There were days, perhaps even weeks, during the time of the Heads of Agreement uprisings (1981) in Belize when it appeared to me that Belize had been cut off from the rest of the world, that no one outside really knew of how dangerous and explosive Belize had suddenly become, and, finally, that those who did know, did not care.
This happens to regions and countries all the time, the feeling of being totally and frighteningly isolated, during and following huge natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and the like. Man-made disasters, such as civil wars, can also create the effect of having a people experience the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world.
On Wall Street in New York City, there are men and women who live in a world of numbers and money. The stock markets on Wall Street, and indeed those in the major business capitals of the world, are receiving all kinds of financial and other vital information during the course of the working day as soon as that information is available. This is specific information about developments which will raise or lower the value of the corporations which are listed on the stock exchange, information which will raise or lower the value of the internationally important commodities, such as gold, silver, oil, copper, steel, etc., and information which will raise or lower the value of planet earth’s important currencies – the dollar, the pound, the franc, the yen, the ruble, etc.
The information which concerns, yea obsesses, Wall Street and other financial capitals on planet earth, does not have anything to do with human beings per se. By that we mean, that if there is an earthquake in Iran or Iraq, for example, as there have always been historically, it does not matter to Wall Street how many hundreds of thousands of Iranians or Iraqis die: what matters to Wall Street is how that earthquake will affect the price of oil, and what impact that earthquake will have on the share value of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Aramco, and other oil companies.
In the world of Wall Street and like streets, then, people do not matter, except and only when these people affect the numbers on the markets. It is important for Belizeans to understand this, because, by and large, we are a friendly people, and we are an innocent people. Belizeans have been introduced to the rest of the world in a serious way, we would say, only in the last 25 years. Previous to that, we would have individual immigrant families, even whole groups, like the Mennonites, come here and “school” us in business, agriculture and other skills, because they had come from more experienced and sophisticated regions of the planet. But our thesis is that Belize has only been opened up, relatively speaking, in the last 25 years.
41 years ago, a Wall Street lawyer by the name of Bethuel Webster presented his proposals for a solution to the dispute between Great Britain and Guatemala over the territory of British Honduras (now Belize). Wall Street had become interested in this territory because there were large petroleum and natural gas deposits which the corporations had discovered in Belize. (This information was kept hidden from the masses of the Belizean people.)
But there was a problem in Belize. The problem was that the neo-European ruling class of Guatemala, the United States’ most important Central American ally, “claimed” the British colony, while the British were, of course, the United States’ most important international ally. Once Wall Street confirmed the oil findings and the oil companies began extraction, the Guatemalans would no doubt become more aggressive with their claim. Two of America’s friends would become confrontational, and that would not do. So, the business-like thing to do was to settle the dispute before the oil announcements and extractions. Hence, Bethuel Webster’s Seventeen Proposals in 1968.
These “Proposals” did not have anything to do with the Belizean people. In Webster’s world, in the world of Wall Street, we peons do not exist. The parties which Webster intended to please and placate were the minority military dictatorship of Guatemala and the imperial “queendom” of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The people of Belize immediately responded to Webster, through violent means, by establishing their right to be a party to any settlement of the aforementioned dispute. Ditto, in 1981.
Oil is a volatile commodity internationally because of its importance to the world’s industrial centers, the world’s military machines, and the world’s financial markets. I am pessimistic about Belize’s future because of our petroleum deposits. I think we will become more and more unstable and violent as a nation, not because we, the Belizean people, prefer conflict and confrontation, but because forces outside our borders which are much, much powerful than we are, have struck black gold in our territory.
Consider Iraq. This is the site of the ancient, treasured civilization of Mesopotamia. But the discovery of oil there in the beginning of the twentieth century immediately caused that country’s history to become a violent one. The same may be said of Nigeria. The history of that West African nation changed in a violent direction once petroleum deposits were identified there fifty years ago.
And I have now come to believe that the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) was as bloody as it was, and it was bloody, trust me, because oil was an issue, a larger issue than has ever been recognized. When Francisco Madero challenged Porfirio Diaz in 1910, Mexico was already an oil producing nation. Britain and Germany, the principals in World War I four years later, were already modernizing their war machinery (airplanes, tanks, ships, submarines, etc.) in a direction which made oil skyrocket in importance on world markets.
Consider the ten years in Mexico from 1910 to 1920. Madero takes power in 1911 after defeating Diaz’s federal army with the assistance of Pancho Villa in Chihuahua and Emiliano Zapata in Morelos. In 1913, Madero is murdered by Victoriano Huerta’s reactionary coup. But Villa and Zapata remain revolutionary. Along with Venustiano Carranza, they wage war against Huerta, who is forced into exile in 1914. Carranza, who controls the Tampico oil fields, then goes to war with Villa and Zapata, emerging victorious in 1916. Zapata is assassinated in 1919. Carranza is murdered in 1920.
I think it will be difficult for Belize to avoid such a fate, on a smaller scale, of course, as has befallen Iraq, Nigeria and Mexico. The Guatemalans will not give up their claim. The Americans and the British have it as their priority to satisfy the Guatemalans. In the final analysis, it will be only the Belizean people who can save the Belizean people.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.