I didn?t get his name, but this Egyptian went back home and wrote a book called ?Milestones.? The book was very influential amongst the masses of poor Muslims in Egypt, and spawned an extreme Islamic movement during the rule, ironically, of a man who was an Egyptian and Arab hero ? Gamal Abdul Nasser. I think the author of ?Milestones? was executed by the Egyptian authorities, which made him a martyr.

The main thing is that the author of ?Milestones,? the spiritual founder of what eventually became Al Queda, despised what the guys on the PBS show called ?modernity?, as represented by what he saw of America and experienced there.

On Wednesday morning, following the discussion on Tuesday night?s Kremandala Show, I knew that I wanted to write about the Guatemalan attitude to Belize, and the history in the last half century of how we Belizeans react to that attitude, and American/British attempts to resolve the ?differendum.?

I ended up with the PBS interview as my frame of reference, because I see and believe where the future of the differendum will feature, more and more, the indigenous peoples who live in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, and who are basically hostile to ?modernity? because it represents socio-economic oppression, and other European things which these peoples consider undesirable.

Let me say, before I proceed, that I am not an enemy of modernity. I am uncomfortable with modernity, increasingly so as I grow older. Modernity in Belize has meant, for example, privatization, globalization, crack cocaine, gang warfare, sexual depravity, family meltdown, and other undesirable phenomena. These undesirable phenomena are overlooked by advocates of modernity and excused on the grounds that they are ?problems with progress?. I do not take myself too seriously where my personal discomfort with modernity is concerned. I consider myself a throwback and an exception. I may even be a relic. So. I make no attempts to influence my children or grandchildren to my perspective, which is born, I think, of a childhood on the sea as a fisherman trainee.

The British and the Americans came to the conclusion decades ago that they needed to reconcile Guatemala and Belize so as to create a situation where their oil companies could pump and pipeline oil and natural gas out of the Chiapas/Peten/Belize oilfields without the bother of instability in the region. The British and the Americans also came to the conclusion that the literate, majority black population of Belize was a problem. They resolved to reduce the black population here by various mechanisms, such as emigration and birth control. At the same time, the British and the Americans continued to probe in search of a solution to the differendum. These probes included the Seventeen Proposals (1968), the Heads of Agreement (1981), the Maritime Areas Act (1991), and the Ramphal/Reichler Proposals (2002). The literate, majority black population rejected the 1968 and 1981 probes with street violence, but the Maritime Areas Act went through in 1991. It was not coincidental, to my mind, that by 1991 the majority blacks had become a minority. (Ramphal/Reichler ran into problems in Guatemala, and never reached referendum in Belize.)

There were several talk shows on different radio stations in Belize City on Monday night. There were people with university degrees on all of those shows, but it was obvious that they are generally uninformed, in real, geopolitical terms. These relatively uninformed people are those who help to mould public opinion in Belize. Because of the multiplicity of shallow opinions bombarding the Belizean people in all the different media organs, my opinion is that the British and the Americans have succeeded in what they set out to do. The once literate, majority blacks are now confused, minority blacks. More than that, they are modernized, confused, minority blacks.

Beneath the uninformed noise of the blacks, however, lies the silent resistance of the indigenous peoples. Even as the Chiapas/Peten/Belize oilfields, in their identity as oilfields, know no national boundaries, the indigenous peoples of the Yucatan, Peten and Belize do not recognize the national boundaries drawn by the Europeans to share up their violent conquests in the region. The indigenous peoples of southern Mexico, northeastern Guatemala, and Belize must abide by the national laws of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, because they are oppressed peoples. But this was a territory without boundaries five hundred years ago, and it was the ancestors of these indigenous peoples who inhabited and ruled in the region.

The British, the Mexicans, the neo-European oligarchy in Guatemala, and the selfish, greedy, treacherous politicians in Belize, will have their way, because we blacks in Belize are now a confused minority. Those of us blacks who remain in the land and who resist oppression in the form of modernity, will increasingly have to turn to our indigenous brethren and sistren for support and solidarity. The still waters run deep.

All power to the people.