Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 8:41 PM
Last night I watched the movie, Mrs. Brown, about John Brown, a servant to Queen Victoria, who brought her out of her long depression after the death of her beloved Albert! It is a fascinating study of the Victorian era, sprinkled with notables like Tennyson and Robert Burns and Dickens, and of course, Benjamin Disraeli, who was one of Victoria’s favorite prime ministers. Despite all the pomp and circumstance and decadence and hypocrisy surrounding the royal family, the thing that stayed with me most was when the Prince of Wales, Albert, heir to the throne, introduced Disraeli to a Mr. Tate, “who is in sugar,” as the prince described him.
The name didn’t surprise me; every Belizean born before, let’s say 1985, knows the names “Tate & Lyle”. The Belizean economy was driven by that company and sugar for most of the 20th century! So, no, the name didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was the accessibility and familiarity it had with the monarchy itself, the highest echelons of the British Empire! Mr. Tate had the ability to do whatever his company wanted to do in the colonies. His company, along with BEC, ruled Belize, even during the years of self-government, unfettered by any checks and balances, and abused their workers, the cane farmers, and all the other industries they were involved in. They had the invincible power of John Bull behind them!
I don’t believe I ever realized until much later in life, the damage that colonialism has done to us as a people, and to those all over the world who lived under that system. I used to believe that it was a good thing, being under the influence and power of the English, no matter that we were still being subjugated economically and psychologically! We were the special ones, living under the banner of the Union Jack, while the rest of Central America was a cesspool of revolution and corruption and violence. Wat a ting!
The hopelessness I write about is because I believe that we are still in the grips of colonialism. Economic colonialism, for sure, and everyone who cares, knows what I’m talking about! But we also still give deference to our old masters, what Bob Marley described as mental slavery. We still treat those who come and invest in Belize as saviors, not as the partners that they should be treated as. They run roughshod over us because they have, and are allowed, the power to do so.
And so, our caneros, our workforce, our people, are still being underpaid for their hard labor. Our fishing industry, sugar, and even our day-to-day businesses suffer from that economic colonization. We are not in charge! The unions are unions in name only; sometimes some paltry amounts of money are added to the already substandard wages and pensions, if any, that the workers earn. Our minimum wage was raised a couple of years ago, but we still can’t thrive, and only barely survive, on that!
Meanwhile, those who invest in the country, and look at it as doing us a favor, while they enrich themselves with the blood and sweat of our people, suing us if they don’t get their desired results, go on plundering our naivety, our goodwill, our innocence! All because we defer to them; they are foreign, so they must know better!
We are too lenient doling out citizenships to whosoever can afford it! We have seen the negative results of these compromises. We, and I mean our PUDP governments, are careless in handling the economic engines of this rich and diverse Jewel. Instead of running a tight ship like nations much smaller than ours do, we give way to the shiny objects, and do so to the detriment of our citizens. “We have given our hearts away.”
Until we come to the realization that we, not they, run our country. Until we become determined and patriotic enough to know that we can have, and encourage investments without ceding our independence to them, but demand that they be our equal partners, rather than the colonizers that they usually are! Until then, we will continue to wallow in the shallows and miseries that the bard spoke of, thereby shortchanging our citizens, our economic worth!
My purpose is not to teach or preach, but to make you think, or maybe see things in a different light.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” — Bob Marley.
Glen