Today, the University of Belize and the Ministry of Home Affairs finished up a 2-day Seminar with a big theme. It was called Understanding Masculinities and Male Violence in Belize.
That misunderstood masculinity is what's driving the epidemic of violence in Belize - and one of the experts who was brought in to try and decode it is Jamaican violence anthropologist, Dr. Herbert Gayle.
He's written the definitive study of male violence in Belize - which was released as a book in 2016. But today we tracked him down at the airport to ask him about the violence that we've recently seen indiscriminately targeting women and children. As we've reported three women and one male minor have been murdered, while others have been shot in the city in the last two months.
Gayle said it is a worrying development indicative of a deepening crisis:
Jules Vasquez
"It is cyclical, these crime crises and every time we think, well, this is the end of the world. But what has really triggered this one is the violence against women and children. And people can't understand that, because there are two things you protect in society - that are off limits, thought to be."
Dr. Herbert Gayle, Violence Anthropologist
"Especially in a war zone...the replicator."
Jules Vasquez
"So what is it indicative of?"
Dr. Herbert Gayle
"It's an indicator of what we call a level two war, meaning that no longer are people at the base level of violence, but they're stepping it up to a higher level, in which they are addressing the replicator because one of the rules of war is you do not kill women and children and once people do that, they are actually triggering a larger war, because they know when they kill the person biologically who replaces us, who can reproduce, who can replace us, that's why we call them the replicator. They know for sure that what they're doing is triggering a deeper set of emotion and a deeper set of emotion means a wider frame of killing. So, there is reason to be concerned."
Jules Vasquez
"Is this a phenomenon that has been witnessed in the Caribbean?"
Dr. Herbert Gayle
"Jamaica. Jamaica. And there's been bits of it in Trinidad. But Jamaica, especially. And of course we know the war level in Jamaica is much higher than here in Belize. So, it is something that we have to be mindful of and begin to address, and addressing it means getting the resources focused on family. Because I mean it is suggesting to people that we've been neglecting families for too long and focusing on secondaries like the social services that are very visible and so forth, and the big programs and so forth, but the primaries of education and the family we have to return to because people have to understand that you can't attack women and children."
Dr. Gayle returned to Jamaica today after presenting at the seminar yesterday.
Email
Print