File

The WORLD falls apart
1930s
Belize’s place
from the Great Depression to WORLD WAR 2
1920s - 1940s
Lesson Plan - 5 key areas
1. pre- 1930s British Honduras
2. 1931 Hurricane
3. Great Depression
4. Birth of Nationalism - Labor Rises UP
5. World War 2 breaks out
Pattern of Colonialism
Colonialism created a pattern of underdevelopment in Belize. This pattern of relying only on forestry
instead of developing the land created poverty and hardship for the workers and their families.
In the early 20th century, the forest industry revived for a short time. Mahogany and a new product,
chicle, became the main export items. The United States began to import chicle.
From 1929 until 1940 the economy of the United States collapsed. We call this the
Great Depression. This caused the price of timber to fall. Later on, with the
development of a chemical substitute for chicle, forestry declined again. Belize still
did not have a good road system, loggers had to go farther and farther to find unused
forests, and forestry continued to be managed badly.
1938
British
Honduras
Postage
STAMP
Even as late as the 1950's foresters had not learned
to care for the land and manage the industry by
replanting the forests.
1931 Hurricane
The 1931 Belize hurricane was a devastating Category 4 tropical cyclone that struck British
Honduras on 10 September 1931, killing an estimated 2,500 people. Although weaker than
Hurricane Hattie of 1961, it remains the deadliest hurricane and natural disaster in British
Honduras history. The hurricane was first detected as a tropical wave off the west coast of Africa
on 29 August. Moving westward, the disturbance remained relatively weak till 6 September, when
it was first classified as a tropical cyclone just west of the Windward Islands.
maximum sustained winds of 135 mph
The depression gradually intensified, reaching tropical stormintensity within the first six hours
following tropical cyclogenesis. The cyclone intensified further to hurricane intensity by
8 September. Strengthening and organization remained gradual until the storm reached the
Gulf of Honduras, by which time it began to rapidly intensify. The tropical cyclone quickly
attained Category 4 hurricane intensity. The hurricane subsequently made landfall on Belize
City on 10 September with maximum sustained winds of 135 mph . Moving across the
Yucatán Peninsula, the tropical cyclone weakened, and continued to weaken when it moved
across the Bay of Campeche.
SJC
before and after
the 1931 Hurricane
It’s the ECONOMY
RIOTS, STRIKES AND REBELLIONS
unemployed
brigade
Labourers and Unemployed Association (LUA)
}
very
important
Soberanis QUOTES:
“you have suffered long...5cents a day can’t
keep you.Your children are starving and so
are you.”
“I prefer to be a dead hero than a living
coward.”
“ We are a new people, we are awake to the
facts, we are not going to be railroaded into
slavery, or starvation...”
“British Honduras for British Honduraneans”
“we interpret Government as only an
executive for the people.”
- excerpt from Assad Shoman’s 13 Chapters: A
History of Belize
The Belize Independent
UNEMPLOYMENT
GWU -
General Workers
UNION
British Honduras Workers and Tradesmen's Union, the first central
trade union organization in the Central American country Belize.
Founded in 1939 by Antonio Soberanis Gómez. Registered as a legal
trade union in 1943. Shortly thereafter it changed its name to General
Workers Union (GWU). GWU played an important role in the anticolonial movement. It reached its peak in 1955. Thereafter it declined
rapidly.
During World War II (1939-1945)
the FORESTRY industry
had revived for a while. Unemployment had also been eased because
thousands of workers emigrated to Britain for forestry jobs, to Panama
to work in building the Canal and to the southern United Stated to work
in agricultural estates. But after the war they came home to
unemployment and poverty.
LIVING CONDITIONS
in BELIZE
The working class suffered from unemployment, low wages, bad
housing, severe malnutrition, and poor health care. A British reporter
complained that "the Colony has always been run exclusively for what
could be got out of it . . . a quarter of the people are without work or
working part-time, earning less than twelve shillings per week. Belize
most shockingly depressed spot in
the whole British/West Indies - perhaps in the
City is about the
Commonwealth.
Hunger, poverty, the filthy conditions under
which the people live are incredible."
Tree Fellers - Belize and World War 2
The film Tree Fellers is about "Belizean
lumberjacks who in 1942 left the tropical rainforests
of British Honduras to help Britain fight fascism by felling trees in Scotland."
Tree Fellers (2004, 24 mins) tells the story of the 900 Belizean lumberjacks who in 1942 left the tropical rainforests of
British Honduras to help Britain fight fascism by felling trees in Scotland. Sam ( 93), Eric (87) and Amos (86) were
among those who stayed on after the war to make new lives in a country where, for better or worse, the colour of their
skin marked them out.
103 year old Sam Martinez shows us where in Belize he grew up and went to School before leaving for Scotland in
1942 as part of the British Honduras Forestry Unit.