Guatemalan Invasion Crisis in British Honduras 1972

A new series of meetings between British and Guatemalan representatives, concerning the Guatemalan claims on the territory of the crown colony of British Honduras (renamed Belize on June 1, 1973), began in 1969. The talks broke down early in 1972 after Britain announced it was sending the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, the destroyer HMS London, and several frigates along with 8000 troops to Belize, and other parts of the Caribbean, to conduct amphibious exercises. Guatemala charged that the United Kingdom was sending menacing reinforcements to the colony. Guatemala responded by massing troops on the border; Guatemala claimed this military build-up along the border with British Honduras was in response to a guerilla ambush of a Guatemalan military patrol in the area.

Then President Sanchez Hernandez of El Salvador reportedly made a deal with the president of Guatemala, General Arana Osorio, to join an invasion of neighboring British Honduras. In return, El Salvador would have the right to settle half a million peasants in the territory of British Honduras over a ten-year period.

While at a meeting in Washington on March 20, 1972, representatives of the government of Guatemala protested against British actions, pointing out that, Britain had not removed its troops from the border, the negotiations were broken and Guatemala would take military action if Belize became independent. Britain maintained its position that it was responsible for defending Belize making it very difficult to reduce its troops under the circumstances.

The Organization of American States (OAS) then became involved in the dispute. At a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the OAS in April 1972, Guatemala tabled a resolution seeking the imposition of sanctions to force the removal of British troops from Belize, alleging that "they were poised to invade Guatemala." The government of the United Kingdom responded to the charge by repudiating Guatemala's claim and pointing out that it was the Guatemalan military posture that now required the British to permanently reinforce their contingent in British Honduras. Great Britain invited the OAS to send a military observer to investigate the nature of the British military presence; in May, the observer visited Belize and reported that the British presence was of a purely defensive character.

Although no violence resulted from the crisis, Britain thereafter increased the size of its regular garrison to act as a deterrent to future Guatemalan adventurism. The arrival of British military reinforcements in British Honduras seemed to have end whatever immediate invasion plans the Guatemalans may have developed.

References

Fighting Never Stopped, 435-6; El Salvador: The Face of Revolution, 61; Belize - A Country Study; Belize-Guatemala Territorial Issue.

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