Today is a tragic and terrible day in northern Belize as anarchy was
loosed in the area of the Tower Hill Factory in Orange Walk. Credible reports
say one man has died and at least four are injured after clashes between police
and protestors. But the seeds of that anarchy was planted many days earlier.
Both sides knew they would eventually block the road – and indeed from
Saturday hostilities started to spark up between the police who were protecting
the sugar factory and the cane farmers who were holding firm outside of it.
On Saturday tear gas was released on a few farmers as police had to clear a
road. Hearing the news Keith Swift headed to Orange Walk and he found farmers
already cultivate the resolve and the hardline that came to bear on those terrible
events this afternoon.
Keith Swift Reporting,
This was Tower Hill on Saturday – police men standing guard at the road
leading uphill to block these roughly one hundred sugar cane farmers and their
families. The police men were armed with guns and - one even equipped with tear
gas to keep them at bay but the farmers remained calm and resolute.
Francisco Tillett, Cane Farmer
“From last night we were here and we will be here night in, day out
and we will stay here.”
Emiliano Aban, Cane Farmer
“I am right here because of the core sampler and we will be right 
here until they take it out from here. If we have to stay here a month, we will
stay here a month right here.”
Francisco Tillett,
“I am here because I am in protest too against the core sampler which
is not doing us any any good at all. Instead it is just taking away the little
bit of money that we get and we want to send a message to the whole country
and to the government and to BSI that we don’t want that core sampler.
Take it away and then we can continue working. If they don’t take it away,
we will continue here as long as it is there.”
Emiliano Aban,
“We have to do this because this is our business. This is not politics
because if we have to fight with the government we will fight with the government
because this is not politics, this is our business.”
But they made it clear that they are in it for the long haul –even if 
their patience was growing thin.
Elizar Uk, Cane Farmer
“Six months we deliver cane and six months we don’t deliver
cane. So between that six months we don’t have work. We just depend on
the work we did. So that means that if we could survive for that six months,
we could survive for the rest because if we continue to deliver cane to that
factory, we know that we are the ones who will be affected.”
Mario Camara, Cane Farmer
“If this continues, people will get more drastic because they are
just playing with us – telling us they will fix it and nobody does anything.”
And images like this of police blocking the Northern Highway to allow a convoy
of 6 trucks loaded with sugar cane to basically sneak into the factory through
the back door – is probably what made what the undesirable, inevitable.
And of course, that is what is at the center of this dispute: that
the farmers demand that the factory be shut down but it was not as it continued
to receive cane from BSI owned cane fields.
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