Dear Editor,
Vincent Alexander’s letter dated April 11 2023 entitled ‘Covert and overt aid from global powers have been the fuel of our defining moments’ is a desperate attempt at revision of historical facts while relying on his own imagination and superficial feelings to define a moment that does not hold true. First, Alexander tried to equate the declassification of the files from the US State Department with the recent bombshell release of information that Forbes Burnham was on the payroll of the CIA. The CIA is an organization that undermined progressive and democratically elected governments in the world. Alexander desperately tried to justify Burnham’s action being in bed with the CIA by loosely trying to draw a parallel with Dr. Jagan’s request in 1951 to the Czechoslovak Communist Party for financial assistance in the run up to the 1953 election. It should be noted that while during those times the Eastern European block countries did provide support to national liberation movements especially in developing countries, they are not on record conducting the type of covert and overt operations as practiced by the CIA. Further Jagan was never on the payroll of any foreign interest, neither East nor West.
Mr. Alexander considered Burnham’s approach to get Independence at all cost as clever. It is therefore not surprising that British Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, described Burnham as a demagogue and opportunist who will fit and turn as time demanded. Burnham reneged on his own election promise in 1961 to support the party that won the election for Independence. Ian Macleod, the then foreign and colonial secretary, was adamant to the US that Jagan was no hardcore communist and was a better alternative than Burnham to govern Guyana. However, two concurrent events led to Independence being delayed, after being promised in 1963, first was a changeover of secretary from Ian Macleod to Duncan Sandys, and the next was the election in the US with Barry Goldwater as the Republican Presidential Candidate, a harsh warmonger, challenging the incumbent President Kennedy, who was on the back foot after the failed Bay of Pigs’ invasion in Cuba.
At the local level, the PNC, UF and the TUC teamed up to destabilize the country with the help of the CIA. This episode has been well documented, especially by Neil Sheehan’s publication in the New York Times (22/02/1967) which stated how the CIA was linked to the strikes that helped oust Jagan. The confluence of these factors played a major role in Independence being delayed and was later granted to the PNC/UF coalition government in 1966. Alexander complimented the attainment of Independence by Burnham while being subservient to foreign interest. This he considered smart policy. Moreover the existence of the Cold War was fertile ground for Burnham to execute his opportunistic tendencies. Dr. Water Rodney argued that Independence, for most of the colonies, was like a briefcase revolution where a local upper-class elite turns up to Lancaster House and was given a flag, pledge and a mandate to serve foreign interests. If my memory serves me correct, the late George Lamming argued that the Anglo-Saxon was taken over by the Afro-Saxon in the Caribbean since little has changed. This was the birth of neo-colonialism.
It is no wonder that Burnham left the country as the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere and saddled with the largest external debt on a per-capita basis after two decades of rule. It is no wonder why during my teenage days, in the late 70’s, Guyanese had to join long lines for basic food stuff that people of both races longed for the good old days. Jagan was the most ardent critic of neocolonialism that left many developing countries poor underdeveloped and its people impoverished until today, in fact, Jagan saw economic Independence as a critical component of political Independence. In this context, Professor of African and African American studies at Penn State, Cary Fraser, in a column in Stabroek News (19/05/08) argued that “as a political leader who emerged out of the sugar plantation regime, Jagan threw himself into the challenge to both the colonial order and the sugar plantations that largely defined the limits of possibilities for his generation. Key to his political engagement was the search for national Independence, and strategies to make sugar and bauxite industries provide a basis for economic expansion that would pave the way for serious economic growth.” He continued that while many may have disagreed with Jagan’s embrace of Marxist-Leninist ideology, his undoubted “willingness to grow beyond the profession of dentistry into a political activist, and his deep emotional commitment to improving the lives of the workers and small farmers, stood as a testimony to his intellectual growth and political seriousness”.
Jagan never saw Guyana as a supplier of commodities to metropolitan countries. His strategy was the diversification of both bauxite and sugar into higher valued products.
Finally, Alexander has a proclivity to water down Dr. Jagan’s contributions in the struggle for real Independence in an effort to gain some traction for his political idol, Forbes Burnham. However, as an independent newspaper put it in an editorial on March 20, 2018, one hundred year after he was born, “Cheddi Jagan’s place as one of the larger-than- life figures in Guyana’s political history is not even remotely in question, even among Guyanese who never embraced his political views. This is the mark of the man”. Cheddi Jagan contributions to the struggle for real freedom resonate not only in Guyana but well beyond our shores.
Sincerely,
Rajendra Rampersaud