Researchers look into male participation in violence
It is a well known that the number of murders have spiraled. In 2008, the turbulence in the streets of Belize was aggravated by the introduction of fragment grenades. After the infamous explosion on Mayflower Street, stakeholders began to take a serious look at the increase in violence and the arsenal that have been unleashed in the old capital. Social partners have invested their own dollars in a research called the Male Social Participation and Violence in Belize. News Five attended a conference at the University of West Indies School of Continuing Studies, where the research team gave an update on their work which is expected to be concluded by mid 2010.
Jose Sanchez, Reporting
The civil war benchmark for homicide is thirty per one hundred thousand persons. Belize reached thirty-four in 2008 and so far has thirty-three for 2009. Because Belize City is the murder capital of the country, a research team has been looking at the Male Social Participation and Violence in Belize.
Herbert Gayle, Anthropologist of Social Violence
“What we have here it’s high, its beginning to edge towards the dangerous point called Jamaica and that’s a frightening concern I have for this country. Why is it so high? It’s not because of two things; reality and super reality. Super reality is created by your ecology of size. Belize is so small by the time two gangs begin to war, give them a week they would have killed a relative. That’s a very precarious position to be in because what is happening there is what we call the Hitlerian feeling where Hitler gave these kids a dog to raise and then asked them to kill the dog. Kids are beginning to choose gangs over their families and that is happening here at a faster rate than a country that would be large where you could drive for fifteen miles and go harm somebody and come back and that person is a relative. The gang members I have spoken to here, all of them have already killed a family member. We’re not even saying a few of them you know, all of them have already killed a family member.”
According to the local research manager, Belize City students are also being impacted by violence.
Nelma Mortis, Local Research Manager
“The students on south side, a high number of them are sharing, based on the questions we have asked, that have shared that they have relatives who are gang members or have been killed by gangs or due to gang activity. It’s high for the south side, very high. This research emerged out of a think tank session that was put together by the National Committee for Families and Children in 2008 and Doctor Herbert Gayle was invited as the region’s only Social Anthropologist to come in and assess and update all stakeholders.”
The current research is expected to be complete by July of 2010, but the team gave an update to the media today.
Jamuna Vasquez, Assistant Research Manager
“We’re looking at the schools and the community which are the biggest part of the frame and we have the Kolbe prison, the police department and because we’re using many different methodology, we use what we call triangulation and so we’re using a broad scope that we’re using. Let me tell you what we’ve started with. We started with preparation by training the researchers. This was an in dept training that was done in April and Dr. Gayle has been back and forth to Belize, constantly supervising and ensuring that the quality kept up to mark.”
Herbert Gayle
“You’ll see in red the countries, we’re looking at the counties here with the highest homicide rate in the last decade; meaning since the year 2000 and you’ll see that Belize and Trinidad and Tobago are at an average of concern some place there at the bottom.”
Doctor Herbert Gayle explained why countries like Belize have been unable to curb the violence.
Herbert Gayle
“In order for a country to be in the mess that we are in the region, you have to have four very horrible things happening at once. You have to have extreme poverty in the midst of wealth, combined with social isolation and all these things. You have to have weak central political authority, which is the combination of police, judiciary, civil society and central government. You also have to have a problem of social organization of violence such as Crips and Bloods. You also have to have, the matter of mobilizing for the purpose of politics and leadership. So any country you see with a homicide rate beyond thirty, politicians are not innocent. That’s just a general acceptance around the world. On the individual level it has to be a whole series of isolation, mono traffic disaster level as we discussed and all of these things, fractured identity, all of these things have to pile up before somebody does what we call a fromic killing, not kill out of self-defence but actually go out and kill somebody.”
The Caribbean and Central America are ranked first and third when it comes to murder. Belize has too many murders no matter in which region it is placed. Gayle believes it will get worse.
Herbert Gayle
“The south African situation we know keeps going down, so by next year the Caribbean and central America will be one and two. So that’s not good.”
Perhaps when murders are viewed as a national emergency a tangible strategy will be implemented. Reporting for News Five, Jose Sanchez.
The research team has received funding from the Ministry of National Security, the Ministry of Education, the Kolbe Foundation, the Crimes Control Council and other stakeholders.
