“In late 1752, Governor Knowles forwards a proclamation to Lord Holderness by the King of Spain ordering Spanish Governors to ‘grant freedom to such Negro slaves as should fly from the English and Dutch Colonies to my dominions under pretence of embracing the Holly (sic) Catholic religion.’
“From this day henceforth until the end of slavery in the English colonies in 1837, black brothers and sisters who were supposed to be so happy with the Baymen in Belize broke away and headed north. The Archives are filled with annual complaints by the settlers in Belize concerning the disastrous effects the seduction of slaves by the Spanish was having on the timber trade. Slaves were heading north to the Hondo and Bacalar in a steady stream. You will remember that the brothers who revolted in 1773 headed north to the Spanish.”
– from Knocking Our Own Ting, by Evan X Hyde, pgs. 10, 11, X COMMUNICATION, Angelus Press, 1995
Two or three weeks ago, we wrote an editorial titled “Uncompromising.” It was a harsh editorial. It was a necessary editorial. You and I know how it is, there are times a parent will beat up on a child, then explain that it’s for his/her own good. The parent may even accompany the whacking with an expression of love. You and I know how it is.
Our people did not come to where we are today, where we are scared of our own children, we didn’t come here overnight. What angers us at this newspaper is that we began warning you about this more than forty years ago. But, you didn’t want our castor oil. You preferred sugared candy. You wanted to hear what you wanted to hear from the PUP and the UDP – sweet words.
The important thing back then was for us to seek to identify who we were. Over a period of centuries and many generations, the slavemasters who afterwards became our colonial masters, did a job on our minds. A person who has been conquered and enslaved/colonized, is a vulnerable person. He/she seeks nothing as much as he/she seeks a quality of life improvement for his/her children. How to get it for the children? Understand our ancestors’ situation. Those brutes who had conquered our ancestors with swords and guns, had metamorphosed into saintly preachers and missionaries. They consoled us in our misery. They offered us their God. Our ancestors accepted.
There came the point about sixty years ago when our grandparents realized that we had to begin charting our own way. There were many of our people who were afraid of this self rule. They had become dependent on the same people who had conquered, enslaved, colonized, and proselytized us. There had been benefits from that dependency. The greatest benefit was that we were the master’s alter ego. We had reached the point where we ran government for him. We had power over all the other Belizeans – Mestizos, Mayas, Garifuna, etc.
In a sense, we had earned that power. But, in another sense, we were “house niggers.” In the words of Malcolm, when the master got sick, we said, “We’s sick.” Massa no longer needed to chain our bodies, because he had to come to own our minds.
There were people on the territorial periphery of colonial power in British Honduras who had come to the settlement of Belize many decades, centuries even, after we were first brought here in chains. These people punished here, but they worked hard. Also, and very important, they fought to preserve their culture and community as a people, this under extreme duress. The various new people survived, then they thrived. They became Belizeans.
Bottom line, they were tougher than we were, because they had experienced more pain. In our naiveté, however, we bought into Massa’s story/game: we were in charge of things because we were superior and deserved to be in charge. The truth was, we were in charge of things because we had sold out to Massa.
A lot of things began to change sixty years ago. And forty years ago, we tried to have our people get the sense. They didn’t get the sense then, but they have the sense now. We are in a war. We didn’t choose this fight, but we can’t run away from it. This is for real.
You can’t be indulging in a self-esteem which is based on how valuable you were to Massa. Sure enough, that value to Massa derived from your competence. But, whether now or later, the duty of the slave is to rebel. Roots must resist. The international paradigm calls for the colonized to seek self rule. This is the road to human and national dignity.
If you want to be a clown and dance jigs for Massa in the third millennium, then you will be a joker. You will be a joker for the world. You will be a joker for the region. And, perhaps most important, you will be a joker for those Belizeans whose history has made them understand that sometimes the price of your freedom is your life.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.