Dear Editor,
The Cuffy 250 Committee joins the rest of Guyana in commemorating our country’s 44th anniversary as a republic. The date of our republican status is linked to the beginning of the 1763 Berbice Revolt launched by our ancestors 251 years ago. We, therefore, call on all Guyanese in the midst of their Mashramani revelry, to remember and reflect on the bold historic act of freedom struck in 1763 by Cuffy (Kofi), Akara, Accabre and Atta and their band of freedom fighters.
For us in the Cuffy 250 Committee, the existence of Guyana as a sovereign state is inextricably linked to the Berbice revolt which we view as the official beginning of our quest for independence and statehood grounded in equality and freedom. Those men and women who confronted the power of the plantocracy in 1763 and gained their freedom for almost a year are the rightful fathers and mothers of our nation. They showed the enslaved throughout the Americas that another world based on freedom was possible. They also showed the slave owners that there was a limit to human oppression and that physical enslavement had not extinguished the inherent human spirit of resistance and freedom. In effect, they struck the first death blow against race slavery in what would later become Guyana. The Berbice Revolt, therefore, was not a slave revolt, but a massive act of liberation by human beings held in bondage against their will.
The 1763 Revolt was also an important act of global significance. It preceded both the other great revolution by captive Africans, which created a liberated Haiti in 1804, as well as the American and French revolutions of that period. Our foreparents, then, contributed to the age and tradition of world revolution that is today hailed and studied by people all over the world. We are an integral part of world history too.
While some historians and commentators focus on the fact that the Berbice revolt was eventually crushed, Cuffy 250 urges all Guyanese to celebrate the 1763 Revolt as a great victory of the oppressed over oppression, of good over evil and of freedom over unfreedom. The fact that the Europeans used their institutional might to overcome the freedom fighters represented a setback to rather than a turning back of the inevitable march to freedom. Freedom from oppression is almost always incremental. The spirit of 1763 rose to high proportions again in 1823 and 1834 and in the long struggle against post-emancipation servitude that would eventually lead to political independence and republicanism.
We believe that Cuffy and his revolutionary sisters and brothers and the 1763 Revolt in general belong to all Guyanese regardless of ethnicity. But we also urge that African Guyanese take special pride in the revolt as a product of the African imagination and personality. This is important at a time when the African contribution to world civilization is under fresh assault by revisionists and racists. In this regard the 1763 Revolt must become a constant symbol of resistance and overcoming in the hands and collective mind of African Guyanese as they combat institutional and other forms of marginalization.
Finally, the Cuffy 250 Committee urges that it is improper to celebrate Cuffy and his comrades while supporting or turning a blind eye to the torture of their descendants. The most recent torture of young Colwyn Harding must remind us of the torture of the leaders of the 1763 revolt. We cannot celebrate an act of freedom in 1763 but stand in the way of equal freedom in 2014. We cannot affirm Cuffy’s right to resistance against wrongdoing in 1763 but deny the same right to the people of Linden in 2012. Those who are tasked with overseeing our republic today must decide whether they stand on the shoulder of Cuffy and his revolutionaries. And Guyanese, in general, must reclaim the resistance and freedom spirit and tradition of 1763 not merely as an academic exercise, but as a powerful moral and political guide in the continuing struggle to make republicanism a reality that reflects the will of all Guyanese regardless of social class and ethnic origin.
Yours faithfully,
Norwell Hinds
for Cuffy 250 Committee
