Our Man in Belize. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, April, 1998 by James Gibney

A veteran diplomat recalls life in an obscure outpost

With its Graham Greenesque title, pastel-colored book jacket, and breezy prose, Richard Conroy's memoirs of Foreign Service life in 1960s British Honduras offer an enjoyable nostalgia trip back to the days when diplomacy still featured prop-driven DC-4s and typewritten dispatches. But based on my latter-day experiences with the State Department, what's most striking about Conroy's recollections is how little the Foreign Service seems to have changed. Roughly four decades, one Cold War, and several dozen State Department reorganization plans after Conroy first took up his tropical post, the day-to-day experiences of an American vice consul -- especially in the Third World -- remain a bizarre blend of Conrad, Kafka, and the Marx Brothers.

Conroy's story begins with his induction into the Foreign Service by way of jobs in the Social Security Administration and a federal nuclear bomb factory in his native Tennessee. Recruited as part of a larger effort by the State Department to go beyond the then-usual pool of Northeastern elites, Conroy quickly demonstrates that he has the right stuff. When his State Department examiners ask whether he would commit an illegal act to advance the national interest, Conroy replies that he would first find out that he had been "misinformed" about the act's illegality, commit the act, and then slap the highest possible classification on any records of what he had done. Although this anecdote rings a little too cute to my ears, few FSOs would deny that the ability to cover your ass is an essential survival skill.

Moreover, Conroy's depiction of his early days in the department is a classic illustration of what happens when smart people are forced to do dumb things. His first assignment is to reconcile personnel files and pay records in the personnel office. Bored out of their gourds, Conroy and colleagues set up an informal tea house where they spend their days composing limericks and spreading incendiary gossip. (One of the department's longest-running internal laments is that few FSOs are good "managers" -- a legitimate concern that involves a complex mismatch between the people it attracts and the people it needs.) But this period is not a total loss: A teahouse patron later helps Conroy by derailing his assignment to Naha, Okinawa, in favor of the more desirable Zurich. Writes Conroy about his time in Switzerland: "If these years were in any way memorable, they were so because the consul general was a lovable alcoholic with a 70-year-old Polish mistress, my immediate superior insisted that all correspondence be prepared in the passive voice, and I had to use elaborate subterfuge to wrest control over the visa section from a local Swiss clerk who had delusions of grandeur." With the exception (perhaps) of the lovable alcoholic consul general, his description deftly distills many a first tour.

Conroy does not tell why he went from Zurich to then-British Honduras (now Belize), which is probably just as well. The State Department's assignment system continues to defy easy explanation, operating more on the basis of personal connections and personnel regulations than any internal logic or guiding intelligence. But as Conroy's new boss makes clear when he welcomes him and his family to "in back of beyond," his assignment probably isn't a reward for good behavior. I don't know what Belize is like today, but Conroy's vivid portrait of its sights, sounds, and smells in 1961 evoked some of my first impressions of Bombay, India, 30 years later, whether the funky hygiene, madcap drivers, or the local tendency to steal gas caps and windshield wipers.

After a shaky recovery from his welcoming cocktail party, Conroy settles in at the tiny, two-person consulate. As the resident "Visa Mon," he sorts through a daily parade of dubious would-be travelers to the United States, including one 26-year old man who "wished to see his daughter graduate from Harvard, which he seemed to think was located in New Orleans" (Three of the top stories that dirt-poor Indian farmers used to give "Visa Wallahs" in Bombay were that they wanted to see: 1) Disneyland; 2) the "White Christmas" festival, usually in Texas; and 3) the Water Goddess, aka the Statue of Liberty.) Conroy also tends to the usual mix of good, bad, and ugly American travelers, keeps loose tabs on Belize's bubbling trade in illegal narcotics and stolen cars, and writes commercial reports that "the State Department had to provide if it was to keep [the Department of] Commerce from sending out its own field representatives." (A turf battle that State ultimately lost with the creation of the Foreign Commercial Service.) And, last but not least, as Conroy hilariously recounts, our man in Belize spends a lot of time at parties and receptions, getting bombed with the zany locals, fishing giant cockroaches out of his soup, and doing some compulsory dancing with the wife of the British Governor General.

Disruption to this more or less happy state of affairs comes in the form of Hurricane Hattie on Oct. 31, 1961. As the storm approaches, Conroy's boss Pruitt heads for the high ground (after first ensuring the safety of his sailboat). Conroy is left to secure the consulate and find shelter for his staff and that of the International Cooperation Administration (now the U.S. Agency for International Development, or AID). When Hattie hits with winds close to 200 miles an hour, it kills 400 people, shreds buildings, and leaves much of Belize covered with mud and without electricity or drinking water. Conroy sends the department the kind of cable that most vice consuls can only dream about: "Consul missing. Have assumed charge. Conroy." The first telegram the department sends back is "Department presumes that in view of the destruction caused by the recent hurricane, there will be no representation functions [i.e., parties] in British Honduras during the recovery period. All unobligated representation funds for this fiscal year therefore withdrawn from post's allotment."