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Joined: Apr 2000
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Here are a few choice quotes from The Tourist Who's Too Dangerous for Belize, by Dean Fortune DeMarks. This is billed as a novel, perhaps to help in any libel suits, but it's really just the story of DeMarks' experience in Belize, told in the first person by DeMarks. People and places are called by their actual names, though in some cases with slight changes of spelling.

I must say that I'm glad it's not written in the same style as DeMarks' tweets on Twitter, where every other word is capitalized and the grammar is challenging. Perhaps DeMarks had an editor, or a ghost writer. Still, punctuation and grammar in the book are eccentric, to say the least. The quotes below are verbatim, except where brackets [ ] are used.

A brief summary of the plot of DeMarks' self-published novel, such as it is: A middle-aged insurance agent from New Jersey, Dean DeMarks, who seems to believe that he is smarter and tougher than almost everyone else, comes to Belize and buys the site of the old Seine Bight Hotel on the Placencia peninsula. He plans on building condos. At first, he thinks Belize is a paradise, but commuting back and forth from New Jersey to Belize soon he decides that he is being cheated and ripped off by his workers, mostly Garifuna, and by many others in Belize. Because his boss at the New Jersey insurance agency becomes delusional, he says, he leaves his job. DeMarks becomes increasingly scornful of all Garifuna and indeed of nearly all Belizeans and most expats. At one point, he says something that suggests it would be a good idea for someone to burn down a Garifuna bar, Beya Bu, in Seine Bight, and it somehow happens. He has a series of run-ins with the police in Seine Bight, Independence, Belize City and Belmopan, and also with local residents, both Belizeans and expats. The police, who according to DeMarks are mostly Garinagu, raid his home in Seine Bight and find an unlicensed gun and plastic explosive. DeMarks claims the evidence has been planted. He is detained. Attorneys ("Ms. Moor" and "Simeon") and the U.S. embassy can't help him much, and he is deported on a TACA flight to Houston, after the police, he claims, steal some money from his wallet.

Anyway, here are a few quotations (fair use, I hope) from the book.

--Lan Sluder

On Belize Kriol:
"Here they also speak a mixed version of Creole and English, different from other parts of the Caribbean....It sounds similar to Pig Latin, except even less understandable."

On Belizeans:

"At first glance, this country is intriguing and appears to have a lot to offer. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes extremely clear that Belizeans are treacherous and its motives (sic) self serving and dangerous, especially to the 'White Devil'".

"I explained to my son that the vast majority of Belizeans are very uneducated and it's better to ignore them. I went on to explain that we need to show these people that we are the better person, in hopes that if we lead by example, then one day they too will become better people."

On the Garifuna:
"These are the lowest of all Belizeans, the streetwalking crackhead Garifuna. These cocaine-addicted theives are all over southern Belize, and their way of earning a living is to sell drugs to degenerate tourists or robbing them once they've gained their confidence."

"I've learned that if you challenge a Garifuna with a stern voice and ask simple direct questions, you get a little more truth out of them. You might have to repeat yourself several times because they will act like they don't understand English or pretend like they don't know what you're saying, but if you keep asking the same question over and over, you'll eventually get the truth."

"...the creed of the Garifuna, "It Takes a Friend to F**k a Friend."

On certain businesspeople in Belize:
"As we wind out of the mountains and hit the flat plain of southern Belize we come to the land of the Z[....]. Howie [an American real estate agent] explains to me that this family controls most of the cocaine trafficking in the country. He goes on to say it's more than rumor how they are partners with the Columbian Cali drug cartel. Their property is so vast it is measured by the square mile ... These drug lords also control all the banana plantations that stretch from the Maya Mountains, ten miles east to the Caribbean Sea and as far south as the Gulf of Honduras. I ask Howie, 'How can one family own so much and so many, have so little?'...."

On Ray Auxillou's Belize Development Trust:
"The Belize media is rated as the worst offender of Internet Fraud in the Western Hemisphere by the Belize Development Trust, a Non-Profit, Government Watchdog (sic)."

About the Belize Police and Others:
"Today, the Garifuna or Black Caribe, controls (sic) the National Police Force of Belize...."


Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 7,479
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What a lovely gentleman.

Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,054
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Nobody asked my opinion about DeMarks and his allegations, but I'll say this anyway: I have no doubt that some of the charges DeMarks makes about corruption, ripoffs and drugs are true, or at least nearly so.

But, on the other hand, DeMarks comes across as a know-it-all jerk from New Jersey who starts building a house and condos in Belize without half knowing what the hell he is doing. Instead of hiring a responsible contractor and staying close by to supervise the job, he hires incompetents on the cheap and doesn't stick around to see what they're doing. Surprise, they do a lousy job and steal him blind.

DeMarks starts getting angry and frustrated and before long he's obsessed with "getting back" at the Belizeans who ruined his run at paradise.

Everything escalates and before long he's in real trouble with people in Placencia and with local and national powers-that-be. Now, instead of putting it behind him and starting over, he's trying to exorcise his Belize demons by writing a "tell all" book and sending angry tweets on Twitter.

--Lan Sluder

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 6,267
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His Klan membership is probably in very good standing.
What an ASS.


Joined: Jan 2008
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This guy BEGS attention,message board gods please make this disappear! Now Lan ,lets not mention this jerk again ,huh ..please

Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,054
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I'm a believer in the idea that sunshine and fresh air helps heal most wounds, and that keeping things in the dark makes them fester.

--Lan Sluder

Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,416
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i like that,, can i use it?

Joined: Oct 2000
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man, this guy's tweets are INSANE!!!!!

Joined: May 2009
Posts: 21
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I dont know how to read his tweets, does it take a membership, or fees? Just register?

Surely Belize is somewhere between not as bad as he says & not as wonderful as some others try to portray it.

Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 31
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Wow, If a guy from Jersey thinks the Crime and Corruption is bad in Belize....

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