“In Belize, Price saw the movement as detrimental to his cause of national unity and the harmonious balance among the various ethnic groups. He turned a blind eye as the Minister of Police, C. L. B. Rogers, harassed, intimidated and jailed the Black Power leaders.”

• pg. 289, DIARY OF A RECOVERING POLITICIAN, by Godfrey Smith, Angelus Press, 2022. In late April of 2012, I travelled in a chartered tourist van from Melchor to Guatemala City. We left Melchor about 7:30 a.m. and arrived in Guatemala City about 4:15 p.m. I was joined the following day, I believe, in a hotel room in Guatemala City by my wife and one of my daughters, who had flown from Belize City. I was in Guatemala City to seek a medical opinion on my prostate.

If I remember correctly, I arrived in the Guatemalan capital on a Tuesday and left the same week on Saturday early in the morning in the same tourist van to return home. I remember that the industrial activity on that Saturday morning on the highway, with trucks and tractors and the like running between Guatemala’s Caribbean Sea port, Puerto Barrios and the city, was impressive. 

I could see, then, why Belizean personalities like Mr. Price, Mr. Goldson, and the late Alejandro Vernon, were likewise impressed by Guatemala’s relative standard of development as compared to the pathetic state in which the British were holding British Honduras in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

When Mr. Goldson visited Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz had become the Guatemalan president, succeeding Juan Jose Arevalo (1945-1951), and Mr. Goldson later referred in his newspaper to his time in Guatemala as “seven days of freedom.” I can’t say whether this was before or after the British had jailed Mr. Goldson and Leigh Richardson in 1951.

But it is for sure that Arbenz was a progressive leader and was pushing land reform in Guatemala. This land reform provoked all kinds of resistance from American companies, primarily United Fruit, and the Guatemalan oligarchy: Jacobo Arbenz had to flee Guatemala in 1954, claiming that he did not want the country to descend into bloodshed.

Pushed out of the anti-West-Indian-Federation People’s United Party (PUP) in 1956, Mr. Goldson became very anti-Guatemala in his newspaper, THE BELIZE BILLBOARD, especially after General Ydigoras Fuentes became the Guatemalan president in 1958.

Mr. Goldson was making a lot of money off his newspaper, which sold 4,000 copies daily and 7,000 on Sundays, so much so that even though he made an alliance between his Honduran Independence Party (HIP) and Herbert Fuller’s National Party (NP) to form the National Independence Party (NIP) in 1958, Mr. Goldson did not run in Belize’s first MInisterial constitution election in March of 1961, an election in which the PUP won 18 out of 18 seats.

Instead, Mr. Goldson sent his wife, Hadie, to London in 1961 to study law. It would have been a brilliant move, because Mr. Goldson knew he would need a reliable attorney to fight the massive power of Mr. Price and the PUP. Even though Mrs. Goldson qualified for the bar, her career as a lawyer in Belize, after she returned home in 1965, was not noteworthy.

Sending his wife to study law may have turned out to be a mistake, but it should not have been. We can see now, with the benefit of hindsight, that Mr. Goldson’s greatest mistake was exposing the Thirteen Proposals in 1966. He incurred the wrath of the United States, which confirmed the accuracy of Mr. Goldson’s revelations when Bethuel Webster, the American attorney who mediated the talks between the United Kingdom and Guatemala, produced the Seventeen Proposals in 1968. Because of his exposing the Proposals, Washington condemned Mr. Goldson to a non-leadership role in the Opposition, even though Mr. Goldson was a certified national hero and was undoubtedly the most popular leader in the Opposition to the PUP.

At some point soon, I will analyze the events which took place between 1966 and 1973, when the United Democratic Party (UDP) was formed, and Mr. Goldson, the most sincere leader in the ranks of the Opposition, was reduced to Party Whip status.    

Mr. Price and the PUP recruited me in 1975 after UBAD had been dissolved in late 1974. I met privately several times with the aforementioned C. L. B. Rogers before an informal relationship between myself and the ruling PUP was formed. This is another story, and a long one.

But I thought about the greatness of Mr. Goldson recently when I went to do cataract surgery on my right eye. (I had done the same surgery on my left eye a few years before.) How could this man have accomplished all that he did when he was experiencing serious problems with his eyes from back in the late ‘60s? When Mr. Goldson himself went to study law in London in January of 1972, his eye problems were severe. That is my sense.

By the time he returned home with his law degree in 1974, Mr. Goldson was practically blind.

Belize is crazy small. You know that. My father, a Roman Catholic, was a close friend of the late Henry “Eagles” Usher, and when my dad was married to my mom, a Methodist, at the Holy Redeemer Presbytery, Mr. Usher and his famous wife, the late “Miss Jane,” were the witnesses.

My father was a quiet PUP, but my mom was an outspoken supporter of Mr. Goldson in his anti-Guatemala prime. So that, as my mom’s oldest child, you will understand why I was a Goldson supporter. And so, when Mr. Goldson asked me to support him in the December 1971 Belize City Council election (Mr. Goldson was being boycotted by Dean Lindo and his PDM), I did ally with Mr. Goldson, and that turned out to be MY biggest mistake. Because, Mr. Goldson had already been condemned by Washington and the Belizean business oligarchy.

Between 1974 and 1995, Mr. Goldson did all that he did without any eyes. My respect for him is immense.

Power to the people.