There are hundreds, and probably thousands of people from the republics around us who are in Belize, most of them probably illegally, and who work hard for wages which are substantially lower than Belizeans will accept ? primarily in the agriculture, shrimp growing, construction and home maintenance industries.

From time to time, there are cries raised that these ?aliens?, or immigrants, are taking away jobs from native Belizeans. This is an issue all over planet earth, except in a country like Mexico, which is almost completely closed off to foreign labour. Immigrants enrich all the countries they enter, because they work for low wages and seldom benefit from contributions they have to make to mainstream society, such as social security. Legislators all over the world turn a blind eye to the matter of these undocumented immigrants, because the big industrial capitalists and businessmen who donate to their political campaigns, use illegal workers to cut their costs and increase their profit margins.

We bring up the broader issue of illegal immigrants even though we have no idea whether Mara Noemi Garcia was documented or undocumented. The fact of the matter is that we native Belizeans are quick to consider anyone as an ?alien? who looks Hispanic and may not speak English well.

But the other fact of this matter is that Mara Noemi Garcia, in humanitarian terms, did nothing to deserve her cruel and terrible fate. And another fact of the matter is that once again, and in the most graphic way possible, we native Belizeans in Greater Belize City must conclude that we have lost control of many of our children. If it is not the case that we adult Belizeans need to be afraid of our own children, and that may be the case, then it is for sure that visitors to our country have to be afraid of our children. For this, and for the tragedy of Mara Noemi Garcia, we must offer our sincere apologies.

The primary responsibility for the crimes of children lies with their parents, wherever they are. We know, however, that in some cases today it is harder for a Belizean to be an adult than it is to be a child. In Belize, nevertheless, as in rural Africa, we had the tradition of the whole community being solicitous for the welfare of children whose home structure had broken down in some way. The mass migration of adult Belizeans to the United States during the 1960?s and 1970?s, made it so that the urban communities of Belize could not handle all the young people who were losing adult supervision. The social disintegration became positively catastrophic when the volatile mix of television, crack cocaine and gangs took over in the middle 1980?s. We have now been told by the young commentators on KREM?s morning talk show, that video games, featuring similar types of samurai activity, have become a really big thing with out-of-school young Belizeans. Things are happening too fast for us older Belizeans to keep up with.

In September of 2003, the UBAD Educational Foundation and the World Garifuna Organization broke ground with the holding of Belize?s first Black Summit, in Belize City. The two organizations, one based in Belize City and the other in Dangriga, did months and months of work to finance and organize the Belize Black Summit, but this breaking of ground was not followed, as it should have been, with the planting of seeds. The problem is that community organizations like the UEF and the WGO, are overwhelmed by the power of the party politicians who are financed by the corporations and the international forces of globalization. In Belize, you can?t do anything to assist at the community level because the party politicians always feel threatened in some kind of way.

In Southside Belize City, there was one elected area representative who did not attend a single session of the Belize Black Summit in 2003. He had just been re-elected to office, and felt that not only did he not have to attend, he did not even have to offer any apologies for not attending. This is one of the reasons we have problems in our community. We, as a people, are in crisis, but we cannot meet to talk black, because the red and the blue are bigger and more important. For real.