Martin Carter

Site Update - "Live Chat" Now Available !!

2006-11-23T16:06:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,This is just a brief note to inform everyone that we have now created a new chat room (a special thanks to Gav !!) which we hope you will all use ... For those of you who are unfamilar with chat rooms, it is a great way to meet people from around the world by having a "real time" conversation with them... You can talk about all sorts of various subjects or simpy view the online discussion... I would like to invite all of you to use this feature which I believe is a great way to connect with people from around the world...Thanks again to Gav as this would not have been possible without his hard work and dedication...Sincerely,JonoThe Mittelholzer Foundationhttp://www.mittelholzer.org

Mittelholzer Foundation

2006-06-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

Under the spirit of encouraging national unity and preserving our culture we have launched a website called the Mittelholzer Foundation. Since we feel that all forums are only as good as their visitors, we would like to encourage everyone to join and participate.

Features of our site will eventually include:

Archives of rare pictures, historical journals and essays.

Free Online Classified

Free Community Cooperative

Gallery of hundreds of old and new pictures of Guyana

Free Event Listing

A Chat room

An assortment of arcade style games (including a cool cricket game !!)

Private Messaging

And much, much more ...

And hopefully an area where people can download and upload music

One of the most complete links pages featuring Guyanese and Caribbean sites

Once again, we cannot work on promoting national unity and preserving our history without your participation and as such, I must make a very public and personal plea for people to join and spread the work of our existence...

Main Page - http://mittelholzer.org/

Forum - http://mittelholzer.org/forum/index.php

Thanks,

Jonathan Bratt

jonathanbratt@rogers.com

A Political Plea...

2006-05-05T14:07:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

Sorry to bother you as I am sure you are all busy however I came across this important news item in the Kaieteur News and wanted to forward this message to as many people as possible and I hope that you will also feel the need to so do. Although I am not an authority on Guyanese politics there is little doubt that the country has suffered enough because of the racial politics that are continually being practiced by the PPP and PNC. It is for this reason, that the people of Guyana have been and continue to be subjected to the constant threat of violence and criminal activity as the political officials have done little to improve the quality of life for the average Guyanese citizen. It is time for all Guyanese people to take back their country from the corrupt politicians and inept government that seeks only to maintain the status quo which is essentially to keep the people as uniformed as possible so that they can maintain the status quo and retain their political power. If the people of Guyana were better informed about the current political practices and policies in place, they would no doubt expect and demand better from their elected officials who, in my honest opinion, have done little to help improve the country. It is for this reason, that I make this public plea to everyone to at least think changing their vote from one that is based solely on race and ethnicity, to one that is based upon the idea of change. There is no doubt that all Guyanese people deserve and I firmly believe that the AFC represents a legitimate opportunity for Guyana to have a prosperous future. If there is any confusion or hesitation to vote for change, then consider voting for the AFC as a means of protest which will send a message to the powers that be that you are tired of the existing racial politics that so divides and hinders the economic and social development of the country. It is time for every Guyanese citizen to take back their country and to assert their power by casting a vote for the AFC.

People do have the power to change the world in which they live in... I encourage you all to please forward this message to all of your Guyanese friends and family and to do all you can to help the AFC win this election either through a donation or by talking with friends and family about the idea that it is time for change, it is time for the AFC lead Guyana toward the bright future our ancestors had envisioned and struggled to achieve.

Thank-you for your time and I although I do not have any affiliation with the AFC, there is no doubt in my mind that they represent the best hope for Guyana.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Bratt

jonathanbratt@rogers.com

Guyana On My Mind

2006-04-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to James for this wonderful article !!

By Felicia Persaud

Hardbeatnews, NEW YORK, N.Y., Fri. Apr. 28, 2006: “I grieve … Your land is vast, full of plenty and your people hope. What tragic fate has betook you and left you barren. Of love, of the beauty and the freedom of existence.”

Those words from renown Guyanese poet James C. Richmond came back to me on Saturday April 22 as I woke like many to the horrific news that four more nationals – including a government minister – were senselessly slaughtered in the South American nation. The news came on the heels of the many other killings in recent weeks, that has put the spotlight on this country of less than a million people.

Murders like the Ronald Waddell execution, the Gazz Shermohamed killing and the bloodbath of February that took eight lives in one night in a tiny village on the outskirts of Georgetown, the country’s capital, have all stunned the nation.

But the Satyadeow Sawh, Rajpat Rai, Phulmattie Persaud and Curtis Robinson murders left many especially bewildered, since for the ruling Peoples Progressive Party/Civic, it hit so close to home.

I never knew Sawh, Waddell or Shermohamed, or the many more whose lives have all been taken coldly and callously by bullets. But for me, the reports of the horrific killings took my mind back to a dark period in my life in Guyana, prior to the Desmond Hoyte rule, where many lived in fear of ‘kick-down the door’ bandits, that robbed, raped and killed often.

I especially remember the infamous leader of the bandits, ‘Eyelash,’ who brought terror to the East Coast of Demerara and of the many vigilante groups that were formed in many communities by residents to help protect their families. I can still see the many steel doors that popped up all around houses to prevent such attacks and I can still hear my father detailing to me in military-like precision, the plan of assault and my role should our home be attacked by the terror squad.

Luckily we never were, but I know countless others who were; many of whom left Guyana almost immediately after, vowing never to return.

So contrary to the many comments and emails I’ve seen flashing around this past week, terror in Guyana is nothing new. What is new, however, is the sophisticated weaponry and tactics of the criminals, boosted no doubt by the lucrative drug trade that’s spilling over from neighboring South American countries.

And the economic plight of many in the country is providing the fuel for to rapidly make its way across the country. With many in the civil service and tactical services units so vastly underpaid, fast, easy money is no doubt tempting and it’s causing many to dismiss a human life as coldly as they would a chicken that they rear for a meal.

So what should be done? First off, the government and the opposition must desist from using these killings as a political ploy. There is no time for selfish politicking. This is a national crisis of enormous proportions that can only be solved by bringing in international help, especially to neighboring Brazil and Venezuela, while working together to devise a national strategy.

And targeting one specific area of the country while the government and the police throw around wild theories of a political terror plot is not a solution. The rising crime rate in Guyana is a social scourge of enormous proportion not some air brain scheme to steal the government. If that were the case, the entire cabinet would have been taken out already.

When Hoyte took over the government in 1985, he reinstated the death penalty and took a significant bite out of crime. Similar radical steps must be taken to send a strong message to those who take innocent lives without care but it must be substantially boosted by international firepower and aid.

Once these criminals are found, the death penalty that’s on the books in Guyana must be implemented to send a clear message that such cold-blooded assassinations will not be tolerated. Let’s get real please, identify the problem and not continue to be blinded by race and politics.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is publisher of The Caribbean World News Network (caribworldnews.com), the only daily Caribbean Diaspora newswire.

WELCOME TO THE GUYANA FOLK FESTIVAL '06 SEASON

2006-04-24T23:09:00.000-07:00

WELCOME TO THE GUYANA FOLK FESTIVAL '06 SEASON

http://www.guyfolkfest.org/

WELCOME TO THE GUYANA FOLK FESTIVAL '06 SEASON

2006-04-24T22:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Colleagues:

Greetings and best wishes in this the 40th year of Guyana's independence.

This e-mail is to share with you the plans that are emerging for Guyana Folk Festival 2006.

For the past five years, the Guyana Cultural Association, a New York-based, non-profit organization, has organized the Guyana Folk Festival which is becoming an important end-of-summer holiday destination for the Guyanese and Caribbean diaspora.

Each year, the festival is organized around a theme. In past years the themes have been "Celebrating Guyanese music," "Celebrating the Guyanese word," "Celebrating Guyanese dance." In 2006, the theme is "Carifesta 72 Revisited: Celebrating Our Caribbean Culture"

Background

Just six years after independence, Guyana hosted the most important cultural event in contemporary Caribbean history--Carifesta 72. For three weeks (August 25 to September 15), the Caribbean expressive culture bloomed in Guyana. The festival celebrated the region's intergenerational and multiracial heritage, transcended the narrow geographies of history and revealed the important role of creative expression in the region's future development. Carifesta 72 was one of Guyana's important gifts to the region during its 40 years of independence.

The goal of Guyana Folk Festival 2006 is to celebrate the several threads that make up the Caribbean cultural tapestry and the ties that bind the peoples of the Caribbean, at home and in diaspora.

The 2006 Program

The emerging program shows that this year's festival will start in June 2006 and will end with the popular Folk Festival Family Fun Day on Sunday, September 3, 2006. What follows are some of the emerging highlights:

Festival of Guyanese Film: This program scheduled for Friday, June 30; Saturday, July 1; and Sunday, July 2 will showcase films made by Guyanese or about Guyana. The venue will be the Meyer Levin School Auditorium, Ralph Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.

Festival of Performing Arts: This program scheduled for Saturday, July 29; Sunday, July30; Saturday, August 5; and Sunday, August 6 will celebrate Caribbean performing arts. The venue will be the Meyer Levin School Auditorium, Ralph Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.

The Guyana Cultural Association's Awards Ceremony. This event for members and special invitees is scheduled for Wednesday, August 30, 2006. The venue is to be announced.

Come to My Kwe Kwe. This event is scheduled for Friday, September 1, 2006. The venue is to be announced.

The Symposium. The 2006 Folk Festival symposium will examine Guyana's place in Caribbean creativity. This event will take place at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York on Saturday, September 2, 2006. Prior to the New York symposium, a series of seminars on the same theme will be organized in Guyana, Atlanta, Florida, and the Cayman Islands.

Folk Festival Family Fun Day. This event is scheduled for Sunday, September 3, 2005 at the Meyer Levin School Ground, Ralph Avenue (between Tilden & Beverly), Brooklyn, New York.

The Guyana Cultural Association, organizers of the Guyana Folk Festival, seek your usual support and participation. I will keep you updated as further information becomes available.

For further details on the Guyana Cultural Association and previous Guyana Folk Festivals, please visit: http://www.guyfolkfest.org/

(Special Thanks to James C. Richmond and all the organizers of these most important event in the history of Guyana ...)

The West Indian canon?

2006-04-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

Over the long Easter weekend I started reading my newly-arrived review copy of University of Hunger: Collected Poems and Selected Prose by Martin Carter, edited by my friend Gemma Robinson and published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books. (By happy coincidence, another new edition of Carter's poems edited by Ian McDonald and Stewart Brown will be published by Macmillan later this year.) University of Hunger--which takes its title from one of Carter's best-known poems--includes every poem he published in his lifetime, and is scrupulously annotated--the full treatment. It is, in fact, one of the best edited volumes of Caribbean literature I've yet seen, befitting the work of one of our major--dare I say canonical?--authors.

And it got me thinking, as I sometimes do, how wonderful it would be to have a Caribbean equivalent of the French Bibliotheque de la Pleiade or the Library of America--a uniform series of definitive editions of our major literary works, edited by experts and produced to the highest physical standards, and kept in print indefinitely at relatively inexpensive cost to the buyer. Perhaps one day a sufficiently enlightened (and sufficiently wealthy) benefactor will come along and make this possible. Should that day come, which writers or works would we include? What are the true Caribbean classics, worthy of preservation in this way for future generations?

Carter would certainly make the cut--the other obvious writers would include Jean Rhys, George Lamming, Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, Wilson Harris, Kamau Brathwaite, Louise Bennett, C.L.R. James--and who else, Beat blog readers? Who are the canonical West Indian authors? Which not-so-well-remembered writers do you think deserve to be resurrected? I'd make a strong argument for A.J. Seymour myself. Other suggestions? Use the comments below, please.

Caribbean Beat Weblog

2006-04-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

THE VENN COMMISSION

The strike in the sugar industry and the shooting of sugar workers at Enmore forced the Colonial Office in England to agree that the sugar industry in Guyana was facing a crisis, and that urgent action was needed to improve the social conditions of the sugar workers. As a result, the Secretary of State for the Colonies in October 1948 appointed a three-member commission to examine and report on the problems affecting the industry. The commission was headed by Dr. J. A. Venn, a professor of Cambridge University, while the other members were R. Sudell, an agricultural journalist, and B. G. Smallman of the Colonial Office as secretary.

The commission arrived in Guyana in late December and during the next six weeks visited the main sugar plantations. The team also took evidence from 192 persons at meetings held in Georgetown and New Amsterdam.

The commission's final report, submitted in July 1949, paid special attention to problems affecting women in the sugar industry. It noted that in 1948, 28 percent of the sugar workers were women, and spoke of the strenuous labour they had to perform in weeding, moulding cane and jumping over canals.

The women were forced into this situation to supplement the poor wages earned by their husbands. Many of them, the report stated, had to be up by 3.00 a.m. in order to prepare meals and to leave for work, and they would not return home until the evening. As a result, their children's care was neglected since there was no parent at home to care for them. The commission was concerned, too, that female workers were supervised by male drivers.

Among the recommendations of the Venn Commission were the following:

1. Each estate must provide creches to care for young children, while tasks should be arranged to allow women workers to return home to prepare meals and look after their children.

2. Women must not work in water (canals and flooded fields), and gangs of women workers should be supervised by women overseers.

3. All workers must be supplied with fresh drinking water, and sheltered areas must be erected for protection against rain and to provide places for workers to have their meals.

4. Roads must be constructed so that workers could travel in comfort to the fields.

5. For factory workers, social amenities such as proper toilet facilities, bath rooms and canteens must be provided.

6. There must be proper inspection and care of machinery on the estates.

7. The Workmen's Compensation Ordinance must be amended to give recognition to the claims made common-law wives and their children. This was necessary since most marriages among sugar workers were not official.

8. Measures should be taken to halt the use of child labour in the sugar industry.

9. The title of "drivers" should be changed to "headmen".

10. The Medical Department should institute regular inspection of housing, water supply and sanitation on the sugar estates.

11. Plots of lands must be provided to regular workers to cultivate rice, root crops and vegetables.

12. The British Government should provide a subsidy of one pound Sterling for each ton of sugar produced in Guyana for at least the next 15 years.

13. All the "ranges" in which sugar workers lived must be torn down and replaced with proper weatherproof housing by 1953.

14. The "cut and load" system which influenced the 1948 strike should remain in force, but the "cut and drop" system should operate when there was not an adequate supply of punts.

15. A Wages Board, to fix wages, should be established for the entire sugar industry. It should be made up of an equal number of representatives from the employer and the unions, and two neutral members appointed by the Government.

The Venn Commission also stated that a contributory pension scheme should be established. It recommended that male adult workers should contribute 2.5 percent and the employers 5 percent of the weekly earning of the workers. But this scheme was not implemented mainly because the SPA was not supportive of it, and also because the MPCA, the recognized union, was not willing to struggle for it.

The Commission examined the demands for recognition by the GIWU as the bargaining union for sugar workers instead of the MPCA. It disagreed with the immediate claim made by GIWU saying that if workers maintained their membership of the union for about three years, the union would then have grounds to make its demand for recognition.

http://www.guyana.org

2006-04-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

THE ENMORE MARTYRS

By 1948, most sugar workers in Guyana were giving support to the Guyana Industrial Workers Union (GIWU). On 22 April 1948, cane cutters, backed by the union, went on strike demanding the abolishment of the existing "cut and load" system in the fields. This reaping system which forced cane cutters had to load the sugar punts with the cane they cut, was not popular among cane cutters. It was introduced in 1945, and from time to time workers had gone on strike to demand that it should be changed. As part of the demands of the 1948 strike, the cane cutters called for the replacement of "cut and load" with a "cut and drop" system by which the cane cutters should cut the cane, but other workers would load the cut cane into the punts for shipment to the factory.

In addition to this particular issue, the workers demanded higher wages and improved living conditions on the sugar estates. However, the real aim of the strike was to demand recognition of the GIWU as the bargaining union for the field and factory workers on all the sugar estates in the country.

The strike obtained political support from the Political Affairs Committee (PAC), and the workers were addressed at numerous public meetings by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan and leaders of the GIWU. The PAC bulletins were widely distributed at these meetings. Dr. Jagan himself was personally involved in the organization of the strike, and helped to raise funds across the country to it. Janet Jagan was also in the forefront in operating soup kitchens for the striking workers and their families on the sugar estates.

As the strike continued, the recognized union, the MPCA, urged the workers to return to work saying that they demand for higher pay would be taken up with the Sugar Producers Association (SPA). But the workers, who had no confidence in the MPCA, refused to heed this call and stated that in any discussions with the SPA they wanted only the GIWU to represent them. However, the SPA was adamant that negotiations would be conducted only with the MPCA, the recognized union.

With sugar production seriously affected by the ongoing strike, the sugar estates hired scab labour and enticed some workers to return to work. In retaliation, strikers went to the fields and chased them away, and in some cases physically attacked them.

On 14 June the SPA and the MPCA met to discuss the issues, but no satisfactory agreement was reached. In any case, the workers were not prepared to accept any agreement that the MPCA was negotiating, since they felt very strongly that the union was betraying their interests. On the following day, some strikers attacked overseers and some strike-breakers at Nonpariel, and in the evening there were reports of vandalism, including the cutting of telephone lines between Georgetown and Enmore.

Early on the morning of June 16 a crowd of about 400 workers gathered outside the factory at Enmore for a protest and picketing exercise. The management of Enmore Estate was expecting this protest action, and the evening before had requested assistance from the Police. Lance Corporal James and six policemen, each armed with a rifle and six rounds of ammunition, were earlier sent from Georgetown early on the morning of June 16 and they reported to the management of Enmore estate at 4.00 a.m. Two hours later, they and took up positions in the factory compound which was protected by a fence 15 feet high with rows of barbed wire running along the outward struts at the top.

By 10.00 a.m. the crowd had grown to between 500 and 600 persons and was led by one of the workers carrying a red flag. They attempted to enter the factory compound through the gates and through two trench gaps at the rear by which punts entered the factory. But they were prevented from doing so because the locked gates and the punt gaps were protected by policemen. A section of the crowd then hurled bricks and sticks at the policemen, and several persons managed to enter the compound on the rear of the factory. The policemen tried to push back the crowd, but after this effort failed, they opened fire and five workers were killed and fourteen others were injured.

Lallabagee Kissoon, 30 years old, was shot in the back; 19-year-old Pooran was shot in the leg and pelvis; Rambarran died from bullet wounds in his leg; Dookhie died in hospital later that day; and Harry died the following day from severe spinal injuries. These men, through the years, became known as the Enmore Martyrs.

On June 17, the funeral of the slain men saw a massive crowd of people marching behind their coffins from Enmore to La Repentir Cemetery in Georgetown, a distance of more than 16 miles. This procession of thousands was led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan and PAC and GIWU leaders. The tragedy and the ultimate sacrifice of these sugar workers greatly influenced Dr. Jagan political philosophy and outlook. On the grave side of the Enmore Martyrs surrounded by thousands of mourners, he made a silent pledge that he would dedicate his entire life to the cause of the struggle of the Guyanese people against bondage and exploitation.

To investigate the shooting, the Governor, Sir Charles Wooley, appointed a commission of enquiry headed by Frederick Boland, a Supreme Court judge. The two other members of the commission were S. L. Van Batenburg Stafford and R. S. Persaud. Evidence was collected from 64 persons and a report was presented in August 1948. Dr. Jagan, Janet Jagan and Dr. Lachmansingh refused to testify before the commission because they felt it was a waste of time owing to the fact that the commission chairman and members were openly showing a bias towards the Police and the management of Enmore Estate.

In their testimony to the Commission, policemen involved in the shooting claimed that they were forced to shoot to protect the factory from destruction or damage and to protect the lives of workers who were on the premises.

The report, as widely expected, justified the shooting. But it criticised the Police for not applying measures, such as the use to tear gas, to keep the crowd away from the factory compound. The members of the commission also felt that the shooting period went beyond what was reasonable when they stated: "We are, therefore, of the opinion that the evidence has established that after the first few shots, there was firing which went beyond the requirements of the situation, with the result that Pooran notably and some others received shots when in actual flight."

http://www.guyana.org/

2006-04-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

THE CANADA-GUYANA FORUM

INVITES YOU TO A PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION:

Guyana in Crisis: Crime, Security and the Elections of 2006"

WHEN: Saturday 22nd April

WHERE: WEST END: From 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm at Connections - 5835

Dixie Rd & Shawson. Directions: 1 Block North of HWY 401 Beside the

Best Western

AND

EAST END: From 3:30 PM to 5:30 pm at Scarborough Village RC,

3600 Kingston Rd. For directions contact: 416- 396 - 4048

If you are planning to attend the lunch meeting, please e-mail Derek

Kowlessar (derek@humanitylink.org) or Alissa Trotz (da.trotz@utoronto.ca)

For information contact: Sr. Hazel Campayne (416-920-0132); Jai Parasram

(416-289-1346); Alissa Trotz (416-978-8286)

PLEASE COME OUT AND JOIN US AT ONE OF THESE GATHERINGS FOR A LONG OVERDUE

DISCUSSION!!

I pray that someday there will be peace on Earth.
OUR FIGHT IS WITH IGNORANCE, NOT WITH EACH OTHER! - Jai Parsram

2006-04-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

Slavery in the British and French Caribbean

Slavery in the British and French Caribbean was the Slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire. The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, Antigua, Martinique and Guadeloupe were the first important slave societies of the Caribbean, switching to slavery by the end of the 16th century as their economies converted from tobacco to sugar production. By the middle of the 17th century, British Jamaica and French Saint-Domingue had become the largest and most brutal slave societies of the region, rivaling Brazil as a destination for enslaved Africans.

The death rates for black slaves in these islands were higher than birth rates. Three out of four babies born into slavery died before the age of five. The main reason why the birth rates were lower than the death rate was because many slaves were over worked. Slaves had to use axes to cut down trees and burn brush to clear land for sugar plantations. They also had to crush sugar canes and remove liquid from them. After that they had to boil and clarify the liquid until it crystallised into sugar. Slaves also had poor living conditions and consequently they contracted many diseases.

Caribbean slavery gave the masters a complete freedom over the control of his slave. The low birth rates and high death rates caused the Caribbean island population to decrease. Slaves worked from sun up until sun down, with little medical care. Caribbean slaves often worked on cane estates suffering hardship in harsh conditions and supervised under demanding masters. The sugar industry caused the need for complete control the master needed over the slaves in order to meet demands and control the harvest. The Caribbean islands used a factory-like system to mass produce sugar production.

The factors mentioned above were perhaps the main cause of low birth rates among Caribbean slaves, as life was extremely hard in every aspect of their survival. But there is another possible reason for the low birth rate among slaves in the Caribbean. It is possible that females simply didn't want to bring new life into their existing world. Author Jan Rogozinski briefly mentions this in his book, "A Brief History of the Caribbean." He states that "Perhaps slave mothers simply did not see much point in raising children solely to provide labourers for their masters" (p. 142). This had been another form of slave rebellion against their masters. Slaves sang songs insulting their white masters and, in some cases, they would simply pretend to be ignorant or stupid (thus conforming to their master's preconceptions) to avoid punishment and further work. These factors may suggest that an unwillingness to bear children was a further act of resistance.

With the abolition of the Slave trade in 1807, the new British colony of Trinidad was left with a severe shortage of labour. This was exacerbated by the abolition of slavery in 1833. To deal with this problem Trinidad imported indentured servants from the 1830s until 1917. Initially Chinese, free West Africans, and Portuguese from the island of Madeira were imported, but they were soon supplanted by Indians. In addition, large numbers of ex-slaves migrated from the Lesser Antilles to Trinidad.

The first announcement from Whitehall in England that slaves would be totally freed by 1840 was made in 1833. In the meantime, slaves on plantations were expected to remain were they were and work as "apprentices" for the next six years.

Trinidad was to demonstrate the successful use of non-violent protest and passive resistance almost a hundred years before Mahatma Gandhi's campaign in India. On 1st of August 1834, a unarmed group of mainly elderly negroes being addressed by the Governor at Government House about the new laws, began chanting: "Pas de six ans. Point de six ans" ("Not six years. No six years"), drowning out the voice of the Governor. Peaceful protests continued until a resolution to abolish apprentiship was passed and de facto freedom was achieved. Full emancipation for all was finally legally granted ahead of schedule on 1st August, 1838, making Trinidad the first British colony with slaves to completely abolish slavery.

(Wikipedia)

2006-04-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

Slavery and the Caribbean

Europeans came into contact with the Caribbean after Columbus's momentous journeys in 1492, 1496 and 1498. The desire for expansion and trade led to the settlement of the colonies. The indigenous peoples, according to our sources mostly peaceful Tainos and warlike Caribs, proved to be unsuitable for slave labour in the newly formed plantations, and they were quickly and brutally decimated. The descendants of this once thriving community can now only be found in Guiana and Trinidad.

The slave trade which had already begun on the West Coast of Africa provided the needed labour, and a period from 1496 (Columbus's second voyage) to 1838 saw Africans flogged and tortured in an effort to assimilate them into the plantation economy. Slave labour supplied the most coveted and important items in Atlantic and European commerce: the sugar, coffee, cotton and cacao of the Caribbean; the tobacco, rice and indigo of North America; the gold and sugar of Portuguese and Spanish South America. These commodities comprised about a third of the value of European commerce, a figure inflated by regulations that obliged colonial products to be brought to the metropolis prior to their re-export to other destinations. Atlantic navigation and European settlement of the New World made the Americas Europe's most convenient and practical source of tropical and sub-tropical produce. The rate of growth of Atlantic trade in the eighteenth century had outstripped all other branches of European commerce and created fabulous fortunes.

An estimate of the slave population in the British Caribbean in Robin Blackburn's study, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery: 1776-1848, puts the slave numbers at 428,000 out of a population of 500,000, so the number of slaves vastly exceeded the number of white owners and overseers. Absentee plantation owners added to the unrest. Rebellion was common, with the forms including self mutilation, suicide and infanticide as well as escape and maroonage (whereby the slaves escaped into the hills and wooded interiors of the islands and set up potentially threatening communities of their own. See references in Wide Sargasso Sea). Jamaica holds the record for slave revolts, with serious uprisings in 1655, 1673, 1760 and continued disquiet after that. The documentation of revolts in Trinidad is less complete, but we know of at least one serious plot in 1805. Guiana was actually governed by a slave named Cuffy for a year after the revolt in 1763, and Barbados also had numerous plots, including six between 1649 and 1701.

Even after Emancipation in 1838, the unequal system continued. The first indication of this came with the awarding of some twenty million pounds to the planters by way of compensation, with nothing being awarded to the former slaves. The system tried to force them to continue the arduous work on the plantations by introducing high taxes on small holdings, high rates for licences or small traders, and contracts to shackle the labourers to the large plantations. The problems associated with the uneasy post-Emancipation time form the backdrop for Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

The shortage of available labour led to the introduction of indentured labour from another of Britain's colonies, India, in 1844. These labourers worsened conditions for the former slaves by undermining attempts to achieve improved conditions through strikes. By 1917, when immigration came to a halt some 145,000 Indians had come to Trinidad, and 238,000 to Guiana. The importation of Indians affected Jamaica, but not Barbados, as well, with 39,000 immigrants. Writers such as V.S. Naipaul, the highly reputed Trinidadian novelist, have their roots in the importation of Indian indentured labourers to replace the slaves.

Slavery is a recurring theme in the literature of the Caribbean. Many writers feel the need to attempt a vocalisation of all that was denied under the brutal system. Writers such as Derek Walcott in Omeros, and George Lamming in In the Castle of my Skin talk about the difficulty of moving forward from the feelings of injustice inspired by the slave system and the lack of improvement of life after slavery. The Caribbean moved from a place of glory in the British Empire, with Barbados nicknamed "Little England," to its present position of instability and reliance on tourism for the survival of the economy. Some writers, including Jamaica Kincaid, see tourism as an extension of the system of slavery, with the "natives" there for the tourist's amusement and comfort. Any study of the literature of this region must bear in mind the violent heritage of the place, and the fact that the indigenous population were almost totally destroyed and the present population were brought there entirely against their will.

http://www.qub.ac.uk/en/imperial/carib/slavery.htm

2006-04-01T22:53:00.000-08:00

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Felicia A. Pride, Founder/Editor/Publisher
"A vision without a plan is a dream. A plan without vision is a nightmare." –Unknown

Felicia Pride was raised in both Northern New Jersey and Baltimore , Maryland giving her a unique sense of possibility. A self-proclaimed nerd, Felicia has always been a lover of the nontraditional. After receiving a B.S. degree in business, she moved closer to New York City to bask in its immense opportunities. Immediately, she held positions in marketing, gaining a firm foundation and promoting various products and services.

She made the initial transition into publishing through writing. Penning cultural and entertainment pieces not only allowed her to interview an intriguing list of personalities, but also earned her writing credits in the Baltimore City Paper, Vibe.com , Popmatters.com , Africana.com and Fly Magazine . She also expanded into other types of writing and possesses a vast and diverse portfolio. It was a subsequent position as an assistant editor at a magazine that prompted her to return to school and study publishing.

Felicia has a graduate degree in writing and publishing from Emerson College ( Boston , Massachusetts ) with a specialization in books. Already, she has held positions at respected publishing houses and continues to work in the industry. Yet, she hasn't abandoned her marketing roots. She freelances as an editorial and promotional consultant to writers and publishers. To learn more about her writing and promotional services, visit www.thebacklist.net/main/services.html .

But most importantly, she has been able to realize her dream to edit her own publication, BackList, which combines her love of books and publishing. As her entrepreneurial nature leads the way, Felicia continues to involve herself in positive, challenging projects. The one concern that remains is whether she will be able to do everything in one lifetime.

stacia l. brown, contributing writer
stacia l. brown is a twentysomething lansing, michigan native, raised in baltimore , md. a graduate of trinity college of washington , dc, she enjoys writing in all forms (though she's currently on a poetry hiatus). stacia has watched an inordinate amount of television and is trying to match her hours logged staring at the black box with hours spent reading substantial literature. after having adopted that mission about three years ago, she's decided it'll probably be another five years before she accomplishes it.

2006-03-31T20:30:00.000-08:00

US$15,000 urgently needed to save infant's life

Stabroek News

Desean Noel

Little Desean Noel is in desperate need of an operation for a brain tumour which has almost rendered him immobile and is affecting his eyesight.

The child, who is just shy of his third birthday, urgently needs US$15,000 to have the surgery done at the Community Hospital, Cocorite, Trinidad. Because of the urgency, Dr Richard Spam who saw the child at the Davis Memorial Hospital and agreed to do it, has set April 6 for the operation. He said the sum of money is all-inclusive and the child and his mother would just have to get tickets and accommodation for the mother.

However, because the child's parents, Althiea Sampson and Richard Noel, who reside at 139 First Field Caneville, Grove, East Bank Demerara, have no way of raising that sum of money they are appealing to the public for assistance.

Desean is now a patient at the Georgetown Public Hospital. He was admitted last Thursday as his condition has deteriorated and he is in constant pain.

His mother said the boy is her only child and he was "normal" until early last month when he began to suffer from headaches and was vomiting everything he ate. He also had a high fever and was rushed to the hospital where he remained for 19 days.

During that time an MRI scan of the brain was ordered and this was done at St Joseph Mercy Hospital on March 3, revealing a large left frontal tumour that extended into the third ventricle resulting in obstructive hydrocephalus.

"He requires urgent treatment which will involve a section of the tumour. It is likely that once the tumour is cleared he will not require ventriculo-peritoneal shunt. I have advised the parents of the proposed treatment and the urgency," Dr Spam wrote in a letter he gave to the parents.

The mother said that late last year the child had developed an abscess at the back of his head but this was treated by the hospital and they never suspected there was a much larger problem.

Desean is now lying in the hospital bed and according to his mother he is unable to focus on anyone or anything because of the constant pain he is in. The parents have approached the Ministry of Health and First Lady Varshnie Jagdeo's Kids First Fund organisation and now await word on what help would be made available. But time is running out and even though they have set up a bank account they have only managed to raise a little over $200,000 which is a far cry from the US$15,000 they require to save the child's life.

The account is at the New Building Society (NBS) and its number is: D15453. Relatives of the child could be contacted on 643-2654 and 646-0262.

2006-03-31T20:14:00.000-08:00

Stabroek News

Twenty-year-old mother of two abandoned, struggling to make ends meet

By Oluatoyin Allyne

Wednesday, March 29th 2006

Janel Chase

At 20, Janel Chase should have been looking forward to how her life would unfold. Instead, she is a depressed mother of two whose reputed husband recently walked out on her leaving her with no means of supporting herself and children.

Some days it is a struggle to find a few spoons of sugar to make tea for her two- and one-year-old children.

She lives with her 81-year-old grandmother and according to her they help to take care of each other and the children. Their home is located in Cemetery Road, Mocha, East Bank Demerara, and although it is in "good condition" it does not have any electricity or running water.

And apart from the difficulty of surviving and providing for her two toddlers, the young mother is also epileptic. She was forced to leave school early because of the condition.

She said she sometimes knows when to expect an attack but at other times it happens suddenly, like one she experienced a little less than two years ago.

She said she was returning from the shop after making a purchase for her grandmother when suddenly she blacked out. She later learnt she fell flat on her face on the road and had to be taken home by public-spirited citizens. When she came to, Chase was in her bed and two of her front teeth were missing, knocked out when she fell on the road.

Even though her boyfriend, who was living with her at the time, stuck around after this incident and she bore him another child, Chase feels that her missing front teeth caused him to leave.

"I think is because me ent get no front teeth and he must be see some other girl more flashy than me and gone with she," the young woman said.

She told Stabroek News that he walked out earlier this year. She said he made a living by weeding for people during the day, while at night he operated a karaoke machine at a popular business spot in Mocha. But many days he gave her just $300. One day, she said, she told him that the money could do nothing for the children. "He just turn and say, Janel me ent able with this. This relationship between me and you over. He ask me for his clothes and I give he it and he gone," she said.

"I don't know, honestly I don't know where that boy is."

Chase said she attempted several times to make contact with her daughter's father's relatives to get assistance for little Marian and Mario but they were not willing to help and on a few occasions she has had the phone hung up on her.

Chase is very conscious about her missing teeth, which are only noticeable when she speaks. She is small in stature and underweight, but the young woman said she really cannot take care of herself. She said many days when there is not enough food for the entire family she leaves herself without to ensure that her children and grandmother eat because of their ages. And this is not healthy, because, according to the young woman, whenever she is not eating properly she is more likely to have an epileptic fit.

Chase grew up with her grandmother. Her father lives overseas but she does not know him, while her mother is married and living in the same village. Chase said since she grew up with her grandmother she is not close to her mother. According to Chase, she left school in form four on the advice of the headmistress because of her condition.

At her grandmother's age there is not much she can do, but Chase said the woman still has a small kitchen garden which she maintains.

"She would go and sit down and weed and plant and when dem things get ripe deh does come in handy fo we. I don't really know how really we surviving," the young mother said.

Chase's story is not unique as there are many women her age who are in the same position or even worse but her existence is indeed sad. She survives through the benevolence of those living around her. She does not mind that her reputed husband has left, but wishes he would contribute to the children's upkeep. "Is better he go if he want another woman, I don't want he to be with me and other woman because with all dem things out there, I don't want to dead and leave me children," she said.

Chase would not openly beg for assistance, but would welcome anything offered to her. Because of her condition and lack of education it is difficult for her to find any employment and even if she does she has the added problem of finding someone to take care of the children since they are sometimes too much.

She sees the road ahead as long and difficult.

Editor's note

We have received numerous letters from persons willing to help Miss Chase.

Miss Chase lives in Cemetery Road, Mocha, East Bank Demerara but does not have a telephone. Persons willing to help Miss Chase can do so through Troopers of Charity a non governmental organisation formed in America 36 years ago which established an office in Guyana seven years ago, dedicated to improving the livelihood of homeless children, school dropouts, teenage mothers and other disadvantaged persons. They are located at 122 Nelson Street, Mocha, EBD. The director is Mr. Kenneth Johnson and the mediator is Miss Zipporah Peters who can be reached at 263-6037.

2006-03-31T09:17:00.000-08:00

Society

THE COMPOSITION OF GUYANESE SOCIETY is a reflection of the country's colonial past. The colony was created by Dutch and British planters who grew sugarcane using the labor of slaves and indentured workers. Ignoring the country's vast interior, the planters constructed dikes and dams that transformed the coast into an arable plain. With the exception of the indigenous Amerindians and a few Europeans, the entire population consisted of imported plantation workers or their descendants.

Guyanese culture developed with the adaptation of the forced and voluntary immigrants to the customs of the dominant British. Brought to Guyana as slaves, Africans of diverse backgrounds had been thrown together under conditions that severely constrained their ability to preserve their respective cultural traditions. In adopting Christianity and the values of British colonists, the descendants of the African slaves laid the foundations of today's Afro-Guyanese culture. Arriving later and under somewhat more favorable circumstances, East Indian immigrants were subjected to fewer pressures to assimilate than the Africans had been. As a result, more of their traditional culture was preserved.

Although the culture of independent Guyana has become more truly national, the Guyanese people remain divided by ethnic mistrust. The Guyanese elite that has emerged to replace the colonial administration faces the enormous challenge of satisfying the aspirations of the people concerning economic development and educational opportunity.

Guyana Table of Contents

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

2006-03-30T10:59:00.001-08:00

Please visit...

Kyk-Over-Al

http://kykoveral.blogspot.com

Online/Caribbean Arts Journal. Features poetry, essays, drawings, sketches, paintings of various Caribbean/Guyanese artists. Also includes historical information and biographies of notable people from the region. All are welcome and we are always accepting submissions for content...

2006-03-29T07:36:00.000-08:00

What’s in a Name.

Many years ago I was sat in my bank manager’s office with my partner, bob. We lived in a small town in North Wales called Bethesda, where my mother was born. We had a little shop there called ‘Quarry View Stores.’ From the back window of our shop we could see the huge slate mountain, which had been the home of the Penrhyn Quarries, once famous for its slate throughout the world. We didn’t call our shop Quarry View Stores because we could see the quarry. It had been the name of mam’s family’s shop, a grocery owned by her parents, and we wanted to continue the tradition.

It was the summer and we had been summoned to the bank to discuss our finances. For me it was a good time to switch off, to not be responsible and I left it to the men folks to deal with such matters. I settled myself down in the warmth of the room and watched the sunlight illuminate the motes of dust by the window. It was beautiful and I lost myself in reverie.

The bank manager’s name was Williams, the same as my father’s- Denis Williams, but unlike my Guyanese father he was a Welsh man. I could hear the bank manager being rude and patronising, as people with a very little power sometimes are. I suddenly had a thought that perhaps his forebears had owned and named my father’s ancestors in Guyana. After all Williams was one of the oldest of Welsh names.

Later, I went to the library. In the archives department I held the original documents from the Pennants plantation in Jamaica, the family that had developed the quarry that dominated the town. I was aware of being a black woman, probably the first black person to see these papers, reading through a long list of names with no surnames. The archivist was very sensitive and helpful but he seemed embarrassed. These were the names of slaves – Pennants, real people with real lives that were documented as commodities, chattels. They had no identity save their owner-given names. Their belonging was only to the slave master. Nobody would ever know their real names. I was in awe. I was shivering. I felt myself to be trespassing in another world, as if I had no right to be there, to be witnessing this history.

I was able to find no other acknowledgement in Wales of involvement with slavery, even the Pennants, whose name meant something in the Welsh language, are generally regarded as English. The negative connotations of Empire are always attributed to the English, but my family name, a slave name, was a Welsh name. It was then that I decided to change my name.

I came from a family that had come to Wales in 1959. There were very few black people in this area back then but over the years the family has grown into dynastic proportions and being a ‘Williams’ meant something. But what did it mean? My paternal grandmother was called Isabel Adonis: I had been named Isabel after her and decided to adopt her surname as well.

I discovered that Adonis had a mythical and spiritual significance and it added to its specialness, originating as it did from Adonai meaning ‘lord.’ Adonis in Greek mythology was a beautiful man, loved equally by Persephone and Aphrodite, the goddesses of darkness and light, and because neither would give him up, he divided his time equally between his two lovers. The name was also connected to rebirth so it couldn’t have been more perfect and more meaningful to me. It was still a family name and it seemed to give me access to the feminine side of my father. I was the only daughter amongst my sisters named after a black woman and it gave me a strong sense of intimacy with this dark mother.

Mam had been a Hughes. Of one thing she was quite sure: when it came to a disagreement she would always revert back to her Welshness.

“Don’t forget I’m Welsh,” she said, and there was something rigid and autocratic about this statement. Once I asked her if she thought I was Welsh; if she was, why wasn’t I? She answered:

“It would take a long time for you to be Welsh.”

“But mam, how long would it take?”

But having established her bottom line she couldn’t go further and see the whole problem of identity, that it was about power and who belonged to who and nothing else. She would not explore her feelings, which were well defended. When my father left mam she continued to use his name and couldn’t let her wedding ring go and get a new partner. She continued to own him through his name Williams. Despite having a Welsh name, he wasn’t Welsh and neither was I, his daughter. No amount of time would change that.

My father had never spoken about his background as though he was entirely self made. To mention that I’m Denis Williams’ daughter in a Guyanese context has significance, whereas in Wales it has a false meaning. My father could never live here and in the context of Wales it sounds like somebody Welsh, somebody white. Moreover my father’s name of Williams, was a black name that spoke of oppression, cruelty and endurance, but in Wales that association and is denied.

The American Indians changed their names throughout their life to acknowledge psychological and spiritual transformations. They might have three or four name changes in a lifetime. We limit our identities to a small space of the body, but extend ourselves through a long lifetime, but not everyone is the same throughout their lives. People can change; changing your name doesn’t make you different but it symbolises change. The tradition of patrilineal surnames extends this identity through the generations in a particular form, which in the case of slavery has been broken. From the fragments of this fractured history, one has to seek an undivided individuality, and a name that symbolises connectedness. In Guyana it might be different, but in Wales the name of Williams symbolises the fracture, while my grandmother’s name, Adonis, asserts with it’s uniqueness here, something of my Caribbean and African heritage.

Isabel Adonis.

March 2006.

(thanks Isabel !!)

2006-03-27T12:15:00.000-08:00

Playing Militia

Even in that place of final exile
among tombs, and mechanical inscriptions,
each leaf is a different green,
flower of a different kind
of red and yellow; also each ripe fruit
tumult of a really different seed
there, in that place.

Outside in the traffic
between the city's indifferent wheels and feet,
amid a hatred of trees,
the phalloid needles of sewing machines
have sown a new drill. The sleeves
of uniforms droop
like the wet feathers of a crow's wing
over a secret carrion. Girls unbreasted,
wear guns like earrings. Boys ungamed,
grip them like tickets. The spree
is a wake. Admission is free.

Martin Carter in Poems of Affinity, 1980

2006-03-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

César Vallejo

César Abraham Vallejo was born on March 16, 1892, in Santiago de Chuco, an isolated town in north central Perú. Vallejo's grandmothers were Chimu Indians and both of his grandfathers, by a strange coincidence, were Spanish Catholic priests. He was the youngest of eleven children and grew up in a home saturated with religious devotion. Vallejo entered the School of Philosophy and Letters at Trujillo University in 1910, but had to drop out for lack of money. Between 1908 and 1913, he started and stopped his college education several times, working in the meantime as a tutor and in the accounts department on a large sugar estate. At the sugar estate, Vallejo saw thousands of workers arrive in the courtyard at dawn to work in the fields until nightfall for a few cents a day and a fistful of rice. Seeing this devastated Vallejo and later inspired both his poetry and his politics.

In 1913 Vallejo enrolled again at Trujillo University and studied literature and law, and read voraciously about determinism, mythology, and evolution. After receiving a Master's Degree in Spanish literature in 1915, Vallejo continued to study law until 1917. However, his life in Trujillo had become complicated by a tortured love affair and he moved to Lima. Vallejo found work as the principal of a prestigious school. At night he visited opium dens in Chinatown and hung out in the Bohemian cafe where he met the important literary figures of the time, including Manual Gonzalez Prada, one of Peru's leading leftists. When Vallejo's Los heraldos negros was published, in 1919, it was received enthusiastically. Vallejo then began to push his talent in a new direction.

Vallejo lost his teaching post for refusing to marry a woman with whom he was having an affair. In 1920, after his mother's death and the loss of a second teaching job, Vallejo visited his home. During a feud that broke out before his arrival in Santiago de Chuco, an aide to the subprefect was shot and the general store burned to the ground. Vallejo, who was actually writing up the legal information about the shooting for the subprefect, was blamed as an "intellectual instigator." In spite of protest telegrams from intellectuals and newspaper editors, he was imprisoned for 105 days. When released on parole, he left for Lima, embittered by the affair.

In 1922, Vallejo published Trilce, a book written while in hiding before his arrest. Trilce, which placed Latin American poetry in the center of Western cultural tradition, appeared to come out of nowhere. Vallejo continued to teach while in Lima, but in the spring of 1923 his position was eliminated. Fearing that he could still be forced to go back to jail, he accepted the invitation of his friend Julio Gálvez to go to Paris. Vallejo left Peru for good in June 1923.

Vallejo and Gálvez nearly starved in Paris. It wasn't until 1925 that Vallejo found his first stable job in a newly opened press agency and began to receive a monthly grant from the Spanish government to continue his law studies at the University of Madrid. Since he was not required to stay on campus Vallejo remained in Paris, where he continued to receive the money for two years. The grant, plus the income from articles, enabled Vallejo to move into the Hotel Richelieu in 1926 and frequent exhibitions, concerts, and cafe He met Antonin Artaud, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. The somber, straightforward works he wrote during this period form a bridge between Trilce and the densely compassionate and bitter poetry he would write in the thirties.

In 1927, he received news from home that the tribunal in charge of his old case had given orders to arrest him, which confirmed his intuition to leave Peru. He left his post at the press agency and refused further grant payments. His economic situation worsened. By 1928, he had begun to read Marxist literature and appeared to be an actively committed Communist. In September of 1928 Vallejo made the first of three trips to Russia; he returned to form the Peruvian Socialist party with other expatriates.

In January 1929, Vallejo and Georgette Philipart, whom he met soon after his arrival in Paris, moved in together. Vallejo's Marxist studies continued, and he decided no longer to publish poetry, devoting himself instead to writing a book of Marxist theory. In 1930, Vallejo wrote his first drama. He continued to write scripts in the years to come, leaving nearly 600 pages of unpublished material at his death. Vallejo was arrested by the police in a Paris railroad station in December and ordered to leave France within three days. He returned to Madrid where, in 1931, he wrote his only novel, El tungsteno. When the Monarchy fell and the Republic was proclaimed, Vallejo officially joined the Spanish Communist party and, once Rusia en 1931 was published, was even temporarily famous. Despite his success, however, he could not find a publisher for his new material.

In January 1932, Georgette Philipart returned to Paris to find their apartment sacked by the police. Meanwhile, Vallejo was desperately trying to establish publishing connections in Madrid. Finally obtaining a resident permit in February 1933, Vallejo left for Paris with nothing but the clothes on his back. The conditions of the permit forbade him to engage in any political activity whatsoever; the years between 1933 and 1936 were the least documented in Vallejo's adult life and may well have been his darkest.

Vallejo and Philipart married in 1934, and their financial situation took a turn for the worse. Finally, in 1936, Vallejo found a teaching position, and the Fascist uprising in Spain in July of that year inspired him to a spectacular display of sustained creativity. Absorbed by the Loyalist anti-Fascist cause, Vallejo began to build a "popular poetry," incorporating war reportage, while at the same time becoming more hermetic than ever before. In July 1937 he left again for Spain, which was deep in civil war, and took part in the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture. Among the 200 writers attending, Vallejo was elected the Peruvian representative. While in Spain, Vallejo visited the front briefly and saw the horror with his own eyes. Back in Paris he wrote a fifteen-scene tragedy, La piedra cansada, and then in one sustained push, from early September to early December, fifty-two of the fifty-four poems that make up Sermón de la barbarie, along with the fifteen poems of España, aparte de mí este cálize.

In early March 1938, the years of strain and deprivation, compounded by heartbreak over Spain, as well as exhaustion from the pace of the previous year, finally took their toll. Vallejo contracted a lingering fever, and by late March he could not get out of bed. Despite medical attention, his condition worsened. No one knew how to heal him; at one point, his wife even enlisted the help of astrologers and wizards. On the morning of April 15, the Fascists finally reached the Mediterranean, cutting the Loyalist territory in two. At more or less the same moment, Vallejo cried out in delirium, "I am going to Spain! I want to go to Spain!" and he died. It was Good Friday. The clinic records state that he died of an "acute intestinal infection." His body was buried at Montrouge, the "Communist" cemetery in southern Paris. In the 1960s, Georgette, who was living in Lima, had his remains moved to Montparnasse, where they now reside.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Selected Poems of Cesar Vallejo Selected Poems of Cesar Vallejo (1981)
Antologia (1948)
Antologia (1966)
Antologia de Cesar Vallejo (1942)
Antologia poetica (1962)
Asi es la vida, tal como es la vida (1982)
Canciones de hogar: Songs of Home (1981)
Cesar Vallejo (1967)
Cesar Vallejo, a Selection of His Poetry (1988)
Cesar Vallejo: An Anthology of His Poetry (1970)
Cesar Vallejo: Sus mejores obras (1962)
Cesar Vallejo: The Complete Posthumous Poetry (1978)
España, aparte de mí este cálize (Spain, Take This Cup from Me) (1939)
La vida, y quince poemas: antologia poetica (1958)
Los heraldos negros (The Black Heralds) (1918)
Los heraldos negros y Trilce (1962)
Los mejores versos de Cesar Vallejo (1956)
Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems (1993)
Nómina de huesos (Payroll of Bones) (1936)
Obra poetica completa (1968)
Obra poetica completa: Cesar Vallejo (1982)
Obras completas (1974)
Palms and Guitar (1982)
Perfil de Cesar Vallejo: Vida y obra antologia poetica (1978)
Poemas (1958)
Poemas en prosa; Poemas humanos, Espana, aparta de mi este caliz (1988)
Poemas escogidos (1958)
Poemas humanos (1923-1938) [and] Espana, aparta de mi este caliz (1937-1938) (1961)
Poemas humanos (Human Poems) (1939)
Poemas humanos; Espana, aparta de mi este caliz (1985)
Poesia completa (1981)
Poesia completa (1988)
Poesias completas (1961)
Poesias completas (1965)
Poesias completas (1918-1938) (1949)
Poesias completas de Cesar Vallejo, J. Pablos (1971)
Selected Poems (1976)
Selected Poetry (1987)
Sermón de la barbarie (Sermon on Barbarism) (1939)
Seven Poems (1967)
Ten Versions from Trilce (1970)
Trilce (1922)
Trilce (1992)
Trilce (1992)
Trilce (1973)
Twenty Poems (1962)
Un hombre pasa (1970)
Works also collected in Poesia completa (1978)

Prose

Articulos olvidados (1960)
Autopsy on Surrealism (1982)
Battles in Spain (1978)
Cartas a Pablo Abril (1971)
Cronicas (1984)
Desde Europa (1987)
El romanticismo en la poesia castellana (1954)
Epistolario general (1982)
La cultura Peruana: Cronicas (1987)
Literatura y arte (1966)
Paco Yunque (1981)
Rusia ante el segundo plan quinquenal (1965)
Rusia en 1931 (1932)
Rusia en 1931: Reflexiones al pie del Kremlin (1959)
The Mayakovsky Case (1982)

Drama

La piedra cansada (1927)
Teatro completo (1979)

Letters

El tungsteno (1931)
Escalas melografiadas, Talleres Tipografia de la Penitenciaria (1923)
Fabla salvaje (1923)
Novelas y cuentos completos (1970)
Novelas: Tungsteno, Fabla salvaje, Escalas melografiadas, Hora del Hombre (1948)
Tungsten: A Novel (1988)
Tungsteno (1958)
Tungsteno y Paco Yunque (1957)

2006-03-26T23:37:00.000-08:00

Letter of Reality

Leaping through the open door

Right fist raised in defiance and pronouncement of death

Go curse the world

Enunciating right and wrong

Announcing the beginning of the scene, the scream will come

This salutation is meant to right the wrongs

And the perplexities of some

Across the world and under the eyes of the sun, where the obliteration prolongs

In a frenzy – in midair the search consumes

The sentence is meant to contradict

Will Nations and man with much to spare, rescue their hearts entomb

Remember the Negroid who were tricked

Shackled, abused, culturally lynched, enslaved, a people to expire!

The indigenous who were robbed of their rightful place

Carrying their dead to a higher ground, while dancing with painted faces by the fire

To call upon their God of courage and muster strength to save face

Like a lingering wind

Soon to draw upon typhoon wings

Strides that man made must never be rescind

Nor fall upon ages dark, for all were meant to walk like kings

Nor collude or conspire a Barabbas over Jesus of the Crucifixion

A Nation under judgment will never get a song to sing

And blood that was shed must be repaid to redeem a Nation

Wars and rumors of wars, pestilence and suffering

Brutal Taliban, Al Quad – Bin Laden and suicidal attacks against democratic Nations

Write again and then in words again, write again

Birth a song to right the wrongs

Like the slewing of Goliath, stop the shame

David the conquering lion of old standing strong

Now frustrated man, comfort thyself, the Omnipotent did predict a rescue of the Nation

Though perilous times must come, will come, must come, take heart and see His salvation

The oceans shall give of their dead

And mangled bones who fled

Must come bone upon bone, the bones shall live again, live again

Stand still to see the latter – rain

Poem by: James C. Richmond

2006-03-26T18:51:00.000-08:00

Cover of racist book dealing with Indians and Chinese immigrants.

2006-03-26T18:37:00.000-08:00

An indentureship-related transcript, dated 1844.

2006-03-26T18:23:00.000-08:00

19th Century Indentured servants.

2006-03-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

19th Century Indentured servants working in a field.