Orange Walk Town

In Maya times the area was known as Holpatin, and the district holds some of the oldest Maya sites in Belize, among them Cuello, an early farming village, and Lamanai, upriver, occupied for some 3,000 years. The Maya here met Europeans in the 1530s and fought them over land for long afterwards; Spanish friars built churches at Lamanai, but a Maya revolt drove them out.

The modern town began as a stop on the New River for logwood, mahogany and chicle workers, who used the river to float their products to the sea and halted at a logging camp called Orange Walk. In the 19th century it was a small settlement of thatched and wooden houses, mostly on the west bank. From 1848 Maya and Mestizo refugees fleeing the Caste War of Yucatán arrived in large numbers and settled in the town and the villages around it, bringing sugar cane with them.

On 1 September 1872 a force of Icaiche Maya led by Marcos Canul crossed from Mexico and attacked the town in the Battle of Orange Walk, after long disputes with the British authorities over land and rent; Canul was mortally wounded and his men withdrew. The colonial authorities later dug trenches around the settlement, and a monument to Canul now stands beside the town barracks. In 1963 a sugar mill opened, drawing migrant workers from other districts and neighbouring countries, and the town grew into the centre of Belize's sugar industry.

Despite its English name, Orange Walk is overwhelmingly Mestizo and Spanish-speaking, the least ethnically diverse town in Belize. Its traditions came with the Maya and Mestizo refugees from Yucatán, and the town lies on the main road between Belize City and Chetumal in Mexico. English is the most used language, but almost everyone speaks Spanish to some extent.

Religion is important to most residents. About two-thirds are Roman Catholic, and the town's churches include La Inmaculada, one of its historic sites; evangelical congregations are numerous, with preachers often seen in the streets, and around fifty churches are registered in the Orange Walk area.

The Mennonite colonies of Shipyard, founded in 1958, and Blue Creek lie in the district and keep their own ways. Most speak Plautdietsch, a Low German dialect; the more traditional, as in Shipyard, wear distinctive clothing and travel by horse and buggy, while others, such as Blue Creek, have modernised to various degrees. At the 2010 census about one in ten of the town's residents spoke German.

Orange Walk had a population of about 13,400 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth-largest town in Belize. Nicknamed "Sugar City", it lives from cane: the Tower Hill sugar factory nearby handles all the country's sugar-cane output, and rum is distilled from local cane, mostly for the home market. Other farming and tourism, mainly ecotourism, add to one of Belize's strongest local economies, and the town's poverty rate is the second-lowest in the country.

Most people live in their own houses, many built in the 1990s of cement block, and the town's homes are among the best kept in Belize, though some plots lie abandoned. The streets are well paved, with traffic lights at the main junctions, and the town has parks, sports grounds, a regional hospital, several high schools and campuses of the University of Belize and Galen University.

The day starts early around the market, and during the cane season heavy trucks crowd the highway. Because the town sits midway between Belize City and Chetumal, buses and tour coaches pass through constantly. Its closeness to Mexico has also made the district a centre of drug trafficking.

Orange Walk's food shows its Yucatán roots. Salbutes, puffed fried tortillas topped with chicken, tomato and other toppings and originally from the Yucatán Peninsula, are sold along Main Street, and tacos from street carts are the standard breakfast in the market area. Panades, garnaches and tamales are everyday snacks, and chimole, a soup, is among the midday dishes. Maya dishes have a restaurant of their own in town.

The Belizean staples are here too: chicken, barbecued or stewed, with rice and beans, flour tortillas and potato salad. Chinese restaurants are common across Belize, and La Popular Bakery has supplied the town with bread and Mexican-style sweet breads and pastries since 1955.

Sugar shapes what people drink as well. Rum is made from local cane by several refineries and is mostly drunk within Belize rather than exported, and a few riverside bars on the New River serve drinks beside the water.