Belize Fest 2022 to be Held in Inglewood, California

Los Angeles, California has for decades boasted a large population of Belizeans. Annually during the month of September, a huge festival that attracts thousands is organized in an area known as Inglewood. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Belize Fest could not be held and this year, True Belizean proprietor Faron Smith is reviving the fete. It features everything Belizean, including food and music, and allows for those who cannot make it back to Belize to enjoy the patriotic season. Smith says that this is the seventh year that he has been organizing the Belize Fest. 

Faron Smith

Faron Smith, Proprietor, True Belizean

“Belize fest is our September celebrations here in L.A. and it takes place in Inglewood, California.  It is a time when Belizeans come from near and far, all over the place and from different states also to come and celebrate being Belizean. We come and celebrate tenth and celebrate independence which is the twenty-first. Being that we are in the states and there is not a holiday for those Events here, we just celebrate it as close to the date as we can possibly do. Every year this event has a whole lot of excitement around it. The thing that is the most exciting is that this is all Belizean. We have Belizean food, Belizean musicians, Belizean everything. So the amount of Belizean pride is on a thousand. So the excitement as you can tell just by that, in being far away from home, this is the closest thing we could get to doing tenth and twenty-first. The tradition of having Belizean events here in California has been going on for way longer than I have been in L.A. There’s a whole lot of people that did this before me and that are still doing it while I am doing it too; they are doing their own thing. There’s a lot of people involved in doing it with me also and a lot of them have been doing work like this for like sixty years now.”