George Price
George Price spent thirty years getting Belize to independence and lost the first election after it. He had trained for the priesthood in Guatemala and the United States before returning to what was then British Honduras, and entered politics in 1950 when a devaluation of the local dollar - ordered from London without consultation - produced a nationalist movement overnight. He founded the People's United Party, was jailed briefly for sedition, and won every election from 1954 to 1984. Self-government came in 1964 and independence took another seventeen years, for one reason: Guatemala claimed the entire territory as a province, on the argument that Britain had never built the road promised in the treaty of 1859. Independence with an unsettled claim and no army was not a proposition anyone in Belize City could accept, so the campaign was fought at the United Nations rather than at home. He won it there. A general assembly resolution in 1980 backed Belizean independence within its existing borders by a very large majority, and the country became independent in September 1981 with a British garrison left behind to guarantee it - which stayed until 1994. The country he handed over was unusual for the region. It had no death squads, no coups and no political prisoners, and its population was a mixture of Creole, Maya, Garifuna and Spanish-speaking that he insisted on defining as Central American rather than Caribbean. He lost the 1984 election, returned as prime minister from 1989 to 1993, and retired without ever having owned a car or a house of his own. Guatemala recognised Belize in 1991; the border claim is still at the International Court of Justice.
- Lived: 1919 CE – 2011 CE
- Nationality: Belizean
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
