Let’s not fool ourselves. There is a real question about the future status of Belize as a country, and what contributes to the reality of that question is not only the Guatemalan claim to Belize, but the weak nationalism of the Belizean people.
As we listen to Foreign Minister Sedi Elrington’s arguments in support of a closer, in fact special, relationship with Israel, we can see that his mind set is similar to that of the very first UDP Leader, Mr. Dean Lindo. Lindo was very successful as UDP Leader with a policy package which stressed economic development for Belize, free enterprise, foreign investment, and a downplaying of the Guatemalan claim and Belizeans’ resistance to it.
The Opposition Leader whom Lindo replaced, officially in 1974 after first trying to overthrow him in 1969, was Philip Goldson. At some point in the late 1950s/early 1960s, Mr. Goldson had become a serious nationalist, whose major concern was the Guatemalan claim to Belize and how Belize proposed to respond to it. As publisher and editor of The Belize Billboard, which was not only a daily but also unquestionably the most powerful newspaper in British Honduras, Mr. Goldson captured the imagination of the people of Belize. His National Independence Party (NIP) was, however, weak in national, organizational, and political terms, winning only three seats out of 54 overall in the general elections of 1961, 1965, and 1969. (Mr. Goldson did not lead the NIP in the 1961 general elections.)
All non-PUP Belizean nationalists pay homage to Mr. Goldson, because he made manifest, continuing personal sacrifices for Belize, the most notable of which was going to jail in 1951 on a sedition charge placed by the British colonial authorities. Forty years later in 1991, Mr. Goldson led a serious breakaway from the then Opposition UDP, a breakaway which included Sedi Elrington’s older brother, Hubert. Mr. Goldson was the UDP area representative for the Albert constituency when he broke with the party and formed the National Alliance for Belizean Rights (NABR). The reason for Goldson’s rebellion was the UDP’s support of the Maritime Areas Act (MAA).
Just a couple months before the June 1993 general elections, Mr. Goldson led NABR into a coalition with the UDP on the basis of a UDP promise that they would repeal the Maritime Areas Act if the coalition was elected, which it was. The UDP did not repeal the MAA. Mr. Goldson served as a Cabinet Minister in the UDP/NABR government of 1993 to 1998, but he was isolated. At his death in 2001, he was still NABR Leader.
Sedi Elrington has taken public credit for helping to “broker” the coalition agreement between the UDP and NABR in April/May of 1993. We imagine that Mr. Elrington would claim that he holds Mr. Goldson in the greatest of esteem, and that he considers himself to be following in the nationalist footsteps of Mr. Goldson. But his actions now suggest otherwise. As I pointed out in the second paragraph of this essay, Sedi’s Israeli initiative is more in line with the approach taken by Dean Lindo. In the UDP, however, no one ever comes out and say he or she is thinking or acting in the tradition of Mr. Lindo. It is Mr. Goldson who is Belize’s Jose Martí.
The good thing about my personal situation as a non-politician, is that I can say anything I believe, rather than having to say, as the politicians do, what people want to hear. The downside of my constitutional reality is, of course, that the politicians are more powerful than I. When I was a young man entering public life for the first time as an officer of UBAD, I did not understand my role in constitutional terms, and so when the politicians used their power seeking to silence and crush I, I fought back. Within the defined confines of Belize’s parliamentary democracy, such a fighting back was like entering a dead end street.
I feel strongly about Israel’s known support for South African apartheid and her role as an arms supplier/army trainer for murderous Guatemalan military dictatorships. Israel is not a nation with which I wish Belize to become romantic. All I can have, however, is my say. I understand and respect that Mr. Elrington and his Belizean government have had their way. But I feel sure that Mr. Goldson would not have approved of this.
And so we return to the question of Belize’s future status. Where the historical tradition of nation-states is concerned, Belize is somewhat of an artificial creation. A thousand years ago and more, Belize, territorially speaking, was a part of the Maya world. A few hundred years ago, British pirates/woodcutters carved out a niche here, and on their own initiative and with the support of the British Empire’s “backative” in the region, they defended that niche. There was a significant role played in that defence by blacks and browns in the settlement.
The Belize settlement opted to become a British colony in the latter part of the nineteenth century. British Honduras around the same time was accepting Mestizo and Maya refugees from the Caste War in the Yucatan. In the early part of the century, British Honduras had accepted Garifuna refugees from Roatan. At various times in the colony’s history, East Indian, Chinese, Arab, and other immigrants were accepted. Some supporters of the Confederate side in the United States civil war (1861-1865) were allowed to settle in Toledo. The Mennonites came around 1957. Later in the modern era, the self-governing colony of Belize accepted thousands of refugees from the civil wars in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Salvador. And so it goes … Belize’s is a heterogeneous population.
If Sedi listens closely to what he said on the Israeli matter, the suggestion is strong that the important thing for him is the development of Belize as a country, as opposed to the welfare of those who may consider themselves roots Belizeans. If this is the case, why not get rid of us non-producing roots Belizeans, and make it all a Mennonite affair?