"To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as "the system" is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.
But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding." ---Excerpt from "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M Pirsig.
.............................................................................................................................. "Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Blessed is all of creation Blessed be my beautiful people Blessed be the day of our awakening Blessed is my country Blessed are her patient hills.
"The central theme of my writing has been to demonstrate that allowing institutional purposes to pre-empt our own has been destructive of life, liberty, peace and, ultimately, of civilizations. We have long walked a line between our need for social organization – as a way of satisfying various mutual needs – and becoming so attracted to the systems that serve our interests that we want to make them permanent. We move imperceptibly from associations that we control in pursuit of our ends, to organizations that become ends in themselves, and that control us in order to foster their interests. When this occurs, the informal organization has metamorphosed into an institution. I have developed this process more fully in my book, Calculated Chaos.
"An institution is no longer a convenient tool for our mutual benefit, but an end in itself; its own raison d’être. It has taken on a life of its own, one that differs from, and usurps, our purposes. Because they can only function and survive through using people, institutions require humans to identify their sense of being with them. To this end, government schools have been established, whose primary purpose has always been to condition young minds in the necessity and desirability of the institutional scheme of things. In the words of Ivan Illich, “[s]chool is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” Schools also help us learn to seek meaningful and well-paying careers within institutional hierarchies.
"When we identify ourselves with, and attach ourselves to these institutional entities, we absorb their values; their purposes; their modus operandi. Such practices of attachment can be analogized to a cancer that metastasizes our inner sense of being. In the process, we become dehumanized, for institutions have no souls; no emotions; no spiritual, moral, or intuitive sense. They neither cry, bleed, love, or experience elation. They are machines and, like other machines, operate solely on the basis of mechanics, linear processes, and material ends. When we become institutionalized, we become little more than robots – servo-mechanisms – functioning in response to how we have been programmed to perform.
"The emotional and spiritual dimensions that make us human are of no value to institutions which, in times of political wrong-doing, urge us to suppress such sentiments. Anything that is nonmaterial is immaterial to members of the institutional order. In place of deeply-held philosophic principles, institutions have policies; their sense of “meaning” consists only of perpetuating themselves by maximizing their power and material wealth. To such entities, human beings have value only as fungible resources to exploit on behalf of institutional ends.
"It would be easy to condemn the soldiers who engaged in this slaughter as “evil” or “depraved” or “insane” beings. Such is the manner in which we have long accustomed ourselves to blanking out any awareness of the “dark side” of our own unconscious. In such ways have we isolated ourselves from the Hitlers, Stalins, Mao Tse-Tungs, Pol Pots, and other tyrants, leaving us with the comforting feeling that we shared nothing in common with them. But history informs us – if we will only look – that, once we have identified ourselves with any purpose beyond ourselves, we can become capable of the most vicious forms of wrongdoing. How do otherwise decent men participate in a lynch-mob?
"The state – an institution that is defined in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence – is particularly attractive to men and women whose “dark sides” are closer to the surface than those of more tolerant and peaceful persons. When the state energizes this “dark side” – which it does particularly in wartime, the quality that led Randolph Bourne to identify war as “the health of the state” – otherwise decent men and women can turn themselves into agents of savage brutality. When their murderous acts are conducted on behalf of the state – with which most people identify themselves – their actions acquire an aura of legitimacy that would not have obtained under other circumstances; a distinction that would prevent them from becoming serial killers upon their return home.
"Identifying ourselves with the state, in other words, has a way of turning us into sociopaths. It is not that the state does this to us, but that our willingness to attach ourselves to external entities – and the values upon which they are grounded – separates us from our focused inner sense of being. This applies not just to the pilots of helicopter gun-ships over Baghdad, but to more visible political figures such as Madeleine Albright – who defended her Clinton-era policies that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children – and Janet Reno, who defended her massacre of Branch Davidian men, women, and children at Waco. More recent application of these dynamics are found in George W. Bush’s fascination with starting pre-emptive wars against the rest of the world, and Barack Obama’s apparent willingness to use nuclear weapons in future pre-emptive attacks, as well as to assassinate Americans.
"People who are willing to embrace – or even to tolerate – such sociopathic conduct, have lost all touch with what it means to be human; have lost their souls. No federal bailouts; no increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or decrease in unemployment levels, will overcome this loss. Nor can any “stimulus package” be enacted – with or without bipartisan support – to restore the personal integrity long since lost.
"There was a time, not so many decades ago, when brute force – particularly when engaged in by police and military agents of the state – was at least frowned upon, if not condemned, by decent men and women. The threshold level for such practices continues to get progressively lower. A major contribution to Barry Goldwater’s defeat in the 1964 presidential campaign, was the unfounded fear that he might be willing to use nuclear weapons in the war in Vietnam. Modernly, Bush’s and Obama’s willingness to initiate a nuclear war have raised no major outcries from most Americans, who seem to prefer “hope” (i.e., wishful thinking) over intelligent “understanding” as a way of making the world free, peaceful, and productive.
"When the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, John McCain, can garner nearly 60,000,000 votes with his sociopathic dance of “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” should we be shocked by the butcherous conduct of some American helicopter pilots?" ---Excerpt from the article "How We Lost Our Souls" by Butler Shaffer.
.............................................................................................................................. "Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Blessed is all of creation Blessed be my beautiful people Blessed be the day of our awakening Blessed is my country Blessed are her patient hills.
"In 1851 the Suquamish and other Indian tribes around Washington's Puget Sound were faced with a proposed treaty which in part persuaded them to sell two million acres of land for $150,000. Chief Seattle of the Suquamish tribe was a very spiritual and articulate man. If he gave a speech on that occasion, it might well have sounded like this:
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.
The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man.
We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers.
The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man--all belong to the same family.
So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves.
He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consider your offer to buy our land.
But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.
This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.
If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people.
The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.
We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.
The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on.
He leaves his father's graves behind, and he does not care.
He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care.
His father's grave, and his children's birthright, are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads.
His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.
I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways.
The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.
There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings.
But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand.
The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a midday rain, or scented with the pinion pine.
The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath--the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath.
The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes.
Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.
But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh.
And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.
So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition: The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.
I am a savage and I do not understand any other way.
I've seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train.
I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.
What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit.
For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.
You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin.
Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.
All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny.
We may be brothers after all.
We shall see.
One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover, our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white.
This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.
The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.
But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man.
That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Source
.............................................................................................................................. "Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Blessed is all of creation Blessed be my beautiful people Blessed be the day of our awakening Blessed is my country Blessed are her patient hills.
Recently I was reminded of Don José María Chacón, the last Spanish Governor of Trinidad and Tobago. The trigger for this memory was the severe flooding that has been causing misery in Trinidad. It took me back to Chacón and his manhandling of one watercourse when he began in 1787, the gargantuan feat of changing the course of the St. Ann's River in Port of Spain. The accounts also tell us that Chacón took money out of his own private purse to complete that project! That really impressed me when I first learned of it since we've come to expect that with some public officials the cash flow will go in the opposite direction.
From the little that I was taught in school about the last Spanish Governor of Trinidad and Tobago, I've had no reason to dislike Chacón. I think the man genuinely loved Trinidad and did his best to impose his idea of order on the place. Under the best of circumstances, that could have been problematic especially if as a non-native he had been driven by an unbridled missionary impulse. But there's enough in the history books to suggest that Chacón did go native and that his intentions were sincerely for the betterment of the lives of the inhabitants of the island.
If you've never read The History of Trinidad under the Spanish Government by Pierre Gustave Louis Borde, I promise you that you will not regret getting your hands on this two-volume work. It was republished by Paria Publishing in 1982 and I continue to count it among my favourite history texts. Borde supplies lots of details about Chacón that present the man and the administrator and the spirit which infused his tenure as Governor of Trinidad. I mentioned earlier that he had taken money out of his own pocket to help finance the redirecting of the St. Ann's river. From Borde's account, it seems that his civic mindedness was contagious:
"p.238 - Finally it was the business community of the town which was disinterested enough to impose a tax of 2 1/2 percent on all importations to provide funds for the construction of a prison, a theatre and other public buildings. Each one considered it an honour to do something for the good of the country, and these noble sentiments produced a perfect accord between the administration and those who were administered. The colony was so attached to their Governor that, fearing they might one day see him replaced by someone else, a universal petition was sent to the metropolitan government in Spain at the beginning of 1788 (13th April). It was signed by all members of the Cabildo, the commandants of the quarters, the Alcaldes, and many others, requesting, in the name of the entire community of Trinidad, that the term of office of Don José María Chacón should be prolonged by five years."
p. 235 - In Port of Spain, the merchants were numerous. The place was bursting with French haberdashery, which the launches from the Spanish Main came in great numbers to buy. The exports from the colony consisted of sugar, coffee, cotton, cocoa and indigo. All the industries and professions and trades prospered, and the well-being of the colony was general. One can say without exaggeration, that the period of the first eight years of the government of Don José María Chacón was the Golden Age of Trinidad."
Source: The History of Trinidad under the Spanish Government by Pierre Gustave Louis Borde, Part Two
As Chacón kept coming to mind, I began to wonder about the meaning of the word Chacón and after searching Google, I discovered to my amusement that it means "gecko"- what some of us might have referred to as a teck-a-teck.
Reading this, I had to smile. The eminent Don José María Chacón, The Chevalier de Calatrava, Sanchez de Sotomayor, Rodriguez de Rivera, Infante de Lara y Castro, under the weight of the high expectations of the Spanish empire for their colony of Trinidad, had been teetering all this time on the back of a tiny reptile! This illustrious man, who also carried the official titles of Captain General and Governor of the Island, Sub-Inspector of the Troops in his garrison, Judge Conservator and Royal Vice Patron of Mails and Postages, could also have been known as "The Lizard".
I began to really think about "lizards" after that revelation. Everyone has a lizard. Some people hide theirs and others wear them proudly on their sleeves. The personalities of some lizards are so distinctive that people acknowledge them and they become the inspirations for the nicknames which are given to their owners. There is a lizard under every grand idea, every grand scheme and it can be the strongest or the weakest link in its fulfillment. Present at every event is a lizard, and it's appearance can either empty a room or prove to be the life of the party.
On matters of sovereignty though, Chacón's lizard had the final roar. In 1797 he advised his namesake to surrender the island of Trinidad to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby, all this without a squeak. We must also remember that this was also accomplished without any human blood being spilled. Empires hate the sovereignty of other states but Chacón was not about to take a stand to defend Spanish sovereignty on the backs of the inhabitants of the colony.
"p. 283 - Thus, by eight o'clock in the evening, all the Spanish forces found themselves completely encircled, General Abercromby having taken up these positions was now certain that his opponents could not escape him, and he therefore sent an officer to the Governor under a flag of truce, to deliver the following message:
p. 284 - Tell the Governor [Chacón] that I regret to see that he has no hope whatever of obtaining what he desires. The superiority of the forces under my command has made me master of this town, and has enabled me to encircle both the land and sea forces in such a manner that, by taking possession of the heights they have been cut off from all communication and all help; that with such unequal forces as he has at his disposal there is no possibility of making any resistance. Rather than spilling blood uselessly, I request that he should appoint a place where we can confer together and where I can offer him the most honourable capitulation which it is possible to give to good and faithful soldiers who otherwise would be uselessly sacrificed. ...
After two long days of anxiety, Governor Chacon finally succeeded in getting what he wanted all the time, that is , the capitulation of the island without any fighting. He called together a council of war consisting of the Lieutenant Governor and the Officers commanding the various corps, so that they could discuss the proposal of the English general. All of them, taking into consideration the desperate position of their affairs, necessarily decided to agree to capitulation. After that, an interview took place between the two heads, at which it was agreed to
p. 285 - suspend all armed action immediately and a conference was arranged for eight o'clock the next morning the 18th, to discuss the terms of capitulation. At the appointed hour the next day, General Abercromby, Admiral Harvey and Governor Chacon met in one of the houses in the town, and the following fifteen articles of Capitulation were recorded and signed by them..." Source: The History of Trinidad under the Spanish Government by Pierre Gustave Louis Borde, Part Two
It is my belief that Chacón's lizard loved humanity [or feared the French] even more than Spanish sovereignty or the British empire. He turned his back on Spain and signed us over to the British. Some of us would not have been here today if he had made another choice, just like things would have gone very differently if the armed forces between 10:30 and 11:00 on the night of Friday 27 July, 1990, had actually obeyed A.N.R. Robinson's spirited command: "Attack with full force!"
Perhaps our armed forces' reluctant lizard was a direct descendant of Chacón's?
With such weighty subjects, it is my curse [or my lizard] to be constantly distracted.
...............................................................................................................................
"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.
This is a story, first of all, about two Belizean children who went missing in Punta Gorda, Belize on August 30, 2010. They remain the most important characters in this story but a series of events surrounding their disappearance raises other persistent problems which need to be addressed by Belize and other Caribbean countries.
Apparently Central Americans tend not to take things lightly when their children disappear, and will move [or burn] heaven and earth in their quest for answers. To provide some background on this hyper-sensitivity:
Last year, the US Department of State provided the following travel information:
SAFETY AND SECURITY: ...Virulent rumors of child stealing and murder for organ harvesting continue to be reported in several different areas of Guatemala frequented by American tourists. Frustration over crime and a lack of appropriate judicial remedies have led to violent incidents of vigilantism. In 2007, numerous Guatemalan citizens were lynched for suspicion of child stealing, and three local women who had allegedly facilitated foreign adoptions were attacked by a mob that accused them of kidnapping and killing a girl whose mutilated remains were found near Camotan, Chiquimula (near the Honduran border on the main road leading to the Copan Mayan ruins). In reaction to unconfirmed reports of babies being kidnapped in the El Golfete area of the Rio Dulce (near Livingston, Izabal), residents of small villages in the area remain mobilized and suspicious of all outsiders, including foreigners. Rumors of foreigners stealing Guatemalan children have also surfaced in the area surrounding the Tajumulco Volcano in the Department of San Marcos.
Also in 2007, two foreigners (including an American citizen) and a Guatemalan kayaking on a river near Chicaman, Quiche were accused of stealing children and seized by a 500-person mob (estimated). Although threatened, the individuals were not physically attacked. The incident occurred after the group had been talking and joking with a local boy on the river bank. In Sayaxche, Petén, rumors escalated into mob action against a Guatemalan couple believed to be involved in child stealing. The husband was beaten and burned to death, and the wife threatened, but was eventually turned over to the police. A local American resident was also seized and threatened with death when he tried to intervene with the mob. In the same area, a family of American tourists, along with several Guatemalan motorists, was held overnight at a road blockade for possible use as human shields. Mobs have also targeted police, resulting in delayed or ineffective responses by law enforcement.
The U.S. Embassy has received reports, as recently as March 2009, of restless villagers in the Petén who are suspicious of anyone they believe to be involved in baby kidnapping and organ harvesting.
The following recommendations will help residents and visitors alike to increase their safety:
...Avoid close contact with children, including taking photographs, especially in rural areas. Such contact can be viewed with deep alarm and may provoke panic and violence."
THE PRIMARY STORY
STILL MISSING: Benjamin Rash [11] and his sister, Onelia Rash [9] Descriptions: Benjamin Rash is about 5ft in height, weighs about 65 lbs, slim built, narrow face, Brown complexion and was last seen wearing a blue T. Shirt with red sleeves, black shorts and a pair of green slippers. Onelia Rash is about 3 ft 6 inches in height, weighs about 55 lbs, broad face, straight black shoulder length hair, brown complexion. When she was last seen she was wearing a white and red blouse, black skirt, and was barefooted. Both children are of Maya Descent, and were last seen by their uncle Domingo Rash at Hope Ville area in Punta Gorda.”
TIMELINE
Monday 30 August, 2010 Farmer, Pedro Rash of San Marcos village in the Toledo district of southern Belize awaited the return home of his two children, Benjamin and Onelia Rash from Punta Gorda Town where they had gone on an errand to sell craboo and limes.
The last reported sighting of the siblings was at 3:48 p.m. in the village of Cattle Landing some three and a half miles outside of Punta Gorda Town.
Tuesday 31 August, 2010 The Belize police reported the following: “The whereabouts of two minors from San Marcos Village, Toledo is unknown at this time and Police are seeking the public’s assistance in locating them. On the 31/8/10 Pedro Rash, a 38 year old farmer of San Marcos Village Toledo District, reported that at about 6:30am on the 30/8/10, he and his two children; Benjamin Rash, 11 yrs and Onelia Rash, 9 yrs both students of San Marcos Village; left towards the San Marcos Junction along with his father. On the way they were met by their uncle Domingo Rash where their father left them in his uncle's care as he was heading towards Punta Gorda Town. However, up to the time of making the report none of the children have arrived home as yet. Thursday 2 September, 2010 Four males with machetes appeared at the gate of the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary (ACES) facility to ask one of the owners, Vince Rose if he knew anything about a missing child. After he told them that he didn’t, the group left, and Rose departed for Ambergris Caye, an island in the north part of the country, where the Belize Forest Department had asked him and his wife Chenot-Rose to capture three “problematic” crocodiles.
Family members told police that an oracle, psychic or “bush doctor” had informed them that Rose and Chenot-Rose were holding the children against their will at ACES. According to reports which have not been substantiated, the “witchdoctor” told them that the children were on the premises of ACES, but they were “underground.” The “witchdoctor” planned to find the children by divining their location using items of clothing belonging to them and she would then have the police accompany her to that exact location. According to Pedro Rash, the psychic had met Senior superintendent Robert Mariano and Corporal Avila at the police station and they had been informed that she was receiving the children's clothing although no record of the meeting was taken.
Saturday 4 September, 2010 The first meeting between Belizean and Guatemelan police officers was held to co-ordinate search efforts for the missing children on both sides of the border. Since then the Guatemalan police have been actively involved.
Sunday 5 September 2010 High emotions started to boil over from early Sunday morning when armed villagers—approximately 100 of them—showed up outside the Punta Gorda Police Station demanding that police go and search the American couple’s home in the Water Hole Area, approximately 11 miles outside Punta Gorda Town. Villagers reported that the police had told them that they could not search the facility because they didn’t have a signed search warrant. It has been reported that the police had been notified that there was a risk that villagers would burn the ACES facility but they were unable to do anything because they apparently feared two barking dogs at ACES.
While the police were searching the southern parts of Toledo for the children, the frustrated villagers banded together to search on their own, because they felt that the police weren't doing a thorough job. Since the police would not search the Roses’ premises, which included ACES, the villagers decided to storm the property at about 10:30 a.m. on that day.
The large group of villagers with machetes and rifles boarded a bus and went to ACES. The children’s father Pedro Rash looked in through the windows and believed he saw limes like the ones his son and daughter had been selling.
Later, Vince Rose, still on Ambergris Caye, started receiving calls including from the police to alert him to the fact that ACES was ablaze.
Police disarmed the villagers, confiscated the bus, detained them until noon, then released them.
Monday 6 September, 2010 Vince Rose returned to the ACES property to assess the damage, estimated at $1 million, and to speak with police.
Reportedly one of the sanctuary’s 17 resident crocodiles was shot and another hacked with machetes.
Punta Gorda Police arrested and charged the psychic, Delfina Alvarez [42], housewife of Water Supply Area, Punta Gorda Town for the offense of pretending to tell fortune.
The Mayan villagers from San Marcos continued to gather in front of the Punta Gorda Police Station to show support for the missing children and to protest the police’s “lack of activity” to conduct proper searches for the children and the dragging of feet to issue a proper search warrant to search ACES.
San Marcos cancelled school for a week.
Tuesday 7 September, 2010 The Belize Press Office released a report stating that they had arrested and charged Delfina Alvarez. She pleaded not guilty to the charge and bail was offered in the sum of $1500.00Bcy. She is to reappear in Punta Gorda Magistrate Court on October 12, 2010." Some suggest that she may have been wrongly accused.
Monday 13 September, 2010 Sr. Supt. Robert Mariano, O.C. Toledo Police Formation of Belize, had a meeting with the Comicionado de Santa Cruz, Guatemala, at the Jalacte Village police station. Present at the time in the meeting was Major Requena from the Belizean Defence Force and Mr. Rash, the father of the children. The Guatemalan authorities reported that they had placed the missing persons posters on every bus and taxi in the area and that they continue to ask people questions about the missing children.
Tuesday 14 September, 2010 The Belizean police went all the way into the Dolores area, which is also a Guatemalan border area, to conduct their investigations. Tuesday 12 October, 2010 Forty three days after their disappearance, a reward was offered for information that could lead investigators to the children. The reward is in the amount of twelve thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars and is reportedly being offered by an anonymous group of donors to anyone who may have crucial information that will lead to the safe return of 11-year-old Benjamin Rash and nine-year-old Onelia Rash. Collection of Articles On The Disappearance of the children, Benjamin and Onelia Rash and The Fallout
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chaos In Punta Gorda. 7 News Belize | September 6, 2010
Tonight two children, a 9 year old boy and an 11 year old girl from San Marcos Villagers are missing. The worst is feared because they have been missing for over a week. And their disappearance has caused an uproar in Punta Gorda Town.
Villagers from San Marcos feel the police have been casually ignoring them - and that bitterness culminated yesterday when a home was burnt down.
But tensions started to boil over from early Sunday morning when armed villagers - about 100 of them - showed up outside the PG police station demanding that police go and search an American couple's home in the Water Hole Area. Police didn't accede to the demands and shortly after the home was on Fire. We got this video from our friends at PGTV:….
Jules Vasquez, Reporting This is Vincent Rose's home in the water Hole Area outside of Punta Gorda at about 10:30 yesterday morning. The house was set on fire by an angry mob who believe that Rose was somehow responsible for these two missing children, Benjamin 9 and Onelia Rash 11 - who disappeared 17 days earlier. This is information the villagers got from an oracle and passed unto police:
Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer "September 2nd, I am going back a little, police received a report that the owner Vince Rose of Croc Land in Toledo - they believed that these children were being held there against their will. Police conducted searches on the premises and it was fruitless. The reason I am mentioning that is because...."
Jules Vasquez "They reached that conclusion based on what information?"
Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer "Well the family claims that they consulted an oracle and, Jules, when your children are missing, whatever lead given to us we will follow."
But they followed it and nothing was found at Rose's home or his adjoining property, the American crocodile education sanctuary.
But the villagers were fixed on the notion that Rose somehow knew about the missing children. So a mob went to his home in the water Hole Area outside of PG and burnt it down. Rose was in San Pedro when it happened Vince Rose, Owner of house "I am still at a shock and all I've done since I've heard of this is me and my wife crying. It's just unacceptable that a pre-meditated group of savages - and they are not human beings, they are savages - they should not even be out on the streets; they should all be in prison because they are not human beings. It was pre-meditated and they are savages and I am going back to see if any of the animals are alive or dead. That's unacceptable. Belizeans should be ashamed of themselves to allow people to live in their country that are savages." Jules Vasquez "For the avoidance of doubt, do you have any idea, do you know anything about these kids?" Vince Rose, Owner of house "I never knew anything about the kids missing until Thursday, the day I left to come to this island to go and catch crocs. 4 boys showed up at my front gate with machetes and asked if I heard anything about a missing child. I said no. I don't know anything about it; I didn't heard anything about it and at that time they did not ask me 'Vince can we just walk around and search' sure I would have let you - come on in and I'll give you a tour of the whole place. No they didn't ask me nothing, they went on their way. I thought nothing of it, got on a plane, came here, caught 3 crocodiles, tied them up and put them at Tamara Sniffin's place, got the phone call from the police department that I had no more ACES."
After the fire, police intercepted the mob, took control of their bus and their arms which included machetes and rifles and detained the still enraged group at the PG station. They feel that police have ignored them because they are friendly to Rose: Angry villager "From Monday we make a report. No police, no BDF come and assist us in the San Marcos Village. No BDF or police came, something is wrong somewhere." Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer "Like you rightfully mention they were highly armed but for some miraculous reason these persons were disarmed and contained. Yes, additional personnel and BDF had to be brought in but at the end of the day these persons were escorted to the Punta Gorda police Station where the disarming took place."
Disarmed and detained - after the fact - when the police should have known where they were heading.
Jules Vasquez "Did the police fail to protect property? I was all the way in Belize City and I knew that they are going from the police station to burn down the man house. No oracle told me."
Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer "In all fairness to the police department. That's Mr. Rose's private property, Mr. Rose had a wooden building on his property that was properly secured by burglar bars. You are saying that the rumors were going around that they were going to burn that building. The police did everything in their power to secure that building, but fire, we cannot prevent fire."
Jules Vasquez "But you can prevent people from going to set a fire." Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer "Jules, if you are going to set a fire; will you go into the front entrance to that property?"
The fact is though that the police were neither at the front or the back - they came after and now Vincent Rose says he only has the clothes on his back:
Vince Rose, Owner of house "My whole life that I built as a little boy is gone. I didn't just move here with a couple of bags, my whole life that I had was there and I know material things but they have meaning to me and my wife besides all the hard work we did. So Punta Gorda lost out because that sanctuary is gone; so is the education; so is any help. This is going to go on every news station I can ever get to internationally. I guess I have to go back like when I was 18 years and go find a job and a place to live and go buy some underwear and maybe some shampoo and start all over because I got nothing."
The men were detained until around noon yesterday and then released without charge. Police say a special team is investigating.
The villagers went back to the police station this afternoon and started a picket which lasted three hours. San Marcos has cancelled school for a week.
There were 17 crocodiles housed at ACE which is next to the house that was on fire. None of them escaped but reports are that one was shot and one was hacked with a machete.
The physical damage to the structure is estimated at one million dollars - it was not insured. And having seen the damage Rose said he plans to move the crocodiles to San Pedro - where he will set up a mini sanctuary if he can find financing.. But even as the uproar on all sides increases - the most worrying aspect of the case is that the children are still missing. Police say they were selling fruits for their family when they went missing on Monday August 30th: Fitzroy Yearwood, Police Press Officer "The father, a farmer of San Marcos Village in Toledo, visited the Punta Gorda Police Station on Monday August 30th where he reported that his 2 children was sent to Punta Gorda Town to sell lime and craboo and they have not return home since. Our investigation led us to the southern highway somewhere in Cattle Landing Village where the children were last seen around 3:45 pm where it is believe that they were trying to catch a ride to go back home to San Marcos Village. On Friday September 3rd, 50 police recruits were sent to this area along with special constables from Toledo, Toledo police personnel and the search intensified because from the 30th until the 3rd and we haven't found them. We believe that the need to intensify this search was there."
Police say that with those recruits, they have over 100 persons looking for kids - but so far they have not been found and there are no leads.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crocodile Sanctuary Burned In Toledo Allegedly By ‘Maya Mob’ Incited By Local Fortuneteller After Disappearance Of Two Children. By Lan Sluder BELIZE FIRST | 7 September, 2010
The American Crocodile Education Sanctuary (ACES) facility near Punta Gorda, operated as a volunteer reptile rescue and rehab center by a young American couple, Vince Rose and wife Cherie Renee Chenot-Rose, was burned to the ground Sunday, September 5. From news reports, a group of about 100 villagers from San Marcos village, armed with rifles and machetes, came to the ACES property on Water Hole Road in the Forest Home area when the couple was away, looking for two missing children they believed were at the ACES facility. It is unclear whether there was a caretaker at the property when the villagers arrived.
The villagers reportedly shot some of the crocodiles and the property was set ablaze, burning down the owners’ home, laboratory and two guest cabanas. The buildings, reportedly valued at BZ$1 million, were totally destroyed. They were not insured.
Two young Maya children, Benjamin and Onelia Rash, 9 and 11, from San Marcos village, had gone missing earlier in the week, after being in Punta Gorda selling craboo and limes. A local fortuneteller, oracle or “psychic” allegedly had claimed that the missing children had been fed to the crocodiles at ACES. Police had been to the crocodile facility but had found nothing linking it to the children’s disappearance.
Cherie Chenot-Rose posted this to her Facebook page on September 5: “ACES no longer exists. While Vince and I were on Ambergris Caye rescuing three problematic crocodiles for the Belize Forest Department, two children went missing from a village near Punta Gorda. The local Maya villagers believed that Vince and I fed the missing children to the crocs. We were not even there, as I stated, but were on Ambergris Caye. As a lynch mob, the villagers burnt ACES / American Crocodile Education Sanctuary to the ground. The status of the crocodiles is unknown because the fire is so hot the Belize Defense Forces cannot get to the property. No one has been arrested. Vince and Cherie are now homeless and do not have anything to [our] name. Everything was lost. Our lives have been threatened if we return to Punta Gorda. We do not even know if our dogs survived.”
Since the incident, the media, online forums and the jungle telegraph have been alive with charges back and forth. From one perspective it has been viewed as a version of the Frankenstein story, with villagers marching on the doctor's house with pitchforks. From another perspective it has been viewed as the unfortunate legacy of decades and centuries of racism and ill treatment of the indigenous people of the region. And from another perspective it has been treated as gringos not fitting in with the local culture. There are other views as well, ranging from the burning being simply an accident caused by the heat wave to the welfare of dangerous reptiles being put ahead of the welfare of children.
In response to a television reporter’s question soon after the fire, Vince Rose said: “It's just unacceptable that a pre-meditated group of savages - and they are not human beings, they are savages - they should not even be out on the streets. They should all be in prison because they are not human beings.”
Police and the Punta Gorda Fire Service are investigating the fire as possible arson. Vince Rose has said publicly he plans to bring legal action against individuals involved for attempted murder, arson and trespassing. An article in the San Pedro Sun newspaper claims that some of the same people in the ACES mob allegedly may have been involved in burnings of other homes in Toledo.
The two children who went missing August 30 near Punta Gorda have so far not been found, despite a massive hunt by as many as 100 Belize police in Toledo and Stann Creek districts. On August 31, the Belize police reported the following: “The whereabouts of two minors from San Marcos Village, Toledo is unknown at this time and Police are seeking the public’s assistance in locating them. On the 31/8/10 Pedro Rash, a 38 year old farmer of San Marcos Village Toledo District, reported that at about 6:30am on the 30/8/10, he and his two children; Benjamin Rash, 11 yrs and Onelia Rash, 9 yrs both students of San Marcos Village; left towards the San Marcos Junction along with his father. On the way they were met by their uncle Domingo Rash where their father left them in his uncle care as he was heading towards Punta Gorda Town. However, up to the time of making the report none of the children have arrived home as yet. The description of the children are as follows: Benjamin is about 5ft in height, weighs about 65 lbs, slim built, narrow face, Brown complexion and was last seen wearing a blue T. Shirt with red sleeve and a black short pants with a pair of green slippers while his sister; Onelia Rash is about 3 ft 6 inches in height, weighs about 55 lbs, broad face, straight black shoulder length hair, brown complexion and was last seen wearing a white and red blouse, black skirt, and had no slippers. Both children are of Maya Descent, and were last seen by their uncle Domingo Rash at Hope Ville area in Punta Gorda.”
In Guatemala, attacks by groups of Maya on foreigners and local people who are believed to be responsible for kidnapping children or stealing them for adoption or for harvesting organs long have been fairly common. In one incident in 2007, a mob of 500 near Chicaman, Quiche, seized two foreigners including one American, along with a local person, who they believed to be involved in child abductions, but later released them without harm. Also in 2007, in Sayaxche, Pet�n, rumors escalated into mob action against a Guatemalan couple believed to be involved in child stealing. The husband was beaten and burned to death, and the wife threatened but released. The U.S. State Department warns travelers in rural areas of Guatemala to avoid close contact with local children and not to photograph them without permission.
ACES was located on 36 acres on the Rio Grande River. Rose and Chenot-Rose came to Belize about six years ago and had built the facility themselves from scratch. The not-for-profit organization was involved in researching and protecting the estimated 10,000 to 20,000 wild American Saltwater Crocodiles still remaining worldwide. ACES helped fund the work by offering two eco-tourism cabanhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifas, powered by solar and wind. The organization’s future now is unclear, though there has been discussion of it relocating to Ambergris Caye. (September 6, 2010; updated September 7, 2010)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Massive search for missing Rash children. By Isani Cayetano News 5 Belize | Sep 7, 2010
A search continues for two missing siblings from the village of San Marcos in the Toledo District. As we told you last Thursday, they have been missing since August thirtieth when they were selling craboo and lemons near Cattle Landing. Anxiety reached boiling point among family and the community over their disappearance this past Sunday over speculation that the kids had been abducted by the owners of the American Crocodile Educational Sanctuary. The owners were on Ambergris Caye reportedly rescuing crocodiles when the sanctuary was set ablaze by the villagers. A News Five team has been following this after story since Saturday and has dramatic coverage beginning with the search on Saturday.
Residents of the peaceful Mayan community of San Marcos are tonight searching desperately for two children who went missing a week ago. The circumstance surrounding the mysterious disappearance of siblings Oneila and Benjamin Rash is shrouded in superstition but the Belize Police Department, through its Toledo formation, has wasted no time in mobilizing its force to conduct an intensive search of the district. On Monday last the duo, accompanied by their father, set out on foot to a bus stop situated at the entrance of the village. The children, ages nine and eleven, were en route to Punta Gorda Town that morning to sell fruits they had picked from trees in their yard. Oneila and Benjamin were last seen by their father, Pedro Rash, at the junction of the Southern Highway awaiting a bus.
Pedro Rash, Father of Missing Children “The last time I saw them was Monday morning at six-thirty. I gone along with them by the junction. I left them and then I continue going. From there they catch the bus noh going to Hopeville.”
At that point the children were met by their uncle Domingo who was also heading to work in the direction of town. Domingo Rash, Uncle of Missing Children “When I reach the junction of San Marcos Village we all boarded the Cox bus from San Antonio together. We went ahead, we’re on our way, while reaching Cattle Landing the two children un-board the bus [near] the area where the mechanic man has piled the vehicles there. They had un-board the bus just about five meters from that area. I had get off of the bus also. I see when those pikney, those two children, went and they made their way to sell what they have to sell.”
From there Oneila and her older brother Benjamin started their task for the day. They worked the area together, on foot, selling lime and craboo.
Domingo Rash “At around nine-thirty to ten, I was doing a work right by wah cement building. I was dressing underneath the window, glover windows and I see the two children pass by with their two buckets. I see Benjamin leading the way first then the little girl with the lee bucket and I never wondered if they will never return back again.”
The reality later that night was that they did not return home. That was when Pedro alerted Punta Gorda Police that his children, who were only two days shy of beginning a new school year at San Marcos R.C. School, were missing.
Pedro Rash “I gone deh like ‘bout nine-thirty, em, that was Monday evening noh. 9:30 or so and I gone report it one time and ker dehn picture and reported it one time to the police so that police could em help me noh. But what they told me it haftu to be like twenty-four hours noh, let’s say two days. Then after that third, four days then they will call [them] missing persons noh. So police like I understand like dehn give us like one day or two days fu see if they reach home noh.”
And when they didn’t reach home by Wednesday evening a massive campaign was launched by the Toledo police formation to comb the entire district for them.
Isani Cayetano “The last reported sighting of siblings Benjamin and Oneila Rash was here in the village of Cattle Landing some three and a half miles outside of Punta Gorda Town. That was Monday August 31st at 3:48 p.m. Since then no one has seen or heard from the missing children despite numerous attempts by family and friends including the Punta Gorda police formation to locate them.”
According to Senior Superintendent Robert Mariano despite not having any solid leads the department has been trying its best to locate them and is stopping at nothing until the children are found and safely returned to their family.
Robert Mariano, Officer Commanding Toledo Police Formation “We have put the particulars of these children over the internet. We have also sent it to Interpol. We have also sent their particulars to all the formations in this country and the police here in the district have continued a search for these children. We have checkpoints on the highway, as you know. The police officers they have the photographs of these children and every vehicle that has come in into Punta Gorda Town and leaving the district is shown these photograph, photographs, and asked if they have seen these children.”
Notwithstanding the efforts of some eighty officers deployed along the Southern Highway, up until Sunday the search for the missing children was fruitless. Of the many cars and buses that have been stopped and thoroughly checked there has been no trace of Benjamin or his sister. Residents of San Marcos believe they were both abducted and used to feed crocodiles at a nearby sanctuary. The owner of the property has been accused of that monstrosity.
Marcos Choc, Resident, San Marcos Village “Well to me he’s doing this business like, maybe he’s taking kids like just to feed the alligators you know. That’s the only best suggestion that I can give you know. Or some people say they just take their parts for the children and just sell it you know.”
Although police cannot divulge too much information or prove that theory they have not ruled out that possibility and as such are awaiting the return of the crocodile breeder to Punta Gorda Town for questioning. Meanwhile the mother of the missing children, Louisa Rash who speaks only K‘ekchi, is making a desperate plea for their safe return.
Louisa Rash, Mother of Missing Children “I want them to come back home because I’m not feeling good without them. If anybody saw them or where they are they could please call the police and send them back home.”
Punta Gorda police have visited all the communities within the Toledo District and have gone as far as Santa Cruz Village in Guatemala to notify residents and law enforcement authorities of the mysterious disappearance of Oneila and Benjamin Rash.
The police department is being assisted tremendously by Senator Pulcheria Teul who, in her capacity as the executive director of the Toledo Maya Women’s Council, has offered her vehicle and other resources to the search for Oneila and Benjamin Rash. We’ll have more on this developing story, including an interview with Vincent Rose later on in the newscast. One reader's comment on this article:
misslady says: September 14, 2010 at 7:51 am
Voice for my people says: these kids have RIGHTS
Sorry dahlin, but lotta people think they don’t and lotta people think the Mayans dare oppose a croc farm in their vicinity. Lotta people think only the foreigners have rights. Independence? Cho, we traded one massa for another and this new massa say we savages and have no right to be superstitious and should be ashamed of the Mayan people and listen to this: that they were doing us a huge, huge favor by opening a croc farm in the Mayan’s backyard. This new massa say all rights belong to them. We mi tink the Brits were bad….they never insulted our culture like this tho.
At the top of the newscast, we told you that the property of Vincent Rose, a U.S. crocodile expert who has been running a sanctuary a few miles outside of Punta Gorda Town, was on Sunday completely destroyed by fire. News Five’s Isani Cayetano was back in Punta Gorda today and has more on this developing story.
A busload of residents from San Marcos Village visited the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary, ACES, on Sunday to conduct a search for Onelia and Benjamin Rash. The property, according to information given by a local fortune teller, was reportedly where the siblings were being held hostage. The owner who is accused of abducting the children to feed crocodiles was in San Pedro when he received news that ACES was on fire. Rose says his life has been destroyed simply based on superstition.
Vincent Rose, Owner, ACES “I guess it came from a psychic! So let’s go with facts. Who we are what we do with a spotless record; now go with what a psychic is saying. My whole life is ruined and so is some of Toledo’s tourism now. The Maya community should be ashamed of itself. They burned the wrong man’s house down and destroyed a future entity for their own Toledo District.”
Isani Cayetano “A mob of villagers in search of Oneila and Benjamin Rash descended upon the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary on Sunday morning—rifles and machetes in hand—where they proceeded to torch the property.”
According to Kenyatta Garnett of the Punta Gorda Fire Service an investigation into the arson has been launched and the department has joined forces with Punta Gorda police to ascertain its cause. Kenyatta Garnett, O.C. Punta Gorda Fire Station “We’re definitely treating it as a case of arson based on the finding and the layout of the fire scene at this time.” Isani Cayetano “What is the preliminary investigation looking like at this point?”
Kenyatta Garnett “Right now it’s coming around. We are doing our best to find out exactly what caused the fire and how the fire really started and thing at this time.”
The crocodile sanctuary was a million dollar investment that was set up to protect humans against them. Rose has indicated that he will be taking full legal action against the Mayan Community.
Isani Cayetano “Do you plan on taking any legal recourse against anyone who may be found culpable of committing the crime of arson on your property?”
Vincent Rose “Arson, attempted murder, trespassing, all the above, yes I will be taking very strong measures.”
Despite burning down the property Oneila and Benjamin Rash remain missing while the Mayan community today picketed the Punta Gorda Police Station. The children’s father, Pedro Rash, says their search over weekend was futile.
Pedro Rash, Father of Missing Children “So far now, police and some of my villagers deh around and investigate more and look for the two child and the person we are waiting for I understand he is here now.”
Isani Cayetano “There has been some controversy in the information that you were said to have gotten from a bush doctor regarding the whereabouts of your children. Could you speak to us a bit about that?
Pedro Rash “Whether it could be so or not, I have evidence there by myself because we went there with the police along and one of my village members see what is there and that is the lime. I get some few lime there and that is what we see inside the house. That’s why we expect the police to get into the house or call that person and come in.”
That person was Vincent Rose. He flew down to Punta Gorda today where he gave a statement and accompanied police to the premises to complete their investigation.
After an “oracle” told a man that the American couple who ran a Belize crocodile sanctuary had kidnapped his two missing children to feed them to the animals, an “angry mob” of fellow villagers burned down the sanctuary buildings on Sunday and killed at least two crocodiles, according to a variety of reports.
Animal Policy Examiner (APE) received an initial email on Monday regarding the incident from Cherie Chenot-Rose, biologist and cofounder of ACES American Crocodile Sanctuary in Punta Gorda, Belize with husband Vince Rose. APE’s subsequent phone calls to Punta Gorda-area residents, posts by Chenot-Rose on Facebook, and reports on Belizean television (7 News and News 5) have yielded the following information.
August 30, 2010 Farmer Pedro Rash of San Marcos village in the Toledo district of southern Belize reported to police that he had sent his 11-year-old daughter Oneila Rash and 9-year-old son Benjamin Rash into Punta Gorda Town to sell limes, but that they had not returned home.
Police tracked leads that led them to a main highway where the children had been spotted possibly trying to catch a ride, but searches of that area and others were fruitless. September 2, 2010 Four males with machetes appeared at the ACES gate to ask Rose if he knew anything about a missing child. After he told them that he didn’t, the group left, and Rose departed for Ambergris Caye, an island in the north part of the country, where the Belize Forest Department had asked him and his wife Chenot-Rose to capture three “problematic” crocodiles.
Family members told police that an oracle or “bush doctor” had informed them that Rose and Chenot-Rose were holding the children against their will at ACES. Police searched the premises and found no evidence of the children.
September 5, 2010 After gathering at the police station to demand further searches because of what they perceived to be inactivity on the part of authorities to conduct a large-scale search for the missing Maya children, a search party organised by relatives and villagers, some armed with machetes and rifles, boarded a bus and went to ACES. The children’s father Pedro Rash looked in through the windows and believed he saw limes like the ones his son and daughter had been selling.
Rose, still on Ambergris Caye, received a call from police that ACES had been destroyed by fire.
Police disarmed the villagers, confiscated the bus, detained them until noon, then released them.
September 6, 2010 Rose returned to the ACES property to assess the damage, estimated at $1 million, and to speak with police.
Reportedly one of the sanctuary’s 17 resident crocodiles was shot and another hacked with machetes.
Police are investigating the attack as suspected arson. Rose’s statements strongly condemn the villagers.
A friend of Rose and Chenot-Rose told Animal Policy Examiner that the couple are in shock, and now have nothing but the belongings they took with them to Ambergris Caye.
Onelia and Benjamin Rash remain missing. Police continue the search.
Donations requested
The owners of a Punta Gorda area hotel have issued this entreaty on behalf of Rose and Chenot-Rose:
“Following the arson attack on ACES which has completely demolished their home and facilities an account has been set up at Belize Bank to help provide financial support for Vince and Cherie during this period of crisis for them."
Editorial note While in Belize reporting on eco- and animal issues in February, Animal Policy Examiner visited ACES. Interviewing Chenot-Rose, an enthusiastic expert on American crocodiles, and seeing the crocs themselves was one of the high points of the trip.
It is deeply distressing to hear of the losses of the sanctuary, the crocodiles, and the unknown fates of the missing children.
The search for two children from the Belize Mayan community at San Marcos in the Toledo District of Belize entered its eight day without any signs of hope amidst a controversy surrounding allegations the kids may have disappeared near a crocodile sanctuary and nursery run by two U.S.A. nationals Vince and Cherie Rose. A search party organised by relatives and villagers visited the crocodile farm on September 5 after inactivity on the part of authorities to conduct a large-scale search for the missing Maya children Benjamin and Onelia Rash, 9 and 11.
The indigenous Maya of Belize comprise about 12 per cent of the population and are regarded as an oppressed minority. U.S. oil companies have been encroaching on native lands for decades and the Government of Belize has been defying a Belize Supreme Court ruling promulgating the rights of the Maya to their ancestral lands.
The Croc facility has since mysteriously been destroyed by fire. Allegations are that the old wood buildings were engulfed in bush fires common in the area, Other theories suggest nearby villagers, fearing for their life and the safety of their children, may have had a hand in the destruction of the farm.
The crocodile facility owners and their supporters have taken to indicting the indigenous Maya of Belize in Toledo for for the destruction of their farm, which also housed a resort. The Rose couple have been agitating with U.S. media and foreign travel writers to fan the flames of discontent against Belize in this incident.
The incident has been covered by the U.S. cable station CNN which did not include the most colorful and offensive quote of Mr. Rose who in a televised interview with Channel 7 described Belizeans in general and the Maya nation of Belize in particular as : “..savages – and they are not human beings, they are savages – they should not even be out on the streets. They should all be in prison because they are not human beings.”
The Rose couple and their supporters are now soliciting one million dollars in compensation for their ill-fated venture and are inviting the public to send them money. Locals allege that the claim is overinflated.
Since the incident, the Belizean authorities have belatedly devoted more resources to try and find the missing children. Belizeans believe the children may have been victims of the crocodiles at the sprawling crocodile facility and resort in southern Belize, but hope is still there that they may be found alive and well.
To date the hoopla surrounding this incident has been driven primarily by the Rose couple and their supporters who have organised a strategic campaign using the media and social networks such as Facebook to spread their version of the events. The indigenous Maya who do not have these resources have nevertheless announced that the Toledo Alcaldes association will be holding a public meeting in Punta Gorda town on Wednesday to give their version of what happened on Sunday.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS * A psychic told Maya villagers the Americans were connected to the disappearance of 2 children * The 36-acre sanctuary protected two species of endangered crocodiles * No arrests have been made in the arson, national police said Tuesday * Americans Cherie and Vince Rose vow to stay in Belize and start all over
(CNN) -- An American couple in Belize struggled Tuesday to figure out their future, their dreams literally up in smoke after a mob of indigenous Mayans burned down their animal sanctuary in the belief the foreigners fed two missing children to crocodiles on their property.
Cherie and Vince Rose moved to the tiny Central American nation in 2004 to form a 36-acre sanctuary for two species of endangered crocodiles found in Belize -- the American and Morelet's crocodiles.
Bit by bit, their hope turned into reality. They built a two-story octagonal house that rested on stilts and reached 30 feet into the air. They constructed two smaller cottages to house researchers and students. They dug out two acres of canals for the crocodiles. They acquired two boats.
They called the place the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary.
Most of it vanished Sunday morning, when a throng of angry villagers from a settlement about 10 miles away torched the buildings on their property. A local psychic had told the villagers that the Americans had fed the two missing children to the 17 crocodiles at the sanctuary, police say.
The Roses were rescuing three crocodiles on a distant island at the time, so were not home to ward off the attack -- or possibly suffer a gruesome fate.
"It was like something out of a Frankenstein movie," Cherie Rose said Tuesday. "If we'd been home, they would have killed us. They said they were going to chop us up and feed us to the crocodiles."
National police confirm that the indigenous Maya villagers were acting on the advice of a psychic who said the Roses had something to do with the August 7 disappearance of 11-year-old Benjamin Rash and his 9-year-old sister Onelia.
"They have their own superstitions," Deputy Police Commissioner James Magdaleno said about the Maya, who make up about 10 percent of Belize's population. "Because of their beliefs, they decided to take the law into their own hands."
No arrests have been made, the deputy commissioner told CNN.
"We don't know who burned the house," he said. "That is still under investigation."
Police also questioned Vince Rose about the missing children, but no connection was established, Magdaleno said Tuesday.
For the Roses, the drama unfolded in excruciating slow motion from far away.
They traveled August 29 to rescue some crocodiles on Ambergris Caye, a Caribbean Sea island off the northeastern coast of Belize. Their sanctuary in Punta Gorda is on the Caribbean coast in southeastern Belize, more than five hours away by land and airplane.
On Friday, September 3, the couple received phone calls from friends saying that truckloads of people from the village of San Marcos were on their way to the sanctuary to burn it down. The Roses sent their caretaker to the compound, but everyone was gone by the time he got there. The area around the two cottages had been trashed, though.
The Roses got more calls from friends Saturday, again telling them that villagers with shotguns and machetes were on their way to the sanctuary. The caretaker was afraid to go there, Cherie Rose said, so they called police that night. The police said they couldn't go on the property because the Roses' two mixed-breed dogs were barking and would not allow them to enter, Cherie Rose recounted.
"By 9 a.m. Sunday, we were receiving frantic calls and texts," Cherie Rose said.
By the time police got there, it was too late.
"They told us, 'Oh, we're sorry. Your place is burning to the ground as we speak,' " Cherie Rose said.
Life has been numbingly painful since.
"We're in shock," she said. "We're totally devastated."
Vince Rose still found it difficult to talk about the sanctuary Tuesday, having to stop several times during a phone interview to compose himself.
"They lost everything," Deputy Commissioner Magdaleno said Tuesday.
Well, maybe not quite everything. Their two dogs -- Rio and Maya -- survived.
So did their spirit. They don't know quite how, but they vow to stay in Belize and start all over.
"We love what we do, and the adventure is just incredible," said Cherie Rose, who is 44 and said she has a biology degree from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. "We do more in one day than some people do in a lifetime."
"We are going to stay in Belize. We are going to fight this. I'm not abandoning those crocodiles down there."
Her 48-year-old husband agrees.
"What we created was absolutely beautiful," Vince Rose said. "No, I'm not going. We're not letting them run us out of this country."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Police arrest PG “witchdoctor.” By Daniel Ortiz Amandala: General News | 08/09/2010 - 09:06 AM
A desperate father, deeply concerned about the fate of his two missing children, and angry with the police for their apparently lackadaisical approach to the investigation, fell into the clutches of a local “witchdoctor,” with the result that a million-dollar investment, business and a home, has gone up in flames.
The witchdoctor, a female now being charged by police, allegedly told the missing children’s parents that they were being held on the premises of an American couple, Vince and Cherie Chenot-Rose, who owned a crocodile sanctuary.
The father, Pedro Rash, aided by about a hundred incensed villagers, stormed Vince and Cherie’s business, American Crocodile Education Sanctuary (ACES), to look for the children, Benjamin Rash, 11, and Onelia Rash, 9, both from San Marcos Village, Toledo.
The children were not found, but ACES and the Roses’ home, all uninsured, were burned, totally destroyed by the flames.
An angry, outraged and disbelieving Vince and Cherie, who were not at home at the time, when they learned of the destruction of their 7-year investment, and home, sent out a press release yesterday, part of which we reproduce:
“In the early morning hours of September 5th, a frenzied mob of Mayan-Belizean villagers set fire to the American Crocodile sanctuary that a Colorado couple spent the last six years creating. “‘We’ve lost everything,’ said Cherie Chenot-Rose, co-owner and founder of the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary (ACES).
“The mob was apparently riled into frenzy by a Mayan ‘psychic’ who claimed that two children who have been missing for the last week had been fed to the crocodiles at the sanctuary. It is alleged that the same group of villagers are responsible for burning other homes in the past several months in the Toledo District, the southernmost portion of Belize.
“Luckily, Cherie and her husband, Vince Rose, were in San Pedro on the island of Ambergris Caye when the mob attacked. At the request of the Belize Forest Department, the team was rescuing three problem crocs and meeting with top Belize tourism officials discussing the prospect of creating an American Crocodile sanctuary on the island.
“Reports are that the mob shot and killed some of the 17 crocs held in captivity at the sanctuary. Also destroyed were the Rose’s two-story home that included a laboratory and nursery for baby crocs. One baby American Crocodile was to be flown to Chicago to the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, Ill., USA, for the first ever animal exchange program between Belize and the USA.
“Over $2,500 in vet supplies that were recently donated for a new humane society that Cherie, along with other locals, was working on in Punta Gorda were also lost. “‘This one wrongful incident has affected and hurt many innocent people and animals,’ added Cherie…”
Reports to Amandala are that the high emotions started to boil over from early Sunday morning when armed villagers—approximately 100 of them—showed up outside the Punta Gorda Police Station demanding that police go and search the American couple’s home in the Water Hole Area, approximately 11 miles outside Punta Gorda Town. Police didn’t accede to the demands and shortly afterwards, Vincent Rose’s home, along with ACES in the Water Hole Area, was stormed by the villagers at about 10:30 a.m. on Sunday.
The house and buildings were set ablaze by the angry mob, who believed that Rose was responsible for the disappearance of the children 17 days earlier, courtesy of the “witchdoctor,”whom the children’s father had consulted. The villagers descended on ACES and the Roses’ home, and shortly after, everything burnable was set on fire.
A couple of the villagers told Amandala that the police had told them that they could not search the facility because they didn’t have a signed search warrant.
While the police were searching the southern parts of Toledo for the children, the villagers banded together to search on their own, because they felt that the police wasn’t doing a thorough job. The police had not searched the Roses’ premises, which included ACES.
Amandala understands from a credible source that a top-brass police officer had been warned of the villagers’ intent to gather in front of ACES and conduct their own search, and that the situation could have gotten out of hand if the authorities didn’t go to the location. But by the time the police arrived a few hours later, the Roses’ home and ACES had already gone up in flames.
Yesterday, Monday, the Mayan villagers from San Marcos were still showing support for the family by gathering in front of the Punta Gorda Police Station and picketing the police’s “lack of activity” to conduct proper searches for the children and the dragging of feet to issue a proper search warrant to search ACES.
Police say Tuesday that they have arrested and charged Delfina Alvarez Selgado, 42, a housewife of Water Supply Area of Punta Gorda Town, yesterday for the offense of “pretending to tell fortune.” She pleaded not guilty to the charge and bail of $1,500 was offered. She is to reappear in Punta Gorda Magistrate’s Court on October 12, 2010.
Amandala sources say that Greg Choc, a respected Mayan activist of Toledo, had to step in and arrange legal representation for the people whom the police were thinking about taking into custody.
We also had a chance to hear Pedro Rash, the father of the children, speak about the circumstances of the supposed tie-in between his missing children and the ACES.
Pedro Rash, father of the missing children, said: “I have evidence here, because we went there (ACES) along with the police, and one of my village members found lime (the fruit) on the premises. That’s why we are expecting the police to get into that house or call that person. I believe that the police know where that person [is], so we are expecting the police to bring in this man, talk to him, and open the place so that I am satisfied…”
The lime is of significance, said Rash, because the children were selling a number of things when they went missing, including lime.
Rash also said that the “witchdoctor” told them that the children were on the premises of ACES, but they were “underground,” which conflicts with Rose’s press release that stated that the “witchdoctor” had said that the children had been fed to the crocodiles.
Rash also recounted how the “witchdoctor” planned to find the children; she would divine their location by performing magic on items of clothing belonging to them and have the police accompany her to that exact location.
Pedro Rash added: “She asked me about giving her some clothing for the pair of children; I brought it that same day she asked. She told me she will do the magic work on the clothes; she will inform the BDF and the police and go in that area. When we saw her here this morning, in front of Mr. Mariano [Senior Superintendent Robert Mariano, officer in charge of the Punta Gorda Police Station], I informed the police before I gave over the clothing to her. I wanted the police to take a statement for this, but Corporal Avila did not take any statements, such as …details like what color they [the clothing] are. Corporal Avila told me that he knows the witchdoctor, and I asked if she could help them in locating the children. That’s when they [the police and the witchdoctor] left…” [He did not say where they went.]
We also got a chance to hear Vince Rose, co-owner of ACES, speak about his loss. Vince Rose said: “We run a crocodile sanctuary, which means we go around with the Belize Police Department getting wild crocodiles that have been fed by humans, out of their backyards or out of their areas, because now they’re dangerous crocodiles, and they are going to kill someone someday. So we are doing the opposite of what everyone else thinks. We are preventing people from being hurt.”
Rose said that he and others have been working with American and Morelet’s crocodiles for 7 years. He says that he and his wife have a spotless record here in Belize and in the US. He was outraged that not only were his life’s work and home destroyed, but especially, where the information came from; it was not from a credible source to merit such an “act of terrorism,” as he described it. He said that he is upset with the Mayan community for what they did, and as a result, he will not sanction another facility being built down in Toledo.
“The Mayan community should be very ashamed of themselves,” Rose commented. “They burned the wrong man’s house down and destroyed any future entities for their own Toledo District.”
He said that he and his wife sustained approximately a million dollars in damages because the facility was not insured. He said the facility was built of steel and wood. He said that he and his wife had moved there for life, but now not only did their investment go down the drain but their personal belongings and memories were also destroyed.
Rose said he plans to take legal action against anyone the police finds responsible for the arson. He also wishes that attempted murder and trespassing be added to the list of charges, because he and his wife could have been in the houses when they were burned down.
Both parties felt that the police didn’t support them well enough: the villagers felt that the police didn’t provide them with enough support by taking too long to get the search warrant and open up the place for inspection, and Rose feels that the police didn’t make an appearance quickly enough to stop the mob from burning his place to the ground.
The police in Punta Gorda have remained quiet about the whole matter.
(Special thanks to Wil Maheia and the PGTV crew for helping us with this story.) (Ed. NOTE: The story made CNN International today, under an article captioned: Belize mob torches Americans’ animal sanctuary but their will survives.)
ASPEN — A former Aspen couple are reeling from the loss of their Belize house and crocodile sanctuary, which were burnt to the ground Sunday morning by an angry mob of villagers.
Sunday's rampage was reportedly instigated by approximately 100 indigenous Mayans, who stormed the property of Cherie and Vincent Rose while they were away. The couple has since moved from their home in Punta Gorda, located on the Caribbean coast off southeastern Belize, to an island in the northeastern region of the Central American country.
“We're still trying to come out of shock,” said Vincent Rose, 49, in a telephone interview Wednesday, adding that he and his wife feel “80 percent safe.”
The Roses have deep Aspen ties. They wedded atop Aspen Mountain in 2002 before moving to Belize in 2004. Cherie Rose, 44, once taught snowboarding at Buttermilk. Vincent Rose spent his summers in Aspen starting in 1980, before moving here full time in the 1990s. A general contractor, he ran Bear Construction and remodeled the late John Denver's home.
After Denver died in a plane crash in October 1997, the singer-songwriter's son gave Vincent Rose one of Denver's guitars. It was destroyed by the blaze.
“Stuff like that, you can't replace,” Vincent Rose said.
He said the couple have lost nearly all of their possessions.
The mob — which hailed from a settlement about 10 miles away — torched the property because they believed two missing children were captives at the Rose home, which sits next to their nonprofit American Crocodile Education Sanctuary (ACES). Some news outlets reported the mob, acting on the advice of a psychic, believed the children had been fed to the crocodiles. The mob apparently became infuriated because police were not responsive to their demands that they search the Rose home for the children, 7newsbelize.com reported.
“They have their own superstitions,” Deputy Police Commissioner James Magdaleno told CNN about the Mayans. “Because of their beliefs, they decided to take the law into their own hands.”
The psychic was arrested and charged with “pretends to tell fortune,” but there have been no arson arrests, according to 7newsbelize.com.
Rose said he has no idea of the whereabouts of the two children — a 9-year-old boy and his 11-year-old sister — who have been missing since Aug. 7. Rose said he just recently became aware of their disappearance.
At the time of the invasion, the Rose couple were in San Pedro rescuing crocodiles off the island of Ambergris Caye, the husband said.
“Thank God we were not there,” he said. “We would have been killed.”
Rose said the mob, armed with machetes and firearms, “broke into the house and torched the place, and there were no children to be found. We're all for the safe return of these children, just as much as anybody else.”
Rose said he knows of at least one crocodile that died from the fire. ACES, which sits on 36 acres, had been home to 17 crocodiles. Vincent Rose said he visited the sanctuary Monday, escorted by soldiers and police.
“I have not been able to assess if any of the crocodiles were shot, but when I did go down there, there weren't any floating,” he said.
A river flows through the sanctuary, and the crocodiles feed on a diet of shrimp, fish and crabs, Rose said. But that's not enough to sustain their diet; he's hoping some of his friends, who are nearby butchers, will feed them meat scraps.
After Rose visited the sanctuary, he was taken to the police station where he was interviewed for about three hours, he said. A mob waited outside the police station, he said.
“When I left, they had me run out of the back door,” he said. “Then all of the sudden the officers had me run back in the police compound because of a mob. We had to regroup, and the officers and soldiers finally raced me to the airport and there was an airplane waiting for me.”
Rose said he and his wife, a biologist, started ACES shortly after they moved to Belize.
“When we moved there and saw the devastation of all the endangered species being hunted and killed without any proper permit, we decided we needed to do something,” he said.
The couple got along well with the natives, Vincent Rose noted.
“We donated police equipment to the police office; we donated to the hospital and schools,” he said.
Rose noted that he plans to take legal action.
“I'm going to get a lawyer and sue the Mayan village that's responsible for destroying our lives and our not-for-profit crocodile sanctuary,” he said.
The couple doesn't plan to leave Belize, either.
“We're not going to get bullied out of town by a group of uncivilized people,” he said. “There's still law that exists in all countries, and we're just not going to give up on what we've built and created. We're going to go to a different part of the country where there's more support and it's a safe area.”
Neither the house nor sanctuary were insured.
Accounts have been set up to help the Rose couple and the sanctuary. One, set up by the Belize Economic & Ecological Development Fund, takes Paypal donations through the e-mail address info@beedfund.com. Wire transfers can be made to: Intermiary Bank, Bank of America New York, 300 Harmon Meadow BLVD, Seacaucus, N.J. 07094 USA, Swift address — BOFAUS3N, ABA -026009593 to credit, Beneficiary Bank, BIC BBLBZBZ,account #6550-8-26053 of Belize Bank Limited, for final credit to account # 630-1-1-10130 of Vince & Cherie Rose Fire Victims.
No strangers to Ambergris Caye, the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary (ACES) team, Vince Rose and wife Cherie Chenot-Rose from Punta Gorda (PG) have conducted countless rescues and removals of problematic crocs here on the island and throughout the country for the past several years. ACES is a crocodile sanctuary permitted by the Belize Forest Department (BFD) and does not farm the animals for profit or breed the animals in captivity.
Last weekend while the team was on Ambergris Caye removing three problematic crocs at the request of the BFD, villagers near their home in Punta Gorda were busy organizing a lynch mob against the ACES sanctuary. Reports are that a village psychic professed to San Marcos Villagers that two PG children, who have been missing since Monday, August 30th were either being held hostage at the ACES compound or had been fed to the captive crocodiles. In a fit of rage and frustration from an apparent lack of cooperation from the PG police in assisting with the search for the missing children, an angry mob descended onto the ACES property and proceeded to burn it to the ground.
ACES biologist and director Cherie Chenot-Rose had traveled to San Pedro on August 29th on a week-long campaign to meet with the Hon. Manuel Heredia Jr., Minister of Tourism, and give a presentation to the Ambergris Caye Chamber of Commerce on the possibility of developing a second ACES here on the island. Their proposal was based on the fact that the majority of problematic crocodiles are on Ambergris Caye due to illegal and indirect feeding and growing development on the island in conflict with crocodile habitat. Their proposed sanctuary in San Pedro would develop into a tourist attraction as well as an educational facility about wildlife and habitat conservation. Chenot-Rose met with Heredia as well as members of the Chamber last week and everyone was very excited about the possibilities, with Heredia pledging full support. Chenot-Rose commented, "It just makes sense to have a second sanctuary here, there is huge community support for it and the logistics of transporting these crocs all the way to our facility in PG are unreasonable. Having the additional facility here on Ambergris Caye can be a very positive addition to the community and tourism."
On Thursday, September 2nd Vince Rose, ACES Animal Behaviorist traveled to San Pedro from PG to meet up with his wife and began the process of capturing the problematic crocodiles. On Saturday, two large crocs that were used to being fed as a tourist attraction at the WASA Lagoon south of San Pedro were captured and a baby croc was confiscated from a local resident who was illegally trying to sell him. On Sunday morning a fourth croc that had been traveling through neighbor's yards, getting into trash cans and reportedly eating local pets near Heredia Park was captured. While the captured animals were safely contained and plans were being made to transport them to PG, the Roses learned on Sunday afternoon that there was no sanctuary to return to.
The Story Unfolds On August 1st, 2010 a missing persons report was issued by Police Press Officer Sgt. Fitzroy Yearwood stating, "The whereabouts of two minors from San Marcos Village, Toledo is unknown at this time and Police are seeking the public's assistance in locating them. On the 31/8/10, Pedro Rash 38yrs, farmer of San Marcos Village Toledo District reported that about 6:30am on the 30/8/10, he and his two Children Namely Benjamin Rash, 11yrs and Onelia Rash 9yrs both students of San Marcos Village left towards the San Marcos Junction along with his father. On the way they were met by their uncle Domingo Rash where their father left them in his uncle care as he was heading towards Punta Gorda Town and up to the time of making the report none of the children arrived home as yet.
The description of the children are as follows: Benjamin:- about 5ft in height, weighs about 65 lbs, slim built, narrow face, Brown complexion and was last seen wearing a blue T. Shirt with red sleeve and a black short pants with a pair of green slippers while his sister Onelia Rash:- about 3 ft 6 inches in height, weighs about 55 lbs, broad face, straight black shoulder length hair, brown complexion and was last seen wearing a white and red blouse, black skirt, and had no slippers. Both children are of Maya Descent, and were last seen by their uncle Domingo Rash at Hope Ville area in Punta Gorda." Reports are that the father, along with other village members grew frustrated with an apparent lack of interest on the part of the PG police in locating the children and decided to take matters into their own hands. While the Roses were in San Pedro, mobs of villagers combed their 36 acre property and when the father, Pedro Rash, was asked in an interview by a Channel 5 reporter if they were acting on advice from their village psychic that the children were at the ACES compound, Rash stated, "Whether it could be so or not, I have evidence there by myself because we went there with the police along and one of my village members see what is there and that is the lime. I get some few lime there and that is what we see inside the house. That's why we expect the police to get into the house or call that person and come in."
In a state of shock and fearing for his life, Vince Rose traveled via Tropic Air to PG from San Pedro on Monday morning to file a report with the police and access the damage to his property. Rose was met in route at the Belize City Municipal Airport by Channel 7 News where in an angry rant he referred to the villagers as "savages - they should not even be out on the streets; they should all be in prison because they are not human beings." When Rose arrived at the PG airstrip he was met by the police and escorted to their headquarters. In the meantime a mob of picketing villagers gathered outside the station, demanding that Mr. Rose be arrested. Rose was then accompanied by police and the Belize Defense Force to the ACES compound where the house and two guest cabins he and his wife had built over the last seven years stood smoldering in ashes. One small croc was found dead and Rose was able to spot a few of the 17 resident crocs alive. After Rose returned to the station and completed his report, police escorting him back to the airport was mobbed by protesters.
In a CNN story posted yesterday by Arthur Brice, national police confirmed that the indigenous Maya villagers were acting on the advice of a psychic who said the Roses had something to do with the disappearance of the children. "They have their own superstitions," deputy police commissioner James Magdaleno said about the Maya, who make up about 10 percent of Belize's population. "Because of their beliefs, they decided to take the law into their own hands."
The Aftermath Media houses countywide began flocking to the scene when word was first released of mobs gathering at ACES before the fire. Now the story has reached an international level stirring a pot of controversy ranging from Mayan/Belizean land and rights conflicts to racial prejudices on all sides to culture clash and Ex-Patriot safety within the country.
The San Pedro Sun had the opportunity to interview the Roses where they are staying on Ambergris Caye for the time being. When asked about Pedro Rash's reasoning behind assuming their guilt based on spotting limes inside their house, Mr. Rose told The Sun, "How on earth can someone be guilty by LIME association? Yes we have lime trees and all sorts of fruit trees on our property, this is just unbelievable...so the fact that I had limes in my house and that a psychic said the children were on my property was enough evidence for these people to burn down the entire compound?" responded the distraught Rose. According to Mr. Rose when he met with the PG police on Monday he was never questioned as a suspect, nor did the police imply that he was under investigation.
When asked about his harsh comments during his Channel 7 interview on Monday Mr. Rose emotionally explained, "I was and am still in a state of shock...I was sleep deprived, devastated and just completely lost it...I am sorry if people took my words in offense but they have to understand I was at the end of my rope...my God, my entire life was just burnt to the ground." What is next for the Roses and ACES? According to the team they are determined to resurrect a croc sanctuary, preferably on Ambergris Caye. Cherie commented, "We are not leaving the country with our tails between our legs. We have made a commitment to the conservation and protection of these crocodiles and are encouraged by the response we have received about establishing another sanctuary on Ambergris Caye. We are starting our lives over again with just the clothes we have on our backs. The support we have received from the Belizean community and from around the world is overwhelming and we do not know how to begin to thank all who have helped us during this time, we are truly blessed." In ending, Vince lamented the irony, "We have dedicated our lives to protecting the American Crocodile but now it seems that it was the crocs that saved our lives this time. If we had not been on the island removing crocs we would have been at our home in PG...God only knows what could have happened, I do know that my wife and I could not have controlled such a violent mob." As for the three adult crocs captured over the weekend, the team was forced to set them lose because there is no place to contain them now.
On Tuesday, Sept. 7th the Belize Press Office released a report stating, "Punta Gorda Police arrested and charged Delfina Alvarez Selgado, 42yrs., Housewife of Water Supply Area, Punta Gorda Town on September 06, 2010 for the Offense of "Pretends to tell Fortune". She pleaded not guilty to the charge and bail was offered in the sum of $1500.00Bcy. She is to reappear in Punta Gorda Magistrate Court on October 12, 2010." As to date no other arrests have been made and the search for the missing children remains. The Maya Toledo Alcaldes Association announced that it will be holding a public meeting in Punta Gorda Town on Wednesday to give their version of what happened on Sunday but were unavailable for comment. In an effort to gain a comment from the Maya community in Toledo as well a call was also made to Cristina Coc, spokesperson for the Maya Leaders Alliance without success. The San Pedro Sun will continue to report on this story as it develops. If anyone has any information about the missing children Benjamin and Onelia Rash, you are asked to contact the PG Police or your nearest police station.
”ACES no longer exists,” read the post on biologist Cherie Chenot-Rose’s Facebook page on Monday morning, referring to the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary in Belize that she and her husband Vince Rose built, and which I visited earlier this year.
I had to read it three times before it sank in.
She went on: “While Vince and I were on Ambergris Caye rescuing three problematic crocodiles for the Belize Forest Department, two children went missing from a village near Punta Gorda [where ACES was located]. The local Maya villagers believed that Vince and I fed the missing children to the crocs. We were not even there, as I stated, but were on Ambergris Caye. As a lynch mob, the villagers burnt ACES / American Crocodile Education Sanctuary to the ground.”
Was this some sort of sick Internet hoax? I wondered. How could ACES be gone? In February I toured the facility, and just last week had an email exchange with Chenot-Rose, wherein she agreed to send me details about the work she and her husband were doing on Ambergris so that I could write an article about it.
Burned to the ground by a mob of angry villagers? This seemed more akin to plots from gothic horror novels than reality.
And villagers who believed that the American couple had fed the children to their crocodiles? Huh?
A few emails and phone calls confirmed that the ACES facility had indeed been destroyed, and possibly at least two of the rescued crocodiles along with it—one shot and another hacked with machetes.
Chenot-Rose and Rose were homeless, with nothing to their names but the belongings they had taken with them to Ambergris Caye. The sanctuary they had created was literally up in smoke.
Immediately I began working on an article about the disaster and posted it, as did CNN a few hours later. It was the third story I’d done about the sanctuary--one I never imagined I’d have to write.
A visit to ACES before its destruction As I wrote, all I could think about was what ACES had been like before—what I saw on the day I visited, what I learned, its magical setting at the sunny bend of a river, the lifelong dream the couple had poured out their sweat and their savings so as to make real, and most of all the magnificent, misunderstood reptiles they had worked so hard to save.
That balmy day last February, Chenot-Rose took me on a tour of the facility that included the personal stories of many of the animals they had brought there at the behest of the Belize Forest Department.
In the coming days I will post the video of that tour on this page.
Watching it feels almost surreal for me now. For the founders of ACES, it might feel like a different lifetime.
But given that Chenot-Rose and Rose wish to build a new croc sanctuary in northern Belize on Ambergris Caye, it’s noteworthy to take a look at the video’s evidence of what they had developed from scratch on the Punta Gorda site before it was annihilated:
The rescue and care of many animals in well-planned, enclosed habitats
A research facility that offered study opportunities for students and internships at all levels
A pair of eco-friendly guest cabins or Croc Cabanas, where they had begun a green tourism business to help support their croc-rescuing habit
A modest home for themselves.
Troubling questions It is true that ACES no longer exists—not in its previous form. At the moment what remains of it are the heaps of ashes in Punta Gorda, the fears, the hostilities, the broken but still-breathing dreams, and many questions.
Where are the two missing San Marcos village children, siblings Onelia and Benjamin Rash, ages 11 and 9, whose disturbing disappearance triggered the cascade of calamity? On August 30th their farmer father sent them into Punta Gorda Town to sell limes. They have not yet come home.
Will Chenot-Rose and Rose find the copious strength, support, funds, and luck required to recreate ACES on Ambergris?
And at the end of the day, what does this bizarre and multifaceted episode say about human nature, about intercultural relations, and about the prospects for animals and their champions across the globe?
The indigenous Maya of southern Belize have come forth to give their side of the story on the disappearance of two children near a crocodile farm run by two U.S. nationals in southern Belize.
The crocodile farm owned by Aspen Colorado natives Vince and Cherie Rose was destroyed by fire last Sunday, and since then the Rose couple have blamed local villagers for the fire and have been venting their fury on the Belize Maya using their contacts in their native country the U.S.A. and media such as CNN and other news outlets and foreign travel writers to give their side of the story. The indigenous Maya who are are among the poorest population sector of Belize do not have the access or resources of the Rose couple – Vince Rose is a well to do Colorado contractor who used to maintain properties for recording star John Denver according to an article in the Post Independent newspaper. Mr. Rose subsequently launched a second career as a so called “Croc Behaviorist”.
A prayer vigil pleading for the return of the missing Maya children Benjamin and Onelia Rash, 9 and 11, was held on Wednesday in Punta Gorda, capital of the Toledo District where the Rose American Crocodile Education Sanctuary was located.
According to published news reports the facility which also breeds crocodiles was unattended at the time it was destroyed by fire – suggesting the possibility of alleged negligence on the part of the owners. The Belize Maya have reacted to inflammatory statements made by Vince Rose describing Belizeans and the indigenous Maya as “savages”. A television report based on an interview with the Executive Director of the Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Development – SATIIM reads in part:
Gregory Choc, SATIIM: “Some of our people have come forward and say that we don’t like what has been said about us. We are a peaceful people despite the many injustices that continue to be committed against us. We seek peaceful non-violent resolution for differences that we may have. So I think there are some members of the community who also want to make a statement in respect to what has been said by Mr. Rose.”
“He called them savages. Very unfortunate language and that perspective is getting traction in the international news media. The story is on CNN. How do you mitigate the effects of that? How do you contend with that?”
Gregory Choc, SATIIM: “Well we will continue employing the strategies that we have consistently used. We look at the indigenous peoples’ struggle globally. It is no surprise that that language has been used to characterize the communities whose children are missing. I do not know the gentleman. I refuse to get involved in personal attacks.”
Jules Vasquez: “Were you insulted?”
Gregory Choc, SATIIM: “You know I don’t know how much more insults we can take because we’ve been insulted over and over for centuries.”
Another speaker at the prayer vigil stated:
Ligorio Coy – Chairman, Alcalde Association: “If the law has evidence seeing that it has been done by the Mayan people well the law is there to tell us the truth. But if there is no evidence the Mayan people are saying that they are not the ones that were involved in the fire.
The indigenous Maya Nation of Belize is considered to be a repressed minority in Belize. The Toledo district which is their ancestral homeland has been encroached upon for decades by U.S. and other foreign companies exploiting their natural resources.
A series of unfortunate events, as the saying goes, recently has juxtaposed two types of predators: the crocodile and the pedophile.
On August 30th, the day before they were to begin their next school year in the Mayan village of San Marcos in southern Belize, Onelia and Benjamin Rash, ages 11 and 9, set out for nearby Punta Gorda Town to sell limes and other fruit at the behest of their farmer father.
They never came home.
Resentful that the police appeared to be doing little to find the missing children, and believing a local soothsayer’s utterance that Americans Vince Rose and his wife Cherie Chenot-Rose had nabbed Onelia and Benjamin to feed them to crocodiles at their ACES American Crocodile Education Sanctuary in Punta Gorda, a mob of San Marcos villagers allegedly descended upon ACES with rifles and machetes on September 5th, burned all its structures to the ground, and hacked to death at least one rescued baby crocodile.
The American couple, now homeless and in shock after watching all their possessions and their four years of work on the sanctuary go up in flames, have vowed to rebuild ACES on Ambergris Caye in northern Belize.
Onelia and Benjamin Rash might never see home—or life—again.
Pedophilia rampant in Central America Human trafficking and its frequent partner pedophilia are common in many parts of the world including central America. Many observers believe that Mayan children are targeted for abduction.
According to the U.S. State Department’s “Safety and Security” advisory for Belize’s adjacent neighbor Guatemala, “Virulent rumors of child stealing and murder for organ harvesting continue to be reported in several different areas of Guatemala frequented by American tourists. Frustration over crime and a lack of appropriate judicial remedies have led to violent incidents of vigilantism. In 2007, numerous Guatemalan citizens were lynched for suspicion of child stealing, and three local women who had allegedly facilitated foreign adoptions were attacked by a mob that accused them of kidnapping and killing a girl whose mutilated remains were found near Camotan, Chiquimula.”
“Also in 2007,” the warning continues, “two foreigners (including an American citizen) and a Guatemalan kayaking on a river near Chicaman, Quiche were accused of stealing children and seized by a 500-person mob (estimated). Although threatened, the individuals were not physically attacked.”
While the State Department has issued no such warnings for Belize, it is reasonable to extrapolate that that country’s inhabitants might have similar causes for concern about their children.
It's also reasonable to suspect that Onelia and Benjamin Rash were taken for just the type of dark purpose that terrifies parents everywhere.
Crocodiles and pedophiles—two predators
In one of those bizarre dramas often produced when the world of humans and the world of animals collide, two very different species of predator have crawled onstage. They come from opposite directions, and with very different roles to play.
Some of the differences between crocodiles and pedophiles:
• Crocodiles attack to eat. • Pedophiles attack for pleasure.
• Crocodiles fulfill a crucial function in ecosystems as “apex predators” at the top of the food chain. They control the population and the habits of other species to keep the community in balance. Without them, other species may decline. In a domino effect, the living community itself often collapses. • Pedophiles fulfill their own compulsions. Because of them, other individuals sometimes decline. In a domino effect, the community’s social structure often collapses.
• Crocodiles’ (American crocodile or Crocodylus acutus) preferred prey are fish, and may include mammals, birds, turtles, and crabs and fish. Attacks on humans are rare. • Pedophiles’ preferred prey are human children. Attacks are common.
• Crocodiles’ behavior is fairly patterned and predictable, refined by 200 million years of evolution. • Pedophiles’ behavior and its origins are perplexing and inadequately understood.
• Crocodiles are often found missing their tails, which are illegally butchered off by poachers for the Chinese medicine trade. • Pedophiles are usually found intact.
• Crocodiles fall victim to human intervention through poaching and loss of habitat. Only 20,000 American crocodiles remain in the wild—fewer than polar bears. • Pedophiles, whose numbers are abundant, typically escape human intervention, although some observers believe that divine intervention will take its course.
Taking the fall for the villain As often happens where human and animal lives intersect, one of the characters in this drama has taken the fall for the other. Cast by some in the role of villain, at least one crocodile so far—a rescued, half-blind baby named Ace—had a moment in the spotlight, and paid for it with his life.
Meanwhile, his predatory counterpart on stage—someone who might very well know the fate of two Mayan children who were just about to go back to school—remains in the shadows.
Benjamin and Onelia Rash disappeared over a month.
The two-week-old search for the missing children Onelia and Benjamin Rash, from the village of San Marcos, Toledo has extended into Guatemala to Poptún, and Santa Cruz.
Posters of Onelia and Benjamin have been posted on every bus and taxi of the Mayan communities and neighbouring villagers are on alert.
Onelia and Benjamin disappeared while selling craboo and limes for their parents. They were last seen in Cattle Landing, but it is not believed that they ever reached Punta Gorda, the municipal capital, which is about three miles away.
The story of the missing children has rocked Belize and the police in the south have been on full alert.
The officer commanding the Toledo Police Department, Robert Mariano, along with Mr. Pedro Rash, the father of the missing children and Major Requeña of the BDF, have met for the second time with Sr. Trinidad de laCruz, the Comicionado and law enforcement authorites of Santa Cruz, Guatemala. The meeting, held at the Jalacté Police Station, was to co-ordinate search efforts on both sides of the border.
According to Mariano, Comicionado Cruz expressed his wholehearted support and assistance in the search for the children. Guatemalan police are also actively involved in the search from their side of the border.
The first meeting between Guatemelan and Belizean police officers was held on September 4th. Since then the Guatemalan police have been actively involved.
Mariano explained that there is an established agreement between the two police authorities to exchange information on any criminal activity that involves either country.
The disappearance of the two kids has caused some adults from the Village of San Marcos to go beserk. A group of villagers visited the crocodile sanctuary owned by Americans Vincent and Cherie Rose and burned it to the ground. The also used their machetes to slaughter as many crocodiles as they could find. The Roses were holding seventeen crocodiles in pens at the time of the attack.
Reports from Toledo are now saying that the villagers approached the Roses and asked for permission to inspect the crocodile sanctuary. This request was refused.
Next the village elders went to the police and asked Inspector Robert Mariano to carry out a search. Mariao declined on the ground that there was no evidence to justify such an inspection.
At this the villagers took matters into their own hands, waited until the Roses were absent from their home, and proceeded to burn the place down.
It’s not often you read about an American couple suing a Mayan village in Belize. The couple threatening to sue after an angry mob of 100 Mayans torched the couple’s Punta Gorda, Belize home. The fate of the crocodiles in the couple’s crocodile sanctuary, unknown. What the newspapers are reporting versus what one of the Americans, Cherie Rose, posted on her Facebook page.
According to the news report, former Aspen couple Cherie and Vincent Rose were away from their Punta Gorda, Belize home and crocodile sanctuary when two children from a Mayan village located ten miles from the Rose’s home, disappeared. A Mayan psychic informing the villagers the children were being held captive in the Rose’s home. According to the Aspen Times, ’100 angry Mayans’ stormed the Rose’s property then torched the couple’s home.
Aspen Times:
“When I left, they had me run out of the back door,” he [Vincent Rose] said. “Then all of the sudden the officers had me run back in the police compound because of a mob. We had to regroup, and the officers and soldiers finally raced me to the airport and there was an airplane waiting for me.”
Rose said he and his wife, a biologist, started ACES shortly after they moved to Belize.
“When we moved there and saw the devastation of all the endangered species being hunted and killed without any proper permit, we decided we needed to do something,” he said.
The couple got along well with the natives, Vincent Rose noted.
“We donated police equipment to the police office; we donated to the hospital and schools,” he said.
Rose noted that he plans to take legal action.
“I’m going to get a lawyer and sue the Mayan village that’s responsible for destroying our lives and our not-for-profit crocodile sanctuary,” he said.
The Rose’s have since relocated to another part of Belize. Rose stating he and his wife were ‘not going to be bullied out of town by uncivilized people’. The psychic under arrest, charged with ‘pretends to tell fortune’ while no arson charges have been filed against the Mayan mob.
On her Facebook page Cherie Rose posted:
ACES no longer exists. While Vince and I were on Ambergris Caye rescuing three problematic crocodiles for the Belize Forest Department, two children went missing from a village near Punta Gorda. The local Maya villagers believed that Vince and I fed the missing children to the crocs. We were not even there, as I stated, but were on Ambergris Caye. As a lynch mob, the villagers burnt ACES / American Crocodile Education Sanctuary to the ground. The status of the crocodiles is unknown because the fire is so hot the Belize Defense Forces cannot get to the property. Noone has been arrested. Vince and Cherie are now homeless and do not have anything to their name. Everything was lost. Our lives have been threated if we return to Punta Gorda. We do not even know if our dogs survived. We are not sure how to handle the situation, but the villagers and the country of Belize need to be held accountable. The United States Embassy in Belize in not helping us at all other than making us pay for our new passports. This is insane.
Forty three days after they disappeared, tonight a reward is being offered for information that could lead investigators to the children. The reward comes with a slew of strings attached. The reward is in the amount of twelve thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars. The reward is reportedly being offered by an anonymous group of donors and is being touted as an incentive to anyone who may have crucial information that will lead to the safe return of 11-year-old Benjamin Rash and nine-year-old Onelia Rash. The siblings were last seen on August 30 near Cattle Landing Village in the Toledo District. The reward will be paid to anyone who is aware of the location of the children if he or she provides this information to the Police, and the information leads to the safe recovery of both children. In order to collect the reward, the person providing this information must be able to confirm that they were the ones who provided the information. For further information, or to report the whereabouts of these children, please contact Assistant Commissioner of Police Miguel Segura at the National Crimes Investigation Branch in Belmopan or call Crime Stoppers at telephone number 0-800-922-8477. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin, 11, and Onelia Rash, 9, still missing after 4+ months By Daniel Ortiz Amandala: General News | 04/01/2011 - 10:33 AM
It has been 4 months and several days since Onelia Rash, 9, and Benjamin Rash, 11, both of the San Marcos Village in the Toledo District, have gone missing, and at press time tonight, they have not been found.
Not only have they not been found, but police have no idea where they may be, or who their abductor(s) are.
The children went missing on August 31, 2010 and an extensive search was conducted all around the country and particularly in the southern and western areas of Belize. The police even went as far as to seek help from international police to help with their search.
The last time that the children were seen, they had been selling fruits for their family. They were last spotted in the Cattle Landing Village on the same day that they went missing. Reportedly, they were attempting to catch a ride home.
The circumstances surrounding the missing Rash children have been strange. Villagers of the San Marcos Village, Toledo, burned down the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary (ACES), which was owned and managed by Vince and Cherie Chenot-Rose, an American couple living in Toledo for several years, because they were told by a “witchdoctor” that the couple had something to do with the children’s disappearance.
The couple was outraged that the villagers would suspect them of kidnapping, and would go so far as to destroy their home and business. They have stated categorically to the media that they had nothing to do with the children’s disappearance, and that their sympathies lie with the family, hoping that the children are returned safely.
The villagers allegedly burned the property due to a combination of frustration with the lack of progress of the police search and the information received from the PG “witchdoctor.”
The police told Amandala a couple months back that they would keep the case open until the children have been found.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin and Onelia Rash. FiWe Belize | January 24, 2012
Other Information
Reward: BZ $12,750.00 TERMS AND CONDITIONS TO COLLECT THE REWARD FOR THE SAFE RETURN OF BENJAMIN RASH AND ONELIA RASH
A reward in the amount of BZ$12,750.00 (Twelve thousand, Seven Hundred Fifty Belize dollars) is being offered by an anonymous group of donors for the safe return of both Benjamin Rash and Onelia Rash, aged eleven (11) and nine (9), who were last seen on August 30, 2010 near Cattle Landing, in the Toledo District of Belize. Such reward will be paid to the person or persons responsible for the safe return of these children. This reward will only be paid if the following conditions are met:
Both children must be alive and in the custody of either the Belize Police Department or the children’s family. The reward will not be paid unless both children are recovered alive. There will be no partial reward for the return of just one child. The reward will not be paid before the children are in the custody of the Belize Police Department or the children’s family. There will be no advance payment of any kind, including (but not limited) to “out-of-pocket expenses,” “facilitation fees,” “locator’s fees,” etc. The reward will be paid to anyone who is aware of the location of the children if he or she provides this information to the Police, and the information leads to the safe recovery of both children. In order to collect the reward, the person providing this information must be able to confirm that they were the ones who provided the information. If more than one person is responsible for the safe recovery of both children, the reward will be split between those persons. In no case will the total reward paid exceed BZ$12,750.00 (Twelve thousand, Seven Hundred, Fifty Belize dollars). If the children are safely returned, and there is a dispute between persons attempting to claim the reward, the Belize Police Department will decide who the reward shall be paid to. The decision of the Belize Police Department will be final.
For further information, or to report the whereabouts of these children, please contact MIGUEL A. SEGURA, ASST. COMISSIONER, HEAD NATIONAL CRIMES INVESTIGATION BRANCH, Crime Stoppers Hot line – 0-800–922-TIPS e-mail: masegura666@gmail.com
1. Belizean police should abandon that rule of waiting 48 hours before responding to missing persons reports, even if only for reports of missing children. Children are less likely than adults to voluntarily disappear. As soon as they are missed, full searches should be initiated by their communities and the police.
2. The police should have done more to defuse the situation. It is obvious to me from the reports that there were ample signals from the distressed villagers that their concerns were not being addressed. Some reports suggest that the police knew that the villagers were going to the property. Something should have been done to dissuade them from that course of action. As for the excuse that the barking dogs prevented the police from entering the premises, I am certain that the caretaker could have restrained those animals.
3. I have seen no report of Vince Rose apologising for the following statement that he made to a local television reporter:
“It's just unacceptable that a pre-meditated group of savages - and they are not human beings, they are savages - they should not even be out on the streets. They should all be in prison because they are not human beings.”
but he did excuse himself later by saying that he was in shock when he made it:
"I was and am still in a state of shock...I was sleep deprived, devastated and just completely lost it...I am sorry if people took my words in offense but they have to understand I was at the end of my rope...my God, my entire life was just burnt to the ground."
Vince Rose, although I do not condone violence, will it ever occur to you that the villagers were also and are still in shock? True, they hadn't lost a million dollar property, as was your claim, but they had lost two young children. How much are those two lives worth? And when your shock subsides, will you do the humane thing and express solidarity with the parents who are still searching for their missing children?
4. Ms Chenot-Rose, the wife of Vince Rose made this statement with all the smugness and invasive, ham-fisted, do-good-itry that has become all too familiar:
"We love what we do, and the adventure is just incredible," said Cherie Rose, who is 44 and said she has a biology degree from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. "We do more in one day than some people do in a lifetime."
"We are going to stay in Belize. We are going to fight this. I'm not abandoning those crocodiles down there."
Ms Chenot-Rose, I'm betting that there are many more desperate crocodiles in need of rescue in the oil-coated wetlands of Louisiana for starters. I firmly believe that charity begins at home.
5. From reading readers' comments, both those of persons native to Belize and foreigners living there, I sense that there is a perception that certain segments of the Belizean population resent the presence of some of these expatriates. I cannot simply use native "savagery" and jealousy to explain away this resentment. Where there is smoke there is fire and from seeing what happens in my own country, there is solid evidence to support the claim that natives are sometimes made to feel like second class citizens in their own countries by undeserving outsiders with the slavering collusion of the governments of these countries. I have not yet recovered from what I learned earlier this year about disaster capitalism in Haiti. On the topic of Haiti, there is another parallel with this story and that is the rush to highlight the "superstitious" nature of the locals, their belief in the "occult" as this particular article touts titillatingly in its title but barely discusses in its contents. It brings back unpleasant memories of Pat Robertson's comment earlier this year about Haiti and its pact with the Devil. This being a sore point with me, perhaps it is best that I drop it here but if a "witch doctor" told the villagers that the Americans had the two children and this resulted in the torching of their property, was it also a "witch doctor" who told the American people that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to incite them to torch that country. Excuse my angst but this world stinks.
If any of this resentment existed before the disappearance of the children, then it must have been exacerbated by the frustration among the villagers that the concerns of the locals were being ignored in favour of protecting the expatriates. Again, I suspect that the police, understanding the climate, should have been more vigilant, and should have tried harder to protect both the the villagers and the Roses. I am relieved that no expatriates were harmed in the incident because as we know only "savages" can be accused of and tried and convicted of crimes against the civilised.
6. My concerns remain for: 1. the safety/lives of these two children and all missing children, 2. the rights and quality of life of the indigenous peoples of Belize, and 3. the well-being of animals everywhere.
Xtoles [Song to the Sun] Mayan song dedicated to the children
Conex, conex palanxen, xicubin, xicubin yocolquin. Let's go, let's hurry boys, for the sun is coming out. Conex, conex palanxen, xicubin, xicubin yocolquin. Let's go, let's hurry boys, for the sun is coming out. Xola mayola, xola mayol, ea, ea, ea, o. Sho-la ma-yo-la, sho-la ma-yol, Ay-ah, ay-ah, ay-ah oh. Conex, conex palanxen, xicubin, xicubin yocolquin. Let's go, let's hurry boys, for the sun is coming out.
Come home Benjamin and Onelia. Children, come home!
"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Blessed is all of creation Blessed be my beautiful people Blessed be the day of our awakening Blessed is my country Blessed are her patient hills.
Lord, Please walk beside me through this day. Clear the heavy air with the lightness of Your Presence. Guide my hands and steady my heart that I may give comfort when I cannot give hope, that I may give relief when I do not have a cure, and that I may radiate Your healing peace when the limits of science, time, and the human body overwhelm us all. Amen
Source
Sáncte Míchael Archángele, defénde nos in proélio, cóntra nequítiam et insídias diáboli ésto præsídium. Ímperet ílli Déus, súpplices deprecámur: tuque, prínceps milítiæ cæléstis, Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos, qui ad perditiónem animárum pervagántur in múndo, divína virtúte, in inférnum detrúde. Ámen
