The AFC dossier, a brilliant American scholar and Percy Hintzen

Nov 02, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – One of the US’ most accomplished scholars who for the past 50 years have analysed Caribbean society including several major scholarly pieces on Guyana reminded me last week on what Professor Percy Hintzen once wrote.
Percy Hintzen is an African Guyanese living in the US for the past 40 years. The accomplished American scholar is White just in case you want to accuse him of favouring Indian Guyanese. Percy is one of the best sociologists, Guyana has produced. As a UG freshman I sought his knowledge on many things.
The American scholar in a discussion we had last week about the deterioration today of some iconic figures in the era of Walter Rodney observed that, “This seems to fit Hintzen’s view that the Creole middle class saw the future as belonging to it and resented claims made by the Indian population.”
Hintzen wrote, “In colonial British Guiana, class differences and racialized patterns of distribution of privilege were managed under a rubric of Creoleness. Creoleness explained, determined its standards of normative evaluation, served as a guide and compass for action and was the basis for simplification of the colonial complex. Creoleness incorporated the various groups of blacks, mixed, Portuguese, Chinese and a few Whites (source, Hintzen, “Creoleness and Nationalism in Guyanese Anti-colonialism and Post-colonial formation, in “Small Axe”, March 2004). Please note, Indians are not on the list.
In another publication, Hintzen wrote this, “West Indian identity and its black political nationalism were fashioned for and by its Creole population (when during this period) Indians were located outside Nationalist representation and practice,” (source, Hintzen, “Cheddi Jagan: Charisma and Guyana’s response to Western capitalism” in Anton Allahar (ed), “Caribbean Charisma: Reflections on Leadership, Legitimacy and Populist Politics.”
We come now to the observation of Hintzen that holds the key to understanding why light-complexioned, middle class Guyanese in and out of the land and certain civil society groups led by African middle class Guyanese supported the grab for permanent power by the PNC and AFC during the March 2020 election. The Hintzen analysis is also the same guide in comprehending the confidential AFC dossier in which Charrandass Persaud’s conduct in the AFC is assigned prominence but there is no mention of the action of Dominic Gaskin.
Hintzen argues that the Creole population was alarmed by the rise not only of Cheddi Jagan but the extent to which the Indian population gravitated around him. Hintzen wrote in his essay on Jagan in the Allahar book that as Indians embraced Jagan, “the entire Creolese order coalesced against Asian, Indian political organisation.”
More than 75 years after this happened in British Guiana, it happened in 2020. Remove Jagan in March 2020 and substitute the PPP instead. What you have is the identical atavistic reversion. Alarmed at an Indian president and his Indian party governing Guyana, Creole and African middle class rejected both. In 2020, alarmed at an Indian party was coming into power against after the Creole class acquired the government in 2015, the entire order of African Guyanese middle class fortress attempted an oligarchic putsch.
We end with the Freudian mind that went into that AFC dossier. I quote from my last Friday column; here is the part that betrays what the Freudian mind represses; “Please read carefully the following words: “The Charrandas issue must be dealt with and closed as it continues to linger and haunt the AFC as a party.” But why was there no mention of the Dominic Gaskin story? Gaskin exposed wrongs in the AFC more than Charran.
Was there a Creole contempt for the Indian man, Charrandass Persaud, the Berbician whose origins are from the cane-fields in Canje? He shook up the AFC with the way he voted in the no-confidence motion (NCM) but so did the half- White-half Creole gentleman, Dominic Gaskin, who did as much criticism of the AFC’s flaky leadership during the five months of attempted election rigging as Charran did.
Here is what Gaskin wrote on his Meta page on July, 2020: “To my colleagues in the coalition, I make one final appeal. You are losing political ground. You cannot win this battle. Find a way out today. And for God’s sake stop abusing everyone who dares to suggest that you lost the election. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest otherwise.”
The AFC immediately expelled Charran after the NCM. But on to this day, there has been no condemnation of Gaskin by the AFC’s leadership. The AFC dossier does not mention his name in any controversy but does so for Charran. The Freudian mind was at work. Charran is Indian. Maybe he is not equal in eugenics to Gaskin.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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