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Editor-In-Chief
Nigel Williams Editor
Godfrey Wray
Editorial: 227-5216; 227-5204 guyanachronicle.com wnigel10@hotmail.com gnnleditorial@gmail.com
Editorial
The Easter message TODAY we celebrate Easter, although Christians believe that Jesus rose from the grave on the first day of the week – Sunday; which means that the real celebration of this occasion should have been yesterday. We in Guyana have come to accept that public holidays falling on Sunday are automatically celebrated on Monday. Easter, like so many other religious holidays, has become more of a Guyanese festival; and while those who are steeped in religion would embrace this occasion of Easter to remember the death, burial and Resurrection of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, many others who are not like-minded would just use the holiday to renew family and friendship bonds and to socialise. It is here that we get a glimpse of how cohesive our society is, as the Easter festivity provides the unique opportunity for all citizens -- regardless of religious persuasion -- to meet on the sea walls, in the fun parks, and in other open spaces to fly their kites and mix and mingle with the crowd. We should not lose sight of this cohesiveness, as we have seen in the just-concluded Phagwah celebrations that Guyanese are not afraid to embrace their culture and celebrate with their brothers and sisters of different faiths. At a time when the seeds of racism and division are being subtly planted in our society, the message of Easter becomes even more relevant to us. It was in a similar context that Jesus entered the scene at Jerusalem -- his final visit there before he was crucified. Never before had the world seen such a triumphal procession as that which accompanied Him into Jerusalem. “Amid the crowd”, one writer puts it, “were the captives whom He had rescued from Satan’s power, praising God for their deliverance. The blind whom He had restored to sight were leading the way. The dumb whose tongues He had loosed shouted the loudest hosannas. The crippled whom He had healed bounded with joy, and were the most active in breaking the palm branches and waving them before their Saviour. Widows and orphans were exalting the name of Jesus for His works of mercy to them. The lepers whom He had cleansed spread their untainted garments in His path, and hailed Him as the King of Glory. Those whom His voice had awakened from the sleep of death were
GUYANA CHRONICLE Monday March 28, 2016
Jonestown Massacre revisited Dear Editor, ON November 18, 1978, more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple, located not far from the Port Kaituma airstrip, died after drinking cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid. Their suicidal act was attributed to a directive from Reverend Jim Jones, the religious leader of the commune. Jones himself died from gunshot wounds. Despite the publications of seven books by Jonestown survivors about the incident, many questions remain, including the role of the Guyana Government. This tragedy has long been dismissed as an American tragedy. Prime Minister Burnham declared the Jonestown Massacre “an American problem”. A recent publication, A New Look at Jonestown, by elder statesman Eusi Kwayana, offers a fresh look at the mass suicide. Not surprisingly, Kwayana, a political activist, offers a Guyanese perspective on the tragedy. Interest is generated from reading the first chapter of the 258-page book, as Kwayana interviews three survivors of the Jones Temple, one of whom wrote the foreword to the book, Laura Johnston Kohn. The rest of the book incorporates excerpts from the writings of several Guyanese, including George Danns, Walter Rodney and Jan Carew, culminating in an analysis of the massacre by Kwayana. What makes Kwayana’s narrative worth reading is his deliberate examination of a “tragedy in Guyana” as a “Guyanese tragedy”, while still reminding us that the tragedy involved primarily victims from the US.
One scholarly excerpt comes from the work Guyanese sociologists George Danns and Lear Matthews, who consider Jones’s commune a “community-inspired self-reliance” effort coinciding with Burnham’s cooperative socialism. Jonestown could be considered part and parcel of Burnham’s development plans, made possible by an offer of “resources and encouragement for hinterland development”, and his policy of encouraging “foreigners to settle in the interior”. Kwayana dug deep to identify the role played by Guyanese in this tragedy. A defining theme of the book is that the tragedy had strong resemblance to other international and national events in world history. While Danns and Matthews identify the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project as an outgrowth of Burnhamism, readers are left to wonder if Jones’s commune was simply a cult or an experiment that offered broader historical lessons. The book makes the point that the commune was a reflection of a master/slave plantation society reflective of the type found in the American South. It considers the role of religion as central to indoctrination and social control of the labour population. Kwayana made reference to a speech by Walter Rodney, who reminded us that the Jim Jones affair remained a secretive one, with no official inquiry into the mass suicide by the Burnham regime. It was yet another dark stain on the image on the nation. In a reproduced 1978 Dayclean article, Kwayana forcefully argues that the Peoples Temple
in that throng.” And while all of this was going on, there were still many -- the Bible referred to them as Pharisees -- who witnessed the scene, and, burning with envy and malice, sought to disrupt the joyous feeling of the people. With all their authority, they tried to silence the people; but their appeals and threats only increased the enthusiasm. In our society today, they are many modern-day Pharisees whose only aim is to disrupt every attempt at social cohesion and unity; and, just like the crowd that followed Jesus, we must resist them. The Easter message, much like many others is the triumph of good over evil, portrays a Christ, though reviled and hated by mankind, who went to the cross to lay down His life for them. His body was entombed for three days, so has our
was actually a “state within a state” (a term that may have been used by top ranks in the Burnham regime), given the extent to which the Burnham regime was involved, and the level of secrecy associated with its creation. Kwayana reminded us of some simple facts that we may have taken for granted: Jim Jones “was in full control of truth and “he embodied the media…”. This was eerily the simplicity with which the Burnham regime governed Guyana, particularly during the late 1970s, ironically, a time when Kwayana’s opposition to Burnham was strongest. He reminds us of the contempt Burnham had for the Guyanese people - at the time when Guyanese faced import bans on many essential items, the settlers at Jonestown were exempted from the country’s customs and immigration regulations. Now domiciled in California, the area from which most of Jones’s innocent victims migrated, Kwayana found time to meet with survivors of the People’s Temple. His book offers some new insights into a national tragedy that claimed Guyana as an international pariah state. Not embedded in pretensions or utopian theoretical approach, ‘A New Look at Jonestown’ is well worth reading, not because it was written by a politically/socially conscious Guyanese activist, but because of what it has to offer in our greater understanding of what essentially was a Guyanese national tragedy. Sincerely, BAYTORAM RAMHARACK
society been weighed down for years by the scourge of division. Like Jesus rising from the grave on the third day, declaring: “I am the resurrection and the life”, Easter presents us with another opportunity as a country to soar above our differences. Spiritually also, the application here is that despite our shortcomings, Christ was ready to die for the sins of the world. We must, in our own way, make sacrifices for our fellow men. At a societal level, the Resurrection of Christ also offers us the hope that there is opportunity for freedom, improvement, and second chances. Easter will be of no value to us if we do not embrace the principles of Christ’s teachings to condemn the bad practices of earthly governments and man and work towards eliminating poverty, intolerance, inequity and injustice.