Why is Damon important in Guyanese history?

By Dr Rovin Deodat
Guyana Chronicle
August 8, 1999


TOMORROW, August 9 marks an important anniversary in Guyana's early fight for freedom, one hundred and sixty-five years ago. It was the day when a group of ordinary workers in the colonial slave society of what was already called British Guiana, took a stand for freedom in a village churchyard. They were led by a simple but determined man called Damon.

Back in 1986, I wrote a full-page feature for the Sunday Chronicle entitled `Damon's Cross'. The article started this way: "In a little village on the Essequibo Coast, about two miles north of Anna Regina is a huge concrete cross on solid old foundations in the middle of a swampy graveyard. The locals call it Damon's Cross. Local knowledge, however, goes no further. And an act of heroism, as defiant and as great as any in the annals of our country continues unsung and unrecognised."

In 1988, that recognition came in the form of a statue which now stands in Essequibo as a monument to both the spirit and the courage of the man Damon and his colleagues who stood with him for three defiant days.

It all started on the long-awaited August 1, 1834, when slaves throughout British Guiana expected an end to the cruel and dehumanising system of slavery. On paper, this was emancipation day (or more exactly the Abolition of Slavery). In reality, it was the start of the apprenticeship system which was to replace slavery but which saw the former slaves in the very state they were in before August 1, 1834. Many thought they were to be completely free and reacted with dismay when they heard that they were tied to their former plantations under virtually the same working conditions for six more years.

There was general unrest in various parts of the country throughout the first week of August, 1834. The planters and the Colonial Administration were, however, able to quell most of these on the Demerara coast. But in Essequibo, it reached a boiling point on Saturday, August 9, when 700 workers between plantations Richmond and Devonshire Castle stopped work and gathered in the Trinity Churchyard at La Belle Alliance.

Damon, an ordinary worker, emerged as one of the leaders and ran up a flag on a pole as a sign of their freedom from the plantations. The workers stayed in the churchyard for three days until the Governor arrived with troops from Georgetown on August 11. Governor Smyth, unlike the planters of the various estates, spoke to the workers in an appeasing way and explained the period of apprenticeship which they had now entered. The workers thereafter peacefully dispersed, but the leaders were arrested and taken to Georgetown. By this time, Damon was being referred to as the

`Captain'.

Of the leaders arrested, four were sentenced to terms of imprisonment and severe flogging; two were sentenced to "transportation" (to New South Wales) and Damon alone was to be hanged, particularly for that single act of daring to fly his flag of freedom in the colonial empire.

On October 13, 1834, Damon paid with his life for this remarkable human cry for freedom. He was hanged on a scaffold specially erected in front of what was then the new (completed in April, 1834) Public Buildings in Georgetown.


A © page from:
Guyana: Land of Six Peoples