TIGHTENING GRIP OF U.S. IMPERIALISM IN GUYANA
Georgetown
The situation in Guyana has continued on the pattern set since the coalition government of the People's National Congress (led by Forbes Burnham) and the United “Force assumed office in December 1964. That government, as is well known, depends heavily on U.S. and United Kingdom backing, both for personnel (technicians, Peace Corps, etc.) and finances. The U.S. government has not relaxed at all over the last two years and their penetration continues intensified at every conceivable level.
The local trade unions receive large handouts from the International Confedera-— tion of Free Trade Unions* which conducts regular training also. U.S. trade unions ~ finance housing projects for the local trade unions. The U.S. Agency for International Development* has embarked on a programme of training for Guyanese personnel, from heads of departments to. clerks in all branches of government service.
. The local security officers are being trained in Washington. The prime minister, Forbes Burnham, is advised by an American economist (Davenport). The U.S. government has beeh applying* severe pressure on the Guyana government to join the Organization of American States for obvious reasons. The University of Guyana is completely controlled by the Americans and Canadians. ;
In consistency with this alignment the Guyana government. has been utterly conservative in its policies at home and it has been unearthing all the diehard conservatives previously associated with the colonial power, appointing them to all the important positions in government.
The Americans and the coalition government have been proceeding unimpeded in their course; and as if no opposition existed. The People's Progressive party, which won forty-seven percent of the votes at the last elections, has been pathetically ineffective. Because it lacks both dynamism and a real power position, it has been brushed aside with contempt. The position of the PPP needs serious analysis.
At the moment the PPP is gearing to meet the next elections. Elections are its strong point since its strategy is based on the assumption that with time the East . Indian voters will have an absolute majority. That position, as one can see, is also the source of its weakness.
The Africans are vital for a revolutionary undertaking in Guyana, and Burnham is assured of their loyalty, which gives him a far stronger power position than Jagan. Burnham controls effectively the police and army; his party is militarily organised, his party controls the trade unions and most government servants are behind him. Burnham has control of the election machinery and can manipulate it with impunity.
. The PPP is very vulnerable and can be crushed physically if the imperialists feel compelled to do so. Organisationally the PPP has been weakened and the "left" in the party is prisoner of the racial situation as well as the compulsion felt by the leadership to regard maintenance of the party machine as the fundamental priority. Jagan is now engulfed in more inner-party conflicts with moderate and openly racist elements in the party. These elements want an accommodation with the Americans and British so as to ensure a regular place in office for the party.. °
* These names received unsavory mention in the U.S. press at the height of the exposure of Central Intelligence Agency operations. in February. Drew Pearson charged that the AFL-CIO has received around $100,000,000 a_year in subsidies from the CIA, most of which is funneled abroad through affiliated bodies. Pearson named in this connection Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown, who handle foreign policy for George Meany, the head of the big U.S. trade-union federation. [See World Outlook March 3,.page 242.] Om February 22, the New York Times reported that CIA agents, "working under cover of an American labor union, helpéd. organize strikes in British Guiana in 1962 and 1963 against Dr. Cheddi Jagan..." The international affairs department [Public Service International Inter-American Affairs Branch] of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees “was actually run by two intelligence agency aides who operated out of the union's former headquarters in Washington with the knowledge of the union leadership," according to the same report. The whereabouts of one of these two CIA agents is not known at present. The other "is now a provincial adviser for the Agency for International Development in Vietnam."