- Essays: On The Road (And A Little Off)


 

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   HOW THE DEA CAME TO BELIZE AND SPOILED THE PARTY WHILE MAKING AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

Belize City, Belize, January 22, 2007 - -
A couple or three years ago a recurring
invasion of cruise ships, gargantuan
seagoing condos laden with gargantuan
seagoing American tourists, began to anchor
off Belize City, endangering the
second-largest barrier reef in the world
and three of the only four atolls in the
Caribbean with their passing and paradise
with their mere presence.

From the anchorage, large high-speed
ferries bring the tourists ashore to
pre-approved sanitized destinations where
they buy Belizean souvenirs made in Taiwan.

This paving of paradise has gotten steadily
worse and steadily wider.  In Placencia, in
the southern end of the country, there has
been a recent influx of Mom and Pop
retirees who, not satisfied with paradise
as they found it and as nature created it,
have banded together and forced the
abolition of the locals' roosters, as the
birds tend to wake Mom and Pop up in the
mornings.

I arrived in Belize City and took a cab to
the Seaside Guest House, 7 Prince Street,
where Bageant and I would be staying for a
couple of days while he worked on the
galleys for his book ("Deer Hunting with
Jesus"; can you detect a plug here?).

There is no way to paint Belize City, or
just plain "Belize", as the locals call it,
as anything other than a bustling,
hustling, dirty Caribbean town.  Crime is
quite high here: the murder rate far
outstrips that of any city in the United
States.  Tourists, however, are effectively
watched over by an army of plainclothes
angels (whom you'll never pick out in a
crowd).

The current causes of crime here can be
almost directly traced to the Reagan
administration's war on drugs.  "Belize
Breeze", as it was called, was once the
product of countless small upland farmers
who grew it as a money crop to supplement
those crops they grew for subsistence.
Unfortunately the mellow, peaceful (or so
I'm told)high came to the attention of the
bean-counters in the DEA and, soon,
paraquat-spraying helicopters were soaking
every little farm in the hills to eliminate
the devil weed.

Unfortunately, the paraquat also eliminated
the corn and beans, which, there being
nothing left to eat in the hills, brought
people streaming into the cities, Belize in
particular, looking for work which wasn't
there.  What employment soon followed,
however, was that provided by the Medellin
cartel, and Belize, with its mangrove
inlets, soon became a primary transshipment
point for Colombia's finest, which was
delivered north through Mexico and
ultimately to the deviated septae of
America del Norte.  In its wake, as always,
there were locals who have become, for want
of a kinder, gentler term, crackheads.
They wander the streets begging for money
(to buy some food).  I always buy food and
give it to them.  It is not always accepted
joyfully.

The taxi, driven by Mr Cardenas, one of
thousands of immigrants here from
Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, pulls up to
the Seaside and I hear, "There he is!  I've
been watching for you, my brother!" coming
from the balcony.
Manly hugs and backslaps all around, it is
the first time I've met Bageant in the
flesh, though we've talked by internet and
phone for the last two years.
(joebageant.com)

As it turned out, Joe's editor in New York
was having a nanny crisis or something so
that the galleys would be delayed arriving,
and after hanging out a couple of
uneventful days in Belize, we set out for
Hopkins Village and Luke and Marzy's, Joe's
adoptive home and family further down the
coast.

NEXT: THE VILLAGE OF HOPKINS AND PANAMA
GETS DOWN WITH A COUPLE OF PUNTA PLAYERS



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