National Perspective Belize – Analysis & Commentary

www.nationalperspectivebz.com

Belize City: Saturday 15th November 2025

When Belmopan was carved out of the bush and declared the nation’s administrative capital in the 1970s, it survived not because of government vision, but because of the labour, resilience, and subsistence culture of the villages that surrounded it. San Martin, Maya Mopan, Las Flores, Salvapan, Riviera and the other rural clusters were the lungs, arms, and backbone that made Belmopan livable long before it earned the title “City.”

Today, that very City — still without a proper sewage system, with half of its neighbourhoods relying on septic tanks and open drains — has decided to weaponize municipal and public health laws against the same rural communities that kept it alive for decades.

Mayor Pablo Cawich’s latest enforcement drive against small livestock and poultry is not simply a bureaucratic exercise. It is a legal overreach, a social injustice, and a moral betrayal of the Maya and immigrant families whose cultura del campo is older than Belmopan itself.

And it exposes a far deeper hypocrisy: Belmopan wants the power of a modern city, but refuses the responsibilities that come with it.

A CITY WITHOUT COMPLETED SEWERS SHOULD NOT BE CRIMINALIZING CHICKENS

The Mayor claims to be “enforcing the law,” but conveniently ignores the realities on the ground:

• Belmopan is not fully urbanized.
• Large sections of the City — including Maya Mopan Extension, Salvapan and Las Flores — still function as rural settlements with rural livelihoods.
• The City Council has not provided the urban amenities it now demands from residents.

There is not a completed municipal sewer system.

There is inadequate waste management.

There are no proper public drains in the surrounding sub-urban.

There are no agricultural buffer zones.

And there is no zoning policy that accounts for peri-urban communities.

Yet the City is ready to fine a grandmother $200 for keeping six chickens on a fenced-off corner of her yard — chickens that feed her, sustain her dignity, and represent a cultural practice older than Belmopan’s birth.

That is not urban planning.

That is arrogance masked as law.

WHAT THE LAW ACTUALLY SAYS — AND DOES NOT SAY

The Public Health Act does NOT prohibit livestock in “city limits.”

It prohibits nuisances — meaning situations that create real, proven health hazards.

There is no clause that bans chickens, goats, or pigs simply because they exist.

The so-called “500-yard rule” that the Mayor keeps repeating appears nowhere in statute.

It comes from internal Ministry of Health guidelines, not law.

Guidelines cannot create criminal offences.

Under Belizean administrative law, enforcement must be:

1. rational

• proportional
• equitable
• based on evidence, not assumptions

This crackdown fails all four tests.

LEGITIMATE EXPECTATION: YOU CANNOT URBANIZE A RURAL COMMUNITY OVERNIGHT

Residents of San Martin, Salvapan, Maya Mopan and Las Flores have kept animals for decades — with the full knowledge and tolerance of the Belmopan City Council.

They cleared their land themselves, built their homes, and fed their children by raising chickens, pigs, ducks, and small livestock. Their way of life is not a hobby or an inconvenience — it is the very foundation of their economic survival.

Courts have recognized that when government tolerance forms part of a community’s long-standing reality, citizens develop a legitimate expectation that their livelihood will not suddenly be criminalized.

This is especially true for communities rooted in Maya subsistence traditions.

Belmopan’s “new enforcement” violates that principle.

A CASE-BY-CASE APPROACH IS ILLEGAL AND DISCRIMINATORY

The Mayor’s public statement that enforcement will be decided “case by case” is an open admission of unequal treatment.

Selective enforcement is unconstitutional under Section 6 of the Belize Constitution.

The poorest families — those unable to afford a lawyer or unable to protest — will bear the brunt. Meanwhile, larger, politically connected landowners who keep animals will be quietly exempted.

That is not justice.

That is class warfare disguised as urban development.

THE REAL PROBLEM IS NOT LIVESTOCK — IT IS THE CITY COUNCIL’S FAILURE TO PLAN

If horses are tied near school gates, that is negligence by specific owners, not an inherent danger of rural life.

If animals roam public spaces, that requires targeted enforcement, not a citywide ban.

If poultry effluent causes issues, that requires zoning policy, not the criminalization of backyard farming.

Belmopan has the legal authority to:

• create small livestock zones
• issue licenses
• designate community agricultural spaces
• provide sanitation education
• draft peri-urban regulations tailored to village realities

But rather than doing any of that work, the Council chose the easiest path:

• Punish the poor.
• Silence the rural voice.
• Force rural communities to live by urban rules without urban services.

THIS IS A MORAL BETRAYAL OF THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT BELMOPAN

The residents fighting this policy are not rebels.

They are the same people who:

• farmed vegetables that fed Belmopan
• raised families on subsistence income
• provided the labour that built the capital
• survived without government support
• and maintained the land long before Belmopan’s prestige grew

To turn around now and tell them:

“Your way of life is no longer welcome.”

is nothing short of a moral disgrace.

A capital city that still relies on latrines and septic tanks cannot pretend to be a gleaming “Garden City” and then punish its rural heart for existing.

Belmopan is trying to erase the very people whose labour gave it life.

THE WAY FORWARD — IF BELMOPAN IS SERIOUS ABOUT BEING A CITY

If City Hall wants to enforce livestock rules fairly, it must first:

1. Provide the services that justify urban regulation.

Sewage system, proper drains, zoning laws, waste infrastructure.

2. Conduct public consultation.

Required under natural justice.

3. Create mixed-use agricultural zones for peri-urban communities.

Respect the rural character of San Martin, Maya Mopan, Salvapan and Las Flores.

4. Introduce small-livestock licensing, not punishment.

A $25 license, not a $200 fine.

5. Stop attacking the poor to appear modern.

Urbanization without humanity is not development.

THE FINAL QUESTION

How can Belmopan criminalize chickens

when they cannot provide a complete comprehensive sewer system?

The answer lies in political convenience, not law.

And that is why the people of the surrounding villages — the people who built Belmopan with their hands, their sweat, and their culture — must stand firm against a policy that is not only legally flawed, but morally offensive.

Belmopan may want urban power.

But until it accepts urban responsibility,

it has no moral authority to police rural life.