While in the WI, they say “June – too soon” – because hurricanes will arrive later – here June is significant for other reasons. Significantly, there’s the tragedy of those five sugar workers gunned down at Enmore back in 1948, and Walter Rodney’s assassination by Burnham and the PNC in 1980. We “remember” our past to give continuity in our lives! But remember Proust’s aphorism: “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily remembrance of things as they were”?
There’s a lot to unpack in that pithy statement. At the most mundane level we’re now assured that memory does, in fact, lie “in our heads”. And your Eyewitness ain’t just talking about those physical structures – three organs – in our brains. Those are there and they have a role to play – whenever we remember, we literally RECONSTRUCT that memory – based on sights, sounds and other sensations and feelings that were stored separately and have to be retrieved. And as Proust posited, we can reconstruct them quite differently from what “actually” happened. Someone might’ve told us something different about the same event; we might’ve read some additional “facts” and these are added as grist for our “minds” to put together and retrieve. Yep…all of that for our own memories of our own experiences!
So imagine what happens when we “remember” events like the two mentioned above that we didn’t experience but only heard about them! Aren’t we at the mercy of those who did the telling and then our reconstructions?? How can we be sure we were told everything that happened? Take, for example Rodney’s assassination. We know that from the sixties at UWI in Jamaica—when he started “grounding” with what were considered by the authorities to be “disreputable” characters – the Rastafarians and “rude boys”, for instance – he came under surveillance. And this continued in London when he studied there and when he went to work in Tanzania.
Did these spies plant anyone in the WPA when he returned in 1974 and hooked up with them? Remember, this was the height of the Cold War, which was very, very HOT in the Third World!! In Guyana, the ideological question loomed quite large and, unlike with Burnham, the powers-that-be would’ve known Rodney wasn’t spouting Marxist revolutionary rhetoric just to sound “progressive”! This was one serious brother committed to root and branch change!
Look at how the remnants – fossils?? – of his party have not only tied bundle with the PNC but are the main refurbishers and promulgators of Burnham’s image. Listening to them, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Burnham will soon be beatified by the new Pope!!
This ain’t no idle speculation ‘cause many of the players are still pimping poor Rodney’s memory!!
…at provocateurs of violence
Remembering Enmore reminds us that most of the “uprisings” before the 1960’s were spontaneous against their direct oppressors. But in 1962, the Black Friday arson and riots of Feb 16 were instigated by foreign operatives using their well-honed tactics. Like spreading a rumour in the massed crowd in front of Parliament that a baby had been killed by tear gas! The mob went berserk!
This became the new norm to this day: the 1963 strikes and violence, ditto in 1964. Fast forwarding to 1997 the PPP was accused of “stealing” the elections which segued into “slow fyaah; mo fyaah” leading to the “African Resistance” in the 2002 post-Mash Day Jailbreak. It didn’t end until 2008 after hundreds had been killed and the “Freedom Fighters” had been wiped out.
Today the rumours are being repeated by a new bunch of provocateurs – now called Scrapeheads and who are “excused” by the old fogies as misunderstood choirboys. Remember their looting and burning “over Adrianna”??
Those who forget…
