(NOTE: Leafing through old copies of this newspaper, I found the following article in the Friday, November 10, 1978 issue.

Since the middle of the 1980s, we have witnessed the transformation of the Barracks, from a traditional sports and recreation area for Belize City Southsiders to a home for international hotels/casinos.

When the People’ s United Party (PUP) was re-elected to government in 1998, they soon proposed the introduction of casinos into Belize. There was some protest from the churches, but the government promised that only tourists would be allowed into the casinos. This promise proved to be bogus. 

I’m not exactly sure what it is that international casinos bring to a location which is so toxic, but I believe the deterioration of the hallowed MCC Garden took place because one of the casinos wanted it for a parking lot. The November 10, 1978 story follows.)

FLORIDA REJECTS CASINOS: BELIZE NEXT?

BELIZE CITY, Wed. Nov. 8, 1978

Florida voters yesterday rejected proposals for gambling casinos to be introduced into the Sunshine State.

This vote, taking place just a few days after Belize Roman Catholic Bishop Robert L. Hodapp celebrated his 50th anniversary as a Jesuit and 20th as Bishop, brings back memories of the shooting of Bishop Hodapp in Miami, Florida near the turn of the last decade.

Readers will remember that rumours were rife in the late sixties that Belize would be the site for new, international gambling casinos, but these proposals never did come before our local legislature. Part of the reason for the blocking of casino legislation even before proposals were submitted, was the strong anti-casino stance taken by the local Roman Church led by Bishop Hodapp.

It was being said in Belize that the Mob had ordered the shooting of Hodapp as a punishment for his opposition to the casinos which would have opened up Belize to the Florida and New Orleans Mob families headed by Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello, respectively.

In the November 1978 issue of PLAYBOY magazine, there is an article by Dan E. Moldea revealing the late labour leader Jimmy Hoffa’s secret role as the CIA’s link to the Mob in the 1960s when both organizations were planning the assassination of Cuba’s Fidel Castro in revenge for his disruption of Marcello’s and Trafficante’s gambling and narcotics on the island. Trafficante was among the mobsters solicited for the now famous CIA plots to assassinate Castro.

Hoffa hated John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy with a virulent passion, while Carlos Marcello reportedly in September 1962 shouted an ancient Sicilian death threat against the Kennedy brothers: “Livars! Na Petra di La Scarpa!” (“Take the stone out of my shoe!”) Marcello then announced that John Kennedy, the first Catholic U.S. president, would be assassinated. Marcello was angry because Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s federal agents had kidnapped him and deported him to Guatemala.

Moldea states: “The fact of America’s most secret Government agency teaming up with its most powerful criminals is sinister enough. Even more troubling, however, was my realization that ties between the plots to kill Castro and the murder of President Kennedy keep showing up once certain other relationships are fitted into the puzzle.”

It may be that these powerful men, having failed in Florida, will turn their attention anew to Belize. The Belizean climate, from their standpoint, would be right for their casino endeavours now, as most Belizeans seem to fear communism today more than they fear the Mob. And Belize is at such a crossroads today that she must fall into the arms of one or the other: the communists or the Mob!