Clinton Canul Luna’s last child, a teenaged daughter by the name of Ariadne, called me this morning, Wednesday, to say that he had passed last night.
I think I knew Luna for 15 to 20 years, perhaps even more, our relationship beginning with a letter he wrote the newspaper way back when.

There was a terrible hurricane by the name of Janet which struck Corozal Town in 1955. (I think the late Philip Goldson and the late Henry Fairweather were given credit for re-designing and rebuilding the town.) As a result of the disaster, Clinton’s mother sent him, at 12 years of age, to Acapulco to live and work with an uncle. 

Acapulco is a very famous tourist destination on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, and this is where Clinton made his bones. He rose as high as becoming a hotel manager there. Luna later entered the trade union business in Mexico. He never gave me many details about his life in Acapulco and the rest of Mexico, because we did not spend that much time together. I knew, though, that I could get advice from him on anything I did not understand about major issues, and I always found his advice to be on point.

He was a very intelligent man. He was also a handsome man, and he loved women, who loved him in return. But after his successful decades in Mexico (one of his sons is a congressman in Cancun), Clinton said that he ended up broke because he gave everything he had to his wife, who had abandoned him for another man. I did not understand this, but did not press him for details.   

Clinton Luna taught tourism briefly at the Belize Technical College around 1992 or 1993. I did not question him about this period in his life.

A sincere and serious Mayanist, Luna was part Creole, related to the Wrights on East Canal. Again, I did not press him for details.

I think Clinton Luna was very anti-capitalist, and it may be that he could be considered a communist. (He was definitely anti-American.) But, what really is a communist? What is the difference between communist beliefs and the teachings of Jesus Christ? I always told Luna that if I died before he did, they would get rid of him from the newspaper immediately.

I admired Luna as a person, because he was so fearless and so anti-materialistic. He lived in a very poor section of Corozal Town in a broken down home in an area they call Finca Solana. The times I went to see him in Corozal Town, I would turn right at the burial ground and then left along the seashore. I would then have to call him by phone to have him come out from the bush and show me exactly where he lived.

There was a lot more to Clinton Canul Luna (sometimes he called himself Clinton Davis) than I ever found out. As I said before, I would ask his advice on certain things; his advice would usually be practically brilliant. I learned a lot from Clinton Canul Luna. I feel a deep grief on his passing. He was my teacher and my friend.