On November 26, a Belize Defence Force soldier stationed at the Valentin Conservation Post along the Belize/Guatemala western border was shot in the buttocks by an unknown person. There is some speculation that the shot came from the Guatemala side of the border, but thus far, maybe because the wound to the soldier isn’t life-threatening, and Guatemala’s claim to Belize’s territory has reached the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for resolution, it hasn’t caused a ripple in the relations between Belize and Guatemala. It is likely that if a Guatemalan soldier had been shot in the rear end, and it was suspected that the shot came from the Belize side of the border, the temperature would have been considerable.
Reporting on the shooting, Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams, said we know that the shot didn’t come from the stock issued to our soldiers because all their ammunition had been accounted for. Commissioner Williams said that the slug is an important key to their investigation, and after a surgical procedure on the soldier is done to extract it, it will be sent to the National Forensic Science Service for ballistic testing, where the type of bullet, the type of gun it was fired from, the direction from which the bullet that hit the soldier came, and other things will be determined.
Any news of violence at the western border sets off alarm bells, primarily because of the Guatemalan claim to our territory. As noted, that claim is now before the ICJ, where Belize has, some say incredibly, for as long as the matter is before the court, “on paper” given up its sovereignty. Some would say the noble interest of peace justifies our agreeing to settle the matter there.
A number of incidents on the western border have been extremely confrontational. Ambassador James S. Murphy wrote in his book, A Compendium of Relevant Documents – The Guatemalan Claim to Belize, that the year 2000 was a particularly bad one for Belize-Guatemala relations. A Guatemalan national was shot and killed in January that year, when a BDF patrol returned fire on attackers, and in February, in what Murphy describes as the most serious violation of Belizean sovereignty, “a twenty-five member GAF [Guatemalan Armed Forces] patrol entered Belize, kidnapped a four-member joint BDF/Police patrol near San Vicente Village, Toledo, marched our security officers across the border into Guatemala, and then charged them with illegal entry.” Also, in May that year a 25-member GAF patrol “entered Belize and approached two villages in the Toledo District.”
Later that year, in November, Belize and Guatemala, under the guidance of the Organization of American States (OAS), accepted the recommendation of the “Facilitators” — Sir Shridath Ramphal and Mr. Paul Reichler — that a temporary regime be created on the western border, as a buffer between the two countries. Murphy said this regime, called the Adjacency Zone, is “comprised of territory lying within one kilometer east and one kilometer west of what the Agreement called the Adjacency Line, actually the existing land border between the two countries.”
The most contentious incident since then occurred in 2016 when a 13-year-old boy was unfortunately shot and killed. BDF soldiers, who along with a conservation group had been investigating an illegal land clearing, returned fire when that group came under attack around nightfall. The boy’s body was found when they were leaving the area. Guatemala’s president, Jimmy Morales, described the incident as cowardly and Guatemalan troops amassed in the area. Belize’s Prime Minister, Dean Barrow, told the world that Belize has a long history as a peace-loving nation, and the GOB expressed its regret over the incident and turned to the OAS to conduct an investigation.
Some illegal land clearings in our territory are directly related to the relentless drugs war that was created by the Americans to stop the flow of South American cocaine, and marijuana into their country. This war has caused a lot of carnage, and created many millionaire drug dealers. Aggressive, enormously rich drug barons, unable to deposit their millions directly into the banking system, cut down virgin forest in Guatemala’s Petén Department, and cross the border into Belize and cut down virgin forest which protects critical watersheds in the Chiquibul and Columbia Reserves, to make pastures to graze their cattle. These operators run afoul of our conservation group, Friends for Conservation and Development (FCD), who, along with our security personnel, fight to protect our resources.
Until the US “allows” for the legalization of these natural hallucinogens, and addresses their problem through education and regulation, as all countries should, the turmoil will remain in our region.
Landless Guatemalans are also responsible for some illegal cutting down of forest in Belize. Guatemala has always been controlled by the rich, and a bloody civil war that lasted nearly 40 years didn’t end with the masses, mainly indigenous groups, gaining a greater share in that country. The possibilities look ripe to landless Guatemalans when they gaze across the border at the lush Chiquibul and Columbia forests. They have frequent run-ins with the FCD and our security personnel who try to prevent poaching of our prime flora and fauna, and the cutting down of forest to establish farms.
The tension was raised a notch when the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a November 19 release, condemned Belize’s recent application to take Honduras’ claim to the Sapodilla cays to the ICJ. Senator Michael Peyrefitte (UDP) told KREM News that Belize has every right to exercise its legal options, and that what Guatemala properly should do is “withdraw” their “unfounded claim.”
The comments from Guatemala might have been just gamesmanship. When Guatemala cited delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and asked for a 12-month extension to submit its Memorial to the ICJ, Belize’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs objected and suggested that 2 months would be sufficient for them. In the end the ICJ settled on a 6-month extension.
The present government in Guatemala has not been as belligerent as previous ones, maybe because the claim is before the ICJ, but Guatemala is known to be a bully when dealing with the much smaller Belize. The shooting coming on the heels of the abrasive comments from Guatemala has caused Belizeans to wonder if the shot could have been fired maliciously by the GAF. In September Wil Maheia’s Belize Territorial Volunteers planted two Belizean flags on our Sarstoon Island, and the GAF removed them. The flags have since been returned.
To date, we don’t know what happened on the border on Saturday. Was some careless person cleaning their gun and it went off and hit our soldier? Did someone shoot at an animal in the bush, missed, and the errant bullet hit our soldier? Were unscrupulous parties trying to scare off our security agents so they can have a free run on our land? Did the bullet come from the gun of a member of the GAF? Was the shooting an accident, or intentional?