Characters and Caricatures

This book is about characters found in folktales that are well-known in Belize. The material was compiled from interviews with several persons and a review of written sources from Belize, Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. Then came the difficult tasks: firstly, to reconstruct details about the main characters – where they originated, their primary activities, the antidotes applicable against them; and secondly, to do the narratives in a manner that retains much of the originality and mystery.

The end product is an eminently readable text with its own infectious style that carries the reader from start to finish. Copies of the originally hand-drawn illustrations and the built-in reports of the encounters with the characters themselves increase the appeal of CHARACTERS AND CARICATURES IN BELIZEAN FOLKLORE to a large cross-section of the reading public.

These narratives form a part of Belizean folklore – the sum total of myths, omens, legends, proverbs, riddles, songs, poems, sayings, dreams, and beliefs, that exist among us. Usually confined to the oral medium, folklore is insufficiently reflected in the literature that has overtaken Belize within the past decade, resulting in the proliferation of novels, short stories, poems, and journals.

But folklore is also a part of literature. It is that part which is not normally read in schools but more often told at informal gatherings, such as wakes. Its aficionados are not usually well-schooled ladies and gentlemen; rather they are the small fisherman and farmer or the older folk to whom one may not even pay attention. It does not end with a final copyright; rather it grows taking its own inspiration from the creativity of the teller, the mood of his audience, and the nature of the setting. It reaches far into the inner character of the Belizean person; it is dynamic and rootsy.