This is one of the hard lessons you learn in life. Diana and I left Belize in 1981 to pursue our goals. We returned in 1993 to a completely different country. As a matter of fact, even my return to the country I was born and raised in – the US, made me realize that the same principle applies, but this article is not about our personal struggles: it’s about what Market Square is trying to accomplish with their current strategy in Belize.
Let’s reverse our field a bit. The only constant in these times is change, something that has been particularly evident in Belize because Belize had so much ground to make up when change exploded here in the early 80’s. I was born in 1948, the year that television became commercially feasible in the United States. By the mid to late 50’s, T.V. had pretty much stormed its way into the homes and the psyche of the “developed world.”
The 1958 NFL championship game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts was televised and marked the beginning of the meteoric rise of the game of American football into a multi-billion dollar business. Elvis was introduced to a national audience on the Ed Sullivan television show. Johnny Carson and “The Tonight Show” became an American institution.
The use of fire hoses and attack dogs to stop a nonviolent civil rights march in Selma, Alabama became world news, as did Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the 1963 march on Washington. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in ‘63 kept Americans riveted to their TV screens, as did the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and in 1968, the killings of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
The Vietnam War became the first conflict in history to be beamed into people’s living rooms, contributing to the growth of the public opposition that played a crucial role in America’s decision to end it. Man’s first steps on the moon were televised to a rapt audience. The advent of communications satellites introduced American and European television programs to the world at large and made cable television a reality. The 70’s saw scientific advance piled upon scientific advance, leading to what may be regarded as one of the most significant developments of all time – the personal computer and the Internet!
And where did Belize fit into all of this? At the beginning of the 80’s, Belize had no landline telephone service, no satellite or cable television and only one, that’s right, one government controlled and operated radio station! In the subsequent 28 years, Belize has been catapulted into the modern world, in spite of the opposition of Belize’s most politically powerful man at that time, and a person revered in some circles as “the father of the nation” – George Cadle Price. He obviously knew that once the door to access information was opened, it would become next to impossible to close it again, but in any case, it didn’t matter. The dam had broken, giving Belizeans the same chance to find information that could be found by any person in New York City, LA, Chicago, London, Paris, or anywhere else in the so-called “developed world.”
So what does all of this have to do with not being able to go home again? It means that returning lock, stock and barrel to the old days, the days when the Minister of Communications had the power to ban “any material whether it be printed, aural or visual that in his judgment was detrimental to Belize,” are over. The landscape has permanently changed, just as surely as it has changed for individuals who leave a country and return several years later. That law may still be on the books for all I know, but it is highly unlikely that any Minister will be in a position to enforce it!
Now let’s look at the scenario from the perspective of Market Square’s current attempt to reassert control of the aural and visual media by launching a massive attack on KREM radio and television. No doubt, the buried land mines for this option were laid back in 1994 by those who are probably congratulating themselves about their cleverness and foresight in doing so; however, when you are on the wrong side of history, well, you’re just on the wrong side of history.
Those countries, for example, China, Cuba, many of the Middle Eastern societies and Myanmar (formerly Burma), who have managed to maintain control over the flow of information available to their people, have not had a three-decade open window which they are trying to shut. The transition to the “modern world” in those countries occurred while the media was still effectively under government control. That control had never been lost or relinquished in the first place, and even those countries are presently struggling, trying to deal with the economic problems that rigid state control over the flow of information creates.
CNN Europe has pointed out that even in Myanmar, one of the most tightly controlled countries in the world today; information does get through, although it gets through at considerable personal risk to those disseminating and receiving it, and both China and Cuba are easing restrictions in their countries out of economic necessity. The difficulty of making economic progress in any country increases in direct proportion to the difficulty its citizens have in acquiring the information necessary to live and work in a global economy, and governments eventually have to make a choice. How far behind is a government willing to allow its country to fall in order to maintain control of who has or hasn’t access to particular information?
Even in Myanmar, whose four decade-old military government has shown time and time again that it doesn’t give a damn about its citizens, events have a tendency to create their own momentum. The disastrous cyclone that recently slammed into the Irrawaddy delta region of the country may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. When people are facing tragedy on that level, and the death toll is sure to exceed 100,000, fear of repression becomes less important when people realize that the junta is directly responsible for the personal and economic losses that they are suffering, along with the very real possibility that they will die anyway, from either starvation and/or disease, so why not tell the Generals what they can kiss? Mass indifference to the dictates of a government can render that government as ineffective as if it were facing armed insurrection.
It should be easy to understand why Market Square is focusing attention on KREM rather than on Amandala. KREM is an aural medium that appeals to listeners on recreational and intellectual levels. The people who listen to reggae and dance hall music are listening to sounds that often have social injustice, racial injustice, sexual issues, gender discrimination, greed, corruption, etc., as the subject of their lyrics.
The format mixes easily with such innovative programs as Ya Ya Marin-Coleman’s “Let’s Read and Reason Together.” “Reasoning and Reading” as regards the history, life and philosophy of Marcus Garvey, for example, is the last thing that Market Square wants the average Belizean to do, as these skills are inimical to the mass “follow the leader as he/she leads you to the cliff and pushes you over” tactic that makes it easier for them to achieve their objectives. Market Square doesn’t consider Amandala to be as serious a threat, since Belizeans are more prone to be attracted to an aural medium rather than a newspaper, or so the conventional “wisdom” goes. Clearly, from their point of view, KREM is a major threat and as such, they are working overtime to try to destroy it!
The lid holding back the information available to Belizeans was blown away in the 1980’s, and once people have had a taste of freedom, it becomes very difficult to slam that lid back on. The only way that access can be restricted today (short of an outright dictatorship) is to keep the cost of Internet services and computers as high as possible, but there are ways to get around everything, and the explosion of technology will bring down prices regardless.
Legislation that blocks an opportunity to make money won’t have much success in Belize: that’s why television became a reality in the 80’s in spite of George Price’s personal opposition, and KREM became a powerful force for social change, even though the PUP hierarchy hatched a devious plan to give the station an operating license while simultaneously trying to pull the rug out from under it by creating conditions that were intended to make the station a commercial failure.
Seen from this perspective, Market Square’s attack on KREM becomes more of an attempt to extract some measure of revenge than anything else. Maybe some of the principals believe the stuff that G. Mike is spouting – that Evan X was singularly responsible for the fall of the Musa-Fonseca (or Fonseca-Musa if you prefer) administration; damn, what a backhanded compliment, even though it’s not true, but that train has already left the station and it has a full head of steam. Trying to bring the train to a stop and then putting it into reverse may well be a feat that not even Market Square’s money can pull off.
Graduation Day
May 18th, 2008 has turned out to be graduation day for our whole society! Forget the upcoming primary school, high school, sixth form and university graduations. Belize has irrevocably become a participant in major league violence – a hand grenade tossed into a crowd, the kind of violence that has become all too frequent in many places in the world.
At this point, things are so crazy that a person could be forgiven if they had a thought; just a thought now, that this is the kind of event that might get the population to agree with the concept of “preventive detention.” After all, why not use all possible means to put a stop to this kind of horror? A baseless conspiracy theory postulated by a half-crazy journalist? That’s the way those who advanced different theories other than the “official” scenarios regarding the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King were described by the “mainstream media” at first. In this world, things are often not quite what they may initially seem to be!
Whether that theory or any other theory has some basis in fact or not, well, time will tell. What has become abundantly clear in the year 2008 is that there appears to be no shortage of people in this world who are perfectly capable of doing things that make the average person recoil in horror. How else can we describe a century, the 20th, in which scientific knowledge has broken through all boundaries as far as the possibility of those discoveries helping people, yet more people were killed in wars during that same century than during any other hundred-year period in human history? Just watch the nightly news. It can make you sick to your stomach! Have eyes in the back of your head with the full knowledge that even this may not be enough to keep you and your family members alive! Second Timothy 3:16; verses 1- 5; anyone?