by clairmont chung
Many thought the Cold War over: dead and buried in the
rubble of the Berlin Wall. The winners claimed their medals and the superiority
of their ideas. These formed an alliance centered on notions of individual
freedoms and a free market. Seemingly, slowly, the rest of the world fell into smug
step. But, now, as the whole planet grapples with the same old but growing income
inequalities and all kinds of fundamentalism, environmental degradation, mass health
emergencies, racism and xenophobia, huge cracks have opened in once sacred alliances.
Smaller countries like Guyana and others in the region struggle to fill their
cracks while being knocked around by huge waves that originate elsewhere, in a struggle
to stay afloat and a lifeline with room for only a few. For Guyana, more than
most, it seems a lot like that old Cold War. The offered lifeline is the exploitation of
resources but that has brought little benefit to its caretakers; only its
takers.
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| President David Granger |
So, instead of discussing the next 50 years of development
and possibilities of progress, the promise of new kinds of sustainable energy,
mass transportation, race-free distribution of resources and internetric
commerce, we are mired in a familiar ‘we versus them’ paradigm as an excuse for
our stagnation. Except ‘them’ and ‘we’ are not so clear, or different,
ideologically. Segments of the population struggle to maintain a course to
their own humanity. In a decade where many would be celebrating 50 years of
independence from colonial rule, the old powers and allies are even more
involved in our lives as anytime since independence and effecting the usual
coups and regime changes. And the recent change a rehash of the same.
What does one call a government with one career military
officer as Head of State and another as Minister of State?
There are some differences in this new Cold War. It’s not
communism versus capitalism. One wonders what happened to that difference and if
it ever was. Instead, it’s one kind of neoliberalism against another kind of neoliberalism,
one more fascist than the other, and all to control any resources or ideas of self-determination.
On May 16th of 2015 Guyana swore in Brigadier David Granger, Ret’d, a former Commander
in that country’s army, as winner of its May 11th national election and its 7th
President. Brigadier Granger headed a coalition of parties, APNU-AFC, led by his
own People’s National Congress (PNC), that promised a return to order for a
country that had been racked by underdevelopment ills, misuse of natural
resources, narco-traffic, narco-klepsy, violence, institutional racism, poverty,
and corruption.
Guyana’s election could have gone without note as many of
its sister Caribbean nations in Trinidad, Jamaica and St. Vincent had it not
had a border with Venezuela. Immediate military and nationalistic rhetoric followed the election and brought Brigadier Granger under closer scrutiny, not only
because he is a former military head, but also because of the peculiar rise of
his star, and his close association with the US military, that notorious cold
warrior. President Granger appears to have emerged quite rapidly from relative
obscurity and retirement to head of state. Even within his own party, the
People’s National Congress, now APNU, his rise seemed almost Obama-like as among US Democrats.
His challenge for party leadership shunted aside very well known, long time,
aspirants to power. It caused some early divisions in that party but fences appear
to have mended quickly and with good result: a seat at the head table.
His political platform was not ideologically different
from the incumbent People’s Progressive Party (PPP). Unlike the early days of
Guyana’s modern political history when the masses aligned with socialist PPP
against the conservative colonial agents; now, both the losing PPP and now
ruling PNC led APNU-AFC tout the usual neo liberal platitudes made
popular during the Cold War; the country’s consistent economic growth or its
lack, security, more foreign investment, privatization, free markets and anti
corruption.
Corruption seemingly only resides in the underdeveloped, as
if corruption is somehow greater in victims and pawns of the war than in the
ones who conspired to seize power; and replace their enemies with their allies in
coups and other conspiracies.
The Cold War labeled the PPP as Marxist and the PNC, now
APNU-AFC, as, not so much, and more sympathetic to western interests. Neither
protested then nor do now. Guyana’s modern political history, like the rest of
the world’s, has been written on a slate mined in the Cold War; but recent times
have seen little to betray the Marxist histories of its earlier leading
political figures. Nothing either major presidential candidate said harked back
to the old days of Marxist influenced appeals to broken chains, real independence,
organized labor or a communist international against European and American
imperialism. Instead, both groups have avoided any left leaning rhetoric and
fought to outdo each other finding the narrowest distance between them and US
sentiments. Part of the reason is that neither of the old Cold War leftist countries, Russia nor China, espouses any left leaning rhetoric and certainly not
in actual practice. In fact, both show contempt for workers' rights at home and
abroad.
US involvement would seem unnecessary in this environment. Evidently, the US saw things differently. If,
in fact, it was the vote that ousted the PPP, it was a vote informed by that
government’s connection to narco traffic and gang warfare that left several
hundred dead or missing and one of the US consulate staff kidnapped. He was rescued allegedly by a gang leader attached to the PPP. In the recent elections, not one to
leave anything to chance, the US engaged and funded a get ‘out to vote
campaign’, with TV advertising no less, that posed as part of the democratic
process and without an obvious bow to either side. A cursory reading of US
history in the region reveals little of anything democratic.
But despite the similarities of the two vying factions, Guyana
is a central part of that new Cold War and the US role looks now as then:we look as we did in 1964. Then, A PNC led coalition, PNC-UF,
won an election that ushered in that country’s independence of May 1966.
Similarly, now a PNC led coalition has won the 2015 election and the right to
preside over the country’s 50th year of that independence.
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| The Invasion |
That 1964 victory came at the end of a decade that had begun
with a British led invasion. In 1953, British troops intervened to suspend the
then British Guiana constitution with its new rights for working people, and
imprison its socialist and communist leaning authors. That invasion came at the
beginning of the Cold War and helped identify the Cold War strategy of coups
and regime changes in the region.
Within 5 years thereafter that coalition of left leaning Guyanese
leaders had been divided and split into two main parties with race as a primary
function in the split, but ideology too. Race would become a touchstone that
would usher in a civil war. Many rural villages were racially ‘cleansed’. There
had been some blurring of the lines between East Indian and African villages
kept historically separated. Civil war meant one had to move back to one’s
traditional villages and sometimes live in homes once occupied by a family of
the other race. The irony: you could not live in their village but you could
live in their home. It was really a political war between two
parties fueled by the cold war, not unlike Jamaica in the 1970s, except in
Guyana race played a greater role in identifying the enemy. All of this, much
like Jamaica of the 1970s, garrisons included, has been shown to occur with the
full involvement of the US and UK. There was an invasion then too, more like a build-up, not to change governments only but to enforce its change and to maintain
the separateness: apartheid. This is separate from the state sponsored violence
against the people that has continued unabated from forced labor, through indenture,
to now.
The 2015 elections saw none of the political violence of the
previous political milestones of 1953 or 1964. There was violence and even
racial violence, in the past decade, but not overtly party centered. It is yet
to be fully analyzed. Narco funded gangs began a series of assassinations,
seemingly random, initially, but as part of a crime fight, then grew as a gang
related fight for control of the narco traffic and with the victors tied to the
ruling PPP: operatives would later testify in US courts. It was not the racial-political
civil war of the 1960s, but a war to control the local drug trade and,
inevitably, political influence, that had long been racially divided. The US
seemed disinterested but with the occasional reprimand about drug transshipment
and the need for greater security including a local DEA office.
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| Prime Minister Forbes Burnham and President Lyndon Johnson |
The Cold War was long over and the wars on drugs and terror the
new focus; if just a kind of distraction at first. All are now ongoing,
simultaneously, molded into one huge globe of insecurity. The war on drugs
became a war that militarized the police to control human resources and any
kind of resistance with Black Lives as examples of what could happen. The war
on terror began as a war for control of oil resources that escalated into what
we now know, but we have been under a state of terror at least from enslavement
and the deaths of innocents its hallmark.
Looked at as a whole we see its not cold,
its not drugs, its not terror. Bodies are lying everywhere. It’s the expansion of empire and on a much
older battlefield.
In 1953, Fidel Castro was in jail for his failed armed attempt
to seize power in 1952 Cuba. So US and UK intervention in 1953, in Guyana, was
informed by those developments and similar attempts around the world as well as
their own global ambitions. 1953 was also the overthrow of Iran's elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the re-imposition of the Shah of Iran.
A similar pattern emerges and questions raised when Guyana’s 2015 election is
viewed in the context of regime changes in Brazil and Argentina, ongoing attempts
at similar changes in Venezuela and as far back as the 2009 coup in Honduras.
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| Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama |
When in 1987 Former US President Ronald Reagan commanded the
Berlin Wall torn down, Russia and China were not the same kind of enemy US President
Kennedy had faced in 1961. By 1961, Castro had finally succeeded in seizing
power and banishing unbridled capitalism. And moreover, the USSR had placed
nuclear missiles in Cuba aimed at the US: a short 90 miles from Miami. China
was in support of North Vietnam in a war that would see the US withdraw in
shame. But by 1980 all showed signs of structural political change and an end
to the Cold War. US global goodwill was not sufficient to end the Cuba
blockade. But it would be US money that kick-started China’s new economic
ascendancy.
Today, China’s brand of state sponsored capitalism, as is Russia’s,
can hardly be distinguished from the US or the UK’s. It is all state sponsored, the US’ too,
because none of it could be possible without the military apparatus and corporate
welfare. It appears that economies survive; even if in turmoil, when you have
the military might to support it. The others seek favor. This was the case in
the 1620s when the Dutch West India Company and its agents arrived in the Americas
and, importantly, in the now named Essequibo River, in Guiana and Hudson River
in New Amsterdam, now New York. This is still the case now; as Exxon-Mobil makes its timed
appearance.
Beginnings of the Modern Empire
The short and brutal Spanish-American War of 1898 is
generally accepted as the first steps of US imperial ambition. Wars have been
glorified through history, but they are as glorious as a stick-up, and much
more deadly. Weakened by the weight of smaller wars and insurgencies in its
colonies, Spain did not relish a battle with the US: it had been spread too
thin. Cuba was in revolt. New Granada, by then Gran Colombia, was in revolt and
The Philippines too. Spain learned, as had the US, an economy without forced
labor is not as easy as one with. The US moved against a now wounded
super-predator and a chance to expand simultaneously in the Atlantic as well as
the Pacific coasts of both the Americas and Asia. New Granada had broken into
Gran Colombia, which included Panama. New Granada originally included today’s
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and parts of Peru. These territories remain
crucial to understanding the US’ continuing imperial ambitions. Again, not much
has changed.
The US hit upon its signature strategy of backing
insurgencies and then staying; usually beyond its welcome. It revived the dream
of a transcontinental canal; it financed Panama’s secession from Gran Colombia,
in 1903, were the first to recognize the new country, immediately, and promptly
arranged for its own control of what was to be the Panama Canal.
The same strategy was used in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines,
and Guam. With its fleets in disarray, Spain agreed at the Treaty of Paris in
December 1898, to cede control of Cuba, The Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico
to the US. Though it did not get the whole of Gran Colombia in the deal, it got
the Panama Canal along with significant regional influence.
In the Asian theatre, The Philippines became a base, and
remains so today, from which to monitor developments in China and Russia. This
made the Panama Canal even more important. At about the same time, China was
engaged in its own rebellion against European interests. It had come down a
long way from its once mighty military and technological advantage. And now was
the subject of colonial exploitation under European control. Resistance to
foreign exploitation and the attendant humiliations evolved into the Boxer
Rebellion lasting from 1899 to 1901. That resentment was soon directed at the
monarchy, the 4000-year-old Qing Dynasty; that revolution began in 1911 and by
1912 had established the Republic of China.
Simultaneously in Russia, strikes and political turmoil
evolved into the 1905 Revolution and a new constitution in 1906. But that did
not stem the clamor for greater equality from below. The First World War,
1914-18 only exacerbated these inequalities and the Bolshevik Revolution in
1917 by 1918 had led to a full civil war and the execution of the Royal family;
Czar Nicholas II, his wife and children.
My Enemy’s Enemy
The Cold War is so named because the main participants were
engaged in a war that did not result in an actual exchange of fire between
them. Many of the cold warriors fought as allies; the US, USSR and China in WW II
and I. They were not allies before the wars but common interests prevailed over
individual ambitions. Between the wars, many leaders in the Pan African
movement identified with Russia and were viewed with more than suspicion by
western imperialism. That was set aside during the Second World War and to the
great benefit of Europe and America because it is the opinion of the experts
that without the Soviet involvement the result would have been decidedly different.
However, that alliance did not survive and it is that post
WW II period that intensified the freeze of the Cold War and laid the
foundation for its current reboot. President Obama’s recent visits to Cuba and
Argentina set the context. It is the places he did not visit that better tells
the story; Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia Ecuador and Venezuela, of course. The Cuba
visit was sold as a thaw in that relationship. But little was mentioned about
the origins of the freeze.
Are We Friends, Nyet?
Now that Russia has relinquished its socialist ideology and
its regional satellites, Cuba in particular is no longer seen as an obstacle to
US expansion. It is cast more as a relic of the geo-politico-ideological war
between socialism and capitalism waged primarily between the US and the former
USSR. Despite these developments, Cuba holds tenaciously to some old socialist
tenets. While at US held Guantanamo, that lasting vestige of that old war, terror
suspects undergo the kind of torture formerly associated with the Iron Curtain
that once cloaked the Soviet socialist republics on the other side of the
Berlin Wall. There is talk of lifting the 60 year old US enforced blockade against
Cuba. No US President had visited for 88 years. President Obama’s Cuba visit may
have been intended as confirmation of the old war’s end, a demonstration of the
toothless bear, with manicured claws: a friend. Nothing could be further from
the truth.
Not only is the war not over, but also it’s at one of its
most volatile points and being waged, as of old, everywhere. This was not
always apparent. The lines on the battlefield, if so before, are not as simple
and clear now: the two dimensional view of socialism versus capitalism has
ramped up. China, once seen as a sidekick to the Soviet machine, at least in
the post World War II period, has emerged as its own superpower and blurred the
line with its own brand of imperialism with state lubricated capitalism. Russia,
freed from its satellites forged its own sleeker brand of imperialism. Russia’s
once global reach has been surpassed by China, both are modernizing their
arsenals and looking for opportunities.
As if out of step, in the US of all places, a viable presidential
candidate publicly declared himself socialist and drew hugely popular support.
Times had changed or not. The US is effecting every bit of influence to chart
the planet’s orbit and nowhere more evident than in little Guyana.
President Granger’s People National Congress (PNC) that had
been out of power for 23 years had itself dabbled with socialism through the
years; despite its origins as the beneficiary of the US intelligence and its
decidedly neo colonial policy. State department records and independent
accounts confirmed that in 1964 the US and Britain combined, through various agents
including the CIA and the AFL-CIO, to elevate Forbes Burnham to power as leader
of the PNC and part of an earlier coalition with a decidedly pro-west United
Force. The PNC’s early leadership had once been part of the then defeated
People’s Progressive Party. PPP leader, Cheddi Jagan, had identified himself
and the party as socialist and the US and UK intelligence agreed he was
Marxist and a communist. Forbes Burnham lead a split from the PPP in the mid
1950s to form the PNC, became premier in 1964, Prime Minister in 1966, and
President in 1980: a run that saw him as the head of state in some political
form for 21 consecutive years until his death in 1985. The PNC held on until
1992.
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| A Guyana National Service Contingent |
President Granger served as a career military officer under the
Burnham regime for most of that time, 1967 to 1992, and a primary architect of its Guyana National
Service program 1974 to 2000. National Service was adopted as part of that
government’s ‘socialist’ phase lasting from around the early 1970s to Burnham’s
death in 1985. President Granger’s earlier socialist association seems distant now;
as did President Burnham’s earlier socialist association with the PPP must have
seemed when he was anointed as Premier in 1964. The US did view Burnham with
skepticism then, but felt he would be better than Cheddi who was more clearly
aligned with the Soviets of that time. President Burnham’s socialism grew more austere
the longer he remained in power and included fraternal relations with Cuba, the
USSR, China, and The People’s Republic of Korea. President Granger even led
military delegations to some of these countries including North Korea; a trip
that one would think unthinkable for him now. Perhaps Burnham felt pushed and
Granger was excused as a soldier following orders from his Commander-in-Chief.
Most of Latin America was under military juntas, dictatorships or close. Brazil’s ‘Three Stooges’ took control in 1964; a reference to the US roll in the coup and the three-person military junta. After a few months, they relinquished to another career military officer in EmÃlio Garrastazu Médici that began an extended military rule. While Forbes Burnham as Commander in Chief of Guyana's armed forces pushed towards socialism and Pan Africanism, in a military government of
sorts, Salvador Allende was overthrown and assassinated by his military leaders,
some he appointed, in a US supported Coup. Augusto Pinochet became that
country’s Commander in Chief. Pinochet in Chile marks
that country’s most repressive period. It is claimed 3000 were murdered or
disappeared and 80,000 tortured or imprisoned. Almost every Latin American
country has had a period of military rule, except Mexico and that is debatable;
and if not military rule certainly dictatorship. Some even claimed socialism. Venezuela,
Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil enjoyed the longest periods of military rule. It
is with some irony that in recent times these 4 countries posed, along with
Uruguay and Ecuador, some ideological resistance to US hegemony.
Perhaps President Granger had been better vetted than Former
President Burnham. President Granger is listed by the National Defense
University (NDU) as a 2000 graduate and also as an Adjunct Professor until 2010
at its Fort Lesley J. McNair home in Washington DC. It is operated by the US
Department of Defense. It was in 2010 that Brigadier Granger’s star began to
rise within the PNC and APNU organizations and in 2011 stood as its leader in
national elections in a losing effort. Immediately after his 2015 election
victory he returned to deliver a commencement address at his alma mater. He had
been retired from military service since 1992.
In fairness, his address was not to the entire university:
He addressed graduates at William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense
Studies who had completed the 6-week Caribbean Defense and Security Course. The
center is sometimes referred to as CHDS and also WJPC. The release noted all
participants received a copy of President Granger’s book on geopolitics. This
involvement, by itself, would not raise too many eyebrows in even the Caribbean
region as most of its military brass have historically attended military
schools in England and France and more so now the US. Additionally, the
center’s stated goals of security in Latin America and the Caribbean seems
fairly benign.
However, as recent as 2014, US Senator and Chairman of the
Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, launched an investigation, headed by the
Department of Defense, Office of Inspector General, into the Perry Center
(WJPC) and whistleblower allegations that it protected one of its professors
indicted in 2013 by Chilean civil court as responsible for the torture and
murder of 7 detainees while he served in Chile’s secret police under President
Pinochet. Further allegations surfaced of the clandestine involvement of WJPC
officials in the Honduras Coup of 2009 that ousted democratically elected
President Manuel Zelaya and that the WJPC exhibits a culture of mismanagement,
corruption, homophobia, racism, and sexism. US Senator Patrick Leahy noted
allegations the National Defense University has hired as faculty, military
officers accused of human rights violations that included extra judicial
killings and torture. The William J. Perry Center falls under direct command of
Southcom, US military southern command, and so too does Guantanamo.
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| Orlando Letelier |
The 2009 overthrow of Manuel Zelaya was carried out by Romeo
Vásquez Velásquez, another retired Brigadier but of the Honduran Armed Forces
and a graduate of another US Department of Defense school, the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). This was formerly the
School of the Americas originally opened in Panama in1946 but moved to the Fort
Benning, GA in 1984 and later renamed after repeated protest about its
graduates and their history of torture, murder and coups. It is from that
school that Manuel Contreras graduated and became the head of the Chilean
Secret Police (DINA) under Augusto Pinochet. But even more importantly
Contreras was serving as Chief of Secret Police in 1976 at the time of the murder
of Carlos Letelier an exiled Chilean dissident in Washington DC. Letelier had
worked for the deposed Socialist Salvador Allende and was imprisoned, tortured
and exiled after the 1973 Coup.
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| Michael Townley |
A DINA Agent, Michael Townley confessed to his role in the
murder of Letelier and implicated Manuel Contreras in that and Operation Condor;
a plan to eliminate political dissidents, trade unionists, and Marxist subversives
in Latin America and beyond. John Judge in his essay “The Black Hole of Guyana (p143)”
called Townley a ‘decapitation
specialist’. Cuban dissidents from New Jersey helped Townley and the names of
Luis Posada Cariles and Orlando Bosch surfaced as part of that conspiracy and
others including the September 1, 1976 bombing of the Guyana Consulate in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Posada and Bosch were later arrested and held in Venezuela for the October 6th, 1976, bombing of the Cubana Airlines flight 455 that killed 73; 11 Guyanese
citizens were among the dead. Cariles escaped while awaiting retrial and is reported
to have subsequently worked for the CIA and the Contras in the war to depose
the Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.
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| Letelier's bombed car |
It is in that sense we are back at that earlier political
juncture. Perhaps we never left. Most of the operatives are still alive and
changes in government have seen a return of retired actors. This essay is not to cast
blame but to raise awareness, vigilance, provide context for the debate, and to analyze current and coming developments.
From 1964, for 28 years
until, to 1992 the PNC was able to hold onto power. And from numerous and
credible reports, none of the many elections and one referendum were free or
fair. The PPP regained and held power from 1992, for 23 years, to 2015. If you listen to PNC supporters, none of those
elections were free and fair. And the players in front and behind the scenes
now, hold a stunning resemblance to those then. Even the differences help make
the point. The Cold War is alive and
well.
Even the APNU AFC coalition came on the advice of US interests.
A Wikileaks release revealed the US sent an emissary before the 2011 election
to urge a coalition of the parties against the PPP. Only one year earlier
Brigadier Granger had risen from obscurity to party leader. The AFC comprising
then a younger generation of former members of the PPP and PNC disenchanted
with the old politics, refused the advice and invitation to a coalition.
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| Guyanese victims on Cubana Flight 455 |
The numerically smaller Working People’s Alliance (WPA) joined
the coalition in 2011; a party founded in opposition to the PNC during that
earlier reign and also one once closer to traditional socialist conventions. The AFC holds no socialist pretentions. It
joined the coalition in time for the 2015 elections.
A recent commission of inquiry convened before the elections
by the PPP, determined that the then PNC government under Forbes Burnham carried
out the car bomb assassination of Walter Rodney in 1980, the WPA’s Marxian co leader.
His driver, brother Donald Rodney, survived with lacerations to the exposed side
of his neck and face.
Though the participants in the Cold War never exchanged direct
fire that does not mean there were no casualties. There were millions of
casualties within those countries and their satellites;some attacked their own
citizens. Wars were fought by proxy. Millions died in Vietnam. Afghanistan is
ongoing, so too is Syria. Many died inside the US, the black power movement, the
anti war movement, and the overarching civil rights movement. It was a war of
ideas. Not all ideologues occupied lands with needed resources to fight a war.
Not all casualties were ideologues. Most were innocent.
Congressional hearings on FBI activities confirmed the
already known activities under its Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) ranged
from actual assassinations, infiltrations, false prosecutions, character assassinations,
finding the seams in the organizations and splitting those seams to the point
where the factions were shooting each other.
A number of players surprisingly sought refuge from this
onslaught in Guyana. The story of the Stiner brothers was recently retold on
National Public Radio. Two brothers, members of the Black Panther Party, were
convicted of killing Black Panther leaders Bunchy Carter and John Huggins. Both
brothers escaped prison together and ended up in Guyana in the early 70s. Larry
Watani Stiner left Guyana for Suriname in 1980 and the story was about his life
there, his return to the US, where he was re-incarcerated to complete his
sentence. He did survive prison and was reunited in LA with his Surinamese wife
and children.
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| Rabbi Washington |
The most notorious was Jim Jones. The People’s Temple
massacre remains incomprehensible and ripe for speculation. But its tragic end
as a supposed socialist experiment supported the point of socialism’s failures.
Rabbi Washington, known as David Hill, was another US refugee in Guyana and formed
the House of Israel. These were not Panthers but were supposedly seeking a safe
place away from the attention of US laws and enforcement; but instead became
the law against any opposition to the ruling PNC. Many came to realize that
they were in as much danger there from US authorities as they were in the US.
Others became disenchanted and left what they thought would have been an
Nkrumah-like Pan African socialist country under Forbes Burnham.
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| Maj. Gen. Norman McLean |
President Granger has surrounded himself with former military
colleagues in key positions. His Minister of State is Joseph Harmon a retired
Lieutenant Colonel and seen as the force behind the Office of the President
forming a kind of Junta Elegida
(elected). Old party faithfuls and military personnel of the 70s and 80s head
state-run corporations and key institutions. Norman McLean, Maj. General Ret.,
heads the Private Sector Commission. The newest admit to that commission is
Exxon. Maj. General is the highest rank
among the retirees. Bloomberg News valued Exxon’s recent oil find in Guyana at
$40 Billion, the Guyanese 2014 GDP at $3.23 Billion and Exxon’s market value at
$341 Billion. One can see the likely reason for Venezuelan nervousness and
Guyana’s spirited rhetoric about border protections.
Guyana has historically been analyzed within the context of
the English speaking Caribbean. A more accurate analysis may require Latin
America as the context. US hegemony has not spared former British colonies of
the Caribbean. But for the most part they have complied with the dictates of US
foreign policy, except for Grenada in 1979, Trinidad and Tobago in 1970 and 2 later coups, and Jamaica for a time under Michael Manley. After
the 2015 election, President Granger flew a day early to a Mercosur conference
in Brazil. It was reported as an opportunity to request then President Dilma
Rousseff to talk to Venezuela’s President Maduro and help calm down the
rhetoric. President Granger could not have known a conspiracy was brewing to
oust President Rousseff and replace her with conservative neo liberals bent on
her impeachment. Rousseff had been imprisoned and tortured by Brazil ‘s
military government while a young leftist activist.
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| Presidents Granger and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil |
Mercosur has pursued a self-determination line. All had
issued directives that they will not send any further candidates to the schools
run by the US Department of Defense. Though that was before the ‘coup’ against
Rousseff and the neo liberal victory in Argentina.
It has been three years since Wikileaks founder Julian
Assange fled into and remained in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He has been granted asylum
by that government but believes he would be arrested and extradited to the US
if he attempts to leave its embassy. Eric Snowden, National Security Administration
whistleblower, fled the US and settled in Russia. Evidently he did not feel
safe in China, his first stop. The fallout from the US role in the ouster of President
Zelaya of Honduras may yet haunt Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in her
presidential bid. At the most recent Caribbean Energy Summits 2015 and extended to Central America in 2016 in Wash. DC, US, Vice
President Biden urged Guyana and regional heads to seek alternative oil deals
to the ones with Venezuela, Petro Caribe. That may be moot and mute now.
All this is happening as traditional Cold War enemies are cleaving
towards neoliberal agendas. While a US presidential hopeful has met with tremendous
success from younger Americans despite declaring himself socialist. NATO is
massing in Poland and Russia’s western border as a response to Russia in Crimea
and Syria too. China is everywhere. A China based company is a partner in an oil-drilling
consortium headed by Exxon to develop the new fields off Guyana’s coast. Another
US presidential hopeful plans to build a wall to exclude people from the center
of the empire. It seems the more things change the more they stay the same. And
Guyana is, as always, caught in the strong currents, vulnerable, like the
infantry, on a battlefield with its Kings, Queens and Knights moved by an
almost unseen hand.
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