These two works are representative of the literature on this colony. The official report on British Honduras for 1962-63 achieves order through rigid categorization, while the Guatemalan publication by Gall is an implacable restatement of Guatemala’s rights to Belize with a heavily historical emphasis.
The report follows closely the format of previous years; specifically it is identical in many respects to the report for 1959-61. New statistics and circumstances are indicated. A general review of events of 1962-63 centers on a new constitution which aims at self-government. Then follow chapters on population, occupations, public finance and taxation, currency and banking, commerce, production, social services, legislation, justice, public utilities and public works, communications, press and information media, local militia, and archaeology. The concluding section has chapters on geography, history, administration, and weights and measures and a reading list. The report is thus a very useful handbook or almanac on British Honduras today, for either researchers or tourists.
Belice, nuestra tierra relates to the Belize dispute and dates from the presidency of Ydígoras Fuentes in Guatemala. According to the preface, the work was completed in March 1958, and is thus contemporaneous with the work of Ydígoras’ Foreign Minister, Carlos García Bauer, La controversia sobre el territorio de Belice y el procedimiento ex-aequo et bono (1958), which indicated a somewhat changed legal position for Guatemala in the dispute. Gall’s work represents more nearly the traditional Guatemalan approach and was finally published in 1962 toward the end of the Ydígoras administration. With one exception (L. E. Fisher, The Intendant System in Spanish America) Gall cites only Spanish language authorities through 1957, and only seven of these thirty were published outside of Guatemala. In accord with the preface date Gall does not mention a number of important works which came out between 1958 and 1961, García Bauer’s among them.
Leaving aside geographical description and appendices, the narrative of Gall’s work devotes more specific attention to Mexico (70 pp.) than to Great Britain (50 pp.), a reversal of the emphasis of most Guatemalan literature on the dispute. Spain’s role is considered in connection with both Mexico and Great Britain. The principal value of Gall’s work is that much of its discussion of the dispute is based on Guatemalan documentation which presents to some extent the viewpoints of late-nineteenth-century members of the Guatemalan government. The book would have been more useful if it had included the maps which it lists for an anexo cartagráfico.
