Dear Editor,
Slavery may be classified as a condition in which one human being (slave/serf) was owned by another (slaveholder) from a system of buying and selling of human beings (slave trade) for the purpose of forced and unpaid labor. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons.
The Dutch West India Company was responsible for the introduction of the slave market from Africa since the 16th century into the Caribbean. Following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492, the Arawakan-speaking Native people known as the Taino, were completely destroyed by slavery, European disease, starvation, and war.
Britain’s passage of the Slavery Abolition Act, marked the start of freedom for 800,000 enslaved people in all its colonies on Aug. 1, 1834. Slavery was one the most difficult truths and greatest contradictions harbored by America. US President Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on 1st January 1,1863, declaring “that all persons held as slaves…. are, and henceforward shall be free.”
In discussing peace and war, MK Gandhi espoused, “The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states.”
Freedom stands dangerously alone as a concept only, if the elements factored internally and externally to lay the foundation, are not entrenched to support the pillars of growth to institutionalize its principles, practices and procurement. It is the legal agencies which have to provide the necessities and tools in order to protect its providence, including the government, the court and the policing agents.
Guyana gained her independence from the colonial master, Great Britain, on 26th May 1966, after a long and tiring verbal battle fought. As a colony, then British Guiana, slaves from Africa and indentured laborers from India were imported to plant and produce sugar for the English to enrich themselves and their motherland. The Portuguese and Chinese were also tried and tested. While the Indigenous people were the original inhabitants of the land, they were forced to seek refuge by hiding from enslavement and retreating further into the hinterland. And so, this land of many waters and six races, grew into a Republic on the 23rd February 1970, divided by the PNC and politics with the advent of a barefaced and bold Burnham since 1957.
Cruel but crucial, the critique commented, “Emancipation provided legal relief from the pace and discipline of slavery, and it allowed blacks to protest old grievances by simply moving on.” Choices were constrained, communication was curfewed and there was no compensation as consolation.
From the 18th century in the US, the wages of emancipation from inception were costly as adumbrated by a local anthem which was executed with violence by local rife clubs like the White Rose, Seventy-six, and Sons of the South. But the biggest group by far was the “invisible empire: known as the Ku Klux Klan, comprising white men from all classes and regions of Mississippi. The anthem was sung with lyrics: “N….g….s and [Republicans], get out of the way. We’re born of the night and we vanish by day. No rations have we, but the flesh of man– And love n…g…s best–the Ku Klux Klan. We catch ’em alive and roast ’em whole. And hand ’em around with a sharpened pole.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ on March’2023 at the General Assembly event marking the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, in New York said, “The history of racialized chattel slavery is a history of suffering, crime, violence and exploitation. It is a history of colossal injustice. Just as the slave trade underwrote the wealth and prosperity of the colonizers, it devastated the African continent, thwarting its development for centuries….. a history of cruelty and barbery for humanity, it was the largest legally sanctioned forced migration.”
William Wilberforce, an Englishman, was one of the abolitionists who spoke out against the atrocious crime. Those enslaved also revolted against this system. In 1811 some 500 slaves, led by a mixed-race slave driver named Charles Deslondes, marched through Louisiana in military formation before federal troops captured them. Toussaint L’Ouverture spearheaded the Haitian Revolution between 1791 and 1904. Nanny Asafo was the revered female leader of the Maroons – that group of runaway slaves who fought the British during the 18th century and established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica, maintaining their freedom and independence. In Guyana, Cuffy and Akara led the Berbice Slave Rebellion in 1763.
The Middle Passage was the most fearsome trauma experienced during the Triangular Trade. It spelled a sickening, if not deadly journey for the slaves. Some 15 million Africans died during this phase. The three parts originated in Great Britain sending cloth, guns/ammunition and manufactured goods to Africa. The Middle Passage incurred Africa sending slaves and spices to the Caribbean and America. The third phase saw the ships returning to Britain from the Caribbean with iron, lumber, sugar, rum, tobacco and other crops.
The “owners” of enslaved people were compensated for their “loss of property.” The people whose labor and families were stolen for generations were not compensated. This inhumane practice may be traced to a historical and scriptural period dating some 11,000 years ago. Today, apologists are surfacing throughout the world, some with variable degree of compensation in different format. The serious question of “reparation” is still in the air. While ancient slavery may be “gone with the wind,” modern slavery is replaced with “traffic in person.”
Are all men born equal? Happy Emancipation Day Guyana.
Yours respectfully,
Jai Lall.