ABSTRACT
In fact, until recently, few people knew that early immigrant labourers worked in Belize in the sugar cane, as well as lumber and banana industries. Belize Indians make up only 3.9 per cent of the 322,453 multi-ethnic population of Belize. This chapter is intended to highlight the contributions of marginalized Indians to Belize and to explore the cultural aspects underlying these contributions. It helps to bridge the gap in Belizean knowledge evident in the non-existence of writing on Indians in Belize. Unlike Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname with their large Indian populations, Indians in Belize, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, and Grenada were a minority. Since Belize was administered by Jamaica it was easy to facilitate the second flow of time-expired Indians to Belize. Biographical research was employed to investigate the influential factors that determined the contributions of ten diasporic Indians to the multi-ethnic society in Belize.
