United States president, Joe Biden recently gave permission for Ukraine to fire long-range ballistic missiles, donated by the U.S., into Russia. In response, the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, has threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Putin has made such a threat before. When he first made such a threat, Biden went to the Chinese leader and asked him to intervene with Putin so that he would not use tactical nuclear weapons.

This is big people business, but nuclear war would be disastrous for all of planet earth’s eight billion people.

After World War II, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, in which the principal combatants were Great Britain, Russia, and the United States on the so-called Allied side, and Germany, Italy, and Japan on the so-called Axis side, India achieved independence from Britain in 1947. This was momentous.

Ten years later, Ghana became the first African nation to gain independence (from Britain), then Nigeria, the African giant, achieved independence from Britain in 1960. 

In the early 1960s, the big islands in the Caribbean, Jamaica and Trinidad, were granted independence by the British.

British Honduras (Belize) became a self-governing colony in 1964, and was expected to become independent in a couple years. But, the Guatemalan claim was in the way.

The mood in Belize during the decade of the 1960s was, however, quite upbeat insofar as our national self-esteem was concerned. In fact, there was such a mood over most of the so-called Third World, where people of color had been enslaved and colonized by the Europeans for centuries. We had this feeling in the Third World that the Europeans had been seriously weakened by their warring against each other in World War II, so that we who had been enslaved and colonized were looking towards a bright future.

Soon, however, a concept referred to by Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah as “neocolonialism,” began to rear its head. This neocolonialism essentially involved the rich nations, our former colonizers, having their giant transnational corporations penetrate and dominate our economies. These corporations were looking for cheap labor and critical natural resources in their former colonies.

The key thing to note here is that, despite all the religious propaganda spread in our schools by the missionaries from our former colonizers, might is right. Not only that: control of our schools meant that our former colonizers had the power to decide what was taught to our children, and what would be hidden from them.

In the case of Belize, the British decided that we Belizeans would not be taught about the so-called Caste War, which took place just north of us in the Yucatan Peninsula, beginning in 1847 and lasting for the rest of the nineteenth century. Most of the populations of Belize’s two northern districts, Corozal and Orange Walk, are descended from Spanish, Mestizo, and Maya people who came out of the Yucatan and took refuge south in Belize. So, the history of the Caste War is important knowledge for us Belizeans to possess. That knowledge was denied to us, even after we Belizeans became independent and supposedly took control of our own education system.

A most important weapon of colonizers consists of what we call “divide and conquer.” It has been difficult for us Belizean ethnic groups to unite with each other because there is important knowledge that has been denied, and is still being denied, to us. 

My generation, born after World War II, was brainwashed in local movie theaters by movies made by Americans which glorified Texas, Texans, Texas Rangers, and individuals such as Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Sam Houston. The fact of the matter was that Texas (which was called “Tejas” by the Spanish and the Mexicans) was once Spanish territory, which was taken over by Mexico when Mexico gained independence in 1821. In the American South, slavery was entrenched at that time, and white American Southerners had been drifting south into Texas with their commitment to slavery. But Mexico soon banned slavery, whereupon the American Texans began armed rebellion against the Mexican government in 1835.

I would like you to read an article in the July/August 2022 edition of SMITHSONIAN, entitled, “South to the Promised Land—assured their freedom across the border, many enslaved African Americans fled to Mexico.”

Here are a few paragraphs from that article:

“The earliest examples of slaves escaping south are from the late 17th century. In the Carolinas, enslaved men and women ran away from the rice plantations in Spanish Florida, where they were able to arm themselves against their former enslavers. In 1693, King Charles II of Spain decreed that all fugitive slaves would be free in Florida. In 1733, a caveat was added: To gain their freedom, fugitives had to convert to Catholicism and declare loyalty to the Spanish crown. In 1750, the same promise was extended to the entire Viceroyalty of New Spain, which included all of present-day Mexico and nearly all of the American West, plus Florida.

“Even though slavery existed in New Spain, American runaways were usually granted asylum by the Spanish authorities, because the American form of slavery was regarded as far more brutal and dehumanizing. In New Spain, for example, slaves were subjects of the Spanish crown, not property, and it was illegal to separate husbands and wives or to impose excessive punishments. 

“In 1821, after Mexico won its independence, it opened the northern frontier state of Texas to Anglo American settlers. Many of these settlers brought Black slaves and established American-style cotton plantations in present-day East Texas. This set up a conflict with the Mexican government, which banned the importation of enslaved people in 1824, on the principle of liberty for all.

“The Anglo colonists ignored the law or imposed lifetime contracts of indentured servitude on their Black workers. The state of Coahuila y Tejas responded by limiting indenture contracts to ten years, and guaranteeing liberty to the children of slaves. In a so-called ‘free womb’ law in 1835, the Anglo settlers, bristling at these and other laws they regarded as oppressive, rose up in revolt. ‘It’s controversial, especially in Texas, but the historical profession is coming to a consensus that slavery was an important part of the Texas Revolution,’ says Baumgartner.

“In 1836, Texas won independence from Mexico and, now an autonomous republic, enshrined slavery in its constitution. Mexico fully abolished slavery the following year. In 1845, Texas joined the United States as a slave state. Then came the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Defeat forced Mexico to relinquish all or parts of the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming.

“’This was the first time in its history that the U.S. acquired territory where slavery was (previously) abolished by law,’ says Baumgartner. 

“At the same time, Southern politicians attempted to expand slavery by annexing Cuba, where it was firmly entrenched, and by working to overturn the Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited slavery in much of the territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. When these and other efforts failed, secession and Civil War followed.”