These reflections were provoked by a very good article written by my friend Mario Lara, which has gained considerable attention for its excellent personal reflections on his recent visit to El Salvador.
But let us be honest: the attention was not focused on Mario’s visits to museums and libraries, the beautiful beaches, or the majestic mountain ranges. No. The article captured public attention because, intentionally or inadvertently, it appeared to provoke—and perhaps even endorse—the idea of adopting a Bukele-style approach to crime management in Belize.
Once again, the old question has resurfaced: **Does Belize need a Bukele?
Before we surrender our critical thinking to political fashion and imported solutions, we must remind ourselves of a basic truth: Belize is not El Salvador. Belize is not Jamaica, New York, London, Burkina Faso, or Singapore. Belize is Belize, with our own social, economic, historical, political, and cultural circumstances.
We cannot simply take a crime-management strategy from another country, place it over Belize like a borrowed suit, and expect it to fit.
We cannot superimpose another nation’s response upon our society without first understanding the conditions that produced both its crime and its strategy.
This reminds me of the argument some years ago that Belize could replicate the success of Singapore. It sounded attractive, but it ignored the fact that Belize and Singapore are two different societies, shaped by different histories, cultures, institutions, economies, populations, and political realities. A solution that grows organically out of one society cannot simply be uprooted and transplanted into another without consequence.
Every country has its own conditions, its own institutions, its own criminal networks, its own political culture, and its own historical development. Any serious response to crime in Belize must therefore be rooted in Belizean soil. It must grow out of our reality, not out of our fascination with another country’s strongman.
We cannot clean up crime at the street level while refusing to clean up crime at the highest levels of society. We cannot raid the homes of poor young men at dawn while criminals with influence are invited through the front doors of government offices during the day. We cannot continue demanding accountability from the powerless while extending silence, protection, and respectability to the powerful.
In Mario Lara’s article, he reported that a former president of El Salvador had just been released from prison. Why has that part of the Salvadoran experience not received equal attention? Why are we fascinated by the mass imprisonment of young men but less interested in the imprisonment of presidents, ministers, financiers, businessmen, and public officials?
Why do we continue behaving as though crime is centred almost exclusively among young Black youths?
Show me the equivalent in Belize of the worldwide, multimillion-dollar criminal operation of MS-13. The organization and international reach of MS-13 have no duplicate in Gungulun, Jane Usher Boulevard, George Street, or Majestic Alley. To equate these Belizean communities with the scale and structure of MS-13 is not serious crime analysis. It is political theatre.
Advocates of a wholesale Bukele-style strategy in Belize are proposing that we use a gun to shoot a mosquito—no pun intended. Worse, the gun will almost certainly be pointed at the same communities that have always carried the burden of aggressive policing, mass detention, social neglect, unemployment, inadequate housing, broken schools, and political abandonment.
The call for a Belizean Bukele is dangerous because it invites us to believe that one forceful personality can rescue us from problems created over generations. It reduces a complex national crisis to the fantasy of a strong man, a bigger prison, more soldiers, more guns, and fewer questions.
But crime is not merely a policing problem. Crime is connected to poverty, inequality, failed education, family disintegration, substance abuse, political corruption, institutional weakness, unemployment, social exclusion, and the steady collapse of hope among our young people.
You cannot arrest your way out of those conditions.
You cannot imprison your way out of a culture of corruption.
You cannot declare a State of Emergency against poverty.
You cannot build enough prison cells to contain the consequences of national neglect.
And you cannot continue criminalizing young Black men while ignoring those who finance, facilitate, protect, profit from, and politically manipulate the conditions in which street violence grows.
Let us also remember the other part of Bukele’s strategy: the pursuit of criminals embedded at the top of society and within powerful institutions. That is the part many Belizean admirers of Bukele conveniently leave out.
They want the raids, the soldiers, the handcuffs, the prison photographs, and the mass detention of young men. But where is their enthusiasm for investigating corruption at the top?
In Belize, the young Black man standing on the street corner is highly visible. He is watched, searched, detained, photographed, labelled, and condemned. But the well-connected criminal is often invisible. He wears a guayabera, occupies an office, attends official functions, controls contracts, moves money, influences institutions, and may even help shape the very laws under which the young man on the street is prosecuted.
These are the enablers.
A serious crime strategy must confront violence in the streets, but it must also confront corruption, organized financial crime, political protection, official misconduct, money laundering, trafficking, illicit enrichment, and those who use wealth, status, family connections, and political influence to avoid accountability.
Too often, nothing happens until there is a whistleblower. Respect to the whistleblowers—the men and women who risk their employment, reputation, security, and sometimes their lives to expose what powerful institutions would prefer to keep hidden.
Crime does not exist only at the bottom. Crime also occupies boardrooms and government offices. It controls contracts, manipulates public funds, protects illegal operations, launders profits, influences elections, corrupts institutions, and then points accusing fingers toward the poorest communities.
We are quick to send soldiers into Gungulun, Jane Usher, George Street, and Majestic Alley. But when will we send investigators into the offices where questionable contracts are signed? When will we follow the money? When will we expose the respectable faces behind the criminal economy? When will the law become as fearless in the corridors of power as it is in the alleys of poverty?
Until we are prepared to confront crime at every level, the call for a Belizean Bukele will remain intellectually dishonest and socially dangerous. It will continue to place the weight of the country’s failures upon young Black boys born into difficult circumstances while protecting those who create, enable, finance, and benefit from the disorder.
Belize does not need an imported strongman. Belize needs strong institutions, courageous leadership, social investment, political accountability, equal justice, and solutions rooted in the lived reality of our people.
Until then, we will continue treating the symptoms while protecting the disease.
The post Reflections: Nuri Muhammad asks- Does Belize really need a Bukele? appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
These reflections were provoked by a very good article written by my friend Mario Lara, which has gained considerable attention for its excellent personal reflections on his recent visit to El Salvador. But let us be honest: the attention was not focused on Mario’s visits to museums and libraries, the beautiful beaches, or the majestic
The post Reflections: Nuri Muhammad asks- Does Belize really need a Bukele? appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
