High Adventure

from HEY DAD, THIS IS BELIZE! by Emory King (abridged)

The Atayde Brothers Circus visited Belize in the late twenties. It was around the same time Lindbergh flew into Belize City with his famous plane. They set up their tent near Memorial Park, and when the people of Belize saw what was inside they rushed the place by the thousands.

Animals! Boys, there were elephants, camels, show horses, polar bears, lions, tigers from India, and even giraffes. On the 10th of September the circus band marched through the streets and we almost had a riot.

And a regular band it was too. All the members had uniforms with gold braid and wore high hats and marched like soldiers. The leader of the band was a Mexican Army Major named Ismael G. Amaton. He was on the wrong side in some revolution in Mexico in those days and had been forced to run away and join the circus to keep from being killed.

Every weekend people came from all over to see the circus. There were clowns, performing horses, acrobats from El Salvador, trapeze artists, beautiful German girls dressed all in spangles and tights, who rode bicycles. It was a sight for the people of Belize.

Well boys, the circus stayed around Belize City for about two months, giving shows every weekend to packed audiences. But a funny thing happened. The circus went broke.

Nobody knows why. Maybe someone ran off with the cash. But the circus did not have the money to move on. Little by little, a few of the circus people left. Some went to Honduras and Guatemala. Some went back to Mexico. A few stayed on in Belize.

When there was only about 50 people left, with all the animals and equipment, they decided to sell what they could and rent a boat to take them to Progresso.

A storm came up when the boat, which looked like Noah’s Ark, got as far as Caye Caulker’s northern point. They could not go out to sea, so they came up to San Pedro and landed.

Well, if you ever saw a circus it was that day. The boat got as close to shore as possible, and they put the poor beasts into the sea to get ashore as best they could.

It was a downhearted bunch of people and a sad bunch of animals. Imagine giraffes and elephants, and dancing horses on the beach.

Of course, we villagers did everything we could to help. Water and meat and food for the animals soon put the town in trouble, but somehow we fixed them up alright. The circus people were nice, and put on a couple of shows for us in the main park.

Oh those were the days, boys. Ever since then, whenever we Belizeans hear of a big project that is going to do great things in the country, we say: Bigger circus than this come to Belize and broke up.