Changing names, naming changes

May 12, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When the West Indies cricket team won the world’s T/20 championship under Darren Sammy, within two days, not two months, St. Lucia changed the name of its national stadium in honour of its most famous cricketer, Darren Sammy.
It simply boggles the mind why there was a National Commemoration Commission to plan the Golden Jubilee of Independence and not one street, not even one roadway, was changed in memory of someone who played more than a passing role in the shaping of modern Guyana in its totality. By totality, I include the arts, education, academia, the security sector, business, and not just politics or public service.
I have no idea what is legally involved to change the name of a street, but whatever it is, it cannot be months or years; it has to be weeks. The City Council did not take years to rename a section of New Garden Street after Shivnarine Chanderpaul. Why the PPP Government that was in power just months short of twenty-three years did nothing is quite understandable – keeping history alive simply was not within their range of interest. But what about then-Mayor Hamilton Green and the City Council? Apart from New Garden Street, where else did Green rename?
One of the reasons why naming streets and places after people, and changing banal names of roadways is important, is because our young population is very young. It is not that these young people are ignorant, bohemian, uncaring and wild, thus they have no interest in the history. They are not like this, far from it. It is just that there isn’t a system in place to keep history in their consciousness.
Take Cheddi Jagan. Every young Guyanese knows who he is, because one of the most talked about places in Guyana is the main international airport. Surely, an 18-year-old would turn and ask his mother who Cheddi Jagan was, as they rush to get to the airport.
It is simply sick and disgusting that the name Desmond Hoyte is fading from the consciousness of a population that is very young. Let us say you were five years old when Hoyte lost power in 1992, you are now thirty. How much of Hoyte would you know?
Hoyte is not a leader whose approach to political economy I admire. I think his pitfalls were too many and his naivety about Guyana’s psychology and sociology were awful. But Hoyte had an approach to personal integrity and democratic power that puts him in a category above all other leaders from colonial times to the present moment.
First, I think he had no interest in running a state where constituency preference and constituency protection were at the top of his agenda. Every head of government practiced that kind of politics. Secondly, I don’t think Hoyte was interested in any form of authoritarian state power. Had he remained in office I believe Hoyte would have depoliticized state power. No other leader has done that, from Jagan in 1957 right up to Granger in 2017. There isn’t scope to adumbrate a thesis on Hoyte in a newspaper column, but the one area that stands out and for which his name deserves to be emblazoned in Guyana, is the race factor. I think he is the only leader we have had that didn’t situate the race factor into governance.
Though Hoyte would top my list for a major part of Guyana to be named after him, there are dozens of names that should adorn the physical landscape of Guyana. Burnham was right to erase Murray Street, named after a man who tortured slaves, and replace it with a slave rebel, Quamina. I don’t know how Almond Street got its title, but I know the name has no significance in Guyana, so Lance Gibbs deserves to secure that honour.
I can instantly call to mind some serious contributors to Guyanese history that the young generation needs to know about, and we need to keep these nationalist contributors alive by naming places or streets or scholarships or something else after them.
There is the Walter Rodney Archives, but that was a wrong identification. Maybe UG Access Road should be named after him or Clive Thomas. I could understand retaining Railway Embankment on which I live. It is a part of our history. The train ran on that spot. But why South Road and North Road? Why the Theatre Guild and not the Ron Robinson Theatre?
Finally, what about Moses Nagamootoo? Perhaps Guyana’s most enduring politician, Moses after what he did in May 2015 deserves to have some major identification carry his name.

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