Spanish navigators encountered Baliceaux in the fifteenth century, but the island's recorded history is sparse until the late eighteenth century. Its highest point, Gun Hill, served as a military observation station during the conflicts that swept the Caribbean between 1772 and 1797. The island is small, privately held for most of its modern history, and has never supported a permanent settlement. It lies among the northern Grenadines, close enough to Saint Vincent to see the larger island's volcanic peaks on a clear day. For the Garifuna people who were brought here against their will in 1797, that proximity must have been its own form of cruelty: their homeland visible on the horizon, but impossibly out of reach.

After the Second Carib War ended with the defeat of the Garifuna resistance on Saint Vincent, the British did not simply claim victory. They carried out a systematic deportation. Nearly 5,000 Garifuna -- including elders, women, and children -- were removed from their homes and transported to Baliceaux. The island had none of the infrastructure needed to sustain a population of that size. There were no buildings, no water sources adequate for thousands, no cultivated food. The imprisoned Garifuna were left to die, and many did. Disease -- likely including yellow fever and dysentery -- tore through the crowded, starving population. Approximately 2,445 people perished during the seven months the survivors were held on the island. The British then loaded the remaining 2,026 Garifuna onto transport ships and sent them to Roatan, an island off Honduras, 1,700 miles from everything they had ever known.

For more than two centuries, the graves of the Garifuna who died on Baliceaux received no official recognition. No monuments were erected. No archaeological excavation was conducted. The island passed through private hands, at one point listed for sale in 2023 with an asking price of thirty million dollars. The prospect of a sacred burial ground being sold as a luxury real estate listing galvanized Garifuna communities across the Caribbean and Central America. The Garifuna Heritage Foundation and diaspora organizations called for the island's acquisition as a cultural heritage site. Every March, on National Heroes Day in Saint Vincent, Garifuna descendants make a pilgrimage across the water to Baliceaux, walking the ground where their ancestors suffered and died, singing songs of remembrance in the Garifuna language.

In March 2025, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves announced in the parliament of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines that the government had acquired Baliceaux. He cited the island's historical and cultural significance to the Garifuna people as the reason for the purchase, stating that the former owners would receive fair compensation. For the Garifuna diaspora -- communities now spread across Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the United States, all tracing their ancestry to the survivors of Baliceaux -- the acquisition carried profound weight. The island where the British had tried to erase a people would now belong to the nation those people helped build. What happens next on Baliceaux remains to be determined: whether it becomes a memorial, a heritage site, or simply a place where the dead are finally acknowledged. But after 228 years, the ground beneath the grass is no longer for sale.