Dear Editor,
I wholeheartedly support Vishnu Bisram’s timely call for an institutionalized Cheddi Jagan Memorial Lecture (See Kaieteur News letters to the Editor “A Call for Institutionalized Cheddi Jagan Memorial Lecture” March 16, 2024). The need for an annual Cheddi Jagan lecture series is absolutely necessary at this time in our country’s history. Cheddi Jagan embodied an idealism, integrity and a commitment to an inclusive society that was ahead of his time. He wanted the best for them and these values are much needed in Guyana in 2024.
I believe that the lectures should illustrate Jagan’s commitment to the working class regardless of their ethnicity and regardless of their political affiliations. A template for such a lecture series is already in place. For example, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s annual Reith Lectures and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Massey Lectures are highly anticipated annual events hosted by key state institutions to explore ideas that enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of their respective nations. University of Guyana is a state-owned institution that is up to the task of creating a made-for-Guyana annual lecture series that can help strengthen Guyana’s national identity and bring us together.
I believe we, as a people, have largely forgotten who we are – or perhaps never knew. As such, I suggest that the inaugural lecture start with who Guyanese are and where they came from. Let us be reminded how slaves through their blood, sweat, tears and battered bodies created untold wealth for the colonial masters. Let us also remember that after the abolition of slavery, the colonizers brought indentured workers to the country to maintain their profits and cynically exploited them by creating suspicion and ethnic divides between the two people.
Over time the lectures should invite local and international intellectuals, academics, activists and leaders to make their contributions to the discourse by exploring a broad range of issues and themes. The lectures should be widely distributed in print and the electronic media as part of the historical record of Guyana for our people and the rest of the world.
Our people did not come together until Cheddi Jagan came to the fore in the 1950s. Sadly, as the public record shows, the powers that be in Britain and the United States of America deliberately destroyed what he stood for in the 1950s and 1960s by fostering disunity between the leaders and their followers of the day. Today, Guyana has elected a President who walks in the shadow of the giant figure of Cheddi Jagan, to continue our national quest for a just and equitable society. I believe we are finally on our journey to El Dorado and we can only get there if we know where we come from and who we are. So let’s launch a Cheddi Jagan lecture series – the time is right!
Sincerely,
Ricardo Smith
Retiree