About Belize

Belize is an amazing country with amazing people. You will find Belizeans to be warm, welcoming, and extremely friendly. Belize is a country with a high level of poverty and a huge need for Jesus Christ to be proclaimed. This small, English-speaking country is an incredible place to minister through short-term missions. Belize has become a passion of Thirst Missions and Thirst’s founder, Jason Pfingsten, for the past 20 years. You will find that our Belizean staff members have a heart for their country and a love for the people of their country rarely seen in this world. We encourage you to enjoy reading about, praying over, and exploring information on Belize prior to your trip. We hope that you will find, as our staff and countless short-term mission individuals who have gone before you, that once you bring your group on short-term missions to Belize, you will never be the same.

Formerly British Honduras, Belize is a country in Central America. Once part of the Mayan and Spanish Empires, it was most recently a British colony, gaining its independence in 1981. The country is bordered to the south and west by Guatemala, to the north by Mexico, and to the east by the Caribbean Sea.

Belize has a diverse society, composed of many cultures and speaking many languages; it is the only country in Central America where English is an official language, and Spanish, Creole, and Mayan are also widely spoken. With 8,867 square miles of territory and 301,270 people, the population density is the lowest in the Central American region and one of the lowest in the world. The country's growth rate 2.2% is the highest in the region and one of the highest in the western hemisphere.

Geography
The north of Belize consists mostly of flat, swampy coastal plains, in places heavily forested. The flora is highly diverse considering the small geographical area. The south contains the low mountain range of the Maya Mountains. The highest point in Belize is Doyle's Delight at 3,688 ft. (1,124 m.). The Caribbean coast is lined with a coral reef and some 450 islets and islands known locally as cayes (pronounced "keys"), forming the approximately 200 mile (322 km) long Belize Barrier Reef, the longest in the Western Hemisphere and the second longest in the world after the Great Barrier Reef. Three of the four coral atolls in the Western Hemisphere are also located off the coast of Belize.
The climate is tropical and generally very hot and humid. The rainy season lasts from June to November, and hurricanes and floods are natural hazards.

Politics
Belize is a parliamentary democracy, a constitutional monarchy, and a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The structure of government is based on the British parliamentary system, and the legal system is modeled on the common law of England. The current head of state is the Queen of Belize, Elizabeth II, who is represented in the country by the Governor-General. The bicameral National Assembly of Belize is composed of a House of Representatives and a Senate. The thirty-one members of the House are popularly elected to a maximum five-year term and introduce legislation affecting the development of Belize. The Governor-General appoints the twelve members of the Senate, with a Senate president selected by the members. The Senate is responsible for debating and approving bills passed by the House.

Religion
Religious freedom is guaranteed in Belize. It is a predominantly Christian society with 49.6% of Belizeans Roman Catholic, and 27% Protestant. Yet, there is much need for Jesus Christ to be proclaimed and to be shared through short-term missions.

Birth Rate and Life Expectancy
Belize's birth rate currently stands at nearly 25 per 1,000. Nearly 6 people die per year out of 1,000 members of the population; this figure includes murders, accidents, and death from natural causes. Infant mortality, now at 24 deaths per 1,000 people, has been decreasing over the last century. Male babies are more likely to die than females. The life expectancy of a typical male is 66 years, while for a female it is 70. HIV/AIDS, while not a serious threat to national stability, does affect enough of the population to give Belize a high infection rating among Caribbean and Central American nations. Belize has a relatively young and growing population. Its birth rate is among the highest in the world, and there are indications that this trend will continue in the future.

History
Before the arrival of Europeans, Belize was part of the territory of the Maya. The Mopan Maya were the original inhabitants of Belize. The Maya civilization spread itself over Belize beginning around 1500 BC and flourished until about AD 900. English buccaneers first settled on the coast of Belize in 1638, seeking a sheltered region from which they could attack Spanish ships. The settlers turned to cutting logwood during the 1700s. The wood yielded a fixing agent for clothing dyes that was vital to the European woolen industry. The Spanish granted the British settlers the right to occupy the area and cut logwood in exchange for an end to piracy. Historical accounts from the early 1700s note that Africans were brought to the settlement from Jamaica to work as slaves and cut timber. As early as 1800, Africans outnumbered Europeans by about four to one. By then the settlement’s primary export had shifted from logwood to mahogany.

For fear of provoking Spanish attack, the British government did not initially recognize the settlement in Belize as a colony. It allowed the settlers to establish their own laws and forms of government. During this time, a few wealthy settlers gained control of the local legislature, known as the Public Meeting, as well as most of the settlement’s land and timber. The British first appointed a superintendent over the area in 1786.

The Spanish, who claimed sovereignty over the whole of Central America, tried often to gain control by force over Belize, but they were not successful. Spain’s last attack ended on September 10, 1798, when the people of Belize decisively defeated a Spanish fleet at the Battle of St. George's Caye. The anniversary of the battle is now a national holiday in Belize.

In the early 1800s, the British sought greater control over the settlers, threatening to suspend the Public Meeting unless it observed the government’s instructions to abolish slavery. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1838, but this did little to change working conditions for laborers in the Belize settlement. Because a small elite controlled the settlement’s land and commerce, former slaves had no choice but to continue to work in timber cutting.

In 1836, after the emancipation of Central America from Spanish rule, the British claimed the right to administer the region. In 1862 Great Britain formally declared it a British colony, subordinate to Jamaica, and named it British Honduras. As a colony Belize began to attract British investors. Among the British firms that dominated the colony in the late 1800s was the Belize Estate and Produce Company, which eventually acquired half of all the privately held land in the colony. Belize Estate’s influence accounts in part for the colony’s reliance on the mahogany trade throughout the rest of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

The Great Depression of the 1930s caused a near-collapse of the colonial economy as British demand for timber plummeted. The effects of widespread unemployment were worsened by a devastating hurricane that struck the colony in 1931. Perceptions of the government’s relief effort as inadequate were aggravated by its refusal to legalize labor unions or introduce a minimum wage. Demonstrations and riots in 1934 marked the beginning of an independence movement. In response, the government repealed criminal penalties for workers who broke their labor contracts and granted workers the right to join unions.

Economic conditions improved during World War II (1939-1945) when many Belizean men entered the armed forces or otherwise contributed labor to the war effort. Following the war, the colony’s economy again stagnated. Britain’s decision to devalue the British Honduras dollar in 1949 worsened economic conditions and led to the creation of the People’s Committee, which demanded independence. The People’s Committee’s successor, the People’s United Party (PUP), sought constitutional reforms that would expand voting rights to all adults.

Constitutional reforms were initiated in 1954 and resulted in a new constitution ten years later. Britain granted British Honduras self-government in 1964, and the head of the PUP—independence leader George Price—became the colony’s prime minister. British Honduras was officially renamed Belize in 1973. Progress toward independence, however, was hampered by an old Guatemalan claim to sovereignty over the territory of Belize. When Belize finally attained full independence on September 21, 1981, Guatemala refused to recognize the new nation. About 1,500 British troops remained to protect Belize from the Guatemalan threat.

With Price at the helm, the PUP won all elections until 1984. In that election, first national election after independence, the PUP was defeated by the United Democratic Party (UDP), and UDP leader Manuel Esquivel replaced Price as prime minister. Price returned to power after elections in 1989. Guatemala’s president formally recognized Belize’s independence in 1992. The following year the United Kingdom announced that it would end its military involvement in Belize. All British soldiers were withdrawn in 1994, apart from a small contingent of troops who remained to train Belizean troops.

The UDP regained power in the 1993 national election, and Esquivel became prime minister for a second time. Soon afterward Esquivel announced the suspension of a pact reached with Guatemala during Price’s tenure, claiming Price had made too many concessions in order to gain Guatemalan recognition. The pact would have resolved a 130-year-old border dispute between the two countries. Border tensions continued into the early 2000s, although the two countries cooperated in other areas.

The PUP won a landslide victory in the 1998 national elections, and PUP leader Said Musa was sworn in as prime minister. In the 2003 elections, the PUP maintained its majority and Musa continued as prime minister. He pledged to improve conditions in the underdeveloped and largely inaccessible southern part of Belize.

In 2005, Belize was the site of unrest caused by discontent with the People's United Party government, including tax increases in the national budget. On February 8, 2008, Dean Barrow of the UDP was sworn in as Belize's first black prime minister.

Belize information used by permission from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belize