Cheddi Jagan, Guyana's Founder, Dies at 78
New York Times
March 7, 1997
By Larry Rohter
Cheddi B. Jagan, the firebrand who led Guyana to independence and was one of the Caribbean's most contentious political leaders for half a century, died yesterday in Washington, where he had been hospitalized after a heart attack. He was 78.
Dr. Jagan had undergone heart surgery at Walter Reed Army Hospital after being flown to the United States on Feb. 15.
A dentist by training, Dr. Jagan rode the aspirations of Guyana's downtrodden Indian majority to power at a young age. But he was also a Marxist-Leninist of the pro-Soviet mold, which led to clashes with Churchill, who thought him a Communist puppet, and John F. Kennedy, who feared he aspired to install a ''second Cuba'' on the northern coast of South America.
Both those confrontations ended badly, with Dr. Jagan losing the post of Prime Minister to which he had been elected. But his popularity in his small country never faded, and he returned to power in 1992, nearly three decades after Washington engineered his ouster, with a softened outlook of his own and, ironically, the support of the United States.
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, 53, was sworn in to succeed Mr. Jagan until elections can be held, probably this year. Mr. Hinds proclaimed six days of official mourning for ''the greatest son and patriot that has ever walked this land.''
Cheddi Jagan was born on March 22, 1918, on a sugar plantation near Port Mourant, in the eastern part of what was then British Guiana. His grandparents had migrated there from India as indentured laborers, and his father worked as the foreman of a work crew on the estate, giving the boy early exposure to poverty and exploitation.
The eldest of 11 children, he studied first at his village school, which was the extent of the education available to most young Indians at that time. But his parents made considerable financial sacrifices in order to send him to secondary school in the capital, Georgetown, where he excelled as a student, debater and cricket batsman.
At the age of 18, armed with his family's $500 life savings, he enrolled at Howard University in Washington, and entered the pre-medical program, majoring in dentistry. To help meet expenses, he worked as an elevator operator and, during the summers, as a patent medicine salesman in Harlem, experiences he would later say taught him bitter lessons about racism and inequality in capitalist societies.
By 1943, he had graduated from the Northwestern University Dental School in Chicago, where he met the American woman who became his wife and chief political partner and adviser. Janet Rosenberg was a student nurse active in left-wing causes, and she encouraged his interest in political science, economics, sociology and philosophy.
The couple returned to Georgetown, with Dr. Jagan dividing his energies between his dental practice and labor organizing, becoming a leader of the sugar, rice and wood workers' unions. In 1947, he was elected to the British Guiana assembly, and in 1950 he and his wife founded the People's Progressive Party, the first modern political organization in the colony.
Elections held under a new constitution providing for universal suffrage and increased home rule resulted in Dr. Jagan being elected chief minister in April 1953, at the age of 35. But his fondness for Marxist oratory and a program that called for sweeping social and economic reforms quickly aroused the suspicion of Churchill, who was serving his last term as Prime Minister, and six months later London sent troops and warships to depose him, charging that Dr. Jagan and his party ''were completely under the control of a Communist clique.''
Dr. Jagan responded with a civil disobedience campaign modeled on the one led by Mohandas K. Gandhi against British rule in India, but he was quickly arrested and jailed for six months. Nonetheless, his party again emerged triumphant in elections 1957, and both Dr. Jagan and his wife won Cabinet posts.
In 1961, the party fared even better, and Dr. Jagan (pronounced to rhyme with pagan) was sworn in as Prime Minister, vowing to achieve independence from Britain and install a socialist economy. That platform had the unwavering support of the colony's long-suffering Indian majority, but at the height of the cold war, Dr. Jagan's enthusiasm for the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro and his threats to turn to the Soviet Union for aid immediately made him suspect to the United States.
''Events had convinced us that Jagan, though perhaps not a disciplined Communist, had that kind of deep, pro-Communist emotion which only sustained experience with Communism could cure,'' Arthur M. Schlesinger, the historian who was a special assistant for Latin American affairs to President Kennedy, wrote in his 1965 book ''A Thousand Days.'' Dr. Jagan ''was unquestionably some sort of a Marxist,'' he added, but also was ''plainly the most popular leader in British Guiana.''
Soon after Dr. Jagan's return to Georgetown, the Central Intelligence Agency undertook a destabilization campaign against him. United States Government documents that only came to light in the 1990's indicate that Washington was behind much of the Guyanese labor unrest, sabotage and disinformation efforts that led to race riots between East Indians and blacks that left nearly 100 dead.
The United States also pressured Britain to delay Guyana's independence until constitutional changes could be carried out to make it more difficult for Dr. Jagan to retain power. Although Dr. Jagan's party led the voting in elections in 1964, two opposition parties formed a coalition government that was headed by Forbes Burnham, a black lawyer who had once been an ally of Dr. Jagan but who split with him. Mr. Burnham later proved to be, as described by Mr. Schlesinger, ''an opportunist, racist and demagogue intent only on personal power.''
For nearly 30 years, Dr. Jagan led the oppositon. But once Mr. Burnham was in power, he installed what the State Department later described as a system of ''wiretaps, mail interceptions and physical surveillance'' designed to ''monitor and intimidate political opponents,'' and won one rigged election after another until he died in office in 1985.
It was only in 1992, with Guyana near economic collapse as a result of years of misrule and corruption, that Dr. Jagan's years in the political wilderness ended. He won 54 percent of the vote, and once sworn in as President proved to be more mellow and less ideological than in the past.
Though Dr. Jagan said he had not abandoned his commitment to Marxism, he sought to attract foreign investors and embraced some free market policies. ''I was a Gorbachev even before Gorbachev, in the sense of what we were doing and not adopting the traditional dogmas of Marxist parties,'' he said.
With the cold war over, Washington's attitude by then had also changed, and Dr. Jagan's relations with the Clinton Administration were cordial.
In addition to his wife, Dr. Jagan is survived by two children, Cheddi Jr. and Nadira, and five grandchildren.
|