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Recording history so truths and facts can live on

Jul 06, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Today, July 6th at Linden there will be a commemorative event to remember the victims of the bombing of the Son Chapman ferry in 1964. The boat was taking passengers from Georgetown to Mc Kenzie. Thirty eight persons of African ethnicity lost their lives out of a total of 62 passengers. The consensus view was that it was part of the tit-for-tat between the PNC and PPP in those days. Six weeks before that, East Indians in large numbers in Mc Kenzie were horribly attacked and many died.
This is the first time there will be a death anniversary arising out of this tragedy. It should be welcomed by all Guyanese because it is history being recorded. This tragic, brutal act remains one of several uncivilized episodes in the young life of this country. Three others perhaps fall into the same category. The May 1964 massacre of East Indians at Wismar, the June 11 arson attack on the home of civil servant Arthur Abraham in which he and seven of his children were burnt alive, and the recent mass murder in Lusignan.
These are four incidences of politically driven terror that this nation’s historians should write about so that the young people and those that will follow them can bring these facts into their consciousness thus avoiding a repetition of the bestialities that their grandparents once fell prey to. If we write history and we set out the facts as they occurred, we prevent myths from being born. Myths and mythologies are enemies of mental freeness and open minds. Who we are can be understood by who we were when we were helpless products of the indoctrination of our elders. This writer was no exception.
I grew up on a PPP diet. It wasn’t a question or race. Yes, race was the single, most important factor that created suspicions among Guyanese but in our family we had transcended race. My big brother and two sisters were married to African Guyanese at the time when the two major ethnic groups were tearing friendships apart. For me, my PPP indoctrination came out of my parents’ belief that the PNC was not a party of good, nice people. But I chose the PPP as a sixteen year old youth because I was fascinated with Marxism. In terms of my local inspiration, it came from the “West on Trial” In my twenties the “West on Trial” was the only source of political narrative. It was Biblical material for a curious mind.
I joined the PPP with two of my friends; we were of the same mind-set. We were young, radical and intensely non-racial. One of us was African and I had three African-in-laws, so how could I have been racially sensitive. Our sojourn in the PPP didn’t last too long. The PPP was not my cup of tea. I saw people there who masqueraded as Marxist but had the racist stamp printed all over them. I came to love one of the great PPP leaders. He reciprocated the sentiment. That was E.M.G. Wilson whom we affectionately called “Coco”.  “Coco liked me because he saw me as an Indian youth that wasn’t interested in being an Indian youth. I left the PPP, went to Guyana Oriental College, then UG. I was saved from the evil and madness that the PPP offered its young people. I often wondered what I would have turned out to be if I had stayed inside the PPP.
At UG, I threw off the influence of the “West on Trial.”  I cannot call Dr. Jagan a liar because many of the non-fictions in his autobiography he probably thought were honest occurrences. But one thing was clear; Jagan’s portrait was exclusively in his mind. I threw off also the macabre distortions in Guyanese history that I grew up with. One had to do with the crusading anti-PPP editor in the sixties, Peter Taylor. I was told he was shot by a jealous lover. In fact, it was the PPP that tried to kill him using two men one of whom was closely related to me.
I kept this a pent-up secret a long time. It is time for the genie to come out of the bottle. I will name the attempted killer and who ordered the attack. As to the Son Chapman, I was told that PNC agents were taking dynamite to Linden to attack Indians. One thing was wrong about that. There were no Indians in July 1964 in Mc Kenzie. And dynamite was freely available to the PNC from Demba that had them by the millions. Indeed, history must be recorded to save young minds from evil.

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