(BELIZE CITY, Wed. June 6, 2018 – NOTE: Below is the text of the Publisher’s response to a letter from Mr. Gilly Young, campaign manager for the ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) in Prime Minister Dr. Manuel Esquivel’s Caribbean Shores constituency, originally published in the issue of AMANDALA dated Thursday, September 9, 1993, twenty five years ago. We reproduced that letter in our Tuesday issue this week, June 5, 2018. It appears elsewhere in this issue.)

Publisher’s RESPONSE. In his covering note to this letter, Mr. Young asked that his letter be left unedited, and so the newspaper has honored that request.

AMANDALA publishes this letter because we know there are many people who share Mr. Young’s views, and most of them are readers of AMANDALA. This newspaper is a forum for debate, and even arguments; we perform a public service and get paid for it. Mr. Young has also assured us that this letter is exclusive to AMANDALA.

I am a man who has no problem with criticism, except when it becomes personal, and I dare say Mr. Young has come close to being personal instead of analytical in his letter.

Be that as it may, I can assure him that my father is not so petty or small-minded as to let Mr. Young’s criticism of his son “erode the friendship.”

Personally, I admire Mr. Young and think he is a good and faithful Belizean.

I also know him to be a UDP follower to the exclusion of most other ideas, and therefore I believe him to be a one-dimensional person.

On the issue of sports, I think Mr. Young is espousing nostalgic amateurism; I therefore think he has his head buried in the sand.

Anyone who cares to investigate will find out that most of the so-called “amateurs” in international sports were professionals all the while; that the highest development of sports, as expressed in international competition, takes place at the professional level, and that any independent nation worth its salt is interested in competitive and dignified participation with other nations.

Kremandala believes education is far more important than sports.  But for some disadvantaged youths, sports can help to pay for their education. Two Kremandala Raiders’ basketball players have only this month gone on scholarship to Navarro Junior College in Texas.

Our program at Kremandala is not blindly dedicated to sports for sports’ sake, Mr. Young.  We have lost $60,000.00 the last two y ears trying to provide those alternatives to drug use and drug dealing. We are investing in young people.

Mr. Young, your reaction to the “royal Creole” bit indicates that you consider yourself to be one of those creatures referred to; I was speaking completely in general. Belize is a small and strange place. Everybody is related to everybody else. Most “royal Creole” families have “roots” relatives, and vice versa.

But if you wish to pursue the subject, I would, if pressed, start calling the names of individuals and families in British Honduras who obviously thought that British colonialism constituted the best of all possible worlds, and firmly believed that what was good for Britain was good for Belize.

I do not share either of those views. I come from a family where I know members who think like “royal” Creole and members who think like “roots” Creole. For myself, I am an even different breed – I am a radical Creole. I have lived like this, and thus will I die.

This is Belize, you say, not the U.S.A. My dear chap, Belize is quite obviously a colony of the U.S.A., and if you care to debate this, we can do it on my radio show. You have a standing invitation to KREM Radio.

The rest of your letter bores me. I spend my life creating programs and alternatives for young Belizeans who are having a tough time, while you stay in King’s Park counting your money, congratulating yourself on your success, and thanking the Lord, like the Pharisee, that you are not like the rest of us – sinners.

Your letter disappoints me but does not surprise me. Why don’t you ask corporate Belize why they do not support programs designed to provide alternatives for our young people?

That was the main point of my column. Or do you think they are doing enough?

Because of your George Price “jones,” a whole lot of exploitation of our people is going on in our country, and you prefer not to see it, because you want to remain a member in good standing of corporate Belize.

People like you can’t figure me out, Mr. Young; and you become incensed by my style and my behavior instead of analyzing my ideas. UBAD is dissolved almost 20 years now, and the black community is in a much worse state now than it was then.

Who is to blame? According to you, it is George Price and Kremandala, or do I have you figured wrong?

Is it just our fate as black/brown people to be the floor mats of the City? Or are there big business/industrial giants in this place pursuing policies designed to wreck us even more? That’s what I want to talk about.