by Colin Hyde

The murder of young Imarie Galvez dominated the minds and hearts of Belizeans last week — a terrible tragedy in a land where we are battered with terrible news of the untimely, violent deaths of our young people far too regularly. It didn’t used to be like this. Everyone who knew Belize prior to independence know of a time when few dared to commit murder, and guilty parties had a near certain date with the gallows.

Murder victims are almost always male, and sons of the poor. The murder of a girl is not common, but it has been increasing. When the murder victim is a girl, she is usually from a poor family.

Many of the murders of young males are associated with the sales of drugs, or machismo-related beefs. The running of illegal drugs in Belize — marijuana and cocaine— became a big thing in the 1970s, and the pressure on our society hasn’t let up since. Guns associated with the drugs trade now proliferate, and beefs that were once resolved with fists or sometimes a stick or sharp weapon are now settled with bullets.

I know absolutely nothing about the recent case, but in the past the murders of young females almost always had to do with love or sex. The facts say that when a girl turns up dead, a spurned lover is not far away. Or, that a rapist trying to cover their tracks did it.

I’m not speculating on who killed the young lady. Two things jumped out at me when I read about the tragedy in the Amandala. That night, she was angry or not happy with a friend, and so she walked home. The second is that she depended on taxis to get around. The daughters of the well-off or rich families jump in their vehicle and drive to the party, and when they feel like going home, they don’t need to look for a taxi. A girl is stuck out on a limb if the cabbie she trusts is not available when she most needs them.

Young people need to, will go out and have fun. In present-day Belize, the minds of parents whose children go out to have fun are dominated with thoughts that their next meeting with their boy might be at the morgue, or that their daughter might be violated. That shouldn’t be so.

The primary business of every society is to protect its young. A big part of that is arming them with the truth. Young people from not rich or well-off families must accept that they are more vulnerable; they must keep that fact in the front of their minds whenever they are going out on the town. You can have fun, but know that you are at far greater risk than the children of the well-off and rich, so you must act differently.

I see a lot of advice out there for girls, about how they can protect themselves when they go out. They’re all good. Most of them remind young people to stay with the crowd. But when a boy or girl finds a pareja, they don’t want any friends around. If a girl loses her friends at the party, if they find their beaus and she is left alone, she is in the most dangerous of places. There are some not so good people on the night circuit, some of them extremely unsavory. And worse can happen to a girl than being violated. The sick male might want to cover his tracks.

What, what doesn’t mean anything?

The US being so powerful, everybody scrambling to get a Green Card and all that, I guess it was natural for poor us to think that Americans were some kind of smart. Really, in Belize we look at everyone who has money as the brightest bulbs, and nobody had or has money like they (the Americans) do. We read US-published Time Magazine and Newsweek, there’s a lot of deep thinking there, even if sometimes it’s a little “swayed”, and so many of our young people dreamt of going to their universities. We should be excused if we had them on a pedestal high above our heads.

Then along came television and we were suddenly able to see and hear them debate the issues, and immediately their points began to plummet. It didn’t take us very long to understand why they could hold an embargo against Cuba for decades, why the average American has no real knowledge of or gives a daam about what is going on outside of their borders, why they could support the murder of good leaders and the overthrow of good governments in our part of the world. And why they have hysteria at the mention of anything left of full free enterprise.

The lady leader who said Trump is in good company because Jesus and Mandela were also arrested — one, how does a country manufacture a mind like hers, and two, elect her to government? She’s a representative from Georgia, and her name is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Ms. Greene went on some fishing trip! I got the story from Sonam Sheth, from an article in the Business Insider last month titled, “Marjorie Taylor Greene compared Trump to Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ in an interview with her new boyfriend.” Sheth said the lady said former US president Trump was “joining the likes of Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ” as he awaited his day in court to answer criminal charges.

Lady, do you know what Jesus was arrested for? Do you know what Mandela was arrested for? Do you know what Philip Goldson was arrested for? Lady, those guys were freedom fighters, Jesus to save our tempted souls from sin, and Mandela and Goldson were fighting for political freedom for their people, the former fighting apartheid and the latter colonialism. What, they arrested Trump? What for? Please, please, what for matters!

The cutest picture of the year goes to … Buckingham Palace

There’s this photograph with the new King Charles III flanked by Prince William, who is standing to his right, and a little boy, must be William’s son, standing to his left. It’s nice, cute to see a grampa, his son, and his grandson having a family moment, but it can’t escape you while watching them that in times gone by, da man on the throne would have had real power, I mean like fu real. Dis ya time da noh like bifo time. Once upon a time the man with that crown could have said “off with his head” to anyone in the realm, and before morning a crowd would have gathered for the spectacle.

Those days are long, long gone now. One historian says that the Royal family has been symbolic since 1688.

Oh, if the British were humble like the Taiwanese! Remember I got chided about some history I reported between Taiwan and Mainland China? Well, while the British are putting on airs, people haffu talk. But I won’t sink and be like their numerous tabloids.

I found this bit from a guest at The Straight Dope Message Board quite entertaining. It’s unofficial, so wi kyaahn seh that da soh with the hayr of the haas tail een a wi hand. The guest said the last execution in the UK was in 1964, and technically all “prosecutions are at the behest of the Crown.” But, but as for directly ordering anyone’s death, the nearest to that was 1747 when Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, was beheaded for treason. And for the last real ‘off with his head’ order, the guest said that title goes to Charles II, who, in 1661, ordered the beheading of Oliver Cromwell, who had been dead since 1658.

Aha, Charles II exhumed the bodies of three men, one of them Oliver Cromwell, and had them beheaded for presiding over the execution of his pa, Charles I.