Well, well, well…tomorrow is Mashramani!! Now don’t you try correcting your Eyewitness that it’s actually “Republic Day”. It might’ve originally started out with Republic Day, but when Burnham decided to make the 1970 wine-down at Linden NATIONAL, who doubted the tail would be soon wagging THAT Dawg!! After all, the folks at the bauxite town – who’d up to then been living at Wismar and Mackenzie – had showed their Republican patriotism by changing the names to that of their beloved “Founder Leader” – Linden. As in Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham!!
So why not reward them by acknowledging their “far-sightedness” for creating a jump-up session under a made-up supposedly “Arawak” festival that calls for “celebration after a hard day’s work”!! No one before, then or afterward have ever been able to find such a word in the nine Amerindian cultures, much less Arawak!! But hey!! The folks at Linden had to be acknowledged not only for their renaming of their town, but also for ensuring it was literally a PNC town. They’d burned and chased out all 3000 or so Indian residents – who were, of course, assumed to be “PPP”!! Linden has remained staunchly PNC ever since.
But it wasn’t just Mashramani that was made up – the day itself was made up as commemorating Cuffy’s start of the Berbice Rebellion and Cuffy made our National Hero. But it is one historian, slavish follower of Burnham – Daly – who’d arbitrarily decided that the start of the Rebellion by Cuffy up the Berbice River was on Feb 23. Poor Cuffy wasn’t even at the Plantation where the Rebellion started – Magdalenenberg – and only joined weeks later!! Not so incidentally, a coin of Cuffy was struck where he looked awfully like Burnham!!
Now apart from the name being fake, the content of the Mashramani celebration is also fake since it had nothing Guyanese about it save the people!! It was a shameless rip-off of the Trini Carnival that those folks had evolved from the French Creoles and their slaves who’d emigrated from Haiti to Trinidad after they fled the REAL revolution there by Toussaint L’Overture!! So we had the PNC Government foisting a totally fake occasion onto the Guyanese people!!
Not springing organically from the lives of the people, the PNC Government had to sponsor most of the floats and parades of Mash until they were thrown out in 1992. It was thought the incoming PPP – which had pointed out the additional phoniness of commemorating the date due to its closeness to Burnham’s birthday on Feb 20!! – would scupper Mash. And Education Minister Dale Bisnauth originally did downplay it. However, PNC supporters cried “Discrimination”!! And back it came – this time by strong-arming business support!
Let’s see what the COVID-19 Mash gonna be like!!
…neighbours
For over a year, the Dominican Republic’s been threatening to build a wall along its 245-mile border with Haiti – which shares the island of Hispaniola with them. After all the criticism Trump received when he decided on such a wall with Mexico to keep migrants – including Haitians – most thought it was just a bluff. After all, both countries are African-dominated with large strata of Mulattos and shared a long history of colonial exploitation followed by cruel dictatorships. (Sounds like Guyana, no?!)
But two days ago, the fence started to go up – a high-tech 12-foot one with barbed wire on top along with cameras, motion detectors and army-manned guard posts along the structure. If it sounds like the Berlin Wall, then this is more sophisticated. The problem is, Haiti is spiralling downwards at such a pace, the Dominicans fear their 20% Haitian population might soon overwhelm them.
What say our local woke brigade?
…sugar
Some folks are protesting the alternative use of the Enmore sugar packaging plant. Did they first conduct a survey on whether the fired sugar workers would rather return to the cane fields or work in the new industries?
Thought not!!
