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We support the Maya

EditorialWe support the Maya


?If charity be the highest virtue, and purity and peace the greatest good, then were these savages far better and happier beings than any civilization could boast. That they possessed any rights, any natural or inherent privileges in regard to their lands or their lives; that these innocent and inoffensive people were not just subjects for coercion, treachery, robbery, enslavement, and slaughter, was a matter which seems never to have been questioned at that time by either discoverer, adventurer, or ruler. However invalid in any of the Spanish courts might have been the argument of a housebreaker, that in the room he entered he discovered a purse of gold, and took it, Spaniards never thought of applying such logic to themselves in regard to the possessions of the natives in the new lands their Genoese had found.?


– pgs. 165, 166, ibid.



Despite their poverty, the Garinagu and the Mayans have more rights in Belize than in any other Central American country. These rights have increased incrementally in the fifty years plus since the nationalist movement began here.


The Mayans in the Toledo District live in a remote area of Belize. It is important that freedom loving blacks and browns in the rest of the country, those of us who wish to continue living here, understand that we must support the Mayans in their fight against Exxon in the Sarstoon/Temash, because we will need the Mayans to support us in our struggle for freedom in Belize.


Over five hundred years ago, Africans and Americans went through a similar experience. Our lands were invaded by Europeans who pretended that what they wanted to do was save our eternal souls. What they were more interested in was gold, and material wealth. The history is there, but the educational system in Belize, controlled by the Roman and English Churches, does not teach the true history.


Today, the Europeans have returned to Belize. These are new Europeans who wear three-piece suits, carry briefcases and read the WALL STREET JOURNAL. It is gold again they seek; this time it is black gold. The natives don?t count. The Indians didn?t count in 1492, and the Mayans don?t count in 2006. But it is not as easy for the Europeans to murder us today as it was in 1492. We have the ability to communicate with each other in 2006, and now we know very well that when they do it to the Mayans in the morning, they will do it to us Africans in the afternoon.


From the very beginning, there have been those of us who have sold us out to the Europeans. Nothing has changed. The Europeans always use our own to undermine and defeat us. Those of you who want to give up, you do that ? give up. There are those of us who will fight on, no mater what and no matter who.


Our message to our Mayan brothers and sisters in Sarstoon/Temash is solidarity, solidarity from the Africans.


All power to the people.

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