Dear Editor,

Any Belizean who would wager his country in a crap shoot is a fool. To risk the rent is bad, to risk one’s patrimony is unforgivable. There is no need to go to the ICJ. Belize has a demarcated border with Guatemala. Belize’s benighted Foreign Minister mistakenly referred to the border as “artificial,” but it is real. If Belize “wins” at the ICJ, Guatemala will simply refute the ruling, and return to “business as usual.”

Mr. Colin Hyde says environmentalists do not want the border colonized, out of concern for the trees. Better the trees are cut by Belizean farmers than Guatemalan farmers, as is the case while I write this. The Guatemalans are “busy as beavers” felling trees.

Mr. Hyde says the Guatemalan oligarchs are praying for a “No” vote, so they can say they took the high road. Of course that is nonsense. The Guatemalan oligarchs do not care a flip for public opinion. They rule with an iron fist. They are not stupid, else they would try to reclaim Chiapas from Mexico. They are opportunistic, and believe they can seize weak little Belize.

Like the true Nazis they always have been, the Guatemalan oligarchy is after lebensraum. Belizean patriots should vote a resounding “No!” to the ICJ, to tell the world they love their country.

In the meantime, give those poor unfortunate youths on Belize City’s Southside, those youths with no future, who continue murdering one another right and left, give them “forty acres and a mule,” and say “Go west, young man, go west.”

Now I have had my say. I do not intend to go “tit for tat” with Mr. Colin Hyde, for my daddy instructed me at his knee, “Son, never argue with a fool, because bystanders won’t be able to tell which is which.”

I suggest Mr. Hyde debate with Mr. Clinton Canul Luna, a true Belizean patriot, same as yours truly, Dean Wayland.