Talk:Northern Belize

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Discussion for: Northern Belize • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Northern Belize is the cannabis growing area of the Orange Walk and Corozal districts of Belize: the growing that United States reports placed in the north of the country from the 1980s, and the fields destroyed there from 2012 to 2021. The spraying campaigns of 1983 to 1989 are treated on Herbicide spraying in Belize, and Belize's law on cannabis and its national figures on the country page. Growing in Toledo, in the Chiquibul and along the border with Guatemala is outside this page.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why Northern Belize is a growing area

The State Department's narcotics report of February 1986 (p. 48) says the glyphosate spraying of October 1985 was carried out "in the primary growing areas in northern Belize", in "several areas of northern Belize". Its report of March 1990 (p. 163) says "Cannabis cultivation centers in the northern and northwestern parts of the country", and (p. 165) that plots are found "increasingly in the north and west".
The paraquat spraying of October 1983 covered the Orange Walk, Corozal, Cayo and Toledo districts, as reported by the Belizean papers in the Joint Publications Research Service transcript of December 1983 (p. 35).
The Drug Enforcement Administration's brief of March 2000 says that cultivation "has been detected mainly in the Orange Walk District"; its profile of May 2001 says cultivation "traditionally has been detected primarily in Belize's northern Orange Walk District".
Belize's report to the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission for 2005–2006 (printed p. 11) names "the Northern District" as "the most cultivated area, followed by the Southern District of Toledo", with 53,000 plants destroyed in "the Orange Walk District (northern)" from January to September 2006.
Amandala (11 October 2013) places the fields of the January 2012 operation at Blue Creek, Honey Camp, Chiwa Camp and Little Belize "in the north". Breaking Belize News reports fields destroyed in Orange Walk District (2015, 2018, 2019, 2021) and Corozal District (2015, 2016, 2019, 2021).

How the border is drawn

The map border is the union of Orange Walk District and Corozal District as OpenStreetMap draws them (admin relations 962355 and 962356), about 7,090 km² before the open water is cut. The two districts are the units the sources name, and every place the press reports name for a field lies inside them.
The line's outer edge was checked for ground above 4,000 m, bare or sparse ground, snow and ice and open water. The Corozal district line runs out over Corozal Bay and Chetumal Bay; that open water, about 660 km², is left out, and the area becomes about 6,430 km², the infobox figure. No land is left out. The village of Consejo stands on the shore, on the line itself.
The sources write of "northern Belize", "the north" and "the Northern District" without naming a boundary. The page takes the two northern districts as the area; the reports for Cayo (Arenal, Cotton Tree) and for Belize District (Lucky Strike, Rhaburn Ridge) are not included.
The point in the infobox is the centre of the two districts, not a field.

Growing status

Active: the Drug Enforcement Administration (2000, 2001), Belize's report for 2005–2006 and the press from 2013 to 2021 report cannabis grown and destroyed in the two districts. No source says the growing has ended.

Place names

Blue Creek, Little Belize and Neuland, named in the reports, are settlements of Mennonites. The reports locate fields near or at these places; only one (Breaking Belize News, 4 January 2019) names the community, as "the Neuland Mennonite Community", in placing a field about three miles north-west of the settlement. None of the reports says who planted the fields. The article names the places as each report does and says nothing about the communities.
Breaking Belize News spells the village Nueland on 28 October 2018 and Neuland on 4 January 2019; the article uses Neuland, except where the earlier report's spelling is quoted.
Amandala writes "San Pedro, Colombia" for the southern fields of January 2012; the village is San Pedro Columbia, in Toledo District.
Santa Martha appears twice: as the Santa Martha road, on the outskirts of Orange Walk Town (17 September 2015), and as Santa Martha village (20 July 2021).

Source discrepancies

January 2012. Amandala of 11 October 2013 dates this operation to "January last year", which the article gives as January 2012. Its totals (35,707 plants, 24 plantations) cover the northern and the southern fields together and are given as such.
Santa Rita, July 2015. The headline and opening of Breaking Belize News (30 July 2015) give "more than 2,000" plants; the body gives a field of 2,500 plants, which the article uses.
Plants destroyed, 1997–2000. The Drug Enforcement Administration's two briefs give different national totals for the same years (1998: 178,719 and 202,803; 1999: 300,900 and 270,136). Neither gives figures by district, and neither total is used here.

Sources

Drug Enforcement Administration. DEA-20006 (March 2000) and DEA-01010 (May 2001), in the National Archives' harvest of the DEA website of 2004.
State Department. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, February 1986 and March 1990, in the scans of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
Breaking Belize News and Amandala. Eleven reports of fields destroyed in the two districts, 2015 to 2021, and the Amandala account of the joint operations of 2012 and 2013.

Other reports

The State Department's report for 2003 mentions an aircraft suspected of carrying cocaine that landed in "the Northern District of Blue Creek", and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2012) names Orange Walk in connection with trafficking. These concern trafficking, not growing, and are not used.
A US Department of Defense account of a joint eradication operation of March 2014 (34 fields, about 57,283 plants), relayed by Breaking Belize News (7 April 2014), and a joint operation of October 2015 (almost 51,000 plants, "remote areas across the country") do not name districts and are not used.

Open questions

Eradication figures by district after 2006, from the Belize Police Department or the National Drug Abuse Control Council, would show how the share of the north has changed.
Channel 5 Belize has reported eradication in the north, among them 875 plants destroyed "in northern Belize"; those reports are not cited here and may date further fields.