This text presents an analysis of the processes of ethnic-racial classification and categorization of the population of Belize throughout 19th and 20th centuries, based on the censuses and the reports of the government. We are interested not so much in the data as such, as with the categories used for counting the population, seen as indicators of political instruments of construction of a colonial, then a national society. Whereas, at the 19th century, the censuses reflect the various modes of apprehension of the population (transition from slavery to freedom, assertion or negation of ethnic-racial diversity), the administrative reports are based on a demographic and spatial model that seem invariant and stereotyped, and used like a simple...