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Columbus Day

EditorialColumbus Day


Since independence for Belize in 1981, we found out that October 12 had become known in the Northern Districts as ?Dia de La Raza,? which is in English ? ?Day of The Race.? Our understanding now is that in Mexico, just across Belize?s northern border, October 12 is ?Dia de La Raza.? So the one day was being celebrated in three different countries as three different things. ???


The question in Belize now is, it appears to us ? exactly what ?Raza? is it that is being celebrated and extolled? This is a most interesting question, and you have to wonder how is it we are supposed to be so educated in Belize and yet we are so puzzled as to what it is we are celebrating on October 12.


The reason for the ignorance, we submit, is the fact that the education system in Belize has been ruled by the churches, whose first commitment is to religion, not to education. We British Hondurans/Belizeans were raised in ignorance because the churches in this country were dedicated to keeping us ignorant about Columbus? murders and rapes in this ?New World.? The churches lied about Columbus because Columbus sailed into the ?New World? in 1492 with the Christian cross in front of him. Columbus was the first Christian in the ?New World?, supposedly, and whatever he did was done in the name of Jesus Christ, the Pope of Rome and the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church being the first Christian church and the one from which all the others came. So all Christian churches cooperated in keeping the truth about Columbus? horrible and genocidal crimes from being taught in the schools of British Honduras/Belize.


Columbus and his successors caused the deaths of so many millions of the indigenous Indian tribes which inhabited the region before Christopher arrived in 1492, that a Catholic priest, Bartolome de las Casas, tried to save the Indians from extinction by urging the Christian Spaniards and Christian Portuguese to enslave and transport Africans, considered more hardy and robust, to do the plantation and mining work in the ?New World? for all those European Christians who were greedy for earthly riches. This was how the African slave trade began ? as a tool of mercy!


The Christian churches were ashamed of the truth, so they taught us lies. In celebrating Columbus, we Africans and Indians were celebrating the person who introduced the most evil into the histories of our ancestors. The European Christians excused Columbus? crimes on the grounds that he had done a glorious deed ? he had introduced Christianity and ?salvation? to pagan Africans and Indians.


We Africans and Indians do not accept this bull shit any more. But there are some of our people who still believe that it is only the apologists for Columbus who can educate our Belizean children. Even though the brilliant successes of the Belize Technical College proved that not only the churches can run schools, yet the churches, the ruling neo-European oligarchy and their bourgeois stoogies have continued the conspiracy to maintain ignorance on these matters amongst our children and young people. Electoral politicians, both PUP and UDP, intimidated by the power of the churches and their religious fanatics, routinely fall all over themselves in publicly paying homage to all the ?successes? of Belize?s church-state system of education.


So, we come back to this troubling question ? which ?Raza? has its day on October 12? The reason the question is troubling is because the Christian churches in Belize have not taught Belizean children the history of the terrible Caste War in the Yucatan. The Caste War broke out in 1847 just a couple hundred miles to the north of Corozal, and lasted the whole second half of the nineteenth century. The combatants were the Spanish ?ladinos? who were based in Merida and Campeche, and the Maya Indians who controlled the villages in the center and the south of the Yucatan. The combatants were hostile to each other primarily because of race, which went hand in hand with religion. The Spanish ?ladinos? were and are Roman Catholic. The Mayans had their own civilization and religious beliefs.


Most of the Belizeans who now inhabit the Corozal and Orange Walk Districts are descended from Caste War refugees, both Spanish ?ladinos? and Maya Indians, who came across the border to begin a new life in British Honduras. Three and four generations later, one wonders if these Belizeans know exactly what ?Raza? this ?Dia? is about. If not, perhaps the priests can tell us.

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