47 CULTURAL CHANGE IN GALES POINT MANATEE: AUTO-ETHNO- GRAPHIC REFLECTIONS FROM A COMMUNITY MEMBER Myrna Manzaneres “National Kriol Council, Belize History Association, Belize” Rolando Cocom Institute for Social and Cultural Research (ISCR/NICH) This report seeks to present an interpretive perspective of cultural change in the African descent community of Gales Point Manatee, Belize. The paper is empirically based on the biography and observations of Myrna Manzanares (co-author) who has participated in many cultural research and initiatives in the community. The themes addressed include language, spiritualism, social mores, music, dance, and social problems. One of the signiicance of this report is that it provides readers with an introductory text to the cultural practices and cultural changes occurring in the community. A second importance of this research is that it may be useful for future studies seeking to understand the processes of cultural change and cultural identity in the community and by extension in Belize. KEYWORDS: Cultural change, Creole, creolization, auto-ethnography, Gales Point Manatee INTRODUCTION The analysis of cultural change in Belize has been a ield of concentrated interest among scholars from a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, and anthropology (Bolland, 2003; Cocom, 2013; Iyo, 2000; Shoman, 2010; Wilk, 2002). This interest is also relected in the public sphere where many cultural groups, organizations, and initiatives (e.g. “Local Cultural Groups”, NICH) have been established to address how Western inluences (e.g. capitalism , technology, and religious movements) are impacting the way cultural festivities, language, and local cuisines, among other cultural forms, are practiced in Belize. In the last few years, there has been an initiative spearheaded by the National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) to sensitize communities about the importance of safeguarding Belize’s intangible cultural heritage. One of the maxims of the initiative is to place community members at the forefront of how cultural practices are documented, represented, and safeguarded for future generations. While we agree that culture is a dynamic and ever changing set of overt and covert practices, the analysis of ‘cultural change’ in the social sciences is considered a useful ield towards understanding the processes which shape current group identities and contemporary social contexts (Bolland, 2003; Iyo, 2000). The analysis of cultural change allows us to interrogate the historical and social forces at play in communities and to address how these changes have been interpreted and represented in public and academic discourse. In Belize, the processes of cultural change among African descendants in particular continues to be debated in creolization studies and African diaspora studies (Bolland, 2003; Iyo, 2000; Macpherson, 2003) which provide us various models of comprehending cultural change from anthropological and historical perspectives. Without pursuing an in-depth analysis of the existing literature, it is hoped that this auto- ethnographic report will contribute to the project of analyzing the cultural changes in the village of Gales Point Manatee (GPM), Belize. The paper is empirically based on the biography and observations of Myrna Manzanares (co-author) who has participated in many cultural research and initiatives in her birthplace of GPM (Hyde, 2012; Manzanares, 2006; Wade, Herrera, Woods, & Manzanares, 2005). The research is viewed as an interpretive contribution to the ield of cultural change and may be useful as an introductory text to GPM and as an ethnographic source for future research. It presents a narrative that is rooted in Manzanares’s individual experience, intellectual knowledge, and shaped by her current concerns and aspirations as a researcher and a cultural activist. The function of the co-author (Rolando Cocom) in this report was to organize the academic frame from which to present this narrative, a version of which was presented at the 6 th annual Belize Archeology and Anthropology Symposium (BAAS, 2014). In order to retain as much as possible the perspective of Manzaneres’s narrative, limited editing was carried out on