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From The Publisher

HighlightsFrom The Publisher

Almost two decades ago, someone I held in high esteem (now deceased) said to me, seemingly out of the blue, “I don’t know why the British don’t come and take back their country.” (He spoke in Creole.) I was taken aback, because the speaker was a man of the world who normally spent little time considering/discussing things political. 

    I have spent a lot of time over the years looking at this statement, examining it from as many angles as I could, and my conclusion was that the opinion expressed was as a result of the breakdown of law and order in this country of Belize (formerly British Honduras), which had been granted political independence by the British in September of 1981.

    When the British granted Belize independence, they had refused to give Belize a military defence guarantee insofar as the longstanding claim/threat to the territory by the republic of Guatemala, which is Belize’s neighbor to the west and the south, was concerned.

    And yet, less than a year after Belize’s independence, in April of 1982 in fact, the British went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. A Wikipedia page on the topic describes the conflict as a “ten-week undeclared war,” but 649 Argentine military personnel were killed and 255 British. (Three Falkland Islanders were killed during the hostilities.) The British are considered to have been the victors in the conflict.

    There was a very interesting phase in the war when the tide appeared to have swung Argentina’s way after they began to use the sophisticated French Exocet missile to sink British ships. (Remember, the British had to travel thousands of miles from England to the war zone in the South Atlantic.) It appeared the British succeeded in convincing the French to stop selling the Exocet to Argentina, and the advantage thereupon swung back to Great Britain.

    The nature and timing of the Falkland Islands war are most relevant to Belize. In the first instance, the British shed blood for the Falkland Islanders, who are of European ancestry. Secondly, all the Latin countries in South and Central America were in diplomatic and moral support of Argentina in the matter of Las Malvinas, which is the Argentine name for the Falklands. Thirdly, the United States, our planet’s superpower, found itself in a pickle, because Great Britain is probably its most important international ally, but American relations with the South and Central American republics are also of great concern for Washington.     

    One of the things I have learned over the course of my life on planet earth is that violence is of massive importance, although the clerics and the diplomats and the intellectuals worldwide all try to play down the war factor.

    Take the case of Belize. Our ancestors were violently enslaved and colonized by the British, but the education system and religious processes here were dominated by the so-called Anglican Church until the Caste War in Yucatan in 1847 began a surge in Roman Catholicism when Mexican refugees from that war settled here.

    Our understanding of God and Jesus Christ was orchestrated by the same people who had brutalized us. Remember, the Anglican (or English) church is the only one in Christendom where the head of the state is the head of the church. The state and the church are one and the same in Britain. Incredible, but true.

    The British were so powerful internationally for so many centuries that they became understated in their imperialism. The British did not have to prove themselves to themselves or to anyone else. The sun did not set on the British empire, as it has been famously said. The British ruled the world.

    My column today is a personal look at how impressed I was as a young boy and young man by the surging power of the Roman Catholic Church in British Honduras. The Anglicans, represented at the high school level by St. Michael’s College for boys and St. Hilda’s College for girls, were so laid back that they appeared to have been surpassed by the Catholics.

    The supreme Anglican native here was Sir W. H. Courtenay, the grandfather of Senator Eamon Courtenay, Belize’s current Foreign Minister. Rt. Hon. George Price, a practising Roman Catholic and former aspirant to the priesthood, took over leadership of the anti-British People’s United Party (PUP) in 1956, and the British charged him with sedition in 1958. He was defended in the Supreme Court by the aforementioned W. H. Courtenay, who had led the pro-British opposition to the PUP in the early 1950s and was considered the colony’s finest attorney at the time.

    Mr. Price was acquitted. Which of us can say when the Courtenays and the Prices, the Anglicans and the Catholics, became as one? It would appear that this had become the case by 1961 when Mr. Price’s PUP won all 18 seats under a new Ministerial constitution granted by the British. (Sir Courtenay became the first Speaker of the House.) As a result of that PUP landslide victory in 1961, Belize appeared to become a virtual one-party state for most of the 1960s. Hon. Philip Goldson was like “the boy standing on the burning deck.” He was all the opposition in Belize. (And yet, the record shows he had decided to become a Roman Catholic in the 1950s.) 

    Today in 2022, the dominant banking and business force in Belize is an Englishman who is very, very British. In their military incarnation, called BATSUB, the British are very and typically understated in Belize. Mayhap they are still ruling us, while discreetly allowing our youth to slaughter each other. 

    There is little to learn of any consequence or gravitas in Belize’s social media, beloved. If you are a serious student, I would recommend you begin your study of the present situation in Belize by reading Peter Ashdown’s amazing essay, “The Problem of Creole Historiography.”

    I will end by going back to 1993, when the then Governor-General, Dame Minita Gordon, surprisingly appointed yours truly as her choice for Senator in the 1993-1998 administration of the United Democratic Party (UDP) under the late Dr. Manuel Esquivel. At the time, I was naive enough to believe that Dame Minita was under the rule of the Rt. Hon. George Price. Now I understand that Governors-General are ruled from Buckingham Palace. The British were, as always, understated. And cold

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