2. Guatemalan acknowledgement of British title to the whole of
British Honduras (Belize)

121. After 1850, there are numerous illustrations of Guatemalan acknowledgement of British title to British Honduras.

122. The first to be mentioned is the Boundary Map of 1861 showing the names "Guatemala" and "British Honduras" over the relevant territories and bearing the signature of the Guatemalan Commissioner.

123. On 10 May 1887 Guatemala protested at what was seen by it as a trespass on its territory in the neighbourhood of Plancha de Piedra in the region of Petén. As the Collector of Revenue at Petén put it:

      ". . . I have just learnt from the Commander of the Revenue Guard of Plancha de Piedra, that on that side the said Colony has marked its limits some 1000 yards from the boundary line formerly known as being within our territory, towards the west, and from the same boundary line on our territory towards the north some 5 leagues, more or less."

The Guatemalan Minister, in forwarding this information to the British Legation in Guatemala said:

      "I have considered it right to inform you of the foregoing, trusting that you will take such steps as you may deem advisable, in order that, should the advances mentioned . . . have been effected, HMG may give the necessary orders to prevent the same in the future."

This is not the language of a Government that disputes the validity of the title of its neighbouring State to the adjacent territory on the other side of the border. It can only be regarded as evidence of Guatemalan acquiescence in the title of Britain to British Honduras.

124. When, in July 1896, discussions took place between the British Minister to Guatemala and the President of Guatemala regarding the possibility of the construction of a railway line connecting the Guatemalan province of Petén with the Atlantic coast in British Honduras, the President indicated his willingness in principle to grant the concession for the line within Guatemala and raised no question regarding the title of Britain to British Honduras. Nor did any reservation or qualification regarding title to British Honduras appear in the letter from the President of 18 January 1897 defining the conditions "with regard to the construction of a railway from the Department of Petén, on the frontier of British Honduras, to the first of the important cities of the said littoral". The President was assassinated soon afterwards and there was a change of government in Guatemala. The idea was pursued for a while; for example in the form of a request by the Guatemalan Minister for Foreign Affairs for a copy of the report of a survey of the route carried out by British engineers. Again, no reservation was made by Guatemala as to British title to British Honduras.

125. In 1897 there was an implied acknowledgement of the title of Britain to
British Honduras in the letter of the President of Guatemala of 18 January in which he defined the conditions which his Government would be prepared to make "with regard to the construction of a railway from the Department of Petén, on the frontier of British Honduras, to the first of the important cities of the littoral". Negotiations were pursued between Guatemala and a private British company in 1901, but nothing came of them.

126. In 1902 the Guatemalan commandant stationed at a village just beyond the frontier at Garbutt's Falls requested permission to pass through a part of the territory of British Honduras for the purpose of proceeding to Yolloché, a place in Mexico. Permission was refused. The episode reflects Guatemalan acceptance of the non-Guatemalan status of British Honduras.

127. Sometime after May 1908 Guatemala raised with Britain a question relating to the opening and clearing of part of the boundary between Plancha de Piedra and Benque Viejo. Britain replied that the failure to inform Guatemala was an oversight.

128. In 1916, there was a further incident on the border which led to a Guatemalan protest and a British reply on 2 November.

129. In 1920, there appears to have been a joint survey of the boundary by engineers appointed by Guatemala and British Honduras.

130. On 15 February 1923 Guatemala instructed its Consul in Belize to approach the Government of British Honduras regarding the possible joint demarcation of the boundary, but this suggestion appears to have been declined by Britain.

131. The suggestion was then made by Guatemala, in response to a British proposal for demarcation, made on 5 December 1924, that British engineers should carry out the work and that it should be inspected by Guatemalan engineers before being approved.

132. On 31 March 1925 Britain put forward a 17 point proposal for the procedure
of demarcation, which was accepted by Guatemala on 21 January 1926 subject to five observations. The fifth of these read:

     "The significance and comprehension of the present agreement are exclusively confined to the demarcation of the above mentioned boundary."

This condition can serve only to reinforce the pattern of acceptance that there was some boundary between Guatemala and British Honduras - an acceptance that implied that British Honduras was entitled to the territory over which it exercised authority as far south as the Sarstoon. Mendoza reports that Britain accepted the Guatemalan proposal for the participation of Guatemalan commissioners; subject to certain changes which were accepted by Guatemala on 4 June 1926.

133. In July 1927 Britain requested permission for one of its surveyors to cross to the southern bank of the Sarstoon River to make astronomical observations. Permission was granted on 2 August 1927.

134. On 8 August 1927 Guatemala agreed that ocular inspection of the boundary might be carried out at the beginning of the dry season, but the details were not settled.

135. On 3 January 1929 Guatemala informed Britain that its engineers would be
ready to join the British engineers at the Sarstoon on 15 January, and so took place the surveys which were recorded in the 1931 Exchange of Notes.

136. Reference may also be made to the acceptance of the boundary reflected in Guatemalan participation in the survey that led to the 1931 Exchange of Notes.

3. Absence of any Guatemalan presence in the area before and after 1850

137. Now what conduct of Guatemala in relation to the area prior to 1850, or at all, can be set against the indications given above of the extent of British settlement and action there?

138. The only positive items of Guatemalan conduct that can be traced are two
grants of land made in 1834 that included areas that fall within the limits claimed by Britain for British Honduras.

139. One was made to a British company, the Eastern Coast of Central America
Commercial and Agricultural Company. This company was granted some 14 million acres in the Guatemalan province of Verapaz - a grant which included the whole of the area of British Honduras between the Sibun and the Sarstoon. A map of 1837 illustrating the grant shows no Guatemalan settlements or towns in the area. The British company was warned by the British Government in 1835 that if it received from a foreign Government a grant of land "which is included within the limits of a British settlement, such persons must take the consequences of their connivance with the encroaching pretensions of such foreign Government". And in 1836 the Company was officially informed of the limits of the territory claimed by Britain as belonging to the British settlements in the Bay of Honduras. The Company failed within a few years and its charter was forfeited. There is no indication of any further attempt by Guatemala to grant these lands.

140. The other grant was made to a certain Colonel Galindo, an Irishman, who was
a British subject. This lay between the Belize and the Hondo rivers. Galindo was no more successful than the British company. He attempted to interest a Dutch company in his venture. This led Britain to inform the Dutch Government "in the most formal manner" that Britain denied the right of Guatemala to grant, and of Galindo to occupy, the lands in question. Galindo's venture ended in 1840 when he was killed in a battle.

141. We recall here the maxim actori incumbit probatio. The burden rests upon Guatemala to prove its claims. Guatemala must show that it acquired from Spain the title that it now asserts. As yet, apart from the two grants just mentioned, Guatemala has never produced any evidence of having done anything since it became independent of Spain in 1821 to establish that it might have possessed authority over, or been in actual possession of, any part of the present territory of Belize. Guatemala has done no more than assert, by virtue of its own succession to the Captaincy-Generalship of Guatemala and the doctrine of uti possidetis, that it acquired a notional title to or authority over Belize. Guatemala has not shown that the authority of the Captaincy-Generalship of Guatemala extended to the area of what is now Belize, either in theory or, more to the point, in fact. And as regards the area south of the River Sibun it is appropriate to note the observation made by the Guatemalan Constitutional Court in its 1992 judgment mentioned above to the effect that "the lack of people made it difficult to carry out monitoring and surveillance to protect the territory".

- Maps of Guatemala

142. Reference may be made to maps which from time to time purport to show the extent of Guatemala. They may be treated as evidence of the general understanding of the position and, in some cases, also of official understanding. The absence from them of any indication of Guatemalan settlement or activity in the area confirms what is already evident, namely, that the area was never - and was never believed, even by Guatemala, to have been - in its possession.

143. A map dated 1775 entitled "The Bay of Honduras" by Thos. Jeffreys places
the words "The Logwood Cutters" stretching across the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. It shows no settlements in the rest of what was to become British Honduras. The name "Verapaz" is drawn west to east across an area to the south of Coban - a location in Guatemala. Coban is the only town that appears in this part of the map.

144. A map dated 1825, edited by Brué, Paris, entitled "Carte Générale des États Unis Mexicains et des Provinces-Unies de l'Amérique Centrale", places the name "Colonie Anglaise" north of the River Belize and the name "Vera-Paz" across an area extending from Guatemala north-eastwards into the southern part of British Honduras. But the nearest marked Guatemalan towns are Coban and Cahabon, both to the west of what came to be agreed as the western boundary of British Honduras.

145. A map of 1 March 1827 published in London by James Wyld, Geographer to His Majesty and the Duke of York, is entitled "Mexico and Guatemala, showing the Position of the Mines". It carries the words "British Settlements" across the area north of the River Sibun. The area to the south of that river and south-east of the mountain range, extending southwards to the Gulf of Dulce carries the name "Vera Paz". But there is no indication of any Guatemalan town or settlement in that area other than the town of "Cahaban", well to the south of the River Gorda. This town appears on later Guatemalan maps as "Cajabon", much further to the west and well inside what is indisputably Guatemalan territory. A later edition of the same map, published in 1873, clearly shows the 1859 boundaries and inserts the name Sarstoon against the river of that name, which was unnamed in the earlier edition. Even then, however, there is no indication of any significant named Guatemalan location east of Cahaban and certainly none east of the 1859 border.

146. A map, dated 1832, of the Departamento de Verapaz, by M. Rivera Maestre, engraved in Guatemala, marks the name "Verapaz" vertically from north to south within Guatemala and as hardly touching the southern part of British Honduras. It does not show any Guatemalan settlement anywhere in the eastern area between the rivers Hondo and Sarstoon (unnamed). The most easterly town in Verapaz is Cajabon. This appears to be the map referred to in the geographical description of the area of the 1834 Concession and it is also the one referred to in the award in the Guatemala/Honduras Boundary case, 1933, as being an officially published map.

147. In 1837 the Directors of the British Company of Agriculture, Commerce and Colonisation produced a map of the "Territory of Verapaz ceded by the Federal Government of Central America" to the Directors of the Company. The copy of the map held in the Royal Geographical Society in London shows the boundaries of the Territory. The coastal littoral north of the Sarstoon and east of the Cham or Chiman Mountains and south of the Cockscomb Mountains bears no names of Guatemalan settlement, the whole of that southern area carrying only the description "District of Livingston", Livingston being a named place marked just south of the mouth of the Sarstoon.

148. Reference should again be made to the 1861 Boundary Map signed by both the British and Guatemalan demarcation Commissioners.

149. There is an 1876 map of Guatemala, the significance of which derives from
the fact that it is stated to be "Levantado y publicado por orden del Smo. Gobierno ("made and published by order of the Government"), prepared by Herman Au, engineer, engraved and printed in Hamburg by Charles Fuchs and published by L. Friederichsen & Co, Hamburg. It also carries the notation "Depositado para Centro-Americano con los Sres. Hockmeyer & Co. in Guatemala and Retaluleu". The scale is 1:700,000. The map clearly shows the southern boundary line along the River Sarstoon and from the point of the meeting between that river and the River Gracias á Dios, the straight line drawn in a north-north-westerly direction. The region to the east of the boundary is called "Belize". There is no indication of any Guatemalan town or settlement in the area south of the River Sibun (or, indeed, elsewhere in Belize). The area of the Republic is stated to be 38,800 square miles and manifestly does not include Belize.

150. A map of 1881 of "Les Isthmes Interocéaniques d'après la Carte publicée par le Commodore Ammen dans le Bulletin de la Societé de Géographie Américaine" simply labels the whole area of British Honduras as "Yucatan Anglais" and shows no Guatemalan settlements in the south of the area.

151. A "croquis", dated 1887, showing "Los Limites de la Republica de Guatemala" by E. Rockstroh shows the boundary as laid down in the 1859 Convention. No Guatemalan settlement is shown east of the western boundary of British Honduras.

152. An undated (probably late 19th century) map of Guatemala, drawn by J.
Gavarette and published by Machado, Yrigoyen y Ca shows the whole territory of Guatemala, but depicts quite clearly the boundaries of British Honduras under the name "Colonie de Belize" in accordance with the 1859 Convention. It contains no indication of Guatemalan presence in British Honduras.

Back to Menu