The Mennonites are amongst the most successful tribes in the country, and they have been recognized locally and internationally as the most productive Belizeans. Hugh O’Brien, and Louis Wade, two outstanding Kriol brothers who have excellent business relationships with the Mennonite community in Belize, believe that it would be wise for Roots Belizeans, especially the Kriols, to copy the Mennonite blueprint.
Hugh, an outstanding agriculturist who once headed the Belize College of Agriculture (amalgamated into the University of Belize in 2000), and also held other high postings in the Ministry of Agriculture, does business directly with the Mennonites, and Wade, the owner of Plus TV, gets much of his advertising from them.
Recently, Hugh put out a post on his FB account and on Breaking Belize News in which he congratulated a young man who is doing excellent work with the Mennonite group, and expressed his views on how some Belizeans perceive them.
Hugh congratulated the young man, Danny Tejada, a highly trained laboratory technician who is managing a branch of Western Dairies in Grenada. Hugh said that Tejada rose through the ranks, and he excelled at Western Dairies, Belize, and was rewarded with the manager’s post at Western Dairies, Grenada. Hugh wrote: “…he works for the Mennonites in Spanish Lookout, and his dedication and knowledge is cherished by them. He and I are vivid examples of the relationship that is possible and that can be carved out with the very progressive Mennonites. Let’s not hate on them, let’s work together to develop a more mutually beneficial relationship.”
You don’t have to be a regular viewer of Plus TV to notice the support the Mennonite community gives to that television station. Wade, the host of that station’s morning show, comments regularly about the sterling work the community is doing in Belize, and he holds the same views Hugh does, that we should try and copy them.
So, we shouldn’t be complaining about Mennonites “stealing” so much of the thunder: instead, we should be emulating them. I don’t think that many Kriols “hate” the Mennonites. If you hate somebody you don’t patronize their businesses. We do. It is my opinion that Hugh used the term, “hating”, loosely.
On the matter of copying some of their game, I don’t disagree with Hugh and Louis. I believe, however, that there are some facts that must be told for the purpose of explaining to them why Roots Belizeans are begging and dying in the streets. These facts are also important for Kriols to know, so we don’t feel more hopeless than we are now, so we don’t feel that it is impossible for us to turn things around.
Before I go on, the Kriols are not the only tribe in Belize that is not getting a portion of the pie proportionate with their percentage of the population. There are many Belizeans who describe themselves as Maya, Garinagu, Mestizos, East Indians, and New Belizeans from the neighboring republics that are not economically well off. They have problems too, but the problems of the Kriol are more deep-rooted.
The Mennonites do not respect unsuccessful people. No successful tribe in Belize respects the Kriol tribe. This is natural. They are doing well, taking care of their own, and we are not doing well, not taking care of our own. It is natural that we are viewed this way. Again, I don’t disagree with Hugh and Louis. But some facts must be told. We are a people with capacity. We jos get let down by our leaders.
I am aware of some unfavorable comments about the Mennonite group. They are all directed at the modern Mennonites. I have never heard a negative comment about traditional Mennonites.
The Mennonites came here with a past. There is a story that the modern Mennonites have no concern for the environment. The story was that they don’t build soil, that they will rake and scrape everything they can get out of it, and when it is completely exhausted they move on. If that is true then that might have to do with their being somewhat nomadic when they came to our part of the world. They didn’t see themselves as the owners of the land, so they didn’t care sufficiently.
The modern Mennonites seemed too eager to embrace GMO. Hugh and Louis seemed all too eager for Belize to go GMO too. GMO is cutting edge science that is still in the experimental stage. A lot of Belizeans thought the reward for Belize wasn’t near worth the risk of what GMO could do to our environment and what GMO could do to the wholesomeness of our food. This negative view on GMO is not limited to Belize.
The Mennonites came to Belize with a dibbling stick, but they were not without knowledge of organized farming. They came as a tribe. There was no discrimination in their tribe because they were one race, one culture, one color, one religion. Their color did not place them at the bottom of the ladder in Belize. Their religion did not disperse them.
Their education system was designed to serve their tribe. Their political system was designed with one purpose only — to forward their tribe. Their economic system remains all about their tribe. Mennonites are considered to be capitalist, but they cooperate with each other.
We are marking the 100th year after the 1919 Ex-servicemen uprising in Belize. The story there is that our soldiers came back from World War I and found that there was nothing for them. They had put their lives on the line to save the world, and there was nothing here for them. The story was the same in 1934, and it was the same in 1950.
One truth for Belize in 1919, 1934, and 1950, was that the forests were decimated, and that is all that the majority of Kriols knew how to do – forestry work. If we look at Belize’s history we see that Belize started turning toward agriculture, but Kriols, the children of the slaves, knew very little about farming. All throughout slavery our ancestors were denied agriculture. We did not have a culture of farming.
But, if Roots Belizeans were to survive, and prosper, they had to farm. Some Kriol leaders knew this.
Belize got self-government in 1964 from Great Britain, and beginning from the sixties, Belizeans started going abroad to study the agricultural sciences. The heroes of the sixties and early seventies (1900s) form a Who’s Who at Central Farm – Norris E. Wade, John E. Link, Godsman Ellis, Elias Juan, Angel Tzec, Balmore Silva, Joe Smith, Harry Vernon, Rodney Neal, Carlos Santos, Eulalio Garcia, Alfonso Tzul, Luis Betancourt, and others.
These men were charged with teaching our technicians in the Extension Services the most modern agricultural techniques, and they were to pass the knowledge on to the farmers. Our government owned bulldozers, and rubber wheel tractors, and every kind of farm implement, to help our farmers develop their farms so we could advance past dibble-stick agriculture. There was a development bank, the Development Finance Corporation, to finance farm operations.
We know that it didn’t work out for the Kriols, and where we failed, the Mennonite group took off. I noted that they were better farmers than we were, and they had a far better structure in everything than we had.
There are a number of other reasons why Kriols didn’t get to share in the Green Revolution. Not many Kriols had land, or good land, or accessible land. The capital to develop farm infrastructure wasn’t sufficiently subsidized, definitely not for startup farms. The government decided to privatize machinery services too soon. The government stopped pushing the Extension Services too soon.
Our political leaders didn’t see that our tribe being so diffused and dispersed, we needed to be treated as a special interest group. There were a few leaders who saw the importance, the absolute need for us to participate in the Green Revolution. I met the then Deputy Prime Minister, Lindy Rogers, one time only. He told me: “When a Kriol man gets his hands on some money, he builds a house; when a Spanish man (Mestizo) gets his hands on some money, he builds a business.” Rogers saw that our tribe wasn’t ready for this new Belize.
There were other leaders; let’s just say they didn’t do enough. The fact is that the Kriol tribe made no gains in this important period; we were behind then and now we are way behind, so far back that many of us are begging in the streets, and killing each other.
In 1919 the Kriols had nothing, and in 2019 we still have nothing. We can’t complain too much about 1919, because our leaders then were our colonial masters. We have a right to complain in 2019 because our leaders now are born-and-bred Belizeans.
Tomorrow we must have something. If we are to get something, there are things we must learn from the Mennonites, and from the other successful tribes here too. The Kriols especially are in need of upliftment, but some of our other tribes also need special attention. There are things that must be done to turn things around for us.
We did not only miss the Green Revolution. We lost the little we had. I’ll close today by saying that for us to have more does not mean that those tribes who have more must have less. A zero-sum game is only alive where there is no creativity.
There are some things that should not have been taken away from the masses. The vice of gambling should belong to the state. As Ms. Sandra Coye keeps pointing out, we should be making our own clothes. As Mr. Bill Lindo keeps pointing out, we should be manufacturing goods.
Yes, we must learn from the Mennonites and other successful tribes. One of the things we must copy is the way they cooperate with each other. Maybe next week I can give my dos centavos on that, and some other things too.