It was with deep sadness that we learned of David de Caires’ passing. December will mark two years since my initial conversation with David, when he supported my proposal to establish this column. David was in touch regularly, never too busy to respond to an e-mail, to write with a query. My last correspondence with David on the column was in March; in May I received word that he had left the country for a few months and that Anand Persaud would now be handling the correspondence.
Jamaican economist Norman Girvan reminds us that “David was co-founder, along with Lloyd Best and Miles Fitzpatrick, of the New World Journal in 1963, which called for a bipartisan, indigenous development programme in Guyana and a coalition government that would heal the fractures in the national movement which had splintered along racial lines.” Dr. Brian Meeks, Director of the Centre for Caribbean Thought (CCT) at the University of the West Indies, said yesterday that David had written a short article that will appear as part of the proceedings coming out of the Caribbean Reasonings New World Conference, which will be published in 2009. David was also part of the consortium that recently gave permission for the CCT and the University of the West Indies Press to republish the New World Quarterly collection.
This morning I pulled out my parents’ old copies of New World Fortnightly, which David founded and which came out in Guyana. I looked at the range of topics that were covered: Guyanese national theatre; Caribbean integration; the army and civil service; Art and the Akawaio; the 1966 Independence issue. In the November 30th, 1964 inaugural issue, in a country traumatized by the racial disturbances of the preceding months, poet Martin Carter opened with a letter whose contents resonate deeply with our current predicament as Guyanese: “The almost fanatical pre-occupation with hollow issues, the gossip-mongering which passes for conversation, and the inevitable political hysteria, leave little time for the serious examination of ideas. I know that the psychological squalor of everyday life is exhausting. I know that the urgent practical problem of making a living comes first. What I do not know is why only so few revolt, either by word or by deed, against such acute spiritual discomfort.” Carter goes on to comment on the emergence of New World Fortnightly: “In our present condition few things can be as important as objectivity. I feel that much of the good which will come out of this publication will come from the ability of the contributors to maintain their objectivity in the face of fixed allegiance and uncritical response.” Although David de Caires entered the newspaper business relatively late in life, if we look at New World we realize that four and a half decades ago he was intensely involved in a joint project dedicated to the dissemination of ideas, and to a critical engagement with the realities of a soon to be independent region. Perhaps we should consider a reprinting of the Guyana Fortnightly issues. Not as a way of archiving the past, but as a project dedicated to drawing on these historical conversations to help make sense of our stagnant present, as we struggle to remember a different, more hopeful future for Guyana. On behalf of all of the contributors to this column, I would like to extend my deepest condolences to David’s family, and to his extended family at Stabroek News.
– Alissa Trotz, Editor, In the Diaspora Column, Toronto, November 2, 2008.
A Tribute
by Cary Fraser
I cannot remember the first time I met David – it must have been sometime in the 1970s in the company of Martin and/or Phyllis Carter. It was a chance encounter somewhere in Georgetown and, at the time, I was young and too engaged with frivolous pursuits to pay much attention to David. It was a mistake on my part not to recognize the intensity that lay behind the relaxed manner and the congenial conversation in which David engaged. When I went to the University of the West Indies-St. Augustine in 1977, I met Lloyd Best there and it was from Lloyd that I learnt about the formation of the New World Group and early years of the New World publications in which David played an important role. In fact, I learnt more about David from a Trinidadian than I had from other Guyanese. It was an interesting experience and it taught me the importance of looking at my own society through the eyes of the outsider in order to see the truths from which we tend to shrink. It was a gift that David had and I regret now that I did not ask him at Lloyd’s funeral how he had acquired that gift. David and I chatted after the funeral service and he returned the favor to Lloyd of discussing with me some of his memories of Lloyd and the significance of his passing. It is this juxtaposition of memories through which I must now pay tribute to David – a distinguished Guyanese and one who went beyond the call of duty to render yeoman service to the society to which he remained deeply committed.
David was born during the Great Depression and came of age in Guyana during the disintegration of the nationalist movement and the collapse of the West Indian Federation. It was certainly not an auspicious context in which to pursue an engagement with politics, especially when Guyanese politics took a very violent turn in the early 1960s. However, it was precisely in this context that David, Lloyd, and others spurred the development of the New World journals, and demonstrated their commitment to shape a space for intellectual engagement that would rise above the rhetoric of vitriolic irrelevance that has too often shaped the political climate of the region. More important, they were committed to the idea that nationalism should be underpinned by a focus upon the development of an intellectual tradition that sought to make sense of the Caribbean on its own terms – not by way of imported ideologies and concepts divorced from the realities of the region.
The New World group were engaged in intellectual decolonization as a corollary of the transfer of power from Britain.
It was an intellectual challenge from which David did not shrink and the discomfiture that he provoked among the leaders of the PPP and the PNC over the course of his life was testimony to his view that the political leaders should be held accountable. He was also clear that absurdity should not remain uncontested and his observation about Cheddi Jagan and the PPP in his interview with Frank Birbalsingh illustrated his acute sense of irony: “This variance between the formal ideology of the leader [Marxism] and his charismatic racial appeal is interesting for what it says about politics: that it’s about symbols and not necessarily about messages.” In the same interview, he offered his view that Peter D’Aguiar bore greater responsibility than Forbes Burnham for the events of 1962 that would ultimately lead to the overthrow of the PPP – a view that should be explored more systematically by historians and the current generation of political leaders.
David was born into the Portuguese business class, shaped by Roman Catholic education, and would become an engaged intellectual committed to a vision of nation broader than tribal identity. He had outgrown the politics of Guyana but remained committed to the belief that he had a responsibility to offer an alternative vision. Like Martin Carter, David moved to the beat of a different drum and Guyanese life was thus enriched. May he rest in peace.
