Village renaissance “The village movement was the cradle, the crib, the crucible of our nation”

Nov 13, 2016 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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(Address by HE President David Granger on the occasion of National Day of Villages)
We, Guyanese, for the most part, are children of villages. Two out of every three Guyanese still live in villages. Persons living on the coastland, by and large, owe their places of residence to that movement which began one hundred and seventy seven years ago with the purchase of a single plantation. That event laid the foundation for the incubation of a nation.
Victoria is the mother of all villages. Victoria, the first village on the coastland, is a landmark – a monument to the ideal of human freedom. It is a shrine to human endeavour.
Victoria spawned the great village movement that transformed a cheerless archipelago of plantations on British Guiana’s coastland into a chain of human settlements stretching from the Corentyne to the Pomeroon Rivers.
The purchase of a plantation ignited the greatest movement of freed peoples in the Anglophone Caribbean. The village movement was not the creation of scholars or governors. It was the work of poor folk, mainly illiterate men and women.
The movement started on 7th November 1839. Eighty-three free men and women from five plantations – Ann’s Grove, Dochfour, Enmore, Hope and Paradise – agreed to pay 30,000 guilders for Plantation Northbrook. They collected their savings and paid two-thirds of the money right away in coins, delivered in a wheelbarrow, “some of them still black with the mud in which they had been buried.” The remainder was covered by a promissory note which was redeemed three weeks later.
Victoria, located about 30 km from Georgetown on the East Coast Demerara, originally comprised about 202 hectares (about 500 acres) and had a depth of 11 km and width of 483 m. The transport, passed on 4th January 1841, was signed on behalf of the new proprietors by Samuel Burke. He was deputed to go to town to receive the transport, because he alone among the purchasers could sign his name, which he did before Judge Thomas Norton.
It was my honour, as Leader of the Opposition in the 10th Parliament, to table a motion calling for 7th November to be designated National Day of Villages. The National Assembly of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, on 7th November 2013, debated and approved that motion, but it was not assented to or implemented at that time.
The Motion had to await my assent two years later in 2015 hence the designation, celebration and consummation of a National Day of Villages, today.
THE VILLAGE MOVEMENT
This day has now become an irrevocable, annual commemoration of our national village movement which scholars describe as:
“The most spectacular and aggressive land settlement movement in the history of the people of the British Caribbean and a movement which seemed to one planter in British Guiana to be certainly without parallel in the history of the world!”
National Day of Villages” is a not meant to be a ceremonial event to embroider our calendar.
It is not about Africans or Amerindians or Indians. It is about all Guyanese. It is all about the future. It is a reaffirmation of our confidence in the centrality of villages to the future of our nation. It enjoins us with the responsibility to revitalize our villages for posterity.
The village movement was the cradle, the crib, the crucible of our nation.
The village movement represented:
– a manifestation of true emancipation which was impossible on the plantation, itself the scene of economic exploitation and social degradation;
– a transformation of the landscape from a string of plantations into a series of human habitations allowing the establishment of other villages by other immigrants.
The village was the whole world for our early peasantry. Village life rested securely on the four pillars of the Church, the family home, the farm (or workshop or workplace) and the primary school. Village administration became the public school-house where many local and, later, national politicians had their apprenticeship. Village endeavour initiated the infrastructural development of rural areas by the construction of homes, churches, cemeteries, schools, bridges and roads.
Victoria’s proprietors, seven years after emerging from enslavement − the worst form of domination and degradation in human history − had the wisdom to promulgate a remarkable prototype for local government on 2nd May 1845.
Their covenant was entitled: “Agreement Entered into by the Following Persons in the Name and on Behalf of Themselves and the Other Proprietors of Victoria Village for the Good Regulation and General Benefit of Said Estate.” Article 20 read, in part:
“…calling to mind our happy condition and comparing it with our past state of degradation, we have determined in gratitude to our Almighty Father to erect two buildings which shall be used and devoted to the purposes of Religion as a School House and a Church where our children may be taught to read their Bibles and learn their several duties, and where we may from time to time assemble and meet together and there offer up to Almighty God our humble prayers and thanks for the mercies we have received…”
The Agreement prescribed twenty detailed ‘regulations’ for the management of the village by its proprietors. These included the election of office-bearers, taxes, the prohibition of drunkenness, cursing, swearing, gambling, etc, trespassing, observing the Sabbath, sale of properties and the use of firearms, among others.
Victoria’s founders, as a result of this advanced thinking, had a head start on other villages. The village, gradually, by the late 19th century, came to enjoy a relatively high cultural standard – influenced by the large number of churches and schools and inspired by a growing group of educated people among whom were parsons and school teachers.
The expected depopulation of plantations triggered a confrontation between the emergent peasantry and the planter class. The most memorable example of the clash of the classes was the ‘Great Rates War’ of 1865 when East Coast villagers, mainly from Buxton-Friendship, stopped the train carrying the Governor.
High taxation and the deliberate destruction of produce, combined with poor drainage, flooding were used to undermine the economies of the villages. The villagers themselves, despite their travails, endured and bequeathed a priceless legacy to future generations.
Victoria, together with nearby communities, particularly Belfield to the East, pioneered agricultural shows with the formation of an Agricultural Society, an idea that was copied in other villages.
‘Greater Victoria’ developed a thriving agro-processing economy. This was based on the production of coconuts – used in the manufacture of oi,l but which also generated pig and poultry feed from its by-products and coir for making mattresses; cassava − which was processed into cassava-bread and cassareep; and fruit for beverages, table consumption and preserves.
Households maintained kitchen gardens for green vegetables. Farms in the back-dam produced fruit, ground provisions and plantains and farmers sold their produce at a vibrant village market. Micro-businesses such as bakeries, clothing stores, retail shops and parlours proliferated. Cottage industries produced drinking chocolate and households made sugar-cake, black-pudding, souse, mabi (mauby) and other beverages for sale. Artisans, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, contractors and carpenters built and maintained bridges, houses, kokers and other minor public works.
The model of the village economy served society well in the 19th and 20th centuries. The country now has to move on. The model has to be revisited and made relevant to the reality of the 21st century. Vibrant village economies are essential to the survival of the country as a whole and have to be resuscitated.
VILLAGE VITALITY
National Day of Villages is about the future. It is not about fond memories and ‘lang-time story.’ Your government is prepared to support and sustain micro-enterprise development as much as it must maintain macro-economic stability. Development cannot take place in the absence of both growth and macroeconomic stability. Human development must be promoted particularly for the poor and other vulnerable segments of society.
The process of revitalizing our villages has restarted. The conduct of local government elections was the essential first step to empower neighbourhoods to take control of their own affairs.
The Ministry of Communities will work with the elected local authorities and other stakeholders to revitalise village economies:
– Village economies must flourish by the establishment of micro- and medium-scale enterprises to generate industries and businesses which will provide employment; by growing food again; producing goods again; providing services again; Village lands must bloom again by being placed under cultivation.
– Village democracy must flourish through regular local government elections and the selection of local leaders who care for their communities and who represent their constituencies;
– Villages’ cultural life must be revived. Villages must have happy homes, happy families and happy neighbours. Villages must become socially cohesive units promoting inter-ethnic harmony. Community centres must come alive with athletic, cultural activities and trade fairs.
Guyana’s National Day of Villages is about the future, even as we pay homage to our ancestors – the founders. It recognises our common heritage. It acknowledges the value of the precious gift which has been passed on from generation to generation for 177 years. It admits that we are merely trustees of this rich legacy which we must bequeath to the next generation.

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