No one in Belize can tell you where the word “Creole” (now “Kriol”) comes from. Just north of us in Mexico, Criollo has been used for centuries to refer to Spaniards who were born in Mexico (sometimes then called “New Spain.”) In Louisiana, “Creole” refers to those born of the original French settlers of that territory.
In Belize, “Creole” has had a specific meaning. It refers to those Belizeans of some degree of African descent who are not Garifuna. The problem the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) found with the “Creole” designation in 1969 was that it did not explicitly denote the African origin of the person designated. In 1969, UBAD emphasized “black,” which, the Nation of Islam explained, was in four parts – black, brown, red, and yellow.
As the years and decades went by, we moved from “black” to “Afro Honduran” and “Afro Belizean,” and, eventually, “African.” There is a reason we have always insisted on our African-ness, and that reason is this. Those who enslaved and colonized our ancestors, tried to deny our ancestors’ humanity. They tried to make our ancestors out to be animals. This was in order to justify the horrors of slavery to the Europeans back home in Europe, some of whom had become critical of slavery on the grounds of Christian compassion.
As the decades and the centuries went by, white supremacists, exploiting the power they enjoyed over the education and religious system, the entertainment industry, the publishing industry, and other methods of mass communication, convinced a lot of our people that white was intrinsically good and beautiful, whereas black was intrinsically, Biblically even, bad and ugly.
In 1969, we wanted to emphasize the completeness of our rebellion against white supremacy. We wanted Belizeans to know that we accepted, yea embraced, our blackness, and that we thought that black was beautiful.
In British Honduras in 1969, a small branch of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had survived, and they met regularly at the Liberty Hall on Barrack Road. The president was Percival Innis, a George Street shoemaker, and the secretary-general was Robert “Rasta” Livingston, who became a foundation UBAD officer in February of 1969. Other UNIA members included Nurse Vivian Seay, Nurse Cleopatra White, and Elfreda Reyes, who was an NIP adherent. All these people are now deceased.
We mention the British Honduras branch of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA, because we want to declare that Marcus Garvey’s international achievement in the early 1920’s was truly sensational. You must remember that at this time, black people were routinely being lynched in the racially segregated American South, the partition of Africa had been completed by European powers just 35 years before at the Berlin Conference, and British Honduras was absolutely ruled by the British. Garvey, however, essentially managed to convince millions of black people all over planet earth that black was beautiful, that black should and could “do for self,” and that Africa should be “redeemed” by black people as an international force.
Garvey himself was attacked and destroyed by white supremacy, but his spiritual message resurfaced in the religion we know today as Rastafarianism. The leading international symbol of Rasta remains the late Jamaican reggae musician/poet, Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley. Marley was the son of a white Englishman and a black Jamaican mother. But Marley, once he reached the age of enlightenment, always referred to himself as an “African.” It is the stone which the builders rejected, which has indeed become the cornerstone. Africans, unite.
If you seek to bypass and disrespect the UBAD reality in your black consciousness, this is fine. But, in pushing your Creole/Kriol identity, you are going away from Garveyism. And you cannot bypass or disrespect Marcus Mosiah. If you do that, then you will certainly be considered quaint in the rest of the African world. Black is beautiful.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.