Amandala received news of the passing this morning of ex-PUP stalwart and businessman, Mark Cuellar, in a Chetumal hospital after a short illness. He was 64.
Cuellar, according to fellow PUP Bill Lindo, was general secretary of the party during a tumultuous time, in the early 1980’s, as George Price prepared to lead Belize into Independence from Great Britain.
Cuellar later formed part of the PUP’s “right wing,” which also included then Ministers Fred Hunter and Louis Sylvestre (now with the United Democratic Party), current Senator Hector Silva, and then Minister Joe Briceño, father of the party’s present leader, Hon. Johnny Briceño.
They had aligned themselves against the socialist-influenced “left wing” of the party, which included former Prime Minister and party chairman, Said Musa, and former ambassador, senator and Minister, Assad Shoman.
According to Lindo, sometime in the mid-1980’s, after Mr. Musa became party chairman, Cuellar joined Hunter and Sylvestre in the short-lived Belize Popular Party, which contested some local elections but gradually went defunct after the 1989 general elections, which the PUP won narrowly over Manuel Esquivel’s UDP.
As Hunter and Sylvestre returned to their PUP roots, says Lindo, Cuellar drifted out of politics and into private business, getting involved in media ventures in Corozal and the South.