The High Court with Statue of Queen Victoria – Georgetown – Guyana
Rude citizen! think you I do not know
that love is stammered, hate is shouted out
in every human city in this world?
Men murder men, as men must murder men,
to build their shining governments of the damned.
From the poem “After One Year” by Martin Carter (1927-1997)
I entered this world during a period of upheaval: the decline of the British Empire and the rise of the United States as a world power. As the British and American governments jostled to protect their interests, they fractured my small world. The British sought to secure their economic gains. The Americans feared having another communist nation in their backyard.
The British exploited the weakness within our first political party that had united the two major ethnic groups, totaling 81.6 percent of the population: East Indians (50.8 percent)…
