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This date has no significance to me as an African Guyanese
Dear Editor,
Please allow me space in your column to make this brief message of dis-association.On the 5th May, 2013 this country will be celebrating, what has been called “Arrival Day” in Guyana . We need to cut the hypocrisy, in Trinidad it is known as “Indian Arrival Day”.
I wish to put on record my dis-association with any part of my history being linked with this particular date 5th May. This date has NO SIGNIFICANCE to me as an AFRICAN Guyanese. Let me make this clear, that as a matter of fact, AND LAW, that my ancestors who were SLAVES, NEVER “Arrived” to any country called Guyana , when they were brought to this part of the world from Africa .
The country of Guyana NEVER EXISTED, when the first slave ships sailed up the Orinoco River in the year 1506.For the sake of those politicians who are supposed to represent my interest, and who do not, I wish to inform you that this country called Guyana, only came into existence through the struggles of my ancestors who were Creole Guyanese, the ones who were born in Guyana, and who struggled to be recognized as human beings after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.
The country of British Guyana only came into existence as a direct result of the two slave rebellions of 1763, the Berbice Slave Revolt and the 1823 Demerara revolution.With Cuffy and his lieutenant Accra, ruling the county of Berbice with no intention of ever giving it up again, and with the ever increasing militancy of the now “educated” Creole Africans, who were schooled by Quamina, in the other two counties of Demerara and Essequibo, despite the “failed” 1823 revolt, the Dutch eventually ceded their county of Berbice to the British.
The result is that, eight (8) years after the 1823 Demerara Revolt, in 1831, the new country called British Guyana was formed, and three (3) years later on the 1st August 1834 the enslaved Africans got their freedom.What is significant is that the terms of the quality of life that the freed African slaves and their descendants, should enjoy in Guyana , had been enshrined IN WRITTEN form in a Covenant that has been countenanced in the Articles of Independence in 1964.
The reception of laws provisions.In other words, the rights of the African Guyanese in this country, always had the “Force of Law”, but it is sad that the leaders of these proud people do not know the significance of this.I know that I do.
Juliet Holder-Allen (LL.B)
Attorney At Law
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