Biography
Her Excellency Dame Froyla Tzalam
Born in Southern Belize, Froyla Tzalam grew up in the rural Mopan village of San Antonio, Toledo British Honduras. She shared her parents Florentino Tzalam and Juanita Tzak with ten other siblings. Her parents’ active involvement in community development was a big factor in her professional life. Cultural preservation and practice, colonial legacy, rural economy, and the active participation of women in the public spheres are all important themes in her work. The legacy of the Maya people in their art, traditional knowledge, and environmental stewardship have informed Dame Froyla’s continuing passion. She views Belize as a tiny country with many diverse cultures; it is a model of a thriving nation-state and a global leader in innovation. Dame Froyla lauds Belize’s ability to create a new way of being and doing particularly given the global challenges of natural resource management, well-being, and livelihood.
Keenly aware that citizenship is an accident of birth, she was determined to show that individuals can be more than the sum of their individual cultures. Taking advantage of increasing global migration, people can find synergies between and harness their cultural knowledge and world systems to come up with innovative solutions to the global challenges being faced by individuals, families, and societies.
“Reuse, recycle, repurpose” and “support the local economy “are two of her favourite mantras. In her installation speech, she stated she wanted to build bridges between cultures, people, and societies to foster greater understanding not only between peoples but also as a way to respect the physical world we inhabit. We cannot be blamed for what we inherited, but we can blame ourselves for not creating a more inclusive society for all people, not just in our boundaries but in the world.
Froyla is married to Daniel Mendez, and they have two children.
