Linden F. Lewis is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Bucknell University, Pennsylvania.
In a recent visit to Guyana, I was struck by the pace of the development taking place in the country. The discovery of oil in the Essequibo area in 2015 has made an obvious difference to the character of the city and country. One notices the massive amount of building taking place along with the booming business establishments. The sheer volume of new vehicles on the road is impressive. Of course, with many cars on the road come congestion, and impatient drivers, of which there were many. The presence of Venezuelan, Colombian, Peruvian, Brazilian and Cuban immigrants in Georgetown could not be missed. The legitimacy of their status was a topic of discussion, along with the speculation about how much of the immigration is a product of human trafficking. What was not evident to the casual observer, was whether these trappings of modernity translated to material improvements in the lives of working class people, or as George Lamming used to say, ‘the people from down below.’ One could only hope that such development is carefully monitored to avoid the pitfalls of too heavy a reliance on the oil and gas sector, and is sensitive to the integrity of the environment.
Apart from reconnecting with some family members with whom I had been out of touch for many years, I was also curious to find out more about my maternal grandmother. My mother, Florence Lewis, nee Squires, had said very little about her mother. I have always been interested in unravelling this family history. One day during our trip, when my wife and I were not meeting friends or family, we decided to take a ride up Homestretch Avenue to The Walter Rodney Archives to see if I could ascertain any vital information about this ancient relative of mine. My enthusiasm was buoyed by the assumption that it is in this building I might learn more about my ancestry. One could only imagine my surprise when I discovered that this was not, in the main, the site of official records of people of African descent. How could this be? Perhaps the records of birth, death and marriage, have never been transferred from the General Registry Office or wherever else they might have been housed, but a visitor to what was formerly known as the Guyana National Archives, would reasonably have a certain expectation that such information was available to researchers, or simply people who are seeking information about their heritage. Whatever the reason, one has to ask what has taken so long, and why make a big, declarative announcement about the name change of this building, when substantively, the resources of the document center do not apply equally to everyone in the nation. Indeed, it is for reasons such as those I have described, that it is rather misleading to read on the World History Archives website, a description to the effect that the Walter Rodney National Archives represent an important supplement to the Colonial Office records found at Kew Gardens, in the United Kingdom. Nothing could be farther from the reality of what exists in the Rodney archives. Indeed, if one goes to the archives thinking that the records apply equally to everyone in Guyana, one would be as disappointed, as was I. These circumstances reminded me of a comment that Walter Rodney often made, namely, that if you wanted to do research on Africans and slavery in the Caribbean, you had to go to London, and if you wanted to do research on the Dutch heritage in Guyana, you had to go to Holland (The Netherlands). Similarly people of Portuguese descent in Guyana, may find it more fruitful to explore the archives in Portugal. It is well known, for example, that C. L. R. James, ably assisted by Eric Williams, had to peruse the archives in France in the writing of his classic book, The Black Jacobins, about the Haitian Revolution of 1791. More recently Marjolein Kars demonstrated the importance of tapping the Dutch archives, to throw more light on the Berbice rebellion in her book: Blood on the River. This conundrum is clearly and deliberately a product of colonialism, but that does not mean we, in the contemporary Republic of Guyana, should contribute to such an historical travesty.
It boggles the mind to understand the presumed paltry holding of records and books of people of African descent in the archives, rechristened The Walter Rodney National Archives, in honor of the Guyanese historian who had written The History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545 to 1800, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, “West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” “The impact of the Atlantic Slave trade on West Africa,” among many other publications concerning the African heritage. My encounter at the Walter Rodney National Archives caused me to reflect on the experience of a friend of mine, whose interaction with the archives was qualitatively different. My friend recounted her experience at the same institution. She told me that she was able to trace her relatives, see all the family names, the date of their arrival in Guyana, and the ship that brought them to this country. She added that the revelation brought tears to her eyes. To me this was an enriching and affirming experience; the kind of encounter we should all be entitled to. I was happy for her. Indeed, this is the kind of information that was at her disposal, insofar as her ancestors came to Guyana at a later time, and under different circumstances. For people of African descent, the Walter Rodney Archives should be a place where there is some concerted effort to uncover and disseminate the fragmented past of people of African descent in Guyana. The experience of my friend at the Walter Rodney Archives brought back the question I raised earlier: why was there such a public gesture made of rechristening this institution in 2021 after such an outstanding historian of Africa and the Caribbean, when the representation of its remit to the descendants of Africa is so paltry? Moreover, what was not lost on me in this revealing encounter with the Rodney Archives, was that perhaps the general public might be unaware of the discrepancy between the official name of the documentation center and its substantive holdings. After all, in the daily struggle to reproduce one’s self, there is not often much room for visits to the national archives. On the occasion that one makes it to such a warehouse of information therefore, one’s expectation concerning historical discovery ought not to be scuttled. Such a realization is unsettling, or at best disappointing. Perhaps there is a lot more popular and historical work to be done still. Checking into a pharmacy on Fifth Street on that same day, I was attracted to a display of children’s books on a side shelf. There were several familiar storybooks that many of us had grown up reading, there was even Goldilocks, but there was no Kofi Baadu Out of Africa, nor was there Lakshmi Out of India, both children’s books by Walter Rodney; but tomorrow is another day with brand new possibilities for renewal and change. It seems to me as though there is time to correct this situation at one of our more important institutions. Such change would move us from the realm of symbol to that of substance. In that way, we can fulfil the journey of discovery of all of our ancestors.
