the highest,
when they had the most claimed territory, although even claiming territory is different
back then. I don't know.It's a good question, it's a good
thought process. Yeah, and Ithink I think it's an open question.

(25:22):
Probably. I think in this particularcase, maya civilization is referred to a
period of time when cities and agriculturewere the most developed, as you suggested,
where there was probably a high populationas well, And it also probably
refers to some of those advancements relatedto architecture, astronomy, and mathematics that
we just discussed. And it's importantto indicate that the Maya religion was also

(25:47):
very centrally important to the functioning ofcities at this time. I don't want
to say religion, it's unimportant thatother times, but it's sort of very
markedly hierarchical and very connected to theways in which cities were constructed and built.
And there's probably an economic expression tothis, some trade as well.
But it's not believed that there wasa a Mayan empire per se, but

(26:10):
rather a city more a series ofwhat we might call city states or something
like that, or maybe sometimes beenin conflict, but many times we're trading
with one another, something that's distinctfrom this period, maybe from earlier as
well. I wanted to raise becausewe're both people who are studying geography of
sport at times, you and I. Yeah, we do. And there's
a team ball sport that arose fromthe Maya culture with very important political,

(26:36):
religious, and social dimensions. Andhave you heard of this game before?
Do you know anything about this?I don't know if it's this exact one.
I've seen variations of what would bebroadly described as ancient sort of indigenous
ball games from South or Central America, where they I mean, I think

(26:57):
there's variations of it, but I'veseen one, and I think it was
in like an old Disney movie.But it's like they have to hit the
ball with their hips or like ahoop or something that's on the side.
I don't know, something like that. I can see the popular imagination of
it. I guess, yeah,well, the Disney may have captured something

(27:18):
correct in that case. But therewas a ball game that sort of resembled
soccer in that you couldn't use yourhands, but you couldn't use your feet
either, So, as you suggest, you have to use your hips,
heads, shoulders, and knees inorder to propel the ball, and there
would be some kind of hoop forthe ball to go through. Sometimes at

(27:40):
pretty high height, the ball wouldsort of bounce around it. But it
was heavy enough and sort of dangerousenough that they had to wear protection.
So they had to wear, youknow, the equivalent of protective equipment equipment
today to protect different parts of theirbodies. Apparently, neighboring cities would compete
with one another, and the gamewas sometimes used to settle disputes. Whether

(28:03):
this was used in place of waror not is not entirely clear to me.
Some scholars might have a pretty strongidea about that, but that's out
there. And the game also figuresvery prominently in the k Maya narrative of
creation, which is called the popolVo and in this case it's the sun
and the moon gods I believe thatare competing in this competition. So it's

(28:26):
a very strong part of their cosmologyand their religion as well. So for
many years, researchers from the westernpart of the world believe that the losing
team or the losing team captain weresometimes not all the time, but sometimes
subsequently sacrificed to the gods. Andthen it came up that it might have

(28:48):
been the winning team or winning captainthat was sacrificed. And so you know,
this sounds alarming to us because wehave a different sort of configuration of
life based on the religions that predominatein the world today. So there were
religious rituals that had human sacrifices amongthe Maya, but the Maya to their

(29:12):
understanding was that there was not reallife, was cyclical. There wasn't sort
of life and death is that wewould recognize it, for example, in
Christianity or in Islam, which there'sthere's this world and then there's the next
world, and they're very different andthey're distinct. The Maya apparently believed that
the things were a bit more secularcyclical. So in other words, if

(29:33):
somebody stopped living, they weren't deadbecause their spirit would move on into another
form or something like that. Andso this might help us wrap our heads
a little bit around why they woulddo something like this, because they have
a very different conceptualization of life inthe world over time than the major religions

(29:56):
do today. No, that's fascinating. I think to me that sounds I
don't know where this idea came fromoriginally, maybe India, but the idea
of reincarnation, right, like,it's just you're once you die, you're
just going back into sort of thesystem as it were. And I think
that does reframe sort of what deathis for a culture, especially if it's

(30:18):
a culture of everybody. Right,you know, if your grandmother dies,
you're not necessarily all that sad becauseyour belief system just says, well,
she'll be back again. In thecase of the Hindu religion, there is
this idea of reincarnation, which alsois very convenient for supporting the very rigid
cast system that existed there as well. Again, it's a different configuration of

(30:40):
the world and allows people to seethings in a different way. So let's
move on with the Maya just alittle bit here, and the Maya civilization
is thought to have started to declinebetween the eighth and tenth centuries. And
so again, what does decline mean. We talked about what peak means.
Decline in this case, it probablymeans decreased trade, increased warfare, and

(31:02):
increased death rate. And eventually thisalso led to the abandonment of some of
these cities that had tens of thousandspeople in them, so the abandonment of
cities, and it speculated that manyMaya cities were abandoned within about one hundred
year period, so it all happenedpretty quickly. Of course, this is
also where this myth of the disappearanceor the vanishing of the Maya come from.

(31:23):
And it was more that the civilizationsort of moved away from those large
cities and people started living i thinkin smaller settlements. Again, there's I
think predominant theory that there's a combinationof deforestation and drought, which maybe have
related in some ways to climate changeat the time, but also human activity

(31:44):
that catalyzed this decline, and thereare probably other factors at play too,
So you're moving away from the hierarchyof the city and things sort of take
a turn at that point. Andof course the architecture of the ancient Maya
civilization is evan today and these someof these temples and cities that are being
excavated in Belize. This concludes Altunha, a Characol and Shanantinich. And I've

(32:08):
been to Shanantinich, which is avery fascinating place. I was fortunate enough
to visit Mayan ruins in Guatemala andBelize and Honduras, and it was very
interesting to visit them and see howthey're sort of excavated and administered and talked
about in different ways in different countries. So now, anyways, by the

(32:30):
time the Spanish conquistur show up onthe scene, the Maya cities had long
been abandoned, but of course thepeople were still there. You know.
It's what you're saying, seems likea moment where people will be like,
WHOA, how could people just abandonthese big cities that seem so insane.
It seems like you would want tostick around. You know, everything's already

(32:50):
built X Y Z, and Ithink it's worth calling out that. You
know, after the Roman Empire fellRome was practically abandoned. Compared to its
height. I think they dropped downto just a few thousand people at one
point, or maybe a few tensof thousand people, but that was down
from you know, hundreds of thousandsor millions of people at the sort of
the height of the Roman Empire.It's like, yeah, this can happen.

(33:10):
You know, there's no longer there'sno longer a something pulling everybody in
an economy, a wealth, apower base that's pulling everybody in, and
when that doesn't exist anymore, peoplewill scatter and they'll try and find something
else. To have cities, youhave to have pretty significant agriculture. I
mean, you can have small citiesmaybe that agriculture, but generally throughout the

(33:32):
world, cities have arisen with agriculture. And if that system breaks down in
some way it isn't able to supportthat kind of urban population, then people
start to subsist in a different way, which maybe in smaller groups, and
there's advance. There's examples of abandonedstuff all over the world, right,
like even from our own culture.I mean, I on my Instagram feed,

(33:54):
I have this abandoned buildings kind ofvibe going on, And there are
things that were built in the twentiethcentury that have been completely abandoned, sometimes
its entire cities. So this isn'tmaybe as rare as we might think it
is, but it is fascinating toconsider why this happened. So I Spanish

(34:15):
conquistadors. So it's time to filterin European contact here, because that's going
to change things very significantly. Ithas in many parts of the world.
England, it always does, youknow, it's not always the it's a
story that ends up badly oftentimes forthe people who are already living in some

(34:36):
of these places. England or subsequentlyBritain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal
and Spain all sought to exploit resourcesin Central America and the Caribbean, and
the early fifteen hundred Spanish conquistadors beganto conquer Maya lands and claim much of
the territory for Spain. In thesixteenth and century seventeenth centuries, Spanish sailors

(34:58):
and missionaries began toccupied the Mia landsthat are now known as Belize. However,
it seems that permanent colonial settlement inwhat is now Belieze was not made
until maybe the seventeen hundreds. Thisis a question of dispute, but there's
a lot of speculation that a lotof the claims that there was settlement earlier,
particularly on the part of the English, was to establish territorial claims,

(35:21):
and that the history of Europeans,for example English logging and which was a
big industry at one point in theseventeen hundreds in Belize, really doesn't go
back as far as maybe it's sometimesrepresented to have gone back. So you
get a situation where Spain has claimeda lot of territory in the area,

(35:45):
and then English pirates or buccaneers arein the area there and they're trying to
establish things, and piracy becomes kindof a big thing by the middle of
the fifteen hundreds. A note onpiracy. You probably know that pirates,
what we think of as pirates,used to be sponsored by different countries,
and which is why some pirates thatare English have sir in front of their

(36:07):
names. That's not something that youwould think of for just like a freelance
pirate, right, So the ideawas that they were supported and the English
would support pirates taking over Spanish shipsand vice versa. And then at one
point there was an agreement upon Europeanpowers to not do that. It's like,
let's not do this to each otheranymore, I think would be better

(36:29):
for everybody. And then the piratesstart thinking, well, they're out of
a job, so they become completelyindependent contractors and they just start doing the
same things but on their own behalf. And so what used to be a
state enterprise becomes an independent enterprise,which is how we mostly think about pirates,
probably particularly in that ride we mentionedearlier at Disney World, all the

(36:50):
movies that came afterwards, in everymovie that's come after that. So perhaps
at some point these English buccaneers startedusing the Keys and Keys are islands off
the mainland coast of Belize and Mexicoas a base of operations for some of
their activities. And then at somepoint, and when exactly is not clear,

(37:12):
some British individuals start to excavate hardwith the Spanish. We're doing that
too, and there was piracy ofthose ships, and at some point the
English are like, let's just cutout the Spanish part and just go and
start excavating some of this stuff ourselves. And that was by the seventeen hundred.
How much earlier, it's unclear.So we have a period of a
few hundred years where Britain and Spainare really contesting the area that is now

(37:35):
Belize. And during this time manyremote Maya villages existed without too much interference
from European powers, and that wouldchange, but for a while that was
the situation. You know, it'sreally interesting thinking about this contest between England
and Spain at the time. Imean, listener, if if you're unaware
of sort of the Spanish colonial empireat the time, it was heavily centered

(38:00):
on what is today in Mexico City, or the former ruins of the Aztec
Empire, and that's sort of wherethey established themselves and started growing out,
and that's where eventually they would youknow, I mean, there was a
whole other thing in South America,but it was always going to be administered
by Leave. It is called theViceroyalty of Spain, the vice Royalty of
New Spain that was centered in MexicoCity, and so it's kind of amazing

(38:22):
to think that they were able todominate quote unquote so much of Central even
into North America, northern North America, Central America, and South America,
and yet they couldn't sort of,I guess, deal with the English in
this relatively small area that was prettyclose relative to where their administrative center was.

(38:46):
Absolutely yeah, and the English hada big administrative colonial center in Jamaica,
which isn't that far right either.That's true, and the fact that
we talked about earlier that these blizesabsent from some early maps suggests that other
places were capturing the attention of thesecolonial powers more than what became Belize.

(39:08):
But eventually, of course that shifts. So in the context of this contention
between Spain and Britain in seventeen sixtythree and seventeen eighty three, there are
some treaties that are signed which grantBritish subjects authority to do logging there,

(39:29):
but in doing so that sort ofreiffies the Spanish claim for sovereignty there that
if you're given permission, that meansthat you have to ask for permission.
However, in seventeen ninety eight Spainthey had made several incursions and kicked out
British laggers, and they tried todo that in seventeen ninety eight and that
ended up not working out. Soat that point England has a stronger claim

(39:52):
in what's going on. And afterthis, Belize or what is now Belize,
becomes a de facto British colony,and in eighteen sixty two it becomes
a formal colony known as British Honduras, and this was the name up until
recently in fact and the Honduras,this of course is a country nearby,

(40:12):
but it references the Bay or theGulf of Honduras, which is directly to
the east of Belize and to thenorth of Honduras. In eighteen fifty nine,
and this will be important for thisborder dispute, Britain and Guatemala signed
a treaty which demarcates the border betweenBelize and Guatemala. So it wasn't an

(40:34):
independent country of Belize that was signing. It was Britain and Guatemala. And
in eighteen sixty two Britain declares thesettlement of Belize to be a Crown colony.
I mentioned that and the Lieutenant Governorreported to the governor of Jamaica and
that sort of centralized control that wewere talking about. And then in eighteen
ninety three, Mexico renounced a claimthey previously had on Belize, which is

(40:55):
why they're not really currently involved ina border dispute in the region today.
It's interesting because if granted, Belizeis not a British colony anymore, but
it's interesting if Guatemala had signed this, you know, whatever deal with treaty
with Britain that demarketed sort of whatwas British Honduras or Belize today and Guatemala

(41:21):
at the time. What's happened sincethen where Guatemala is like now like whoa,
whoa, whoa. That maybe they'relike that was with that was with
Britain, that wasn't with Belize,So that could be part of it.
There may have been different maps madethat showed different borders, and there's probably
answers to a lot of these thingsthat I don't have, But that's that's
interesting. It would be interesting togo deeper into and find out the nature

(41:45):
of that particular conflict and what sortof how countries make how they claim legitimacy
for their claims right I mean,like you said earlier, this is a
future episode. Absolutely, we gotto do it. Yeah, we're gonna
write this down. Yeah, allright, let's get to the twentieth century
Belize. But before we do that, we have to take a short break.

(42:16):
Welcome back to to the Geographies Everythingpodcast with Jeff and Hunter, and
we're talking about geography is Belize,and we're talking about twenty century Belize and
that in nineteen fifty four, theBelize starts to gain limited autonomy from Britain,
so they're still part of Britain theUnited Kingdom, but they have some

(42:37):
autonomy. A couple big events thatI'll mention here nineteen thirty one and nineteen
sixty one hurricanes completely decimate or notcompletely, but largely decimate Belize City,
which is on the coast, whichwas the capital of the country at the
time. And partly in response tothese hurricanes that did so much damage to
Belize City, in nineteen seventy thecapital was moved. They didn't physically move

(43:00):
all the buildings, but a differentcity became the capital, and that's Belmo
Pond, which is about fifty mileswest of Belize City, and that's inland,
so in nineteen sixty four, anew constitution grants Belize full autonomy,
established as a two chamber parliament,and allows for universal adult suffrage. And

(43:21):
then in nineteen seventy three the country'sname changed from British Honduras to Belize.
So that's I'm going to say thatsort of recently seventy three. Yeah,
that seems very recent, yeah,right. In fact, you know when
you were saying, when you startedtalking about British Honduras, so I was
thinking, oh, yeah, I'veseen maps that have British Honduras on them,
right, that's not that wasn't itdidn't seem and those maps were old,

(43:42):
they didn't seem like they were theyweren't ancient. It was like the
Soviet Union was on them, youknow that kind of stuff, right from
the early seventies. Maps might usethis to open m for the place.
And so in nineteen eighty one Belizebecomes independent. So that's very recently,
right, So in a sense it'sone of the more recent countries in the
world. There's obviously some that aremore recent, South Sudan and others.

(44:07):
However, in eighteen, nineteen eightyone, Belize becomes independent. Most countries
recognize it, but one country doesnot. And it might not shock you
to learn that Guatemala refuses to recognizeBelize's independence, and so what's that today?
Not exist? Sort of here,I'll let's just do all that.
British troops apparently stayed behind a littlebit to help protect the border, and

(44:31):
in nineteen ninety two Guatemala recognized Belize'sindependence but maintained some claim to the territory.
So it wasn't until ninety two thatthey say, all right, you're
an inependent country, but we don'tagree where this border is. And so
that's sort of the more contemporary sideof things. I was in Guatemala and
Belize in Honduras in nineteen ninety four, so that was really just it was

(44:53):
just a couple of years or lessafter this recognition recognition, and I'd spent
most of my time in Guatemala,so so a lot of what I was
learning about Belize was from the perspectiveof people in Guatemala. Between two thousand
and two and two thousand and three, Belize in Guatemala negotiated an agreement regarding
the border dispute. However, aGuatemalan referendum rejected the settlement so it didn't

(45:15):
go into effect. And then intwo thousand, let's see, I'm sorry,
the border dispute between Belize and Guatemalacontinues to this day under the arbitration
of the International Court of Justice,so that has not been completely been resolved.
And then Belize remains part of theCommonwealth, you know, sort of

(45:37):
like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which means that King Charles the Third
is the monarch and head of stateof Belize, but domestically it has in
place a governor general that really there'sa lot of interest in Belize today because
it's a beautiful place in the Caribbean. Yeah, it's a tourist spot.

(45:58):
I mean if sold last week.Last week we had an entire episode about
people's summer vacations, and Belize isabsolutely going to be a place that people
visit this summer. I mean,it's absolutely It's becoming very well known as
as a place to go, youknow, for resorts to get the beach
the Caribbean, you know, CentralAmerican lifestyle. I don't know if they

(46:20):
have jungles down there. I'm surethey do, because I know Guatemala does.
But all us to say is,yeah, a very big part of
absolutely, but apparently it's an evenmore popular spot for your winter vacation because
okay, the majority is like somemaybe on the order of seventy percent of
the tourists to Belize are from theUnited States, and the United States our

(46:42):
winter is December through you know,March or something like that or thereabouts,
and so apparently December, February andMarch are the biggest tourist months overall there.
But people are visiting there, ofcourse all year round because people are
attracted to that kind of environment andthat kind of experience all year round.
And one of the other big drawsto Belize is actually off the coast of

(47:07):
Belize, and it's the Belize BarrierReef, which is the largest reef in
North America and i'm sorry, inthe Northern Hemisphere and the second largest reef
in the world, and the largestone being the Great Barrier Reef off the
northeast coast of Australia. So innineteen ninety six, the Belize Barrier Reef
Reserve System was designated by UNESCO asa World Heritage Site and recognized for its

(47:30):
biodiversity, its cultural significance, andits environmental vulnerability as well. And it
consists of seven discrete protected areas.One of these is the Blue Hole Natural
Monument. Have you ever heard ofthis thing before? I have never heard
of the Blue Hole Natural Monument Naturalmonument. Yeah, I've never heard of

(47:52):
that. Now, this is alarge marine sinkhole which is about one thousand
feet across an over four hundred feetdeep, near the center of Lighthouse Reef
atall fifty miles from mainland Belize,and it attracts scuba divers from around the
world, very advanced dives apparently.And what's distinctive about it is that there

(48:12):
is this blue, dark blue areaof the sea that it stands out in
very strong, and it's circular andstrong contrast to the lighter waters around it.
And this is something that you cansee images of. It's pretty fascinating
and apparently it's distinct enough where youcan see it from space. Not having
been to space, I can't confirmthis for you, but I'm told that

(48:34):
you can see this from space.There are some satellite images that might depict
that for us. And there isan interconnected expanse of underwater caverns that used
to be above the surface of thewater that are associated associated with the blue
hole, and it's the largest naturalformation of its kind in the world.
So this is something that looks verydistinct and gets believes sometimes gets representative of

(48:58):
this sometimes as well. Back tothe just overall reef system. In two
thousand and nine, the reef systemwas added to the list of World Heritage
Sites in Danger, so there's aspecific list of World herited sites that are
seen as being endangered. However,in twenty eighteen, the reef system was
removed from that list, and thiswas five months after the Belizean government established

(49:20):
a moratorium on oil exploration and drillingin Belize's offshore waters in two thousand and
eight. When this legislation was passed, Belize was one of three countries in
the world with this kind of legislation. So it's seen as a sort of
very forward thinking and a way topreserve culture, livelihood, environmental integrity.
So that's that's still I think,a pretty distinct situation throughout the world.

(49:44):
It's interesting. I would be curiousto know, you know, when I
think about these kinds of switches.You know, let's pass this thing to
you know, save this whatever forest, reef, whatever natural thing. There's
always a part of me, maybeit's a cynical part of me. It's
like, well, that's great andI love that, but are they doing
it just because now they're trying toprotect their tourism dollars? That is like,

(50:07):
and that's not necessarily a bad thing, But it's also it's like,
well, if they didn't have tourism, would they still be just drilling and
trying to find all the money theycan get. And it's like, maybe,
I don't know, that's a greatquestion and maybe not right. I
mean, it's it would be easyto think that if there wasn't this really
important industry located there, tourism,that they would be open to other industries

(50:30):
that might be important there. Butin fact it's probably a combination of different
reasons. And sometimes politics make strangebedfellows kind of thing, and people are
like, all right, well,this is what the result we want.
Maybe it's for different reasons, butlet's try to make this happen. And
I'm sure it was a fight becauseyou know, oil is a huge industry
that can bring lots of money intothe coffers of a country, and many

(50:52):
countries are not successful. And havingthis kind of legislation right, it does
turn off that about half turn outthat half Belize population depend on the barrier
reef area for their livelihoods and mostare related to tourism. There's some other
industries that are maybe tangentile to tourismas well, and it's really the keys

(51:15):
in Belize that attract the most tourists. So some people fly into Belize city,
but very few people visit Belmopond,for example, which is a very
small city and a very hot andhumid climate. In twenty nineteen, for
example, which is the year beforethe pandemic, over five hundred thousand people
visited Belize. Now remember there's justover four hundred thousand people who lived there,

(51:36):
so they had more than their ownpopulation visit that country within the span
of twenty nineteen. Now, therate of tourism, the number of tourists
plummeted during COVID, and last yearthe number of tourists was close but did
not quite reach that level from twentynineteen. So I suspect that maybe this

(51:58):
year or next year they'll be backto having half a million people visit every
year. Beginning in nineteen ninety one, cruise ships began anchoring in the waters
off of Belize, also increased thenumber of tourists. The largest island of
Belize is ambergrese Key, which isalso the number one tourist destination in all
of Belize, and in Spanish itwas sometimes called Sla Bonita. So I

(52:22):
have to have to say that forany Madonna fans listening out there, that
this island is rumored to have inspiredMadonna's nineteen eighty six hit Lat East La
Bonita, which is probably not true. It turns out. I think there
are some interviews with Madonna She's like, wow, this is just sort of
a place, you know, imaginaryplace. However, the song at the

(52:44):
very beginning refers to San Pedro,if you recall the lyrics, which is
a town on the south of theisland of ambergreese Key. So that gave
more power and that it also allows, I think Belize and ambergrese Key to
say, hey, this is theplace Madonna was singing about in that song.
Madonna incidentally co wrote that song withher producer and just a little last

(53:04):
tid bet that I can't resist.The song was originally shopped to Michael Jackson,
who decided that it wasn't the rightsong for him, so Madonna recorded
herself. Fascinating. Interesting, there'sanother big tourist attraction there called Key Cocker,
which is a much smaller island.It's five miles long and less than
a mile wide, and it's beenvery popular for decades with the sort of

(53:29):
budget backpacker set, which you know, I went to Ambergree's per day and
didn't stay overnight, and I stayedfor several days in Key Cocker because that
was my budget as well. Rightagain, mainland Belize Trek's tourists, but
less than the Keys. And Idid have an experience in Belmo Pond.
I was there for I think itwas ten days or two weeks or something

(53:49):
with three of my friends in themid nineties, and we built a water
catchment tank. We helped under theleadership of the from I think it was
El Salvador, and so we builtthis for the Red Cross so they could
collect water. And it was inOctober and it was brutally hot, very
humid, and then like three orfour times a day, this guy would
just open up and just pour lotsof rain. And for like twenty minutes

(54:15):
and then we'd have to go backto work. So that's some of my
I have a lot of memories ofthis place. It's in a fantastically beautiful
country, wonderful people, with thekind of diversity that we talked about earlier
in the episode, so it's aplace to consider on your map of the
world. Of course, tourism issomething that we've had an ongoing debate about.

(54:37):
It's a great thing because it getspeople to be engaged with and care
about different parts of the world.There's a sort of a very big dark
side to tourism as well, sowe'll leave that to individual listeners to decide
where they want to travel too.But that's what we have time for today
when talking about Belize. It's beena really fun episode exploring Belize. I

(54:59):
like it when we take a placeand we just sort of dive into it
a little bit because every place hasa story, and obviously every places every
place is geography, right, there'sa geography at every place. There's reason
why those places exist, as areason why the humans that are there exist
there today and where they came from. There's just so much we can do
when we just talk about a place, such as we've done with Hawaii,
Alaska, Greenland, Easter Island.We did that a few weeks ago.

(55:21):
That's right. They always think we'refascinating. I think episodes that people can
really really enjoy, and it givespeople sort of a finite area to just
hone in on, like, Okay, we're going to talk about this,
and I know where we're talking about. It's probably what people when we talk
about geography right there, like we'regoing to talk about this place and exactly
as we've suggested throughout our tenure onour podcast. That on geography is many

(55:44):
things, but it remains place basedin many ways too. Absolutely well with
that, Hunter, where can peoplefind you around the world the internets?
Maybe? Well? I am Huntershowby I'm a professor of geography at Portland
State University, and there are sometactile ways in which you can see my
work. They are called books.There are cultural outlases. One of them

(56:05):
is called Portland is a Cultural Outlists. The other one is called Upper Left
Cities, a cultural outlests of SanFrancisco, Portland, and Seattle. Those
are ca authored by David Bannis,with contributions by you Jeff my co host
of Geography is Everything. Yeah,my name is Jeff Gibson. I am
the co host of this podcast,Geography is Everything. You can also find
me over on YouTube. That's YouTubedot com, slash little at Signed Geography

(56:25):
by Jeff. If you want thispodcast delivered straight to your email, just
go over to substack. That's Geographyis Everything dot substack dot com and you
can subscribe there. It's totally free. If you liked what you either watch
today or listen to today, pleaseeither like and subscribe on YouTube or rate
and review us on any of thepodcast apps that exists out there. There's

(56:46):
always really fun to see and read. And I don't know if they really
help with the algorithmic ranking. SoI just think it's kind of nice for
you to be able to share yourthoughts about what we're doing. I don't
know. I think it helps people, you know, whether they want to
partake where they want going in.Right, It's nice to hear, Yeah,
it's nice to hear. Yeah.Next week we are well, we're

(57:07):
going some somewhere very different, muchcolder, not nearly as tropical, but
should be very interesting. We're goingto the moon. Oh wow. Yeah,
that's I mean, geography references theEarth. But I think we can
let it go. I mean,there's certainly there are spatial things to talk
about when we're talking about the Moonthat relate to the Moon and relate to

(57:28):
Earth. So I think that's gonnabe super fascinating. It's gonna be really
interesting. We were going to coversort of how the Moon became the Moon
in the first place. We're goingto cover the culture, that place that
people have with the moon, thethe ideas, the religions that formed around
it. We're gonna talk a littlebit. We're gonna do a little bit
of a callback to our episodes onthe Space Race. Why do we care
about the Moon? Why are wetrying to get there? Right? There's

(57:50):
a lot, there's a lot thatgoes into that. But there's also this
aspect of the moon in that itinfluences so much of our planet. Right,
There's there's an inherent geography to theway that our planet works because the
Moon is the Moon and it's there, and so we're going to talk about
that as well. This is alsogoing to be our second episode. We're
going to have another guest on tohelp us talk a little bit more about
the astronomy science y aspects of theMoon. That's again we don't really have

(58:16):
the expertise for it. I amnot an astronomer. I took some astronomy
classes, which I'm grateful for,but that was a long time ago now.
Yeah, yeah, well I'm lookingforward to that. We'll introduce that
guest on next week's episode. Obviouslythat episode will then come a couple days
afterwards, like we did with JesseAlexander when we did the World War One

(58:37):
episodes. But I guess until then, we will see you around the internet.
Maybe go check out our stuff.You see us around there. Thanks
for listening.