Marketing Culture and the Belizean Nation: Blackness, Indigeneity, and Multicultural Performance

Abstract:

This article examines how the Belizean nation and national belonging are constructed in the representational politics of Belizean Belikin Beer campaign advertisements. In 2012, Belikin Beer released a series of commercials showcasing the “culture of Belize,” while addressing themes related to Belizean national identity, labor, heritage, and commemoration. Contrary to national constructions of Belize as a multicultural and plural society, the Belizean identity performed in Belikin’s campaign located Belize within an ambiguous regional geography, portraying it as a unique site within Central America and the broader Circum-Caribbean that provides the space for the reconciliation of diasporic and transnational Black and Indigenous identities. Belize provides a complex framework for the examination of Central American Caribbean identities and the utilization of Blackness and Indigeneity by the tourism industry. In tourism industry-driven cultural projects, competing ideals of Belizean identity, Belizean Blackness(es) and Indigeneities are heightened in new media and cultural productions that draw on the peculiarities of Belizean ethnic relations and ideology of national identity.