Monday, May 13, 2024
“All the buoys which have marked the channel of our lives seem to have been swept away.” This was a quote from Lord Esher, a British historian and politician, mourning the death of Edward VIII in 1910, 4 years before the beginning of WWI.
It reminds me of the Sarstoon, where a Guatemalan navy is oblivious to any buoys that may have existed at one point or the other. They have been swept away as Guatemala claims the Sarstoon as its territory, and views us Belizeans as intruders whenever we try to rightfully traverse those waterways! We’re always making sure that we stay within the boundaries of OUR border. According to the Guats, there are no boundaries, the waterways belong to them, and they have gone as far as to intimidate and insult our highest-ranking military officer. With no pushback whatsoever from our side, like Putin is trying to do in Europe, they might decide to take a couple of our cayes, claiming them as Guatemalan territory! And why not? We will just throw up our hands in the air and say we shouldn’t antagonize them.
Maybe the Prime Minister and his Cabinet should take a trip, a very publicized tour of our southernmost outpost, making sure that the Guats know of this trip, just to see if they would have the balls to intercept them. Maybe monthly visits should be made by our government officials to the base, to show these thugs that Belice es Nuestro, and not theirs. But the PM says not to antagonize them, and he’s an honorable man, to quote the bard! The foreign minister is an honorable man, the general is an honorable man. They all say we should not aggravate our unfriendly and greedy neighbor. But where’s the honor in that?
Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the buoys are fast disappearing as we sleepwalk into autocracy, led by the crimson king and his minions, a very corrupt and focused following, a minority determined to end democracy at any cost! Americans either shrug them off as buffoons, or are too busy to pay attention to the danger these right-wing crazies pose. That is exactly how the Nazis took over Germany, and the world paid a terrible price because of the indifference of a people!
Indifference is a shortcoming that we cannot afford. It is too expensive and could cost us our sovereignty, our freedom, our democracy, our way of life, whether it be in Belize or in America. I have acquaintances who ask me why I keep beating a dead horse. I tell them that the horse is far from dead, just playing possum while we let our guard down!
The buoys are being swept away, right in front of our eyes. It is time to start paying attention to that clarion call which is fast fading into the darkness, that same darkness that will envelop us all when all those buoys are no longer marking the channel of our lives, of our countries!
“Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” — Dylan Thomas
Glen