You might have read in the New York Times or in the Boston Globe that Janet Jagan, the first woman elected president of Guyana, died at age 88 this past weekend. A native of Chicago and a naturalized Guyanese citizen, Jagan -- born Janet Rosenberg to Jewish parents -- was elected president of Guyana (an English-speaking country and former British colony in South America, for those who need a geography briefing) on December 15, 1997. She succeeded her husband, Cheddi Jagan, who died earlier that year, making her the first American-born woman to be elected president of any country -- pretty impressive.

Jagan's political history is interesting: she was a hard-line communist who championed the nationalization of foreign owned industries in an effort to strip some wealth from the rich Guyanese elite and leverage the poor. Throughout her career, both she and her husband were jailed and placed under house arrest multiple times after being accused by the British of seeking to turn Guyana into a communist state.

I was most interested in reading about how Jagan will be remembered in Guyana, as described by BBC's Orin Gordon in a piece on PRI's The World:

"I think she's going to be remembered with a great deal of warmth. She came over the years to be regarded as Guyanese. She never lost her American accent over the many years, the many decades that she lived in Guyana. She was a very unassuming person. She carried herself modestly even when she was in power. She didn't do the motorcades or she didn't dress up very much. She wasn't a 'string of pearls' kind of person. She wasn't ostentatious in any way, so you would struggle to pick her out in a crowd. She's going to be remembered as well as a brave woman, because in the ‘40s, coming from a Jewish American background and marrying an Indo-Guyanese and moving to Guyana with him, people regarded both of them as being brave for doing what they did at the time. He was brave to marry outside his tightly knit Indian-Guyanese community and to bring a white American wife to Guyana, and she was brave to make the move to Guyana."

Jagan certainly was a woman of great courage. For me, her life story serves an important reminder of the rich and varied contexts -- across the globe, in some of the most unassuming places -- in which Jewish women live their lives, take risks, and effect critical change.

April 1, 2009

 

Obituary: Janet Jagan

Norman Faria (From People’s Voice, April 16-30, 2009, Organ of the Communist Party of Canada)

 Janet Jagan, the Chicago-born freedom fighter whom /Time/ magazine once described as the “most controversial woman in South American politics since Eva Peron”, has died in her adopted homeland of Guyana, succumbing to abdominal aneurysm at the age of 88.

 She and her husband Cheddi Jagan, the son of East Indian indentured labourers in the former British colony, were among the prime movers of the formation in 1950 of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which united the main East Indian and African ethnic groups. Despite being elected several times in free and fair elections, PPP governments were removed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by British and American imperialist agencies. Dedicated Marxists, the Jagans were among progressive and democratic minded anti-colonialists who were imprisoned by Britain.

 During the first terms of the PPP, Janet Jagan served as Minister of Home Affairs, initiating many advances for Guyanese women and benefits for all the people.

 An appreciative editorial following her death in a Guyanese paper, /Kaieteur News/, noted that Guyanese politics “up to then had been dominated by ethnic organisations led by middle class professionals”.

 Describing the early PPP governments as “communist”, the Washington and London administrations installed a right-opportunist People’s Nationalist Congress (PNC) which represented mainly black middle class elements. The PNC ruled with an authoritarian, often brutish, manner for 28 years, rigging several elections and splitting the working class and patriotic elements, as pointed out by groups such as the Association of Concerned Guyanese in Toronto and New York.

 The free and fair election in 1992 saw the PPP formally being recognised once more as the people’s choice. Dr. Jagan became President but died in office in 1997. He was succeeded by his wife, who served for 20 months, only to resign for health reasons. Many socio-economic and good governance programs have come on line benefitting all Guyanese since 1992.

 During the time out of office, Janet Jagan figured prominently in maintaining patience, readiness and discipline in the PPP. She remained in the party’s Central Committee until she died, and was for many years the editor of the party’s newspaper, the /Mirror/, in addition to being the party’s General Secretary.

 She was a nursing student when she and young Cheddi, then studying dentistry at Northwestern University, married and returned to his birthplace in 1943.

 Janet Rosenberg was born in 1920 into a Chicago Jewish family (Dr. Jagan jokingly quipped in his autobiography  “The West On Trial” that “Janet’s father threatened to shoot me”). I once asked when I visited the /Mirror/ office (I was correspondent in Barbados for the paper) if she was related to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the American “atomic spies” executed during the Cold War hysteria. The linkage was attempted by the subversives against her. She replied: “If you look in the Chicago telephone directory, you will find several pages of Rosenbergs. To my knowledge we were not related but if we were I would be very proud to be.”

 I last talked with Janet at the PPP office in Guyana’s capital Georgetown last November. Typically, she asked me how the Barbadian people and their government were doing, as well of course about Guyanese nationals in the island. Among the topics in her weekly column for the /Mirror/ this year were those in defence of the rights of the Palestinians for justice, peace and their own homeland. She was a staunch regionalist and internationalist until her dying day.

 Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo said shortly after her death on March 28: “Our party remains strong today and that was her life’s work – to ensure that the party remains strong so that it can continue to serve the people of this country.”

Janet Jagan (died in Guyana) was cremated on March 31 and the ashes interred beside her husband’s in the rural farming community of Babu John, in the South-Eastern shore of Guyana. Her body was fittingly giving a warm and appreciative send off along the route from the Parliament buildings by thousands of Guyanese from all races and religions. Many pledged to emulate the outstanding example of this modest, hard working woman who dedicated her life to the love of the working class, patriotic farmers and the business sector, and the building of organised representation in their interests.  (Norman Faria is Guyana’s Honorary Consul in Barbados).

 

From Chicago to Guyana: Janet Rosenberg Jagan takes over as president - by William Steif

When Janet Rosalie Rosenberg was born at Michael Reese Hospital on Chicago's South Side, the odds were a zillion to one that she'd one day be president of Guyana, South America's only English-speaking nation. 

Yet when the seventy-seven-year-old, who describes herself as "an old fuddy-duddy," scored a decisive victory in the elections this past December, it came as no surprise to the people of Guyana. She has devoted more than fifty years of her life to this Idaho-sized country, which won independence from England in 1966.  Throughout her five decades of involvement in Guyanese politics, she and her husband, Cheddi Jagan, were jailed for their activities, won high elective offices, and along the way had to fend off both the CIA and Britain's MI5.  In October 1992, Cheddi became president of Guyana. He served until March 6, 1996, when he died of heart failure. Prime Minister Samuel A. Hinds then became president and named Janet Jagan prime minister. 

Now she is president.  Janet Jagan's father, Charles Rosenberg, worked as a plumbing and heating salesman on Chicago's South Side. The Depression and anti-Semitism took their toll. "Business was awful," she recalls. "Father couldn't make a good living." But he did spark her interest in the world. "My father took me to the public library once a week," she says. "He got me reading a lot."  Over the years, people have often asked her whether she is related to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953 for being Communist spies. She emphatically denies any familial relationship. "It makes me angry," she says. "People say that maliciously, but we're not related. Look in the New York or Chicago phone books, and you'll find a couple of pages of Rosenbergs." Janet's family moved to Detroit during the Depression, enabling her to go to Detroit University, Wayne State, and Michigan State. 

Janet Rosenberg's interest in Guyana began in 1942, when she was a nursing student at Chicago's Cook County Hospital. One night at a party, she met a dental student from Northwestern University. He was a young man from British Guiana named Cheddi Jagan.  Janet's parents strongly opposed her marriage to Cheddi, and his parents didn't approve, either. But that didn't stop them.  Cheddi returned to Port Mourant, British Guiana, to set up his dental practice in the fall of 1943, using second-hand equipment he'd bought in the United States. Janet stayed in Chicago a few months, earning money as a proofreader for the American Medical Association. She arrived in British Guiana just before Christmas that year.  The couple quickly became involved in leftwing politics.

"When the sugar plantation workers had problems, they always called on Cheddi," Janet Jagan recalls. Soon the couple started to participate in the trade-union movement. "We met the general secretary of affairs of the British Guiana Labor Union and formed a political-affairs committee. In 1946, there was a bauxite workers' strike, and in 1947, the British-controlled parliament restricted suffrage. A lot of workers came to Cheddi and wanted him to run for a parliament seat. Cheddi won; I lost in another district. Cheddi was a great success. He was the only one who spoke for the workers. Others got bought out, and there was a media monopoly."  The 1946 bauxite workers' strike was followed by a sugar workers' strike. "We were involved," she says. "I collected funds and food, organized soup kitchens. The strike lasted a long time, and I got to know the five men who became the Enmore Martyrs--the police shot them in the back."  She went on to organize domestic workers and helped found the Women's Political and Economic Organization and other groups. With Forbes Burnham (later a rival), Janet and Cheddi launched the People's Progressive Party on January 1, 1950. Janet became the general secretary of the People's Progressive Party, edited the party's newspaper, and was the first woman elected to the Georgetown City Council in 1950. Georgetown, a city of 200,000, is capital of this nation of 750,000.  In 1953, when the British introduced limited self-government, the People's Progressive Party won. Janet was elected to parliament and became the legislature's deputy speaker, the first woman in that post. Cheddi was chief minister. But "the British kicked us out after four and a half months," she recalls. "The constitution was suspended and the British Marines brought in. The party was split. Race entered into it sideways." 

Race has played a prominent role in Guyanese politics. About 48 percent of Guyana's population is East Indian, 33 percent Afro-Guyanese, 6 percent Amerindian, and the rest are of British, Portuguese, Chinese, or mixed heritage. British colonialists abolished slavery in 1834 and then turned to India to import indentured workers to labor in the rice fields, sugar plantations, and mines, a system of quasi-slavery that didn't end until 1917.  Cheddi Jagan was of East Indian heritage; Forbes Burnham was AfroGuyanese. In the mid-1950s, Burnham split off and formed the People's National Congress.  The British rulers slapped heavy restrictions on Guyanese politicians, and in early 1954, Cheddi was jailed for six months for violating a rule--he traveled out of town. The day Cheddi was released, Janet was jailed.  "I was jailed for attending a Hindu thing called a Yag, and I had a copy of Nehru's book," she says. "The British called it a political meeting--illegal, though there were prayers. They raided the house for prohibited literature. There were some political books, some stuff by Lenin. And they planted a police manual. I'm sure it was planted. We weren't supposed to have such things. We had our choice a fine or jail. We decided no fines, go to jail, civil disobedience. Cheddi's father tried to pay my fine. I had to stop him. We were resisting the colonialists."  She was in jail nearly six months. But that didn't alter her political outlook, which has remained consistent over the years.  "Cheddi and I always have believed in socialism," she says. "To us that meant getting rid of oppression, so the poor man can get out of this poverty, get the fruits of the country. Now, after the Cold War, there's a new human global order, a different global outlook. Now all the spending for arms can go elsewhere. We can get rid of wars and poverty."  In 1957, the British restored constitutional rule and the People's Progressive Party won the election. Janet Jagan was reelected to the legislature and became minister of labor, health, and housing. "In four years, we did pretty good. We opened lands to housing, brought in new riverboats," she says. "I was considered the minister who got things done. I took bureaucrats into the country to show them how people lived, set up a network of doctors and dentists a dozen health clinics, got about 5,000 houses and apartments built with very low rents, like $20 a month. There was no bribery or favoritism, people who needed help got it--mainly blacks in the slums got it." 

In 1961, the Burnham-led People's National Congress challenged them. "We won again, and all hell blew out as the CIA spent a lot of money on the PNC," Jagan says. It was the early years of Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution. The CIA and Britain's MI5 "tried to destabilize the government, tried to get us out of government by stimulating a racial war, by creating antagonism between blacks and East Indians."  In 1963, Janet Jagan became minister of home affairs, which is supposed to control the police, but "the commissioner of police sent reinforcements to the mining town of Mackenzie, dozens were slaughtered, the town's whole East Indian population had to be evacuated. I resigned because the commissioner wouldn't follow my instructions."  She remembers one terrorist attack that occurred at the headquarters of the People's Progressive Party. "There was the Progressive Bookshop below the second-floor headquarters of the PPP in Georgetown. An Afro-American woman who worked there saw a box and asked, `What's this doing here?' No one knew, some man came in and didn't take his change. The woman told [party member] Michael Forde, `Just to be safe, take it out.' Michael took it and was crossing the street toward the cinema when it blew up. If it had blown up in the bookshop, there would've been about sixty people killed or injured. Michael was killed, a few people were injured, Michael's hand was blown off and landed in front of the cinema." The book shop now carries Michael Forde's name. 

In 1964, the British changed the electoral system to proportional representation. That enabled Burnham's People's National Congress to ally itself with a much smaller businessman's party. In the 1964 vote, the People's Progressive Party got 46 percent of the vote, but the People's National Congress and its ally got 51 percent. Burnham took charge. 

When independence came in 1966, Burnham got rid of the business party and ruled as a virtual dictator until he died in 1985, at which point his prime minister, Desmond Hoyte, took over and in 1987 won a disputed election to a five-year presidential term, giving up that post when a free, fair election put Cheddi in office in 1992.

In 1993, Janet was named Guyana's ambassador to the United Nations.  "We fought for free, fair elections for twenty-eight years," says Jagan, who is the author of History of the PPP, Rigged Elections in Guyana. "When we were struggling for democracy, not a single voice in the Caribbean was raised on our behalf No one would say `boo.'" In that category, she includes the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the fifteen-member Caribbean Community, Caricom.  Ironically, her opponent in the December 1997 presidential race, Desmond Hoyte, along with other minor party candidates, charged that Jagan rigged the election. Hoyte also said it was illegal for the chairman of the elections commission to declare her the winner and have her sworn in before all the votes were tallied. With more than 90 percent of the votes tallied, Jagan was leading with 56 percent to Hoyte's 42 percent, clinching the election for her, since she was leading by more votes than were left to be counted.  Despite Hoyte's threat to make Guyana "ungovernable," Jagan sounded conciliatory notes in her victory talk. "I intend to be a president of all the people," she said. 

The Jagans raised two children, Nadira, forty-two, a jeweler in Toronto, and Cheddi Jr., forty eight, a dentist with practices in New York and Guyana.  "Through all the busy years, my parents always spent time with my brother and me," says Nadira. "My mother always took care of all the finances, the general running of the house, so my father never had to bother with such things. She remembered everyone's birthday or anniversary, sent out cards and gifts. My parents complemented each other and even though their opinions may have differed sometimes, they had a common cause and commitment. I never heard my parents argue about personal things, only about politics."  Nadira acknowledges, though, that it was hard for her mother when she first arrived in Guyana. "Life was very difficult and different for my mother due to the cultural differences and diet to which she wasn't accustomed," she says. But Janet Jagan adjusted, and she didn't complain when she and Cheddi moved to Georgetown for six years to live with Cheddi's four brothers and his sister.  "My mother did not care about possessions and had always been willing to go out of her way to help others," says Nadira. "She accepted without reservation my father's responsibility to give higher education to his brothers and sister, and never hesitated to allocate whatever financial outlay was necessary."  Nadira calls her mother "a very private person." But private or not, most Saturdays while she was serving as Guyana's prime minister, Janet Jagan sat in her little second-floor office at party headquarters, listening to the complaints of her constituents from 8 A.M. to noon.  Now it's her turn to rule. And it may not be easy.

Guyana started out relatively wealthy in 1966 and by 1990 was nearly as poor as Haiti. It is only in the past seven years that the country seems to be turning around. And it still has a long way to go.  Per-capita income in this nation loaded with bauxite, gold, diamonds, timber, fish, rice, and sugar, remains low--around $650 a year. But that's a vast improvement over the $400 annual per-capita income registered around 1990.  Guyana's economic growth has averaged about 7 percent yearly since 1991. Inflation also seems to be under control, falling from an annual rate of 70.3 percent in 1991 to 4.5 percent in 1996. Unemployment stands at around 10 percent, says Bharrat Jagdeo, Jagan's finance minister. Jagdeo studied at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow for five and a half years and is Jagan's likely successor.  But today Jagdeo, thirty-three, sounds like a free-market advocate when he talks about approaching privatizations. He is delighted that a Malaysian company and a Singapore company are both interested in opening a 600,000-acre palm-oil plantation. There's also much talk in Georgetown about the possibility of a Dallas bank investing in a new satellite launching center like French Guiana's Kourou Space Center, from which more than half the world's commercial satellites are now launched. Two oil companies are doing offshore exploration, the timber industry is booming, and both rice and sugar production have come back nicely, with bauxite not too far behind. 

Like other Latin American socialists, Jagan has struggled to balance her ideals against tough economic realities. In July, she led a team to Canada to negotiate a management takeover of Guyana Electric Corporation, which she hopes "will end our blackouts." The deal is for Saskatchewan Power to enter a joint venture--and a $20 million investment--so as to improve electric power around the nation.  Another challenge is to attract more skilled Guyanese to come back home. In the last twenty-five years, when populations in most Third World nations were doubling and tripling, Guyana's has barely budged.  Many Guyanese took off for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, or English-speaking Caribbean islands. The outflow is estimated between 500,000 and a million people, many of them trained and talented, and many sending remittances to their relatives in Guyana to this day.  None of this is simple, but there continues to be a lot of public confidence in Janet Jagan, despite what she calls "the racist attacks" from her political rivals. Jagdeo says what many of her supporters believe: "Janet is going to do excellently as president. She's extremely strong, but she's also very caring."  In the new global order, that latter quality may be most important of all. 

William Steif is a veteran reporter who lives in St. Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands.