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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Southside

EditorialSouthside


When this newspaper began referring to the ?Southside? about a decade or so ago, there were public voices which decried the designation. These voices are muted today, because the statistics do not lie. A disproportionate number of murders, almost all involving young men as victims and perpetrators, are committed on the Southside of Belize City, so it is very difficult to deny that there are problems here which, if they are not unique, are certainly alarming.


The Southside of Belize City is, with the exception of Dangriga, the Belizean municipality with the most African DNA. It is, with the exception of Dangriga, the poorest municipality. Historically, however, it is where the settlement of Belize began in the seventeenth century, and where the first church and school ? St. John?s Cathedral and St. John?s School, were constructed early in the nineteenth century. Belize City began on Foreshore, then spread to Regent Street, Albert Street and points west.


The young man who are now murdering themselves on the Southside and packing the Hattieville Prison for various crimes, are the descendants of men who were the star performers when the settlement?s main products were mahogany and chicle from the forests of British Honduras. These young men?s ancestors worked with the Belize Estate and Produce Company, and with various mahogany and chicle contractors like Robert Turton, Ben Stuart, Dick Dewgarde, Henry Gabourel, the Melhado brothers, and so on. Their ancestors worked on the waterfront when it used to be at the old Customs warehouses and bond sheds; they worked with the Customs Department and with the various boats which carried passengers and goods north and south along the coast of the colony, and up the Belize Old River . They practiced various trades ? they were mechanics, machinists, tailors, butchers, fishermen, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, cabinet makers, building contractors, and so on and so forth.


Until the second half of the twentieth century, such men were the foundation of a strong and stable community. The Southside had trade unions, lodges, credit unions, schools, churches, orchestras, marching bands, movie theatres, dance halls, sports organizations, membership clubs ? a solid community infrastructure, in other words.


Then the Southside began to lose jobs in the middle of the twentieth century, because of the decline of the mahogany and chicle industries. Working men began to migrate to the United States, and many lost contact with their families. The apprentice system began to deteriorate. The various community organizations began to lose their paying membership. Then television, crack cocaine and gangs entered the Southside in the 1980?s. By the 1990?s, the Southside was a municipality in crisis, and that crisis has become worse in the new millennium.


The most dramatic manifestation of that crisis has been the anti-social and violent behaviors of the young men on the Southside of Belize City. If this is not a national crisis, then it is, at least, a Southside crisis. The problem is one which is beyond the capacity of the local politicians to solve. It is a problem which is caused by dwindling resources, changing market conditions, a myopic educational system, cowardly local leadership, and a planet which is dominated by white supremacy.


In its original incarnation, the Under?17 basketball tournament was organized by the administration of the Princess Royal Youth Hostel, and most of the players were not in school. (The tournament began in the mid-1980?s and lasted until the late 1990?s, when the Government of Belize moved the Hostel to the Western Highway outside of Belize City.) So the original tournament filled a vacuum where recreation, organization and discipline were concerned, for the more than half of our Southside young men who annually do not go on to high school.


This year?s revived Under?17 tournament, we were told by the organizers, had roughly 70 percent participants by young men who were in school. We hope the organizers continue with the tournament next year, but we must warn them that the percentage participation by non-school teenagers will increase each year, and then things will not run as smoothly. (Late this year the high schools will begin their own tournament, so those in school teenagers who played in the recent tournament will be twice blessed.)


We must tell you that as long as Belize continues to have more than 50 percent of our young men fail to attend and complete high school, then everything that is done about our Southside youth problems will be only ?band-aid.? Where this situation is concerned there are two kinds of officials in Belize ? those who ignore it and those who are trying to light candles in the dark. Our Southside young men are destroying each other because there are socio-economic conditions in place which make their homicides/suicides inevitable.


If you feel that we sound like Marxist-Leninists, then we are interested in hearing what you armchair intellectuals think is causing all this bloodshed around us. And if you live on the Southside in a bourgeois cocoon, and believe all this does not matter to you, then when your children become teenagers, it is for sure that your girls will be interfered with and your boys will be ?punked? by the teenagers like themselves, teenagers whose ancestors were hard working, reliable citizens.


It?s dark out there. Mark Espat and Cordel Hyde should be congratulated for lighting this particular candle called Under-17. Straight.

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