GUATEMALAN CONSTITUTION PARAGRAPH FORCES WAR WITH BELIZE

GUATEMALA RECOGNIZED THE SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENCE OF BELIZE AND TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY IN 1981

UDP party lawyers, of the incumbent government, confuse the issue of the OBSOLETE Guatemalan claim. After an evening in Belize City with a panel of learned persons, for an enquiring audience of lay people, the current UDP policy of responding to a NEW CLAIM for Belizean territory left everybody mystified.
The consensus of the evening was that the UDP were out of line in their foreign policy actions. That there was no CLAIM for territory to be answered.
Yet the UDP have embarked on a course of answering our Guatemalan friends and neighbors, on a NEW GUATEMALAN TERRITORIAL CLAIM. This sets a dangerous precedent for our long term future. In responding to the Guatemalans, the new UDP Government of Belize is setting new actions that can draw future legal conclusions from PRECEDENT SETTING ACTIONS, to this long standing debate, that would not be to our advantage for a neighborly peaceful life.
The crux of the arguments from our current UDP Cabinet policy makers, was that; the latest re-incarnation of the Guatemalan Claim to Belize made them fearful. The party in power in Belize is controlled by a port townie, coastal black population and the talk and fear of a Guatemalan military invasion was palpable. For the history of Guatemala is brutal with military dictatorship that would, as they have declared in the past; massacre the total coastal black population of Belize, if they invaded. There was no such fear from the other ethnic races that make up the multi-cultural population of Belize in the audience.
Where did the NEW TERRITORIAL GUATEMALAN CLAIM come from? In 1981 when Belize went INDEPENDENT of Great Britain under the terms of the United Nations Charter, Guatemala at that time relinquished ALL OLD claims to Belize in recognizing in the UN voting, for the existing TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY and SOVEREIGNTY of Belize. Indeed it was this ACTION that allows Guatemala migrants to enter Belize of today and obtain citizenship through NATURALIZATION. We have in OUR CONSTITUTION, a law that does not allow citizens of ANY country that claims any territory of Belize, to immigrate here. Which mostly is directed at Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. The current new claim action of Guatemala, effectively cuts off any new citizenship claims by immigrants from our neighbor.
The NEW territorial claim comes from the Guatemalans, based on the fact that THEY in their Constitution have a paragraph that says; each new government in Guatemala MUST try to reclaim Belize territory to Guatemala. When asked why Guatemala does not AMEND their Constitution, the answer seems to be that the paragraph in their Constitution gives the DEATH PENALTY to any government person, or citizen of Guatemala for TREASON, if it is tried to change this GUATEMALAN Constitutional passage.
Our current UDP government Cabinet policy makers are choosing to respond to this NEW Guatemalan CLAIM to Belizean Territory in the form of an AGREEMENT to hold a REFERENDUM to go to the IJC Court for a decision on this NEW Guatemalan claim to Belizean territory. While the UDP CABINET are sure they will win at the IJC court, the lay audience at the discussion in Belize City questioned the actions of the CABINET by EVEN considering this frivolous action of a NEW CLAIM to Belizean territory. It is a future bad precedent setting policy. There seems no point in even considering doing this IJC court action? There was much discussion about old treaties between Spain, Great Britain, the USA, Guatemala and what was then the colony of British Honduras. ALL such actions having been legally terminated in 1981 when Belize went INDEPENDENT from Great Britain under the United Nations CHARTER for SELF DETERMINATION. The threat proposed by the UDP REFERENDUM and going to the IJC court, is that it sets a NEW PRECEDENT for the future with new governments of Guatemala seeking to satisfy the clause in their CONSTITUTION, that someday could cause our two countries to go to war.
The general audience conclusion was; that NO GOVERNMENT of Belize should respond to any Guatemalan claims, based on our de-facto Independence in 1981. That in fact, the Guatemalans who wish to discuss anything of this foreign affairs nature, should FIRST, as a PRE-REQUISITE, DELETE from their Constitution, the offending paragraph claiming Belize and defining TREASON as the penalty for doing so. There will be no end otherwise, to this debate for centuries to come. We wish to be good neighbors with Guatemala and share trade, marriages, tourism and all good things that come with harmonious neighbors living in peace. As long as Guatemala have this paragraph in their Constitution, there will be no peace between us neighbors and every likelihood of a future WAR. It only takes a military coup in Guatemala and a new dictator military GENERAL as President of that neighbor, to start a war between neighbors, based on demagoguery.