Dear Editor,

With respect to “the increasing popularity of American cultural traditions like Halloween and Thanks-giving in Guyana” as stated by Mr Urling in his letter captioned “I thoroughly enjoyed Halloween and St Patrick’s day parties ” (07.11.04) “being attributed to the fact that the world is indeed “flattening” and is becoming smaller”, I beg to differ as it is nothing short of a form of cultural plagiarism by the minority Guyanese to cultivate American cultural forms in our society just to be associated with an American phenomenon.

If we wanted to espouse Darwin’s evolutionary process and mimic the American Halloween we could have done it in our own “uniquess” of Guyanese cultural forms like the “massacuraman”,”old kaie”,”moongazer” etc, not a straight plagiarism of the American film characters.

Uniqueness in one’s culture should not be substituted in another society and be attributed to the fact that the world is becoming a global village. I’m sure February 23 next year the Americans won’t be celebrating Mashramani.

Yours faithfully,

Ravin Shivnauth