THE RECOGNITION OF PSYCHIATRIC DISORDER IN BRITISH HONDURAS
by
MARY KENYON BULLARD
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Department of Anthropology
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
March 1973
As mental illness is inextricably bound to social and cultural norms, research in this area will be more likely to expose the abovementioned factors than would an examination of somatic disease where these norms are neither so crucial nor so operationally extant. Several major epidemiological studies of mental illness have established, if not the extent and gravity of the problem, at least the enigmatic aspects of it. Eaton and Weil (1955) studied the incidence of mental illness among the Hutterite s in the United States, Hollingshead and Redlich (1958) explored the relationship between mental illness and social class, Leighton et al. (1963) described psychiatric disorder among the Yoruba in Africa, Jaco (1960) mapped the incidence of mental illness among Texans, and Srole et al. (1962) found very high rates of mental illness in Manhattan. Partially a s a result of these surveys, there has been an increasing recognition on the part of these and other researchers that the nosological designations, behavioral definitions, clinical categories, etc. utilized in survey techniques often fail to encompass all of the mentally ill for the purposes of the research. Conversely, they may count sizable numbers of people who are not, by common definition, mentally ill at all. This has led to an interest in the processes by which persons are labelled as mentally ill and the behaviors and perceptions which initiate the processes. Lemert (1962) and Goffman (1963), for example, focus on how other people react to the first signs of psychiatric disorder in a person. The literature reflects a great amount of formal disagreement among professionals as to what counts as a case of mental illness (Plunkett and Gordon 1960 examine the "case criteria" in a number of survey studies and they are widely divergent), yet it has been shown that this published disagreement is somewhat irrelevant to the real problem--isolation and description of the lay diagnostic and labelling procedure. Scheff (1966), in his examination of commitment proceedings stresses that it is the community which decides who the mentally ill are, and professionals for the most part acquiesce to this informal lay decision-making. Mechanic (1962) finds that the crucial factors in enumerating and defining the mentally ill are those which are operating in the average person of any society, the friend, relative, or co-worker whose common-sense criteria of a person's mental health or illness are the determining factors in the assessment of sanity. Edgerton (1969), using the concepts of "negotiations" in the diagnosis of mental illness in an African society, also views the community process of identifying and labelling the mentally ill as one which cannot be ignored in any examination of
The general aims of this research were to discover and describe the definitions of and attitudes toward psychiatric disorder in British Honduras, and to relate these to other aspects of social life. This entailed an examination of many aspects of the social system, beliefs and values, patterns of interaction, as well as a great deal about disease in general. In this investigation of the attitudes which British Hondurans have toward psychiatric disorder, both the cognitive and affective components of attitude will be described. I will catalogue the information the populace learns and shares about causes, manifestations, and prognoses in mental illness. The basic premise upon which this research is based is: Social and cultural factors greatly influence the definition, perception, and treatment of psychiatric disorder, and these factors will vary in importance and effect among peoples with different cultural heritages. Related questions to which the study is addressed are:
1. What are the factors which contribute toward certain kinds of behavior being called psychiatric disorder, and why is it these and not others?Theoretical Implications2. Are there any broad similarities and consistencies in the behavior of the mentally ill pointing toward a great deal of learned behavior and a good understanding and performance of the role in persons so labelled?
3. How are the forces of society organized and activated to label and isolate the mentally ill?
4. In a given societal context, how necessary is institutionalization of the mentally ill?
5. Can some forms of deviant behavior, especially those called mental illness, contribute to the stability and cohesion of a society?
Throughout this study there will be many implicit and explicit assumptions made and some of the more crucial ones will be examined here in order to place the data in better theoretical perspective. Perhaps the major assumption involved is that there exists such an entity as "psychiatric disorder" and that it has "sociocultural aspects. " The reality of psychiatric disorder has certainly been questioned although most frequently under its alias of "mental illness. " Thomas Szasz, in his widely reprinted essay, "The Myth of Mental Illness, " makes a strong case for just such a situation.
... In contemporary social usage, the finding of mental illness is made by establishing a deviance in behavior from certain psychosocial, ethical, or legal norms. The judgment may be made, as in medicine, by the patient, the physician (psychiatrist), or others. Remedial action, finally tends to be sought in a therapeutic--or covertly medical--framework. This creates a situation in which it is claimed that psychosocial, ethical, and legal deviations can be corrected by medical action. Since medical interventions are designed to remedy only medical problems, it is logically absurd to expect that they will help solve problems whose very existence have been defined and established on non-medical grounds (Szasz 1970:17).His main thesis is that persons now called "mentally ill" would be better described as having "problems in living" and should be jailed if found guilty of crimes and otherwise left alone unless they seek help themselves. He, of course, advocates that persons with behavioral manifestations of organic problems should be medically treated as well, but as the majority of persons in mental hospitals are judged to be in "sound body" as far as current knowledge permits, this proviso would not affect a great many people. One of the main tenets of the "mental health movement" is that persons with apparently severe mental problems probably have some chemical, metabolic, chromosomal, etc. abnormality, which is as yet undetectable by medical science. This however, if it were established, would still not explain the content of various kinds of psychiatric disorders and would render largely inexplicable the previous and current successes of non-chemical therapy. Clearly this is far too large a problem to be thoroughly discussed here but it is one which has been kept in mind throughout. For this reason, I have chosen to use the term "psychiatric disorder" which, although it is certainly not theory-free, at least addresses itself to the usual mode of correction rather than postulating a cause or locus of involvement.
That such an entity as psychiatric disorder has socio-cultural aspects is fairly certain in all cases except perhaps those in which a person declares or decides himself to be disturbed based solely on introspection and contemplation of his mental state. 4 Indeed with the problem of community recognition and treatment of persons who appear to be unbalanced, these may be the main aspects. There has been a conscious effort, for several reasons, in this study to eschew psychological explanations and psychogenic causes in the cases of psychiatric disorder presented. Primarily, the behavior manifested can be considered sui generis in the cultural context, and the social reaction to it will be very nearly the same whether it is ultimately produced by unresolved conflicts of childhood, homosexual panic, "mental fatigue, " paranoid ideation, or, for that matter, a chemical imbalance. This is especially true in any area where most of the populace have never been exposed to these terms and the ideas and theories which have produced them. In fact, this innocence of psychoanalytic theory
allows British Hondurans much more freedom of expression when talking about their childhoods, dreams, private opinions, and personal thoughts. They do not fear revealing "latent impulses" and various kinds of "complexes. " Such things are not part of their universe of explanations and need not be referred to in a study of them, in the same way that one can describe and interpret the effects of the tides without mention of the moon. It is refreshing to live among people to whom there are no phallic symbols, oral fixations, anal retentive traits and the like. Freud and his followers may well have done us all a grave disservice in transforming flag poles, cigarettes, and red plush chairs into expressions about human nature which they were never meant to be and very likely are not. For British Hondurans, unsophisticated in matters of the "unconscious, " deal with themselves and others in a direct and explicit manner with no preoccupations about what the artifacts of behavior "really" mean.
Much of the discussion of psychiatric disorder to follow takes place in the context of deviant behavior and the theoretical problems involved in confining the concept in this way should be briefly mentioned. That this restriction is also used by persons who endorse the "mental illness" metaphor is interesting because of its inconsistency. Persons with other types of illnesses are not usually
thought of as deviants, yet people whose locus of "disease" is in their heads and manifested in their behavior are almost always considered so. I believe this is essentially a misclassification if one believes that there is a physical basis to psychiatric disorder. Traditionally in the United States, persons who are legally insane by definition do not know right from wrong. Therefore their abnormal behavior, no matter how heinous, does not have the same moral implications as that of a sane person. They, in effect, can do no wrong and, like the girl sleeping under the bar, are more to be pitied than censured. In fact, in the current trend of thinking in the United States, it is almost a de facto conclusion that a person who commits a shockingly outrageous act must be insane--the act is viewed as so wrong that it would be unthinkable for a person of sound mind to perform it. This is exactly the opposite of the situational assessment of deviance that sociologists usually assert, that no act is in itself deviant. In reality, some acts are so deviant in themselves that the actor is automatically placed beyond the pale of deviancy into the category of maniac where the act, not an audience, defines the assessment of the actor. There is a relationship between deviant behavior and psychiatric disorder but I do not believe that it is simply that the latter is a type of the former. 5 Rather it appears that a high level of etically abnormal
behavior which is not viewed by the community as deviant tends to make the recognition of psychiatric disorder less immediate. This will be amplified in the concluding chapter.
These points illustrate the difficulties in utilizing sociological theory to interpret folk conceptions. Social scientists define deviant behavior in statistical or operational terms as exemplified in the following statements: "... social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction constitutes deviance" (Becker 1963:9). "Deviance is not a property inherent in certain forms of behavior, it is a property conferred upon these forms by the audiences which directly or indirectly witness them" (Erikson 1962:11, emphasis in original). "An item of behavior, taken in and by itself, cannot be labelled either conformity or deviance. There is no such thing as conforming or deviating behavior in the abstract" (Sherif 1961:159, quoted in Jessor et al. 1968:24). None of these statements has a moral or ethical base even though the usual use of the word "deviant" connotes behavior that is wrong or bad as well as being a serious departure from the norm. Thus a sociological definition of deviant behavior which is totally relative and contextually based cannot be proximate to the definition or emic concepts being used by the vast majority of people even though
it may encompass roughly the same behavior. Also the moral vacuum in which the definition is founded removes the rationale for one of the
usually defining characteristics of deviant behavior--the use of negative sanctions. The forces of social control are brought to bear on many individuals because their actions are believed to be morally wrong as well as abnormal in a statistical sense. The importance of this moral or ethical component in folk conceptions of deviant behavior will become clear in the following chapters.
Methodology
In summary, Belize presents special problems for the anthropologist in the establishment of a workable and pleasant rapport with the populace. I feel that it is not merely happenstance that virtually all of the ethnographic work done in British Honduras has been done outside the city itself. One has to be able to endure many rebuffs and open hostility in order to win the confidence and friendship of a few Belizeans. Some parts of Belize are almost totally unapproachable and Belizeans themselves go out of their ways to avoid certain neighborhoods. There are elements of the population which would challenge a researcher of the utmost charm and tenacity. Even though the anthropologist considers himself a special kind of foreigner, this distinction
is lost on many Belizeans; and much of the time one is faced with
intense frustration in even the simplest personal contacts.
This is not the case in the 'out districts, ' which is all of
British Honduras except the city of Belize. In Small Town where I
spent the last half of my stay, there were very few problems, and
none of an important nature. The people were mostly of mixed Indian
descent speaking both Creole and Spanish. There were representatives
of all the ethnic groups found in the country and it was a "complete"
community in that there were schools from primary to secondary
levels, various denominations of churches, many government offices,
a hospital and clinic, and a large sugar cane refinery where most of
the population earned its livelihood. Neither was the area so economically depressed as to distort family living patterns. The people of Small Town showed a lively curiosity about me when I arrived and watched me with interest during my whole stay there. However, after it became clear to them through their close observation of me that I had no startlingly peculiar habits, they began to relate to me in a fairly normal manner. Upon my arrival I moved in with relatives of some friends I had made in Belize and stayed with them some weeks. When the chance came to rent part of a small house in their neighborhood, I transferred my belongings and, although I slept and worked in my house, I spent all the rest of my time with this family. Here I became part of the household, eating meals there, helping out in their small general store, making an economic contribution, and assisting with child care and other household tasks. As a result of helping in the store, I made the acquaintance of most of the neighbors and spent much time discussing things with them over their purchases. Many people in Small Town came to think that I was somehow related to this family, and it was an ideal situation for fieldwork.
In both Belize and Small Town, my informants were for the most part "ordinary" people. While I tried to select people as representative as possible of the various ethnic groups and levels of economic and scholastic achievement, I also looked for other qualifications.
People with high intelligence and good verbal expression coupled with the experience of living in several different parts of the country appeared to yield the best information. In this way, I was able to gather case histories of individuals beyond Belize and Small Town. I consciously avoided persons who had spent any time in the United States or whose command of English indicated considerable experience dealing with foreigners. The most important factor they all had in common was their naivete; they had no previous experience as informants and did not really understand the purpose of many of my questions. If there is one underlying bias to the data I collected from them, it is their commendable attempt to emphasize the good and pleasing aspects of life in British Honduras and gloss over what they considered to be "bad, " especially if it involved a relative or friend. As much of
my questioning and curiosity was involved with deviant behavior, it is inevitable that some stories remained untold. But British Hondurans have a matter of fact acceptance of life which makes them certainly less shy than most Americans about divulging the details of many lurid events. Certainly there were times when my informants' responses exceeded in frankness anything I had expected. Perhaps the only hindrance throughout all the interviewing was the inevitable dead-end reached when abstract thought was required. British Hondurans argue by analogy and explain by example. They seem to seek the most
proximate explanations for actions and events. They neither seek nor postulate grand causal schemes and any attempt to elicit them is very nearly always fruitless. I came to regard this kind of thinking as one of the most salient features of British Honduran life and will argue later that it has a pervasive effect on their views of human nature and how they interpret the actions of others.
Very nearly all my data, as stated above, have come from non-professional people. This is an inevitable result of the difficulties I had in establishing a working relationship with the medical profession in British Honduras. Most health care and all the hospitals save one are administered through the Ministry of Internal Affairs and are under the supervision of the Chief Medical Officer. Although my relations with all the persons I met in their official capacities were very cordial, it was never possible to do the kind of observation and data collecting I had planned. Government representatives exhibited great hesitation, to the point of refusal, in allowing me to tour treatment facilities and examine medical records. Perhaps fearing what they thought would be an inevitably negative comparison with similar facilities in the United States, they chose to deny me professional access to all but Seaview Mental Hospital and I was never permitted to examine any medical records.
During my days of observation at Seaview I found the personnel to be courteous and helpful but markedly evasive about questions of length of patients' stays, medications, etc. On one occasion when an attendant was showing me a list of the patients and their diagnoses, she closed the note book and concealed it when another employee appeared. The problem of medical records was of a different nature in Small Town where on various visits with people to the doctor, I could see that he kept no records on out-patients and few on
those who were hospitalized. My knowledge of the workings of the'~
various medical facilities are as a result based on what I could observe
as a "visitor. " Needless to say, I rarely missed an opportunity to
visit a friend or neighbor in the hospital and I was always available
with my vehicle to take persons to and from the doctor. I also have
as source material the reports of lay-persons about their experiences I with the medical establishment but these can hardly be taken at face value. My impressions of Seaview Hospital lead me to conclude that,
considering the resources available, the government is doing a commendable job with health care and that they need not fear "foreign
inspection" of their facilities. However that does not alter the lack
of statistical data from which this research suffers and the kind of
informed speculation which must be the result of working where a
government follows a policy of quasi-secrecy about matters which
elsewhere are handled in a more open manner.
Had it been made clear to me upon my arrival that all these crucial sources of data would be completely unavailable, I would have completed the study elsewhere. By the time it became obvious that this was the case, far too much time had been invested to make it feasible to relocate. Some inaccuracies under these conditions are unavoidable, but those that follow are largely the result of my being unable to correct the misinformation and errors of my informants with first-hand observation of my own. If a statement is not so, it is at least what the people of British Honduras believe to be so, and thus has a validity of its own in this study of folk models of psychiatric disorder.
This study will be comparative, although not formally so, as the only way to deal with unfamiliar phenomena is to interpret them according to those with which one is familiar. As with most anthropological material, the ways of British Hondurans which are at variance with American or English middle-class procedures will be those emphasized. Indeed similarities between groups of people are often the most difficult to perceive. While it may not be quite so interesting to report that British Hondurans lock their doors and windows when leaving their houses as it is to note that they carefully prevent any
fresh air from ever entering a sick room, the former fact is not less valuable than the latter. I have tried wherever possible to enumerate those instances in which these people behave as most of us do in order to avoid representing them as far more exotic than they really are.
Organization of the Study
Psychiatric disorder is described in a section on the history and function of Seaview Hospital accompanied by a description of the facility and patients as they are today. Information about physically handicapped and mentally retarded men and women is also provided to illustrate how abnormal persons are integrated into the community and the manner in which they can lead fairly normal lives. Behavioral traits believed to be symptoms of mental illness are discussed in Chapter Nine.
One of the main contentions of this study is that high levels of deviant behavior affect the perception of psychiatric disorder and
information relating to this is presented in Chapters Eleven and Twelve. Chapter Thirteen presents the conclusions. The findings of the study are that British Hondurans perceive psychiatric disorder in a significantly different way than does much of Western society. Their beliefs as to its causes, manifestations, and prognoses can be related to other aspects of the social milieu and some of their attitudes traced to a more general view of man and his place in the universe. The situation there indicates that it is at least feasible to restrict institutionalization to only the severest cases of psychiatric disorder and that there may be some positive effects in tolerating the slightly to moderately disturbed in the community.
NOTES
2. Harris's definition of emics will be used here: "... logic
empirical systems whose phenomenal distinctions or 'things'
are built up out of contrasts and discriminations significant,
meaningful, real, accurate, or in some other fashion regarded
as appropriate by the actors themselves" (1968:571). Etic statements as made in the study "... depend upon phenomenal distinctions judged appropriate by the community of scientific observers" (575).
3. Extreme relativists would deny that there are ethic standards of behavior, but this would be argued by those who believe in the existence of moral absolutes. Although the former opinion is more commonly held by social scientists, neither position is empirically justifiable.
4. Here the consequences are purely personal if no one else judges the individual to be disturbed. Much psychoanalytic treatment takes place under just such circumstances.
5. Thus I associate psychiatric disorder with deviancy because it
is theoretically traditional to do so, but the emics of the situation
in British Honduras do not agree with this classification.
6. Throughout the work single quotation marks will be used for
British Honduran words and phrases.
My fieldwork was begun in August, 1971, and completed in September, 1972. During this period I resided in three locations. My initial location was in "Little Town, " chosen largely on the basis of my previous residence there during 1969. The people of the village were already familiar with me and I knew several families there who would be reliable informants. After several weeks of residence there, several potentially undesirable features of the locale became obvious. The main drawback was the extreme atypicality of the village, evidenced, for example, by the virtual absence of any of the varied racial elements which are so characteristic of the country as a whole. The preponderance of men working outside of the village itself made it difficult to observe complete family groupings, and generally produced the illusion of a whole town composed of women and children--a picture at complete variance with the rest of the country where men are everywhere and at
all times in great evidence on the streets and in business establishments. Finally, although throughout most of British Honduras almost all health care is provided by government hospitals and clinics, there was in Little Town a clinic run by a Protestant missionary sect. Even though the administrators of this clinic were much more receptive to my plans of observation and study than their governmental counterparts, I eventually decided that it would be at best misleading to base my study on this unusual situation.. . .
At the suggestion of personnel in the Medical Department in Belize City, I moved to Belize in order to be closer to the mental hospital and the general hospital. After a rather long and frustrating waiting period of several months, I realized that although my relocation in Belize had indeed brought me geographically closer to the centers of medical and psychiatric care, I was in reality no closer to the information I was seeking. These months were largely spent in observing and interviewing those persons who were receptive to my inquiries. This was never an easy task. I was continuously an object of observation myself and my social visibility was so extreme as to make it impossible ever to mix naturally with Belizeans. As an unattached female in a city where foreign women are eminently "fair game, " men tended to regard me in terms of a potential romantic liaison and
women received me with a latent hostility as a possible disruptor of already established relationships. During this period I lived alone in a small flat in the center of town as my initial inquiries about room and board with a local family were met by reactions of shocked incredulity. This is due to a marked reluctance on the part of Belizeans to accept foreigners on an equal basis. The very people whose approval I was seeking would have disapproved of my taking living quarters in a "typical" Belizean home, and they would have been most suspicious of my motives. Or worse, and more likely, I would have been treated with a certain contempt for lowering my standards and "going native. " Likewise the local upper-class and expatriate communities, upon whose goodwill and tolerance my very presence in the country depended, would have found such behavior on my part most unsuitable. This subtle but very real isolation from the population was a problem never satisfactorily resolved during the period of my fieldwork, but it was largely mitigated by my leaving Belize and settling in an area where there were not so many pre-conceived ideas about how foreigners should behave.. . .
Probably this problem of proper role-identity could be resolved, at least in Belize, by the researcher having a more visibly 'sensible' 6 task than that of the rather abstract study of human nature and society. With a more understandable purpose, such as a job, there are many
more natural ways of meeting people and gaining their friendship and trust. Without establishing some sort of local credentials that tie one in a concrete way to the society, the social scientist inevitably is seen as some sort of die-hard tourist or hanger-on in this country where foreigners either work or just casually pass through. For Belize is not a small village where daily face-to-face contact with the inhabitants produces its own form of acceptance and role establishment. In Belize, people need not tolerate and finally welcome the stranger. They can, if they choose, have very little to do with outsiders. One solution to this dilemma is to pay people for their conversation. I resorted to this strategem with varying results. Since much of the information I was seeking is of a rather subtle sort, best revealed in fairly natural conversation, direct and formal interviewing was only occasionally productive. Also people found it most odd that I would pay them for 'lone talk' and never ceased to wonder when I would ask them to do what I was "really" paying them for. This was markedly alleviated by giving these paid informants odd jobs and small services to perform for me, grossly over-paying them by local standards, and taking up their time with interminable questions and 'visiting. ' This method worked so well, I continued to use it after moving to "Small Town" although my relations with informants there were much different.
The study consists of an examination of causes, recognition, and treatment of psychiatric disorder in the context of the culture and society of British Honduras. It is assumed that, in the same way medical problems are differently perceived or perceived not at all in various human groups, the phenomenon usually referred to as "mental illness" would exhibit certain characteristics closely related to the nature of the society in question. The principal aim of the research is to describe the folk model of psychiatric disorder in the context of British Honduran society, and to interpret the local attitudes and beliefs which influence it. The information was gathered during a period of thirteen months divided between Belize City and rural areas.
British Honduras is a very small country having both a small land area (8, 866 square miles) and a small population (130, 000). The economy is presently oriented toward export commodities (sugar, lobster, and citrus) and much food and most manufactured goods are imported. The population consists of four linguistically-defined groups
23
-- Caribs, Creoles, Maya Indians, and Spanish--plus an assortment of persons of various European, Asian and American extractions. These groups tend to live in particular parts of the country, with the north and west being largely Spanish and Indian areas, Belize City and the adjacent coastal and riverine settlements predominantly Creole. Caribs are settled in the southern areas. Information about life in Belize, sanitation, housing, clothing, employment, family economics, social organization, and a section on rural life are included. A detailed description of the aspects of life which directly influence health is provided with the emphasis on personal hygiene, waste disposal, food preparation, diet, and sources of contamination and infection.
1. Throughout this study such terms as "psychiatric disorder, "
"mental illness, " "disturbed, " etc. will be used interchangeably
for stylistic reasons. The special or restricted use of any of
the terms will be indicated by double quotation marks.
BRITISH HONDURAS: THE LAND
British Honduras is located on the southeastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula and lies between latitudes 18° 29' and 15° 24' North and longitudes 89° 9' and 88° 10' West. Roughly the size of Massachusetts, the country has a total area of 8, 866 square miles of which some two hundred square miles are made up of off-shore islands called "cays. " It is bordered by Guatemala on the west and south and by Mexico on the north (British Honduras, An Economic Survey, 1971:1). The terrain varies greatly throughout the country from the extensive mangrove swamps on the coast, to broad plains in the north and central areas, and the rugged Maya and Coxcomb Mountains in the south. No more than ten per cent of the territory is cultivated or cleared (Development Plan 1964-1970, 1964:57), the remainder being dense forest and low scrub. The land is drained by several major rivers, the New River in the north, the Belize or Old River and the Sibun River in the central portion, and the Monkey and Rio Grande Rivers to the south. In addition, the southern and northern territorial boundaries are formed by the Sarstoon (Sarstun) and
Hondo Rivers respectively. The climate is sub-tropical and quite pleasant. The nights are cool and high temperatures during the day are usually tempered by trade winds in coastal areas. Although the coastal temperature rarely exceeds 96° Fahrenheit, it is often substantially warmer inland. There is a dry season from February through April and occasionally a short dry period in August. During the other months of the year it is rainy, most markedly so from June to December. Rainfall varies throughout the country from about sixty inches per year to one hundred and sixty, generally increasing as one goes south (Romney, 1959). British Honduras lies in the hurricane zone and is occasionally visited by these powerful storms. Most of the coastal towns have been leveled at least once, and the former capital, Belize, has been destroyed twice in the last fifty years by hurricanes (Waddell, 1961).
For administrative purposes the country is divided into six districts: Belize, Corozal, Orange Walk, Cayo, Stann Creek, and Toledo. The capitals of these districts are towns which bear the same names as the districts excepting Punta Gorda, the capital of Toledo District. For an account of local government in these districts, see I Grant (1967).
Until recent years the economy of British Honduras has been dependent on forest products, but depletion of natural resources and development of synthetic substitutes have forced the country to turn to other sources of income. Currently, sugar cane, citrus, and lobster are the mainstays of the export economy. Although agriculture has traditionally been of secondary importance and interest to British Hondurans, it is likely that there will be great expansion in this sector as a sizable proportion of foreign investment goes into plantation type crops and livestock breeding. Also the current government encourages local food production by making land available to the populace if they will clear and plant it.
The outstanding characteristic of the economy of the country is the small absolute size of the population (currently estimated locally at about 130, 000) which severely limits the supply of labor and the size of the local market. Practically all items must be sup-_ plied in small and costly units, and services are so under-utilized that frequently they cannot be provided at all (Waddell 1967). British Honduras does not generally suffer from great extremes of poverty nor does it have a particularly depressed standard of living according to regional standards. Income per capita compares favorably with surrounding countries and is higher than that of all the neighboring republics except Mexico, Costa Rica, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Barbados (Tripartite Report, 1966). Yet statistics on average earnings and employment rates are not gathered in such a way as to make them a reliable index and they may be somewhat lower than reported.
It could be said fairly that wealth is evenly distributed in British Honduras--few have any. 1 Most of the large lucrative businesses are owned by either British or American firms, and most of the prosperous merchants and landowners in the country are expatriates or of recent foreign extraction. There are several exceptions to this generalization and most are found in the commercial areas of importing and exporting and rum distilling. The majority of the populace live rather frugally and if not from day to day, little better than week to week.
Briefly, the financial condition of British Honduras is an economist's nightmare with the country almost totally dependent on imports, and on the production of commodities which must be sold on competitive and wildly fluctuating world markets. Without its current protected access to United Kingdom and United States of America markets for citrus and sugar respectively, the country would not have even the pretense of a viable economy. Waddell (1967) stresses this problem and feels that the country is over-populated as well. Carey Jones (1953) and Clegern (1967) both deal extensively with the economy of British Honduras and neither comes to an optimistic conclusion.
British Honduras was first settled in the seventeenth century by British buccaneers and loggers who were concentrated in the coastal areas, only going into the interior during the dry season to cut dyewood and later mahogany. 2 Permission was granted to the British by the Spanish Crown to operate in the northern areas principally between the Sibun and Hondo Rivers. Later, however, as the lumbering operations became more profitable and the northern forests were depleted of trees, the loggers spread further south. In 1798, after the Battle of St. George's Cay between the British 'Bagmen' (or loggers) and the Spanish, the British occupied the southern area between the Sibun and Sarstoon Rivers, claiming the land by right of conquest (Humphreys, 1961). At present, British Honduras is still a colony of Great Britain although it is internally autonomous, and
complete independence is pending. However, Guatemala has always maintained that British Honduras is illegally occupied by the British, and is, in fact, part of Guatemala. The increasing autonomy of the colony has led to an intensification of these irredentist claims, and although few people expect a Guatemalan invasion, it is not viewed as an impossibility. Mexico has also claimed certain northern areas of the colony although not so vociferously as Guatemala. The twin
issues of independence from England and the Guatemalan claim form
most of the content of local politics with each of the several sides reiterating the same arguments--all "for" the former and "against" the latter. In conclusion, it can be seen that British Honduras is in a rather unique position, not only because it is the sole English enclave in Central America, but also because of the number and variety of its problems which run the gamut from having its major city periodically blown away to being claimed as a whole by another country.
NOTES
2. Although it is not directly relevent to the material in this study,
the political history of British Honduras has been of much interest to scholars because of the conflicting English and Guatemalan
claims. The definitive work is Humphreys (1961) although Caiger
(1951) and Clegern (1967) are useful.
1. I was informed by several sources that there is no more than
nine million dollars (B. H. ) in circulation in the country. Also
the highest denomination of the currency is a twenty dollar bill.
$1.00 (U. S.) = $1.65 (B. H. ).
BRITISH HONDURAS: THE URBAN SETTING
Residential Patterns and Housing In the older parts of Belize blocks are solidly covered with buildings. There are few yards or open areas and a network of narrow alleys crisscrosses the neighborhoods. Space is at such a premium that sidewalks are rare. Buildings are set flush against the street
with only a small open drain to separate them from vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Over-crowding is an understatement for conditions such as these, and frequent quarrels between co-tenants and neighbors attest to the social strain produced by such close quarters. The transfer of several thousand civil servants to the new capital of Belmopan, fifty miles to the west, has not alleviated the press in Belize. Although the government is encouraging resettlement in Belmopan 3 few persons without government jobs have left Belize to take residence there. Belize Creoles are emphatically urban people; they prefer the lively atmosphere of the busy shops and overflowing
streets to the relative calm of the 'out-districts.' 4 For them, life outside of Belize is characterized by 'hard work' with little remuneration.
Along with and directly related to the oppressive crowding in Belize, the next most striking feature of the city is the untidy appearance of the streets. The drains are usually filled with broken bottles, soggy papers, discarded fruits and vegetables, and every other conceivable type of garbage. To compound the effect of these small street drains, there are four large open canals running through the city which carry all the waste material, most particularly raw
sewage, into the 'river,' actually Haulover Creek. It is a part of the
Belize River delta and divides Belize into its northern and southern halves. This waste disposal system is not maintained by choice. It is rather a reflection of two important aspects of Belize: the lack of government funds to make necessary improvements and the marshiness of the sub-soil. The city itself is so low-lying--no more than a foot above sea level--that latrines are not feasible because they would simply fill up with water. Indeed, it is against the law to dig a pittype latrine. If a person can afford a flush toilet for a building, there is the additional expense of a septic tank because there are no underground sewage pipes. These are not the kinds of septic tanks with drainage tile for the seepage of liquids out of the tank, for exactly the opposite would occur. Rather they are sealed holding tanks which must be pumped out as needed, again at great expense to the owner. It is possible to run a sewage pipe directly into a canal or the river but only if the building is situated directly on one of these bodies of "water. "
The only possible solution to this problem of waste disposal for most Belizeans is the 'bed bucket. ' Small lean-to's are built outside of the building (the distance from the building is not regulated by law, only that it must be outside) and five-gallon buckets or cans are placed in these huts to receive solid waste. Liquid wastes are
collected in smaller buckets in the house and emptied in the yard. The outside buckets are carried to the nearest canal when full, only between nine o'clock in the evening and six o'clock in the morning (it being against the law to empty buckets at other hours), and emptied. This service is usually paid for, as many women (men never carry bed buckets) are afraid to walk on the streets during these hours. The canals also happen to be more dangerous than many areas because some of the rowdier elements collect around the public toilets that over-hang the canals, using them as places to hide while smoking marijuana. The canals apparently remain uncovered because of the expense involved in sealing them with wood or concrete. They seem to be a necessary evil, given the present situation in British Honduras; and, in truth, only the people who live very close to them suffer directly from their effects. They are kept open by schools of millions of government-protected catfish who consume much of the offal. Presently children swim in the river, its water is used to wash tables in the market, and it flows directly toward public beaches. Waste disposal facilities are lacking everywhere in the country except Belmopan, but nowhere is the situation more critical than in Belize. The sanitary problems in Belize can only be solved by the installation of a sewer
system, the closure of the canals, and the building of a sewage treatment plant to keep raw waste out of the river. Realistically though,
nothing will be done soon or perhaps ever since the government has shifted its interests and energies to the new capital where the sewage flows underground.
Aside from these unaesthetic aspects of the city, its climate is pleasantly warm all year round and prevailing sea breezes keep odors and flying insects to a minimum. As in most other areas of the country, the kinds of clothing and shelter are dictated more by personal preference, social convention, and economic status rather than any real need to protect one's self from extremes of climate.
The usual dwelling-type in Belize has long been a raised wooden house with a peaked roof of corrugated 'zinc. ' The house is set upon sturdy rot-resistant wooden posts at least two feet above the ground. After the framework is completed, usually in the form of a cube with angled supporting beams in the corners, it is finished with a wooden floor and horizontal wooden siding. Windows are placed between vertical studs and are finished with outward opening wood-slat shutters instead of glass panes and screening. After the roof is added, the resulting attic is sealed with a wood or wallboard ceiling and is used for the storage of household goods. Rain gutters are always present if the family can afford a water collection tank, but often the water will have to be carried in buckets from the nearest 'stand pipe' or public water faucet. Usually some electric wiring
is done with a few drops and outlets for light bulbs and appliances. Rarely will any plumbing be needed, for even if there is a large rain water tank or stand pipe in the yard, Belizeans do not feel the need for running water inside a house if there is a source close by. This is especially true if the property is being rented, as are most houses in Belize. The tenants will hardly put in running water and the landlord knows the house can be rented with no 'conveniences' at all.
The interiors of houses are divided into a few rooms--usually a 'parlour, ' one or two bedrooms, and perhaps a kitchen--by wallboard partitions that do not extend completely from the floor to the ceiling. This provides for maximum air circulation but very little privacy. Doors may be used inside the house but long cloth curtains also serve the same purpose. The house itself usually has both a
front and rear entrance, with the rear door used for throwing out
used water and garbage. A parlour often contains a set of wooden or upholstered chairs, several small tables, and many decorative objects. The walls may be practically papered with miscellaneous post cards, photographs, old calendars, pictures cut from magazines, various certificates and diplomas, and many small wall hangings featuring artificial fruit and flowers. The tables or hanging shelves will contain more of the same with the addition of sea shells, china
figurines, and seldom used small ashtrays. This plethora of diverse objects creates a somewhat erroneous impression of clutter in these invariably neat and spotless homes. The kitchen and eating area usually has a wooden table and several small stools, and perhaps a wooden 'safe' with several drawers topped by glassed-in shelves for the storage of eating utensils, ornate glassware, a special plate or dish, and food which needs protection from rats and insects. Cooking is most frequently done on a kerosene stove although many people now own bottle-gas ranges and a surprising number of people still cook on a fire hearth. Any baking to be done is accomplished with the use of a modified metal drum in which wood or coconut husks are burned. The bedrooms hold as many beds as possible, the number being determined more by the affluence of the household than the sum of people customarily sleeping in the house. Pallets are made on the floor and many sleep in hammocks. As it is seldom cold enough to require a blanket, most mattresses are covered by only one sheet usually made from flour sacks sewn together. People sleep under these in their clothes or underwear. There will be a chest of drawers or two, if finances allow, but most clothing is hung high in the corners of rooms, stored in boxes, or kept on racks nailed to the wall.
Bathing supplies, a bucket for water, a place off the ground to stand, and perhaps a small bench or box to sit on, are kept in a little 'bath-house' outside the house, usually near the lean-to for the bed bucket. Bathing the body is customarily done in the bath-house; other personal hygiene is done in the house or yard.
The interior of the house is typically painted in several bright colors, with many Belizeans showing a preference for doing each wall in a different color. Where possible linoleum in vivid hues covers the wooden floors and greatly facilitates the frequent job of sweeping as the green lumber used to build the houses soon shrinks leaving wide cracks between the floor boards. "Luxuries" to be
found in some homes include one or more of the following: refrigerators, electric sewing machines, record players, an upholstered sofa with matching chairs, Formica-covered dinette sets, and a t porcelain sink which may or may not have a water supply and drain pipes. Most homes have at least one inexpensive radio.
Houses are generally quite small, a house with floor dimensions of 18' x 22' being of average size for a large family. Moreover when this small floor area is divided into at least three rooms and often four, which are then filled with furniture, the amount of space left for moving about is small indeed. It is not surprising that many
Belizeans do not spend a great deal of time inside their houses. As a rule men are gone much of the day and night, children are in school, and women do all washing and some cooking in their yards. Also many houses have a 'verandah, ' a narrow roofed porch running the whole length of one side of the building which is left open except for low railings and perhaps a gate for confining children. Here a hammock will be hung and many hours spent doing light work, eating, sleeping, and watching the streets and neighbors.
It is obvious that Belizeans build small houses because of lack of money and space. They are not "small" people in any physical sense, and even though they are not particularly tall, many of them, especially women, are so obese that they must move about with care in their cramped houses. They often complain about overcrowding in particularly tiny dwellings and when Belizeans become affluent, many of them move as soon as possible into larger quarters. Very rich Belizeans build and live in huge houses with large rooms containing so much more space than they realistically need that it is startling to enter them. Yet most Belizeans, when planning a new house, will intentionally build a smaller dwelling than they desire because they are all too familiar with the likelihood of running out of money before a large house is completed. 5 This is a common
phenomenon when people build with concrete, the most expensive building material. A partially completed wooden house can perhaps be finished with scrap lumber, but an unfinished concrete block house will remain exactly that, there being no "scrap" concrete. Little thought is given to strength in a house (concrete is chosen not for its strength but for its durability) even though hurricanes are frequent hazards to life and property. The most recent large hurricane in 1961 destroyed most of Belize City but, as people always recall, many frame buildings were left standing. People even build houses from wallboard, estimating its life expectancy at about ten years, barring a disaster.
One important aspect of housing in Belize is that a Belizean does not necessarily view his house as a reflection of anything about himself. This is probably a truism wherever most of a group of people live in rental housing. Some people live in tiny dilapidated dwellings when they could afford better because they cannot find a better house. Although the inside of the house will be immaculate, the outside is often unpainted and patched with used lumber. Belizeans generally view a person's wardrobe and personal appearance as more indicative of his socio-economic status than the condition of his house. In the end, the generally impoverished look of Belize
City, created primarily by the tiny ramshackle houses in the neighborhoods, is partly a misleading one. These are generally rental properties which neither the tenants nor landlords will improve. True, there are many low-income families in Belize but the condition of a house is by no means an accurate reflection of the economic situation of its occupants.
Dress
Men attire themselves in old clothes for everyday wear, usually a pair of worn long pants and a faded shirt or white tee-shirt. Shoes are worn and socks are optional. For week-end and special occasion wear, young men lately favor printed long-sleeved shirts with French-cuffs left open at the wrist, worn with bell-bottom trousers featuring tricky belt loops and pocket trim. Older men generally dress more conservatively and in a style that would render them inconspicuous anywhere in the Western world--dark pants and a white shirt worn with a tie.
Young women now are wearing very short, tight-fitting dresses usually sleeveless and wide-necked. To give a dress some individuality, it will be trimmed with sequins, beads, braid or ribbon. Shiny glittery fabrics are preferred, especially in the brightest
colors. Some are able to afford ready-to-wear garments, but most I wear dresses sewn either by themselves or a seamstress. Dresses such as these can be had locally for about four dollars (U. S. ) including fabric and labor while even "cheap" imported clothes are expensive, fifteen dollars (U. S. ) for the lowest priced outfits. Much men's wear is locally made, especially trousers, although imported
shirts are preferred and predominantly used.
Older and married women wear longer, fuller-skirted dresses of more subdued fabrics. Many females carry umbrellas to shield
themselves from the sun and heads are often wrapped in scarves, although it often seems that the most common hair-do is 'rollers. ' Foreigners frequently speculate that Belizean girls never take their hair down out of rollers, and there are truly many that seem to require a very important occasion before they comb out their hair. However as mentioned above, great pride and care are taken of one's appearance in Belize and the abundance of rollers is a very direct reflection of this pride rather than carelessness. The girls are simply grooming themselves to look better later.
There seems to be no British Honduran "national dress" or regional style. As with many things, Belizeans wear what suits them with the main dictate of local fashion being that one look well-turned out, prosperous, and distinctive. Adhering to a particular style is not too important; in fact, nothing pleases a Belizean more than a unique garment of which there is no duplicate in the city. Sartorial splendor is largely a matter of newness and uniqueness. Belizeans spend very large proportions of their small incomes on clothing, and it often appears that they would rather be well-dressed than well-fed or well-housed. In a society where much emphasis is placed on others' assessment of one's appearance, this is a logical choice.
Few people will know what is cooking on the stove, but everyone can see a new pair of pants.
Employment and Other Sources of Income
By far the most common 'hustles' (ways to generate cash without steady employment) in Belize involve the selling of goods and services to people. Anyone can rent a stall in the market and start
selling anything. There is one man who has supported himself and his family for years by selling only locally made cigarettes, matches, and chewing gum in the public market. One can also buy, build, or rent any of the several kinds of hand- and bicycle-carts, and either sell from them or transport goods. All kinds of seasonal fruit and especially peeled oranges are sold from these carts. Some carts are genuinely profitable enterprises, and one taco cart-man probably makes more per week than most salaried personnel in the city. He is, however, an exception, as there are few legal hustles which produce a large income.
An illustration of how commercially inventive Belizeans can be is the 'conch shell man. ' For years this man helped conch fishermen by removing the edible mollusk from the large shells and for his reward he claimed only the shells themselves. He saved the conch shells for years, storing them on a bit of land by the river until he had a near mountain of them. He was able to sell some of them for fill to people building in the recently cleared areas of Belize and he made a modest living. He was mildly ridiculed by some, but his vindication came when the new capital was being built in 1969. He sold his entire stock of conch shells to the government for a very high price and the shells were used as construction materials in
Belmopan. He continues to save conch shells. There is also a story
told about a man who used to pick up new nails he found on the street. He sorted them according to size and saved them in his house in barrels. When every merchant in the city would be out of one inch nails, for example, he would sell his nails--at his price. People also pick up manure on the streets left by the mule-drawn carts and sell it for a few dollars a sack. Scrap lumber is collected from sawmills and sold for firewood and construction. Antique bottles are searched out in the mud flats near Yarborough and sold as souvenirs and collector's items. Cowhorn is picked up from the slaughterhouse, carved into bird-like objects, and sold to tourists and affluent Belizeans. Coconut graters, valued at about forty cents, are made from scrap lumber and old tin cans. People who can afford it pay others to carry water for them, wash their cars, clean their yards, etc. Many of these small services are provided by children, always boys, but adults resort to them when the situation demands it. More permanent and regular hustles include 'scalping' movie tickets, selling lottery tickets or 'boledo, ' and guiding tourists. Except for prostitution, few opportunities are available to women save domestic
service and food selling.
While these sources of income do not seem to be of major importance, a surprisingly large percentage of Belizeans support
themselves entirely from such endeavors. One peculiar aspect of doing business in Belize is that one rarely buys an item from the person who owns or produces it. There is invariably a "middleman" or two who hustles it. Even though many small farmers bring their produce into Belize themselves, few actually sell it to the public. Rather they 'wholesale' it to street sellers or permanent stallholders in the market. Only when an item is so abundant in Belize that retailers cannot absorb the surplus, do people sell their own products. They can be seen all about the periphery of the market with gunny sacks full of produce in season, such as mangoes, corn, avocados, oranges, limes, and other tropical items that tend to be in great over-supply when in season. Fishermen who find conch pearls or valuable shells usually have someone else sell for them for a large commission. Workers in wood and cowhorn, whose primary targets are tourists, 'front' their wares through people who specialize in hanging around hotels and restaurants and selling things to foreigners. If there is a vehicle to be sold, the owner's proper course of action is to seek out the man who sells cars for people.
Presently the way the middleman system operates in Belize is for the owner of an item (an automobile, a boat, a piece of property, or a cowhorn bird) to declare the minimum or net price he will
take. The seller then makes as much as he possibly can, usually
well in excess of a usual ten per cent commission. Sellers often raise the price of the item 25 to 50 percent or even double it. The disadvantages of this system are obvious: the owner receives much less than the true value and the buyer pays more than he would have to. However the money is distributed farther than it would ordinarily be, and another person benefits from the transaction. In a society as small and poorly financed as British Honduras, this method of doing business redistributes cash in a monetary economy the same way mandatory sharing redistributes food in a hunting and gathering- or subsistence farming-based society. It also operates like a progressive income tax, in that only persons with sufficient affluence to own or buy major and/or luxury items are affected adversely by it as they essentially buy high and sell low. The poorer people who do all the leg work and talking to consummate the deal reap the benefits. It appears that theft, which will be discussed below, may serve a similar function in the society.
Family Economics
Families with low to average incomes usually buy food in small quantities and on credit. Except for a few condiments and seasonings, very little food is kept in the house, and even staples are frequently purchased daily. It might be assumed that food is not purchased in large quantities because of lack of refrigeration and
possible insect or rat damage, but many other factors intervene. One is that there is little quality control of food sold in Belize and some staple items vary greatly in quality. For example, everyone wants fresh red kidney beans because they cook quickly thus saving fuel and preventing the household disaster of the beans not being done by twelve o'clock. As beans sell quickly and there is a high turnover in stock, there is an element of risk every time beans are purchased in getting 'tough beans, ' even though perhaps fairly fresh beans were sold in the same store the day before. No one wants to buy ten pounds of tough beans as some beans are so difficult to cook as to be nearly useless. Rice varies greatly too, especially the local rice which often has a lot of broken grains and unhulled grains called 'machos.' 9 If someone who does not know any better, for example a small child or myself, is sent to buy and returns with poor quality rice, the female head of the household will often send the rice back, complaining that it is too 'dirty.' l0 Lard may be rancid, pig tails may have too much fat, flour can be weevil-infested, bread is often stale, fruits are wormy, sugar is frequently 'dirty,' 11 etc. Belizeans are very concerned about the quality of their food and the slightest fault in it will be noticed and commented upon. And since any purchase is a gamble, Belizeans prefer to keep the stakes small. If it appears odd that
there is so much poor quality food for sale in a city where people are most particular about what they eat, this is due to the prevalence of credit buying. The families who charge their food in a small shop are forced to take what is sold there--tough beans, rank meat, etc. --but they do not need to buy much of it. In any neighborhood in Belize all the ladies will always know which shop currently has the freshest beans and where the cleanest rice is to be found.
Aside from the uncertain quality of a food item (rice and sugar are about the only commodities that exhibit their quality in their appearance) another aspect of credit buying tends to keep purchases small. When one is only extended twenty dollars credit per week, it seems foolish to Belizeans to use a large percentage of it for only one item, for example, a can of lard. They instead buy lard "loose" by the ounce when needed. They certainly realize that it costs more to buy one onion for five cents when they could get three onions for ten cents if half a pound were purchased, but this is of no great import. The significant fact is that for the same ten cents, they could manage onion and bread when they want both; and besides, the cook may not want another onion for a few days. Generally the only times families stock up on food are for special occasions, usually around Christmas, and when a hurricane appears imminent.
The mechanics of credit loss and reestablishment are much the same in Belize as all over the country, and it is a frequent cause of worry and quarreling. A family begins by paying cash in a shop for their food and dry good items and soon asks the proprietor for credit. He will open an account for them by putting their name in the credit book and will extend them a certain amount of credit according to what they ask, his assessment of their ability to pay, and their previous credit arrangements with him or other shop-keepers. Usually the account will be paid in full when it is due, every week or fortnight, rarely as long as a month. If it is not paid in full the balance will be added to the next week's purchases. If this continues to the point where the balance is equal to the amount of credit extended, the shop-keeper will stop their credit until the balance is at least partially paid. As the family must buy with cash now, they often transfer their business to another establishment and soon ask that shop-keeper for credit. He will likely extend credit to them even though he is aware of their current grocery debts. This is a result of the abundance of small shops and stores all over the country. 12 There are so many of them, several to a square block usually, that most shop-keepers will take the risk because they need the business. They also realize that after selling a family hundreds of dollars worth of goods at the
maximum price possible over a period of months, the shop can absorb a small uncollectable debt.
Even if a family leaves a trail of large bad debts wherever they shop, people will fault the store-keepers, saying that they should have known better than to extend so much credit. Some shop-keepers post a list of their non-paying customers proclaiming the family's name and the amount of the debt, titling the roster, "Hard to Pay. " But this is not a very effective strategy and few people would be very embarrassed to have their debts publicized. Shop-keepers are caught in a classic approach-avoidance or "double-bind" situation; they cannot stay in business without giving groceries on credit and they may go out of business if they do. Some attempt to control their customers' spending for them by not allowing such items as cigarettes, soft drinks, and liquor to be placed on account, but they often relent. Listening to a Belizean pleading for a drink or a package of cigarettes on credit is a moving experience. Few people grow up in Belize without experiencing some kind of deprivation and they feel a great deal of sympathy for a person who has no money and is deep in debt as well. In the case of groceries, shop-keepers are lenient with credit often because they pity the family of a man who spends much of his pay on personal enjoyment when there is no food at home, or 'not even milk
for the babies' as they say. But any merchant's limit will be reached eventually and many families need to go far for their purchases because they have exhausted all the sources of credit in their neighborhoods. 13
Few families have much money left over after paying rent and taking care of their credit obligations. Enough may be saved to pay for a child's new shoes or for a few yards of cloth to be sewn at home or taken to a seamstress or tailor. There may be doctor bills or perhaps an obeah specialist is being consulted and needs to be paid. Small weekly payments are often due on a refrigerator or record player and there are usually a few personal debts outstanding to relatives and friends. Any major expenses such as serious illness, the replacement of vital personal goods or tools, a son's wedding, or a funeral create economic setbacks from which it takes months of deprivation to recover.
Every year indebtedness reaches its peak at Christmas. During and after the holiday, Belizeans are so financially strapped and so desperate for cash that the whole city seems to change. Burglary and petty theft reach their yearly highs, fewer men than usual are seen taking their ease on the street corners, and for a while the general populace seems markedly harried and hostile. The price of
everything allowable goes up as everyone makes his last minute move to improve his situation. Shop windows are filled with home furnishings and toys of such a quality that not more than ten per cent of the populace could actually afford them, but far more than ten per cent will purchase them. And Christmas is not only a time for lavish entertaining and gift-giving, though this alone would be a crushing blow to most budgets. In addition, all necessary home improvements are made during this season. At times it seems like every person on the street is carrying a roll of linoleum and a gallon of paint. New curtains are sewn, furniture renovations made, and there must be new clothing for all. 14 People are eager to make a good impression on relatives who visit to share a few drinks or a large meal, as this is the only time of the year when Belizeans really "formally" entertain each other. Along with the home improvements, large stocks of liquor, from local rum and beer to the most expensive imported beverages available, are laid in and both a ham and a turkey are required for Christmas dinner. Expensive cakes are baked and imported apples and pears are purchased for display and consumption. There must be a decorated and lit-up Christmas tree and a present for each child. These economic excesses are characteristic of the poorest families equally with the wealthiest as Christmas
is the most important holiday of the year, and any future deprivations are seen as nothing compared to the specter of a Christmas without literally all the trimmings.
During the months that follow, retail sales drop to their lowest points as people curtail all possible spending to pay their debts. Even the bars do less business than usual which is a prime indicator of the amount of belt-tightening in effect from January until April and May. In fact, the post-Christmas business slump is only remedied by the large end-of-season payments received by fishermen and cane growers. And so the yearly economic cycle evens out and there are about six months of relative normalcy before the Christmas extravaganza begins again.
No discussion of Belizean economics would be complete without some mention of 'boledo' and 'lottery,' the local numbers games. Boledo, played every week day, consists in the drawing of a number between 00 and 99. It costs five cents for one chance which pays $3. 50 (B. H. ) if the number purchased 'plays' or is drawn. Lottery is the Sunday equivalent of boledo and the numbers drawn, three of them, are between 0000 and 9999. It costs ten cents per ticket and the highest payoff is $150. 00 (B. H. ). Few Belizeans do not buy boledo occasionally and many buy every day. The numbers game in British
Honduras is unusual in that although boledo and lottery are supervised and regulated by the government, the profits do not go to a national fund of some kind. Rather, even though the tickets are printed and distributed through governmental agencies, the actual game is run by merchants and boledo syndicates which take the bets and pay them off. The actual selling of the tickets is done by individuals who get a ten per cent commission on their total sales plus a five per cent bonus if they do not sell the winning number.
The average boledo purchase in Belize City is well under one dollar as most people seldom spend more than fifty cents on it per day. But some risk several dollars a day, almost always more than they can realistically afford, depending on how many numbers they are buying and how convinced they are that a certain number will play. Boledo functions like a regressive tax as poor people lose a larger percentage of their money to the system. Indeed many wealthy people, especially the foreign and expatriate merchant class, never buy boledo but only collect the profits. Neither boledo nor lottery can really change a person's station in life. A "big" boledo hit is not more than a few hundred dollars and even a lottery hit, which few persons experience in a lifetime, has only been over one or two thousand dollars a few times in history. Thus it is not like
the Mexican national lottery or the Irish Sweepstakes. Some people are opposed to boledo and lottery on these grounds, saying that it only takes the poor man's money, and even if he wins, it leaves him a poor man still. Although the ethics of any government-sanctioned gambling game are debatable, one fact stands out--the people who can least afford to spare even five cents are the ones who support the system.
Family Structure
One of the most salient aspects of life governing social organization in Belize is the almost absolute inability of a woman, in the absence of a male provider, to support herself and her children adequately and to give them necessary attention and care at the same time. There is no true "welfare" system in Belize and there are no child care centers, free or otherwise. From this one situation almost all basic themes and patterns of family life and conjugal relations result. Thus any woman who has children and is without a husband to support her is dependent on the community and her family for either direct economic assistance, in the form of food and housing, or indirect assistance in the form of relief from the burden of child-care, freeing her to work for a wage. The mechanisms of this assistance, which primarily involve children growing up in households strikingly different from those which would be occupied only
by their own nuclear or extended families, have far-reaching and tragic consequences. Some personal histories will illustrate both the mechanisms involved and the resulting situations.
Jane, seventeen years old, living with her mother and three siblings, becomes pregnant through a brief affair with a young man. She decides not to marry him because she does not love him and does not want to 'get tied up' with him. Two years later, after having the baby and keeping it with her in her mother's house, she marries Jose, and goes to live with him in Guatemala, taking her first baby, Sally, with her. In Guatemala Jane has three more children and in fourteen years they all return to Belize because of economic problems in Guatemala. Jane and Jose rent a small house, and Jose obtains a job. One night, after drinking heavily, Jose returns home and sexually assaults Sally, his step-child who is by now sixteen years old and has a boy-friend. When Sally resists his advances, Jose replies that he has paid to raise her and he deserves first chance at her. Sally jumps through a window to escape him and breaks a limb. The incident provokes a mild quarrel between Jose and Jane but Jane takes no measures to prevent a recurrence of the assault. A week later, Sally marries her boy-friend and moves out of the house.
Lily, having grown up with her mother's sister and virtually raised her younger sister, lives with her aunt and sister making a small living by sewing. At 19 Lily marries a man who takes her to live in the southern part of the country. They stay there for a number of years and have two children. He dies and Lily returns to Belize where she finds another man, Frank, much younger than herself. She moves in with him, taking the first two children, a boy and a girl, with her. Lily has lived with Frank for five years now. He cruelly mistreats her oldest boy and takes an
inordinant interest in the step-daughter. She has already observed him exposing himself to a young girl in the neighborhood and Lily fears for the welfare of her daughter. Frank also beats Lily severely and frequently when he has been drinking or smoking marijuana. Frank does not allow Lily's friends and relatives to visit her and he works only sporadically. Lily must still sew to augment the family income and she is looking for someone to take her oldest son. She has left the man on two previous occasions but each time Frank followed her and beat her until she agreed to live with him again.
'Blood is thicker than water' is a much used aphorism in British Honduras and people feel very strong obligations towards their consanguineal kin. They often feel the obligations even though they have never been particularly closely associated with the kinsman in question. At this point a few remarks about kinship reckoning in British Honduras should be made. The most common system is generally of a bilateral type with a strong matrilineal bias. Although people have a perfect understanding of the biological basis of kinship and realize exactly with whom they share heredity, they many times 'feel closer' to matrilineal and matrilateral kin. This is usually due to the fact that children grow up spending more time in their mother's home and thus knowing these relatives better. Also, as British Hondurans stress, it is impossible to know who is your father, but one's mother can be identified with relative certainty. While this observation does not reflect very kindly on the conduct of British Honduran women, it is nevertheless true. When a woman has children by more than one or two men, there is good logical ground for questioning her
assignments of paternity, and some men go through life denying paternity in one or more instances. However most people acquiesce to a woman's pronouncement as to the fathers of her children, even when there are reservations.
Kin terms are those generally used in the English-speaking world with few exceptions. 'Half' prefixing sibling terms is usually meant to indicate the father's children by another woman other than one's mother, while the usual sibling terms of 'brother' and 'sister' are used for both full siblings and any of the mother's other children. 'Cousin' is used to denote the children of parents' siblings, and parents' siblings' children's children, and parents' 'cousins.' 'First cousins' are only parents' siblings' children. Any perceived degree of cousinship farther removed than this will be called 'second cousin' or, more likely, 'some kind of cousin, I don't know. ' However even with distant cousins people can reckon whether or not they are truly blood kin. The distinction between affinal and consanguineal kin is important and many people will correct someone who assumes them to be related 'by blood' to affinal kin. British Honduran geneologies are often quite complex, there being much 'close' marriage, crossing of generations, and 'half' and 'step' relations. The terms they use are really inadequate to refer to some relatives and they use many descriptive terms, such as 'my mother's brother on-the-father's-
side's wife, not really his wife but his sweetheart who had the three girls for him. ' Such circumlocutions are common as many persons who come and go as residents and visitors cannot be subsumed under the usual kinship terms yet they are somehow part of the family. It is however not these people to whom British Hondurans feel 'close.' They consider close relatives to be their mother's children, her siblings, and perhaps the children of one's mother's children. Women also feel close to their own children. 'Full' brothers and sisters feel much closer to each other than they do to other children of their mother's and father's.
These feelings of closeness are manifested in various ways-mutual visiting, selection of these persons as god-parents, exchanges of food, gifts, money lending, business partnerships, and the extension of whatever aid is possible in times of crisis. People will thus shelter a 'close' relative or sometimes the child of one no matter what he or she has done. If the person is a known criminal, drunkard, sexual deviant, psychotic, or any other kind of undesirable character, he will still be able to depend on his relatives for emotional support, financial aid, food and shelter, and even less purely humanitarian types of assistance. People certainly do not feel that their relatives can do no wrong but rather they see themselves as having to render
aid and give support to them regardless of the degree of their nonconforming behavior. For even though parents will turn a particularly bad child out into the streets, they will always take him or her back again, if only on a trial basis. Thus when young girls become pregnant before marriage, their families usually permit them to stay at home and often will raise the baby as well.
With all of the above diversity, much Belizean social behavior seems incomprehensible in any terms until one understands the situations with which many Belizeans have had to deal almost from birth. Insecurity and hostility are often the emotions of childhood, not warmth and affection. Mutual suspicion coupled with calculated recriminations are characteristic of relations between the sexes. Relatives quarrel for years over property and miniscule inheritances. Neighbors will argue about the ownership of a few mangoes at the height of the season when mangoes are worthless and everywhere are rotting on the ground. But the vindictiveness and belligerence which seem so prevalent where Belizean society is closely examined are no more expressive of the "real" Belize than are the loud laughter and continuous joking which also appear to dominate at a superficial glance. Rather, few Belizeans have the opportunity in their lives to rise above the behavioral correlates of poverty. Many
accept their lives with good-natured resignation, but others resent their situations deeply and harbor a poisonous envy that ultimately
finds expression.
By fortune there exists a privately printed study of poor
people in Belize done by a Belizean with a degree in sociology. Although the sample was drawn by selecting "... 115 of the worst
households, judging by appearance ... " and the author was almost unable to elicit any useful information from males, the study has the benefit of being carried out by a British Honduran. As the survey and document were commissioned by a Protestant church group, there is some editorializing, but the findings are interesting and will be quoted at some length as the study is generally unobtainable
in any library.
Many households were headed by females. The fathers are seen usually at those times when they can receive sexual gratification from the female heads, needless to say
that they rarely give any support to their children. In those homes where there is a male head the mother is still usually the head in charge of the general management of the house, for the resident father is marginal in his functions. He may also have fathered many other children in as many as eight unions and spends his spare time visiting, not so much the children of his other unions, but their mothers.
The male youth, like the male adult, is sexually aggressive and has a tendency of being irresponsible. Because there are not sanctions against his behavior and actions, he roams about freely leaving a child here and there, even at this age, to tell that he has passed this way. Most young men expect to get a virgin woman for a wife but believe that they must have had previous sexual experience before they are really ready to enter into marriage.
The young girl on the other hand seems to be inadequately prepared to cope with this male aggressiveness. Besides this inadequacy, she possesses many misconceptions relating to pregnancy. Consequently, she enters motherhood, many times, not by choice, and therefore mentally premature. After the first child is born her chances of getting married become less. This point is the beginning of many promiscuous relationships for many young women. This sexual behavior may have some financial advantage for the time being, for she must get money to provide food for her child whose father may not even know that he is the father of another child. But very soon she becomes pregnant for another man and this experience repeats itself until her child-bearing age is passed.
Our society, including all the social institutions, seems to have accustomed to the widespread practice of common law unions and to their many consequences. This "accustomed attitude" fails to act as a check-point or pressure
group to such practices. Someone once remarked to another that eight out of ten of our unions are common law unions. The other person then said, "We should be glad, it was once ten out of ten" (pps. 31-32).
It is generally agreed upon that the base of our problem lies in the economic structure. The effects of poverty are poor housing, unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, not to mention the many evils these conditions propagate. It would be unfair, however, to lay the blame completely on poverty for some of the problems that confront our poor families are also problems of the well-to do families. Here are a few examples:
The first one is the lack of norms and sanctions which should regulate and control the behavior of people within our society. The second factor may be an outgrowth of the first, the development of unwholesome attitudes which ignore many existing moral values. So even though our economic structures may be greatly improved, that does not mean that our attitudes will be enhanced as a result ...
The family condition we have just described reveals a certain order within the context of unstable mating. Such order as there is, consists in a series of substitutes for unfaithful parental roles. The co-existence of unstable extra-residential unions, consensual cohabitation and marriage confuses definitions of parenthood appropriate to either form and produces substantial evasion or failure to accept the obligations of parenthood. The consequence, uterine and materine kinship ties are invoked by women as substitutes and they are especially important in providing alternative domestic placement for the issue of the broken unions. Men accommodate the kin and outside issue of their own kin, but very few of their children by former or other current unions. This accounts for the many children who live only with their mothers and the few who live only with their fathers. Also if a mother has other children by former unions, these children are often sent to live with
their maternal grandmothers as some mothers feel that because the children are not for the resident mate he is not responsible for their care and upbringing. (pps. 34-35)
NOTES 2. "Creole" is used to designate both the dialect of English spoken in British Honduras and the people who speak it as a first language. The latter are racially mixed although most have African ancestry in common. 3. It should be pointed out that the government is now virtually the only employer in Belmopan, so employment is a problem (as it is everywhere) for all but civil servants.
4. "Out-district" refers to all rural parts of the country, i. e., every
place but Belize City.
5.
People do not build small houses to prevent relatives from moving in with them as lack of space is never an excuse when relatives arrive.
6. "To walk" refers to any kind of outing or travel, regardless of
mode of transport.
7. The cost of living is low for the local standard of living but good housing and a variety of high quality foods are quite expensive. Consumer goods are all luxuries. When upwardly mobile Belizeans make the shift from average-local life-style to upper-class and expatriate life-style, their living expenses increase several hundred per cent.
8. Although this diet is hardly nutritionally adequate for either adults or children, it is supplemented by "snack" foods, candy, and a large variety of locally produced fruits.
9. These 'machos' and other foreign objects are carefully picked
out of all rice before it is cooked--a tedious procedure. This
is a good example, like the grating of coconut to make coconut
milk, of the kinds of routine and time-consuming tasks which
face Belizean housekeepers and keep them continuously occupied.
10. "Dirty" in this case refers to 'machos, ' stones, chaff, etc.
rather than actual soil or filth.
11. Again, there is not dirt present. Rather the sugar has not been refined to near whiteness but is quite grey.
12. The abundance of shops is due to the lack of employment opportunities. Usually the more shops there are in an area, the more
economically depressed the area is.
13. In situations like this families might want to move to another neighborhood, but the housing shortage usually precludes it. A family would move only if they could find a cheaper and/or better house, and in that instance they would move anyway.
14. This social obligation to re-do the home at Christmas is said to have its roots deep in the past when Belize was primarily the milling and export center for the country's tropical hardwoods. In honor of the holidays there was a major break in the logging season and as the men were all heading back to Belize with the coconut graters, washing bowls, bread boards, etc., they had made in the bush, the women were fixing up their houses with new curtains, rugs, etc. that they had purchased for the men's homecoming.
15. See Ashcroft (1966) for the only published work on Creole social organization. It, however, treats only rural peoples.
16. "Step-father" is used to refer to the man residing with ego's mother. Marriage and/or adoption are not implied.
17. The passages here are reproduced exactly as they are printed, except for the correction of spelling errors. I have not endeavored to correct the grammar or the "sense" of any of the sentences as the meaning is not always clear enough to make this possible. To
keep the medium from interfering with the message, there are no "sic's" in the passage.
18. Here Price is referring to a survey on housing and residential
groups done earlier by the Medical Department.
This chapter furnishes information about the setting in which
one third of all British Hondurans live l and which virtually all visit
occasionally. Belize City is the most developed and Westernized area
of the country, the major port, and the quintessential expression of
Creole culture. It is West Indian in appearance and character and
quite different in size and atmosphere from other areas of the country.
Some of the characteristics of the city and its people will be discussed
here to provide ethnographic background for the more specific information on psychiatric disorder to follow. Although life in Belize may
superficially seem relaxed and casual, there are many stress
producing situations and life is not easy. Belizeans do not often
appear to be particularly harried or distressed when observed in
neighborhood situations and at work because they learn early that
worrying about their problems does not help. Neither, however, do
they forget them; and the data presented here will help to give the
reader an idea of what Belizeans are thinking about.
The small population of British Honduras is concentrated in coastal and riverine settlements and inland in the northern and central areas. Furthermore, the people are distributed in fairly discrete ethnic divisions, creating a situation where most villages and towns are composed of a single dominant ethnic element with varying numbers of other groups present. Belize, the old political capital, is predominantly Creole 2 although all local racial groups are present here. The populace is literally packed into a small (about four square miles) drained and cleared peninsula in the Belize River delta. Although this density of 10, 000 persons/square mile does, not compare with urban densities in the great cities of the world, it is nevertheless high and equals such areas as Berkeley, Detroit, and St. Louis. It should be kept in mind that this density is achieved with no "high rise" buildings, and that most multi-family dwellings have no more than three or four units. There are several distinct neighborhoods: the Barracks, Mesopotamia, Yarborough, Queen's Square, Kings Park, Cinderella Town, Hone Park, The Southern Foreshore, Ex-servicemen's's Area, Lake Independence, and 'town, ' the commercial center of the city. Some of these once had ethnic associations, such as Yarborough, which was predominantly East Indian at one time;
and a few still have definite class connotations, the Southern Foreshore, Hone Park, and the Barracks being high-status addresses. The critically needed room for expansion has been in Kings Park, Ex-servicemen's Area, and the most recently drained Lake Independence where land fill is proceeding at a rate determined by the amount of garbage discarded by the populace. With no "clean" land fill available, garbage is used and then topped with rice chaff. This method, slow but effective, has been much criticized by the Medical Department as providing breeding grounds for rats even before the land is inhabited by humans. However, it will likely continue. Belize is suffering from a severe housing shortage with people usually waiting months to find a place to live and houses and flats being passed from one set of tenants to another without the actual property ever being on the open market. Thus families who are able to build in areas like Lake Independence after living four and five to a room in tiny dwellings with several other buildings between them and the street are not likely to complain too loudly about the nature of the land fill.
Dress is much more succinctly described. At home children wear odd assortments of old clothing and often when very young (about one to three years) will wear little more than cloth pants. When taken out to visit or to 'walk,' 6 girls are elaborately dressed in frilly little dresses with lots of lace and ribbon trim. They have on socks, shiny shoes, knit hats, and often carry tiny purses. Small boys are dressed in shirts and short pants and also wear shoes and socks. These clothes will be immediately removed as the hot and uncomfortable child arrives again at home. Mothers usually carry extra pants for the children as diapers are rarely used on a child over six months of age. The cotton briefs for boys and nylon panties for girls are far less trouble to launder and more can be stitched from a square yard of cloth. Not as absorbent as diapers, these thin pants require changing immediately after being soiled, so many people put rubber pants on the child to save themselves the trouble.
However, acquiring the funds for even a new pair of pants can be difficult in Belize. Although the city is the population center of the country, there is no large source of industrial employment anywhere near it. The only industry of any kind is a clothing factory where some two hundred and fifty people are employed. Other than this and the fishing 'industry,' the only jobs available are those supplied by the government and those generated by the nature of a small city. The problem of what Belizeans do is a perplexing one when the unemployment rate seems to be so high. It is officially estimated at around ten percent, but most informed sources believe that the percentage of the work force with no full-time job is much higher, likely at least twice the official figure. What would suitably be called "unemployment" in Belize is far too difficult a question to settle here. Rather than enumerate the more obvious kinds of employment in a city of some 40, 000, it would be more beneficial here to discuss some of the less obvious ones and a few of the additional sources of income for those with regular employment.
Although it would be difficult to provide a general picture of the economic situation in Belize, a few statements can be made. The average weekly wage is about $23. 00 (U. S. ) or $35. 00 (B. H. ) and a
large family--up to two or three adults and as many as six or eight children--can be supported with this amount. While this seems to be an unbelievably low sum, it must be kept in mind that the cost of living is not high in Belize and is even lower in the out-districts. 7 Rents are quite low with a wooden three-room dwelling costing about $20. 00 - $30. 00 (B. H. ) per month, depending on size and location. This, of course, is unfurnished, and without any conveniences. Cheaper places can be found. All food items deemed necessities by the government are price-controlled and a partial list is found in Table One. The dietary staples vary from one ethnic group to another but Creoles will be used for an example here. Polished rice, red kidney beans, white bakery bread, lard, salted pork tails, and sweetened condensed milk form the basis of the diet. Using a family of six, two adults and four young children as an example, it can be seen from Table Two that it is possible for them to eat three times a day on about three dollars (B. H. ). 8
The economic situation of most Belizeans is inextricably intertwined with their patterns of social organization. 15 The severe housing shortage and general under-employment also intervene to considerable extents in this city where ideals about such things as post-marital residence and household composition can rarely be put into effect. Another important consideration is the dual and contradictory effects of having a large number of children--at some ages and in some circumstances they are a decided economic advantage while in other situations they are definitely a burden. Generalizations about Belizean social organization, at least those couched in the usual anthropological terms, would tend to be misleading and inaccurate. Most Belizeans order their lives by the methods that are the most feasible and available, almost independent of any ideal
they are striving to attain or the moral desirability of acts. They simply cannot afford to choose the "proper" course of action where alternatives present themselves; they must rather select the most pragmatic solution to a problem based usually upon considerations of food, shelter, and comfort for themselves and their dependents. It is, as a result, difficult to summarize the situation because at times it appears to be almost a random system.
A fifteen-year-old girl, Julia, became pregnant after a casual involvement with an older married man. Julia is presently living with her mother, her mother's second common-law husband, and seven younger children. The three oldest children are Julia's full brothers and sisters while the remaining four are related to her only through her mother. She is allowed to stay in the house until the birth of the child. After the child, a girl who is named Peggy, is born, the father contributes five dollars a week toward her maintenance. Julia obtains a job as a clerk in a small shop and seeks lodging with a female cousin who is also working. Julia leaves Peggy with her mother and 'step-father' 1 but visits them daily and gives most of the weekly five dollars to her mother. As Peggy grows up with her grandparents and young aunts and uncles, .she learns to call her mother "Julia, " as everyone else in the house does. She calls her grandmother "mother. " In a few years she will learn how she is related to all these people but she will not change her terms of address for them. Peggy lives with her mother's family for ten years during which time Julia has married and had four children. Now, as Julia and her husband are able to afford a small house on the outskirts of Belize, Julia takes Peggy away to live with her. This precipitates a violent quarrel but Peggy prefers to stay with her mother and finds that she must help with all the household chores, mind and care for the younger children, and run most of the errands as the shops are far. She is forced to stay home from school to work around the house and as a consequence fails several grades, and after three years drops out of school because her advanced age is unsuitable for the low grade she is in. Peggy is now at home every day, doing virtually all of the housework and child-care. By the time she is sixteen, she is so tired of doing her mother's work and listening to her step-father's insults, that she runs away with a young man she met at a dance. Peggy and
Leroy get married and live for three years with Leroy's parents and siblings. Peggy has two children during this time and is pregnant with a third when Leroy leaves to work in a different part of the country. For a while he sends money to the family but in six months he has taken another woman and the money is sent only sporadically. Peggy now leaves her two older children with Leroy's family and gives the newborn to one of her mother's sisters with whom she grew up. Peggy is now working as a domestic and visits her children occasionally.
None of these examples is atypical of life in Belize. It is frankly unusual to find a person who spent all his childhood years in one household, much less with his natural mother and father. Conjugal relationships, whether legal or informal, tend to be brittle and of short duration. Women bear children for a series of men and then must face the economic burden of their support alone. When they have found a man to support them, they are willing to suffer much in the way of physical abuse and ill treatment of both themselves and their children for the sake of the relative amount of economic security. Men tend to view women as faithless and scheming creatures who are interested primarily in a man's money and position, and they feel it is part of their prerogative to abandon them almost at will. This instability of family groups and its resultant effects have been well discussed in Judith Blake's Family Structure in Jamaica (1961). The situation in Belize and throughout much of the country is very similar.
The multiplicity of types of conjugal unions, kinds of adoption, household compositions, etc. are so diverse as to defy succinct description or general classification. Nevertheless certain patterns appear and one of them is the strength of perceived family ties.
Perhaps the greatest drawback to this research is that it was the first one of its kind done in Belize City. Questionnaires were not easily answered and after they were answered one did not feel inclined to rely too heavily on the answers. The latter, however, does not necessarily apply to this research alone. The survey data cited tend to be biased in the direction of presenting better conditions than actually exist because people have hesitated to give actual extent of extra-residential mating and all illegitimate children (Price, n. d. :5).
Mr. Price's substantive findings closely approximate my own and my inquiries were not limited to the lowest socio-economic groups. I did find, however, that in most cases a man is willing to support all the children that a woman has--once he has made the decision to support the woman and his children by her. As British Hondurans say, 'If you like the cow, you have to take the calf. ' Price sees forces of social control as weak and also concurs in my opinion that ideals concerning behavior are usually just that and not guides to conduct. He sees the beginnings of the cycle in childhood experiences, and stresses that children are not properly disciplined or given moral counsel. While his association with church groups makes this last item almost a foregone conclusion, this does not automatically disqualify it front being valid. It is the thesis of my study that factors such as this are related, although not in a direct causal fashion, to the recognition of psychiatric disorder, and this relationship is explicated in Chapter Thirteen.
1. This is the percentage indicated by the 1960 Census and it is likely that it has not changed. There were then some 90,000 persons in British Honduras with 31,000 residing in Belize. Figures for the 1970 Census are not yet available but most sources estimate the total population at 120,000 to 140,000 with about 40,000 located in Belize.
BRITISH HONDURAS: THE RURAL AREAS
The North
Corozal Town, farthest to the north and on the Mexican border, is an attractively situated coastal settlement of about five thousand
persons who are predominantly 'Spanish. 2 Much Mexican influence
is evident especially in the layout of the town, the architectural forms of dwellings and stores, the cuisine, and the general demeanor of the people themselves. A near-by sugar refinery has greatly increased the prosperity in Corozal District; and, during the season, roughly from December to May, the roads are full of battered cane trucks carrying the crop from fields to factory and employment is high. Retail sales dramatically increase and establishments purveying alcoholic beverages show their greatest profits. The area of commercial sugar cane production extends south through Orange Walk District through a region of fairly continuous settlement consisting of small almost purely Indian villages on the side of the Northern Highway and on feeder roads going deep into the bush. In some of these villages dialects of Maya are still customarily used by older adults and little English is spoken or understood with Spanish being the main mode of communication among themselves and with others outside the villages. The culture of these Indians has changed greatly and it is possible to find only remnants of aboriginal life. Most will plant corn every year using the ancient slash and burn technique, and a few will even observe 'first fruit' rituals, but they will generally be more concerned about the success of the cane plantings than the condition of the corn fields.
Some of these villages have been described, and Gann (1918) and Muntsch (1961) provide some ethnographic data.
Sugar cane has brought a relative prosperity to these villages and even in the most distant ones, new concrete dwellings are being erected to replace houses of pole and thatch. There are plenty of trucks and the shops are stocked with former luxury level imported foods. At the fiestas in these villages, most people have new clothes to wear and many now can afford to drink Scotch whiskey and beer instead of local corn- and sugar-based alcoholic beverages. Although these people have experienced great prosperity before, most notably in the chicle boom of the 1930's, it was not of a lasting nature and chicleros had a propensity for wild spending sprees which would quickly reduce them to paupers again. Social change is striking in this area and as the sugar company continues to transfer ownership of the cane fields over to the farmers themselves, it will increase as economic situations continue to improve and the people adjust to their rising affluence.
Conditions are very similar in Orange Walk District to the south. In Orange Walk Town, where there is also a sugar refinery, there are the same signs of new wealth and the corollary changes in life style. Here much more English is spoken and one can foresee the eventual abandonment of Spanish when school children are heard conversing with each other in Creole although Spanish is still largely
spoken in their homes. There are sizable contingents of both Creoles and Caribs 3 who have been there for years and yet remain socially distinct from the much more numerous Spanish. East, west, and north of Orange Walk Town, there are to be found numerous small villages, most situated on rivers and lagoons, where the Indian inhabitants carry on small scale mixed farming and commercial sugar cane production. Here again some Maya is spoken but Spanish is much more commonly heard. Like similar settlements to the north, these villages are often quite open with large central grassy areas and towering ceiba trees shading the houses constructed variously of pole and thatch, wood, or concrete. Pigs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys roam the streets; and horses, still much in use as saddle and pack animals, are tied up here and there to graze. Almost every yard will have a well surrounded by flowers and herbs potted in old tin cans, buckets, chamber pots, and basins. Many will also have a large wood or metal vat for the collection of rainwater, usually preferred to wellwater or pipe-water for bathing, drinking, and cooking. Houses are kept spotlessly clean and uncluttered inside with the rooms sparsely furnished. There is often only a hammock in the largest room, tied up when not in use, a small table or two, and a few crude stools or chairs. Occasionally there will be a table with
the large plaster statue of a saint, several candles, and other Catholic paraphernalia arranged around the image. Other smaller rooms, rarely more than two, will contain light bedding and storage places for clothing. Cooking and washing are done in small out-buildings usually behind and/or to the side of the main living quarters. Frequently there will be a large cluster of such buildings in a yard as one or more relatives are allowed to erect houses on that property.
The number of people occupying any one dwelling unit varies from small nuclear families to large extended groups of kin. When there are many it is usually a result of economic necessity. People who build on someone else's land usually cannot afford property of their own, or occasionally a woman will need help with child care and thus seek the aid of a close relative. It is often difficult to know exactly who is part of a household. Men may be there only for the duration of a job somewhere in the vicinity and usually one of the women and some of the children are only long-term visitors.
Men in these villages plant corn and also own and work in cane fields. Except for a few government jobs in each village, there are virtually no other sources of employment. Women busy themselves with domestic labor, much of it tedious and requiring a great expenditure of energy. Hours are spent daily in the preparation of
corn-based comestibles; and, where there are many young children
and no older girls, child care is a continuous task. Primary schools,
through the sixth grade, give the children a working knowledge of
reading and figuring, but for higher education it is necessary to leave
the village and live in Belize or one of the towns.
Life in these villages is quiet, so quiet that few who have not grown up in one can bear to live in them. There are yearly fiestas, and occasional weddings, christenings, funerals, etc., but other than these rare diversions, there is little to do except the daily tasks. These people have no handicrafts to take up their spare time. The women neither spin nor weave and most sewing is of a fairly rudimentary nature and generally done on a treadle machine. Men do not produce any elaborate handmade items and tend to fill their many empty hours socializing with other males. On the week-ends especially, this socializing is usually augmented by liquor or marijuana or both. There are Saturday trips into town--Orange Walk or Corozal_ for shopping, banking, a dance, or the matinee at the local motion picture theater. But for the out-villagers, life has a continuing sameness that many of them try to escape by moving to the towns or perhaps even as far as Belize. Young men will find employment or learn to hustle a few dollars and few will return to the villages except
to visit occasionally. A man with women and children to support will often work out and only return to his family in the village every week or fortnight with money to pay the debts the family has incurred since his last visit. This is an unsatisfactory but common situation and contributes to the brittleness of marriage in British Honduras. Often the whole family will move from the village; but women, with much more narrowly circumscribed opportunities for social contact than men, will become despondent without their relatives with whom to visit and associate, and may perhaps return to the village with all or some of the children.
Young girls too have opp
As mentioned above, there are six 'towns' outside of Belize and these outposts of urbanization fill the financial, commercial, recreational, and medical needs of the people in the rural areas surrounding them. In these towns and villages, life is somewhat like that in Belize but there are many major exceptions. Diet is modified according to the larger variety and lower prices of locally grown fruits and vegetables. Creole is not always the most commonly spoken language as other ethnic groups (Caribs, Maya Indians, Spanish, East Indians, and Mennonites 1) tend to predominate in numbers and influence. Family life is more stable and abnormal behavior is not so often anti-social in nature. Incomes are lower, the birth rate is higher, and the people have less formal education.