Nigel Westmaas

By Nigel Westmaas “Get gold, humanely if possible, but at all hazards, get gold.”

Haiti is marked today in the regional imagination by notions, images and stigmas of poverty, violence, tragedy, political chaos, gang control, and disastrous foreign interventions, but these perceptions, while generally true, only scratch the surface of a nation with a rich and complex history.

Clem Seecharan’s “Cheddi Jagan and the Cold War, 1946-1992,” unfolds as a Tolstoyan epic across 743 pages (713 excluding the bibliography and index).

(The content of this article is based on a presentation given by the author for the Guyana Institute of Historical Research on November 11, 2023, and is published in honour of Black History month.)

By Nigel Westmaas Patrick Dargan is accredited as Guyana’s first ‘formal’ non-white politician to occupy one of the highest rungs of government under the British colonial order, namely the Combined Court.

By Nigel Westmaas The process of rediscovery and recovery of the historical abundance of Guyana’s past continues in various forms and fora without a significant and broad public education component.

By Nigel Westmaas Emancipation as a concept and practice is not legally or morally tied to August 1st, 1838, the date of the formal removal of the institution of slavery in the British Empire after the Abolition Act of 1834 and the period of “Apprenticeship”.

By Nigel Westmaas                  One of the main features of Guyana’s historical record is its sluggish or unmotivated research and reference about the country’s mainstream historical figures and/or protest movements and individual protests.