Dear Editor,
So much publicity was made of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela presenting the above-titled book (subtitled: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent) to President Barack Obama of the USA, at the Summit of the Americas Meeting in Port of Spain that I felt that I just had to obtain a copy read it. It does appears to be a well-researched account of how over time, Latin America was impoverished by powerful external forces; the supporting bibliography was indeed impressive. There was a reference to Guyana’s own experience (although our country is not normally considered Latin America), and I quote:
“Minerals had much to do with the fall of Cheddi Jagan’s socialist government, which at the end of 1964 had again won a majority of votes in what was then British Guiana. The country now called Guyana is the world’s fourth producer of bauxite and Latin America’s third producer of manganese. The CIA played a decisive role in Jagan’s defeat. Arnold Zander, leader of the strike that served as a provocation and pretext to deny electoral victory to Jagan, afterward admitted publicly that his union had dollars rained upon it from one of the CIA foundations.
The new regime – very Western and very Christian – guaranteed the Aluminium Company of America (ALCOA) against any danger to its interests in Guyana: it could continue tranquilly removing the bauxite and selling it to itself at the same price as in 1938, although the price of aluminium had since soared.”
The fact that the book was first published in 1971 might explain the changed present-day situation with bauxite (and manganese). But I could not help being puzzled over the identity of Arnold Zander, the militant local trade unionist of the 1960’s. And I had always been of the impression that DEMBA was a sub idiary of ALCAN (unless of course ALCAN was itself a subsidiary of ALCOA).
Perhaps one of your readers/bloggers who happens also to be an expert on the historical events of the 1960’s might be able to shed some light on the two matters.
But my point really is, however, that while supporting bibliography is indeed capable of enhancing the credibility of a historian, the reverse may sometimes be true, if the reference is less than authentic. Galeano quoted from Philip Reno “Aluminium profits and Caribbean People” Monthly Review October 1963, and ———The ordeal of British Guiana. New York Monthly Review Press, 1964.
I must confess to faint amusement over Galeano’s (or at least his translator’s) description of the PNC/UF Coalition government as “very Western and very Christian”, and also over the fact that the bauxite industry was soon to be nationalized by the very government which was hoped to maintain the status quo.
Yours faithfully,
Josh Ragnauth
