Month: May 2018

As we celebrate Guyana’s 52nd Independence Anniversary, let us reflect on how the journey began. Certainly the seeds of seeking an end to colonialism must have been planted in the hard days of slavery and indentureship when life was unbelievably difficult and the reason for the crushing oppression and cruelty was easy to define. Billions of words have been written about slavery, the middle passage, the unbearable cruelty of the slave masters and the many uprisings against slavery. These were dealt with in ways which are almost beyond belief. Cheddi…

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As part of the official Independence celebrations, the new Guyana flag, the Golden Arrowhead, was raised on Mount Ayanganna to coincide with the first moments of Independence Day, May 26, 1966. A group of Guyana Defence Force soldiers and guides, led by Adrian Thompson and local Amerindian mountaineer Isaac Jerry, ascended the mountain on the eve of the flag-raising ceremony where Jerry raised the flag, and flares were fired off to celebrate the occasion. The team later described the event as “rough, but exciting.” A plaque bearing the names of…

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1966 was an historic year. British Guiana was throwing off the shackles of British Colonialism to achieve Independence on May 26, – 900 years, after William of Normandy had invaded England. Relative calm had returned to the nation after the political upheavals of 1962 to 1964, as we now prepared to become “One People, One Nation, One Destiny” These ‘prophetic’ words, which became our ‘nation’s motto, first appeared May 1958 during a massive Float Parade in honour of the visit of Princess Margaret. Six floats depicting the ‘Six Peoples’ produced…

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Preserving our literary heritage by Petamber Persaud The book Down Independence Boulevard and Other Stories is an important addition to the country’s literature because it focuses mainly on the push/pull factors fashioning internal migration with some attention paid to the pull/push factors of external migration and the disillusionment of returning home, all fascinatingly rendered in sixteen linked stories set in Guyana and North America but mainly in Guyana, during the ugly 1960s, from where all the main characters originate, some firstly migrating to safer locations in order to escape from…

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– (From Earliest Times to Independence) Throughout the early part of 1966, preparations for Guyana’s independence celebrations went in full swing. A special committee appointed by the government designed the new coat of arms and selected the Canje pheasant as the national bird. The design and colours of the new flag, appropriately called “The Golden Arrowhead”, had already been chosen during the period of the PPP government from entries submitted through an international competition. The winning five-coloured design was submitted by an American, Whitney Smith. The name chosen for the…

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