-1- Imports and Social Distinctions in Belize: From Colonialism to Consumerism Richard Wilk Introduction Belize is dependent on imports for most necessities as well as luxuries. While it has been politically independent since 1981, Belize has long been the most import-dependent country in Central America, more like a Caribbean island than a mainland country with extensive areas of agricultural land. 1 This paper asks how tastes and preferences for imported goods have been established and maintained, particularly in relation to changing class and ethnic boundaries. I argue that imported goods have become thoroughly naturalized into the Belizean class and status systems, in ways that present serious problems for recent efforts at import substitution and economic self-reliance. The research for this paper was done as part of a larger project concerned primarily with consumption and nation-building during the 1980s (Wilk 1990, 1995). My ethnographic and survey research on recent tastes and preferences for local and imported goods provide only background and contrast for this paper, which draws primarily on historical and archival data. I constructed a database using customs records from 1886 to 1990. As with the import data compiled in the Bauer and Orlove papers in this volume, changing measures and classifications presented some problems in collecting this data, and the accuracy of the figures is always in question (particularly for goods like liquor that were often smuggled). But Belize presents a special opportunity because imports were the sole source of many categories of goods, so the import figures measure total consumption. Other documents in the Belize archives, particularly old newspapers, were consulted, and life- history interviews with older urban and rural residents provided important information on diet, ethnic and class relations, and the social functions of particular kinds of goods. The Colonial Taste for Imports Unlike the nearby Spanish colonies, Belize did not have an indigenous set of products to compete with imported food; after the indigenous population was exterminated by the British in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was an enclave economy, producing purely for export and consuming almost no local products. The initial settlers of the area were the "Baymen," European (mostly British) buccaneers, outcasts and merchants, along with their African and Amerindian slaves, who cut logwood for export as a dyestuff. Later, mahogany became the principal export, while agriculture did not become a major source of exports until the twentieth century. The diet of the early settlers was based on flour and salted meat imported in casks from Europe and North America. Local foods hunted and gathered in the forests or grown on small farms must have been consumed as well, but they are rarely mentioned in travelers' accounts. But the bulk of their diet was imported; for most of the year they were occupied full time with cutting precious logwood. In 1675 Dampier reported that logwood cutters ate "Pig and Pork, and pease, or beef and dough-boys (dumplings)." They drank rum or rum punch. Sometimes the staple starch, wheat flour, was used as currency to buy logwood, as was rum (Masefield 1906:123, 186). During the nineteenth century the ethnic composition of the colony diversified. A mixed group of "Creole" and free colored emerged as a small middle class of functionaries and merchants, always subordinated to British expatriates and local whites. The top rank of the social scale consisted of foreign-born or educated staff who expected to make their fortune "in the Bay" and then retire to their home country (mostly England, though