BELIZE CITY, Friday, May 4, (1984) – According to the Thursday, May 3 (1984) issue of the Miami HERALD which was made available to us this morning, almost eight tons of cocaine were smuggled in 13 flights between June 1982 and November 1983. (Pg. 1, AMANDALA No. 772, Friday, May 4, 1984)
I was one of the founders of COLA in June of 2008, but after the group chose an executive a few weeks later, headed by Bernard Adolphus, I drifted away. Rufus X and Mose Hyde remained involved with the executive leadership of the group. In 2009, COLA replaced Mr. Adolphus as president with Carolyn Westby. Mrs. Westby has now been succeeded by Moses Sulph, whose vice-president is Geovannie Brackett.
On Tuesday morning, COLA, in association with Belizeans for Justice, the Harmonyville organization and the Commoners, went to demonstrate in front of the Prime Minister’s office in Belmopan. The demonstrators, who were reported by the media as numbering between 30 and 40, said they were committed to a 24-hour demonstration, which involved camping out overnight in front of the P.M.’s office.
Prominent on television amongst the demonstrators was Rufus X, who became involved with the UBAD organization after he graduated from Belize Technical College in 1969, and became a UBAD officer in 1971, I believe. Rufus X is not a young man, but he behaves like it. He is in very good physical shape. Rufus X has never smoked or drank.
Anything Rufus does, has implications for me, because I believe that I owe him my life. And I will give you the full story now.
When UBAD divided in 1973, Rufus and I went separate ways. I can’t say exactly when we reconciled. But let us say two or three years later. In early 1979, even though we were involved with separate political parties, he with the UDP and I with the PUP, we travelled by road to New Orleans together.
My estrangement from the PUP, which began in late 1980 and became confirmed at the time of the Heads of Agreement in 1981, led to my moving closer to elements of the UDP, which was still in disarray following their traumatic 1979 general election defeat. Rufus X had remained hard core UDP from the time of the party’s foundation in 1973.
Having achieved political independence in September of 1981, under a state of emergency, the attitude of the ruling PUP became even more arrogant and dangerous. This was a political party which had never lost a national election, and there was a Messianic mood at the top, practically Mubarak-like.
As the 1984 general election approached, there was an unprecedented desperation in the PUP. They had lost by a landslide in the December 1983 Belize City Council election. The party was already seriously divided ideologically/philosophically, as was manifest in the national convention battle for chairmanship earlier in 1983. Now, following the CitCo disaster, longstanding Deputy Prime Minister/Deputy Party Leader, C. L. B. “Lindy” Rogers, was forced out of Cabinet, and his putative replacement as the PUP’s Southside powerhouse, V. H. “Harry” Courtenay, the Collet area rep. became seriously ill while on a trip to Asia in April/May of 1984.
In early May of 1984, news broke of cocaine trafficking indictments in Florida which named three Belizeans, including a very high ranking Belize police officer – an Assistant Superintendent of Police. Cocaine planes had been allowed to land and refuel at the Belize International Airport. More than a decade later, revelations by a San Jose Mercury News reporter, Gary Webb, indicated that those flights involved the movement of guns south to the contras in Honduras and the coordinated movement of cocaine north to the South Central Los Angeles market. An article I wrote in this newspaper a couple months after the indictments, incurred the wrath of the Belize Commissioner of Police, who demanded an apology. I refused.
In October of 1984, with the general election around the corner, that Commissioner of Police instructed a former Belize army officer to “kill or maim” me. More than a decade later, that former army officer told me that at that specific time he was on the CIA payroll, and that he reported the ComPol’s instructions to his CIA handler, who told him as follows: “Just don’t get us involved.”
If I had to bet, I would say that the Commissioner of Police was also on the CIA payroll, but I do not believe that it was the CIA which had decided to kill me. I believe that the plot involved politically-connected individuals who were supporting the ruling party.
In any case, I got a warning about two weeks before the drama began. In the club which I frequented, a friend mentioned a “talking” he had heard from the former army officer. So that, when the former army officer fired at a presiding magistrate in court and injured his common-law wife with a bullet, then showed up shortly afterwards at our newspaper office with his gun in hand and blood over him, I knew I was in trouble. This was taking place shortly after 11 a.m. In Belmopan, my sources told me afterwards, there was rumor going around at the same time to the effect that I had fired at the former army officer.
I was holed up at home when the Radio Belize 12:30 news informed that the former army officer was still at large. Rufus X had recently begun work on my home in Buttonwood Bay. I decided to go to the construction site looking for him.
He was there. I told him that it appeared the individual was out to kill me. After a while, Rufus drove me to his house on Cleghorn Street, where he began to give me some firearm instructions. But I would be a rookie going up against a professional, like Jimmy Stewart against Lee Marvin in “Liberty Valance.” Realizing this, Rufus then spoke to me like John Wayne: You drive, he said, I will shoot him.
So, we began a search. A short time afterwards, word came that the individual had been picked up in the Kings Park area by police. I do not remember if there was a radio broadcast, or if it was some other source. Many years later, the individual told me that the ComPol had told him not to worry, that the same senior police officer who ended up picking him up would “take care of everything.” The way how things usually work in these matters, if you do the job they want you to do, then they kill you in order to prevent you from revealing the source of your instructions.
I had hoped that the UDP government which came to power just five weeks after that drama, would have investigated the matter. They did not. As you can imagine, I seriously appreciated the solidarity Rufus X gave me in October of 1984, so that when the UDP began to rough him up three years later, I was honor-bound to support him. Such is life.