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Guats trying to turn back the time

FeaturesGuats trying to turn back the time

I told one of my nephews that I preferred Judy Boucher to Sade, and I saw his eyebrows go up. I think Sade is super spectacular, a talent for all time. But I measure artists by what they do for my melancholia. If you don’t understand the possessive pronoun there, well, you should – as all the without of a person is theirs, so is all that’s within.

The human mind, it’s a crazy labyrinth, and the craziest people to emerge from its corridors are the homosexuals. They have the full patent. They’re quite the study, and that’s why they oftentimes hog up the headlines. Bah, they’re not going to hog up my headlines. This story is not about them.

Loneliness, the melancholia, is natural to all human beings. Some forms of loneliness can be the depths, but there is a kind of loneliness that is benign. There is a loneliness that you can turn on and off like a light switch. This loneliness, which can be controlled, it’s kind of like a sport. You decide when to play.

You know when you’re going to play ball you need certain kinds of gear, and your ball. You also need your gear to feed the melancholia. You don’t need much. All you need is a little space,and a little bottle of something. Ah, you will also need a special kind of music. Somewhere in the Bible there is a story about the effect music has on some stubborn people. In MATTHEW 11:17, Jesus says: We played the flute for you,and you did not dance; we sang a dirge and you did not mourn.

I love and admire Sade. She can really set you in a beautiful mood. But when it comes to the melancholia (and I know most, if not all, of Punta Gorda PGee will agree with me on this), can’t touch Judy Boucher. That lady, she can really make the teardrops flow. Sade is special, super special. But when Judy Boucher sang, If I could turn back the time…bring out the hanki, bring out the tear vial, bring out the sob rag, because you’re going to cry, cry, cry.

These Guats, fantastically, they want to turn back the time, go back to 1802 and back there. I’ve told you the ICJ will laugh them into the streets when they present their case. Please, who were they in 1802? They were a colony of Spain on the Pacific Coast. The Maya, as far as we know, were the first nation here. Certainly, they were here before Spain was. The Guats didn’t exist until 1821. And that’s when they began fighting their neighbors.

We have heard, my gudnis from some Belizeans too, how weak the Guats were in 1850 and 1859, how the British bullied them into signing a treaty. I’ve told you before about my observation that some Belizean intellectuals like to hib words at the British, all because it makes them feel macho.

I’ll be praising Dr. Assad’s new book yet, for all that’s wonderful with it. But I really can’t ignore all the stories about how Father of the Nation, outwitted the British. Please, Father of the Nation won his title because of social justice initiatives and for enlisting the world of nations in our fight to put down this unfair Guatemalan claim.

George Price gets no points for PUP politics, and no points for “tricking” the British. He didn’t! The British said: You want independence and the best deal for you is to appease the bully Guats with a piece of land. Philip Goldson and the people of Belize said no to that deal. And Price, the great hero, took our case to the world of nations, and we WON!

The Economist magazine knows it is ridiculous to contemplate turning back time. Commenting about the 96% pro go to the ICJ decision by 25% of the Guatemalan electorate (why vote NO when you have nothing to lose; why did 4% do so?), The Economist remarked that Belizeans have reason to be sanguine because when we go to the ICJ, the most likely outcome is that nothing will happen. But if the Guats really want to go there, we will go back to the last two times the clock was fixed — to 1859 and 1931.

A number of people say Guatemala must have something up its sleeve, why it has decided on the ICJ. But they can’t have any arguments we don’t know about. Over the years we’ve read that Guatemala claimed our territory as a legacy from Spain. At times, Guatemala has put forward practical reasons (outside of rank greed) for its claim on our territory.

Guatemala has expressed (in the past) fear that we could be used to launch communism across the border. Interestingly, the Guats have produced a communist leader, and we haven’t. We don’t agree with their description of Arbenz as a communist, but that’s how they described that great man. After they drove Arbenz into exile, they formed military dictatorships (another type of extreme) that massacred thousands and thousands of their people.

I must comment on more horror stories coming out of Guatemala recently. We have been encouraged to hear of political reform, but there is no let up in their vicious ways. They are relentless in pursuing and killing native Guatemalans who are fighting for betterment.

They have talked about their need for access to the Caribbean, so they can better exploit the resources of a district in their country that they call, the Peten. It is wonderful that they’ve quit their talk about running pipelines through our country. We have the environmentalists, from all over, to thank for this. I expect that environmentalists over there also gave them the sense about the criminality of piping oil to a port that sits a few miles from the second greatest barrier reef in the world.

Their offer of “reciprocal ports” is just completely unbalanced, one-sided, so off the top of the head. But they are still trying to bully us into it. Ai, so many of these Guatemalan desires are incredible.

The No Vote, recently, has been turning more and more to negotiations our government has had with the government of Guatemala, especially since 1981. We will have to separate ourselves from these treaties fixed in stone and pay more attention to these proposals. At another time I’ll run my take on these areas.

We’ve heard of the fear of court. When I was a young man I got this invaluable lesson from Natividad Obando, my direct boss at Belfood in Alta Vista. He explained (he’s a philosopher)that the world operates on “levels of conscious.” He said that if two people are operating at different levels of conscious, they will have difficulty coming to consensus.

Keeping to the point, on matters of law the court is the highest level of conscious. The people at the court are supposed to be learned and wise. We, you and I, we take our cases to court. We, at our “level of conscious”, both think we are in the right. The court will decide.

On the matter of the ICJ, we know Guatemala’s case. It is about the Peten; it is about communism; and it is about greed for a neighbor’s land. All the people who have studied the Guatemalan claim say that the first two do not give them rights to our territory. So, they have this claim that in 1802 our territory belonged to Spain. That’s all, all that they have in their “legal” case.

There was a time when they might have tried to overrun us. But the British were here. Now, they are living in a world that frowns on bully nations. The best Guatemala can do for herself, and us, is get over it. Instead, the Guats want to turn back the time. We have to tell them…the ICJ won’t do it for you.

Must be another John Longsworth

If the John Longsworth who got recognized for “contributions to the Public Service” is the John Longsworth that Belmopan knows, I am sure all residents of the Garden City feel they sold the wonderful brother a little short. Properly, if it is our John Longsworth, the plaque should read: For excellent contributions to the Public Services of Belize, AND for making sure his neighbors never had a boring day.

Have you ever met John Longsworth and he didn’t have a new, interesting, often saucy story to tell? The answer to that is: NEVER.

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