ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that comparable patterns would occur in resettlement projects anywhere under constraints similar to those of Belize. It shows that resettlement schemes are processes of social change involving some mutual interaction between a government and a community. The chapter deals with several resettlement schemes in Belize that all involved alternative strategies offered by the government and discusses the limited power of the government of Belize as a result of inherent constitutional and resource constraints. Belize is located in the southernmost part of the Yucatan Peninsula facing the Caribbean Sea. In extending assistance to Belize, Britain applied its own constraints based ultimately on its power to limit the colony's constitutional progress toward political independence. The pattern of migratory wage labor in coastal Belize is such that a good proportion of the able-bodied younger men and women are absent from the community for large parts of the year.
