In another week or so, we should be commemorating the martyrdoms of first Walter Rodney, and then the Enmore Martyrs. In the USA, during the fag end of the Great Depression, two authors were commissioned to write about the lives of some anonymous small sharecroppers. The title they gave their book was “Now let us praise famous men”. That – of course – is taken from the Wisdom of Sirach, that begins: “Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” They were not being ironic, but were celebrating the role ordinary people can have in the life of a nation. Those sharecroppers represented the true grit that made America come out of the Depression and become the world’s most powerful nation in the following decade.
Well, it so happens that the Enmore Martyrs’ lives were snuffed out that same decade – 1948 – when sugar insisted it was still King in Guyana and, as such, insisted it had to take its regular blood sacrifice to nourish its roots. Sugar, of course, was founded on the blood of first millions of enslaved Africans in the so-called “New World”, and then hundreds of thousands of Portuguese, Indians and Chinese in Guyana. If there’s anything that should bring us together, then, it ought to be that symbol of the common despoilation of our ordinary folks – Enmore Martyrs’ Day – June 16, 1948.
So, your Eyewitness is giving fair warning: he’s gonna be looking to see whether the annual trek to Enmore will be getting larger, or will continue to dwindle. If it’s the latter, then we’ll be damned for being a bunch of Philistines who cannot even honour their heroes. Let us not forget it was after that 1948 massacre that the Brits were forced to acknowledge our humanity and concede us the universal franchise in which we could choose our leaders to take us to our promised land.
And the second Martyr whom we should honour – on June 13 – is Dr Walter Rodney. That commemoration should remind us of how cynical those who inherited that independence – Forbes Burnham and his PNC – were. They sold us out to the colonials “and made a mockery of our right to vote by rigging every election for decades. Walter Rodney exposed him for the fraud he was – with his imitation of the speech and mannerisms of those whom he could never be, but wanted more than anything in the world to be: white!!
He had Walter assassinated because the latter was a standing indictment of the fraud he was through and through. Walter’s mocking him as the “Reverse” Midas – everything HE touched turned to shit!! – was the last straw.
And yet his successors want to “fulfill his legacy”!!
……the provocateurs of violence
Remembering Enmore reminds us that most of the “uprisings” before the 1960s were spontaneous actions taken 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: 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, who had incited marchers along the East Coast Public Road to attack stallholders at Mon Repos and loot their goods.
Those promoting assassinations have no shame!!
…wackos
The latest fad in the US is “Perineum sunning”. What’s that, you ask? Well, did you hear about the monkey putting his nuts “where the sun doesn’t shine”?? That’s where they’re sunning. So, it’s also called “Butthole Sunning”!!
