The hurricane season is here, June 1, and the next big thing on our calendar, if we don’t get crushed by a bad one, would have been our glorious 10th day of September celebrations, when our forefathers won the glorious fight at old St. George’s Cay. It isn’t safe to pass over the hurricane season so swiftly, because we know how people who are dismissed behave, sometimes. Hn, I can never understand the negative energy of revenge and bad mind.
Our scientists at the Meteorology Department must have their hands full, but if I had the time and the money I’d beg to go in there and be allowed to do some research on some of my observations. If I had to bet – now why did we go and license Boledo when we still haven’t corrected the ownership? – yes, if I had to bet I’d say that Belize will not have to face a hurricane this year. I said: if I had to bet. Of course, I’d give the spread to even the field because we, thank our lucky stars, don’t get wap by those bad beasts every year.
Ain’t it amazing how these days they can track the paths of those big bad bohgaz, call out every step they’ll make from the day they were born? There was no such luck in 1931 when we took one of our worst hits ever. There was no such luck when Hattie turned like a boomerang and reduced Belize City and Dangriga and everything in between to rubble. Mitch – was it in 1998? – was not the best call for the weather scientists either, but ever since they have been on a roll.
Okay, respects having been paid to the bad weather phenomena, we can turn our attention to those bad ones from across the border, in Guatemala.
The writer, Dee Brown, in the book Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, had this quote (which I might not have down to the last letter) from an old Indian chief: everything changes, only the earth remains. My, have things changed, turned bad in our little world.
Bah, at this moment I can’t recall the name of the devil who said that if Arturo O’Neill was a real Spaniard he never would have turned tail and run from the gunboats of Moss and Barrow, and the flats manned by the real heroes of September 10, 1798 (the slaves and people of color who decided that Belize is where they lived and Belize is where they’d stay), but that philistine must be having the time of his retirement in his grave. He must regret, though, that he isn’t still alive so he could have seen us squirm, so he could gloat.
You know, if Clinton Canul Luna and I were younger, he could have come down from Corozal and we could have met in Orange Walk and duked it out. There’s this scene in King Solomon’s Mines, when two aspirants for the title met on the battlefield and decided things in the dust. The white people, they want to wipe out entire peoples to settle their differences, and this uncivilized practice is so common with them that they have a coinage to describe it – collateral damage.
Of course, Canul Luna would have wanted a debate, palabras, because he is an intellectual. Somebody said the pen was mightier than the sword, but you couldn’t tell that to me when I was young. Ah, I remember my last fight. I won’t go into details, but I came out with deep scratch wounds on my chest and face. My adversary ran for a weapon, and I ran home. For me, fighting had rules, and my objective was only to subdue, never to hurt. I learned a couple lessons. My two lessons were, one, not everyone fights by the rules, and two, avoid fights if your heart is not full of hate.
Hmm, am I allowed to distribute some of the spoils of the Guatemalan philistine’s victory to the devil Assad, and Price, and a name I will mention in the next paragraph? No? Aaright, don’t fuss.
My, my, what cruel irony that it was the party of Sedi Elrington which imported a hero Wallace from Scotland and a band of men in skirts carrying bagpipes, that stuck the dagger deep into the hearts of our forefathers’ glory. No, you don’t win a country and then hand over the whole thing to the court – lock, stock, and barrel — to ask for your borders to be defined. The glorious decision still stands, but our glorious battle got trampled by the very ones who were foremost in celebrating it.
You know, all our problems go back to when our former heroine, Ms. Sharon Pitts, put down her flag and eggs after someone ill-advised her into going away to study the wishy-washy law. Ai, she was the wonderful warrior designate to carry the spear after the peerless Miss Emma went into retirement.
I wouldn’t want his job
The story here is about President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador; he’s the man whose job I wouldn’t want. A couple weeks before anyone on our side of the world closed their borders, President Bukele closed El Salvador’s borders to the world. It was a brilliant decision. El Salvador has a land mass about the size of ours, and a population of about 6.5 million, more than 16 times ours. A communicable disease could rampage through a people living in such close quarters with no stopping.
The Guatemalan president publicly stated that they were friends of the USA, but the USA wasn’t reciprocating. He was speaking about the US repatriating Guatemalan citizens who were COVID-19 positive. The US sent back over 1,500 El Salvadorans between the middle of March and the middle of April, but Bukele’s government insists that they were all COVID-19 free. Still, when deportees arrive, they are placed in quarantine for 30 days.
El Faro (at elfaro.net) says “the Washington Post has reported that ICE is not testing deportees; rather, it is only taking their temperature. The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador redirected El Faro’s requests for comment to ICE, which, at the time of publication, declined to respond.” Well, I am not getting in between that, except to say that Bukele was left-wing, but he dumped our Taiwan for big China, he has distanced his country from Venezuela, and he says the US is not doing them wrong with the deportees.
There are criticisms about Bukele’s style of leadership, but I’m not here to interfere with how our neighbors to the south of Guatemala run their country either. I’m just remarking on a remarkable decision to close that country’s borders. Those of us who want to take a swipe at him will note that El Salvador is not as dependent on tourism as we are. Knoema.com says travel and tourism makes up less than 12% of El Salvador’s economy, and we know that that industry makes up almost a whopping 50% of ours. With less dependency on tourism, yes, it was less tempting for El Salvador to keep her borders opened.
El Salvador has not come out of the first wave of COVID-19 unscathed. The present numbers according to Wikipedia are 2,582 cases and 46 deaths; however, if they had not acted immediately, if they had followed the prescription of our neighbor to the immediate north, Mexico, it would most likely have been much, much worse.
The Mexican state of Quintana Roo is one and a half times the size of El Salvador and has a population of 1.5 million —less than a quarter of El Salvador’s, but it has fared much worse. The latest reports are that Quintana Roo has had 1,609 cases, of which 291 have died.
Ah, the politics of El Salvador is very intriguing. That country must be the most difficult nation in Central America to manage, and we, we should be a stroll in the park. We would be, if our leaders were sincere and capable.