Two themes dominate in the history   of Belize: the outward struggle to   establish and maintain an English-  speaking nation in an area   dominated by Hispanic peoples and   culture, and the inward interaction   between groups of different races   and cultural backgrounds.   Understanding contemporary social   relations and the politics of Belize   depends on understanding these   diverse groups and their   interpretations of past events.

  The first English settlers arrived in   the early 1600s in present-day   Belize (known as the Settlement of   Belize in the Bay of Honduras prior   to 1862 and British Honduras from   1862-1973). Their arrival marked the   beginning of a conflict with   neighboring Spanish settlers that   lasted for centuries. For the first 200   years, this conflict was part of the   larger rivalry between Britain and   Spain. In the early 1800s, after most   of the Spanish colonies in the New   World became independent, the   conflict in Belize evolved into a   Guatemalan territorial claim on the   area that continued into the 1990s.

  Like many nations that have recently   emerged from colonialism, Belize   has a population that is fragmented   into many racial and cultural groups.   The two largest groups are the   Creoles, English-speaking or Creole-  speaking blacks and people of mixed   African and European heritage, and   the Mestizos, Spanish-speaking   people of mixed Mayan and Spanish   European. Two other significant   groups are the Garifuna, a group of   African and Carib ancestry originally   from the Lesser Antilles, and the   Maya, descendants of the original   inhabitants of Belize.

  These groups all have different   interpretations of key events in   Belize's history. The subjugation of   the indigenous people, the rivalry   between Spain and Britain, slavery   and the process of emancipation, the   legacy of colonization, and the   position of Belize in the modern   world have all been subject to   reinterpretation and debate. Despite   the gradual emergence of a national   identity, the differences among   ethnic groups and their divergent   outlooks on the present and the past   play an important role in Belize   today.