A NEW historical investigation into one of the darkest chapters of British Guiana’s past has been released, shedding light on the 1964 Wismar Massacre and the role of colonial powers in the tragedy.
Titled Failure of Protection: The 1964 Wismar Massacre and the Responsibility of the British and US Governments, the book is authored by Dr. Yog Mahadeo and became available in paperback on November 17, 2025, through Amazon.
The work presents the massacre as a calculated act of ethnic violence against the Indo-Guyanese community, challenging the conventional portrayal of the events as a spontaneous riot.
According to Mahadeo, the killings were the result of “three intersecting forces”: a century of British colonial policies that deliberately fostered racial and economic divisions, the post-war political rivalry between Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and Forbes Burnham’s People’s National Congress (PNC), and a covert Anglo-American Cold War agenda aimed at destabilising Jagan’s government.
Mahadeo’s analysis highlights the systematic nature of the violence and the “Failure by Design” of colonial authorities. He argues that local police were complicit, while British commanders delayed troop deployment at critical moments, a move that proved fatal for many victims.
The book also examines the enduring impact of the massacre, including the impunity of those responsible and the selective memory that has largely erased the victims from national historical narratives.
The publication builds on Mahadeo’s earlier work, A River of Sorrow, A Legacy of Intrigue: The Sun Chapman Disaster and the Unseen War for British Guiana, offering readers a broader context of the political and social destabilisation of the country during the colonial era.
Together, the two works aim to provide a comprehensive narrative of the historical forces that shaped Guyana’s modern political landscape.
“This is more than a historical account,” Mahadeo writes. “Without a full and impartial reckoning of these foundational traumas, Guyana remains a nation held hostage by the ghosts of its own past.”
Failure of Protection is now available for purchase on Amazon, providing scholars, students, and general readers with a detailed account of a critical and often overlooked period in Guyana’s history.