Musa: Belizeans must have pride in ancestry
Meanwhile, the man who supported the concept of African and Mayan studies from the beginning, Prime Minister Said Musa, says for too long people in Belize have been subjected to only one side of history. He urged students and teachers to embrace the programme in order to move decisively to correct an imbalance, which results in self-hatred and diminishes the confidence people must have to build a better future.
Prime Minister Said Musa
“Today we hear so much about a big word, globalisation, but we of the Caribbean know too of the first globalisation, depicted in the imperial histories we were taught as times of romance and glory, with Pinta and the Santa Maria, remember those ships that Columbus came on? We were taught about that, and Columbus of course was the star of the movie. But the other side of the picture is not revealed: that for example, before Columbus landed in Hispaniola, which is today Haiti and The Dominican Republic, the population is estimated to have been eight million people living on that island. That was in 1492 thereabouts. But by 1508, just a few years later, the population was less than one hundred thousand, and by 1518 it was just twenty-eight thousand, from eight million. Surely this must be one of the most horrible acts of genocide in history, but we have not been taught this in our schools.”
“There are some eighty-five percent of our people who can directly trace their roots to African or Maya civilisations, or both. Eighty-five percent of our people have a lee bit ah African or a lee bit a Maya inna we. My maternal grandmother was a Mayan woman from a Mayan village in Mexico, in Yucatan. A Maya lady, a short lee Maya lady who used to make tamales and I used to sell it. And I am proud of that. So when we look into our history we have a little bit of the African or the Mayan in us, eighty-five percent of the people of Belize. Yet, we have been taught for centuries that African and Mayan peoples are inferior or backward!”
“The widespread blight of the lack of self-esteem in so many of our young people today is in no small part due to the failure of the school system to tell them the truth about themselves and about their past.”
Prime Minister Said Musa also handed over literature and video materials on African and Mayan history to be used in the programme.
