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HOPKINS VILLAGE, BELIZE -- I know it's unpatriotic as hell, but I just cannot get a hard-on about the '08 American presidential elections. As in I haven't read or heard a word about them in a couple of weeks and could care less whether Hillary showed some emotion, which was the big news when I left the States. The will just isn't there. And it's even more difficult from here in this Central American village, where so many people have real problems. The kind that come with being born under one empire, the British one, and living in the shadow of the present American living in the shadow of its walled fortress of armed privilege. One of those problems is who to sell your vote to and for how much.
"I wan too hunred an feefty dollah for my vote," Marie declares as she chops up bananas to make tapo for dinner. I got feefty for my vote las' time, but some people got two feefty."
"Well you're not gonna get any more than fifty, babe," I tell her. "You gotta be more important to get two fifty for your vote. Did you bring anyone else to the polls?"
"No. Le' dem get dey own money."
"End of story then. If you'd brought along some other voters, you might have been up to two fifty by now"
"Den I no vote jus to spite dem."
Belizean politics works that way. Next Feb. 7 Belizeans will cast their ballots in the national election for candidate of either the liberal People's United Party (PUP) or the conservative United Democratic Party (UDP). Between now and then, the People's United Party will hand out a lot of cash and pay off a lot of voters' outstanding bills. Once every five years, it's payday for the poor, who consider their ballot a net cash asset worth 50-100 Belizean dollars (USD$25-$50) or more. Here in Hopkins, 50 Belizean dollars pays the village utilities' water bill for a year. Then too, voters here often feel that their "vote money" is likely to be all they'll ever get from what they consider an unresponsive government. It's hard to argue against this "one in the hand is worth two in the bush" reasoning if you live their lives. There's certain pragmatism, even ironic fairness in vote bribery here. On the other hand, it's a sorry system in which the actual voters are monetarily corrupted by the politicians. I'm more accustomed to the American system, where voters are corrupted morally and intellectually by media. In either case, free market politics is the handful of corruptive mud thrown into the fishbowl. We cannot see a damned thing but what is closest to out noses, usually put there by a politician.
It ain't the Mayo Clinic, but the needles are clean
Indeed, the Belizean government is fucked up, misled, inefficient and corrupt. All things taken into accord, however, in some respects Belizeans get back more than Americans get in return from their government, considering how much Americans work and pay (15 times more than Belizeans), beginning with healthcare. Belizeans at least have free health clinics in the cities and villages, and dirt-cheap higher education, about USD$15 a credit hour. These systems may not be as glossy as their profiteering American equivalent, especially the public hospitals here. But it ain't China, where hospitals do blood transfusions out of Pepsi bottles (according to American media, anyway) and it's not rural India, where poorer patients often sleep under the beds of more heeled patients. In any case Belize does not have 47 million people with no access to healthcare at all, and a not-so-good hospital beats no hospital. In fact, a not-so-good hospital beats even Johns Hopkins if Johns Hopkins won't let you in because you cannot pay the freight.
Same goes for public schools. The school system is a wreck. But so is the American system. Both graduate kids who can't find their own country on a map, the main difference being that Belizean kids don't demonstrate it on YouTube. As an underdeveloped country, we are also way behind in school shootings and sexual assaults, and have yet to install a metal detector anywhere, so far as I know, even in airports, much less schools. Hope remains of catching up: U.S. Bloods and Crips moved into Belize City last year and have been shooting up the joint.
As for the Belizean trade school and higher educational system, my wife and I are helping a Garifuna boy through one, and I cannot say it is inferior to ours, just less plushly equipped. In fact, I'd say on the average the Belizean kids work much harder once they are in college, simply because it's harder to get there in the first place. Our guy in trade school over in Dangriga Town, James, is making perfect grades, while working uphill against hardships such as an arduous daily bus ride and seldom even having lunch money. In the end, though, American or Belizean, it all depends on the young person's grasp of reality. James grasps that studying computer science has removed him from the village streets, where so many of his peers now languish and probably will for the rest of their lives -- or at least until the gringo resorts hire them as slave wage gardeners and maids. Meanwhile, his mom's $50 vote bribe buys a fair slug of lunch supplies. Once every five years during national elections.
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Joe Bageant is the author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, from Random House Crown, about working class America. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found at: http://www.joebageant.com. Feel free to contact him at: joebageant@joebageant.com. Copyright © 2006 by Joe Bageant.
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