Junglepixiebelize - Recollections of a Gringa Pioneer ​

​Nancy R Koerner - Copyright@2023 - All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
"Sayk A Di War"
​Although it should have been just another ordinary trip to Cayo for provisions, it was obvious that something was seriously amiss. We found thick traffic through Santa Elena, and a nearly-impassable Hawkesworth Bridge. Remember,  it was the ONLY bridge in San Ignacio back then. And these were the old days—the race-to-the-middle-of-the-single-lane-bridge days. It must have taken a half-hour just to jockey into position, just to get the window-of-opportunity to take our shot, getting to the middle first, winning dominance, and therefore the right-of-way.
What a scene at the roundabout in front of the San Ignacio Police Station. It was a madhouse. Busses, taxis, lorries, wheeled carts, and bicycles, everybody on the move. People were piling onto the backs of trucks with their children, satchels, bags, pigtail buckets, mattresses, pots and pans, and other household possessions, even some chickens, and one oinking pig, loudly protesting at the small boy tugging at the rope around its neck.
​“What’s going on?” I shouted to a couple of women, as they climbed aboard.
​“Gyal, we gwine,” one said. “Alla we. No mus. Di Guatemalans dem. Dey di com.”*
“What? But why?” I called back, as the truck rumbled forward.
“Sayk a di war."
​“War?” I cried. “What war?”
​It wasn’t the first near-miss with Guatemala. Yet it wasn’t until decades later, in retrospect, I’d found out, via the internet, how close that call had really been. 
​Upon our arrival in January 1976, an invasion from Guatemala had been imminent, and averted only because Mother Nature had served up a very timely earthquake. Up until then, the Guatemalan question had long-been kind of a joke, so most Belizeans had always taken it in stride. 
The long-standing assertion went all the way back to the 1820s, when Spain was in the process of losing its hold on Central America and New Spain, later renamed Mexico. It was common knowledge that, every few years, Guatemala would “rattle their sabers,” reminding Belize of its claim, “Belice es Nuestro.” ** However, it never really seemed likely. Now it was happening again. 
​Although the British Army was already a familiar presence around Cayo, now they were strategically positioned all along the borderline, north and south of  Benque Viejo del Carmen. Atop the ruins of Xunantunich, still the tallest edifice in the country, where the Maya had once practiced ritual human sacrifice, British lookouts were now posted, outfitted with high-powered binoculars, automatic weapons, and radio communications, keeping an eagle-eye on the Guatemalans.
​Likewise, a small disciplined detachment of Gurkhas, whose hard, almost fearsome military bearing stood out sharply beside the more conventional British troops, were serving in the deep jungles of the south. It was they who had found evidence of the planned incursion. 
The New York Times Magazine had written:
That threat is alive and well, and has been for more than 100 years. In the most recent incident, in the summer of 1979, a squad of Nepalese Gurkha soldiers on patrol through the thick Central American jungle were surprised to hear, from some distance away, the sounds of large machines and men. The Gurkhas were part of Britain's 1,700-man military detachment to Belize. Assigned primarily to watch the five meandering trails used by peddlers and merchants between Guatemala and the southern Belizean coastal town of Punta Gorda, the Gurkhas hacked their way toward the sounds. They discovered a road, a project moving slowly but inexorably eastward out of Guatemala,. Instead of  a several-foot-wide scratch through the jungle, appropriate for trade goods being portaged 30 miles on a man’s back, this road had been cleared and leveled by bulldozers, then covered with a dressing of stones. Instead of accommodating a single file of soldiers, trekking through a broken immensity of jungle, this road was one in which a whole army might appear, instantaneously.
 
''Stop,'' the Gurkhas had told the Guatemalan engineers and workmen. ''This is the border. You go no further.''
​********************
 Moreover, what almost happened in Belize that year seemed to be thematic to what was occurring all over the globe—uprisings, partisan revolutions, the exile, and overthrow of tyrants. The era was memorialized in a catchy but powerful song by the Mighty Sparrow, the King of Calypso. The song caught fire in Belize, and could be heard on Saturday nights in San Ignacio, blasting out of the Blue Angels Club on Hudson St. 
​“Wanted: Dead or Alive”*** remains a fascinating historical study. Links are provided for anyone who wants to learn more about the demise of these corrupt leaders. 
"Wanted: Dead or Alive (https://youtu.be/jZwkQn4DlZo)
 
The rule of the tyrants decline, the year, 1979,
From Uganda to Nicaragua, it’s bombs and it’s bullets all the time.
So they corrupt, so they vile, so it's coup after coup all the while. 
Human rights they violate, they thought they were so great, 
So, in disgrace, now they live in exile
Gairy is a wanted man, 
Idi Amin is a wanted man 
Shah of Iran tried so hard to survive. 
He, too, was wanted dead or alive ​
The Shah have a short time to live, 
Because the Ayatollah don't forgive 
When you see church ruling state, with pure vengeance and hate 
Situation must be explosive. 
General Somoza from Nicaragua, 
Thought it was easy with the Sandinistas 
With the help of Venezuela, Panama and Cuba,
They kick him straight to America
​********************
* "Girl, we’re going. All of us. We have to. The Guatemalans are coming. Because of the war."
​**  “Belize is ours.”
​*** Not to be confused with the 1986 Bon Jovi song 
​HISTORICAL REFERENCES 
​
Eric Gairy (Grenada) - https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/grenada-revolution/
Idi Amin (Uganda) - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/idi-amin-overthrown
Shah of Iran - https://www.mrallsophistory.com/revision/the-overthrow-of-the-shah-in-the-iranian-revolution-1979.html
Somoza & Sandinistas (Nicaragua) - https://www.thoughtco.com/nicaraguan-revolution-4777782