Season’s greetings to all the
Kremandala family, readers, television viewers and radio listeners.
After 188 years of war, from 1519 until 1707, on this piece of land we call Belize, the Spaniards could have finally removed a part of the Tipuans from the town of Tipu and took them to Lake Itza, Peten, Guatemala. Many of the Tipuans had run into the bushes up to the Yalbac hills where they started a new village and life. The culture and language of the Tipuans was similar to their neighbors, the Icaiches. There existed no boundaries in the Maya World, and my people had no concept of private property. For them this land was God’s land, and there was no way they could have gotten a signed document or title from the invisible parents of the universe. Except, of course, the Spaniards, who had a representative on earth with the name of His Holiness, Pope Borgia Alejandro VI, who, they claimed, gave this land to them.
The Filibusteros (pirates) who were using the Belize River mouth sometime in the 1600s as their hideout, had also carried out raids on the Maya villages on the coast and also on the Tipuans. Those who were caught were sold as slaves in Jamaica and the young females were used at their pleasure. They did not get title to this land.
The last resistance to the Spanish dominion was ended in 1707. In Belize, as in other parts of the “Maya World,” our Maya brothers were moved from one place to the other, many were sold by the Spaniards as slaves and women were used at their pleasure.
After over three hundred years of oppression, in 1847 my Maya brothers from Yucatan made a stand against the oppressors which turned out to be a social war, commonly known as “La Guerra de Castas” (Caste War), one which lasted for half a century.
Another oppressed social war which took place in another part of the “Maya World” was in Guatemala in (1960) 1962 until 1996. Once more my people were massacred. The Europeans were always in war to dominate the riches of this place they called the “New World.” They also fought to dominate one of the biggest trade industries of those days – the slave trade. Did you know that England had the exclusivity of the slave trade to the Americas from 1713 until 1750?
Thousands of my people ran back to their homeland, which had and still has a British administration. When my people came back they were already indoctrinated in the Mexican Roman Catholic teachings mixed with our ancient Maya culture and traumatized with a racial discrimination. The lighter-skinned Mestizos thought of themselves as superior to the darker skin Mestizos. There were also the authentic Maya, who by then were coming from a Spanish system which looked at them as inferior beings.
The same system was practiced among the British in the settlement of Honduras with their slaves. There were the mulattos of a lighter skin, freed colored who were protected by their masters and considered themselves superior to their brothers, the Black Africans. On one side we had the mulattos who were superior to their Black African brothers, and on the other side we had “white” Mestizos who were superior to their brothers, the darker Mestizos and Maya. One group was talking Spanish and the other English.
Each of them thought of themselves as superior to the other. These two groups had mentally clashed. But, the Mulattos-Creoles stuck to their master’s language and closed themselves in their own world looking towards the east. They had forgotten that it was the north and the south who had given freedom to our ancestors, the African slaves, when they ran away from their British masters because of brutal harsh treatment. We should never forget that our African and Maya brothers of the past knew nothing about racial discrimination. The Mestizos, Maya and Garinagu learned English and Kriol. The Mestizos and Maya can easily mix themselves among the Guatemalans and Mexicans. Not only that, there are thousands of born Belizeans who are also born Guatemalans and Mexicans.
23rd December 2008
Finca Solana
Corozal Town