As someone who does not socialize, and is not actively involved in any of the social media, I have very little idea of the mindsets and perspectives of Belize’s younger generations. By the same token, I feel sure that our younger generations do not have enough precise awareness of where Belize is presently, and how we got there from the colonial status of British Honduras. 

    Belize was the United Kingdom’s only possession in Central America, and British Honduras, the constitutional predecessor to Belize, was grouped with all the islands to the east and south of us which were British possessions, and also with British Guiana, which was Britain’s only possession in South America, on that continent’s northern perimeter. 

    Specifically, the educational systems of all the countries in the British empire were the same. This was brought home to me when I went to college in the United States and met Guy Mhone, an older student from Malawi, a southern African state which had been known as Nyasaland when it was British-owned. Basically, Guy and I had been educated the same way, thousands and thousands of miles apart from each other. 

    The British began to grant political independence to all their regional possessions, such as Jamaica and Trinidad, in the early 1960s. British Honduras would have become independent as early as the late 1960s except for the Guatemalan claim hanging over our heads.

    I am not an attorney or an accountant, so I cannot speak with expertise about the offshore financial industry, if I can use that description. Of all the British possessions in the region, the only two, as far as I am aware, which chose to refuse political independence and retained British colonial status were the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. These two are perhaps the most wealthy of the countries in the region which had experienced British colonial administration. (Trinidad has oil, and now Guyana has recently discovered petroleum deposits. My opinions on relative wealth are, as a result, speculative.)

    The Cayman Islands and Bermuda are both tourist destinations, but it may be, certainly in the case of the Cayman Islands, that their wealth derives from being offshore financial havens.

    When it is that Belize began to enter this “industry,” it is not clear to me. When it is that the tremendous gap between the fabulously rich and the starving poor here began to emerge, I really cannot say. I can say with certainty, however, that such a gap is there for everyone to see, especially in our population center. 

    The Roman Catholic Church, possibly the most powerful institution in the world, became involved in the offshore banking business through its Vatican Bank in time to experience some sensational scandals (including that of one of their bankers hanging himself on a bridge in London) in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

    There are those who believe that Pope John Paul I, who lasted only a month in the papacy, was murdered in 1979 because he had vowed to clear up the financial irregularities and scandals in the Vatican banking system. (This is a major theme in Ford Coppola’s GODFATHER — PART THREE.) The story here is a long, convoluted, and almost frightening one.       

     Now, the Catholic Church in Belize disarmed me somewhat when St. John’s College, the Catholics’ most prestigious high school, introduced African and Mayan history into its curriculum in 2013. SJC’s African and Mayan program has been highly successful, but it has not been emulated by other Catholic high schools, and it has been ignored by the Anglicans and the Methodists.

    You have to understand that there are areas where religion and race become intertwined. The Europeans enslaved Africans and destroyed Indigenous peoples/civilizations in the Americas in the name of Christianity. Any attempt to teach African and Mayan history threatens the foundation of education systems of colonial origin. The reality that cannot be disputed is that it was Europeans who colonized Africans and Indigenous people, not the reverse. 

     Complicating the reality even further is the fact that Christianity is a religion which began in a region we can describe as North Africa. Jesus Christ himself was educated in Egypt until he was twelve years old. The involvement of Ethiopia, an East African state, in the history of Judeo-Christianity is substantial, but almost never discussed in Belize, except by the Rastafarians. It is not for me to discuss it, because all I know is that there is substance. Perhaps you have to look to Professor Henry Gates. The evidence is there, beloved.

    Today, Monday, July 25, 2022, a meeting is being held in Belmopan to begin discussion on the formation of a constitutional committee. Over the last two decades, it has been clearly established that Belize is monarchical, not democratic. The key is that the parliamentary system has been bastardized by oversizing the Cabinet and eliminating back-benching. Every single Belizean leader since 1961 has done it.

    I close with the fact that the lady Sandra Coye, in one of her calls to KREM Radio, opined that it is useless to form a constitutional committee until we know that we have a nation. The nation Belize is threatened by the fact that we have submitted our land and sea borders to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for arbitration. Her opinion is intriguing.

    Where is Belize headed? I have said to you before that it appears to me that our status, guided by Washington, is destined to be that of the oligarchical republics west and south of us — Guatemala and Honduras. 

    At the same time, we do not have any leader with the bravery and integrity of the late, great Philip Goldson, so what is to be done? Peter Ashdown has pointed out that there is a problem in our historiography. He has been ignored by the University of Belize. Today, Belize’s nationhood is up in the air.