Belize will celebrate Emancipation Day for the fourth time tomorrow. And while it has been observed for years across the Caribbean - here in Belize we're still getting used to it - coming to terms with what "emancipation" really meant almost 200 years ago.
Like so much that came down from the slave masters - emancipation itself was a cruel sham.
Tonight, with archival images posted as a "story map" on the ARC GIS website by NICH - we look at the reality and the legacy of slavery in Belize.
The earliest record of slaves in Belize is in 1724.
One century later, the census of 1823 and 1825 showed how deeply slave labour had taken root in the settlement. The 1823 census lists them as Whites, colored, black and slaves.
The census total in 1823 shows a vastly higher number of slaves than whites:
Nigel Encalada, Development Anthropologist
"Because of slavery, the black population outnumbered the white population, by by 9 to 1. Right? That was the sort of ratio that was there."
The documents show children being sold at a public auction.
And the male slaves were brought here as the labour to extract logwood
Nigel Encalada
"The number of slaves in Belize in the 1800s shows how much the colony or the settlement relied upon slave labor for the extraction of of logwood."
Nigel Encalada
"whereas in the Caribbean, enslaved Africans would have worked in, in, in, in would have been forced to work in sugar in Belize, it was the logging was logging and the extraction of forestry products."
Slavery in Belize lasted for over one hundred years, and then there was Emancipation - which was in itself a deception:
Nigel Encalada
"Now, the slavery in Belize, probably the first record of it is the early 1700s, 1724 and then emancipation, quotes Is 1833. Yeah. So the act for the abolition passed in 1833. It would come, it came into effect on August 1st, one year later, 1834. It was supposed to end in 1840, but due to the failure of how it was perceived to work, there was supposed to be a period of apprenticeship where supposedly the enslaved population were to be trained into freedom, noh? The way it worked out was that the slave owners were trying to get as much as they can. They actually became worse in some instances because they were resistant to the whole idea of, of of freeing the enslaved population, that they clamped down tighter, they became more abusive and so on. And so the, the, the British were forced to to enslave, a couple of years earlier, in 1838."
Nigel Encalada
"in the Caribbean, they say that they use the they use the, the apprenticeship system to squeeze out the last juice, noh?"
And in exchange for the so called emancipation, slave owners were reimbursed by the crown for the loss their property - the enslaved human beings, men, women, and children who they owned - listed here alongside cattle, shovels and other property:
Nigel Encalada
"Because, they viewed the black population as, as, as property. That's why they call it chattel slavery. Human beings who could be bought and sold."
Nigel Encalada
"The whole basis of it was brutal. It was inhumane. Treating human beings like, like, property and so on. Right?"
The rate of reimbursement for that human property in Belize is reported to have been higher than in other British territories:
Nigel Encalada
"So in the across the Caribbean, the slave owners were paid. In Belize, actually, they were paid, I think somewhere between 52 and 54 pounds per, per enslaved person who was who was freed. The legacy of that is that the one who, the enslaved there was there was no such thing as compensation, noh? And so that, that has been a bone of contention even up to the day, you know, that there is this regional movement for reparations, noh?."
Reparations for stolen labour and a history of brutality.
The record shows on December 25, 1818, enslaved men Time and Shakespeare, property of Thomas Paslow, sentenced to 500 lashes on their bare backs. Another enslaved African, London, was sentenced to 100 lashes on his bare back.
Nigel Encalada
"The instances of resistance, revolt was also an indication of the nature of slavery in Belize. There are some more brutal records that I've seen, for example, where this guy, Charles Freeman, was accused of harboring runaways as well. And what they did when he was captured, he was ordered to be flogged 39 times, three times, on the north side of the city, on the bridge and on the south side. So what that told me was that their intent was to kill that man, right? Who when you would flog somebody that many times? That tells you about the brutal nature."
Nigel Encalada
"overall the idea was to keep or keep the population under control."
And from a population controlled 200 years ago - to one still struggling to stand up in the 21st century:
Nigel Encalada
"What I am concerned with are the manifestations today about this concept of emancipation. I remember, I'll give you some examples. Teaching at Wesley Junior College last year, I asked the students - 95% of the class, creole, Garifuna students, a handful of, mestizo, another minority group and other groups in the class. How many of you, I ask? Is this, you're the first person doing an associates degree in their family, right? And the majority raise their hand. Jules. Right. I asked them, How many of you, I asked them how many of your parents have, had higher degrees? Maybe one person raised their hand in that class. How many of your parents graduate from high school? Well, a smaller number still. So what it told me, Jules, is that as far as the black population is concerned, we are - and a generation is equivalent of 25 years, let's say - we are 200 years removed from slavery, 220 years, whatever. Eight generations later, we just have some of our first black young people getting an associate's degree right. That's the rate of development of the country, right? You could picture that? It takes 8 generation to go from no school to an associate degree."
Nigel Encalada
"But the legacy of slavery. It continues to live alongside us, right? The continuum of time moves forward, but the the shadow of slavery continues to stalk the history of Belize. Is that a fair confusion? Yes, definitely. In all the ways we talked about. In the in the you have people who are, landed or not landed, meaning they own property or not in the way that, in the same way during slavery where the population was uneducated, whether they have access to education or not, the way in which, the populations have access to, to health care, or not the way to which the populations are free to participate in political processes and democratic processes are not, the way in which families continue to, to exist or not. So do all of those things, come out of, come out of, slavery, noh?."
Again, all archival documentary images are from the NICH "storymap" and you can find that through a link on our website and Facebook page.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/ae8a82e2094a47729076e4d09a00e270
You can tune into Channel 7 tonight at 11:00 for the Eve of Emancipation Mass live from the Queen Street Baptist church.
And tomorrow at 8:30 for the Emancipation day program.
