In Belize, I had the opportunity to meet Juan Guerrero, an artisan boatbuilder. Since he was 14, he has been taking locally harvested timber and transforming it into beautiful sailboats in the town of Sarteneja. Located in the northeast tip of Belize, Sarteneja was historically a fishing village and is still home to many of the country’s small boatbuilders. Quite a few of the sailboats I saw in Belize City and Caye Caulker had their origins in Juan Guerrero’s workshop.
The lifecycle of these sailboats presents an interesting contrast to the typical lifecycle of the buses I’m studying. Instead of being produced from thousands of anonymous industrial parts on an assembly line, these sailboats are uniquely crafted from various local woods by one craftsman in his backyard. Instead of heading south like the old school buses, the boat I saw being manufactured was, according to the wishes of its future captain, going to head north making no/low-emission trips to Cuba ferrying organic produce grown around Sarteneja.
In Corozal, I was able to get a tour of the Gilharry/Venus Bus Lines shop from the owner’s son. Talking with him, and interviewing the owner a couple days later, gave me a great sense of the history of passenger transportation in Belize. I’ll publish highlights from that interview soon. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the older buses that are kept at the shop for parts.
Front of the Taisan and Border Chinese Restaurants in Corozal, Belize
One night in Corozal, I decided to wander over to the cluster of Chinese restaurants southwest of the town plaza for dinner. My experience at the one I chose, Border Chinese Restaurant, induced a cultural sensory overload. I ordered from a menu with Chinese and Belizean food written in Mandarin, Spanish, and English, trying to talk over a Taiwanese cable news broadcast, ranchera music, and chiming slot machines. Accompaniments to my fried rice included fruit juice from Honduras, Marie Sharp’s hot sauce from Belize, and La Choy soy sauce from Irvine, California. On the wall were posters for Belikin Beer (Belize’s local brew), Guinness Beer, Coca-Cola, as well as a Santa Claus mask (in July). Christmas decorations and a Chinese lantern hung from the ceiling.
In response to this bewildering array of imagery, I decided that the only sensible thing to do was to have some books delivered to me. So I had David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity and Frederick Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism sent down, and I (re)read them with my travels, and especially this dinner experience, in mind. Postmodernity, in the words of Wikipedia, describes “the economic and/or cultural state or condition of society,” while postmodernism describes the philosophical, artistic, and cultural response to this condition. A number of concepts in these books helped me think about the Border Chinese Restaurant.
Jameson argues that a “constitutive feature” of postmodernism is “a new depthlessness, which finds its prolongation both in contemporary ‘theory’ and in a whole new culture of the image or the simulacrum” (Postmodernism, p. 6). Simulacra, images with transformed (often reduced) significance and substance, were featured prominently in the Border Chinese Restaurant. The cable news from Taiwan being shown on the TV, had very little meaning to me or the Spanish-speaking men in the bar; it was just a series of flashing images. Similarly, the Mayan temples on Belikin bottles have been reduced from their complex meaning to a society of ages past into a Belizean corporate logo, which is further transformed here by its spatial interaction with Taiwanese, Irish, and Mexican influences. The swimsuit models in the beer advertisements on the wall were women transformed into flat, inked images encouraging the consumption of alcohol. Of course, in postindustrial capitalism, simulacra are employed to spur consumption/consumerism. Perhaps Santa Claus exemplifies this; one face is instantly recognizable as a mandate to buy toys for children.
Border Chinese Restaurant Decorations – Belizean models, Guinness beer, Santa Claus, Chinese lantern
Connected to the depthlessness of simulacra is the ease with which they are superimposed. Flat images with little inherent significance allow for a “collage of superimposed spatial images” (The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 302), such as the one in the restaurant. Superposition of otherwise unconnected images is also a mark of postmodernism in art, as seen in the example below… Read the rest
A highlight of my time in Corozal was a visit to one of the District’s hand-cranked ferries. I was particularly interested in seeing a school bus make the crossing. After talking with some local residents, I understood that the bus from Corozal Town to Copper Bank would leave at 7:00 AM and travel the 5 km to the ferry, from which I could walk back to town. Matthew, a fellow traveler I met in Belize City, and I made it to the town square a bit before 7:00, but the Lino’s Bus we were looking for was nowhere to be found. So we decided to walk out to the ferry.
After we had walked for about half an hour, around the corner ahead of us turned the Lino’s Bus we had been looking for, going the opposite direction into Corozal. I figured it was running late because of muddy roads, and that we would be able to hop on it when it returned to Copper Bank. By 9:15, having endured much mud and little shade, we made it to the Pueblo Nuevo Ferry.
I asked one of the ferry workers who was leaving his shift what time the bus would be returning, and he replied, “about 10:30.” So we decided to wait and watch vehicles cross the river for an hour, during which time we nourished some mosquitoes and helped push a stalled Volkswagen Jetta up onto the ferry.
At 10:30, David, the other ferry worker (who works a twelve hour shift, from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM), came over to us and asked what we were waiting for. I told him about my project and how I wanted to see the Copper Bank bus crossing back over. “You’re going to be waiting a long time; it doesn’t come back until 7:30 tonight,” he responded. He then explained that the Lino’s Bus driver had indeed come back across on the ferry a couple minutes before; unless there was a large crowd needing to get to Copper Bank in the morning, the driver usually left the bus in town and hitchhiked home for lunch.
We laughed at all of the misunderstandings about times, helped crank the ferry back to the Corozal side, and caught a ride back to town in the bed of a pickup truck.
Shipstern Nature Reserve was an easy trip from my lodging in Sarteneja. I made it there by 8:00, but this was too long after sunrise to see any of the toucans I had hoped to see. Most of the trails were closed because of mud, but the butterfly house and 60 ft. observation tower made the trip well worth the walk.
Pupae at Shipstern Nature Reserve
Caterpillar at Shipstern Nature Reserve
View of Chetumal, Mexico, from Shipstern’s Observation Tower
Riding a local bus down Fabers Rd., a small store with a sign reading Yan kee Snacks caught my eye. Like many of the other small neighborhood stores I saw in Belize City, it was a nondescript cinder block building with metal bars running up from the storefront counter. At first I assumed its name was similar to Yankey Clothes – “We bring the New York fashions to you” – a variation on the spelling of Yankee that I’m used to.
As I continued my rides around the city, I noticed a large number of groceries and restaurants with Chinese names scattered throughout. After passing Tan Liang Shop, Ma Ma Chen’s, Tow Tow Grocery, and Ah Wing Saloon, I realized the relationship of Yan Kee Snacks to the Yankee that first came to my mind was probably completely unintentional.
Tow Tow Grocery, one of the many Chinese-owned food vendors in Belize
Carlos, a native Belizian who helped run the Seaside Guesthouse I stayed at and gave me some great advice in my first week in the country, shared some of his thoughts on the preponderance of Chinese-owned food stores. He estimates that 90% of the food outlets in Belize City are owned by Chinese or Taiwanese immigrants. They gained a substantial share of the fried chicken market by significantly undercutting the prices of other proprietors. The Chinese grocery stores, often staffed by immigrant family members who are compensated in-kind with lodging, maintain regular hours throughout the day, unlike the stores that take the customary lunch break and close once they feel they’ve made enough money for the day. Carlos also shared the story of a Chinese investor who bought both the Caye Caulker Water Taxi Association and the San Pedro Belize Express when they were in financial trouble, gaining a monopoly on ferry service while appeasing customers with promotions and giveaways.
Chinatown Supermarket on Caye Caulker (an island that
Foreign investment is big in Belize. The Museum of Belize, recently opened in Belize City’s old jail, was funded in part by the government of Taiwan. In 2008, the value of the Belize’s imports was 1.6 times the value of its exports. The 2008 estimate for the country’s external debt was $954.1 million; with a population just over 314,000, that turns out to be more than $3,000 of foreign debt per person (in comparison, this figure is $43.35 for the United States).
Some fellow travelers passing through the Seaside Guesthouse talked with an official at the Austrian Consulate General, a brother of former prime minister Said Musa, and he explained to them that consumer goods are relatively expensive here because so many are imported. The Musa family owns Brodies, a large department and grocery store chain in Belize. The Brodies I shopped at definitely had a full array of goods from the United States.
Lightbulbs for sale in Belize; the label reads 'This price includes a discount from Southern California Edison…Sale outside California is illegal'
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