Vietnam Casualties Undercounted Dr. Charles Clements, the Vietnam veteran who worked in guerrilla-con- trolled territory in El Salvador, re- cently did some fund-raising for
NACLA. He shared this response with
us. The Editors.
Dear Dr. Clements,
I am writing to add my voice to
those of your brother Vietnam vet-
erans from whom you must have al-
ready heard. You skillfully articulate
my own feelings about not only the
Vietnam experience but this country’s
present Central America policy as
well. I thank you for giving such pow- erful expression through your book
Witness to War to an intensely held
point of view shared by numerous or-
dinarily quiet people. I congratulate
you for doing so much more about it
than most of us.
I subscribe to NACLA because in
the spring of 1968 the losses from my
own squadron alone were in excess of
the casualty figures reported for the
entire war from the Chinese border
to Ca Mau. The [quasi-governmental
newspaper] Stars and Stripes would
headline big victories in the north, while little paragraphs on the back
pages would reveal that the enemy
still occupied half of Saigon weeks
after the Tet offensive began. But I
am sure that I do not need to educate
you about the distortions of the report-
ing. It is more useful to focus the in-
stinctive suspicion that develops from
that into the embarrassing questions:
Why did we lose in Vietnam? What is
really happening in Central America? Salient to what you write about is a
theme central to both questions: the stark injustice of conducting a type of
warfare in which the main victim is
the civilian population. We have be- come used to statistics and large num-
bers. Between 1960 and 1975 the
United States carried out 70,000 as-
sassinations in Vietnam. There have
been 40,000 death squad victims in El
Salvador. Indirect fire and air strikes
sanitize the phenomenon, but the
troops who have to do it must and do
become alienated and brutalized. By
the time the struggle for the hearts and minds has been abstracted down to
the video game of fire control radar, the connection is completely unreal.
Numbers and statistics mean nothing;
all it takes is to see an atrocity with your own eyes just one time to be
overwhelmed with revulsion. But we
seem to learn nothing from the past.
The only way out of this trap is by
speaking the truth, which sometimes
seems as futile as the splashing of a
wave against a rock. It is truth which
stands the test of time. Thank you for
performing so well a job that needs doing.
Jim May
Carbondale, IL
Belizean Achievements Ignored Milton Jamail’s two articles on Be-
lize (May/June and July/August) pro-
vide an admirable short account of
many of the problems facing this re-
cently independent Central American
nation. He justifiably draws attention
to the continuing Guatemalan threat
to Belize, the impact of thousands of
refugees and the growing problem of
U.S. pressure in the region, a pressure that could result effectively in a recol-
onization of Belize. Whether through
direct U.S. militarization, through further economic penetration of an
open and vulnerable economy or
through the extraordinary cultural in-
vasion that is now taking place via the
mass media, Belize could certainly become a dependency of this country,
as Jamail implies. To this horrendous list of problems,
I must add that the sugar industry, which has been the chief contributor
to the economy since 1959 (account-
ing for between 20% and 25% of the
GDP and about 60% of domestic ex-
ports by value) is facing a crisis. With
catastrophic falls in sugar prices since
1980, Tate and Lyle, the transnational corporation that monopolizes sugar
production in Belize, has threatened
to close one of its two factories. To
save the factory, the government re-
cently agreed to acquire 75% of the
shares in the Belizean subsidiary, leaving Tate and Lyle with the re-
mainder. If the industry continues to lose money, as Tate and Lyle antici-
pates, Belize will not have a bargain, but with over 60,000 acres of the
northern districts committed to sugar cane and 4,000 cane farmers and
Continued on page 15
Continued from page 2
thousands of factory and field workers
dependent on the industry, there is no
alternative, at least in the short run.
While such problems are pressing, even threatening, Jamail has perhaps
paid insufficient attention to some of the more positive aspects of Belize and the achievements of its govern-
ment. After all, despite the absence of
growth in many sectors of the
economy, Belize has weathered the
recession more successfully than
many other countries in the region.
Unemployment and consequent hard-
ship have increased but most Belize-
ans are better off than their parents
were, and there is little of the extreme
poverty, or inequality, that is charac-
teristic of other Caribbean and Central
American countries. Financially, Be-
lize appears to be in better shape than
most of these countries and has not yet
been forced to renegotiate its debts or deal with the IMF. Consequently, Be- lizeans have not experienced the kind
of belt-tightening and resultant social
unrest that is evident, for example, in
Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
Another achievement is that Beli-
zeans just celebrated the third anniver-
sary of their independence. Each year
of Belizean sovereignty makes the
Guatemalan territorial claim more ob- viously unjust and unrealistic. Be-
lize’s government took a chance in
1981 when it opted for independence without prior settlement of the
Guatemalan dispute, but, with each new agreement with Mexico or Costa
Rica; and with the recent improve-
ment of relations with Honduras, Be-
lize is isolating Guatemala diplomati-
cally. Of coure, the problem of pro-
viding for Belize’s defense persists, but
that should not obscure the fact
that Belize is consolidating her posi-
tion and thereby making it harder for Guatemala to gain any support.
Belize remains the most peaceful and stable democratic nation in Cen- tral America. The absence of com-
munal violence is an important feature
of Belize’s social history, and sug-
gests, perhaps, that the obsession with
racial divisions and ethnic heterogen-
eity that characterizes most accounts
of Belize is misplaced. Belizean pol- itics
are not racially defined and there
is a 30-year tradition that may be envied elsewhere. When, along with these facts, we consider the high lit- eracy rate and the expanding health
services, it is apparent that there are
clear achievements, as well as prob-
lems, in Belize.
The future of Belize, Jamail would
probably agree, is exceptionally hard to predict because its situation, in
terms of internal factors and external contingencies, is so fluid. The
People’s United Party, which has dominated Belizean politics since its
formation in 1950, is in danger of fis- sion. Prime Minister George Price’s
cabinet shuffle last January only pa-
pered over the growing cracks, just
long enough for the next general elec-
tion which will probably be held at the
end of this year. The new indepen- dence constitution requires that each
district have between two and three
thousand voters and, as’ a result, the
membership of the House of Repre- sentatives, currently 18, will in-
crease–but no one yet knows by how
many. These facts, along with specu- lation about the extent of the U.S. role
in the first national election since in-
dependence, make the result espe-
cially unpredictable. What every
friend of Belize hopes for, however,
is that Belizeans should remain free to
make their own choices and to deter-
mine their own future. About that, I
am sure, Professor Jamail and I are in
agreement.
O. Nigel Bolland
Professor of Sociology, Colgate University Hamilton,
NY
Nigel Bolland is the author of The Formation of Colonial Society-Be-
lize, from Conquest to Crown Colony
and of Belize: The New Nation in
Central America, forthcoming on
Westview Press.
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