I went with my friend and writer Rick Moguel to visit Jesus Ken in Succotz, Cayo.

It was an immersive experience. I remember thinking of those St. John’s College students who staged, for a history project, a cañero rebellion in the context of the moment we call in Belize, the Cañeros Movement .

All the youths wanted to be Jesús Ken. They loved his character, fiery, charismatic and bold. They belong to an instagram generation yet they felt the depth and urgency in Ken’s fight for his fellow sugar cane farmers.

A few weeks ago I visited the former Libertad sugar factory compound. The artist Lito and I were supporting another artist Katie Numi Usher who was doing an art performance in the massive cavern metal structure ex-sugar storage facility.

Both the re-enactment by students and the art intervention by the artist are acts of cultural engagement with history. If we can’t value our ancestral legacies, then cultural estrangement will become us.

We will never know what went down except for our imaginations and the stories we
are told.

Respect to Ricardo for writing with such broad sweeping magical realism strokes. This book can easily excite young people because it is not heavy on theory or lost in academic complexities. It is plain spoken and real.

I encourage those who are open to check this first draft of what we hope to be many on what went down in the northern part of Belize.

It can’t just be the re-fried “caste war” and “refugees” story. It has to get down and
dirty – deeper and graphic.