USA FUNDING OF THE OAS IS CANCELLED. (Organization of American States.)
Wonder what this means for Belize along the frontier with Guatemala? There is at least one family living on the Belize side of the OAS dictated adjacency zone, and Belize has not done anything about it, because this Guatemalan family removal´, would cause perhaps a diplomatic incident. The man of the house, is some sort of criminal, as he is now toting a very expensive weapon, an AK 47. The price of the bullets alone would be a half days pay for one bullet. Guatemala was supposed to have moved the family, but never did. They are short of money just like Belize. The OAS was then supposed to move the family back across the border into Guatemala, but they have been short of money and incentive. Now the USA has cut OAS funding for their previous share, that is going to make matters worse. Nothing more will be coming out of the OAS, to keep the border peaceful. One alternative would be to simply issue the family Belizean papers and relocate them to another site on the Southern highway deeper inside Belize, more by the coast, out of the interior. The problem is complicated.
Since the USA has cut OAS funding entirely, it behooves our government then, to relocate this guy and tear down his existing house in the adjacency zone. If we don´t do something about it, this will be a flashpoint for trouble in the not too far distant future. On the Western Border we worry about Guatemalan incursions.
There are rougly 65,000 communities along the Western Border on the Guatemala side and many of them have organized crime gangs raiding and looting the resources of Belize on our side. Our side is for the most part uninhabited and it is against the law to farm and live there, for Belizeans. The area is jungle watershed and forest reserves. Guatemalans are making a couple of billion dollars a year, by raiding Belize forest reserves, in exotic hardwoods, possibly a transit route for drugs and a gold mining company in the South they say need protection in their remote mountain area from roving bands of Guatemalan bandits. Belizeans are prevented in competing with Guatemalan invading gangs, for our own resources, by our own government. Nor are we allowed to own guns.
A war with roving bandit gangs from Guatemala is going to play havoc with the sensational press in Guatemala City, as they need violent news to sell advertising and tabloids. This in turn sets pyschological fire to the 24 Western mountain Mayan tribes of Guatemala, most of whom live along the mountain ranges and Pacific coast. ( About 12 million of them ) To make things worse, and bad news comes usually in THREES. A new Guatemalan President is going to be elected shortly in two weeks in Guatemala and the FRONT RUNNER is an infamous GENERAL, who is allegedly a HUMAN RIGHTS violator, accused allegedly of slaughtering a number of villages, wholesale, during the last time the military ran the country. It is expected if he becomes the Guatemalan President, the good relations we have been having with Guatemala is going to go down the tubes. The past military rule, was a MAFIA and they thought of themselves that way, except their mafia style of government was legal, as they WERE the government.
Without the OAS providing a small backstop for reasonable discourse and nobody expects them to do anything without the USA FUNDING cut, Belize has to make some VERY HARD decisions on future border policy. It looks like we are on our own? THEREFORE, the question arises. What the heck are we going to do about preparations to contain events getting out of control on the frontier?
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