Belize

A former British colony (known then as British Honduras) and the only country on the Central American mainland that has English as its first language, it has been self-governed since 1964, independent since 1981, but still a member of the Commonwealth and officially ruled by the Queen through a Governor-General. If you look at maps of Guatemala, however, you will see Belize marked as its 23rd department, so watch out for a border-and-territory dispute some time in the future; if war ever comes, that will most likely be the reason. 

Not that Belize is without violence now; the overspill of the Mexican drug trade, and that of several other South American countries, has begun to have its impact in a land of high unemployment even in the tourist industry on which Belize depends, a very heavy foreign debt burden, and one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS  in Central America.

The Maiden of the Rock, Xunantunich

If you’re heading there as a tourist, go visit the barrier reef, which is so important UNESCO have placed their stamp on it, making it a significant habitat for several threatened species, including marine turtles, manatees and the American marine crocodile; though most people go there for the mangrove swamps. And don't forget the Mayan ruins, at Altun Ha, at Xunantunich, at Caracol especially - the land that is now Belize was for more than a thousand years before the Christian era, and then for more than a thousand years after the start of the Christian era, a heartland of Mayan culture, as sophisticated as Biblical Egypt, Babylon, Israel or Phoenicia, leaving behind step-pyramids so similar to those of Egypt and Babylon, and megalithic alignments so similar to those of both Egyptian and Breton Carnac, there will surely be proof found eventually that the first European discoverers of America were not Columbus and his crew, but envoys of King Hiram perhaps, or King Nimrod, or King Arthur even, and not in 1492 CE, but much more likely 1492 BCE.

Learn more at http://www.nichbelize.org/ia-archaeology/archaeological-sites-and-parks.html,though this site will not tell you about the wanton destruction of the Mayan ruins, by Spanish Catholics over several  centuries, and now, today, by construction companies who either want the stone as in-fill rubble or find the ruins in their way (see here for one particularly disgraceful example).


 
Marks For: 5

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