A Walk Through the Spanish Lookout Graveyard
I meditated on a grave dated 1910 to 1994. Was the person born in Canada or Mexico? Did she die peacefully knowing her lifelong goal was accomplished? Or did she on her deathbed utter a dying desire for one thing to be completed?
Certain graves surprised me. The names were “spanish”, most definitely not Mennonite while yet another grave bore an “English” name. But… but… I thought only Mennonites were buried in a Mennonite graveyard. Based on the dates which hailed from the 70’s and 80’s, these were most likely during the time when Guatemalans fleeing the civil war were settling on Mennonite farms as migrant workers. The massive influx of Salvadorans and Guatemalans led to the creation of several “spanish” villages bordering Spanish Lookout to the east, west, north and south as well as to the opening of a new cemetery for them to the southwest of Spanish Lookout. As of today, these half dozen villages still share the same graveyard.
But what about the “english” names? Were they American or Belizean Creoles? The name could easily pass for both especially since many Creoles have names such as Jones, Smith, Brown, etc. More intriguingly, why were they buried here?
I stepped over to one where the person was born and died in that same year. A few lived only a year or two. Then I noticed a startling fact. These children all died between 1985 and 1990; mostly Mennonites although a few non-Mennonite children were affected. I searched out one or two more of these infant graves and sure enough, they all died in the late 1980’s. It was very close to this period that one of my spouse’s siblings passed away when still a child. This begged the question, what happened back then?
I pondered this and suddenly realized it was during the mid-1980’s that a relative became deathly ill with some obscure disease when only about 5 or 6 years old and completely lost all sanity. The person is now middle-aged but still with the brain of a little child. Was there an epidemic of some sort that swept the community during this period? Malaria, pneumonia, measles and dengue were rampant in Belize until the late 1990’s when vaccinations were more available to remote communities.
My curiousity aroused I directed my questions to local Mennonite individuals that were born in the 1970’s but they simply couldn’t recall any epidemic striking the community. Not receiving any answers I decided to ask the older ones, those from the 50’s and 60’s. Their reply was similar. Frustrated now, I approached a gentleman from a nearby “spanish” village who was born in the early 40’s. Again a negative answer. Maybe I'm just asking the wrong persons, or maybe there was no epidemic. Maybe it was simply a severe bout of flu.
Perhaps I will keep searching for answers or perhaps I will follow the example of the Mennonites. Seeing first hand the Mennonite’s callous and non-committal response to the Covid-19 pandemic and their extreme quietness at the number of deaths in the community caused by the virus, I wonder if perhaps this was something similar. The virus came, the children died, they were buried, and life moved on.
