Latest update September 17th, 2026 10:25 AM
Emancipation
Kaieteur News – The most powerful appreciation of what Emancipation means at its fullest should be cherished by all Guyanese. Emancipation Day is primarily an African Guyanese celebration, but due to the condition of this country, needed emancipation is not the exclusive property of one segment in Guyana’s population. There was Emancipation Day, that first one, from the horrors of chattel slavery almost 200 years ago, and 59 years hence, there was Guyana’s Independence. Liberation and freedom for all, yet almost all Guyanese still carry themselves as if they are enslaved, as if they are still colonized. Others are quick to spot the weaknesses, rush in and fill the voids.
There is ExxonMobil with its 2016 slave contract, which restarted Guyana’s slave cycle from then, and into the future. More recently, the US Ambassador to Guyana, Excellency Nicole Theriot, decided to extend that slave master’s mentality, through the condescension of US “concern” on a particular contestant in Guyana’s elections scheduled for September 1st. An oil company running Guyana from its plantation headquarters, and an ambassador manifesting a certain kind of supremacy by pointing to Guyanese what is not good for them. When there are developments of such an embarrassing character, how emancipated, how independent, is Guyana?
The leaders of the national government of the day shrug their shoulders, and carry on as usual, without so much as a pause, without taking offense. Who could it be said is free, who is beholden beyond a doubt, could not have been expressed more persuasively. It is of men and women who either openly subscribe to the new slavery, or quietly approve it. When Emancipation Day, and the whole significance of it, should be a time of national joy and pride, there are these dark clouds assembled overhead, that hobble as tightly as any chain. What liberation when an oil contract cannot be put on the agenda, not even discussed? It is obvious that amid the recognition and celebration of this momentous day, the ExxonMobil 2016 oil contract is the new instrument of Guyana’s slavery. In America, a Civil War was fought to upturn that “odious institution”. In Guyana, a war also rages, but it is of a different kind, where Guyana battle Guyanese to maintain the slavery imposed by the reprehensible ExxonMobil oil contract.
The US Constitution had a provision that recognized the existence of slavery in not so many words. Guyanese coexist with an oil contract that, however it is interpreted and evaluated, still boils down to being the proxy constitution of this independent nation. What Emancipation and what manner of Independence, with national men and institutions of vigor, when a vile oil contract draws a line on, and sets the limits of, Guyanese freedoms? Any man that pays homage to that ExxonMobil contract, gives respectful recognition to its existence (sanctity) is a man enslaved, one quite happy to be in that condition. When he now coddles what he uses to hammer in the sharpest and bluntest ways, then a world of enlightenment comes on how some prefer to live in chains and on their knees, as opposed to their fighting to be truly free.
That contract is the first leg that towers over Guyanese, bends them to the visions and will of a US corporate powerhouse. It is not surprising, therefore, that the US itself should then feel at home in dictating to Guyana, how it should oversee its elections, and who should not be in those. National elections are one of the most prominent hallmarks of a country’s independent standing. Elections are as intimate and controversial an experience as anything that is worked at in Guyana. Though the record has been far from impressive, all Guyanese should be free to participate to the fullest in the 5-year contests that determines their national government. It is of negligible interest whether the US ambassador acted on orders, or on her own. The fact that there was such disdain for local rights and democracy’s standards, is less a condemnation of the US. It is more a revelation of how unemancipated and how dependent Guyanese are to this day on foreign involvement and overpowering US godfatherism. An oil contract enslaves again. Elections cripple, incite foreign depredations.
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