Baron Bliss Lighthouse Crumbles Amid Neglect

As Belize marks a hundred years since the arrival of Baron Bliss, the question is, are we really honoring the memory of our greatest benefactor? The answer might shock you. The Baron Bliss Lighthouse, home to his tomb and once a vital guide for mariners, is in serious trouble. The structure is leaning, the seawall is crumbling, and the site has become a hotspot for drinking, drug use, even sexual activity. Public urination? That too. This historic monument is at risk of disappearing altogether. Historian Nicholas Sanchez says the neglect, the lack of information shared by tour guides, and even the repeated renaming of Baron Bliss Park where he was first buried, all point to a troubling disregard for Bliss’s legacy, and for the history that shaped Belize.

 

Nicholas Sanchez, Historian

“This is where we’re coming so short, that the, like you say, using it as a bathroom, that is terrible. They would never go anywhere else in the world and urinate at a monument like this. Yet nobody says anything and everybody thinks it’s my right to do. It’s not your right to destroy. We have seen them pass here just now and they didn’t even spend maybe two minutes here and I’m sure they’re not in such a hurry to show them the rest of Belize City that they have to get going. There was so much to say about Baron Bliss. This Lighthouse guides ships coming in and it’s an aid to mariners. Two flashes every five seconds or one flash every six seconds and Mariners would look and they see and say, yes, this is Belize. We should stay five hundred yards or five hundred meters, whatever from that light because you are in shallow water after that. So it is very important. It’s saving lives. It’s guiding Mariners. I, myself, as a Mariner can appreciate it. Then of course, this is where he’s buried. First he was buried over here in what is called the Bliss was called the Bliss Park, which is this still to me, the Bliss Park. I don’t know what they call it now. It has gone to a different name changes: Hubert Fuller Park, Animal Park, [San Cas Park]  And I don’t know what it is now.”

 

Shane Williams

“No, it’s the Laughing Bird Caye National Park.”

 

Nicholas Sanchez

“The laugh is on them. And those birds that they’re talk – on them, they are vultures. They’re John Crow.”