[1] Political and economic power remain vested in the hands of a relatively small local elite, most of whom are either white, light-skinned Creole, or Mestizo.
The principal economic interests of the elite include commercial and financial enterprises, retail trade, local manufacturing, the state apparatus, and, to a much lesser extent, export agriculture.
The next group consists of Creole and Mestizo commercial and professional families whose ancestors first came to political and economic prominence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[2] The more recently arrived Chinese and Indian families comprise another elite group, distinguished from the remaining upper sector by length of residence in the country and by cultural differences.
Religion also serves as a partial unifying force; a number of the oldest and most prominent Creole families share the Catholicism of the Mestizo commercial elite.
In Belize City, elite families live in the same ocean-front neighborhoods, belong to the same social clubs, and enjoy a similar lifestyle centered around the extravagant conspicuous consumption of imported goods.
With the decline of the Anglican and Methodist school systems, most elite children, regardless of faith, attend two of Belize's premier Catholic institutions, which provide secondary and post-secondary education.
British universities attracted many of the college-bound members of the Belizean elite in the colonial period, but by 1990 the majority pursued their higher education in the United States or, to a lesser extent, in the West Indies.
The Protestant-educated Creole middle class opposed the movement's anti-British, multicultural ethos and the projection of a Central American destiny for Belize.
These influences stem not only from the formal education system, but also from the popular culture of North America conveyed through cinema, magazines, radio, television, and migration.
Beginning with the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, middle- and working-class Creole youth increasingly adopted an Afrocentric cultural consciousness that distinguished them both from their elders and other ethnic groups in Belizean society.
These people share, in addition to poverty and generally poor living conditions, severely limited access to land, higher education, or any other opportunity to change their marginal status.
Because the government generally awards scholarships according to academic performance rather than financial need, most poor Belizean families continued to lack access to education beyond the primary level.
Female workers generally receive lower incomes than their male counterparts, and women experience a much higher unemployment rate than men.
More privileged members of Belizean society tend to categorize baseboys and basegirls as criminals and delinquents, although the only thing many are guilty of is lacking opportunities for education and meaningful work.
At the very bottom of both the rural and urban social hierarchies are illegally present Central Americans who are employed in the lowest paid, least desirable occupations, such as unskilled labor in the sugar, citrus, banana, and marijuana industries.
[4] Belize has adopted wholeheartedly, and with much popular support, the rhetoric and practices of the ideologies of development and consumerism, twin hallmarks of a modernizing society.
Once revered as a scarce privilege guaranteeing social advancement, education is now perceived as a birthright and an essential tool for entering the job market.
[5] Education, migration, and shifts in economic activity have enhanced the power and influence of previously marginal social groups and regions, particularly the Mestizos who inhabited the northern districts.
Emigration to metropolitan countries often siphoned off people with the highest qualifications and the most ambitions, while immigration from neighboring republics promised to reshape the cultural orientation and, quite literally, the complexion of Belizean society.