AUGUST 20, 2008 issue
Arts & Entertainment
horse and buggy!
Where have the public telephone booths gone? The Bell telephone booth used to be conspicuous in many public places – not any more. They are disappearing fast and have been replaced by the cell phone.
Where are the newspaper stands that stood out at just about every street corner? They too have been disappearing fast, fast. With the internet and the reported drop in newspaper circulation, the stands are redundant and becoming part of our historic past.
Where are the post boxes? I guess they went the same way as letters, postcards, and Christmas cards. Even the reliable “postie” who delivered mail through wind, snow, and storm is a rare sight these days.
What about vending machines like for cigarettes? Cigarette smoking seems to be going up in smoke. I went to buy lighter fuel recently and had a hard job getting some. With the decline in the tobacco industry which hit some places hard as here in Norfolk County where there used to be many tobacco fields, cigarettes, cigarette lighters and the like are becoming rare commodities.
My wife went to buy some ammonia for household cleaning and couldn’t get it. Ammonia and ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) apparently have been connected to terrorism and have disappeared from the grocery, hardware and garden shelves.
The radio (local and overseas) which was the centre of our lives and entertainment in the old days, is almost gone, replaced by digital. Short wave radio seems to be taken over with religious broadcasting.
How many people go to the movies these days compared to the golden age of the cinema – the 40’s and 50’s? You can rent a movie or see it on TV.
Some people say books are on their last legs. I’m not sure what the circulation trend in libraries is like but I know that for me to sell a book for $15 or $20, I almost have to put a gun to the person’s head. Folks say they don’t have time to read – too busy running around doing other things. No time to smell the roses.
Fashions have changed. These days, less is more. Colour is in – black is sometimes fashionable and is making a comeback in the colour of cars. In the old days folks dressed up in sombre colours making every day look like Sunday.
Some things from the old days are making a comeback like hats – fedoras and all kinds of hats. I am a ‘hat man’ and have a few dozen in my collection. Men are putting on hats to hide their baldness and grey hair. For women, it is considered trendy and fashionable.
Looking sexy is in – you have to look hot to get any attention these days. Sports cars and convertibles seem to have enduring appeal. I know – I’ve had my Triumph Spitfire for over 20 years and it always brings a head jerk reaction.
Tattoos are fashionable. The butterfly is popular. I don’t have any (yet). In the past only sailors, soldiers and criminals had tattoos and “decent” folks would not be seen with one.
The ‘f’ word is in. It is probably the most used (overused) word in English and other languages. Leant almost from the crib, it can be heard and seen everywhere and I mean everywhere.
Everything is changing, including work which is being done more and more from home or on the road. Your office could be anywhere. Religion is changing with churches being closed, rented, pulled down or converted to private residences. Some folks are now sleeping on what used to be the high altar. Yet people need some compass, some guidance, some spirituality, more than ever. The music I enjoy most these days are spirituals and old time country - they calm my spirit.
By the way, I won’t be surprised if gas stations disappear. The price of gas is becoming so exorbitant that we could be going back to the horse and buggy. They don’t call me a “see far man” for nothing. I already have a buggy sitting on our front lawn. All I want is a jackass, horse or mule to pull it.
I look outside and I see the leaves on the burning bush shrub are already turning dark brown and red – sure signs of Fall, even though it is the middle of August. I look in the mirror and I see Guyana Boy staring back at me through a weather beaten face. Time and tide wait for no one. Change is the only constant. If the creeks don’t rise and the sun still shines I’ll be talking to you.
Stephen G. Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2005, ISBN 976-637-231-4 (pkp). First published by Ian Randle Publishers Limited in Jamaica, 2005.
A Review by Frank Birbalsingh
The fact of American diplomatic or political intervention in British Guiana (now Guyana), during the 1950s and 60s, has been known for a long time; but its details have only come to light after declassification of official documents in the 1990s, and publication of studies either by independent scholars or individuals involved in the intervention itself.
The chief merit of U.S. Intervention in British Guiana by a professor of history at the University of Dallas, Texas, is that it both reveals fascinating details from these previously unavailable documents, and presents a fuller picture of American intervention in Guyana than we have had before.
The intervention has to be understood in the context of the Cold War which began shortly after the end of World War Two, when two super powers – the US and USSR – each playing sheriff as in a Western film, dared the other to make a false move as they touted their favoured political ideology, American Capitalism on the one hand, and Soviet Communism on the other, to the rest of the world.
This is the context when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, won an historic political victory in Guyana, in 1953, and when, after only 133 days in power the party was thrown out of office by British Governor Sir Alfred Savage.
Despite widespread suspicion of American collusion in this debacle, however, Professor Rabe suggests it was conceived by arch imperialist, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttleton who suspected Dr. Jagan and his party of Communism.
Alas, as we shall see, the Communist taint would stick to Dr. Jagan like glue virtually until his death in 1997.
Following a four year period of administration in Guyana by a Government of unelected appointees, fresh elections were held again in 1957 although, by then, the original PPP had split into two factions, one led by the Indian-Guyanese Dr. Jagan, and the other by the African-Guyanese Forbes Burnham, former education minister in the short-lived 1953 PPP Government.
That was bad enough since it meant that Guyanese politics became a personal contest between the alleged Communist Dr. Jagan and the Social Democrat Mr Burnham whose party was renamed The People’s National Congress (PNC).
Worse still, the contest was seen as one between each leader’s racial group, Indian-Guyanese for Dr. Jagan, and African-Guyanese for Mr. Burnham.
While racial confrontation remains the worst evil in Guyanese politics, even today, Professor Rabe clearly shows that it was not entirely due to historical reasons: it was deliberately fostered partly by manipulation of outside (British and American) agencies which wanted to keep the alleged Communist Dr. Jagan out of power, and partly by the willing collusion of unscrupulous local leaders like Forbes Burnham who "coveted power and acting on a global stage", and Labour leaders like the disgruntled opportunist Richard Ishmael who was incensed that his American academic qualifications failed to get him a teaching job at Queen’s College, the leading Government Boys’ school at the time.
Although, after 1953, the policy of a ruling British Conservative Government was to ‘destroy the PPP and convince Guyanese to join other political parties.’ Dr. Jagan’s party not only won elections again in 1957, but created the impression, at least among some observers, that he was neither Communist nor interested in advancing International Communism.
This, for instance, was the verdict of all the British Governors who observed him at first hand in Guyana: “Governors Savage, Renison, Grey and Luyt consistently rejected U.S. claims that Jagan and the PPP secretly worked with Communists.” Some colonial officials too, for example, Ian Macleod, the British Foreign Secretary, frankly admitted that if he had to make a choice “between Jagan and Burnham as head of my country, I would choose Jagan any day of the week.”
But after Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution in 1959 the Americans dug their heels in so far as Guyana and the PPP were concerned. Castro’s success with what they considered an alien and hateful Communist ideology, so close to their borders, inflamed their fear of Communism to unprecedented heights of paranoia. Still, Dr. Jagan and the PPP again won elections in 1961, and as the possibility of Guyanese Independence loomed with the PPP in power, it pushed American paranoia to breaking point and induced the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to join forces with American Labour unions AFL–CIO in a disguised and deadly effort to disempower Dr. Jagan and the PPP. As Professor Rabe writes, “U.S. officials and private citizens incited murder, arson, bombings and fear and loathing in British Guiana.”
Thus, following strikes engineered and supported by the CIA and the AFL-CIO in 1962 and 1963, and imposition of a new electoral system – proportional representation - in elections, in 1964, a new government led by Forbes Burnham was finally installed.
Professor Rabe documents both the devious and desperate efforts by the US to bring Burnham to power in 1964, and their lavish financial aid given to him afterwards, including support for his dishonest practices in rigging elections and retaining power in 1968. All this in spite of large scale theft and corruption during Burnham’s administration: “In 1967 Peter D’Aguiar discovered that approximately $58,000 had been illegally spent on a highway and that the director of audits could not account for another $11.7 million in government spending.”
Such frank exposure and meticulous documentation illustrate the historical value of Professor Rabe’s book.
Equally important, his book also identifies an underlying contradiction in American foreign policy between eloquent denunciation of oppression and colonialism by US officials and their consistent support for oppressive dictators, throughout the twentieth century, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This contradiction explains even if it cannot justify US intervention in Guyana and support for the Burnham dictatorship.