Back in the day when the Dutch were ruling us – as the three colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice – enslaved Africans from their Essequibo and Demerara plantations used to escape and flee to several Catholic missions on the Orinoco. So a good number of those Venezuelans who’s got some African blood – like Hugo Chávez – might be descended from Guyanese Africans!! It was interesting that even though slavery wasn’t abolished in Venezuela till 1854, the escaped Guyanese Africans who were given refuge by the Catholic Missions were free!! So this Emancipation Day, as your Eyewitness celebrated by “nyaming” (“nyam” is a widely-used West African word meaning “eat”!!) scads of conkies and metemjee, he spared a thought for the continued trials and tribulations over in Venezuela.
There, of course, while folks of African descent are only about 10% of the population, they’re overly represented in the poverty statistics. Because Chávez openly acknowledged his African blood (he spoke about his thick lips and darker skin), most of these folks embraced the Chavista ideals and followed Chavismo. But after decades of experimentation with co-operatives like Burnham over here – most of them are in a worse condition than before. It’s said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, innit??
So, in the early days of Chávez’s revolution, they were at the forefront of the struggle – as is evident in the pics taken during those heady days. But take a look at the pics now that Maduro has massively rigged the election once again – and you’ll see numerous African Venezuelans coming out against Maduro. They realise that the bottom line has to be about whether their lives are better or worse than before. And since even the middle class gotta be scrounging in garbage cans for food, Maduro has to go. Have you noticed how many Afro Venezuelans are refugees in our little dinky country?? Certainly, more than the 10% that’s representative!!
And this brings us to our own Emancipation celebrations. Your Eyewitness has already talked about the small-mindedness of some African Guyanese leaders who kvetched about the Government passing on subventions to an expanded list of African organisations doing their own thing in their villages. But what took him aback – but opened his eyes – was what went down in one of the bigger celebrations in the village of Buxton. It was a political campaign meeting plain and simple!! And the leaders gathered had no shame to explicitly dub it as such!! Now we can understand why they don’t want any government funding – since shame might force them to invite some African leaders who are part of the Government!!
Ah well, it’ll be the small man who’ll never become the real man – right?!!
…Douglahs
Over in the States, Donald Trump has kicked off a storm of protest by claiming that Kamala Harris is being opportunistic to now claim she’s “Black”!! He insists she was very comfortable with being called “Indian” early in the day – and cited an episode of Mindy Kaling showing Kamala how to cook Indian – with the latter enthusiastically embracing her “Indianness”!! Now what are the facts??
Kamala’s mother was from India and her father was a mixed fella – what used to be called “mulatto‘ in the pre-woke era – from Jamaica but “Black” in America. Clearly, then Kamala is a Black and Indian mixture. Your Eyewitness thinks she should be free to choose EITHER of her heritages to define herself – since she’s both.
But being from the Caribbean, we solved the problem a hundred years ago when Indian Indentureds mixed with African ex-slaves. We call them “Douglahs”!! So shouldn’t we introduce this word into America’s lexicon so their politicians can move on to more substantive issues??
Like throwing out Mad Maduro!!
…culture
Your Eyewitness learned back in his college days that “culture” was the “way of life” of people – including their perspective on life, the things they created and the practices they engaged in.
So, why’d we need Governments in culture??
