One of the most vivid episodes in Xaibe’s early history took place in 1865, when the small Northern District village held a major fiesta that included traditional bullfighting. The celebration came after a year of poor harvests that had made the previous fiesta impossible. At the same time, the Icaiche Maya posed a constant threat from the west, and the recent importation of Chinese labourers was seen as a direct danger to local Maya and Mestizo jobs. In this climate of uncertainty, the 1865 fiesta was far more than entertainment. It fulfilled long-postponed religious obligations believed to bring divine protection and helped build solidarity between Maya and Mestizo residents who had often been at odds.
Historian Rosemary M. McNairn, in her 1998 article “Baiting the British Bull: A Fiesta, Trials, and Petition in Belize,” shows how the bullfights carried powerful symbolic weight. The bulls themselves may have represented British colonial authority, giving participants a safe way to express frustration with the government. British officials, however, completely missed this local meaning. To them the event was simply “entertainment”, an echo of the same class-based objections English authorities had once raised against the leisure activities of the poor back home.
The two sides were operating from entirely different cultural frameworks. After the fiesta ended, Magistrate Edwin Adolphus launched prosecutions against those involved.
The village responded swiftly with a petition signed by roughly 400 residents, firmly asserting their right to observe their religious customs. Adolphus dismissed the petition as a conspiracy orchestrated by his fellow magistrate, John Carmichael, insisting that the Maya and Mestizo signatories could not have acted without European prompting.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that English laws banning bullbaiting did not apply in Belize. The local legislature had the power to pass new legislation, but prosecutors advised against it, warning that any such move risked serious unrest.[1]