“The membership of CABO, an organization based just south of us, in La Ceiba, Honduras, spans Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and the United States, to which many Central American Blacks have migrated.”
– Adele Ramos on AMANDALA website, posted September 1, 2009
“A bricklayer who began working at age 11, Juan Almeida Bosque was the only black commander among the rebel leaders.”
“Mr. Almeida … joined the fight against Batista’s dictatorship in March 1952 as a young law student at the University of Havana, where he met Fidel Castro, another aspiring lawyer.
“Mr. Almeida was at Mr. Castro’s side a year later, on July 26, 1953, when Cuba’s future president led an armed attack on the Moncada, a military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. It failed, and Mr. Almeida and both Castros were sent to a prison. But that failure launched the revolutionary battle that triumphed more than five years later.
“Mr. Almeida and other survivors of the offensive were freed in May 1955 under an amnesty granted to the young revolutionaries. He accompanied the Castros and other comrades to Mexico, where they formed a guerrilla army.
“They returned to Cuba in December 1956 on the American yacht GRANMA and launched their battle from the island’s eastern Sierra Maestra. Mr. Almeida, the Castro brothers and Ernesto Guevara, an Argentine known as Che, were among only 16 who survived the landing, in which most of the rebels were killed by government troops.”
– from THE NEW YORK TIMES Obituaries, Sunday, September 13, 2009
Over the Independence Day weekend, several of us former UBAD officials gathered to break bread, so to speak. It was a small group, seven overall, but the symbolism of the gathering was substantial. Of those present, four had participated in the historic meeting which marked the division of UBAD in 1973. Two had voted one way, and two had voted otherwise in that ten-man meeting 36 years ago.
When UBAD was established in 1969, the so-called Creoles were still the majority ethnic group in Belize, and there were powerful special interests which feared the possibly separatist impact of African consciousness in Belize. By contrast, when the Garinagu organized the National Garifuna Council (NGC) about ten years after UBAD’s foundation, presumably because the Garinagu were clearly a non-threatening minority, the NGC was allowed to do whatever it wanted to where their special ethnic consciousness was concerned. No one from the NGC has ever been threatened, persecuted, arrested or jailed for anything. Contrast UBAD.
Before proceeding, I feel the need to remind interested parties that I did not seek leadership of UBAD at its foundation. Leadership was thrust upon me six or seven weeks later when the first leader abruptly left the scene. Although I hosted the weekend’s gathering, I did not do so in any leadership or aspirant leadership capacity.
Scholars and experts have pointed out that the role of charismatic leadership is paramount in socialization of a primitive nature, whereas sophisticated groupings build institutions which can change individual leadership without trepidation or destabilization. The situation in Grenada, for instance, had not achieved sophistication after the New Jewel Movement’s overthrow of Eric Gairy in 1979, so that just four years later a group challenge to individual leadership quickly resulted in instability, then murder and chaos. By contrast, in Mexico they had reached a level of constitutional sophistication after the Mexican Revolution where they decreed a single six-year term for an elected president, after which he had to demit office. In the United States, presidents are elected to a four-year term. They may seek a second term, but no more.
When UBAD began to disintegrate in 1973, it was organized in a relatively primitive fashion, and the organization was unable to resolve its politico/philosophical differences at the leadership level. Thus, UBAD fell, in 1974. Only the UBAD newspaper, Amandala, survived, and the newspaper declared Belizean nationalism, as opposed to black nationalism, in 1977.
In the decades since, a grave deterioration has taken place within our nation’s largest black community. Belize elected an identifiably black Prime Minister in 2008, but the deterioration continues within the black community. Overall, the black population of Belize was reduced from majority to minority status about 25 years ago. This reduction of percentage was done without retaliatory violence of any kind, and the reduction in population percentage does not appear to be the reason for the black community deterioration.
In September of 2003, addressing this deterioration, the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF) and the World Garifuna Organization (WGO) organized Belize’s first (and so far only) black summit. The National Garifuna Council boycotted the event, whereas the participation of a National Kriol Council (NKC), formed around 1996, was only token.
1996 was an important year not only for the emergence of the NKC, but also for the establishment of the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF), specifically in response to the energy coming out of the republic of Honduras for the creation of a Central American organization to represent blacks in this region.
Whereas Belize may have twenty-five or thirty thousand Gariganu, there are ten or twelve times that many Garinagu in Honduras. And these two Garifuna populations have been in close contact, across the Gulf of Honduras, for many, many decades. But Honduras also has an amount of black citizens who are not Garifuna. In any case, when the Garifuna populations of Belize and Honduras began building the Central American Black Organization (CABO), as far as we know in 1996, they took account of the non-Garifuna black population of Belize and sought to have us represented in CABO.
The man who can speak authoritatively about these matters is Mr. Austin Flores of Dangriga, who became vice-president of CABO at its foundation. Celeo Alvarez of Honduras has remained president of CABO since 1996.
All I personally can say for sure is that some of us former UBAD officials heard about CABO in early 1996, and our information was that Belize’s Creole population would be represented in CABO by the newly formed National Kriol Council. We felt that the NKC was not qualified for such a serious assignment. UBAD, therefore, re-organized itself as the UBAD Educational Foundation, and demanded representation in CABO.
UEF was represented in the initial general assemblies of CABO by then UEF chairlady, Lillette Barkley-Waite, and by the late Edgar X Richardson. In the last three years, UEF has been represented by Ya Ya Marin Coleman and Rufus X, except for last year, when Ya Ya Marin ran into legal problems in the United States, and Rufus alone stood in CABO’s annual general meeting in New York City.
In December of this year, it will be Belize’s turn to host the CABO general assembly. The National Kriol Council has grown in power, and it appears that they have clout in the Government of Belize, specifically in the relevant Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If the Belize Ministry of Foreign Affairs decides to play an important role in the CABO general assembly later this year, then UEF’s responsibilities would be minimal.
Incidentally, the matter of CABO did not come up during the weekend’s discussion. Also incidentally, all of us at that discussion are in our sixties and seventies. It’s good to know that our friendship has survived four decades.
I wish to close with a tribute to the black Cuban revolutionary, Juan Almeida, who was buried with great honors in Cuba last week. One afternoon in 1967 or 1968, the late Guy Mhone and I attended a lecture at Dartmouth by a former New York Times correspondent named John Gerassi, who was an expert on the Cuban Revolution. Gerassi told us a story Che Guevara had told him about Juan Almeida.
When the eighty plus Cuban revolutionaries got off the leaky Granma craft after a terrible voyage from Mexico, as they landed on the Cuban coast they were immediately ambushed by the dictator Batista’s helicopters and soldiers. Guevara was shot, and it occurred to him at that point, he explained to Gerassi, that he wished to die with dignity. While contemplating his destiny, Guevara, perhaps Quixotically, leaned against a tree to await his fate. It was Juan Almeida who grabbed Che and rescued him from his fatalistic reverie.
Maximum respect, great freedom fighter Juan Almeida.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.