Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington met with his Guatemalan counterpart Haroldo
Rodas at the OAS in Washington on Tuesday – and Elrington is under scrutiny
tonight after being quoted at those meetings as saying, “We (Belizeans
and Guatemalans) are not different from each other; the fact of this artificial
border does not make us different.”
An “artificial border”!? It is an expression that has rightly rankled
Belizean nationalists – who were already upset when the western border
was turned into an adjacency zone. And now it’s “artificial”!?
Indeed, it has raised some ire, but from what we’ve seen on the ground
it’s an accurate statement – not in a desirable way, perhaps, but
accurate nonetheless because for the Guatemalans who live in the adjacency zone
our border is anything but real – and our army’s inability to properly
police it properly makes it more so.
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