Things bad in Guyana, but remember the Roman Empire?

May 22, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

How bad are things in Guyana? Or how good! I guess it depends on which side of the perception table you sit.

In Wednesday’s Kaieteur News a Letters to the Editor contributor bemoaned, with a litany of horrors, the crime plague in our nation. Well he has joined or is joining a long queue of complainants in the global court of human failings. And in that court, Guyana is just one of many nations with these gripes. We complain because we live here and are bombarded with what appears to be our own hellish designs.
True! But a greater truth is that the crime situation in every country plagued by lawlessness is a microcosm of a bigger, global picture. The questions asked by that letter writer can fit the crime template of a hundred other countries. The problem is worldwide, and worrying to the point where some sociologists, the philosophically-inclined and those of a religious bent are pondering biblical end-time scenarios. I know a few of them here in Guyana.
But look at what is happening elsewhere in the world. Just a brief reflection on three of our regional neighbours wracked by crime and social turmoil – Venezuela, Trinidad & Tobago, and Honduras – paints a truer picture of a pervasive lawlessness. Also in nations as diverse as the United States, Russia, Afghanistan, and Somalia, criminal and immoral excesses are commonplace. This is not even a modern phenomenon, and it may be of some benefit to today’s worriers and local doom prophets to put things in a wider and more chronological perspective.
In Trinidad and Tobago, 12 persons were killed over the previous three-day weekend including a man beaten to death in his own home, and a father and son who were shot dead during an argument with a neighbour. Honduras, not that far way in Central America, reportedly has the world’s highest crime rate. The InSight Crime Foundation declared it ‘the region’s most violent and crime-ridden country,’ partly because it is a major transit nation for the transnational drug trade.
In neighbouring Venezuela, which also has one of the highest violent crime rates in the world, there has been recent widespread looting of supermarkets, shopping malls, pharmacies, and food delivery trucks, even as a Caracas mayor warns that refugees may soon be fleeing the country as ‘people have been reduced to hunting cats, dogs, and pigeons for food.’ He says that Colombia and some Caribbean islands may soon suffer an influx of refugees if the situation continues. The article declares that a civil war is looming. Was it ever that bad here? (And will prospective refugees see Guyana as a viable haven given Mr. Maduro’s recent renewed interest in the claim to two-thirds of our country?)
To hear some people speak of it, our country is close to being a failed state of corruption, bloodshed and backwardness. Well, it may be so to some extent, especially if compared it to places like Sweden or Singapore. But there’s a duality to every phenomenon, so you can also compare it to Iraq or Haiti, in addition to the other beleaguered nations already mentioned.
History is littered with the remains of great nations and empires; it also reveals the seeds and fruit of their downfall. Take the ‘magnificent’ Roman Empire for example.
That the Roman Empire was great is unquestionable; after all much of what is called Western culture originated there, particularly in government, literature, architecture, and engineering. (The construction of our sea walls, canals, roads, and bridges probably owes some debt to the original engineers of Rome.) But the records of ancient Roman life tell a story of the kind of savagery, dehumanization, and debauchery that would make some of our most lawless citizens blush. Historians have recorded the kind of bloodletting, sensual and sexual indulgence, and psychotic overbearance over which our most emboldened criminals would scratch their heads in bewilderment.
Orgies, child-sex, prostitution, concubinage, bestiality and slavery flourished. Slaves were considered furniture, used as sex objects, and tortured for the most minor infractions or for ‘fun’. Phallic images and depictions of every sexual act imaginable were ubiquitous and public. Evidence suggests that infanticide was widely practised as many mothers just couldn’t be bothered or burdened by their newborns.
Then there were those hedonistic, brutal, and slightly crazy emperors, and ‘the games’ – the Roman Games that is, held in the arenas for public entertainment , at which slaves, gladiators, and wild beasts fought each other in often one-sided battles drenched in blood and gore. The mass execution of ‘criminals’ also took place there. The Roman populace reveled in the horror.
The Roman philosopher Seneca said of one such event, “In the morning men are thrown to lions and bears. At midday they are thrown to the spectators themselves. No sooner has a man killed than they shout for him to kill another, or to be killed. The final victor is kept for some other slaughter. In the end, every fighter dies.” Once the emperor Trajan held a four-month spectacle during with 10,000 gladiators and 11,000 animals fought and died.
What I’ve written concerning the Roman Empire is only the tip of the proverbial (and orgiastic) iceberg. But regardless of its decadence, the Roman Empire was considered great. In contrast, Guyana is downright insignificant in the eyes of much of the world, and in the minds of many Guyanese. Why? I think it is because in both the ancient and current worldview, fearsomeness, imperial strength and military might are generally considered qualities superior to meekness, pacifism and hospitality, despite the bloody and immoral acts which may accompany both.
The crime scene in Guyana along with moral apathy may be taking us down a path that leads to our own kind of fall. Granted we’re not ancient Rome or any of the other crime-infested countries mentioned earlier. But we have our own peculiar brand of lawlessness, and apparent tolerance for injustice, that occasionally sets us apart from other countries, even regionally, and we need a revolution in the way we think of and respond to crime and injustice, since what has been tried thus far is far from effective.
As I rhetorically asked at the beginning of this piece, how bad or good is it in Guyana? It’s that duality thing again. Most of us will acknowledge that there is still much good; it’s just that the bad tends to be so much more newsworthy and gossip-spreadable. We’ve survived 50 years of independent nationhood. It took centuries for the Roman Empire to disintegrate. Time and the lessons learnt from history are on our side.

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