Whenever I meet Belizeans of my generation, they usually want to hold a conversation with me. One of the reasons for this is that they so seldom see me, and another reason is that most of them will have been reading all the columns and editorials for which I have been responsible. They want to discuss some of these ideas, and this is perfectly natural.
For my part, however, I usually avoid or cut short such conversations, and the main reason is that I tend to become impatient and/or arbitrary in serious conversations. There are some topics, moreover, which are emotional in nature, such as those involving religious beliefs and passions, and these can quickly explode.
The masses of the Creole people have had a reputation of being friendly, of being open. But, no people who are oppressed are all that friendly or all that open as it may seem to the outsider. There are certain laws which were made and imposed by the colonial masters which our people had to obey. Most of you know about the marijuana law, which was made about 80 years ago. There are also laws which say at what age a young lady can consent to sex. And, most important of all, there is the law of monogamous marriage – one husband, one wife.
On the ground amongst the masses of our people, they have their own views, and these are often in conflict with the laws of the rulers. Today, I will discuss the law of marriage. It should be noted that there are few marriages amongst our people today, and while there were relatively more marriages contracted in the days of my young adulthood, even then more Belizean men and women were parents “living in sin” than there were those who had blessed their union religiously or legally.
I think that I have a better idea of the relationship dynamics where slavery in the American South was concerned, than I do with respect to slave society in Belize. I use the term “relationship” as opposed to “family,” because slaves were not allowed to establish families in the American South, and the family concept had to be a tenuous one in the settlement of Belize, where men had to live and work in the bush for half the year, leaving their women in town to fend for themselves.
They say that in the American South, the slavemasters encouraged sex and promiscuity amongst their chattel, because more slave children increased the wealth of the slavemasters. In Belize when I was growing up, men who were sexually successful with multiple women were considered “heroes” amongst our people, not villains. I don’t know if this was a social perspective which had carried over from the slavery days.
For sure, the one husband/one wife system is the best system in which to rear children. But, there are societies and religions in Asia and Africa which have traditionally allowed one man to have several wives, under certain circumstances. These are serious societies and devout religions. In Belize, the law mandates monogamy, so that those of our men, and there are many of them, who are driven to multiple relationships, have to seek and hide. The stress is enormous, and the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases are increased by the secretive nature of the multiplicity. In Belize, such men are sinners, plain and simple, and this is the main reason why so very few roots men contract formal marriages. Under the non-marital arrangement, you see, the women share in the sin, whereas where there is marriage, the wife is holy but the lovers are whores.
In the business world of Belize, it is the ideal for a man to be in a monogamous marriage. The roots world is not the business world. There are few roots marriages. The form of social compensation amongst our people was the extended family. All adults in the family, in the neighbourhood even, become surrogate parents, for a day or for a lifetime. We had love, Jack, and we used our own means of communication to monitor those sexual deviates who were dangerous to our children.
Marriage, you know, is a business contract to a much greater extent than young people realize. When you are young, you are all caught up in the romance of the concept, but this marriage thing is a business more than a romance. That is why in some traditional societies, the families of the marital couple can arrange the marriage from the time they are children, without reference to the young couple’s romantic ideas. And these “arranged” marriages actually have a higher success rate than the Western marriages where romantic love is the foundation of the contract.
There are many Belizeans I know with whom I could not sustain a conversation on such a matter. The main reason is that they are fanatic and inflexible Christians, and they believe society must be run as they say, or else. The fact of the matter is that the masses of our people only pay lip service to some of these moral dictates which originate from men who claim to be divinely-inspired. And, it is not that the masses of our people do not believe in God. They do, but theirs is a God different from the one in whose name the slave and colonial masters spoke. The slave and colonial masters never, never had any genuine moral authority amongst those they brutalized and exploited.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.