“The most prominent leader was Jacinto Pat, batab of Tihosuco. There were reports that he was a zambo, a Maya with African blood, as well, and photographs of his descendant Leonardo Pat show evidence of this heritage. If true, the source would have been Belize, where there was a black population of twenty-three hundred by the end of the nineteenth century, and Tihosuco had commercial ties with that place.”
– pg. 62, THE CASTE WAR OF YUCATAN, by Nelson A. Reed, Stanford University Press, Revised Edition (2001)
“For the Maya of Chan Santa Cruz this interlude meant survival, but little else. There was the question of whether to plant the scarce seed corn and starve now or eat it and starve later.”
– pg. 157, ibid
It hardly seems like three years have passed since Felipe Calderon became president of Mexico in a hotly contested election which some people believe was stolen. Remember that Calderon was the rightist, hence the choice of the United States, whereas his opponent, Obrador, was considered socialist.
Whatever, the Mexican drug cartels have been waging a horrifyingly violent war against the police and the army of the Mexican nation. That war has had different implications for Belize, such as the increase of corruption and violence in and surrounding our Customs Department. In the movement of cocaine from Colombia, Belize is important, because we share land and sea borders with Mexico, and once the cocaine reaches Mexico, it is a fairly sure bet that it can get into the United States – the ultimate market.
I suppose the reason our people were not taught about Mexico (and Guatemala, for that matter) in the days of colonialism, was because we were British subjects – totalmente. The British colonialists decided what we should know from what we shouldn’t know. When the American Catholic missionaries began to dominate the Belizean educational system about a half century ago, they did not teach about Mexico because the Church didn’t want anyone in Belize to know the truth about the Caste War in the last half of the nineteenth century, and they didn’t want us to know about the Mexican Revolution which followed – starring Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa.
So then, Belize became an independent nation in September of 1981. At the point of independence, Mexico became of paramount importance to Belize’s foreign affairs. How do you make important decisions with respect to a neighbouring people if you don’t know their history? I willingly concede that at the leadership level, we are reasonably well informed about Mexican affairs, partly because we are so friendly with them. But I suppose the intellectual part of me resents the fact that the Americans can feed us propaganda about Mexico, and we swallow.
For me, the all time classic of the American propaganda genre was a movie called The Magnificent Seven, which starred Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and others. This movie offered James Coburn, who became a Belizean moviegoers’ favorite, his first big time role.
The thesis of the movie was totally bogus: it was that American gunfighters are hired by poor Mexican villagers to teach them, Mexicans, how to fight, how to fight against a Mexican bandit named Calvera, a role beautifully played by Eli Wallach. I know that Americans have their warrior heroes – Davy Crockett, Billy The Kid, Wyatt Earp, General George Patton, and so on, but there was no warrior ever greater than Pancho Villa, and Villa was a Mexican. No one can teach Mexicans how to fight, because Mexicans wrote the book.
The Magnificent Seven was made in 1960 by an American director named John Sturges. Calvera was a stereotypical Mexican bandit. The original and classic was Villa, of whom Americans in border states like Texas were scared. Listen, Villa was so bad he actually invaded the United States, at Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916.
The Italian moviemaker Sergio Leone, who made the Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria Volonte Westerns, gave my generation of Belizeans its first look at the horror and absurdity of real war in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Eleven years after Coburn had become a star in The Magnificent Seven, Sergio Leone hired him to star, along with Rod Steiger, in a movie called Duck, You Sucker. Coburn played a fugitive and disillusioned Irish revolutionary who gets caught up in the Mexican Revolution. Steiger plays a small time Mexican bandit who becomes a hero of the Revolution, but can’t figure out why. Pancho Villa is not the focus of Duck, You Sucker, but his vibes are all around. The movie is a serious look at the tapestry of the Mexican Revolution, and Coburn’s participation in Duck, You Sucker, provided evidence that he was becoming an artist of substance.
On Tuesday night next week when I am chairing the Kremandala Show, I will wish to be at home watching, instead of participating, as Paul Rodriguez and Senator Henry Gordon tackle Clinton Uh Luna. I think Paul and Henry will have their hands full, although I would have preferred that Clinton Uh could have had his wish and have the scholar, Lic. Mateo Ayuso Gomez, accompany him.
Clinton Uh is more of an activist than a scholar, although he is well read. Born in Corozal, he went to Mexico as a child after Hurricane Janet wiped out Corozal Town. He spent the next thirty plus years in places like Acapulco and Cancun. Clinton Uh’s importance in the Belizean context is that he is the first Belizean with significant Mexican experience who is sharing his knowledge with the Belizean people.
I look at next Tuesday’s show as preliminary to something more formal. We simply must get Clinton and Mateo together in an academic setting to educate Belizeans. The British refused to do it, and the American missionaries followed suit – they also refused. The time is past when we should be allowing propagandists “fu tek wi mek pappyshow.”
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.