Dominique Noralez Endorsed!

Here’s a running list of people and organizations that have endorsed my candidacy for the Commonwealth Youth Council!

She is someone who is a great team player, a passionate and hard-working advocate of youth empowerment and someone who has always gone above and beyond in any task she is assigned.She will undoubtedly prove to be an asset to the CYC and will be instrumental in advancing the work, goals and mission of CYC in the Caribbean and the Americas region.
National Student Union of Belize

What makes Ms. Noralez so acknowledgeable is that she never fell short of her duties. Whether it was serving on the Board of Directors at BFLA as the youth representative, interning at the Department of Youth Services in the Governance unit policy and programs, serving on the National Youth Council of Belize or being appointed Commonwealth Youth Parliamentarian she was always active and serving in good faith in her various capacities.
Jared Cain, Board Member of the Belize Family Life Association

The Caribbean Women in Leadership (CIWiL) Belize National Chapter congratulates and endorses its fellow member, Ms. Dominique Noralez, on her bid to become the Regional Representative of the Caribbean and the Americas on the Commonwealth Youth Council for a two-year term from 2021-2023.
Caribbean Women in Leadership Nation Chapter Belize

A part from being an amazing leader, she is a true advocate and believer in progress and development and she has the skills and experience needed to progress our region. The Caribbean and the Americas needs a representative who can advocate on behalf of it, who has worked at every level of Youth Development in the region and understands what it takes for progress to made, it needs Dominique Noralez!
Tarun Butcher, Former National Youth Delegate and CARICOM Youth Ambassador

The Profile of the Ideal CARICOM Youth speaks to individuals who are knowledgeable of county, Caribbean history and world affairs; patriotic, actively involved in the development of country and Region; confident, endowed with strong Caribbean identity capable of living anywhere in the world; well rounded, well informed and strong believer in culture and creative. If I didn’t know better, I would say this profile was taken from the pages of Dominque Noralez. Dominque embodies our region entirely as an afro-indigenous woman from a Central American and Caribbean country.
Kylah Ciego, One Young World Ambassador and Former CARICOM Youth Ambassador

Dominique Noralez is the true definition of a leader – and here’s why. Not having ever met me before, she got a hold of my CV and thought I had the skills to do the job of representing Belize as the Vice Chair of Members and Partnerships of the Caribbean Regional Youth Council. She mentored me, introduced me to her networks, and most importantly, believed in me when I felt extremely ill-prepared and entirely green to the youth development space. She selflessly changed the trajectory of my life by opening up a new world of learning and relationships
Kristin Marin, Former Vice Chair of Memberships and Partnerships of Caribbean Regional Youth Council

As a former regional representative for the Caribbean and Americas Region, I want to register my belief Dominique Noralez’s ability to lead the region. She was quite instrumental in providing support to my committee so she has the relevant CYC based experiences to provide sound leadership.
Sujae Boswell, Former Caribbean and Americas Regional Representative Commonwealth Youth Council

She has as well, over the past three years, established a vibrant social and traditional media presence. Dominique joined the Caribbean Youth Environment in 2017 and has represented the
organisation with distinction at a number of regional and international events. These include, the Caribbean Youth Climate Change Conference in Jamaica (2017), World Youth Conference
(2017) and the United Nations Youth Climate Summit in New York (2019); to mention a few. Beyond this she was CYEN’s representative in the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) first Youth Policy and Operational Strategy and is a Commissioner on its Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Commission.
Reginald I. Burke
Executive Coordinator
on behalf of the Regional Steering Committee

Dominique’s introduction to DYS commenced in 2015 as candidate for the Belize National Youth Council. Her victory earned her Vice-President of the Belize district youth council and first Vice-President of the national body. She later interned at our department with a focus on policy and planning. During her time, Dominique supported and or lead through her capacity as a policy and planning officer for the following projects; the annual National Youth Awards, The Caribbean Young Leaders Youth Summit 2016, The World Youth Conference 2017 and Youth Mainstreaming in 2018. She was also a key player in the revision of the National Youth Policy 2018-2019.
Department of Youth Services, Ministry of Youth, Government of Belize

Ms. Noralez is one of our top supporters, always rocking ID SEVEN (as evidenced in this blog image) and gifting our merch to friends and family. Supporters like her are a dream; these are the people who make our work with youth a success. Ms. Noralez is no stranger among the Belize and regional communities. She is a valued member of many organizations, always working to advance youth. What we love most about Ms. Noralez is her passion for others. Ms. Noralez is well educated and experienced in many arenas. But instead of always tooting her own horn, she is always always promoting others rather than her own amazing skills set.
ID Seven owned by Deidra Gentry, Queen’s Young Leader

I know the Commonwealth…

The Commonwealth space is home. I have participated in it, I know it and thus I am equipped and ready to build forward with, for and alongside you!

My first memory of the Commonwealth Youth Council(CYC) was in 2016 as a regional representative to the European Youth Forum’s Meeting of Regional Youth Bodies. There I witnessed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Caribbean Regional Youth Council (CRYC) and the CYC. In 2018, I was appointed Commonwealth Youth Parliamentarian for my country Belize. The first Belizean to have represented at this level meeting young people like me and you from across the Commonwealth of Nations and learning intimately the concerns and aspirations that sounded a lot like mine. In that same year I was also appointed national delegate for the Commonwealth Youth Forum London alongside current CARICOM Youth Ambassador for Belize, Kris Miller. I also had the pleasure of having CRYC Executive Member, Kristin Marin and Erasmus Scholar Ruth Gutierrez as Belizean Youth Leaders serving alongside us.

2019 was a rather busy year having collaborated with the Commonwealth Student Association to host a training for student leaders at the University of the West Indies Open Campus, planned and participated in the launched of the Commonwealth’s Youth Mainstreaming in Development Planning Caribbean Pilot in my Country Belize and representing the country once more at the CYC + CRYC joint Meeting of Members Conference held in Anguilla. This to discuss how we could build and maintain stronger and more resilient National Youth Councils in the region.

So you see that the Commonwealth is not a strange space nor place for me. I have the experience and direction with #ProgresswithNoralez to continue to make our Commonwealth stronger! Follow the journey https://linktr.ee/domnorbze_x.

The people I have met…

We have built the regions youth policy together!

I have been privileged to have met our foremost soldiers in the forward struggle toward meaningful youth participation. In my time as executive member of the National Youth Council of Belize, I travelled to Belgium with then Chairperson of the Caribbean Regional Youth Council, Tijani Christian, to the meeting of regional youth organizations. There we trained and shared with our counterparts from across the globe about the challenges and triumphs of youth development work in our region.

I have trained and bonded with you at the Caribbean Regional Youth Council’s hallmark event the Caribbean Youth Leaders’ Summit where my participation has always elevated. First in 2016 as summit administrator of the 4th CYLS held in Belize, then in 2017 as national delegate at the 5th CYLS held in Jamaica and in 2020 as facilitator of Youth Mainstreaming in Development Planning at the 6th CYLS held in twin island nation, Trinidad and Tobago. I had an opportunity to work with you as we reflected on global youth development at the World Youth Conference in Belize!

As a Caribbean Youth Environment Network member since 2018, I also contributed as a member of the core team of those to draft the Caribbean Development Bank’s Youth Policy and Operational Strategy (YPOS). A strategy that seeks to make youth development an intrinsic part of the bank’s operations. It was a pleasure being on the team with banks officials, senior youth development practitioners and executive members of both the CRYC and CYC.

At UN Agencies in Belize and regionally, I have met you at the United Nations Development program via the Global Environment Facility Small Grants program where I served as Youth Focal Point on the National Steering Committee having represented Belize at the Climate Change Conference in Jamaica 2017 and the UN Climate Change Summit in New York 2019. With the United Nations Population Fund I have worked as a facilitator for its sessions with youth and fellow at its YouthNow Camp held in Lima,Peru. I have worked with the United Nations Children’s Fund via my chairpersonship of the National Children’s Parliament Committee and most recently with United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean having moderated the Caribbean Session of the ECOSOC Youth Forum.

We have worked together and it has worked! Let’s continue the journey with #ProgresswithNoralez. Join here: https://linktr.ee/domnorbze_x.

Community Work Matters…

…this is where the strength of our Commonwealth is found!

I am a learner and leader at heart. One’s whose journey formally began with being chosen to become a Youth Ambassador under the collaboration between the Partners of the Americas and US State Department’s Exchange program and later blossomed into community work with Group Hug focusing on community service, the Youth Advocacy Movement with a focus on sexual and reproductive health, Save to Seas with a focus on marine conservation. True leadership is cultivated through grassroots community involvement and have made sure that I water those roots and keep the values learned at the centre of everything I am involved in and will continue to be involved in.

For a leader that understands intimately the importance of bottom up power and community work vote #Progresswith Noralez. Join the journey at https://linktr.ee/domnorbze_x!

The places I have been…

…the places the CYC will go!

Representing the region, representing you!

My work blossomed into being a board member of the country’s
leading sexual and reproductive health rights organization, the Belize Family
Life Association, the leading of the National Youth Council of Belize, Alternate
CARICOM Youth Ambassador, Youth Focal point for the Global Environment
Facility’s Small Grants Program, Youth Delegate at the Commonwealth Youth
Forum, and Commonwealth Youth Parliamentarian.

I have also worked with UN Agencies in Belize such as the United Nations Development program via the Global Environment Facility Small Grants program where I served as Youth Focal Point on the National Steering Committee and UNCAC Implementation Board, The United Nations Population Fund as a facilitator for its sessions with youth and fellow at its YouthNow Camp held in Lima,Peru. I have worked with the United Nations Children’s Fund via my chairpersonship of the National Children’s Parliament and most recently with United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean having moderated the Caribbean Session of the ECOSOC Youth Forum.

This commitment to youth policy has taken me over a dozen countries representing my country and this region as a consummate citizen of the Commonwealth. Join me on the #ProgresswithNoralez journey and together we will chart the places the CYC will go!

Words to a Blossom

Head to the sun,

          Flower

It's spring,
          
          time

to 
          shine

The Student Political Imperative

Delivered on the occasion of the 3rd Anniversary of the National Students’ Union of Belize.

Good evening!

It is indeed my absolute pleasure to be able to address you on this our 3rd anniversary! We are a toddler in the grand scheme of student movements but have worked and made big steps toward this collective movement.In our Belizean context, organizing alone and remaining resolute in the purpose of that organization is a feat, a success we must take ownership and be proud of. So in the same breath I say congratulations and thank you!

There are less than 15 tertiary level institutions across the Belizean landscape all with varying needs, varying accomplishments. They cater to students from all walks of life, of those who call Belize home, of those who have made Belize home. In 2016, The statistical institute of Belize reported that the secondary school age population of the nation stood at 34,393 with actual enrolment at 22,036 students.There was no data on tertiary level education but what I can tell you confidently and at the same time with an air of caution is that all those students should have made it through highschool and at this moment are now under the stewardship of our young,tenacious union be they members or not. Quite often we as a Belizean society shrug on tertiary level education as a privilege,one that only few are deemed worthy of acquiring. This is because of varying reasons all pointing to ease of accessibility to education. I can point to several culprits: be it unequal distribution of scholarships,be it the myriad of social issues that bar young people from accessing education, be it the question that we all have asked and I think will ask in our context: what’s the point?

I think the solution lies in finding out what our political imperatives are during the time of a pandemic that has shattered the way that we live our lives and lead ourselves. It lies in viewing this time as one of opportunity to reform the ways in which we want to be governed. It has given us copious amounts of time to contemplate the level of participation we have had in our own development.

You see students, in a time that we have been forced to move online in our Zoom universities we must ask ourselves,how long have we been on a thin line? A crash course waiting for the right catalyst to tell us that its time to reevaluate our experiments with education. We have had many challenges with our transition, from pedagogy to practice, from policy to pocket money. In between those times when we must hurriedly submit assignments on Moodle, Black board collaborate and Google classroom discussion boards, we cannot forget those who have no computers and internet connection in their homes, those who only have internet on their phones and those who have internet but only have access to one computer in their homes. Yet still, we must remember those who depended on a friend at school for the day’s meal, those who lost income and now have to make the decision to survive now and leave an education for later. What a privilege it is to be educated from home,to work from home.

These are our political imperatives.

I want to reiterate my words to my fellow students that I shared on international student day on November 17th 2020. It goes,“At home, we’ve seen students lead the course changing demonstrations in April 2005, more recently we watched student of the University of Belize lead a walkout to attend the national demonstrations by the National Trade Union Congress of Belize, we watched the National Student Union of Belize lobby to become an affiliate honorary member of the NTUCB, we watched as students stood in solidarity with the University of Belize Faculty and Staff Union as the looking glass of the COVID 19 revealed the lack of adequate investment into our national university. With all these actions, Belizean students still face challenges relating to affordability of tertiary education, equitable distribution of national scholarships, the accreditation of our national university and inclusion of Belizean students abroad such as those in Cuba who had to advocate for the facilitation of support from our home country or of students who could not receive support to get to the security of home during the first climax of the global pandemic.

The call today is for education stakeholders to include and invest in an education that is the breeding ground for radical, creative, decolonizing ideas and what Paulo Friere calls “critical consciousness”, a recommitment to the acknowledgement and understanding of social, political, and economic contradictions, and taking action against the oppressive elements of that reality.”
Dominique noralez, November 17 2020

There is work to be done.

Students are builders. Students are teachers. Students are investments. Students are untapped vessels of unbounded potential. We are the conduit through which progressive national development shall come.

The call today is for students to embody that consciousness of our collective dynamism. The call today is for education stakeholders to include and invest in an education that is the breeding ground for radical, creative, decolonizing ideas and what Paulo Friere calls “critical consciousness”, a recommitment to the acknowledgement and understanding of social, political, and economic contradictions, and taking action against the oppressive elements of that reality.”

I end with the words of Trinbagonian Poet and friend , Amilar Sanatan, “Solidarity is our survival”.

This must be the student political imperative.

9:57am The Little Rock

Sundays are still the same, the breeze still cool, the tea still warm.

Radiance’s Songs, Sunday’s songs are still playing, dancing in the breeze with the backdrop of the parrots chatter.

Hank Locklin’s, “please help me, I’m falling…” reminding me of the men I’ve loved. The man I love that lives in the land of my birth across the wide expanse of water once assaulted by men from across the watery grave of the Atlantic,unwanted guests. The place where the next man I love now lives, a foreigner.

The song changes, “nobody answers when I call your name.”

“What you cooking today?” in a singer’s voice, the accent of the twin island. Sunday dinna is a little less complete today.

Still the neighbor’s washing happens on the Sabbath, I think that God wants us to be as close to cleanliness as possible. Closer to Godliness.

“look at us, after all these years together.”

Look at us, lovers…lovers of life, love, words, laughter. Lovers of things gone by and of things to come. Of those we’ve always known, of the unknown. Of questions unasked and those without answers. Of things shrouded by darkness, of things dawned by light.

The neighbor from a land not far, a foreigner but not a stranger to my lived experience in this space. Her brother, yet another, was killed some weeks ago. She brings across some extra produce that she had gotten from a man of this land. It’s this love, this spirit of community that has kept us for so long, alive, breathing, loving, caring. Sunday’s pot is more complete than it was when the first song played, more complete as “I’ve been trying to get over you” travels through the breeze and across to my own home.

The tea is now cool, less than its former self. Hot and steaming with essence of honey and lime. Remedies that have passed down, medicinal lineage that we will never let go even as the world now struggles to breathe. Remedies that remind us of power in solidarity, no matter the differences. Sweet and Sour, this is the essence of our character; it has been what has kept us.

Sunday’s are still the same but I do miss the Belizean Breeze, my neighbor’s kuknat crus’, my mother’s hug and my grandmother’s laugh.

“Baby you don’t know what it’s like to love somebody the way I love you.”

“You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille”

“You gotta know when to hold ‘em”

“Promise me son not to do the things I’ve done”

Breaking Bad: Belize Prison Break 2020

It’s been a rough forty-eight hours, a woman Marisela Gonzalez was found badly beaten and shot to the head, left dead in a bushy area of San Pedro Town. A young man, Shakeem Dennison was shot and killed in Belize City in the Yarborough area and died sometime later. Those two stories were buried by the uprisings at the Kolbe Prison system where 28 prisoners escaped from the Administration Segregation building, the largest escape recorded in the prison’s 18-year history. Today, October 13th 2020, one of the escapees were killed while being pursued by authorities and another prisoner was killed at the prison during a day of uprisings on prison grounds. Police and prison officers were also injured during the perceived chaos within Belize’s correctional facility. These situations, all three, have me contemplating much about the construct of justice, the delivery of justice within the Belize and law enforcement. The latter of which I’ve written about before. Curiosity has me thinking: How did we get here? How we can use this boiling point as an opportunity to redefine what justice means to us?

To answer the first question, I go back to the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) conference held under the theme, ‘COVID 19: Securing Our Caribbean Community Within The Era Of Covid-19 and Beyond.’ On July 31st 2020, Executive Director of the Kolbe Foundation Belize Central Prison, Virgilio Murillo, gave a presentation highlighting the challenges the prison was facing during the pandemic. He shared some statistics stating that the concurrent SOEs from the COVID 19 pandemic and the gang SOEs increased the prison population by 362 with 55% of that number attributed to the trawling of suspected gang affiliates from the streets of Belize City. He also shared that at the time of his presentation the prison had a total population of 1272 inmates with 36% on remand and the remaining 64% being convicted. The challenges that were direct to the pandemic included increased psychological pressures on the inmates because of the uncertainty brought about by the disease, discrimination against any new admissions in the prison for fear that they may be infected, and decreased recreational time including the ceasing of visitation and sporting activities. He noted that for the prison itself, the mandatory isolation limited the ability to properly classify inmates and required more cell blocks. He also noted not having enough PPEs and staff to care for and supervise isolated inmates, and a huge drop in sales from the industrial and commissary zones of the prison. The most interesting revelation coming from that presentation was that the prison received no donation of Personal Protective Equipment from the domestic public and private sector until the CARICOM IMPACS made a donation. Even more jarring was that the staff members of the prison were experiencing burn out because of the increase in health security requirements and finally, that there was a clear imbalance in the inmate and prison officer ration at the facility. (CARICOM IMPACS, 2020) Could all these sweltering pressures have contributed to the “weak fence” which saw almost 30 abscond from Kolbe with a high powered weapon and ammo to match? Are we seeing the classic unveiling of the rotting social institutions that crisis bares naked for us to see? This is an institution that in the 2017/2018 fiscal budget got $6,979,048BZD to “to protect society by ensuring the safe custody and supporting the rehabilitation of prisoners.” (Government of Belize, 2019)

Source: American Friends Source Committee

“You feel me! Yeh! Cheer up man, you look sad more than me. Never worry too much for me, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel-either it is sunlight that marks the end of your suffering, or the last light you see on this earth, and that too marks the end of your suffering.”
(Gayle,2016)

I want us to go back to those primary questions about justice and if that is a bit too abstract, think about the lyrics of Lucky Dube’s timeless track Prisoner in which he proclaims, “they won’t build no schools anymore, all they built were the prison, prison.” For our sake, think beyond physical buildings. I think about the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners which are 122 comprehensive rules that guides us on how prisoner-both pre-trial and convicted- are to be treated. First adopted in 1957 and revised in 2015 to be called the Nelson Mandela Rules, I reflect on rule 43 part 1 that states, “In no circumstances may restrictions or disciplinary sanctions amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The following practices, in particular, shall be prohibited: (a) Indefinite solitary confinement; (b) Prolonged solitary confinement; (c) Placement of a prisoner in a dark or constantly lit cell; (d) Corporal punishment or the reduction of a prisoner’s diet or drinking water; (e) Collective punishment.” (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015) I also think about the Global Prison Trends 2020 report which points to options to put an ease on the prison system by avoiding pre-trial detentions using bail (cash bail or bail guarantor), travel bans (including seizure of documents) and other geographic and residence limitations (including house arrest), judicial or police supervision, restrictions on communication with specific persons, or a ban on specific activities such as driving or carrying alcoholic beverages. The report highlights that alternatives to prison sentences can also be employed such as supervision by a probation officer, electronic monitoring, house arrest, verbal sanctions, participation in rehabilitation programmes and community service orders even reaching into restorative justice and victim-offender mediation programmes. (Penal Reform International, 2020) All these along with an entire refocusing and recalibrating of how we view our collective “do the crime, do the time” narrative and an unmasking of the biases that cover the eyes of Lady Liberty should help us veer away from another incident such as today.

Of course, this is not exhaustive and there is always much to ponder and unpack after history has been made, good or bad. I believe that this one is worth much pondering so we in Belize don’t continue to lose lives and misallocate investments without the return of a safe and just Belizean society. I don’t know that we are ready to have a conversation about abolishing prisons just yet. Stay Curious.

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” –Ruth Bader Ginsberg, The Notorious RBG.

References

CARICOM IMPACS. (2020, July 31). CARICOM IMPACS STREAM. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWxZd_cP4bI&t=7360s

Gayle, H. M. (2016). Like Bush Fire: A study on Male Participation and Violence in Urban Belize. Benque Viejo Del Carmen, Cayo, Belize: Cubola Productions.

Government of Belize. (2019, April 2). Approved Estmates of Revenue and Expenditure for Fiscal Year 2019/2020. Retrieved from https://www.mof.gov.bz: https://www.mof.gov.bz/uploads/files/j54t1vst.pdf

Penal Reform International. (2020). Executive Summary Global Prison Trends 2020. Retrieved from https://cdn.penalreform.org/: https://cdn.penalreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Global-Prison-Trends-2020-Executive-Summary-in-English-.pdf

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2015). The United Nations. Retrieved from https://www.unodc.org/: https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Nelson_Mandela_Rules-E-ebook.pdf

The National Perspective

My beloved Belize is set to become 39 years old tomorrow, of which two decades and a trinity I have been alive for. I have gotten the distinction of never being a British subject, my mother and her mother cannot claim the same. As I sit in a room with my Garinagu brother Wasani as we travel to study at the University, I am three years his senior, I am thinking as I am every year about how far we have come as a politically independent state. Where has the time gone, what is the National Perspective and the lens through which we will be required to look beyond the Horizon of a pandemic that has made practical the Shock Doctrine? Rt. Hon. Said Musa is on my mind tonight, a man that has given Belize 46 years of his life in public life. A man whose son sits in parliament with him, a man who is the father of one of Belize’s greatest creative minds. Mr. Musa is a man who has no doubt met with triumph and disaster in his time as leader of this nation. I’ve never had a conversation with him and only listened to him speak once outside the house while I was attending Saint John’s College Junior College with his signature silver hair speaking to us in his signature tone and reminding us of the importance of service. My most dominant memory of him is from a sitting of the lower house, I believe it was the same day he abstained from voting on the referendum bill. I sat in the gallery behind the opposition for a bit on that day, watching as he flipped through the pages of his notes. I was impressed by his penmanship, impressed that he still wrote out all his notes with pen ink and then impressed by his diplomatic prowess when he finally stood up to make his contributions whether I agreed with them or not. Forty-six years is two lifetimes for me and despite orbiting the dialectic nature of Belizean politics there is something to say thanks for. As I endearingly wrote Evan X Hyde on the half-century anniversary of his and Ismail Shabazz’s sedition trial this year, the dues have been paid and I do hope he takes time to smell the roses. I do hope he writes a biography, his legacy is important patchwork in Belize’s identity.

I am thinking of the frequency modulation of 2000 plus 20 Belize. Have we successfully impressed the wave of liberation into the minds and hearts of born Belizeans and those who have transitioned into Belizean identity? What is the Belizean identity? What were the hopes and dreams of the 1981 21-year-old? I listened to the Bocas Lit Fest earlier in the day and was wildly impressed by presentation ‘A Question of Leadership’ on the backdrop of literary works by panellists former Prime Minister of Jamaica- PJ Patterson, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belize- Godfrey Smith and Professor at University of Toronto Alissa Trotz. The three delved into the topic of contemporary Caribbean leadership with ease and visceral nature that I have never experienced, dissecting and consolidating history and history in the making of the Global South Caribbean. Our history interrupted and stunted by that of genocide-fueled colonialist leaving behind the residuals of neocolonialism that we are still struggling with navigating today. You see, our Independence is often romanticized and encapsulated, somewhat incomplete as if that was the only thing happening in 1981. Our Independence came at the height of the Grenadian revolution, two years later Maurice Bishop was killed. Ronald Reagan was president of the United States and that same year someone tried to assassinate him. Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979, Europe’s first female prime minister. Jamaica had just had a spate of violent elections. Walter Rodney was killed in 1980 in Georgetown, Guyana. I can go on and on with this and here is little Belize thinking or at least promoting a thwarted reality that we are so blessed to be mother natures best-kept secret. “Coincidence? The universe is rarely ever that lazy.” We often tout our badge of honour of having a peaceful and constructive revolution that lead to our independence but I don’t think we can claim a non-violent history. The fairy tale story of Belize’s becoming has to be deromanticized for us to achieve true consciousness-raising. I believe a famous writer calls it a decolonializing of thought. The debt we have had to pay because of this colonial narrative had been exponential and moving it our 40th year of Independence in 2021, it is the only bill that must be killed.

Independence Day Decor at Pandy’s Barber Shop in Belize City

Belize is much to unpack on the eve of our Independence and so I consoled myself by watching episodes of the United Kingdom’s ‘Yes, Prime Minister.’ Happy Independence Day to my home, my heart, Belize!

We can’t be content to carry on the business in our countries based on relationships which were determined in the past in which we had no involvement in which we could not participate.
PJ Patterson, Bocas Lit Fest 2020

Musings by DN