We are Guyanese first and foremost…and we have a land to build

Apr 28, 2019 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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“This nation was not built by one ethnic group, but by all persons who came to this country and who they met. Guyana is now, and always will be, multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. Miscegenation is forever. Our diversity is an asset, not a liability. We are proud to belong to a society of many faiths. We are proud of the tapestry of ethnicity within our country.” I took the initiative after 2015 to designate days which celebrate the plural character of our nation, not to divide.” – President David Granger, 183rd Anniversary of Portuguese Arrival Day, Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church.

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In the coming days, Guyana will celebrate the arrival and contributions of two major groupings of people who make up the colourful tapestry of this beautiful land. The 184th Anniversary of the Arrival of people from Portugal will be celebrated this Friday, May 3 at the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Main Street, Georgetown, a location that holds strong historical significance for Guyanese of Portuguese descent and on Sunday, May 5, we will celebrate again the arrival of East Indians.
Today, we take a short stroll back in time to reminisce on the events that have created this nation with such a plural character, a nation so different from others around us.
PORTUGUESE ARRIVAL DAY
Portuguese Arrival Day was first commemorated in 2016 after President Granger decreed it necessary to celebrate every origin of our heritage, to highlight the integration, miscegenation, and the determination of all people to enjoy the rights and privileges of their adopted homeland.
The first batch of 40 arrived in Demerara from Madeira, Portugal on May 3, 1835, on the ship Louisa Baillie. The last batch from Madeira landed in 1882 and by this time, a total of 30,645 Portuguese were already integrated into British Guiana’s population.
Their arrival was a significant period in our history. In 1983, the situation in colonial Guiana was unsettled because of the approaching abolition of (African) slavery. In 1838, over 80,000 Africans were fully emancipated.
Naturally, freed slaves created a huge labour gap and plantation owners were trying all they could to keep a willing labour force in the sugarcane fields, the mainstay of the colonial economy at that time. The owners had even experimented with Indigenous Indians, but that did not work out well. Incidentally, some researchers believe that the famous Explorer, Christopher Columbus, was a Portuguese Nobleman who lived in Genoa, Italy.
Sugar was not new to the indentured Madeiran workers, since Portugal had been cultivating cane and producing sugar since 1452 on the island of Madeira. By 1500, Madeira had become the world’s largest producer of sugar.
But the indentured Portuguese did not stay in Guiana’s sugarcane fields. Within a century of their first arrival, most had moved into commerce – wholesale and retail of foods and dry goods, and into industry. They became property owners, merchants, spare parts sellers and tradesmen, shop owners, importers, show makers, woodcutters, wick makers, among a wide array of small industry businesses.
The Portuguese have been responsible for the establishment and growth of Roman Catholicism in British Guiana. Their arrival here also coincided with the birth of the Village Movement, the local banking system, the introduction of currency, and the system of the exchange of money for goods and services.
THE WHITBY & THE HESPERUS
On May 5, 1838, the same year that African slavery ended once and for all in the British West Indies, a small batch of 396 Indian immigrants landed at Highbury, Berbice in British Guiana from Calcutta, India, aboard the Whitby and the Hesperus.
By this time, natives of India were being taken to Mauritius to work on the sugar plantations and were proving to be very productive. Plantation owner and father of a British statesman, John Gladstone along with other British Guiana colonists first recruited 414 Indians, 150 from Chota Nagpur, and the remainder from Burdwan and Bancoorah near Calcutta (today Kolkata).
Two ships, the Whitby and the Hesperus were chartered to bring them to the West Indies. The Whitby sailed from Calcutta on 13 January 1838 with 249 immigrants, and after a voyage of 112 days, arrived in Guyana on 5 May. Five persons died on the voyage. The ship immediately sailed to Berbice and 164 immigrants who were recruited for the Highbury and Waterloo plantations, disembarked. The ship then returned to Demerara and between 14 and 16 May, the remaining 80 immigrants landed and were taken to Belle Vue Estate.
Of the total 244 on the Whitby, there were 233 men, 5 women and 6 children.
The Hesperus left Calcutta on the 29 January 1838 with 165 passengers, and arrived in Guiana late in the night of 5 May having lost 13 souls on the way. The remaining 135 men, 6 women and 11 children were distributed among Plantations Vreedestein, Vreed-en-Hoop and Anna Regina.
This was the real beginning of the indentureship system that was eventually abolished in 1917. By then, a total of some 240,000 indentured servants had come from India.
Most spoke a dialect of Hindi and were recruited from the provinces of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madras (today known as Tamil Nadu). Within a decade, Indian immigrants were considered to be largely responsible for changing the fortunes of the British Guiana sugar industry.
Indian Arrival Day has been observed by the Indo-Guyanese community since the 20th Century in commemoration of the first Indian emigrants who came aboard the “Whitby” and the “Hesperus” on May 5, 1838.
Indo-Guyanese have kept their culture alive from generation to generation, along with their history and religious philosophies through oral and artistic forms of storytelling.
Our diversity is an asset, not a liability. We are proud to belong to a society of many faiths. We are very proud of the colourful tapestry of our country, and of the people who make Guyana so interesting to the world.
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