Reenactment of the first public meeting at the Bliss

The Bliss auditorium overflowed today for the reenactment of an important day in the history of the country. Both the National Kriol Council and the National Institute of Culture and History organized the performance, which goes back to the Public Meeting in 1797, when settlers struggled with the decision to defend the settlement. News Five’s Delahnie Bain was at the presentation during which the council also introduced its f.lag

Delahnie Bain, Reporting

On June first 1797 a public meeting was held to determine the fate of what we now call the Jewel. It was the age of slavery and the Spaniards were planning their attack on Belize, raising the question among settlers: “to fight or to abandon the settlement?.” That historic milestone was relived on the stage of the Bliss Institute of Creative Arts today.

Nigel Encalada, Director, Institute for Social & Cultural Research, NICH

nigel encalada

“A big part of our objective today was to try and bring history alive. What happens is that in many instances kids, in the modern era, kids are more in tuned with the audio visual and the media outlet. So what we tried to do was to take this particular event in our history and to bring it alive for the stage hoping that the students would then begin to interpret the event and look at it for its significance in our history.”

Myrna Manzanares, the president of the National Kriol Council wrote the script for today’s reenactment.

Myrna Manzanares, President, National Kriol Council

“What I wanted to capture was what actually happened from the beginning and not just the Battle of Saint George’s Caye, going back before that when different things were happening and we wanted to look at where the position of the slaves in those days. Within that whole thing Peter Johnson, a black man was one of the persons who worked along with the white man and the slaves. He was a good friend of Robert Douglas junior and I wanted to show that we had a say as black people in this country and as descendants of the African and the Creole Population.”

Special emphasis was placed on fourteen men from Flowers Bank Village, who made a major difference in the decision to defend this territory. Until today, the importance of their votes had not been adequately recognized.

Nigel Encalada

“If those fourteen men did not vote, the way things turned out it would have been a fifty-one to fifty-one vote. But when they enter the picture it ended with a fifty-one to sixty-five vote; a margin of exactly fourteen. It wouldn’t have been common for them to attend. You see public meetings, while you had all these men, people frequently did not attend these meetings. So the fact that these men came from the river valley with the urgency that they did, we can read into it that they saw the importance of the decision that was going to be made.”

Myrna Manzanares

myrna manzanares

“If they didn’t fight, the course of our history definitely would have been changed. We don’t know whether we would have belonged to Guatemala, or whether we would have been incorporated into Mexico or gone back to England as slaves. We don’t know what would have happened, but definitely it changed the course of history for us as Belizeans—every Belizean that came after.”

Much credit is also due to the actors who delivered an informative yet entertaining performance to this morning’s audience of primary school students.

[Clips of Dancing and Acting from Reenactment…]

The National Kriol Council also took the opportunity to unveil their flag, which Manzanares says they hope will be generally accepted as the Kriol Flag.

Myrna Manzanares

“We’re hoping that over time the Belize Kriol and everyone will come to recognize it and accept it as the Kriol flag. At this time we can’t say generally the Kriol flag, so it is the flag of the National Kriol Council. We must say thanks to Bredda David for his foresight and for being instrumental in designing the initial flag.”

Today’s reenactment was just a portion of a script of the all the events surrounding the Battle of Saint George’s Caye. Manzanares says she hopes to see a production of the full script as part of the September celebration events. Delahnie Bain for News Five.

A festival was held this past Saturday in honor of the fourteen men from Flowers Bank who steered the vote to defend the settlement.