Belizean neurologist, Dr. John Sosa, responding to a question from a caller to XTV’s Wake Up Belize morning show last Friday, about his thoughts on the government incarcerating a 13-year-old boy along with adults at the Belize Central Prison, said a 13-year-old “is still a kid, a baby”, too young to be housed among adults. In explaining what causes these youngsters to fall through the cracks, the doctor said that poverty was at the root. Dr. Sosa said Belizeans need to open their eyes and hearts. He said deprived families shouldn’t have to send their children into the streets to beg for food, that the nation should assist them.
Sosa went on to express his view that families in need should get cash every week to help them pay for their basic necessities; and for those who wonder where the funds for that would come from, he pointed out that we live in a country that isn’t short of resources. Earlier this week, the CEO in the Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Narda Garcia, and Mrs. Janel Espat, the manager of the Belize Government Lotteries Ltd., a public company, announced that one year’s sales of the Boledo should yield over $16.5 million in profits. CEO Garcia noted that the main players of the Boledo are average Belizeans, and the profits will be returned to the people through investments in the National Health Insurance scheme, and sporting and other programs.
If government keeps the focus on initiatives to increase enrollment in schools and encourage the growth of small businesses, we will be better off in the future; but there is a here and now, and all the best laid plans could be derailed if the critical issue of poverty isn’t properly addressed. One problem that absolutely cannot be ignored is caused by marginalized youth in urban areas clutching at straws they see in the illegal drug trade. That’s a dead end that causes the streets to erupt frequently, and whenever that occurs the only successful solution thus far has been the draconian State of Emergency (SOE).
Practically, our neighbor to the southwest, El Salvador, has been under an SOE since shortly after Nayib Bukele, its present president, took office in 2019. Alex Papadovassilakis, in a 2023 story in Insight Crime, said the total prison population in El Salvador “now stands at over 105,000 prisoners, around 1.7% of the country’s population.” Although our murder rate has been among the world’s worst in some recent years, we have managed to avoid such a savage assault of civil liberties. Prison Insider, at the website prison-insider.com, said in a 2021 report that 1,046 of Belize’s population of 397,621 (0.26%) were incarcerated in the country’s single prison.
El Salvador’s “permanent” SOE delivered a murder rate of 2.4 per 100,000 in 2023, from a staggering 103 per 100,000 in 2015. In 2023 Belize coupled a number of humanitarian initiatives with at least one SOE to achieve its lowest murder rate in two decades: 19 per 100,000, almost 50% less than our worst rate—36 per 100,000 in 2018.
Presently, certain parts of the country are under an extended SOE, lasting 90 days, and the streets have been relatively quiet since it was implemented over 2 months ago. Naturally, the individuals rounded up in the SOE, and their families, harbor ill feelings over their rights being taken away. The basic needs of the individuals who are incarcerated are taken care of while they are in prison, but there has been increased hardship for those who depend on them for their economic sustenance.
Everyone knows an SOE is just a Band-Aid; history tells us that soon after it is lifted, violence will increase. Incarcerated individuals receive training, and participate in interventions by leaders of the Leadership Intervention Unit (LIU), but once they are freed they will have to face the same harsh economic realities that drove some of them to a life of crime. Some call for more big-stick SOEs, instead of what is deemed as coddling: the LIU providing a stipend to some individuals who are trying to get out of the gang life. Some argue that the stipend not only encourages indolence, but it is also an incentive to people on the margins to commit crime so they can participate in the program.
There are few worse fates on earth than being poor in capitalist states like ours, states that produce far from sufficient “crumbs”. It’s a tough jungle between and inside those concrete buildings in urban Belize, where the full animal law of daag eat daag and survival of the fittest is in operation; and in that jungle some turn to a life of crime to feed themselves and their families.
There is a small pantry program in Belize, and the Ministry of Education has implemented feeding programs in a number of schools. These are good initiatives, but far from sufficient for the scale of our problem. When the new government took office, the Minister of Human Development and Families, Hon. Dolores Balderamos Garcia, said they would emphasize jobs over handouts. Unfortunately, many marginalized Belizeans are not equipped for some of the jobs available in the workplace.
For people on the margins, Belize has jobs to chop grass and harvest crops, and at the labor level in the construction industry, because, despite the high cost of construction materials, a number of buildings are going up in Belize. But there are some logistics and physical realities that put jobs out of the reach of some. Some jobs call for people to travel far from home, and the jobs don’t pay high enough wages to make them worthwhile. Some people balk at jobs that call for strenuous physical exertion or jobs in subpar environments.
The accusation that people are lazy is a juvenile analysis of a complex problem. Really, those persons who are not competitive in the “rat race” or lack energy are to be pitied, not despised. People who are dormilongz are sick, some mentally, some physically, and the most unfortunate of them suffer from both maladies. These people need a little stipend and training in arts, and crafts, and fish/shrimp farming, and horticulture. There is an assumption that Belizeans would be happy to stay poor so they can get a stipend from government. That is insulting, and false. No doubt such people exist, but almost all people prefer the dignity of earning a living to handouts.
Government agencies are more likely to give groceries than cash. And people on the margins can do with some food assistance. No es nada for Central Farm and the Belize College of Agriculture to provide, on the extremely fertile soils at the research station, food for those in need. Government can provide vegetables, fresh milk, and fresh meat for those in need without disrupting the marketplace. When people on the margins have a little cash, they don’t buy those wholesome foods; they buy Ramen, and chicken sausage in tins.
We could go into a state of emergency for the next 20 years. Or we could heed the advice of Dr. Sosa. Give cash to people living in poverty so they don’t have to send their children to the streets to beg for food, or steal. It needn’t be a permanent program, only until we correct the failures of the past. No Belizean should fall through the cracks. We neglected a generation of Belizeans. They have been battered for too long. For too long their only solace was drugs and alcohol. They need a special lift. Dr. Sosa says give them cash.