Remembering Cheddi Jagan
Caribbean Person of the Century
Cheddi B. Jagan, Freedom Fighter
by Gerald V. Paul
The turn of the century provides a unique opportunity for all of us to reflect on the past and those who helped shaped the future as we now know it.
For Caribbean people, the one who stands out the most is an extraordinary man who dedicated his life to better the lot for his own people, much to his own peril, to ensure that the future they would face would be one offering far more freedom than before.
Freedom fighters, a rare breed, are heroes, whether they come in the form of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King Jr. or Cheddi Jagan. They all stand head and shoulder above the rest, for what makes them special is that their fight is for the people.
But Cheddi Jagan was more than a hero, more than a freedom fighter. To the People of Guyana, the country he helped forge from the shackles of colonialism, C.B.Jagan was the man on whom all their hopes and dreams were pinned. And beyond Guyana’s borders, Jagan became the epitome of democracy - an irony that was never lost on a small dentist whose early political life was purely Marxist.
In the concrete jungle at home and abroad his message was that human rights must embrace civil and political, as will as Economic, social and cultural rights. "Human needs and human security must be the object of development," declared Dr. Jagan in the various continents around the world.
I still have the autographed copy of The West on Trial by Dr. Cheddi "Berret" Jagan. "Berret", not Bharrat was a middle name he adopted because it was fashionable at the time for East Indians in the Caribbean to anglicise their names.
The book is inscribed: "To Gerald: In the cause of Peace, Freedom and Socialism. Cheddi Jagan, 28/3/85."
I remember when he signed it, He was smiling, though he had just experienced another rigged general election by Forbes Burnham, his former partner and then self-declared President-for-Life, which once again cast him into Guyana's political wilderness. It was a place to which he had become accustomed, though as we were soon to find out, he was soon to emerge in triumph.
Our conversation was brief. He asked if I was a member of his People's Progressive Party (PPP) - which will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary on January 1, 2000 - and although my answer was in the negative, he appeared unperturbed. Just being in his presence, however, was awesome. Here was a man who had gone to prison for his beliefs, survived a bomb attack which killed a loyal supporter, Michael Forde, had been beaten, belittled and ostracized, and yet refused to give up the fight, simply because his people needed him and he had no intention of letting them down.
Cheddi Jagan was born in humble surroundings on March 22, 1918 in a Plantation in Port Mourant to Hindu parents who hailed from Baste in Uttar Pradesh, in India. The shoeless - until he was twelve - Dr. Jagan spent a stint at Port Mourant Primary School, then at Scots School at Rose Hall Village and R.N.Persaud's private secondary school in Port Mourant, the only secondary school of its kind in the area.
Dr. Jagan - who once wore earrings because of his culture - laboured diligently as a child and credited his father as the fountain for any leadership qualities he had acquired. However as for the elements of finance, his mother was called blessed.
He enrolled in the prestigious Queens College in Georgetown in 1933, one of the few poor children at the institution at the time. He was then sent abroad to the United States to study dentistry, and while there, he married Janet Rosenberg, the woman who would stand by his side through trial and tribulation - and even prison - until his death.
But dentistry was not his passion. What Cheddi Jagan wanted more than anything was to be in a position where he could better the lot for his fellow Guyanese, most of whom, like his parents, remained poor as the country's wealth was filtered to the colonial masters in Britain. So in 1947, four years after his return from the United States, he ran for office and became the youngest member at age 29 of the Legislative Council of Guyana. Three years later, he co-founded the People’s Progressive Party with an affable bright young lawyer named Forbes Burnham, and his wife Janet.
The PPP became a thorn in the side of the British for a turbulent decade. Jagan’s Marxisist philosophy ran counter to the democratic systems being touted by the Western World in what was then the Cold War era, and the possibility of a communist ruling an important chuck of South America was not something neither the British nor the Americans were prepared to tolerate.
So from day, one, they devised a system called proportional representation, or PR, to keep Jagan from power; and threw their support behind Burnham, who by then had broken away from the PPP to form his own party, the People's National Congress. That support for Burnham never waned, in spite of reports coming out of Guyana of horrendous atrocities against the people. Jagan, once kept out, remained out, even as Burnham openly rigged elections to remain in power. And while eventually, Burnham fell foul of the "masters" through a campaign of nationalization which saw the British and Americans lose millions of dollars in assets, there appeared to be no international will to pressure him to return to the system of democracy they touted.
Undefeated, Jagan kept up the battle, winning the support of labour movements in neighboring Caribbean countries who then began pressuring their respective governments to turn the screws on Burnham. But there was little political will to do so, even following Burnham’s death in 1985.
Jagan also began championing the New Global Human Order cause, which as mentioned earlier, began attracting the attention of the intellectual communities in North America and Europe. This coming out of the cold, so to speak, as well as his shift to acceptance of a more democratic system of government, is what eventually won him grudging support from the United States and Canada, which then mobilized its own systems to push Burnham's successor, Desmond Hoyte, into holding free and fair elections in September 1992.
Jagan's victory at these polls was a vindication as well as a testament to his strength as a person, and a realization of his lifelong promise to deliver freedom to his people. It brought an end to three decades of one of the most oppressive regimes in the history of the Caribbean, and with it the dawn of a new era for the impoverished nation. Jagan's return to the Presidency from which he was so unfairly removed by the superpowers was also roundly applauded by the Caribbean for it ushered in the only time in the post-colonial era that democracy in none of the member nations was under threat.
That he came to power so late served as both a testimony to his resilience as well as a sad footnote in history, for Jagan would not live to serve out his first full term in office.
In March 1997, just shy of his 79th birthday, he succumbed to heart failure. Jagan’s popularity as the greatest Caribbean Person of the Century was evident at his funeral, where an estimated half of the entire population of Guyana attended the ceremony. It was the biggest ever funeral for a leader in the region.
Globally, Dr. Jagan stressed interdependence, particularly between the North and the South, between the developed and the developing countries but with human development as the unifying factor between the two camps. He was bold enough to point out that the availability of new financial resources was critical for human development. His was the view that developing countries, because of their high foreign debt burden, could not embark on the road to prosperity and that handouts, and mendicancy were not the solution, nor was aid with strings attached. What was needed, he argued, was a totally new approach which would address the debt question and find new and innovative ways of mobilizing fresh resources to overcome underdevelopment so as to enable the developing countries, in partnership with the developed countries, to play a more positive and meaningful role in the global marketplace, currently characterized by rapid globalization and trade liberalization. This was long before the World Trade Organization (WTO) got a run for their money in Seattle.
Dr. Jagan also believed that the ideal of freedom is tied to the reality of poverty and suffering of tens of millions of human beings. Until the problem of "freedom from want" is tackled, the other freedoms, important as they are, can have little meaning for them.
"Men, parties, notions, systems and faiths can only be judged by their attitude to this, the fundamental problem of our time. It is only when the system of exploitation ends and poverty is abolished that men will really begin to be free," he once said.
(Printed in The Caribbean Camera, January 1, 2000)
Change his Dream
by George LammingThe name Cheddi Jagan has acquired, for more than one generation, the feel of permanence and awe which time confers on certain historical monuments. And, there was something monumental in the consistency of purpose and the unique kind of dedication which he brought to the public life of the peoples of Guyana.
Through the People's Progressive Party in the early 1950s, Jagan created an environment of expectations and a sense of possibilities which affected, in one way or another, every section of Guyanese society.
It set the tone of intellectual discourse and influenced the mood and themes of creative expression. This was the soil from which the early work of the poet, Martin Carter, blossomed.
And if we look at the major intellectual figures in the area of history and literature in the contemporary Caribbean: the example of Rodney in history and one of the most illuminating and original critics of literature, Gordon Rolehr; it is not by accident that their particular thrust or emphasis is what it is.
They were, in a particular sense, the product of that environment which had been created by the PPP.
"I do not sleep to dream, but dream to change the world."
That this dream suffered a traumatic collapse from which the people of Guyana have not yet recovered, this misfortune does not in any way diminish Dr Jagan's great virtues as a leader who worked tirelessly to create a human solidarity among all ranks of the Guyanese people.
If we trace his social evolution from the stark poverty of a sugar plantation childhood to the highest office in the land, there is a certain logic in the contours of that journey.
He has recalled his mother relating how she worked in the mud at Port Mourant from seven in the morning to six at night for eight cents a day and also three times a week from midnight to six in the morning hauling in bagasses in the factory.
Cheddi himself never wore shoes until he was twelve.
It is not difficult to relate these experiences to Jagan's admiration and identification with the personal manifesto of the United States labour leader Eugene Debs.
"While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free in the struggle, the increasing struggle between the toilers and producers and their exploiters. I have tried as best I can to serve those among whom I was born and with whom I expect to share my lot to the end of my days."
There is no Caribbean leader who has been so frequently cheated of office, none who has been so grossly misrepresented, and no one who, in spite of such adversity, was his equal in certainty of purpose and the capacity to go on and on until his time had come to take leave of us.
And in my own personal experience, I know no other Caribbean leader with whom sharp and wide disagreement could also be the occasion for a warm and fraternal embrace.
© George Lamming
Cherishing Cheddi
by Larry Luxner
In the early 1960s, Washington considered him Public Enemy No 2, a dangerous Marxist following in the footsteps of Fidel Castro. Thirty years later, Guyana's Cheddi Jagan was being hailed by President Bill Clinton as a crusader for democracy and human rights.And now, the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre has opened its doors in Georgetown to honour "Cheddi" - the eloquent dentist who co-led British Guiana to independence in 1966, headed the country's main opposition party for years, and finally served as Guyana's president from 1992 until his death in 1997 at the age of 79.
"We felt that this would be the best tribute we could make to him, to honour his ideas and what he stood for, as well as all his writings," says Jagan's widow, Janet Rosenberg Jagan. "The centre puts on computer all his papers and things related to his many years in the political forefront of Guyana. This allows students to do research about him and about the independence struggle, which was an important period in our history."
Janet Jagan, who became president of Guyana when her husband died, resigned three years ago for health reasons.
Now 81, she spends every morning at the headquarters of the People's Progressive Party, which she and her husband founded in 1950 in order to rid Guyana of British colonial rule. Much of her time is spent these days raising money for the research centre, which was officially opened on, 22 March 2000, by President Bharrat Jagdeo.The Cheddi Jagan Research Centre is located at Red House, a rambling wooden structure on Georgetown's High Street that was the official residence of British Guiana's colonial secretaries, as well as the home of the Jagans from 1961 to 1964, when Jagan was the country's premier.
At the entrance, visitors are greeted with a larger-than-life, black-and-white portrait of the charismatic Jagan making a speech. The photograph is framed by two flags - that of Guyana on the left, and the black, red and yellow flag of the PPP on the right. Dozens of additional photographs line the walls, depicting stages of Jagan's life from the time when he was a struggling dental student at Northwestern University in Chicago, to his civil wedding (neither his nor his wife's family approved of the marriage), to his days as leader of the opposition, and finally to his inauguration as president of Guyana.
From the early days of his dental practice, which he established in 1943, Jagan questioned established standards and norms, becoming a champion of the working classes, particularly fighting for fair wages and conditions for workers on the sugar-cane plantations.
"I challenged the ruling class at every point and introduced motion after motion in the Legislature," he would later write in his memoirs. "But most of these failed. I attacked the government for abandoning subsidization of salted fish, salted and pickled beef, coca powder, split peas, condensed milk and flour; and challenged our rulers for the many other concessions made to planters and their supporters."And towards the end of his life, Jagan's passionate voice was still heard. Supporting a "New Global Human Order." "We must elaborate a rational approach to development, not simply for economic growth, but also for human development. We need growth for social justice and eco-justice. There will be no solution to environmental questions, for instance, if the boundaries of poverty continue to expand."
On the research centre's second floor are encased documents ranging from the authoritarian to the sentimental - such as a 1953 decree from the governor of British Guiana suspending the Constitution, and a very touching 1957 letter from Chicago businessman George L Steiner to Jagan, which begins "Do you remember me? You were my room service boy at 211E Delaware Place while attending Northwestern Dental School."
There's also a sheet of paper entitled "Books You Cannot Read" - 22 categories of material banned by the British colonial government under the Subversive Literature Law. These included copies of Soviet Weekly magazine, as well as the books Hands off British Guiana, and Towards the Third World Trade Union Congress.
In fact, during the 1950s, the British sent Janet Jagan to jail for six months, simply for having a copy of Jawaharlal Nehru's acclaimed 1941 autobiography Towards Freedom.
"A lot of information is coming out now, about what the Americans and British were doing to undermine us," Janet Jagan says. "They were thinking of exiling me and my husband, and Kennedy might have been thinking of getting rid of him."Yet both the British high commissioner and the US ambassador have been honoured guests at the research centre, which receives as average of two hundred visitors a month, and is just down the street from the US Embassy. Attesting to Guyana's friendship with the United States is a framed photograph of Jagan with former President Clinton, and a handwritten note that says: "To President Jagan - welcome back to Washington."
And at Jagan's death, Clinton would write: "President Jagan was a champion of the poor who devoted himself to alleviating poverty in his country and throughout the Caribbean."
Odeen Ishmael, Guyana's ambassador to both the US and the Organization of American States, was a close friend of Cheddi Jagan, and was with him in 1997 when he died of a heart attack at Washington's Walter Reed Medical Centre. He says the idea of a research centre came about many years before that."One day, while he was still in the opposition, Cheddi told me he had quite a lot of his writings in his house," recalls Ishmael. "So we began to talk about microfilming these papers, and we began negotiating with companies in the US. After he became president, that idea was put on the back burner."
The idea was revived following Jagan's death, and Red House - which had been sadly neglected for years - was rehabilitated, thanks to a generous grant from Malaysian timber giant, Barama Company Ltd
"There's no charge for anybody to use the facilities, and we don't ask for donations," says Janet Jagan. "But we do have continuous expenses. My daughter, Nadira, who lives in Canada, raises a lot of money from the sale of Cheddi's books and three months ago, we had a fabulous fund-raising dinner at which we raised G$1m. We keep our nose just above water, though I always worry because we don't have much in reserve."
Adds Dudley Kissoore, chief archivist at the centre: "We need funding. Right now, security is our biggest expense. We have to keep 24-hour security here, and that's eating up our budget."
The guards are needed to protect rare documents, as well as an assortment of gifts that include a silver plate from the Kuwait Chamber of Commence; keys to the city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia; a lucite map of California from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors; a painting from the president of India; a plaque from the Brazilian navy; a wooden drum from the prefect of French Guiana; and a soap stone carving of a Canadian loon from the Guyanese community of Winnipeg.
An audiovisual library on the third floor will eventually comprise over 120 videotapes of the late president's speeches and interviews, while his original writings are currently being scanned onto CD-ROMs. The period from 1942 to 1964 has almost been completed and is now available for public use.
An adjoining room has been fashioned as a replica of Jagan's office - right down to his large wooden desk, rotary telephone, briefcase, and jars of Planters' Nuts. "Those were his favourites," says Kissoore.
Finally, the conference centre, according to a brochure, "seeks to further some of Dr Jagan's deepest concerns, and its objectives include engaging Guyanese and other interested parties in an investigation of the consequences of Guyana's colonial past and its impact on development, nation-building, and the democratic process. It is a living institution, rooted in our past but ever responsive to the needs of our time."
And despite recent election-related unrest between PPP supporters and the opposition People's National Congress, Janet Jagan insists her husband was loved by all.
"I suppose his funeral would have given evidence of this," she says. "Thousands and thousands of people came to pay their respects. Political opinions vary, but everyone recognizes him as a true Guyanese hero."
