By Horace Palacio:
A quote has been circulating on Belizean timelines this week, attributed to the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. Whether he truly wrote it or the internet merely gifted it to him, no one can say for certain. But the line has traveled the world for one reason. People everywhere recognize it.
The worst part of a society manipulated by politics, it says, is watching the poor defend the rich who are responsible for their poverty.
Today I want to hold that sentence up to the Belizean light, because it is half right, half dangerous, and entirely worth an honest examination.
First, the dangerous half, and readers of this column know I must say this, because I have spent a year saying it. The rich is the wrong target. This column has defended honest wealth fiercely, the entrepreneur who built something real, the farmer who scaled, the Marie Sharps of this nation who turned peppers into exports. Those people feed Belize, employ Belize, and deserve applause, not suspicion. I wrote an entire column against the bad mind that tears down every climber, and I retract not a word of it.
So let us sharpen the quote’s blade and aim it correctly. The target is not the rich. The target is the riggers. Not wealth, extraction. There are two kinds of money in every society. The builder’s money, earned from customers who chose him in open competition. And the extractor’s money, harvested from contracts steered in closed rooms, from monopolies protected by connections, from public funds that leak into private pockets, from systems bent so that who you know beats what you can do. The builder feeds you. The extractor feeds on you. Confusing the two is how honest wealth gets slandered and dirty wealth gets defended in the same breath.
Now, with the blade properly aimed, the quote’s true half stands revealed, and it is devastating, because we all know the scene it describes.
The man in the worn party jersey, arguing until midnight in defense of a politician whose mansion was built from contracts, whose family firms drank millions from the treasury, whose decisions helped price that same defender out of a home, a doctor, a future. The woman sharing every post that shields the connected businessman whose protected monopoly inflates the price of everything in her basket. The crowd that cheers loudest for the very arrangement that keeps it waiting outside the gate.
The extractor’s greatest asset was never his money, Belize. It is the poor man’s loyalty, given free of charge. So the only question worth a column is, how is that loyalty manufactured? Let me show you the machine, because I have been documenting its parts all year.
Part one, the jersey. In Belize, party colors are inherited like a surname and defended like a religion. So when the auditor’s report lands on your politician, it does not feel like accountability. It feels like an attack on your family. The poor man defends the millionaire minister not because they share a bank account, they do not, but because they share a color. Tribalism performs a magic trick, it convinces a man that another man’s mansion is somehow his team’s victory.
Part two, the ham. I wrote it long ago and it remains the saddest arithmetic in our politics. The handout at election time, the ham, the hundred dollars, the promise of a little job, purchases loyalty to a system whose true costs, the leaked millions, the broken clinic, the failed school, the poor man pays back a thousandfold. They buy your vote with your own money, and the receipt is your child’s future.
Part three, the phone call. The area representative who fixes your light bill, finds your medicine, smooths your paperwork. It feels like kindness, and personally, sometimes it is. But step back and see the design. The system stays broken precisely so that you need the fixer, and every favor is a thread tying your loyalty to the very man whose class benefits from the brokenness. Retail kindness, funding wholesale extraction.
Part four, the ladder illusion. Some defend the extractor because they dream of one day being him. So they protect his impunity like a savings account, hoping to withdraw from it later. My friend, hear the odds plainly. The rigged room has very few chairs, and yours is not being kept warm. You are not a future insider. You are a current shield.
Part five, the pointed finger. And this is the machinery I wrote about in the algorithm column. When a man is struggling, his anger is a loaded weapon, and enormous effort goes into aiming it anywhere but upward. At the other tribe. At the immigrant. At the neighbor crab climbing the bucket beside him. The feed keeps the poor fighting horizontally so they never look vertically, and the arrangement above them proceeds undisturbed.
Assemble those five parts and you have answered the quote. This is how a society gets the astonishing spectacle of unpaid bodyguards, men with holes in their shoes standing sentry outside mansions their own taxes helped build.
And understand what it costs the whole country. Every reform this column has fought for, the procurement portal, the whistleblower protection, the professional public service, the published contracts, dies the same death. Not because the extractors are strong, there are only a handful of them, but because they command volunteer armies of the very people the reforms would rescue. Accountability in Belize does not fail for lack of evidence. It fails because the watchmen have been recruited by the watched.
So let me leave you with a test, the way this column always tries to leave a tool in your hands. Before you rise to defend any wealthy or powerful man, ask five questions. Did his money come from customers or from contracts? Does he win in open competition or in closed rooms? Does he need you informed or does he need you loyal? Would his fortune survive the sunlight of a published ledger? And the sharpest one of all, does defending him require you to attack the auditor, the journalist, or the whistleblower? Because if your defense of a man demands war on the truth-tellers, you are not his supporter. You are his shield, and shields, remember, are built to absorb damage.
Let me close with the dignity this subject demands, because this was never a sermon calling anyone stupid. The manipulation machine is engineered by professionals and funded by millions. Being fooled by a machine built to fool you is no shame at all.
But staying fooled after the machine has been laid open on the table, part by part, that becomes a choice.
Your loyalty is precious, Belize. It may be the most valuable thing a struggling man owns. So spend it like treasure. Give it to principles, never to persons. To Belize, never to colors. Defend every builder with pride.
And never again stand guard, unpaid, outside a gate that was built to keep you out.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, Horace Palacio, and do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial stance of Breaking Belize News.
The post Belize’s poorest are often the first to defend the system keeping them poor appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
By Horace Palacio: A quote has been circulating on Belizean timelines this week, attributed to the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. Whether he truly wrote it or the internet merely gifted it to him, no one can say for certain. But the line has traveled the world for one reason. People everywhere recognize it. The worst
The post Belize’s poorest are often the first to defend the system keeping them poor appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.