During the 1960’s, the Hon. Philip Goldson from time to time would make a call in the House of Representatives for Belize (then British Honduras) to establish an army. The Hon. Goldson was thinking of a fundamental commitment on the part of the citizens of Belize to defend our territorial integrity in the face of the Guatemalan claim.
As it turned out, what was to become the Belize Defence Force (BDF) in 1978, began with a decision in 1968 by the ruling People’s United Party to create the Police Special Forces (PSF), which became known in the streets as the “paramilitary.”
The paramilitary was the PUP government’s response to uprisings in Belize City in 1966 and 1968 which began as protests against the Guatemala claim. Protests began in 1966 after Hon. Goldson revealed the Thirteen Proposals, which were what he remembered of the secret Webster Proposals. Bethuel Webster was a Wall Street lawyer who was appointed as a mediator for the so-called Anglo-Guatemalan dispute about British Honduras. In 1968, after Webster officially released his Seventeen Proposals to solve the dispute, Belizeans again rebelled. And so it was in response to these two uprisings, which the regular British Honduras Police Force experienced serious problems in controlling, that the paramilitary, which was to become the BDF, was formed.
It was a historical coincidence that just months after the paramilitary was formed, the most sustained popular insurgency in Belize’s history began, with the formation of the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) in February of 1969. And it was another coincidence that it was in 1969 that Charles Good came to Belize from Honduras and joined the Police Special Forces – the paramilitary.
As a teenager, Good had joined the army of the republic of Honduras, and had seen action in 1965 in the Dominican Republic when the United States and her Central American allies sent 42,000 troops to put down what Uncle Sam said it considered a “communist” initiative. Then U.S. President Lyndon Johnson claimed he invaded the Dominican Republic to prevent a “second Cuba.”
Coming out of the Honduran military, having been trained by the Americans, and having seen the civil war action in the Dominican Republic, Charles Good was operating at a higher level than the other paramilitary recruits, whose only taste of action, if you can call it that, had consisted of hunting down the feared escaped convict, Edward Rodney, in late 1968.
Charlie Good began rising through the ranks of the paramilitary, deservedly so. As the goalkeeper for the Police Invaders football team, which was highly ranked in Belizean football competition, Charlie became an impressive figure on the local sporting scene. Add to that his dramatic boxing bouts at Bird’s Isle against Edward “Thor” Middleton, and the truth of the matter was that Charlie Good became a legend in the streets of Belize City in the 1970’s. He was the poster boy for the government security forces in their confrontations with the UBAD group.
The problem with power and fame in the ranks of government security forces anywhere on the planet, is that the powerful and famous individual in such forces has no political base. Such an individual is owned by the state. In the case of Belize, which was moving toward political independence, the power in the state belonged to the PUP, and the Deputy Prime Minister, C.L.B. Rogers, was, as Minister of Home Affairs, in charge of the security forces of Belize. All indications are that Charlie Good, who had become Major Good, and then Captain Good, was personally loyal to Mr. Rogers. Case in point was the “Black Monday” episode in 1978, when Rogers sent the security forces to Tower Hill to put down insubordination organized by the Orange Walk North area representative. It should be recalled, by comparison, that the then Commissioner of Police, Esmond Willoughby, had given his loyalty to British Governor, Peter Donovan McEntee, when Rogers and McEntee clashed in the years immediately preceding independence.
The Heads of Agreement uprisings, which began in late March of 1981, were probably the most serious domestic problem local security forces had seen since the Ex-Servicemen’s Riot of July 1919. Good performed well during the Heads of Agreement, but it was clear by then that the roots people of Belize City had become quite hostile to his style. Plus, and more ominously, his army career had stalled. The BDF was on the front lines searching for marijuana fields in the countryside, but some marijuana cultivation in Belize had political protection – the PUP Cabinet. American trained in his youth, as we noted earlier, Good was uncompromising in his campaign against marijuana cultivation, and refused to be bribed or intimidated.
Rather than have Charlie Good become the first Belizean to command the BDF, the PUP Cabinet then took Tom Greenwood out of the Volunteer Forces and sent him to Sandhurst for special training to take over the BDF. This was a slap in the face to Charlie Good, an insult to a man of great pride.
The years between 1981 and 1984 were tumultous years in Good’s career, because the American Central Intelligence Agency had become active in Belize in order to run the contra war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, which had overthrown Anastacio Somoza in 1979. The CIA ran the contra operation from Honduran territory. When it was precisely that Good went on the CIA payroll, we can’t say. But he became a CIA asset.
In mid-1983, sensational news broke in the United States. A senior Belize police officer, Vallan Gillett, had been indicted (along with four other Belizeans and some Americans) in a Florida state court for smuggling cocaine through the Belize International Airport into the United States. At this time, Maxwell Samuels was the Belize Commissioner of Police. Samuels’ star had risen in Cabinet during the Heads of Agreement, and C.L.B. Rogers had used him to replace the pro-McEntee Willoughby. But C.L.B. Rogers himself was fast fading. Having lost his Mesopotamia seat to the UDP’s Curl Thompson in the 1979 general elections, Rogers was only serving in Cabinet because of Prime Minister George Price’s personal loyalty and good will. When the PUP were devastated in the December 1983 Belize City Council elections, Rogers lost his Cabinet position the following month – January of 1984.
It was not until 1996 that the background truth about the 1983 cocaine indictments emerged. An American reporter by the name of Gary Webb, who died afterwards in mysterious circumstance, broke the news that the CIA had been smuggling cocaine, supplied by Nicaraguan contra operatives, specifically to be used as crack in South Central Los Angeles. Webb’s 1996 “Dark Alliance” series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News, later published as a book, claimed the proceeds of cocaine smuggling were used to finance the contras. The United States Congress had refused to pay for the contra war. So then U.S. President Ronald Reagan had his “boys,” like Oliver North, find “creative” methods of financing.
Charlie Good’s personal life was becoming highly complicated and stressful in 1984. Rogers, the Cabinet Minister to whom he had been loyal, was out of the picture. The people of Belize City disliked him for his security work. His army career had been sabotaged at the Cabinet level. This was the reward he had received for his years of total loyalty to the Government of Belize – betrayal.
Still in the employ of the government but also on the payroll of the CIA, Good collapsed during Independence Day ceremonies at Courthouse Wharf on September 21, 1984. Just five weeks later, Charlie Good pulled out a gun at a Paslow Building Magistrate’s Court, fired at Magistrate Yakub Gaznabbi, then fired at and wounded his (Good’s) common-law wife, Olive Arnold. This was the end of the first part of the life of Charlie Good. He had been too good at what he did. He was too straight. And so, he had been sacrificed. Months later, a former PUP Cabinet Minister appeared on CNN television, for all the world to see, in “bangles” and chains.
In closing, and in honor of the man Charlie Good, we quote simply from JULIUS CAESAR, line 75, Act V, sc. v: “And say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’”