By Dylan Vernon, TIMECOME #25, 8 September 2026.
After a short hiatus, TIMECOME is back! There is a lot to discuss! For its return, I share a new version of a piece from 2024 on contradictions inherent to September in Belize. It is inspired by the Magical History Tour now going around Belize. Check it out! It is an amazing initiative. The core contradiction to which I refer is this: On September 10th we celebrate the British staying in Belize. Then just 11 days later we celebrate the British leaving. Some Belizeans embrace this ironic legacy without question. But questioning and discussing such contradictions is part of nation building as we commemorate our young independence.
The 10th: Hip Hip Hooray, the British Stay
It is important to recall that the British have recorded and written most of our history and interpreted it through Union Jack lenses. Belizeans like Evan X Hyde and Assad Shoman have helped to put some of it, including the Tenth, in better perspective.
We can all agree on one basic fact. In September 1798, the Spanish colonisers made yet another attempt to dislodge British settlers from part of what is now Belize. In the big historical picture, the happening in 1798 was nothing but one of the many hundreds of military conflicts between European powers to control and exploit land and resources that never belonged to them. In centuries-long and bloody imperialist conquest, European powers warred each other at home, across the Americas and in other continents for the spoils of lands and resources that did not belong to them. The land now Belize got caught in the middle of one of these European wars.
The Europeans who fought over the land now Belize were Spanish and English. But it could easily have been French or Dutch or Portuguese. The Spanish believed that their monarch and pope had bestowed the land now Belize to Spain and that the British were here illegally. Of course, the land belonged to neither of them. We can’t change that history. But we do have control over how we understand and use that part of our history for our national development.
There are other basic facts that some of us do not know or ignore. The indigenous Maya who originally owned the land, and the enslaved Africans who were forcibly bought and brought to clear the land, were striped of rights. A handful of ‘free people of colour’ (all men) had some token property and voting rights. We know some of the stories of abusive treatment of indigenous people and slaves, but less so, of how they resisted the Spanish and the British.
In 1798, slavery still reigned in Belize and enslaved Africans were property to order around. So it’s not surprising if some were coerced to help to oppose the Spanish attempts to recover the very land from the British that they had stolen from the Maya.
To cut to the chase, in September 1798, a combination of luck, a sick and disoriented Spanish crew, a tricky reef, a British sloop from Jamaica and some cunning defensive strategies resulted in the settlers dissuading the Spanish from engaging their full armada. At that time, no one assumed that 1798 was going to be the very last such attempt by the Spanish.
The Century from 1798 to 1898
For a ‘battle’ that the British settlers claimed they won so decisively against an European enemy, it is strange that they waited 100 years before instituting official annual commemorations. History tells the real story. Remembrances of the 10th were small, few and sporadic in most of the 1800s. In the mid-1890s, the British settler establishment was under heavy local protest by workers against the lack of freedoms, racism and the terrible social and economic conditions under which most lived. At this time, the Maya, the Kriol, the Garinagu, the Mestizo and the East Indian were all pretty much well-established as identifiable ethnic groups. While geographically separated, they shared common oppressive conditions at the hands of the dominant British.
Some of the settlement’s non-British ‘people’ were getting restless about their oppression. In 1894, there were workers’ protests catalyzed by a devaluation that increased the costs of imports and decreased prices of exports. One of the first measures taken was to cut the salaries of labour while raising prices. After the Governor refused to force the merchants to increase wages, some 600 labourers rioted and looted. The riot was eventually suppressed, as so often has been the case in Belize’s history, with the timely arrival of a British warship from Jamaica. But the fact that wages were indeed increased illustrated the real fear the British and merchant class felt about the prospect of being overthrown by larger numbers of working men and women, including security personnel, incensed about their poor living conditions.
The archives show that it was around this time in 1898 that the British encouraged exaggerated celebrations of what they re-branded as ‘the Battle of St. Georges Caye’ distract attention from the riots and unrest of the mid-1890s. In doing so, they had a few willing local collaborators. These fell into at least two camps. One camp was what we can call the ‘I am more British than the King’ embracers of the Union Jack. In the other camp were those who viewed the commemoration of the 1798 centenary as an opportunity to generate national patriotism around a glorious story of state formation. The problem here is that the commemorations that began officially in 1898 evolved into mythification, misinformation and glorification built around a few facts.
Saynt Jaajiz Kee Day
It is not a myth that the Spanish attempted to retake the Belize settlement in September 1798. No one has actually stated that. But, either by design or ignorance, some of the historical events around the 10th have been wrongly interpreted and embellished over time. What we must understand is that there is a difference between staying that the 10th is a myth (it is not) and saying that it was mythified.
When inaccuracies and misinterpretations are repeated and accepted as true over decades and then over two centuries, they can become normalized and believed as true. This is especially so when they are taught in schools. For example, one mythification is that the name Belize is a bastardization of Wallace (a real person) or that there were no Mayas here when the British arrived (there were) or that slavery in Belize was not that bad (all slavery is bad). All this is no different from believing in Santa Claus – a mythification created around a real person named St. Nicolas?
So, while there was an encounter between the British settlers and the Spanish, the mythification of the 10th goes something like this: The outnumbered British settlers and slave owners, the free coloured men and enslaved Africans, united to fight against the barbaric Spanish in an ingenious, glorious battle. They were victorious in expelling the Spanish from ‘our’ waters – so saving the settlement again. Because of 1798, the British settlers, descendants of the Baymen, stayed on and this should be celebrated. What ethnocentric and discriminatory hogwash passed down by the British and swallowed by some. At that time, both the Spanish and the English were exploiting colonizers and neither deserve celebrating.
One of the most egregious fantasies in the mythification of the 10th is that slaves joined ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with their enslavers and then returned to being slaves on the 11th. Consider for a moment that not only had some slaves recently rebelled against their English ‘masters’,a few years before 1798, but that others were still escaping to Mexico and Guatemala. In 1798 the abolition of slavery was still 40 years away, yet slaves are written about in 10th mythification interpretations as if they were free. Lies were built on a few facts to become new truths!
In 2024, 226 years after 1798, the 10th remains a very sacred cow for many who Belizeans love their 10th music, the Queen of the Bay and the ‘hear ye’ proclamations. Because of its public popularity, the 10th is also a political alter that red and even blue politicians must knell at. To criticise the 10th is politically risky, especially in a small state where every vote counts and neither major party wants to appear to offend any segment of our multi-ethnic population. The fact that so very few politicians have raised questions, illustrates how wonderfully successful, devious and divisive a job the British did on the mythification of the 10th.
The 21st: Hip, Hip Hooray, the British Leave
So every year, a mere eleven days after glorifying the British staying, Belizeans have another huge party to celebrate them leaving. Of course, they didn’t all ‘leave’, but they give up political power and we became independent in September 1981. That Independence was to represent the culmination of 31 years of pre-independence nationalist struggle, delayed only by the Guatemalan claim. It was to symbolize the beginning of the opportunity to forge a new and better nation. For many, including me, we really thought so in 1981.
I was among the tens of thousands of Belizeans who got moist eyed at mid-night on 20th September when the Union Jack came down. I had just graduated Sixth Form and had volunteered to help out with the independence preparations and that gave me an opening to ‘talk’ my way into the Governor’s House to see the flag ceremony live.
Just before independence, I had won the national independence essay competition on the theme ‘Independence is the Beginning’. I wrote about the hopes and aspirations that I, as a young teenage Belizean, had for building the new, free and prosperous post-colonial nation of Belize. So, it goes without saying that I am one of those Belizeans who takes the celebration of 21st September seriously.
There are those who have argued that independence has made us worse off as a nation and a people. While they are objectively wrong, some of us agree that we could have done better with our hard-won freedom so far. Today, I also look back at these past 45 years with a dose of disappointment about aspects of the stagnation of the nation-building and decolonisation project. However, I would never concur that our independence was a mistake or should have been delayed. In fact, it came too late. The delay contributed to our nationalist leaders ‘mellowing out’, and worse, opened the door to deep partisan divisions, starting in 1956.
Looking back to the opportunities since 1981, it is clear that we underestimated the challenges of overcoming deep colonial legacies and did not foresee the extent that international political and neoliberal forces would place severe limitations on our nation-building aspirations. And we also over-estimated the good intentions of our political leadership and, indeed, over-estimated our own capacities as a people to give our independence real meaning. Yet, there is still time to correct this.
Re-tinkin Di 10th
I am of the view that we need to do more to re-educate ourselves and the nation on the 10th in true historical context. We have not yet effectively decolonized our minds from this 10th thing. Doing so requires people’s advocacy and enlightened leadership for historical education and re-education.
I propose that we seriously re-think and re-purpose the 10th of September and dedicate this annual day to collectively recall and learn about the history of the vices of colonialism. These vices motivated the acts of nationalist resistance that made the 21st September 1981 possible as our true national day. How can we celebrate 1798 and 1981 in the same breath when they represent such distinctive moments in our history? How can we celebrate the 10th and the 21st without a national reckoning of their symbolism?
Rethinking Some National Symbols
In 2024 the Government of Trinidad & Tobago removed the ships of Christopher Columbus from the coat of arms in its national flag and replaced it with the Steelpan. How refreshingly progressive an act of decolonisation. It got me to thinking that Belize needs to consider doing the same, not only for the flag but also for our national anthem.
You may recall that in one of my early TIME COME pieces, I informed that, although there was unanimous support in 1981 for Belize’s national symbols to be placed in the Constitution, it was never done. It was not that the framers rejected the popular proposal, but because, due to time constraints, there was no bi-partisan agreement on what the national symbols should be until after the Constitution was finally drafted. In 1981, a bi-partisan task force was hurriedly put together and given just a couple weeks to propose the national symbols. It is my view that the 1981 process was top-down and lacking in transparency. Just as the framers of the Constitution basically ran out of time to meet the 21st of September‘deadline’, so did the people of Belize not have enough time to substantively create and discuss the best options for Belize’s national symbols.
In was not until February 2025, that the National Assembly passed a National Symbols Act describing and specifying all national symbols. There were no changes from the ones used over the years — and even a national prayer was included! It was totally a lost opportunity to decolonize some of our national symbols through the national consultative process that we never had in 1981. What a waste!
In the early 1990s, the Society for the Promotion of Education and Research (SPEAR) led a campaign to re-write the lyrics of the national anthem to remove reference to the Baymen, remove gender bias, remove language that calls for destroying the environment, and add lines that celebrate people’s resistance to colonialism in the lead up to independence. I would offer that this 1990s SPEAR advocacy, which happened before its time, could still be food for thought.
In relation to the national flag and coat of arms, we can have a debate about removing persons (the two men) from the flag. Belize has women and men in equal numbers, we are multi-ethnic and multi-racial, so why not eliminate conflicts about sex and skin colour and have no persons at all? Why not use some neutral image of natural sceneries, for, example, the Blue Hole or the Sleeping Giant or some national symbol we all identify with?
And instead of axes, paddles and saws that evoke deforestation and colonial exploitation of labourers, why don’t we think of images more relevant to all of us – if we need any additional images at all? And why an image of a British ship: a symbol of economic exploitation of our forests, of the slave trade and of the putting down of local protests by British Governors.
And what about ‘sub umbra floreo’ as our motto? Does a motto need to be on our flag at all? If people do think yes, how about not boasting about flourishing under the shade of trees? How about using a creative combination of terms such as democracy, justice, equality, peace, freedom, self-determination, territorial integrity? The point is that there are many better options to creatively and collectively discuss and agree on.
Our challenges in 2026 are, in some ways, not that much different from that September 21st day 45 years ago. We still need to re-make or Constitution. We can still re-imagine a decolonialized 10th. We can still forge new beginnings. Independence is still what we make of it and there is much more nation building to do. Happy Birthday Belize! Adelante