“ … in the 1969-1974 period … young leftist and Black Power radicals garnered phenomenal support among young Creoles and Garinagu in Belize City and Dangriga by denouncing the entire party system as a smokescreen for capitalist neocolonialism.”
– pg. 243, FROM COLONY TO NATION, by Anne S. Macpherson, University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
“Shylock, although I neither lend nor borrow,
By taking nor by giving of excess,
Yet to supply the ripe wants of my friend,
I’ll break a custom.”
– THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, Act I, sc. iii, 62-65
“ Thy currish spirit Governed a wolf who, hanged for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And whilst thou lay’st in thy unhallowed dam
Infused itself in thee, for thy desires
Are wolvish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.”
– ibid. Act IV, sc. i, 133-138
Life can be rough at times. Doctors have had to saw off men’s arms and legs on the battlefield without the use of anesthesia. Can you imagine? It’s not only rough on the patient: it’s rough on the doctors, and whoever is assisting or is near the operation.
In 1969 there was a need to get some educational stuff done, and it had to be done in a rough way – in the streets. There was no time, really, to deal with complexities and technicalities. Anesthesia was not available. The PUP was a powerful ruling party, and they were at the height of their popularity. If UBAD had come soft in 1969, the PUP would have kicked us all over the place. So, UBAD came hard.
Those young people who supported us in 1969 were true and instinctive believers, and together we laid a foundation which has lasted for more than 39 years. You can’t turn back the hands of time, only in your mind. But I remember a couple young men from those days. I see their faces through the mists of time, and I try to live my life and run this show so that they would be proud of their commitment in 1969, and of the benefits which have accrued to our community from that commitment.
These young men were never officers of our organization. They never spoke on the rostrum. They never sought position or power or fame. It was only that they were always there, always representing. And then they went to the United States, which is where all of us went in those days.
In the UBAD pantheon of stars, there is a brother who is viewed as a saint. His name is Edgar X Richardson. He was a UBAD officer who left for America in the latter part of 1969, and did not return until more than two decades later. But the flame of UBAD burned brightly in his soul, and in Los Angeles he passed along that torch of faith to younger Belizeans who had never known UBAD. Edgar X died last year. Peace be upon him. I acknowledge his widow, Mrs. Gilda Dennison Richardson, in this column.
The two “anonymous” brothers I remember from those original days of faith and struggle are Rudolph DeCosta and Dennis Rocke. I wonder where they are and how they’re doing. Rudolph’s dad was a famous waterfront worker who had been a leader in a PUP organization called the Blackhawks. The Blackhawks were the militant male wing of the People’s United Party in the 1950’s. The late Shubu Brown was a Blackhawk before he left the PUP to become an NIP/UDP stalwart. The late Leonard Jones, Sr., was a Blackhawk leader. But there is no written history of the organization.
Dennis Rocke, I think, was from a more middle class family. A calm and pleasant brother, I knew for sure he was still in Belize at the time of the sedition trial in July of 1970, because I have a photograph of him celebrating in a crowd.
There were many Belizeans who liked UBAD, but couldn’t handle some of the rough edges. There are no apologies. The saying goes, a revolution is not a tea party. By international standards, UBAD was not a violent organization, but there were hassles. We’ll just leave it at that. The PUP was mean: we had to defend.
Nuri Muhammad had been with UBAD in those early, heady days of 1969, and one of the things was that he made it clear, to anyone who would listen to him, that he considered himself a leader. Like Edgar X, Bert Simon, for that is how he was named then, left for California in the latter part of 1969. When he returned in late 1972, Simon was Nuri Muhammad, appointed the Belize Minister (Imam) for the Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. In late 1972, Charles X Eagan was still in jail. Nuri pressured Ismael Shabazz, the other ranking UBAD Muslim, to resign from UBAD. This was a blow fatal to UBAD, but no one knew it at the time.
Shortly afterwards, in early 1973, UBAD began to argue and divide at the leadership level, and ended up being dissolved in November of 1974. Many UBAD members and supporters then joined Nuri’s Muslim program, which fulfilled their spiritual needs. But more than that, there were outstanding Belizean professionals who joined the Nation of Islam. They were impressed by Nuri Muhammad’s finish, his demeanor, his manners.
From where I was, struggling in those bitter years of the middle and late 1970’s, I felt that some of those new NOI converts must have been people who liked UBAD from a distance, but had a problem with the roughness of the organization. Whatever the case, the popularity and strength of the Belize NOI surged in those years of which I am speaking. What went wrong, it is not for me to say. It is for Nuri to say.
In the thirty or so years since then, I’ve seen Nuri Muhammad do a lot of things which I considered strange. The strangest thing of all was his becoming press secretary for PUP Prime Minister Said Musa in the last year or two of Mr. Musa’s ill-fated second term. What was Nuri thinking? Our sources said that he had become a Ralphista. This was what the evidence was saying.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, global white supremacy in Belize launched a vicious and merciless legal attack on Kremandala, which is, in a sense, the 2008 incarnation of UBAD. Mr. Ashcroft will look back on this case, I am sure, as a serious mistake on his organization’s part. The Lord is losing badly in the public relations aspect of this matter. Kremandala is the most trusted organization in Belize today. As such, there is support for Kremandala across the board, so to speak. The controversial personality of yours truly is no longer a big issue, one reason being that I have aged, and another reason being that less rowdy members of our family now represent.
Lord Ashcroft’s decision to have his lawyers attack C.B. Hyde’s character, honesty, and credibility, amounts to an attack on a Belizean icon. All Ashcroft knew about was Evan X Hyde, but it was C.B. Hyde who ran KREM Radio. Mr. Ashcroft’s Belizean advisors sent him to attack Evan X Hyde, but it was the Hyde family they were attacking. And C.B. Hyde and his family have a record of integrity. I rest my case.
Power to the people.