Belizean Society - The Upper Sector

The Upper Sector

The elite is a small, socially distinct group whose base of social power lies not in landownership, but in its control of the institutions that mediate relations between Belize and the outside world. The principal economic interests of the elite include commercial and financial enterprises, retail trade, local manufacturing, the state apparatus, and, to a much lesser extent, export agriculture.

The Belizean elite consists of people of different status, prestige, and ethnicity. At the top of the power hierarchy are local whites and light-skinned descendants of the nineteenth-century Creole elite. The next group consists of Creole and Mestizo commercial and professional families whose ancestors first came to political and economic prominence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Next in status are some of the Lebanese and Palestinian merchant families who immigrated to Belize in the early twentieth century.

The more recently arrived Chinese and Indian families comprise another elite group, distinguished from the remaining upper sector by length of residence in the country and by cultural differences. Groups within the elite socialize primarily among themselves.

Shared economic interests and business dealings bond the different segments of the elite. Other cultural factors also play a role. Intermarriage binds several of the elite families together, although usually without transgressing ethnic or religious boundaries. Religion also serves as a partial unifying force; a number of the oldest and most prominent Creole families share the Catholicism of the Mestizo commercial elite.

Because Belize City is the center of the nation's commercial life, the majority of elite families live or maintain a residence there, although some prominent families are based in the district towns. In Belize City, elite families live in the same ocean-front neighborhoods, belong to the same social clubs, and enjoy a similar lifestyle centered around the extravagant conspicuous consumption of imported goods.

Education also serves to unify the upper sector of society. Religious affiliation formerly largely determined which schools children attended. With the decline of the Anglican and Methodist school systems, most elite children, regardless of faith, attend two of Belize's premier Catholic institutions, which provide secondary and post-secondary education. Even after the expansion of secondary and postsecondary schooling in the districts, many of the elite district families continue to send their offspring to Belize City for higher education.

Despite the establishment of a local institution of higher education in 1985, most elite youth attend universities abroad. Their choice of institutions reflects the changing dominant metropolitan cultural orientation of Belizean society. British universities attracted many of the college-bound members of the Belizean elite in the colonial period, but by 1990 the majority pursued their higher education in the United States or, to a lesser extent, in the West Indies.