A PRETTY GOOD COUNTRY, BUT ENDANGERED

"Lawyers are also allowed too much leeway to play with the system and if
the price is right, find loopholes to get some very guilty criminals back
on the street."

- G. Michael Reid, pg. 9 in THE BELIZE TIMES, Sunday, August 17, 2008

Belize is a pretty good country. Two indications of this are, firstly, the
fact that, unlike other Third World countries, we don't live with the
threat of the military coming out of their barracks to take over
government, and secondly, our various ethnicities have healthy working
relationships.

As an indication of the second point, we would consider the heinous, brutal
rape and murder of Kings Park housewife, Sandra Ruiz, and the crazy assault
on one of her children. This took place on Sunday night, August 10. There
was never any sense that there was the potential for ethnic hostility here,
although the victims were Latinos, and there was the likelihood that the
criminal was black.

All indications are that the neighbourhood gave up the rapist/murderer. The
police said openly that community cooperation was responsible for the quick
arrest. The apprehension was made within 24 hours of the crime, and the
preliminary evidence looks strong.

While being a pretty good country, Belize is also, however, an endangered
one. There is, of course, the external danger posed by the Guatemalans, but
there are also the growing domestic problems created by the drug
traffickers and dealers in Belize. The drug dons in Belize have achieved
respectability in that they function freely within the legitimate business
community. One of the reasons for this is because they are able to hire
defence attorneys from the highest leadership levels of the two major
political parties.

The UDP and the PUP are the most powerful organizations in Belizean
society, and when they give their blessings, as they have done, to the
ranking drug dons, then you can understand why the rest of our society has
followed suit.

The most pernicious aspect of the narco culture is the excessive and
irresponsible liquidity it generates. Drug dons in Belize have so much
money that not only can they penetrate the traditional political parties,
they can and do make a mockery of our fundamental morality. Drug moneys
have contributed greatly to making our country a materialistic, immoral and
corrupt one.

During slavery and colonialism days, we created the Anancy figure to
symbolize our attempts to defeat the slavemaster, and then the colonial
rulers, whom we portrayed as Brer Tiger. The Anancy model was mischievous,
duplicitous and absolutely pragmatic. The Anancy model is now, the
newspaper submits, an irrelevant and self-defeating one. We are now an
independent nation; we control our own destiny. Within the confines of our
national borders, we are ourselves Brer Tiger, not Anancy. Belizeans have
authority. What is now needed in Belize is the imposition of discipline.

Because our people are still imagining ourselves as mischievous, tricky
Anancy, however, we have used our creativity to mock and shred attempts to
bring discipline into play. It has reached the point where our Anancy
attitude has helped to make Belize a country with a population which has a
lawless mentality.

The price our society has paid for the wealth of our narco traffickers has
not been recognized or tabulated. Essentially, we have condoned drug
trafficking, when we have not actually embraced it. Yes, Belize has some
incredible buildings about, the latest and most luxurious of motor
vehicles, the most chic and international lifestyles. We marvel at the
wealth of our drug dons, but, Belizeans, it is we who have paid some of the
price for that. The climate of crime in Belize, the undermining of our
judiciary, the daily tensions sparked by the drug addicts, the prostituting
of our women, all these crushing developments in our daily lives are the
price Belizeans pay for accepting, even exalting drug dons.

You know we have made our position at this newspaper very clear over the
years. Belizean drug dons are a creation of the lust for cocaine and drugs
in the United States market. As long as the Americans pay big money for
narcotics, there will be drug dons in countries like Belize.

You and I can't fight drug dons. They are too big and powerful for us. What
we can do, nevertheless, is remove our sycophantic approval for their
activities. You can't build a country on drug trafficking. We need to
discipline Belize in the worst kind of way, but it is impossible to
accomplish this as long as we treat drug traffickers like VIP's. Drug
traffickers can't save Belize, or build a better life for our people. At
the end of the day, because their activity is illegal, they bring violence
and death to a society. The classic example is that of Colombia's Pablo
Escobar, who was far bigger than anyone here can ever hope to be.

The future of Belize is endangered by our drug dons. As long as they are
bigger than honest men, then we cannot hope to climb out of the morass in
which we find ourselves. This is a curse nobody wants to talk about. In his
newspaper column, the former police press officer hinted at it, but he was
not man enough to point the finger where he should have pointed it. Our
problem in Belize is that none of us is really man enough to do so. That is
because the most powerful of our supposedly honourable men have been
suborned. This is how it seems, and this is how it probably is. Speak now,
or forever hold thy peace.