Friday night's double murder in Belmopan has been dominating the social media discourse as reactions and comments from public officials, family members and friends have been ventilated.
But tonight, the ones that stand out are the comments from both the Mayor and Area Representative of Belmopan, saying that the victims and attackers were not from Belmopan - and that the crime came from outside. Well, tonight we were provided with documents that show otherwise. Jaleeza Roberts elaborates:
On Friday night, when shots rang out and bodies were motionless on the ground, the Belmopan police knew they didn't have to go far to find the family of one of the victims:
Alina Alvarez, Mother of Zamar
"On Friday, around 8:00 something they called me to identify that they think they have two persons on the floor and um one of them probably, they get to understand it's my son but I didn't believe it."
The double murder of Zamar Alvarez and Calvert Webster occurred in Central Belmopan - approximately 100 yards from the Belmopan City Hall.
Nevertheless, despite being prone to disagree on many things, the Area Representative and the Mayor of Belmopan have found a common chorus on this one…the victims and attackers were not from Belmopan. In an interview, the Belmopan Area Representative Oscar Mira said "it is a spill off of what happened in Democracia, a spill off of what happened in Belize City, unfortunately these guys came to hide in Belmopan". And the Belmopan mayor held the same line:
Pablo Cawich, Mayor of Belmopan
"It is not affiliated to Belmopan in any way. Both the victims and the attackers are from outside of Belmopan. So I just wanted to clear up that noise that is stating that Belmopan is becoming unsafe because that is clearly untrue."
It's a blame game and an "othering" - that engenders racial overtones and political pandering to xenophobia - but there's also personal injury; it has deepened a mourning mother's emotional turmoil. After the interviews aired yesterday, Zamar Alvarez's mother called us to clear the air. Her son was, in fact, from Belmopan and his official birth certificate shows it.
If that wasn't bad enough, he was also a registered voter in the Belmopan constituency - which these politicians should have known. But they either feigned ignorance or chose instead to play the outsider card for a false sense of community security - but in doing so, they denied this young victim and his family their most essential truth: that the soil that birthed him is also where he drew his last breath.
Jaleeza Roberts, 7 News.
And while that's the story of Zamar Alvarez, the other murder victim, Calvert Webster's family today opened his email and found out that he was accepted into the Belize Coast Guard, a dream he had been waiting to realize before his death.
