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Emancipate the mind, free the fate

Jul 31, 2023 Editorial

Editorial…

Kaieteur News – History tells us that slavery officially ended in the British West Indies almost two centuries ago.  Slavery also officially became a thing of the past in America, the land of the free and where all men are created equal, over 150 years ago.  But, unofficially and under the cover of the chains of sanctity of contract, Guyanese live with a new slavery at the hands of the Americans, with able assistance from the British, and other powers in the European Union, once slave masters themselves right here and in Africa.

Indentureship is no longer an official practice of foreigners in Guyana, but the reality of the local environment is of so many in the Guyanese population, who exist in a state of serfdom, as if they are still on plantations and estates (and slums), but ones that are national in scale.  Though the bodies of men and women in Guyana may not be physically trapped in chains, the minds of too many in local society are too craven in crass prostration before those who come here with a covetous gleam in their eyes for our wealth.

As modern as the 21st century may be claimed to be, with men more civilized and conscious of the rights of man, and the brotherhood that goes with those, there are still these ancient impulses and practices.  Like the impulse toward casting greed-filled eyes and calculations, towards the prosperous potentials, from the patrimony of others.  They then come and take it for themselves, while making a great, big commotion about giving fake dog bones and the occasional milk bones to keep the dogs quiet.  In the days of slavery, those bones went by the names of baubles, and trinkets, and booze to those who sold their own people out for a joke, and the scornful company of assorted pirates, pillagers, and predators.

It was gold and land in the time of the Native American Indians.  It was free people shackled in irons and shipped in a harrowing journey across the ocean to a life of bondage, and as inanimate property, not even as prized as farm livestock or horseracing stock.  There was India and Central and South America, where the lust for rich minerals drove men to engage in genocide of whole peoples, and the plundering of their rich civilizations.  In Guyana, there is our oil, and to a lesser degree our gold and the rest of the other riches.

The Guyanese people have oil in bulk, and they live in the chains of sanctity of contract, and tribal leaders who sell them out for a small bag of dogfood, which both exploiter and betrayers celebrate.  There is no Lincolnesque Emancipation Proclamation on the horizon for Guyanese.  Guyanese have to free themselves.  On this occasion, there is no Slavery Abolition Act in the cards to free Guyanese from their legal and leadership captivity, from their heinous American corporate captivity.  Guyanese have to free themselves; either they rise up and do so themselves, or they doom themselves to generations of slavery, like the Africans in America (and here), like the Indians in India (and right here).

Guyanese have to free their minds first: the foreign exploiter is neither their superior nor their friend, and so also are their own tribal leaders.  Guyanese have to clear their heads of all the swill and filth fed to them, so that their hearts can be steeled to stand up for themselves, free themselves from this crippling bondage.  And, Guyanese of all walks of life, of every shade of color, must shake off the chains around their souls and give their foreign captors the back of their hand, the tip of their boot.  Guyanese have to emancipate themselves, starting with their minds, for nobody else will do it for them.  Guyanese must emancipate themselves first from those in their midst who trick them, and barter their birthright for a bowl of black tea, and cake blackened by leadership rottenness.

Contract and contractors and conspirators must all be freed from, and proven methods must be explored to make such possible.  A national mentality of non-cooperation, the power of passive resistance, must become the norm.  Guyanese: rise up, stand up, lift up.

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