· January, 2006

Stories about Belize from January, 2006

The Caribbean Single Market

  31 January 2006

It's rare to find Caribbean bloggers across different islands talking about the same issue at the same time, but one would have thought that yesterday's historic signing in Jamaica of the document ratifying the Caribbean Single Market (CSM), might have created a little buzz. That, however, is exactly what it...

Caribbean: The Taíno & Catholicism

  31 January 2006

Indigenous issues blog Voice of the Taino people links to an article entitled “Christianity, Capitalism, Corporations, and the Myth of Dominion”, noting that the “Roman” Catholic Church still has not properly addressed the call by the Taíno and other Indigenous Peoples world wide for the revocation of the 1493 Inter-Ceatera...

Belize: Flooding and highways

31 January 2006

Caribbean Colors ventures out on to the highways and byways of Belize during the recent flooding, and takes some photos.

Belize: Friends and business

31 January 2006

Simone posts Part 4 of her “Moving to Belize” guide, and solicits input from people who've “tried to set up a business abroad with friends”.

Caribbean: McWatt wins literary prizes

  30 January 2006

The Caribbean Beat Blog announces that Guyanese writer Mark McWatt has taken both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book in the Canada/Caribbean region, and the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize for Caribbean literature in English or Creole.

Belize: Flooding

26 January 2006

Belizean – Belize News reports on heavy rains in Belize on Tuesday which led to flooding and disruption of traffic. The western highway, which connects the northern and central parts of Belize with Belmopan, the capital, was shut down for several hours and a passenger bus and a truck were...

Belize: No comment on contraband

24 January 2006

The Belize News Blog is reporting that the Comptroller of Customs is refusing to talk to the media about what appears to be persistent corruption among customs officers working on the Belize-Mexico border, who have been accused of confiscating loads of contraband goods and reselling them to local merchants.  The...

Caribbean: A blogger's book awards

  16 January 2006

For the fourth year in a row, Trinidadian Nicholas Laughlin publishes the “Nicholas Laughlin Book Awards” for Caribbean books — “i.e. books written by Caribbean authors, set in the Caribbean, or otherwise of particular Caribbean interest”. As interesting as the selections is Laughlin's analysis of his own reading patterns over...

Caribbean: Caribbeing

  13 January 2006

“In this CSME time. In this time of dancehall self-righteousness versus soca wutlessness. In this time when Trinis don't want to hear about “small islanders” reaching to the Billboard charts with soca music. In this time when Haitians still call out for our help and we still studiously ignore them....

11 key moments in [Anglo-]Caribbean blog history

  13 January 2006

THE INTERNET ARCHIVE IS preserving copies of many early blog pages, but most bloggers are too busy posting to think about otherwise documenting what they're doing. The history of the blogosphere goes back barely a decade, but evolution has been rapid, and bloggers who were around just three or four...

Caribbean: Plays, pantomimes, identity

  13 January 2006

The Caribbean Beat Blog solicits opinions on a newspaper review of this year's Jamaica pantomime, encourages Caribbean bloggers to engage in a “round of collective soul-searching” and publishes “outtakes” from an article in the current issue of the magazine.

Caribbean: Art, film & the Seven Caribbean Wonders

  12 January 2006

The Caribbean Beat Blog links to to a conversation between the director of Jamaica's National Gallery and the guest curator of a current exhibition; an article about a Hollywood film made on location in Grand Cayman by a young Caymanian director; and solicits input for a list of the “Seven...

Caribbean: Best to quote Best

  12 January 2006

Nicholas Laughlin finds he could have saved himself the work of writing his long post about “Caribbeanness” simply by quoting renowned Caribbean thinker Lloyd Best.

Belize: First export of oil

12 January 2006

Melody reports that, following the discovery of oil in commercial quantities late last year, Belize will make its first export of crude oil to the USA later this week.

Caribbean: Wayback when

  11 January 2006

The Caribbean Beat Blog has some fun with the Wayback Machine, linking to early – and in a few cases embarrassing – incarnations of a few Caribbean web sites.

Caribbean: What does the word before the colon mean?

  10 January 2006

“What does “Caribbean” mean? What a vast weight of confusion & possibility & debate those four little syllables have to bear,” says Nicholas Laughlin in a thoughtful post inspired by a long-gone writing deadline, by the debates around the restructuring of the Global Voices “Americas” region, and by Taran Rampersad's...