THIS is part one of a three-part series in reply to Professor Percy Hintzen’s attack on me in his article in Dr. Alissa Trotz’s forum titled, “In The Diaspora” of September 27, 2023. It may be more than three parts because the fictions, propaganda, deceptions, misconceptions and downright barefacedness are saturated all over Dr. Hintzen’s delivery. In their disdain for the PPP government, Mulatto/Creole academics are becoming so emotionally charged that propaganda and fiction are replacing scholarship.

One of the major players in the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC), Dr. Nigel Westmaas made two observations recently. 1- The five months of attempt to subvert the election in 2020 was an act of neo-colonial intervention in Guyana. 2- Everywhere in Guyana, you can see social decay.

Now we have Percy Hintzen chipping in. Let me remind you that this gentleman that belongs to the MCC wrote the following; “When people ask me what I am, I reply that I am a Guyanese creole. This is how my identity was forged, and where my interactions have been, and continue to be, most intense.” See my reply to this Freudian confession of Hintzen in my column of January 27, 2023, titled “Sigmund Freud: Returning to class and colour one year after.”

Here is what I wrote about me then: “When people ask me what I am, I reply that I am a Guyanese proletarian. This is how my identity was forged, and where my interactions have been, and continue to be, most intense.” Let’s strip Hintzen’s interpretation of Guyana’s politics. I am asking readers to be meticulous as they read Hintzen.
They will see with graphic clarity this man’s evasion of facts that he knows will embarrass him. He starts by using the word, “Western” instead of “American” to describe the control of Middle East oil. US foreign policy after World War 2 was to invade and destroy any Middle East regime that posed a threat to the US oil-based economy. Hintzen writes: “Western governments impose, underwrite, back, and subsidise oil colonialism. They unleash their militaries, their campaigns of economic and political retaliation, and their “security” apparatuses to overthrow governments and punish people when oil is challenged.”

That is what the US has done since it became a superpower. European countries were struggling to survive after WW2 when the US came to dominate the world and took control of Middle East oil. Hintzen deliberately subsume the word, “US” under the broad generalisation of the West. Why he did that? Because like the dozens of anti-oil lobbyists, it brings out their double standards.

They lived all their lives in the US where their existence was made possible through modernisation achieved by the fossil fuel industry and still does. And while still living there, they come up with the pyrotechnical idea that Guyana should bear the burden of saving Planet Earth by rejecting oil production. Before I move on to another aspect of Hintzen’s sermon of falsifications, I need to point out to him that for the 45 years he lived in California, I have lived in my beloved Guyana.
Let’s expose more of Hintzen’s propaganda that supposed to be scholarship. He writes; “Today the violence of oil colonialism is targetting people and organisations who question and oppose oil extraction.” The exception to this pattern of violence is Guyana where those opposed to oil exploration belong to an elite class of citizens with money and influence and extensive media contacts.

Let’s educate Hintzen, since he doesn’t live in Guyana.
One of the anti-oil lobbyists recently celebrated two nights of his birthday. One night as a dinner and dance affair at the Pegasus followed the next night at the Theatre Guild by an occasion of artistic entertainment. In 50 years, I would not be able to find the money for those abandonments. This same gentleman was in the press recently photographed turning the sod for a $700 million new headoffice. He owns a private business for which I do not see any state vendetta.
Now don’t get me wrong. My point is not to attack the man. If he feels so then he is wrong and I apologise and I can assure him my point is that, in citing him, I have exposed the fiction of the violence of oil colonialism in Hintzen’s adumbration.

Two of the anti-oil lobbyists are the well-known sisters from one of Guyana richest landed families. These two sisters have funded about seven court cases employing high-priced lawyers against the oil industry in Guyana. Where is the violence against the people who speak out against the fossil fuel industry in Guyana? The anti-oil lobbyists have, at their disposal, not partial, but total, embrace of two of the three private newspapers. Part 2 is forthcoming.