BELIZE CITY — Belize’s founding father and first prime minister, George Price, died early Monday, just short of three decades since he led the small Central American nation to independence. He was 92.
Price died at the Belize Healthcare Partners Hospital in Belize City, said a grand nephew, Henry Charles Usher. He was hospitalized Wednesday after a fall at his Belize City home and put in a medically induced coma following surgery to remove a blood clot.
Belize just celebrated it’s 30th anniversary of Independence on Wednesday, September 21, 2011, the death of the Right Honorable George Cadle Price, 92, two days after this milestone achievement – Belize’s Independence. -
Price was Belize’s first leader when it became independent from Britain on Sept. 21, 1981. As head of the centrist People’s United Party, he served two terms as prime minister, in 1981-84 and 1989-1993, and is considered the father of the Caribbean country of about 300,000 people that borders Mexico and Guatemala.
Belize is on the Central American mainland but maintains closer cultural ties with other English-speaking former British colonies in the Caribbean than with its Spanish-speaking neighbors.
In a message broadcast to the nation, the current prime minister called Price “a giant of a man, the greatest architect of Belizean nationalism and Belizean sovereignty.”
PUP Leader Johnny Briceño told the media, during a press briefing held at the PUP headquarters on Queen Street, that he would surely miss the man he said was his mentor.
“We are very grateful for what Mr. Price has done for us as a nation, for all the Belizean people, the fight from the colonial masters to self-government to Independence, where he forged a new country in the Caribbean and Central America, a country that is known as Belize, and where we Belizeans have an identity as Belizeans.
