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The Jesuits and Kremandala

EditorialThe Jesuits and Kremandala
After almost 40 years of the UBAD/Kremandala process, we can see now that the ultimate issue was always the African and Mayan history. This was an issue raised, amongst others, by Evan X Hyde when he first mounted the public rostrum in early 1969. And it was the issue on which the Belizean establishment, controlled by the Roman Catholic Church, took the longest to yield. When it yielded, the Church did so extremely grudgingly, and now the Church is actually fighting back against African and Mayan history.
 
From behind the trees at Landivar, united by their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, the Jesuits have been the most powerful group in the most powerful force in Belize – the Roman Catholic Church. Through their dominance in the educational system, the Jesuits and the Church have controlled the collective Belizean mind. Mind control is the next best thing to slavery. Some even argue that mind control is a more efficient system than physical slavery.
 
Thus, the single most suicidal move you can make politically in Belize is to attack the Roman Catholic Church. The Jesuits in 1969 interpreted Evan X Hyde’s attack on the educational curriculum of Catholic schools as an attack on the Church itself. Evan X Hyde did not believe he was attacking the Church per se, but at the time he really didn’t care. For the 21-year-old UBAD president in 1969, African and Mayan history was a priority and it was a must.
 
As the spearpoints of white supremacy in education here, the Jesuits were absolutely not going to include African and Mayan history in their schools. In 1969, the Jesuits’ ultimate political weapon was the former Roman Catholic seminarian, Premier George Price, and the Jesuits’ ultimate enemy was the UBAD president who had dared to challenge their educational curriculum.
 
When, therefore, Mr. Price, as PUP Leader, reached out in 1975 to Evan X Hyde, it was an act of complete political desperation. What appeared to be the strength of UBAD had joined the Opposition UDP in 1973, and had pushed the UDP to within 17 votes of general election victory in 1974. Because Mr. Price was in a panic, he sent for what appeared to be the non-UDP remnants of UBAD – Evan X Hyde and those who had remained loyal to him.
 
A lot has happened since 1975, of course, but a quick synopsis of the years between 1969 and 1975 was vital to our subject in this essay, the reason being that Evan X Hyde could not possibly have intended a career in politics when he was forced to lead UBAD in 1969, because, to repeat, the single most suicidal move you can make politically in Belize is to attack the Roman Catholic Church.
 
In 1993, the shocking loss of the general election in June again threw Mr. Price into a panic, and so he sent his Deputy Leaders, Florencio Marin and Said Musa, to make another overture to Evan X Hyde. After months of negotiation, followed by campaigning, Evan X Hyde’s second son, Cordel, became the chairman of the PUP’s Lake Independence constituency. The young Cordel won that position by defeating the incumbent, Carlos Diaz, in an Independence Hall convention in 1994. (In 1996, Cordel Hyde had to defeat Carlos Diaz again, when the full force of Ralph Fonseca’s PUP right wing came out in Diaz’s favor.)
 
Today, Cordel Hyde is a Deputy Leader of the Opposition PUP. He is a different man from his father. Evan X Hyde never won an election. Cordel Hyde has personally never lost one. Only twice has the PUP lost while he has been with them – that was in municipal elections in March 2006 and general elections in February 2008, and on both of those occasions Cordel Hyde had been demoted into PUP limbo by the now disgraced, then ruling neoliberal faction.
 
Cordel Hyde began high school at Wesley College, but under the most incredible of circumstances, X Hyde removed him from Wesley and asked the Jesuit, Fr. John Stochl, to accept him at St. John’s College. S.J.C. is where Cordel Hyde finished high school and attended junior college. He then attended and graduated from a Jesuit university, LeMoyne, in Syracuse, New York. This was on a half scholarship from, yes, the Jesuits.
 
The matter of Mark Espat, Evan X Hyde’s son-in-law and therefore Cordel Hyde’s brother-in-law, is one which complicates things, because it happens that Mark Espat is the other Deputy Leader of the PUP. So now, there are disgraced PUP leaders and cronies who have been raising the specter of Evan X Hyde’s “taking over their party.” It is a most intriguing specter. How can a man who never won an election take over the most successful political party in the modern history of British Honduras/Belize? Preposterous. 
 
The key to understanding the present situation is this. Kremandala is the opposite of the Roman Catholic Church. We do not believe in mind control, nor do we seek it. Kremandala is actually three different business organizations, comprising 60 full time employees, and run by three different managements. The atmosphere on Partridge Street is one of total intellectual and political freedom.
 
In semi-retirement, Evan X Hyde has little contact with the Kremandala employees. They know almost nothing about UBAD. The Kremandala employees are PUP and they are UDP, and they are different religions. Because of African and Mayan history, however, Evan X Hyde remains a big time bogeyman to the Jesuits. And because he remains a bogeyman to the Jesuits, he has once again become a bogeyman to the Jesuits’ ultimate weapon. To be linked to the X, it appears, is to be linked to the devil. We shall see who will go to heaven, and who will go to hell.
 
All power to the people.

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