Very serious developments have taken place at the highest levels of the power structure of the world superpower, the United States of America, these last few days. The President of the U.S., Donald J. Trump, who heads the executive branch of government, authorized his immigration (Homeland Security) department to deport a bunch of Venezuelans to El

Salvador without any kind of legal process. A federal judge, representing the judicial branch of the American democracy, condemned the move and issued an order that the three planes flying the deportees to El Salvador turn back. The planes did not. In the aftermath of the incident, President Trump said he would have the federal judge impeached, whereupon the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, released a statement to the effect that it was not within the President’s power to impeach any federal judge.

The United States has historically broadcast itself as a democracy, one which features three branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial. If the U.S. president overrules the judiciary, then the U.S., which has in our lifetime advertised itself as “the leader of the free world,” will cease to be a democracy and become an authoritarian state, a dictatorship.   

In Central America, Guatemala, a republic which claims territory that was declared by the United Nations in 1981 to be that of the sovereign state of Belize, was a dictatorship under General Jorge Ubico until he was replaced by elected governments between 1945 and 1954. These governments were headed by Juan Jose Arevalo from 1945 to 1951, and then by Jacobo Arbenz from 1951 until 1954 when he went into exile to avoid civil war following a military coup which supported Carlos Castillo Armas as the new president.

Castillo Armas was assassinated in 1957, whereupon Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, a former army general, was elected Guatemala president from 1958, when he won an election, until 1963, when he was overthrown by a military coup.

Guatemala was in a state of civil war from 1960 until 1996, and was governed by military governments until 1986, when a civilian, Vinicio Cerezo, was elected president. 

Guatemala is supposed to be a democratic republic, but most political observers believe that there are two powerful sectors there, the military and the business oligarchy, which essentially run the country.

Belize became an independent democracy in 1981 with the overwhelming support of the United Nations, with the blessing of the mighty U.S.

But Guatemala, which is almost 5 times the size of Belize (and has over 40 times its population), included a claim to Belizean territory in its constitution during the Arevalo administration in the 1940s. In its schools, Guatemala ever since has been teaching its children that Belize actually belongs to Guatemala. 

There have been times in my lifetime when the Guatemalan military has behaved in a disrespectful manner to Belizeans and appeared to be testing its constitutional resolve. In 1975, the situation became so tense that the British government, which was then still the colonial authority in a self-governing Belize, had to fly Harrier jump jets all the way across the Atlantic to allay Belizean fears of Guatemalan aggression.

To the best of my knowledge, the first publicized instance of Guatemalan military incursion into Belizean waters took place in 1978 when a 65-foot Guatemalan gunboat (P-652) ran aground on the northeastern end of Lighthouse Reef Atoll on Tuesday, July 4, of that year. This was the headline story in the Amandala issue of Friday, July 7, 1978. The Guats had been forced to inform the British Embassy in Guatemala City that the boat was missing.

At this newspaper, we thought the event was so sensational that we rented a Maya Airways twin-engined Britten-Norman Islander aircraft to fly to Lighthouse Reef. Myself, photographer Wilton “Barber” Meighan, and Glenn Tillett, who was a teenaged reporter at the time, flew to the site of the stranded gunboat. We had been informed by a Captain Johnson, the British Army public relations officer, that there was no restriction against our taking photographs of the Guatemalan gunboat from the air.

Our pilot took us low enough for photographer Meighan to shoot the Guat crew coming out on deck to watch us. The pilot made three passes for KIM (as our photographer was called) to shoot. The photos showed the name on the stern of the craft, Kaibil Balam; a recoilless machine gun on the port side covered in black canvas; radar equipment; a Guat flag flying; and a machine gun on the bow.

The accompanying photo taken after our flight shows (from left to right) the Maya Airways pilot, the late Glenn Tillett, myself, and the late Wilton Meighan at the old Municipal Airport.