I was raised a caye boy. I don’t like big crowds, loud noises or bright lights. Caye people like solitude or small gatherings, waves breaking on beaches, and moonlight filtering through coconut leaves. In the summer of 1966, I found myself living, at 19 years of age, in the largest city in the United States, the noisiest city in the United States and the U.S. city which is the most brightly lit you can imagine – New York City.
I suppose, of all the thousands of British Hondurans in New York in 1966, I must have been the only one who wanted to come home to Belize. The reefs and sea of Belize were completely pristine forty years ago, and those of us who were caye people realize now that we were actually living in a kind of a paradise.
I ended up stranded in Brooklyn the summer of 1966 because the State Department of the mighty United States reneged on a part of my 1965 scholarship. I was supposed to be able to fly home for summer holidays. State didn’t come up with the ticket. Maybe they were cutting budgets because of the Vietnam War. Anyways, because of expecting to come home, I hadn’t made any plans for the summer where gainful employment was concerned. But at 19 you figure you can handle anything, and I had relatives and friends in Brooklyn. Besides, there were guys my age and younger who were fighting and dying in ‘Nam. So. Why complain?
A few days ago U.S. president George W. Bush announced he was sending more troops to Iraq. This came as a small surprise, because in the United States mid-term elections held in November last year – just two months ago, the powerful national vote for Democratic candidates had reflected the American public’s desire for the American military involvement in Iraq to be reduced, not increased.
Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy responded by declaring that Iraq was George Bush’s Vietnam. “Only” 3,000 Americans have been killed so far in Iraq, whereas 58,000 Americans ended up being killed by the time the United States withdrew from Vietnam in 1975. While the figures in late 1966 showed that a total of 6,644 Americans had been killed in ‘Nam, 5,000 of those fatalities had taken place in 1966 alone. In other words, Vietnam heated up dramatically in 66. And at the end of 1966, American president Lyndon Johnson was announcing that American troop deployments would rise from 400,000 to 470,000.
On the Dartmouth College campus in 1966, Vietnam had become big news, because Uncle Sam was drafting bodies right, left and center. American college students were frantically trying to escape being drafted into the army, because the Vietnam War had become bloody and dangerous.
In the summer of 1966, I worked temporary jobs for an employment agency called Manpower, Inc. This was how I survived – two- and three-day jobs substituting for clerks and typists who were out sick for brief periods. I lived in the basement of a house at 722 Snediker Avenue owned by Mr. and Mrs. Eric Card. Next door to me in the basement lived Mr. and Mrs. Hilly Barrow. On the first floor lived my cousin Michael Lindo, a Belizean named Bunny Bevans, and an American lady whose name I did not know. The Cards lived on the upper floor.
Amongst the Brooklyn Belizeans who seemed to have pretty good permanent jobs were the children of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick “Bado” Moody, a family with whom I was friendly. One of the younger Moody daughters, Barbara, was dating a guy by the name of Eugene Jex. At a party one time, the news was that Eugene was going to Vietnam. I opened my big mouth and asked if Eugene was crazy or what. Vietnam?
But there was nobody in the Belizean community in New York who seemed to have a problem with Vietnam. The fashionable thing among New York Belizeans in 1966 was to “dump on” Belize. If Vietnam was what it took to get your “papers” and your future straightened out in America, then Vietnam was fine.
I guess the way I should have handled it was to talk privately with Eugene, and find out exactly what was in his head. To begin with, any young man who is going to war deserves respect and congratulations on his bravery. I hadn’t given Eugene my respect. But, if you know me you know this, that I was never any kind of diplomat. Straight like that.
My relationship with the New York Belizeans in my circles began to deteriorate after that. In the winter of the following year – 1967, I became radicalized and committed to the black power struggle after black Dartmouth College students protested the visit to the campus of the segregationist governor of Alabama – George Corley Wallace. Vietnam was getting worse and worse. My family paid my way home for the summer of 1967. Much thanks for that.
A couple weeks ago I saw on American television where the year 2006 had been a very good year for Goldman Sachs, a Manhattan financial firm. There were Goldman Sachs traders and bankers who were receiving $50 million and $100 million bonuses for 2006. Good for Goldman Sachs. None of these Goldman Sachs guys are going to Iraq. All they do is make money and count money. Wall Street, Jack. From way back in 1966, these were the “smart money” – the guys who were figuring out how to avoid the draft for ‘Nam.
Eugene Jex, praise God, survived Vietnam. There’s no more draft in America today. You don’t have to join the military to satisfy your obligations as an American citizen or permanent resident. Today the American military is what they call “voluntary” and “professional”.
Bush needs more soldiers for Iraq. This means more opportunities for aliens and immigrants. This is a war which has to grow. It has to grow so that the Goldman Sachs bonuses can keep on running. Figure it out.