Thousands of refugees had fled to the…

Thousands of refugees had fled to the British settlement of Belize during the Caste War in the Yucatan, a devastating struggle that halves the population of the area between 1847 and 1855.

The Legislative Assembly gives large landowners in the colony firm titles to their vast estates in 1855 but does not allow the Maya to own land.

The Maya can only rent land or live on reservations.

Nevertheless, most of the refugees are small farmers who, by 1857, are growing considerable quantities of sugar, rice, corn, and vegetables in the Northern District (now Corozal and Orange Walk districts).

In 1857 the town of Corozal, founded six years earlier, has forty-five hundred inhabitants, second in population only to Belize Town, which has seven thousand inhabitants.

Some Maya, who had fled the strife in the north but have no wish to become subjects of the British, settle in the remote area of the Yalbac Hills, just beyond the woodcutting frontier in the northwest.

By 1862 about a thousand Maya have established themselves in ten villages in this area, with the center in San Pedro.