by Colin Hyde

We’ve heard the story about owners of a precious plot in Placencia who want an incredible sum for a piece of land no one should have owned if they had understood their public obligation. I say, if you own a piece of land and they find Altun Ha on it, the temple and its surrounds cannot belong to you, definitely not to the extent that you could put up a fence. Capitalism has to know its place. If a property is tied to a people’s soul, well, like “a pound of flesh,” you can’t have it.

The point of Placencia, the entire “Pint”, has always been popular. This is the area where the main bridge connects the peninsula to seafarers. From I was a child, I was familiar with Pint because a cousin of my mom’s generation, Hortense DeShield, a soltera whom we called Aunt Tensi, often traveled there. Aunt Tensi always brought treats when she returned from Pint, seashore fruits like sea grapes and coco plum, and special confectioneries like guava jelly and the surprisingly yummy coco plum jam.

This story about private ownership of the “Pint” of Pint goes back to colonial days. Yes, the point of the peninsula would have been in private ownership from since King Hatchet was a hammer. When the Baymen ancestors died out, their offspring, mainly Kriols, and some Mestizos too, inherited their properties. Some Baymen went back to their original turf to live among near pure white stock (we know these people are watered down Blacks) but they couldn’t take the land back with them, only the cash and movable valuables. So, Pint ended up with a fully local owner. And that owner sold it to foreign interests.

No one could be accused of being unkind if they ask what Placencia folk were doing when this sale to a foreigner was taking place. If they knew, they “lamp up,” as many of the offspring of the Baymen in other parts of Belize have done. Brother Clinton Canul Luna once produced a page, I think from Burnaby’s time, in which those Baymen ancestors were described as the worst of the worst of the Almighty’s human creation. We are descendants of, ehm, bad people. Brother Henry Young, one of the Pint clan – hmm, my files say when yu talk Pint yu talk Eiley, Leslie, Garbutt, and Young. Whoa, if that’s not your apellido, you can bet that you can’t marry someone from there who isn’t related to one or all of the four. Ha, the story from Roaring Creek is that the patriarch of the Garbutts there, the late Percival, left Placencia so he could multiply, because he couldn’t find a girl da Pint who wasn’t his cousin, to marry.

Ah, Henry Young, you remember the story, he said a foreigner with some expertise was brought in to help clean up some of the mess made by the politicians here, and after a few days going through the books, books just like the ones that were recently incinerated by a dirt road, he remarked that piracy is alive and well and kicking in Belize, that it hadn’t gone anywhere. We have been scolded that we chase rum too much. Bully for some who have defied the DNA. But at the core we are, ehm, bad people.

Writing about the Pint story, a Placencia scion who is a former chairman of the place, stated on social media that the Alien Land Holding law was repealed in 2001, the sense there being that prior to that year a valuable property like Pint could not have moved to foreign control unobserved. In such a sensible system, the village would have had first rights to buy if the owner chose to sell. Yes, it would be interesting stuff if the owner offered the property to the village, and the village balked.

How the owner applied for and got the rights to land that had grown over the years, at that select spot, please, it would be good if we were told how that happened. Until someone fills us in on how the property da Pint moved to private hands, we won’t know the depth of the waters there.  

Ah, it makes sense for us to confine ourselves to the now, what we are going to do. I guess your property can have a monument on it, if you understand the interest of the people. I know you cannot, should not be allowed to own it with fence rights. If you can own Pint, and fence it, then you can own Altun Ha; you can own Halfmoon Cay; you can own Independence Hill. Whoa there, you could cause a bloody revolution.

Based on what has been reported, the foreign owner of Altun Ha on Placencia wants government to pay them $4.5 million for the little strip. Boy, how the local lawyers love this! They don’t give a darn that the people di geh dang. There would have been a sound speculation law, a practical public property reacquisition law a long time ago, if our lawyers weren’t so deep into their share of the spoils of the present system. The entire Belize scene is distorted because the lawyers who run our show are super greedy. We always get dang da court. In a fairly recent case that cost us around $10 million, DOE had put a stop on someone who was filling in a parcel in the sea, and government had moved to acquire the parcel; but at the end of a maze, we ended up on the hook for the whopping sum. You know the lawyers in that case took a mighty bite out of our treasury. Look, it is the truth, and it hurts our nation.

You know the easiest way to correct things that are wrong, sometimes the only way, is via a bloody revolution. But that is too costly. If people are “reasonable,” we don’t have to go there. Bah, when people aren’t reasonable, you-noa-wat mek. About that unreasonable thing, we all need to look in the mirror, open ourselves to scrutiny. Okay.

Someone said the owner person or persons don’t understand the depth of the situation here. But if he/she/they didn’t know then, they know it now, hence the absolute extortion price we have heard mentioned that they have put on it. How can you price the priceless? A judge could rule that the owner be paid a dollar, or a hundred million dollars. Can you buy Altun Ha?

I say, if it really is real hard ball we are meeting here, our government has to go hog. Sometimes yu have to fight people who want a pound of flesh, with bad mind, get into the mud with them. I am sure the government valuer is offering more than a fair price. Noh pay nobody no $4.5 million for the plot. Sort out the accreted land, and if the boardwalk is on people’s land, well, we have to relocate it to public land. Then take their names da road. Let the world know what is happening here. Have the building authority confine them to building bungalows. Erect some strategic giant signboards all along the border between the properties; block out dehn view so anyone who lives there never sees the sea or feels cooling winds from the east from their verandah. Put the “proper” tax on the property.

Use some of that $4.5 million to construct all kinds of things in the water to enhance the experience at the fest, and subsidize the price of the lobster so the less well-off can get in on the feast.

Disclaimer

Call me out of line, but I think the Reporter publisher should have put an, ehm, ehm, disclaimer on that piece in which Mainland China and its leaders were condemned for deliberately unleashing SarsCov2 on the world. Mr. Harry Lawrence, the author of the piece, said the virus was hatched in a lab in China for the purpose of wikidnis. I know he is not alone in that belief; I know there are legions here and out there who bite on that. But he, H Lawrence, had the daring to say it.

In the Reporter piece, “Friendship Without Limits! The World’s Most Brutal Experiment”, the author said that before the international disaster, there “were the tangible signs of Sino-Chinese aggression,” but they “masked [the] unseen terror which [they were] about to unleash.” They were “preparing for a monstrous viral pandemic, unlike anything seen since the plague called Black Death …”

Braa, get your Reporter, read the plot for yourself, the deliberate deadly horrors. I am not telling you anymore. I am out of breath. Read it fu yuself.