About Crique Jute
Crique Jute is a small Maya farming village in the green hills of Toledo, Belize’s southernmost district, about 18 miles northwest of the town of Punta Gorda and not far from the Guatemala border. It’s home to a few hundred people, and it’s where we’ll spend our three days of VBS and neighborhood visits.
Pray for Crique Jute
Pray for healthy children and good harvests, for families still recovering from the 2024 fires, for wisdom for the village’s leaders, and for every child at VBS to know how deeply God loves them.
- The people
- Most families are Maya, and many are Q’eqchi’ (say “kek-CHEE”), whose ancestors came to southern Belize from Guatemala in the 1870s to escape forced labor on coffee plantations. Village life is close-knit, and Maya villages in Toledo are led by a village council alongside a traditional leader called an alcalde.
- Language
- English is Belize’s official language and the primary language at school, so the kids we’ll meet are learning it in class. At home, many families speak Q’eqchi’, a Mayan language, and you’ll also hear Mopan, another Mayan language, and Spanish in southern Belize.
- Making a living
- Most families farm. They grow corn, beans, and rice using a traditional Maya method called milpa, and some grow cacao, the bean chocolate is made from, to sell. Much of what families eat comes from their own fields.
- Challenges
- Toledo is the poorest district in Belize. In 2025, about 6 in 10 people there lived in what Belize’s statistics office calls multidimensional poverty, a measure that looks at education, health, housing, and basic services, and Maya households were the most affected. Children feel it most, and rural villages have fewer doctors, schools, and jobs than the rest of the country.
- Recent years
- In 2022, the village celebrated a new community water system. In May 2024, wildfires swept through farms and forest around Crique Jute and nearby villages, damaging crops families depend on, and an emergency shelter was opened in the village for families at risk.
