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Belize gears up to celebrate Emancipation Day

EditorialBelize gears up to celebrate Emancipation Day

Three years ago, on Sunday, August 1, 2021, Belize joined the rest of the Caribbean in celebrating Emancipation Day, the day when the chains were removed from the legs of our African ancestors who were enslaved. The National Humanities Center said: “In 1517 the first slaves sent directly from Africa arrived to do forced labor on the Spanish plantations and mines in the Caribbean islands. As the Native Americans enslaved by the Spanish died by the thousands from overwork and disease, more Africans were captured and shipped to replace them.” More than 12 million people from the continent of Africa were forced to make the journey across the Atlantic Ocean. It is estimated that more than 2 million of them died in the holds of the ships, in chains.

There were countless slave rebellions in the Caribbean, Belize, the USA, wherever our African ancestors were enslaved. Divorced from their homeland by a great ocean, their fight for liberation was especially difficult, and many would die fighting for their freedom. Some escaped. In Jamaica, enslaved Africans escaped to the mountains and formed their own communities. In Belize, some escaped and formed communities, or assimilated into Mayan communities to the west and north. But millions, they and their offspring, remained enslaved, and it was on their backs, and with much of their knowledge, that the Europeans built their empire.

On August 1, 1834, slavery in the British Caribbean officially ended. But in some countries, including Belize, those who were enslaved entered an apprenticeship system, which was introduced under the pretext that enslaved people needed to learn a trade so they would be self-sufficient when they became free citizens. The reality was that slave owners, who had received ample compensation for their loss of “property” from the British government, got more time to ready themselves for conducting business without the tremendous advantage of free labor.

Thus, Emancipation Day in Belize is August 1, 1838. There is a photograph of a gathering of our African ancestors at Queen Street Baptist Church, a possible record of the occasion when the last chains fell away. This was a day they had fought for ever since the first raid on the African continent, and their subsequent journey as cargo across the Atlantic Ocean, to be sold like cattle in the Americas, like chattel in the marketplace.

The records show that national hero, Simon Lamb, who was at the fore of the commemoration of the Battle of St. George’s Cay on the Battle’s 100th anniversary, unsuccessfully tried to get our country to give proper recognition to Emancipation Day. UBAD, which came into being in 1969, and its media organ, Amandala, picked up the ball and never put it down. Beginning on August 1, 2014, Sister Virginia Echols of the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF) held a symbolic ceremony at the seashore in front of the Yabra Green in Southside Belize City, and the UEF’s Sister Yaya Marin Coleman, with considerable support from former NICH chair, Yasser Musa, carried the ball across the line.

In his address to the nation on the second commemoration of Emancipation Day, on August 1, 2022, Hon. Francis Fonseca said: “the indignity and injustice of slavery brought with it psychological trauma and socio-economic inequities which have been passed on from generation to generation”, and that “we have an obligation and duty to create greater opportunities in these underserved sectors …”

500 years later, the struggle continues for people of Afro-descent. On August 1 we pause to remember our ancestors who struggled under the yoke as an enslaved people, and recommit to the fight for freedom, justice, and equality.

Netanyahu admonished by UN; Lula counsels Maduro in Venezuela

A great number of Belizeans “natively” have positive feelings about Israel, which is natural, since we are mostly Christians here, and the Christian faith has deep roots in Israel and its religion, Judaism. But the leaders of modern Israel, in particular its present president, Benjamin Netanyahu, have caused the feelings of both Christians and non-Christians here to sour. Modern Israel has a history of hostility toward its Palestinian neighbors, and has been on a rampage since a one-day siege on October 7 by the militant Hamas left hundreds of Israeli citizens and visitors to the country dead or in captivity. Israel has been pounding Gaza with bombs and bullets almost unceasingly since then, seemingly without a care about the carnage; the massive destruction of property, including hospitals and schools; the hunger and injuries and displacement; and the over 20,000 innocent men, women, and children who have been killed.

Thus far, Israel has resisted calls from the international community to cease its bombardment of Gaza. But a recent ICJ Opinion might pressure it to return to humanity, become more civilized in its behavior. The Government of Belize embraced the ICJ Opinion, which states that Israel is in breach of “Article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.” The Opinion says, “As a consequence of Israel’s policies and practices, which span decades, the Palestinian people has been deprived of its right to self-determination over a long period”, that Israel must “end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible…[and that Israel] provide full reparation for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts [and] allow all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their original place of residence.”

Much closer to home, President Lula of Brazil declared that he’s “scared” by reports coming out of Venezuela that the present president of that country, Nicolas Maduro, has said that if he loses the presidential election on Sunday, there’ll be a “bloodbath.” Lula told the media in Brazil, “Maduro has to learn: if you win, you stay [in power]. If you lose, you go. And you prepare to contest another election.”

Both Lula and Maduro are left wing, and our region is hopeful that Lula’s experienced counsel will resonate with Maduro in the event that he loses. Lula has been there, lost an election to a right-wing rival, and he was returned to power after the people woke up and realized that far right policies mostly serve the rich.

It’s a difficult time for Venezuela. International sanctions, mainly by the US, have severely hurt the country economically. Venezuela sits on the world’s largest oil deposits, but they have struggled because of policies that have earned them the ire of rich capitalist nations.

Many Venezuelans are poor, and they have seen neighboring Guyana become one of the richest countries in the Americas after business deals with the big oil barons. Over the years, the two countries haven’t had an adequately neighborly relationship because Venezuela hasn’t let go a more-than-century-old claim of a significant portion of Guyana’s territory. Last year the situation took a worrying turn when the Venezuelan government asked Venezuelans if they approved of creating a state in Guyana. Venezuela’s referendum got its close neighbors nervous, and forced its friends in CARICOM to express their earnest hope “that Venezuela is not raising the prospect of using force or military means to get its own way in this controversy over territory.”

Belize and most countries in the Caribbean have been supportive of the present regime in Venezuela, which began under the leadership of Hugo Chavez in 1999. The Chavez government introduced the Petro Caribe program which allowed countries in the Caribbean and Central America to purchase fuel at hugely concessionary prices. We don’t know how favorable a new leadership in Venezuela would be to us, but Belizeans believe, like Lula, that the will of the people must be respected.

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