Brother Clinton Uh Luna suggested in his piece on Tuesday that I sounded “vex” in my piece last Friday. No. I think I can explain with this intimate little story. I once looked a very close, very sharp brother in the eye and say: Brother, we have argued a lot and I have learned a lot from you. But I am dismayed to say that you have never learned anything from me. He said: don’t you know I argue to win!” I was astounded, and told him so. I only argue to improve my truth.
I have improved my truth (like many others, I believe) from reading Mr. Uh Luna’s comments on many subjects. On the matter of the Battle, he shares his position with many people. I thought that maybe he hadn’t heard enough of the other side, and that if I shared some, he and others might tone down their position. No, I don’t feel that Brother Clinton is arguing “to win.” He (and they) is very firm in his truth …that we Kriols are a bunch of blanks about the Battle. With that, I’ll move on to these random thoughts.
I think I used the term “confusion”, Brother Clinton, not “racist.” If you go to the Bible, you will find that the Israelite elders were dead set against intermarriage, race mixing. Irony, Hitler was dead set against intermarriage too, especially with them. I “guess” it is because it is very easy to hone a nation comprised of one race and one religion, without all that “confusing” clutter.
I had a column titled Sixes and Sevens a while back. There are a few sixes and sevens in my life – I am the sixth son and the seventh child of my parents. I was born on the sixth day of the seventh month (according to my mother); I was born on the seventh day of the seventh month (according to my church). But that’s not the source of my “sixes and sevens.” It’s the daam Kriol. Races “like that” running through my veins…Spaniard too. I have a few Mongols but I don’t have (don’t know of) China in my blood. But one of my family gaan and “married to am.” Former Queen of the Bay, Miss Wong K, is my cousin.
Some good Belizeans (I think the Amandala publisher is big among them) watch the new Belizean Mennonites and new Belizean Chinese and “worry” what they are waiting for, when they will start mix up, mix up. Mix up is…not all bad. The best the pure race in the USA could produce for president in 2000 is…George Bush (though Mama Bush, Barbara, looks ehm blackish to me). But the mix up, mix up produce the spectacular Obama. Of course, he might ehm be one of a kind.
When I was a child, I looked at a couple good friends and said: weh di goh aahn, Spanish? They said, testily: we da noh Spanish; we da Mestizo. I noh play tease (mischievous, yes), so I said: hey, weh di goh aahn, Mestizo? Later I wondered why Mestizos who weren’t Spanish had this big Jones about Arturo O’Neil.
Hmmm, it took UBAD to make some Kriol stop sweating British fever. I pause to say that the great hero, Philip Goldson, never sweated British fever. Those of us who see the “good side” of the Battle aren’t sweating British fever either. We are sweating Belize fever, love of a fragile nation made up of many races and colors, many religions, and all that confusion.
Hey, here’s a little story about “worlds.” I have a sister-in-law, a highly educated Plains Indian from Arizona. She tells me (with a smile) that in her world: Navajo and Hopi don’t get along. Ai, it seems that human beings everywhere will find somebody to quarrel with. There are worlds within worlds, Braa.
In Toledo, there are two Maya worlds. As Belize’s most nationalist economist and financier, Mr. Bill Lindo, discussed on the Kremandala Show last Tuesday night, there is the world of Midway. The Mayas there are going the capitalist way, want their individual plots marked with crow foot. I know many Mayan brothers in Toledo who have also cast aside slash and burn, and adopted mechanized agriculture.
The Mayas in Santa Cruz and Conejo (and many other villages) want it the old socialist way – fu all a we. They want to maintain the old slash and burn system. But that does not mean that they resist all change. Because of land pressure (“encroachment” on traditional turf, increased population on finite land, and proximity to villages (land, it is not what it is but where it is, is a principle that applies everywhere), fallow periods have greatly decreased. Reduced fallow periods means greater weed pressure in the rice fields, so most Mayan farmers use chemicals (herbicides) bought from Prosser Fertilizer and Agrotec Co. Ltd., and James Brodie & Co. Ltd. to secure their harvests.
My fellow Belizeans, it is fundamental that Mayas who experienced the Caste War with the Spaniards would have different issues from the Mayas who were “allowed” to continue their native way by them “baad” British. (The Shomanites will understand that spelling.) Pooh, why do all historians think they are novelists? How did poor Kriol we become the villains of the piece?
In respect to the extensiveness and beauty of the “world” of our ancestor, the Maya, I proud a my heritage. I have no problem with Mayan leaders making demands which seem excessive, because chaans is taking place in Belize. As Honorable Wilfred Elrington once pointed out, you have to be very aggressive if you want to get your rights respected in our country. I support the initiative in Santa Cruz and Conejo, to the extent that it does not cause difficulty to the delicate fabric of the wonderful Jewel.
P.S. The man from Shawshank would say that “world” is just a word. If someone can forward a better word for “world” in the context I used it, I will be grateful. As for “Baymen”…