Balliceaux, A Garifuna Sacred Monument

SEARCHLIGHT welcomes the recent confirmation by Finance Minister, Camillo Gonsalves that the government is in the final stages of acquiring the uninhabited Grenadine Island of Balliceaux and it will be a sacred monument to the Garifuna people, the original owners of the land.

Though there has not been any known poll on the matter, we are confident that such acquisition meets with the approval of the majority of our people, especially if it is going to be dedicated to such an honourable purpose. Interest has been further heightened in the hope that the acquisition may be completed in time for it to be celebrated on March,14, the day set aside to honour our sole National Hero, Carib Chief, the Right Excellent Joseph Chatoyer. What a fitting tribute to the noble Garifuna people both here and abroad, especially those in Belize and Honduras who still consider tiny SVG as their “homeland”!

It is interesting to note that over the years every time there is heightened national interest in the acquisition of Balliceaux, there is a flurry of activity by legal representatives of those who claim ownership of the island staking the ownership claim and obviously trying to increase the market value of what is deemed in commercial terms as “prime tourism property”.

We have to make it absolutely clear that Balliceaux means much more to our people than just a tourism property and that it cannot become a “playground of the rich and famous” as some may envisage. It is, and must remain a sacred monument to the victims of that 18th century genocide and ethnic cleansing. After the murder of Chief Chatoyer and the decision to rid our country of the Garifuna people, Balliceaux was singled out as a convenient graveyard for the unfortunate indigenous inhabitants. In a similar fashion there are those who today have scant regard for the feelings of the Garifuna people.

It is regrettable that modern circumstances and constitutional requirements place our government in a situation where it is obliged to pay compensation for the acquisition of Balliceaux. The ownership of that island is very much a product of colonialism under which people were conquered militarily, and property seized. Nobody paid the original owners for Balliceaux, nor for all the lands seized to establish plantation slavery. If by chance the government were to insist on the sacred rights of the original people, there would be a huge outcry and maybe even threatened sanctions by powerful countries. Just look at South Africa, where the African inhabitants of the land were forcibly dispossessed to make way for odious apartheid. Today, three decades after the end of apartheid, a tiny majority of whites still own not only the vast majority of the land, but the best land at that. Yet the USA is threatening to punish South

Africa for exercising its right to expropriate lands. So we may be constrained by circumstances, but we must not back down on our insistence on Balliceaux. We owe it to those who perished horribly there and those like Chatoyer who fought and died for our sovereignty.