About Leela Vernon
Leela Vernon MBE (21 October 1950 – 19 February 2017) was a Belizean cultural icon noted for her contributions to preserving Creole culture in the country. She was awarded the title "Queen of Brukdown", received the Order of the British Empire for promoting Creole culture and music, and was named the Brukdown Artist of the Year in 2004. She was honored as National Hero in 2016 by the National Institute of Culture and History. == Early life == Lila Genus Martinez was born on 21 October 1950 near Punta Gorda in a disputed border region, now known as the "adjacency zone", between British Honduras and Guatemala. Neither country wanted to issue a birth certificate, but eventually, her parents Gladys Matilda Genus and Alfredo Martinez Jiménez were able to secure a birth certificate and passport from Guatemala. Her father was a chiclero, traveling in chicle camps along the border to gather the natural gum and her mother was a cook. Her father was descended of Jemima Hariniah Hause, a runaway slave originally from Sierra Leone, who fled Mexico to Belize and married a Belizean named Harrison. His mother, Secondina Jiménez was of Maya heritage and married a Spanish-Italian baker surnamed Martinez. Her mother's father, Henry Genus had migrated from Jamaica to work for United Fruit in 1897, before settling in British Honduras with his Belizean wife, Jemima. Leela, as she was called, grew up traveling around the small villages of southern British Honduras(Belize), until around the age of five, when she moved to Punta Gorda to live with her maternal grandparents.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.