The UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF) held an inspiring meeting on Sunday evening, January 14, at the Library of African and Indian (Mayan) Studies on Partridge Street in Belize City. There were three of the officers present who were on the last elected UBAD Party executive – the executive of 1972. These are Evan X Hyde, Rufus X and Wilfred Nicholas, Sr. There was one officer present who served on the UBAD executive in 1969 before migrating to Los Angeles – Edgar X Richardson.
On February 9, 1969, the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) will mark the 38th anniversary of our founding. We intend to celebrate privately the fact that we have kept our legacy alive, and the fact that we have the wherewithal to express and broadcast material which the white supremacists in Belize would have preferred to suppress entirely.
It is in the nature of human beings for the older ones to complain about the excesses of the younger ones, and for the younger ones to make fun about the idiosyncrasies of the older ones. UEF, conscious of the increasing age of its founders, has made a conscious effort, since UEF was established in 1996, to integrate younger brothers and sisters into our process. This is more easily said than done, but it is for sure that younger people will inevitably receive the torch. Within the older UEF mainstream, we do complain about the young, but we are preparing for their rise to authority.
There is no doubt that our black communities are in crisis, but we feel that the situation would be worse if it were not for UBAD and its Kremandala heritage. When the UBAD process began in 1969, there was a repressive government in place which controlled news and information, especially on government monopoly radio, with the power at their disposal.
The government today has resorted to repeated complaints about “the media,” because they would want for things to be the way they were in 1969 where information control is concerned. For sure the people of Belize prefer the way things are today.
Black people between 1969 and 2007 have gone from being a clear majority to being a clear minority. During the four plus decades during which this ethnic re-alignment was going on, most of the Belizeans who migrated to the United States did so with the expectation of returning to Belize, or at least with the firm belief that Belize would be there, as they remembered it, for them to return to.
But while black Belizeans were migrating out, a great amount of people from other countries, both in Central America and Asia, were migrating in. It is not so easy for black Belizeans to return home any more. Belize has changed, from the masses at the base of the socio-economic pyramid, to the financial elite at the tip of the pyramid.
Black Belizeans in the United States have the misconception that Belize is here waiting for them. Not so. Working class black Belizeans who return will not work for the wages for which Central American immigrants are working, and professional black Belizeans will find themselves in bitter competition with the world class Taiwanese, Chinese and Indians who have settled in Belize.
More than that, when black Belizeans left here four plus decades ago, land was plentiful, or so it seemed in Belize. Black Belizeans who come home today can’t get government land to lease any more. The land is taken up and owned by foreigners, immigrants, and real estate speculators. The Belize of 2007 is a Belize where the game has changed drastically.
In 1969, UBAD saw this change coming, not in all the precise ways the change has taken place, but we saw enough to begin the preparation of our people. The change from British Honduras to Belize, and then to Belice, is a change which will not and cannot be reversed. Black Belizeans, at home and abroad, have to adjust to these changes, because these changes will not be reversed to suit black Belizeans. That is the reality of 2007.
Over the 38 years since 1969, the vast majority of home-based Belizeans have turned to their political parties – PUP and UDP, for the answers to the evident and imminent problems. The answers of the PUP and UDP, we submit, are not enough. Liberation cannot come from the political parties, because they will not challenge the status quo. The politicians of Belize no longer even pay lip service to a liberation agenda. Self-aggrandizement is their program, blue and red.
After 38 years, UBAD/Kremandala remains indigenous and authentic. We remain optimistic amidst the community destruction we see around us. As much as we complain about our young, we have faith in them. We will never give up faith in our young. That is why we celebrate.
All power to the people