When the Europeans invaded Africa in the fifteenth century, slavery as an institution had existed for thousands and thousands of years all over the known world – Africa, Asia and Europe. Enslavers had utilized the labor of human beings, but had not sought to remodel the slave’s psyche or turn him/her into a confused cipher. Most slaves had lost their freedom as a result of their tribe or state being conquered by another tribe or state. Slavery was not a race-based institution before the Europeans attacked Africa.
There were Africans who cooperated with the Europeans in the slavery business. In the beginning, the Africans on the west coast of the continent did not know what fate awaited enslaved Africans in the holds of slave ships sailing across the Atlantic Ocean or, later, on the sugar and cotton plantations of the Americas. After a while, however, they must have known that ships which chained so many human beings in their holds had to be hell holes. But, no matter, the Africans who did business with the slavers turned their heads and counted the money. Business was business.
The European people engaged in the slave trade were the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch and the English. These were all nations which believed in Jesus Christ and practiced Christianity as their official religion. This remains the case up to the present day, although the Spanish and Portuguese have remained Roman Catholic, while the French, Dutch and English became Protestants. Still, they are all self-proclaimed Christians.
At some point, someone European decided that these enslaved Africans were too strong and too numerous. The chains and the whips and the dogs were not enough. These only controlled the body. The someone European wanted to control our ancestors’ minds. In order to make unity of the enslaved as difficult as possible, someone European decided to obliterate the slaves’ names, languages, religions, cultures and group histories. Remember now, that the original enslavement process had already destroyed the individual slave’s family matrix and underpinnings. All the Christian European slave nations then basically followed the lead of whoever came up with the idea of altering the historical DNA of slavery as an institution.
Having isolated the slave and removed his identity, the Europeans set about the process of giving the newly created cipher an alien name, language, religion and culture. Essentially, the European gave the African, branded him with, his (European) name, his language, his Christian religion, and his culture. The African submitted under duress. But as time went along and the European rapist’s blood mingled with the Africans,’ there emerged some of our people who publicly expressed their gratitude to the enslaver (who, by then, was going about the business of rebranding by calling himself a “colonizer”) for having obliterated their “pagan” past, for having “civilized” them, and for having given them a Christian, European identity.
The most frightening thing that happened in the slavery era, where the Europeans in the Americas were concerned, was the Haitian Revolution in 1791. In all of the Caribbean slave societies and in Belize, black slaves outnumbered their European slavemasters. An incredible leader emerged in Haiti by the name of Toussaint L’Ouverture, who unified the Africans and led them to freedom, defeating French, British and Spanish armies in the process.
Unfortunately, as time went along, the Europeans in the Caribbean and the Americas succeeded in isolating and victimizing Haiti, because, although the black Haitian republic founded in 1804 assisted Simon Bolivar in the Venezuelan liberation process, the Caribbean and the Americas fundamentally remained European enclaves – slave societies which became, after the rebranding, “colonies.”
In 1995, the descendants of Africans in Belize and Central America, founded an organization called the Central American Black Organization (CABO). (In Spanish, the acronym is ONECA.) On the historical landscape, CABO is a tiny move, but it is a highly symbolic and significant one. In the years subsequent to the organization’s formation, some descendants of Africans in the United States, Venezuela and Colombia have joined CABO.
In more than one sense, Belize is the black capital of Central America. It was therefore unfortunate that, even as Belize was scheduled, by rotation, to host the XV General Assembly of CABO in early December, there were half steps and slipdowns among the black organizations in Belize – National Garifuna Council (NGC), National Kriol Council (NKC), and the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF). Still, a serious effort is presently being made to work out the Belize logistics for the CABO annual general meeting.
Slavery and colonialism were designed, over a period of centuries, to create precisely those conditions which make it difficult for us, descendants of Africans, to unite. CABO is but a single step in a journey of a thousand miles. It is an important first step.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.