Over the last several years, some serious, sincere Belizean nationalists have come to believe in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) initiative to resolve the Guatemala-Belize dispute. These Belizean nationalists include Compton Fairweather and Dr. Gilda Lewis.
There was a time when these nationalists were loyal adherents to the National Independence Party (NIP) line, as promulgated by the Hon. Philip Goldson. By the 1960s, Goldson had developed a hard line where the Guatemalan claim to British Honduras was concerned, and there were and are detractors of his who said and say that the NIP was a one issue party – No Guatemala. I would argue in Mr. Goldson’s defence, not that he needs any defending, that it was in the 1960s that the British and the Americans began, with the 1962 Puerto Rico conference and the 1966 Thirteen Proposals and the 1968 Seventeen Proposals, to push their satellite-state-to-Guatemala projection for this territory. Mr. Goldson felt that if you didn’t have a country, then all the other party politics was meaningless. I agreed with him. That is why this newspaper in 1977 publicly adjusted its philosophy from black nationalism to Belizean nationalism.
The important thing about the internal politics of Guatemala is that, whereas that republic to our west took an impressive turn, under Jacobo Arbenz, towards agrarian reform and social justice from 1951 to 1954, precisely the years when the People’s United Party (PUP), which included Goldson prominently in its leadership, was rising to electoral power in British Honduras, Guatemala returned to oppressive, military, oligarchical rule following a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954.
Following the civil wars in Guatemala, which lasted more than thirty years and saw the murder of more than 200,000 indigenous Guatemalans, that country has enjoyed democratic, civilian rule for the last twenty years or so, but everybody knows that the Guatemalan democracy is at the complete mercy of the Guatemalan military. Guatemala is a country run, ultimately, by the military on behalf of big business in Guatemala and the multimillionaire ranchers and coffee/banana planters. Guatemala is a Roman Catholic state, and the established Church is a key player in a system of governance which exploits, dominates, and often murders Guatemala’s majority indigenous population. When individual members of the Catholic clergy have stood for the republic’s indigenous victims, they have been murdered.
With the educational system in Belize controlled for the last fifty years by that same Roman Catholic Church, generation after generation after generation of Belizeans have grown up completely ignorant of the military/police brutality going on next door, and are hopelessly naïve where the Guatemalan claim to Belize is concerned. The Church, in pursuance of its interests, does not want Belize’s educated classes to be anti-Guatemala, hence the lockdown on truth in Belizean education where Guatemala is concerned.
In the rest of the region and the rest of the world, there is a desire for the dispute between Guatemala and Belize to be peacefully resolved, hence the regional and international support for the ICJ initiative. Had there been a government in Guatemala all these years which was dedicated to agrarian reform and social justice, the masses of the Belizean people would be less suspicious of, and less hostile to, Guatemala. It is only the educated Belizean classes, those whose minds have been trained by the Church, who see no problem with Guatemala. The masses of the Belizean people, who now find themselves controlled politically by the ruling UDP and the Opposition PUP, see a serious problem with Guatemala.
Over the last twenty-five years, London and Washington have gained effective control of the leadership of the UDP and the PUP. It is not as if UDP and PUP leaders do not want the best for Belize, but the direction being proposed by London and Washington, the direction of appeasement and submission to Guatemala, is the easy way out. It looks like the civilized way out, and it certainly appears to be the peaceful way out.
The uproar over the Wilfred Elrington appeasement statement in Washington last month is emanating from the masses of the Belizean people. Mr. Elrington and his family members have sought to explain the uproar as a plot by Kremandala, or even as a family dispute between their family and ours. This is a red herring. It is ridiculous. We supported Mr. Elrington in his successful campaign for the Pickstock seat in 2008. When those who are controlled, through various means, by London and Washington, get into any kind of problem with Kremandala, they always refuse to recognize that Kremandala absolutely came from the people, has been sustained by the people, and depends upon the people for its continued survival. Kremandala is not owned or controlled by the oligarchy, is not beholden to London and Washington, and, above all, does not bow down to the Roman Catholic Church.
Kremandala came out of an organization called the United Black Association for Development (UBAD). Founded in 1969, UBAD divided in 1973, prior to dissolution in 1974. Why did UBAD divide in 1973? UBAD divided in 1973 because UBAD was fighting an arrogant PUP government, and half the UBAD leadership believed that the new UDP was the way to go, the best way to fight the PUP.
At the time, that half of the UBAD executive which broke off to go UDP did not understand, I do not believe, the significance of the new and strange Liberal Party which had just taken a seat at the UDP table. That Liberal Party was a creation of the Roman Catholic Church leadership in Belize, which is controlled from the Rafael Landivar campus. The Roman Catholic Church in Belize is compromised by its larger and more important interests in Guatemala. The Roman Catholic Church was therefore in favor of the Seventeen Proposals and the Heads of Agreements. Those attempts to resolve the Guatemala-Belize dispute in favor of Guatemala, coincide with the Church’s greater interests. I hereby challenge any of them to say otherwise.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.