I don’t think you can understand what happened in British Honduras after devaluation of the B.H. dollar on the last day of 1949 unless you have a sense of the Panama experience of hundreds, perhaps thousands of young British Honduran workers.
In the United States, the connection between big business, industry and even the military, on the one hand, and the cutting edge academic world, on the other, is real. When individuals or companies in the American business and industrial world become highly successful, they often set up so-called foundations which make financing available to scholars and researchers to study matters which the boards of the foundations deem important.
I suppose the American tax laws provide incentives for these billionaires and multimillionaires to establish the foundations. This is certainly not the case in Belize, which is not as progressive and nationalistic a society as the United States is. It is, of course, not fair to Belize to compare us with the mighty United States of America in any respect whatsoever. Still, we should not be looking at situations in the U.S. and not try to learn things which can benefit us in The Jewel.
Each man is well-advised to know the limits of his jurisdiction, so to speak. Some people think otherwise. They say that a man should not consider himself as having any limits to his potential or jurisdiction. In other words, all things are possible. I do not agree with that approach to life.
With reference to the limits of jurisdiction, I am speaking specifically of myself and Belize’s education system. That education system, for all intents and purposes, is out of my control. For my own tranquility and well-being, I must accept that. But, I personally don’t believe a Belizean can consider himself truly educated if he knows nothing about the Caste War in Yucatan in the last half of the nineteenth century, the Marcus Garvey and the UNIA impact on British Honduras in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the Panama experience of Belizeans during and after World War II.
My sense is that all the veterans of Panama on return to British Honduras became members or supporters or sympathizers of the early People’s United Party (PUP). This early PUP was, for purposes of this essay, from 1950 to 1956. The change of PUP leadership from Richardson and Goldson to Price in 1956 affected the political landscape somewhat, but Panama had essentially opened Belizeans’ eyes to the American way of doing things, and the early PUP was hard-core anti-British and pro-American as a result.
The American Depression which began in 1929 and the devastating Belize hurricane of 1931 combined to increase poverty in British Honduras dramatically. The United States had been an important market for Belize mahogany and chicle, and the crash on Wall Street damaged the American market for our produce. The 1931 hurricane killed thousands of Belizeans and destroyed the capital city, leaving thousands more homeless. By 1934, the suffering amongst working class people sparked the roots uprisings led by Antonio “Tony” Soberanis, who, interestingly enough, joined the Panama exodus in the 1940’s after his revolutionary activities in the 1930’s.
Most of my personal education about Panama came from my late maternal uncle, Buck Belisle, but some of my understanding of the Panama experience also came from the late UBAD officer, Jack “Poppa Treetop” Jordan, who, again interestingly enough, was in Guatemala City in 1954 when Carlos Castillo Armas’ CIA coup overthrew the Jacobo Arbenz government. (Treetop had a 6’6" son with a Guatemalan lady who played on the Guatemalan national basketball selection in the 1970’s.)
As a child growing up in the 1950’s, I knew there was something different about my uncle, but I didn’t know what it was. He looked at life differently from the way my father and my father’s civil service friends, like Messrs. Telford Vernon and the late Alfred “Jack” Campbell, did. My uncle was different because he had left his messenger’s job at the Treasury and sought his fortune in Panama in 1941 at the age of 19. The young man who replaced my uncle in his government messenger’s job was the young man who would become his brother-in-law and my father, Charles B. Hyde, a graduate of St. John’s College.
My uncle had mostly grown up in the village of Sittee River, and won a government scholarship from there to attend St. George’s College in Belize (City). His classmates in the city included the late, legendary lawyer, Horace Young. (St. George’s College later split into Wesley College and St. Michael’s College.) My uncle’s decision to go to Panama took him out of the public officer stream and placed him squarely in the ranks of the working classes. In 1941 in British Honduras, no one would make a decision like that. The civil service was considered the best thing going in the colony back then.
When my uncle, who liked gambling, returned to Belize in December of 1946, he was broke. He joined the ranks of the unemployed in the colony. Remember now, the economy of British Honduras in 1946 was very small. If you were not in the civil service, you basically did hard work. And my uncle had walked away from the civil service. Eventually, he got a hookup to the Public Works Department, which was then located where Godfrey Smith presently has his law offices. Where the Central Bank is now located, on the other side of the street, was Her Majesty’s Prison.
Perhaps the most famous of the Panama veterans were Dickie Gardiner and Nacho Coye, both deceased. These two had become partners and later set up the Panama lottery in Belize. In later years, they ran businesses like boxing promotions, nightclubs, restaurants, and so on. Dickie Gardiner founded the television business which is now CBC – a cable and Internet powerhouse.
My thesis, and I believe it would be proven by academic research, is that the Belizeans who went to Panama lost their colonial mentality in that republic. They became more independent in their thinking, more bold in their enterprises, and more entrepreneurial. Only thing is, there’s no research to say yea or nay. Perhaps there will never be.