Dear Editor,
I take this chance to offer my deepest sympathy to Mrs Doreen de Caires, widow of David and a Director of Stabroek News and to their daughter and son on the passing of a remarkable husband and father.
David de Caires was a restless bundle of passionate ideas, eager, penetrating, non-sectarian to the bone. The older generation of concerned or political Guyanese cannot forget his early days and the ease with which he moved among people of various shades of opinion, building networks. Apparently struggling against, or varying from the traditions and interests of his own social group, he took the path of enlightened reform, not sticking to accustomed ways. Though not one of them, he was willing to work with left-wing people in search of coalitions of progress.
This is not an attempt at biography, but only a chance to place on record what I consider remarkable about this citizen. It is a habit of mine to write records of people’s contribution, as Buxton-Friendship In Print and Memory will show. My last was a tribute in September to Hector Lee, an educator whose life and death were unnoticed by the press.
However, there is no doubt at all that as the head of Stabroek News, David de Caires opened the columns of a newspaper which became a daily newspaper, and a leading one, and made it possible for more people to write letters and place their views in a public place than any newspaper of my recollection has attempted.
Guyana has had a series of outstanding editors, some native, some from abroad. I remember at random Evelyn Moe, (Uncle Stapie), Guyanese; FA Fulford, of the UK; and Carl Blackman. There were others, also worthy to be named. de Caires distinguished himself from the tradition by not engaging in the self-promotion that was almost expected, if not required, of the craft. Fulford was an extreme case, but also allowed other media personalities to emerge under his watch.
My impression was that de Caires seemed very keen on running an efficient organisation. He had spent so much energy denouncing the overbearing political figures, though they amused him, that he would not now as editor be the same thing in the pubic eye.
Those who may see David de Caires as a private sector-supporting man in business and nothing more, should try to read issues of the New World publications which he co-founded, and especially the Guyana Independence issue of the New World. In that issue edited by George Lamming and Martin Carter, de Caires and Miles Fitzpatrick together wrote an article ‘Twenty Years Of Politics In Our Land,’ an article which for its keenness of vision and understanding of the social motion of what they dealt with has stood the test of a decade and a half. It remains a very important introduction to the developments since that time.
de Caires never lost his natural curiosity and seemed always to welcome new ideas and to express critical or uncritical welcome for them.
He was foremost among his age group, a few years older, in his welcome to the novelty of the young Walter Rodney’s ideas and praxis. Without a newspaper at that time he gave all the moral and organisational support of which he was capable to the ideas and praxis of the younger patriot.
The country does not realize, because they were not so much platform or party people, the amount of study and intellectual energy he and his partner Miles Fitzpatrick, as well as others of their calling, put into the struggle for a democratic order, which has not yet been realized. At their own level and without intrigue they and others, including former PNC supporters, played an essential part in the unravelling of the parliamentary dictatorship of those days. Many in the succeeding government do not acknowledge that they could never, never have done it alone.
The story of his founding of Stabroek News is carefully told in the book Freedom of Expression… by his colleague, Anna Benjamin. His decision to spearhead the newspaper project was an important part of our attempts at reconstruction. He commended President Hoyte for not opposing, or for permitting the project. There has been no commercial newspaper in my experience that has given such welcome to readers to express their opinions in a public space and thus take part in a national conversation. Even the critics of Stabroek News with a real grievance must acknowledge that it was a regional path-breaker in the encouragement of conversation. Whether it pleased every single writer all the time or not, its record of encouraging readers’ comments cannot be erased. At times we “raged furiously,” like the much defamed ‘heathen,’ but in this essential feature of development, Stabroek News was outstanding and has set a high standard.
In recent years de Caires seemed to try to strike a balance between recognition of an elected government in the place of an unelected one, and the unfortunate mode of governance which the duly elected government was imposing on the nation. His genuine attempt at maintaining standards may have invited repression in the form of the withdrawal of government advertisements. He had strong, but not dogmatic ideas on media culture and has left us a rich example.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
