Dear Editor,
After watching several hours of the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners, I have seen demonstrated and really felt what true unity means, especially in a life and death situation.
Could Guyana learn anything from this, or more importantly, did Guyana learn anything from it? Are we a cursed nation? Definitely not. Are we a stubborn nation? Maybe. Are we a nation slow to learn from previous mistakes? Absolutely.
As a nation, we are prone to making the same mistakes repeatedly. We continue to view ourselves as ethnically, culturally and socially separate, always ignoring the fact that primarily we are Guyanese. That we happen to have emerged out of a brutal situation ought to have made us more aware of our equal-ness but instead we are separated by foolish vanity.
The Chilean people have demonstrated what it is like to stand together as one, while we continue to see our individual ethnic differences as important an characteristic to promote and defend. Whoever we think we are in our minds is no more than an illusion, and at the end of the day all that will remain is a just a simple dash a few inches long between our birth and death dates engraved on our tombstones. A very sobering thought for a people which has wasted so much time bickering with an ‘us against them’ attitude, while our petty collective superiority complex is in total control of our actions.
The Chilean miners have taught the whole world a lesson in unity. If only we could learn a bit from it we may stop seeing our Indian-ness or African-ness or whatever-ness as being more important than our Guyanese-ness.
Yours faithfully,
Bernard Ramsay
