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Religion, politics and crime

EditorialReligion, politics and crime
“Catholic theologians in the nineteenth century repudiated the basic tenets of liberalism and Pius IX, in his Syllabus of Errors (1864), made clear that no Catholic could, in good conscience, be a liberal.”
 
     pg. 12, The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church 1910-1929, Robert E. Quirk, Indiana University Press, 1973.
 
 
It is safe to say that the Roman Catholic Church has never lost a general election in British Honduras/Belize. The first two Prime Ministers, George Price and Manuel Esquivel, were Roman Catholics. The succeeding two Prime Ministers have been Anglicans, but the Catholics have been well represented in the terms of Said Musa and Dean Barrow, by Ralph Fonseca and Carlos Perdomo, respectively.
         
While this blend of religion and politics has served the Church well over the last 60 years, there has been one serious side effect – an epidemic and explosion of violent crime, and primarily on the Southside of Belize City, the old capital. There will be a loud outcry if we suggest that the success of the Church’s policies and programs is in any way linked to the socio-economic disaster on the Southside. In a way, all the Roman Church was doing was taking care of its own, and whatever the Romans have achieved has been won in free and fair competition. But, who is to blame for the Southside, and what is to be done?
         
The pro-Roman Catholic newspaper, THE REPORTER, in its editorial last weekend called for special powers to “enforce a partial state of emergency, giving law enforcement the authority to arrest and hold gang-related criminals for 30 days.” The editorialist goes on: “These 30 days are also to be used for a complete psychological disorder assessment during which the accused person is examined for a detailed history of his past and present. He is subject to civilized interrogation and a polygraph test. He is asked about his friends and associates, and a complete dossier is built up.” The REPORTER editorialist continues: “Every person arrested for a gang-related crime will go through the process, which is to be conducted by professional people at the Kolbe Foundation Center. The purpose of the psychological evaluation is to collect a wide-spectrum database of what the gangs are doing, who are its leaders and who are its members.”
         
Most times in our history, we have been in disagreement with THE REPORTER, but they are a Southside newspaper, and we respect their placement at the corner of Allenby and West Streets, where they have stood firm. This location is just a stone’s throw away from one of the most dangerous gang neighborhoods on the Southside. In their four decades or so at Allenby and West, THE REPORTER has not participated in neighbourhood youth activities the way Amandala has done in the Partridge Street and Vernon Street neighbourhood, but the fact that THE REPORTER, Belize’s second leading newspaper, remains at Allenby and West, means that they are providing jobs and economic activity in an area desperately in need of same.
         
Still, because THE REPORTER ownership has never sponsored a team or involved itself in their neighborhood in any other way except business, it means that they know very little about the people in their neighborhood. That is why they are calling for their co-religionists at the Kolbe Foundation Center to conduct “psychological evaluation” to find out “what the gangs are doing, who are its leaders and who are its members.”
         
We have said before at this newspaper, on more than one occasion, that to grow up in certain areas of Belize City is to automatically become a candidate for gang membership, and that from the age of childhood. The physical and socio-economic circumstances of these specific neighbourhoods contribute directly to the human products we have classified as “gangs.” That is not to say that previous generations of the gang products may not have had similar predilections in antecedent eras. In other words, there are cycles here which need to be broken.
         
You can break these cycles with brute force, as people like Guatemala’s Ubico may have proven, or you can adopt a humane approach, as has been demonstrated in Cuba. The Cuban Revolution itself was not humane, because many in the Bautista dictatorship had to be killed or executed. But the Cuban Revolution is humane in that it created educational opportunities for families which had been mired in illiteracy and poverty.
         
The example of Australia, which was basically settled and developed by convicts deported from Europe, and their descendants, possibly proves that criminality is not primarily a DNA matter. All human beings essentially desire the same things. The problem with the Australia example is what the European colonizers and their deported convicts did to the indigenous aborigines of that island continent. That is another story.
   
At Amandala, our thesis is that this society and the governments which have administrated Belize for the last 60 years have done almost everything in their power to ensure that the way young people behave in specified Southside areas is the way they have to behave. There is no choice in the matter for these young people unless your preference is for what some experts euphemistically refer to as the “alternative life style.”
   
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.

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