Right Honourable, Doctor, Sir Manuel Esquivel passed away while receiving medical attention at a private hospital in Belize City at around 4:30p.m. on Thursday 10 February 2022. Sir Esquivel had been ailing for some time and died at the age of 81. Following his passing, the Government of Belize declared an official three days of mourning during which all flags across the country were flown at half mast. In keeping with the former Prime Minister’s wishes there was no religious service but instead there was an official memorial.
The program of events started on Tuesday, 15 February during which the urn containing his remains was taken by procession from his home on Daly St. to the Government House in Belize City where it laid in state. Being an official ceremony, the event was filled with officialdom as the BDF took charge of the transportation. When it arrived at the Government House, Covid-19 protocols having to be observed, a host of invited guests all took time to pay their last respects to the two-time head of state. Among those viewing the urn were the Prime Minister, Hon. Johnny Briceno; former Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow; the Acting Chief Justice, Hon. Michelle Arana; the Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Moses Shyne Barrow; Hon. Tracy Taegar Panton; and a host of dignitaries and members of Cabinet. Most notably paying his respects was former minister of Housing, Hon. Michael Finnegan. In a teary farewell, Hon. Finnegan remarked that history had absolved Esquivel. He went on to say that, “We love the earth that you walked on. Goodbye my friend.”
On the second day of the official ceremony, on February to the Government House 16, the urn after having been taken back to his residence, was once again transported via a procession. In the route there was the tolling of church bells at St. Catherine’s Academy and Holy Redeemer Cathedral. Upon its arrival at the Government House, again as had been Rt. Hon. Esquivel’s wishes, there was a concert held featuring an eclectic selection of songs and music from the classics to Paranda. The final farewell also included remembrances by his son, David, who fondly remembered his father as the inventor who would use his skills to produce toys for his children and other young relatives. Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow would also likened his former colleague and friend as the Pericles of Belize who possessed manifest intelligence and incorruptibility. Hon. Barrow would say that Rt. Hon. Esquivel was an honest politician which in and of itself is an oxymoron. “Manuel reached the summit more because people respected him than because they loved him… and he was comfortable with that,” stated Barrow. Also giving a remembrance was current Prime Minister, Hon. Johnny Briceno.
“Sir Manuel Esquivel came from an educational background. A math and physics teacher at St. John’s College. He was a devout family man. He brought his skills as a technocrat to government. Some people may not have liked that approach. But he was always well grounded in his belief in good governance, integrity, uprightness and public service. Everything about him represented the highest ideals of Belizean values. No one could challenge his integrity and the purpose for which he made any decision.” – Senator Darrel Bradley 11 February 2022
Dr. Sir Manuel Esquivel, KCMG, PC was born on 2nd May 1940 in Belize city to Juan Pablo Esquivel and his wife Laura Bolton, and passed away on 10 February 2022. His parents were musicians. His dad played the violin and his mom the piano. He was raised in a clapboard house at 8 Daly Street and lived there all his life. A Belizean politician and leader of the United Democratic Party, he served as Prime Minister from 1984 to 1989, and then again from 1993 to 1998.
He married Katherine Levy a British national who had travelled from London to Belize as a VSO volunteer math teacher. Curiously, and unlike what is reported elsewhere, Manuel and Kathie both attended Bristol University, but never met. Manuel was a an educator at the Jesuit run St. John’s College and Kathie a teacher at Wesley College – both institutions in Belize city. Fellow teachers and friends at SJC Carlos and Michelle Perdomo were the matchmakers for Manuel and Kathy. In later years Carlos served as Cabinet Secretary in Sir Manuel’s government. – M.A. Romero Chief Information Officer (RET) To The Government of Belize.
Eulogy of Right Honourable Sir Manuel Esquivel
The great Greek Statesman Pericles is credited with having much enlarged, if not indeed created, Athenian democracy. His position as the First man of Athens was due principally, according to the historian Thucydides, to his manifest intelligence and incorruptibility. Plutarch’s life also describes Pericles as a man of unchallengeable virtue at grips with the fickleness of the mob. It was Plutarch too, who painted a picture of Pericles as a man never seen on any road but that to the public offices, who was recalled to have gone to only one social occasion, which he left early.
I hope that sketch is enough to demonstrate why, during his life and now at his death, I count Sir Manuel Amadeo Esquivel as the Pericles of Belize. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the famous sonnet “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”. In these few days since his passing, an outpouring of sentiment has seen Belizeans from all walks of life counting the ways in which this nation loved Sir Manuel.
Of course, it was not always thus.
He was two times Prime Minister of this country and by any reckoning this was high political success. But there was the feeling that Manuel reached the summit more because people respected him than because they loved him. It is perhaps a measure of the man that Manuel was no doubt comfortable with that. There are few that would seriously argue with the virtue of love. I always had the feeling, though, that Manuel did regard the prize in politics as respect rather than love. The fickleness of people about which Plutarch spoke, meant that political love is often a transient commodity; one that can be bartered for by a trafficking in the baubles of the moment; a counterfeit ornament of public life cheaply bought and easily lost.
Now Manuel never said any of this to me. But it surely is consistent with what we know of the man. Because, you see, any proper framing of Manuel’s life and legacy begins with that most striking of oxymorons: he was an honest politician. Examples abound of his possession of this rarest of qualities, but two stories will suffice. One is of the Corozal businessmen that visited his office to express their gratitude for Manuel’s expansion of the Free Zone and the resultant huge increases in their profits. They knew better than to try to offer Manuel any personal financial token of their appreciation. But they wished to make clear that their thanks would mean substantial contributions to the UDP. Manuel stopped them right away. What he had done was a matter of policy for the benefit of all Belize. He would not allow anyone to sully his performance of duty by talk of reward to him or the UDP. The other story is of his interaction with a Caribbean Shores constituent. During an election canvas, a voter asked Manuel to pave Coney Drive. Manuel’s riposte was: I suppose you want it done with gold?
Now there is no way to soft soap this. Manuel must have been more than a little exasperated by the constant importuning of the electorate. So, he refused to reply with the usual politician’s emollience. Indeed, his response was sarcastic to a degree that must have cost him that vote. But he was such a plain speaker, such a truth teller, that he could not help himself. Every other politician that I know, including yours truly, would have hastened to promise the constituent that they would not only pave Coney Drive with gold, but add diamonds for good measure. Not Manuel, though. He was honest to a fault.
Honesty, of course, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for good leadership. The greatness of Manuel was that he possessed the other qualities in spades. There was his capacious mind; his fixity of purpose; his immovable resolve to do the right, though unpopular, thing; his preternatural calm; the ice in his veins when confronted by crises; his being stirred to anger only by the evil of corruption. The sum total of this man, then, was a wonder to behold.
Like Pericles he was never seen on any road but that to the public offices. In that context I recall an incident in Cabinet right at the start of his second term in 1993. A minister was insisting that we not approve a project for a certain entrepreneur. This was because, the Minister said, that businessman had cut him dead after we lost the 1989 elections. Manuel made clear that the minister was wrong on two scores. One, no Cabinet of his would proceed on the basis of animus against even a political opponent. And two, the minister was out of order to be upset over the businessman’s refusal to socially notice the minister during the years in opposition.
Manuel was stern: Ministers must never be seduced by the trappings of power; by the courtship paid them simply because of office held. In other words, for the majority of the private sector relationships with politicians were merely transactional. Reality dictated a recognition of this sovereign principle. A minister that allowed his head to be turned by the flattery that came simply as an incident of political power, was little better than a fool.
The canvas that I have drawn is, I think, an accurate one. Nobody, though, ought to be misled into thinking that Manuel was some bloodless, soulless paragon.
He was, for one thing, gifted with a lively sense of humour. He had the power of repartee and was quick to lighten a mood by retailing some joke. One I particularly remember is about an old Latin American dictator, utterly corrupted by a life of absolute power but who was at death’s door. His aide asked permission to bring to the general’s bedside a delegation that had come to say goodbye. According to Manuel the general replied: Oh? goodbye? Why would they want to say goodbye? Are they going somewhere? Because I certainly am not.
So, Manuel was never ‘hail fellow well met’. It was not easy to become an intimate of his. However, anyone that really got to know him considered it a privilege. He inspired great loyalty in his friends and colleagues, including me. We worked most closely together after the 93 elections when I became his Deputy. It was a mentorship I never forgot and for which I was always grateful. I will tell another story to show what I mean.
The Party lost terribly in 98, Manuel stepped down as leader and I succeeded him. The UDP began the slow process of rebuilding and I made frequent trips to the Towns and Villages of our country. In those days, public meetings were still in vogue and I would never speak at a rally anywhere without invoking the name of Manuel. I felt that the Party owed him a great debt of gratitude, and one way to repay it was to treat him as the tutelary deity of our cause. There was at that time a new member of the executive of the UDP. He had come to us from the business class and he had the pulse of that community. He took me aside one night after I came off the rostrum and conveyed a message from his private sector associates: I should stop the public references to Manuel and begin to distance the Party from the ex-PM. Manuel was not in good odour with the captains of industry, and I needed in any event to come out from under his shadow.
Of course, I let fly. Manuel would remain totemic for me and the Party and if that new executive member didn’t like it he and his blue blooded scions could go straight to Hades. I am, naturally, giving you the polite version. In actuality, it was as fine a piece of invective as I have ever delivered. I remain proud of it to this day. That was the kind of loyalty Manuel commanded.
One final thing. It has ever been known that Manuel’s public life was beyond reproach. But so too was his private life, and that also set him apart: complete love and fidelity for his wife, and utter devotion to his children. In domestic matters, then, Manuel was again an exemplar of the probity, seemliness and dignity that we have a right to expect from all our Prime Ministers.
Of course, his wife and children loved him back equally deeply. Lady Kathy was his rod and staff in good times and in bad. And no one can fail to be moved by the extraordinary tenderness and care that she and all the children (particularly Ruth as the only one still living in Belize) gave to Manuel during these long years of his deteriorating health.
And so all of us, together with Lady Kathy and David and Laura and Ruth, now say farewell to Manuel. With this send- off, the official period of mourning comes to an end.
Accordingly, we will move on. We will return to our workaday world, to earth’s diurnal turnings. We will do so, though, secure in the knowledge that the Right Honourable Sir Manuel Esquivel has ascended to the pantheon of Belizean immortals: that the Himalayan achievements of his life and leadership are imperishably stamped on the eternal record of our nation’s history. – Eulogy by Rt. Hon. Dean Oliver Barrow three-time Prime Minister of Belize.
“This young impeccable school teacher from St. John’s College rescued a united Democratic Party that was consumed with turmoil, confusion, leadership ambition and after his rescuing the party by taking over its leadership, he rescued this country from a 30 year-old entrenched PUP government and gave the United Democratic Party its first election victory in 1984. In the Esquivel era when we formed the United Democratic Party, the United Democratic Party was basically formed with Manuel Esquivel, Dean Lindo, Harry Lawrence, Paul Rodriguez, Curl Thompson, Kenneth Tillett, Lionel Tillett, myself as the youngest person of the group.” – Hon. Michael Finnegan UDP colleague and former Minister of Housing,
“Esquivel was elected Prime Minister in 1984 – for Belize’s first ever change of government, and then again in 1993, winning an unlikely victory when an over-confident George Price led PUP called a snap election. His historical importance in post Independence Belize is hard to overstate – apart from being the first leader to make Belize’s democracy real when he led the UDP to its first victory – he also took the country from the brink of devaluation shifted the country’s economic focus to a more investment oriented climate – especially open to tourism investment.” – Jules Vasquez Channel 7 Belize.
“Belize did not have a democracy until the UDP won in 1984. We had one-party rule. We had thirty years of PUP one-party rule. That to me stands out as the first and foremost of Sir Manuel Esquivel’s achievements. He and his United Democratic Party defeated the PUP 21 seats to 7, with 75% of the electorate turning out for the general elections. Coming just three years after the PUP had brought Belize to independence in 1981, it was nothing short of spectacular. Like George Price, Sir Manuel was a unique, selfless patriot. The last of a now extinct line of Belizean leaders universally respected for their humility and integrity.” – Manolo Romero Chief Information Officer (RET) – Founder Belize.com – All Rights Reserved.