Abstract
This article discusses two nationalizing projects in the recently independent Caribbean country of Belize. Beauty pageants, promoted by political parties as an explicit effort to build unified national consensus in a multi‐ethnic society, have failed to do so. In practice they dramatize difference more than identity. In the meantime other forms of national identification have flourished, often in sites completely outside of state intervention. An example is provided in the growth of a Belizean cuisine.

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