“Greedy choke puppy.”
– a Creole proverb
When this newspaper began publication almost forty years ago, it did appear that the version of white supremacy with which Belizeans would have to contend in the future, was that of the United States of America. Great Britain having granted British Honduras self-government in 1964, and the U.S. having commenced a limited program of foreign aid for B.H., including Peace Corps and the Michigan Partners for the Alliance, and an American lawyer, Bethuel Webster, having been appointed in 1966 to mediate the Anglo-Guatemalan dispute over British Honduras, all these signals and others suggested that the United States, in accord with her Monroe Doctrine and in line with the United Kingdom’s seeming willingness to yield her hegemony, would, down the road, be running things in Belize.
We felt that our Belizean people needed to become aware of the more aggressive racism of the Americans. London and Washington were much different capitals of Christian, NATO, Western, “democratic” power.
The British were a thousand years old, the Americans only two hundred. Because of their experience and their confidence, the British could afford to operate with psychology and diplomacy. They did not rush to brutality as a first option. In addition, their Caribbean colonial societies had a mixed race buffer class which tended to be Anglophile.
The Americans were young and rough. They had a cowboy mentality, and were quick to use their muscle to decide disputes, not realizing that, in the long run, force was always more expensive and less effective than reasoned diplomacy. Where the matter of race was concerned, the United States was polarized between white and black. There was no buffer class. Whereas in the Caribbean, British men often accepted responsibility for brown children, in the American South, the presence of their white wives on the plantations meant that American white men had to treat brown children as slave chattel – period.
If you read the novels of Ian Fleming, you will learn from the relationship between James Bond, the British M.I.5 agent, and Felix Leiter, the American CIA agent. It is a warm and cooperative relationship indeed.
Well, in 1981, London and Washington agreed for Belize to become independent. In the late 1970’s, civil wars in Guatemala, Salvador and Nicaragua had created crises in Central America for which the Belizean territory was used as a safety valve. The process of moving Central American refugees to Belize was facilitated through the United Nations, but it was Washington and London which made the call.
Around 1985, a British businessman who had spent a couple years of his childhood in British Honduras while his father was serving Whitehall here, began to involve himself in the economy of Belize, which had begun to grow by leaps and bounds with the new UDP government which sold passports and prime real estate, and opened up Belize to tourism. The Britisher soon acquired Belize’s largest bank and largest hotel, and then he saw opportunity in the telecommunications sector, which had been privatized by the UDP administration.
At what point the Englishman became a Conservative Party official and an intimate of Buckingham Palace, we can’t say precisely. But the Englishman is deeply involved in British politics at its highest levels. At what point this Englishman became the largest financier in the party politics of Belize, we can’t say precisely. But this Englishman is deeply involved in Belizean politics at its highest levels.
So deeply is the Englishman embedded in the business and politics of Belize, that the question has to be exactly how much of his activity is personal, and how much of it is imperial. The fact of the matter is that, while the British dramatically withdrew their troops from Belize in 1993, their military presence here has been decidedly renewed, but in a typically understated British manner.
The volatile issue in Belize, as it is in many other countries, is oil. The problem in Belize with respect to this oil, as it is in many other countries, is the indigenous people. The economy of Belize will grow, where its Gross Domestic Product is concerned, if the oil companies are allowed to do what they want to do here. But there are Belizean people who do not wish to live in a situation controlled by the oil companies. These Belizeans number, in their front line, the indigenous people, and their Belize City allies are the Kremandala organization. There are also a substantial amount of American citizens, interestingly enough, who have come to live in Belize because they do not wish to repeat their toxic oil-dominated experiences in America.
In Belize, there are many Americans who have invested a great deal of money here, much more money than the Englishman claims to have done. There are Belizeans, in fact, who have said that the Englishman has not invested any money here: all he has done is take Belizean money out of our country. Whether that is so or not, our point is that it is the Englishman who has interfered, disrespectfully, in the politics of Belize. We have not seen the American business people here behave as the Englishman has done. Why has this been so? What is the Englishman’s end-game? Is it business or is it politics? But, is there really a difference between his business and his politics? Is the Englishman a private business person or is he a “wannabe” hero of the British Empire? These are questions we now must seek to have answered.
Power to the people.