To quote Zora Neale Hurston, "Women are the mules of the world," and where there is poverty, women carry an extra burden. As throughout the Caribbean, there is both suffering and poverty in Belize because of the unequal distribution of resources resulting from a world divided into North/South, so-called black/white, colonized/colonizer, labor/capitalist. 1 This world division of labor has its origins in the expansion of Europe-in its fiercely competitive empire-building, with its concomitant creation of the slave trade, the colonizing of a large portion of the world, the usurping of governments, the expropriating of populations from their land, the extracting of resources and the creating of a new language, a new ideology and a new configuration of world relationships. It is within the context of this broad process that the position of women in Belize can most effectively be examined.This study draws on research I conducted in Belize between 1984 and 1989, in order to gather specific information on working women and to provide a theoretical framework within which to evaluate their status in the Caribbean in general. The ethnographic method was used to collect data on the ways in which women in Belize have accommodated themselves to the uneven but rapid penetration of capital into the country. I argue with Lynn Bolles, 2 that women's relationship to work and the relations of production and reproduction are affected by the political economy of Belize which, in turn, is affected by the international flow of capital. It is critical for development planning to be realistic about the ramifications of the international accumulation of capital, its impact on the region and, especially, its impact on women. Traditional development models based on neoclassical economic theory do not allow for a viable
An old Creole proverb says, &dquo;wen Black man teef, e teef some, wen bakra teef, e teef all,&dquo; which means: when a Black man steals, he steals some; when a White man steals, he steals all. Anyone who is familiar with Belize knows that this proverb reveals truths about the history and people of this Central American country. The colonization process, if not the bakra himself, has been recognized by many scholars, including Magubane (1979), Memmi (1965), Nandy (1983), Nettleford (1979), and Fanon (1967), as having deprived people of their land, their labor, their resources, and their dignity. Although it has not always been demonstrated, colonization also threatens to rob them of one of their most critical resources, the next generation.In this article, I argue that, although formal colonization does not exist in Belize today, it continues to function in the form of a complex and multilevel socialization process, which serves to reinfroce and perpetuate colonial and neocolonial unequal relations of power and an ideology of European superiority. The ethnic identity that accrues to children in this situation creates the conditions for the reproduction of a world stratified according to political, economic, and social power, a world in which invidious distinctions between groups of people, based on such personal attributes as gender, skin color, or class, influence access to critical, life-sustaining resources.
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