Fifty-two years ago today, Guyana rescinded ties to its former colonial ruler, England, becoming the first nation in the Caribbean region to declare itself a republic. As part of the celebrations to mark the occasion, we hosted a Carib-bean Conference of Writers and Artists, similar to the one held four years previously, to commemorate the achievement of Independence.
The one-day conference was held at the Critchlow Labour College, on the 24th February, and the invitees included such leading Caribbean artistic minds as Ivan Van Sertima, Jan Carew, Wilson Harris, Aubrey Williams, Sam Selvon, Austin Clarke, Earl Lovelace, and others. The birth of Carifesta, and the initial hosting of it by Guyana in 1972, was the seed of this very significant gathering of the best and brightest of the Caribbean’s artists who exchanged ideas and held discussions prior to and after the conference.
In his speech to declare the conference open, the then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham posed several challenging questions to the attendees on the subject of Caribbean identity. Half a century later, with most of the region’s states having attained independence, the question lingers tantalisingly; are we any closer to identifying as, or achieving a cultural identity as a region?
Fifty years is a sizable passage of time, and it is safe to say that many of those artists in attendance at that conference are no longer with us today, to provide a first-hand insight of the thought process and mindset of the Caribbean artist of the day, many of whom were either based in England or North America. However, one writer, the Jamaican-raised, London-based, Andrew Salkey, kept a diary of copious notes of the happenings leading up to the event, the conference and subsequent developments. Salkey’s Georgetown Journal covers a significant epoch of our history, and as an outsider looking in, his rather astute observations on his initial visit, of our social and political tensions at the time, is compulsory reading for anyone possessing a keen interest in our history.
Salkey’s 400-odd pages are not only a fascinating peek into our way of life and standard of living at the time, but are complemented with the opinions and thoughts of Guyanese in leading positions and other supplementary information. Among the six appendices are post conference interviews with Guyanese historian, later turned politician, Dr Walter Rodney, (then lecturing at the University of Tanzania), Guyanese economist Dr Clive Thomas, and an extract from a Secret Memorandum issued by the US State Department to Peace Corps Volunteers.
Salkey artfully arranged an interview with Burnham a day prior to his departure, as well as others including then Minister of Culture Martin Carter (whose artistic importance requires no introduction) and then Minister of Education Shirley Field-Ridley. Although Salkey’s journal was penned in chronological sequence, the reader gets the impression that the interview with the Culture Minister, the poet laureate, was the apogee of his trip. According to the author, Carter expressed no interest in being made aware of the line of questioning beforehand.
Carter’s responses to Salkey’s carefully constructed probing questions were transcribed verbatim from his tape recorder and assiduous perusal of them leads one to wonder how we as a nation could have strayed so far off base from the evolving blueprint in terms of cultural development. Carter’s brilliant mind was quick to analyse and present in layman’s terms the elements and process of culture development, and its integrated linkage to political and economic development.
Our national poet laureate’s responses are still food for thought 50 years on, and are worthy of reflection. When Salkey sought Carter’s amplification on “… suppression because of particular economic circumstances,” a quote from a previous answer, he was told, “You can’t possibly be surprised to know that I feel that our former and somewhat continuing economic bondage affects our culture adversely? I contend that a society’s economic powerlessness transfers its impotence. Our real fight is for economic autonomy. Our culture records our poverty, in that regard. It also records our emancipation, in that startling direction, too.…”
On the question of the society’s racial tension affecting cultural aspirations, Carter replied, “If I may put it this way, I’d say that the tensions, the racial tensions, in our society, make up part of the culture of the society. And, if that itself is so, it will certainly influence our cultural development. But, as I see it, our racial tensions are part of our essence, features of ourselves, features mind you, which we have to cope with, at every turn, but not features alien to us.” Martin Carter quit the government in November of that year, returning to his poetry and being among the people.
What has become of Carifesta? As the noted Trinidadian writer and editor Nicholas Laughlin, lamented during his review of Carifesta IX, hosted by Trinidad in 2006, the festival was no longer about the actors, dancers, painters and writers expressing their thoughts on Caribbean culture, but had been hijacked and “had far more to do with the culture bureaucrats who used it to flex their political muscles, to assert their continuing control of the country’s and the region’s cultural narrative.”
As potential economic freedom (of some nature) looms on the horizon with oil production, our political development as a nation has been cast adrift, while our cultural development may as well have been part of the recent clean-up of Georgetown, scrapped up by heavy machinery (political power) and dumped, never to be seen again.
Half a century after becoming the first republic in the Caribbean, we regretfully note, once again, the apparent death of the Guyana Prize for Literature (SN editorials, Looking at the Stars 8th December, 2019, and Priceless,11th July, 2018). Introduced in 1987, by then President Desmond Hoyte, it was one of only two literary prizes in the world which trained writers or assisted beginners.
For posterity, we repeat the words of the poem quoted by President Hoyte when he announced the establishment of the literary prize.
“If thou of fortune be bereft
And in thy store there be but left
Two loaves, sell one and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”
