This year on April 10th, Belizeans will be asked to vote on whether or not we go to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to resolve the Belize-Guatemala Boundary Dispute. This has become a major political and highly volatile issue in our country. Attempts at discussion quickly spiral into personal attacks. It is difficult to separate out what we should know, who we should trust and what is at stake in order to make an informed decision. Who and what do we believe? Few of us are lawyers. We can read, but can we comprehend and predict how it will be judged? Is there hidden agendas, money passing hands, or incompetence in our legal team?
If you have already read, educated and discussed and are still in limbo about who to trust or what to believe, try this. Believe what you experience, what you live. This principle guides us daily — leave at 7am for work, because by 7:30 there is a log jam on the Northern Highway; this store has expired food, careful when you buy there; check references when hiring cause you once hired a known thief; I trust what this person says but that one is liad; and on and on. Just as experience guides your every day behavior, so it should help guide you in this monumental national decision coming in April.
I am a nature photographer first, and a photojournalist second. I have attended some ICJ meetings, listened to radio and TV segments about the ICJ, read numerous reports, talked to knowledgeable and not so knowledgeable friends. But most importantly, I have lived in Belize for nearly 40 years as a naturalized Belizean. And through all the talks, readings, meetings and discussions, there has been one question that I have not been able to come to terms with, nor has anyone else been able to answer when it comes to a yes or no vote on going to the ICJ.
First a little background to set up the question. George Price was a great leader with the exceptional quality of convincing people to follow him. He, as the Father of our Country, along with others, persuaded us that we could make our own decisions, build our own country, let our culture flourish without being shackled to the British.
Most Belizean’s bristle at the mention of the colonial age. While some yearn for the order, safety, and class structure of the past — (usually because they were in the upper class) — most of us feel a visceral twist when the colonial mentality is invoked. Before independence, our government was a foreign land 5000 miles away. This geography presented a problem for England, as it did for all her colonies. With Independence, our own culture could develop free from British influence.
The term “unshackled” at our independence suggests we felt some kind of oppression by England — it was more a superiority facade that burned us. Most Belizeans of that generation felt it. It has a name — privilege. If you were of a fair skinned North American or European ancestory, and you bought into the class structure, life in most cases was easier. Not easy, but the atmosphere was one of being treated different.
Nearly 40 years on from our Independence, this “unshackling” from England has allowed Belizeans the chance to build the country we wanted, one we can all be proud of and happy in. During the 80’s and early 90’s, we were like young children feeling the freedom to create our own society, free of that colonial privilege, where we come together as one people, one country — or so we were led to believe.
About 2 decades ago, when the next generation began to take over from the George Price Era, we began to lose our way. We became like rebellious, selfish teenagers. We began to create our own class structure, one with privilege and entitlement and corruption. While I may be simplifying to some extent, most Belizeans not only know it, but have experienced it. This is not the Belize George Price envisioned, preached, and convinced us to move to Independence.
We have all heard the stories of corruption that run the gamut from fantastic government projects where half the budget goes into a big pot called politician pockets; to hidden deals with corporations that costs us millions in legal fees; to the private land deals; to the closet payments to custom clerks to save paying high duties; to being shook down by a traffic cop. And more worrying is that the corruption has become normalized. It is the dripping lube of the system, crumbs the big boys throw us along with Christmas turkeys and blue notes at election. So basically we have traded the efficiency and governing and class structure of the British, for the inefficiency and corruption of our current society.
This is not criticism, it is an observation of the society we live in today…we all know it. Some may say if you don’t like it, leave. But this is my country now, I love Belize, have raised my family here, and don’t intend to move unless Stann Creek becomes Guatemala territory. And besides, corruption is world wide, we are not special on that account.
Think about this. The British harvested resources here, and created an infrastructure to give a show of protection and management while they raped our Nature. Sprinkled around the country is evidence of this. For example, Augustine Forest Station before the British left was a small, functioning village. Military barracks in the Mountain Pine Ridge housed foreign soldiers. The British still fire live-rounds in one of the natural gems of our country — for practice — despoiling our land so as not to despoil theirs. In a way they are still sipping the last bits at the bottom of the resource glass here, and paying who knows what or who for it.
Today, Augustine is a ghost town; the MPR barracks in ruins; the western border unguarded; the Sarstoon is surrendered to Guatemalan control. We all see this. We allow the seemingly indiscriminate clearing of land; we allow ancient Maya sites that belong to all of us to be razed; we allow bird and wildlife sanctuaries destroyed for hotel or cruise development; foreigners and Belizeans alike — that have lots of money and buy into the corruption — are allowed to destroy the very natural resources that attract tourists here and provide a living for many of our people. Who in their right minds allows the destruction of these special places? What trumps protecting our borders and managing our natural resources to the benefit of all Belizeans into the future?
When George Price and his contemporaries led us to Independence, they convinced us that we could make our own decisions, we could build our own country, we should rule ourselves as a people. That vision morphed into a sort of normalized kleptocracy and environmental genocide, a basic lack of respect for each other and our natural resources — an everyone for themselves mentality.
How to vote on the ICJ referendum? Again, rely on what you experience daily — take stock of our society today. NGO’s manage and protect our major resources with little to no assistance from government; we have a normalized kleptocracy; we have a marginalized part of our population that in turn steal and murder to survive; we allow human trafficking; we have unprotected borders west and south; our foreign ministry appears lost; our education system outputs graduates unable to hold a job; the health system broken; we are destroying world class natural areas that belong to all of us; and on and on and on.
This current system has been, if not architected, at a minimum sustained by our current leadership of the last 2 or 3 decades — both parties can take credit — the same ones pushing for a yes vote. Here is the crux of the question. If we can not trust them to build our country, if we can not trust them to run our country, if we can not trust them to protect us, if we can not trust them to make decisions that benefit us as a people, why should we trust them to do any better at something as complex and as defining in our history as going to the ICJ?
Reflect on the country we live in. How old are the young people that murder and die? The age where they grew up in a society built or maintained by these very same politicians. The Prime Ministers, the foreign ministers, the judges, the lawyers … if they didn’t create our current society, they haven’t even begun to build Or fix it.
The suggestion that we hit the pause button, put our house in order before trusting our future to those that created our present, is a powerful one worthy of serious consideration. We have to continue to mature as a country, as a people. The challenge for the current and next generation of Belizeans is to develop a “shared” vision that is both desirable to a vast majority of our people and ecologically sustainable.
We need to feel as we did when George Price spoke of our Independence. We need new leaders; we need to secure our borders; support and fund our military; protect and manage our natural resources; find a way to minimize and criminalize corruption; teach our children respect and raise them free of domestic violence and abuse; break the cycle of crime; care for our disadvantaged; extend human rights to all, and on and on and on… Basically, we must begin to build the country George Price sold us on, with real leaders.
Look at what your life is like. Ask yourself if you really want the people that created or maintain the current state of our country to represent you on the world stage — to gamble your very patrimony? Can you trust them? The Italians having a proverb, ‘He that deceives me once, its his fault; but if twice, its my fault.’ We know it better as “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”.
Those that say read! educate yourself! discuss! may not understand that many of us have read and still don’t understand; have tried to educate ourselves but are lost in the unfamiliar verbiage and international law; have discussed without conclusion. So at some point we must turn to trust. Trust what our leaders tell us? Trust our leaders? Trust? And where has that gotten us to date? That is the question that I would like answered. Why should we trust what the current architects and builders of our broken Belizean society tell us?
We all must go beyond the usual tropes of read, educate, discuss we are bombarded with daily. One minute a video supporting a no vote becomes a meme, the next it is branded as “fake news!”. How is the working Belizean who is living paycheck to paycheck; trying to raise a family; trying to create authentic and creative art and culture; trying to secure their basic human rights — with, if lucky, a high school education and little to no travel experience — to decide what is fake, and what is not; who to trust and who to dismiss; to be expected to ingest everything and come to an “informed decision”? We can’t.
The alternative? Look around. Every instance of corruption and suffering in our country should elicit a question stronger than “How did this happen?”. The real question should be “Why have I allowed this to happen?”. Will we allow it to happen to us again?
