Frankly Speaking
The PPP and the Army
Compliments of my daughters, I’ve just completed another vacation in the USA. Permit me as a consequence, to offer again a brief waffle-rambling piece on my born-Guyanese country men in Barack Obamaland. (My vacation took me to New York, New Jersey and Florida.)
During the early sixties my aunt and uncle visited the United Kingdom on holiday. (The word “vacation” is of much later American vintage.) They took an old aeroplane to Trinidad then joined a big boat for two weeks to Southampton (?) By the mid-sixties they were “vacationing” in “America- the land of opportunity” as all senior Guyanese Public Servants would describe the USA in those days. They would return to tell little me of Puerto Ricans and a risky, closed-door New York.
Came the Burnham indiscretions and Guyanese- both his supporters and the more oppressed- voted with their feet and migrated, legitimately or via the “back-track,” to the mighty Uncle Sam. That deluge, that exodus began in earnest by the early eighties, I’d say. It has never stopped! Change of Guyanese governments or not! So how are my people in the USA? Those who were born in Guyana. My own limited observations follow.
Today’s immigrants,tomorrow’s citizens
The Guyanese of the early eighties generation have integrated or been absorbed into the societies of the American metropoles. From the old favourite destination of choice- New York, New York- our people are now numerically and visibly in such places as Georgia, Florida, Arizona, California, Texas and many East Coast States. (But I bet you can find some in North Dakota and Alaska!)
It is believed that of the immigrants and “aliens” from the Caribbean region, Guyanese top the list of undocumented/illegal residents. (They pay their taxes and work strenuously, however.) But Guyanese serve the American economy and survival at all levels imaginable. From the ubiquitous MTA (transportation in New York) to indispensable Home Attendants for America’s geriatrics to teachers and nurses, to professors in colleges and universities to security and real estate operatives, they are there working with verve, determination and objectives not matched whilst they were in their homeland. (For obvious reasons.)
Immigrants work hard, behave well and the undocumented illegals paid Jewish and Italian immigration lawyers and became citizens, even as others hurried to produce Guyanese-American children- and citizens. As the realities of migration, go Guyanese have little to be ashamed of and much to be proud about. Because for every one of the modern-day law-breakers fifty or one hundred are upright law-abiding citizens. If only by paper-naturalisation. (Millions of other immigrants are.)
Guyanese-American children
One social phenomenon that has intrigued me over the thirty years I have visited the USA has to do with the American-born offspring of Guyanese-Caribbean immigrants. (Of course, it goes for other nationalities too.)
According to birth -and law- these children are more American than their parents. Some of them had/have to grapple with their bi-cultural “heritage.” They hear their parents’ domestic Guyanese accents being much different from what they hear and speak in school, work and play. Even when they mingle amongst their parent’s Guyanese-Caribbean groupings. They try to love Caribbean foods but soon prefer their pizzas and more American dishes.
Today’s Information-Communication Technology, of course allows them- and their parents – to learn about their parent’s homeland quite easily but the pull factor-reality of their daily physical environment determines their American identity, I even argue that those Guyanese–Caribbean children really do not have a genuine West Indian heritage. To me, through their parents, they have the blood-line and even the Caribbean citizenship, but obviously could not experience the actual cultural, even spiritual traditions and realities of their parent’s origins. Easily they become products of their American birth-places. Nothing is wrong with that.
However, John “Slingshot” Drepaul of Kitty, Corentyne, Trinidad and Orlando, Florida, does not share my view on that one. What say you?
Going, coming home…
“Home is where the heart is, they say. Many US-based Guyanese use this sentiment to explain their undying “love” for their homeland. Their “heart” remains in Guyana whilst all other organs of their being reside in their adopted countries.
I even understand the craving for things Guyanese which many mature immigrants develop after living elsewhere for five years or more. They ask for my short-stories and proverbs, they want Guyanese music and still cook Guyana’s home-foods in America. Loving Guyana from afar, they need to show other ethnic groups that they too have some “original” identity other than “American.” Strange. But understandable? So it’s only the children who are wholly American?
My just-concluded visit did not reveal any scores of Guyanese, under fifty rushing to return to their homeland because of the economic recession now gripping the US – replete with loss of jobs and shrinking bank loans. Return to what, they ask.
Well those over sixty do consider returning to their homeland’s friendlier weather, laid-back retirement mode and houses bought with their life’s American earnings. Their old-age challenge however, is the realization that, as seniors, now they are returning to the blackouts, high prices, chaotic traffic disorder and daily crime, cocaine trafficking, fires and moral collapse- the latter which they are also leaving in their American environment. However, they should be made welcome in the land of their birth. Right? After all, they cling tenaciously to their enduring safety-net: that Blue-Book American passport.
Next time I’ll discuss the changing demographics of the USA, remittances from immigrants, deportees,- and what Guyanese writer E.R. Braithwaite and Nobel Prize Winner Trinidadian V.S. Naipaul think about identity.
The PPP and the army
I’m out of space to really discuss that issue at length. However, the recent Sunday Stabroek editorial on the former GDF officer David Clarke triggered many thoughts of the rocky relationship between the People’s Progressive Party and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) and even the military units, which preceded it.
In summary, my take is that the distrust by the political party of the army has its genesis in the reality that the latter has always been dominated by one ethnic group. And the army, as in most countries, always enjoys a higher profile and status than the more civilian Police Force. The traditional (British) culture meant the military, was hands-off to politicians. Until Forbes Burnham’s party and government changed all that. The GDF became an instrument of PNC electoral engineering and even its internal undesirable behaviours had their drum beaten by a feather, since the Army was responsible for the country’s national security. Right?
Came the return to power of the PPP in 1992. And all the memories of the pro-PNC roles of the army; and the reasons for its ethnic composition, (Is it true that Indo-Guyanese cadets are “hounded” at military training centres?)
President Jagdeo’s shake-up of Army top brass, his more hands-on management of the military as Minister of Security, abetted by Dr Luncheon’s mechanisms, keeps the GDF in sharper focus by the PPP these days. However, the inherited but nurtured culture of lawlessness now extant has produced crooked soldiers, criminal-friendly military managers, as well as unacceptable behaviour by any military.
There are still well trained, qualified and reputable officer-leaders in the GDF. How, in their minds, do they view the Administration’s and its handling of the Army? Is the PPP and the government capable of engaging productively, the Army’s management which it installed? (Besides increases of resources the Army needs. “Administrative inspiration” from a “friendly” Commander-in-Chief. How is he doing? I leave that to you- and the Officer Corps- to decide.
Until…
1. American citizens can call their Congressman when bothered by issues. We in Guyana call…
2. In Texas they debated whether children of undocumented immigrants should get free Salvation Army toys!
3. Whilst Georgetown’s cemetery is a disgrace, I came across a lovely name for a resting-place in New York- resurrection cemetery!
4. When the two uninvited party Crashers got close to President Obama in the White House recently, no one mentioned the Indian prime minister’s security.
5. Did you see the Al Jazeera television report on Drug Trafficking in Guyana? The cheeky Latin American female presenter declared that “the only thing Guyanese have not put cocaine in- is their national anthem!” So internationally hurtful!
‘Til next week!
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