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Joined: Oct 1999
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Marty Offline OP
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Because Spain never occupied, owned or settled Belize!

Guatemala claims to have inherited a Spanish claim to Belize based on the legal doctrine of UTI POSSIDETIS - a doctrine that is NOT by any means universally recognized in international law. Consequently, Pope Alexander VI, one of the most controversial Popes, issued on May 4, 1493, a papal bull granting official ownership of the New World to Ferdinand and Isabela of Spain. (By the way, Pope Alexander VI was a Spaniard. He was from Jativa, a town near Valencia, Spain.)

To these monarchs, the Pope declared: "We of our own motion, and not at your solicitation, do give, concede, and assign for ever to you and your successors, all the islands, and main lands, discovered; and which may hereafter, be discovered, towards the west and south; whether they be situated towards India, or towards any other part whatsoever, and give you absolute power in them." He also included Portugal, giving a portion on a specifically demarcated zone.

However, this papal disposition was never subsequently recognized by any other European power. Yet Guatemala says it inherited these rights from Spain. This is Madness!!!

We do know that in 1717, 1730, 1754, 1779, and finally in the 1798 Battle of St. George's Caye, a total of five Spanish attacks all came from Yucatan, Mexico, to remove British settlers. A captain general from Guatemala was rebuked by his superiors for mounting a military expedition into the area and was reminded that the area fell under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Campeche, so Guatemala had no jurisdiction in Belize.

Of one thing we are sure: Spain NEVER occupied Belize. According to the great Maya scholar, Eric Thompson, in 1531, Francisco Montejo sent Alonzo Davila to conquer the Maya state of Chetumal, ancient Chetumal or Chactema,l which is the present day Belizean town of Corozal. Nachancan, the Maya chief of ancient Chactemal, had an unusual son-in-law, a renegade Spanish soldier named Gonzalo Guerrero who during a shipwreck had landed at Corozal Bay. Gonzalo Guerrero married Nachancan's daughter, Zazil Ha, with whom he had three children.

Thompson calls Guerrero the first European to adopt Belize as his home. Guerrero knew the Spanish methods of war; he realized that the Maya could not possibly defeat the Spanish in open battle and advised the Maya to withdraw to the bush, and Davila marched into the Maya city and renamed it Villa Real, the first attempted Spanish settlement on Belizean territory.

Nachancan, Guerrero and the Maya warriors harassed the Spanish troops whenever they came out of Villa Real to look for food. These hit-and-run tactics so weakened the Spanish that soon they were prisoners in the city and the victorious Maya forces had them surrounded.

After 18 months Davila and his few surviving Spanish soldiers decided to flee for their lives. So there was no Spanish settlement in Belize. The Mayas expelled them under the leadership of Nachancan and Gonzalo Guerrero. Gonzalo Guerrero should be a Belizean hero for keeping the Spanish out of Belize, yet few people know about him.

In 1564, the Pachecos, Gaspar, his son Melchor and his nephew Alonzo led a military entrada against the Mayas in southern Yucatan and Belize. This Gaspar was a savage who committed acts of shocking, bloody cruelty, cutting the breasts off women and the hands, noses and ears off men. He tied squashes to the feet of women and threw them to drown in the lagoon merely to amuse himself. He conquered up to Tipu in Belize. However, Mayas from Bacalar up to Belize always resisted, revolted and rebelled against the invaders, not accepting the conquest. In 1638, leaders in the area centered around Tipu forced the evacuation of eight towns in Belize. Lamanai was burned and deserted. That same year Bacalar suffered yet another indignity. An attack by the privateer Diego Lucifer el Mulato led to the robbery and desecration of the church and the town. Bacalar lost all control as a frontier outpost. In 1648 Bacalar was abandoned: Spanish control over Chetumal and Dzuluinocob, which Belize was a part of, was at an end, and the way was open for British occupation of Belize. Spanish occupation was only temporary and then lost because of Maya resistance. Permanent Spanish occupation of Belize has NOT existed at any time in the history of Belize.

The second Vatican Council has stated "only solutions that are fully human" will be able to solve international problems. Any truly human solution to the Anglo-Guatemalan dispute must take into consideration the desires and personality of the present inhabitants of Belize. We are a unique nation, one that can be distinguished by human qualities from all other nations of the Americas and the world. We must be recognized as such. BELIZE IS FOR BELIZEANS. NO GUATEMALA, NO ICJ!!!

by Joaquin Maga�a, Sr. for Amandala


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The Queen can decide this and end the dispute in minutes.....However, Like any Mother with feuding children.....(don't make me come down there).....


My friends call me Judyann

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Wow, that was a big read.....The Magna Carta was something we studied for a test..... Nonetheless Simon, a Belize Attorney explained to me that we can push the issue high enough through the courts that it could be eventually decided by the UK Magistrate as a part of our Independence agreement... regardless it was a poor attempt of me trying to be humorous..... wink


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No problem, just mind your P's and Q's when it comes to the Queen. Rule Britannia and all that...

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Marty Offline OP
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With the 'Guatemala Issue' at the forefront, I ask if information being presented by the media are words issued from the mouths of puppets, words to appease or just words for the sake of words. When being pressed to make judgment on an issue, one should always go back to the source and review all avenues. Of course, the source of this issue is ages ago when our forefathers settled the land. There are resources however, that document the time period. One I would like to share with you can be downloaded from the internet or perhaps found at your local library if you are lucky enough to have one:

The Diplomatic History of British Honduras, 1638-1901 by R.A. Humphreys

Before we, as Belizeans, make a judgment, we should have as many of the facts at hand that we can. It is unfortunate that all of our history is not part of the school curriculum, perhaps we can make a change in that also.

The historical record shows that Spain was the first titled sovereignty in what is now known as Mexico, Central and South America. Treaties with Great Britain allowed for the settlement of Belize. The area was not occupied by the Spanish, only the British Settlers and the Indigenous Peoples. The settlement grew and after the Battle of St. Georges Caye and expanded to the Sarstoon.

In a Colonial Office Memorandum, 20 Jan. 1835: 'The occupation of the mouth and lower stream should argue a constructive occupation of the whole river. In defining the western boundary of the settlement northwards from the Sarstoon, there was no occupation of the very soil, since the tracts which were remote from the coast and from the rivers had no settled inhabitants��'and the unoccupied tract lying between the Sarstoon and the Belize must be considered as British.'

As Spain relinquished its sovereignty throughout the Americas, the newly formed nations of Central America took their stands. The British however had the view that -

In a letter from Cockburn to Goderich, 30 Jan. 1833, Foreign Office Records 15/13: 'The Republic of Central America [he added] claims to restrict us to the limits laid down in 1786, without, however, referring to the important fact, that those limits had ceased to be acknowledged by us during the sovereignty of Spain in this part of the world, and that the River Sarstoon, which we claim, and to which extent we have long occupied as our boundary to the southward, has never been possessed or occupied by the Republic of Central America.'

So history tells us that -

The British Government denies, in the first place, that Guatemala had any title to sovereignty over the territory covered by the Anglo-Spanish treaties of 1783 and 1786. Secondly, it denies that Guatemala had any title to sovereignty over any part of the territory outside the old treaty lines but included in the present territory of the colony of British Honduras. In no part of this territory had Guatemala ever established possession, or, as an independent state, exercised sovereignty in any other respect. [R.A. Humphreys 1960]

Make your decision, not based on emotion, but through thorough research and get the facts. There are many resources available - the internet, purchase of used books through vendors on line, and research at your libraries and the national archives.

This is our country, we own it, we love it, and we will keep it.




Corruption in Belize


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Marty Offline OP
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World Renowned Legal Expert in International Law Makes Case for Territorial Dispute between Belize and Guatemala

We hear about the Belize - Guatemala territorial dispute countless times, this is because it has been a problem for the two countries Since 1859. Now, a hundred and fifty years later the dispute has still not come to a peaceful resolution. Our Belize Now team spoke to key dignitaries, including a world renowned legal expert, involved in working towards a resolution to the ongoing disagreement. They told us what's next for Belize.


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