“ May the spirit of Julian Cho, the late revolutionary Mayan activist, continue to shine like a beacon light among those like yourself and the Mayan people, who continue to champion the rights of your people for freedom, justice and equality in Belize and Central America.”
December 14, 2018
Dear Editor,
As Salam Alaikum, and that means, peace be unto you.
My Mayan brother Delmar Tzib:
Throughout my entire life as a Muslim representing the example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), I have never disrespected anyone’s culture, for the sole reason that I would not want anyone to disrespect mine.
If in a way I disrespected the Mayan culture of Belize in my article review of the book, To Educate A Nation: Autobiography of Andres P. & Jane V. Enriquez, by my Belizean Garifuna brother and author, Jeremy Enriquez, it is my humble Islamic duty to express my deepest apology to you and those among your people who may have felt hurt by it.
I concur that some of the language in my review may have appeared too harsh in terms of my deep and moving appreciation for the spiritual work in education that was embarked on by the noteworthy Belizean Garifuna scholar and educator, Andres P. Enriquez and is wife, in their missionary work among your people, the Mayas of 1920s rural San Antonio, Belize.
It was not my intention at all to castigate a people, the Belizean Maya, that I have spent much of my journalistic life in the 1980s, 90s, and beyond, as a Belizean writer and journalist, writing about and championing the rights to their Mayan ancestral lands in southern Belize.
As a matter of fact, I knew the Mayan revolutionary activist, Julian Cho, and covered his activist work since 1995 against the Malaysian logging giant, Atlantic Industries, that had earned 17 concessions from the Esquivel administration through the Lands Minister at the time, Dito Juan, to log on Mayan ancestral lands in the Belize Toledo District. And I continued to follow his work up until the day he internationalized the Mayan struggle in 1997 against this kind of environmental terrorism and aggression that had come upon the Belizean Maya in the Toledo District.
Julian Cho sought the expertise of an international lawyer in the United States to come back to Belize and fight to eliminate those 17 logging concessions that he said he had to go and find buried in the Washington Congressional Library in Washington DC, in the U.S. I also listened to him articulate the struggle of the Belizean Maya on the Pacifica Radio Network show, “Democracy Now”, with Wendy Goodman in 1997.
Because of the Mayan revolutionary work of Julian Cho, the Mayas of Belize were able to win a landmark case in the Belize Supreme Court against the government of Belize through the brilliant work of the African Muslim, and Belize Supreme Court Judge, Abdullai Conteh, of the Belize Supreme Court, whose understanding of indigenous peoples’ rights to their land, led him to issue a ruling for the very first time ever in the history of Belize, in favor of the Mayas of Belize and their rights to their ancestral lands of Belize.
Judge Abdullai Conteh was a very good friend of mine, who, like the Muslim I am, has the deepest respect for the rights of indigenous peoples all over the world as the prophet of Islam, Muhammad (PBUH), had for all cultures that he had come across during his historic mission on the Arabian Peninsula 1400 years ago.
May the spirit of Julian Cho, the late revolutionary Mayan activist, continue to shine like a beacon light among those like yourself and the Mayan people, who continue to champion the rights of your people for freedom, justice and equality in Belize and Central America.
As-Salam-Alaikum (Peace be unto you).
Sincerely,
Bilal Morris