Guyana SPEAKS: Sun, 26th March - Walter Rodney: Guyana History and Politics (SPEAKER Cecil Gutzmore)

This month's event was held in commemoration of the birth of Walter Rodney on 23rd March 1942.
The presentation was provided by the distinguished academic and activist, Cecil Gutzmore. Cecil is Afrikan-Jamaican: first settled in the UK in 1961. A retired lecturer in Caribbean studies, history and political science at the now London Metropolitan University and the University of the West Indies (Mona, Kingston, Jamaica). Cecil remains engaged in research, writing and activism on a range of race, class and gender issues including Reparations for Afrikan people. His published work appears as book chapters, articles (in journals: The Black Liberator, Marxism Today, Race and Class, Jamaica Journal, Interventions) and journalism (the Jamaica Gleaner, plus). He has also worked on a number of films about Afrikan-Caribbean politics and culture-history.
The substance of the talk consisted of a summary appraisal of Walter's rich Praxis up to 1974, and a critical account of the importance Walter's contribution - as historian, political-economists revolutionary activist - to Guyana and the Caribbean. This, Cecil argued was second only to Fidel Castro's and that because the latter made an enduring revolution. Emphasis was placed on Walter unique analysis - counter to and in the teeth of overwhelming historiographic approach - of inter Afrikan and Asian Guyanese relations.