Professor Menezes at centre, makes a point during her lecture. Dr Misir at left and Dr Persaud listen attentively. (Cullen Bess-Nelson photo)

Misir told the gathering, including Interim Vice-Chancellor, Dr Lawrence Carrington, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Tota Mangar, both of UG and historian, Sister Mary Menezes and prominent businessman Mr. Yesu Persaud, that assassinated politician Dr Walter Rodney had refuted, as inaccurate, the claim of highly prevalent racial conflict in society.

Rodney had said: “My contention is that the case for the dominant role of racial division in the historical sphere has been overstated and that scholarship on the subject has accepted, without due scrutiny, the proposition that Indians and Africans existed in mutually exclusive compartments.

“The problems of interpretation lie not only in the marshalling of the evidence but, more fundamentally, in the historical methodology that is applied.”

Misir pointed out that, in 1839, there was a significant test of national unity when ex-slaves testified in court that the Indian indentured labourers were treated precisely the same way as Africans under slavery.

A section of the audience.

“East Indians and Africans seemed to mix and associate with one another on terms of the greatest cordiality,” the Commission’s report said.
Misir said, under the leadership of renowned trade unionist Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, East Indians and Africans were allies in the fight for better wages and an eight-hour working day.

He also mentioned that the union of East Indian and African forces unleashed against colonial hegemony is another case in point.

CHALLENGED
Misir said the Africans challenged the anti-education principles of the 1876 law that provided limited education to the Indians.

He said the Africans also demanded that Indian languages be introduced in schools and the Court of Policy, comprising members of many ethnic groups, made Crown lands available to both Indians and Africans.

Misir said, with the emergence of institutional working class in 1946, the unity of the two peoples became solidified following the formation of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in 1950 and manifested in the party’s victory at the 1953 general elections.

He emphasised that nation building is a culturally participative process and all cultures in society must feel a sense of appreciation.

“The need to construct a national unity that absorbs the culture of all groups is mandatory,” Misir declared.

He noted, though, that the need to perceive Guyana as culturally differentiated and to not only genuinely appreciate but also tolerate each other’s culture should be imperative norms to which people must adhere.

Misir reiterated the importance of cultural understanding as the means through which people will embrace a sense of belonging to invest in the country.

“National unity, unquestionable, if only to rid society of ethnic dominance, has to be a strategic, mandatory and premium goal for all developing multi-ethnic societies; a national unity electing inputs from minority cultures, where no culture should be left behind,” he posited.

Menezes, who narrated a brief history of Portuguese in Guyana, recounted that the first of them arrived on May 3, 1835, after a 78 days voyage on board the ‘Louisa Baillie’.

The 40 who came were bound for R.G. Butts’ Plantations Thomas and La Penitence and James Albouy’s Liliendaal.

Also a historian, she explained that emigrants from Madeira, off the coast of Morocco, came to then British Guiana mainly because of:

* the approaching abolition of slavery throughout the British possessions creating a labour gap;

* the longstanding alliance between Portugal and England and

* the political, military and economic problems in Madeira in the 1930s.

DIFFICULT
She said the first decade of the Portuguese here was difficult as they were plagued by death and diseases but, by 1945, most of them had moved off the plantations, bought small plots of land and moved into the huckster and retail trades.

Menezes said the Portuguese were long masters of trade and the Maderians brought with them that flair and expertise.

“By 1852, 79 per cent of the retail rum shops were owned by the Portuguese and they retained that monopoly well into the 20th century,” she said.

Menezes said, apart from being property owners, the Portuguese were provision and commission merchants, importers, iron mongers, ship chandlers, leather and timber merchants, boot and shoe makers, saddlers, coach builders, woodcutters, brick makers, cattle owners, porkknockers and photographers.

They were prominent in the world of sport, too, namely cricket, boxing, cycling, rugby, football, tennis, hockey, racing and rowing.

In addition, the Portuguese made contributions in the fields of music and drama but their entry into politics took them a longer time, as they were not at all welcomed with open arms by the colonial government.

“By the turn of the century, the Portuguese had created their own middle and upper class. They were never accepted into the echelons of white European society though they, themselves, were Europeans, much less did they bolster white supremacy,” she informed the audience.

Menezes said the achievements of the Portuguese are well known and the Royal Gazette had recorded: “The rise of the Portuguese in this colony, from a state of most abject poverty to one of comparative affluence and to the possession of thousands of dollars within the space of a few years, is one of the most remarkable occurrences in modern history.”

This unprecedented success of the Portuguese in business, she said, aroused the jealousy and animosity of the Africans to the extent that riots resulted.

She recalled that, during the 1856 ‘Angel Gabriel’ riots, Portuguese shops were extensively damaged but no one died.