by Colin Hyde

Not too long ago I caught a television documentary in which George Price was telling Rene Villanueva that a little Mestizo boy came with his little flag to join the school parade and some little Kriol boys drove him away, told him that he didn’t belong, and in that moment he effectively decided that the TENTH wasn’t good for Belize. I stayed a while to hear how the Spaniards had bad belly and a little something about slaves waving palm fronds, and Price bragging that 1798 made no contribution to independence, that that achievement was all about the PUP and the people fighting for it.

Price was very comfortable letting it all go to Rene, because that one absolutely adores him, fawns over him. You can give Rene points for gratitude. Every year in September he tells the story about when he came to Belize from Roatán as a young man and auditioned for Radio Belize, and how much Sefe loved his Spanish, and recommended him to George. The adoration for George never stopped; indeed, it gushed, and boy has it paid off for Mr. Villanueva.

I am pretty certain, just from a basic understanding of human beings, who haven’t changed instincts- wise from their days in caves, that that simple incident at the parade galvanized a position that George had been sitting on for some time. George had a beef, and as Manuel Esquivel reminded us, when baby waahn baal yu jos haffu luk pahn ahn.

So, what was Belize when George decided that it was best to kill the TENTH? There were two Kriol tribes, one, mostly brown and red, who identified with our ancestors who were free at the time of emancipation, and one, mostly black, who identified with our ancestors who were enslaved at the time of emancipation. The former, most of them loved the TENTH, and in the latter group many of them were lukewarm and some actually antipathetic toward it.

I have heard Garinagu and Mestizo leaders lambast the Kriols without any compassion for what was going on with the group — perhaps recognizing their division. I think it superficial to look at the little position Kriols had in the public service as a measure of their status in the society. That they clung to the little they had is standard for every tribe. The Kriols were protective, but never violent. In fact, they’ve been on a mass exodus for decades.

It is understandable that other roots tribes would be uncomfortable with the behavior of Kriols, but time is supposed to teach us lessons, give us a better understanding. Really, I have to question anyone harboring beef against us 50 years later. Our other roots tribes were misguided to believe that it was a soft spot for the Kriols. We are a tribe whose ancestors were enslaved. Our ancestors experienced deprivation, genocide, disenfranchisement, and on top of that 300 plus years in chains.

It isn’t only Kriols that loved the TENTH. Many Mestizos did too. For some of them, it might have been because the British was less a colonizer in these parts than the Spanish were, and some probably had a Kriol granny. Some members of the other roots tribes also “big up” in the parade.

For the tribes that came here after 1798, the TENTH was too significant a battle to ignore, to spit on, for without 1798 the country where they found refuge from bad scenes in their homeland would not have existed. They would have run from frying pan to fire. Of course, hmm, the whiter ones might have just mingled with the terrible oligarchies in Central America and joined in the trampling of the brown and the black.

Okay, let’s get back on course to George killing the TENTH and unintentionally causing us to be handed over to the voyeurs and their imported Trinidad Carnival and Jouvert. Man, that anti-TENTH agenda has been as raging a success as replacing the glory of sailing with a nice dory race on the NINTH. But we all know what happened with the latter, that there was no agenda there, that the cause was all poverty. Some observant person said that only the elite ride horses today, and only fishermen and rich people can own a sailboat.

George Price’s story is that it was all for national unity, but there are other factors that might have influenced him. George’s mom was Mestizo, and his father we would call British because his mix didn’t show. Off the top I will say he sweated his mom’s fever. Kristin Gilger, in the piece “A journey of faith, motherhood and priesthood”, which is published in The Republic at the website azcentral.com, said that “dating back to the earliest days of the Church, mothers have received most of the credit when their sons have gone into the church business.”

I believe that George, at least initially, bought into Belize as a member country of the Central American Republic. Geography would have dictated that, and the fact that he was right at home with the people of Central America, he being Mestizo. Price, cloistered in a monastery in Guatemala, and being Mestizo, might not have sensed the hatred the oligarchy over there had for people of African ancestry. He might have known that Guatemala’s leaders weren’t comfortable with the TENTH, but he might not have known that it extended to bitter hatred. He would have if he had read what the dastard neighbor wrote — that O’Neill was a traitor in the Battle, that if he was a Spaniard he would have fought to the death.

Price grew up around Kriols. He got his first real experience of being second class when he went away to school in the US. Haha, my paternal grampa used to run goods for Bob Turton all the way up to New Orleans. One day when he was there, while they offloaded the cargo from his boat he took a walk, to see the city. While on his stroll he saw one of his “white” cousins, with some white folk, hobnobbing with them like he belonged. My paylkaypm grampa said that he was glad to see his faamli and he was about to go and say hello, when he decided not to, because he didn’t want to hurt his cousin’s chances.

It’s possible Price’s dislike for the TENTH started in 1931, the year of the worst storm disaster in our history. George lost friends in that hurricane, and he was greatly endangered, and there is blame, a story that the colonial masters knew the terrible storm was coming and they were lax. Remember Price was superstitious, a horoscope type of guy, one who delved into numbers. He might have wished to wipe the TENTH off the calendar. Oho, Price and his numerology, I don’t want to rankle any of his numerous acolytes today, so that gossip for another time.

Oh hell, might as well tell it and be damned. Did I hear an NIP say that before elections he used to go to a place where dehn bon candle? The notorious boat trip in 2007 had the Price print all over it. You do remember when the PUP hired a guru and went off to séance, for an occult experience.

The TENTH was not an insignificant battle. How come the Guatemalans knew it was for real, and some of us think it was a myth? Yes, the defense was led by white slave masters, but they would have cut tail and run if slaves and free non-whites hadn’t decided that this land, the only one many of them had ever known, this noble spot was where they would raise their children.

Father of the Nation has his great points; he has my admiration in a number of spots, and it is true that it wasn’t a stroll to build our nation around the TENTH, but it wasn’t right to turn our backs on it. Yes, some would have a little difficulty, but nowhere near the region of a child who is the product of a rape struggling to accept and love their father. We are bound to not hate our parents. Too often Belize rejects the hard road of education for the easy way. But that is too much to cover here.