Human rights group Amnesty International is urging Guatemala to account for an estimated 40,000 people who disappeared during the Central American nation’s civil war.
Amnesty deputy director Kerrie Howard said Guatemala has not heeded many of the U.N.’s recommendations on reconciliation made 10 years ago.
Guatemala’s U.S.-backed governments destroyed villages while fighting leftist guerrillas from 1960 to 1996. About 200,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, vanished or died.
– pg. 6A, THE MIAMI HERALD, Thursday, February 26, 2009
I hope that you are reading John L. Stephens, primarily because of the contrast you will see between the conditions in Belize and Guatemala in 1839 and 1840.
Belize was prosperous because of mahogany, which was flourishing at the time, and the majority blacks in Belize were in good shape, because of their role in the Battle of St. George’s Caye and their economic importance as mahogany loggers.
Guatemala was in the throes of a bloody civil war. Sound familiar? With all the wealth Spain had robbed, from Mexico and Peru primarily, and the rest of her “New World” possessions, she was being roughed up by France and Napoleon Bonaparte in the first part of the nineteenth century. The weakness of the Spanish monarchy provided opportunity for “liberal” elements in Mexico and Central America to push for internal freedoms, and indeed independence from Spain, an independence which was declared in 1821.
Spain ruled this area of the world not only because of her conquistadores, who had subdued the indigenous people violently, using horses, muskets and gunpowder, but because the Pope of Rome, by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, had declared that these territories belonged to the King of Spain.
To a great extent, the rule of Spain in Mexico and Central America was a theocratic one. The Roman Catholic Church, in close alliance with the established aristocracy, was extremely powerful; in fact, the Church’s spiritual authority was inseparable from secular rule, which was military and autocratic.
When Mexico and Central America declared independence in 1821, Central America was briefly a part of Iturbide’s Mexico, but then Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica broke away to form the Central American Confederation in 1823. The civil wars which soon broke out in Central America, basically featured the traditional aristocratic elements, in partnership with the Roman Church, against more progressive, liberal elements.
The American historian Hubert Bancroft Howe points out that Salvador was the seat and center of liberalism in Central America, producing the great Francisco Morazan. Guatemala was dominated by the aristocracy and the Church, except for the period between 1831 and 1838 when Mariano Galvez was in power, with the support of Morazan.
Rafael Carrera emerged in 1838 as the Roman Catholic clergy’s Chosen One, and during this period Carrera and the Church convinced the masses of the uneducated Indians of Guatemala, that the liberal element represented foreign elements and hostility to religion. (These “foreign” elements included some British investors and immigrants.)
John L. Stephens apparently arrived in Guatemala early in 1840, when Carrera was terrorizing Guatemala City and consolidating his power with great violence. The contrast between Guatemala and Belize could not have been more stark.
One of the reasons I bring this matter up at this precise point in time is because of the Baron Bliss Sailing Regatta, held every year on the 9th of March. When Baron Bliss visited Belize in 1926, less than ninety years after Stephens, Belize had experienced riots in the capital in 1894 and 1919. The world was about to enter the Great Depression a couple years later, but mahogany was still relatively prosperous in 1926, therefore black people were in good shape.
The mahogany industry involved pitpans, Cayo boats, and the Belize Old River, but the history of our settlement here was marked by the employment of various sailing vessels, including doreys, sloops, and lighters, which transported goods and passengers between the capital, the cays, and the coastal towns. Fishermen here used sailing “smacks.”
When Baron Bliss visited British Honduras, sailing craft ruled, and that is why he asked for an annual Sailing Regatta in his honour, and provided money for same. The prize money has declined drastically in value, so much so that it is a mere pittance. It was only a few passionate fans, like Dean Lindo, Eckert Lewis, Wally Brown, Edward Flowers, the late Collet Maheia and the late Sir George Brown, who really kept the Sailing Regatta alive.
All around us, our people have watched as our traditions and hallowed places have been undermined and desecrated over the last thirty years. A suspicious person would feel that there is some form of conspiracy going on here.
The canoe race from San Ignacio to Belize City, which was introduced about ten years ago, is a very good concept. That race deserves the great success it has achieved. But there is also space for the Sailing Regatta. We should always make space for the Sailing Regatta, because it represents our history here in this territory.
I support all the efforts of our older citizens to preserve and extol the Baron Bliss Sailing Regatta. The prizes are, of course, woefully too small. And it seems everything always comes down to money.
There is great skill involved with sailing. In fact, it is an Olympic sport, and all over the world there are grand sailing races where the prizes are huge. In Belize, we can do more to honor this tradition which helped to defend us in 1798.
Power to the people.
P.S. I should mention that in my childhood during the 1950’s, beautiful sailing sloops would come from the North to compete in the 9th of March Sailing Regatta. I remember the names Cruzita, Estrella and Aventurera. I don’t know whether they came from Caye Caulker, San Pedro Ambergris Caye or Sarteneja. To my recollection, the Garinagu did not compete in the Baron Bliss Regatta, but they are famous and gifted sailors. Perhaps we should have an annual sailing race from Punta Gorda to Ambergris Caye, or something ambitious like that. The key is the sponsorship.