“Official sources estimate that U.S. citizens spend $110 billion a year on drugs, the equivalent of one-tenth of the value of the country’s industrial production. Authorities have never caught a single U.S. trafficker of any real importance …
“Drugs are as ‘American’ as apple pie – a U.S. tragedy, a U.S. business, but they’re the fault of Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, and other ingrate nations. In a scene straight out of the Vietnam War, helicopters and planes bomb guilty-looking Latin American fields with poisons made by Dow Chemical, Chevron, Monsanto and other chemical companies. Devastating to the earth and to human health, the sprayings are next to useless because the drug plantations simply relocate.”
– pgs. 122-124, UPSIDE DOWN, by Eduardo Galeano, Picador, New York, 1998
“Shell and Chevron have destroyed the Niger River delta. Author Ken Saro-Wiwa of the Ogoni people of Nigeria, wrote: ‘What Shell and Chevron have done to Ogoni people, land, streams, creeks and the atmosphere amounts to genocide. The soul of the Ogoni people is dying and I am witness to the fact.
“At the beginning of 1995, Shell’s general manager in Nigeria, Naemeka Achebe, explained why his company supported the military government: ‘For a commercial company trying to make investments, you need a stable environment … Dictatorships can give you that.’ A few months later, the dictatorship hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight other Ogonis for resisting the companies that were destroying their villages and turning their country into a vast wasteland.”
– pgs. 185, 186, ibid.
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In the larger sense, this column is an insignificant exercise. That “larger sense” is the great size of the individuals and institutions who are about the business of disenfranchising the people who have lived in this territory for the last three hundred years or so.
The people of Belize happen to be sitting on one of the great petroleum deposits in the Western Hemisphere, but I can no longer say, definitively, that this is a good thing. What has happened with the Belize Natural Energy (BNE) oil is suggestive of what will happen with the rest of the oil here. There will be a few insignificant cosmetic programs, like marching bands, but the people of Belize will remain poor. They will remain poor because they are uninformed. And they will remain poor because they are confused, and their powerful enemies are in the business of confusing them.
Over the years I’ve seen many young men with chemical addiction problems enter the jail system, lose access to the crack, come out clean, but soon return to the chemical. I hear that nowadays you can get anything you want or think you need inside the prison, so maybe the rehab part of the confinement is not as successful as it used to be. Whatever, there are aspects of the daily (and nightly) lives we live in Belize City which drive young men (and some young women) to embrace crack consolation. The plain truth is, the city has no pity. None.
The masses of the people in the city, it seemed to me, were tolerant of drug traffickers from day one. The reason, I submit, was because we were a poor people, and secretly we dreamed of some of that crazy drugs money rubbing off on us. Plus, we were sure that we ourselves would never use the pernicious product whose sale was making the traffickers and dealers rich.
As time went on, however, we saw relatives and friends get hooked, and unravel before our eyes. We felt the stress of being harassed and hounded by addicts desperate for money to buy a hit. We saw the night life of the formerly lively city shrink and shrink. Night life shrank until it ended with 9 o’clock boledo. And then it shrank some more. Now it ends with the television news in the evening. Eventually we realized that the reason those who made money off drugs, did so, was because they were people who were, or had become, selfish and mean and violent. They were not giving up anything. Nothing. So much for drugs.
Religious fanaticism is a kind of drug, because it seeks to drown the reasoning process in a sea of emotionalism. In last weekend’s issue of The Belize Times, I saw an advertisement to the effect that “Amazing Grace Christian Fellowship of Spanish Lookout … has applied to the Public Utilities Commission for the use of broadcast frequency to operate an FM radio station (Horizon Radio) for sound broadcast to provide coverage throughout the Cayo District and surrounding areas.” I suppose, because of its location, that this will be a Mennonite station, and we know that the Mennonites are one of the wealthiest groups in Belize. The Mennonites can afford a radio station.
But what about all the religious radio and television stations between Belmopan and San Ignacio – the present petroleum belt of Belize? None of the Belizean church organizations in the Cayo District are rich enough to finance these state-of-the-art broadcast stations. Where is the money coming from to establish and maintain all the stations which were broadcasting throughout Cayo even before the Horizon Radio application?
The people of Belize don’t need any more evangelical religions. What we need is to be educated as to how to defend our national patrimony. In whose interest is it for our people to place religious evangelism before national patrimony rights? It is in the interest of the same individuals and institutions which made more money last year than any other business in the world – the oil people. Religion is pouring into Belize by the drumfuls: those drums used to contain oil. Trust me.
Because everybody wants to get theirs in the greed climate of Belize these days, it’s hard to talk serious business with Belizeans. I think it is important that we don’t blame ourselves for all the negatives and negativity we see around us in the streets. As a people, we have been under attack from people whose intentions do not include the national upliftment of Belize and Belizeans.
For forty years in our newspaper, we have been pointing things out, and making arguments for you to analyze and judge. In 2009, many Belizeans have reached the point where we can see that the two-party political process produces essentially the same results no matter which set of politicians we elect. This is a discouraging realization, because party politics came to Belize in 1950 with a surge of national optimism. Today, it is for sure we are fighting for our very lives, and sometimes our own leaders are our enemies. In this malaise, some offer us drugs, and some offer us Jesus. Neither is the solution. Only the people can save the people.
All power to the people.