By Moses V. Nagamootoo (Former Prime Minister & First Vice-President)- The title of this post was suggested by a prominent trade union in an unsolicited piece of advice to “Mr. Nagamootoo”:“If he chooses to write on sugar, once more, we urge him to begin with the phrase “once upon a time…” as all that will follow will be truly fiction, hypocrisy, and deception.” (GAWU statement June 24, 2025).
As a political activist and as a journalist embedded with our militant sugar workers in their protracted battles, my writings over several decades gave a voice to the just cause of Guyanese sugar workers.
In my last article, “Martyrdom and Mockery”, I paid tribute to the heroic struggles of sugar workers for industrial and political democracy. I sought to project the dignity of sugar workers, since we owe our right to join a trade union and the right to vote mainly to their sacrifices.
TWO FRIENDS, TWO PARTIES
While I experienced the affinity between Cheddi Jagan’s PPP and sugar workers, we were always conscious about their diverse ethnicities, different cultural practices as well as their plural political association. In the sugar belt, I saw diversity in the relations between my father Naga and my godfather, Stephen Leigh: two friends; two parties. And in the death of my villagers, Gunraj and Monroe.
I was therefore appalled that on Enmore Martyrs’ Day, a union boss could presumptuously pledge the votes of sugar workers to a particular party, in this case, the party that gave him a seat in the National Assembly.
That gross act, perhaps without the consent of sugar workers, was without any respect for the workers’ political beliefs, their right to independent association and their right to choose.
WRONG REASON
Those remarks in my Facebook post rattled the nervous sensibilities of some among the ruling elite. Their venomous response was predictable but this time for the wrong reason.
GAWU noted: “In his post, Mr. Nagamootoo talks about the ILO’s socio-impact assessment of the closure of estates in a most convenient and, in our view, misleading manner…”(Village Voice 24th June, 2025). The union then pilloried me unendearingly. The truth is, however, I did not refer to any ILO study in my Facebook post!
What GAWU wrote was “truly fiction”. True, the My Turn article was reproduced in several media in Guyana and elsewhere. Since May 26, 2025, that post and others recorded over 115,000 views. The post, “Dear Land of Guyana” (taken from the title of my book) alone received some 61,000 hits.
Village Voice was among publications that carried a write-up of my last post. The newspaper not only erased aspects of my article that exposed the many wrongs done to sugar workers by the Burnham-Hoyte regime, but it injected editorial comments of its own. It was Village Voice that cited the ILO study. It was only the next day, after GAWU’s statement, that Village Voice published my post, unadulterated and in full.
INDECENT PLEDGE
But it was too late. Rattled by my comments on its indecent pledge of political support, GAWU had already jumped the gun, and went for my jugular. I have become accustomed to making the powerful uncomfortable, what the late American civil rights leader, John Lewis, famously described as “making good troubles”.
At times, I paid near-fatal price. Once when I wrote a Mirror article under the caption “Army take-over of Parliament”, the then Chief-of-Staff nearly took my breath away when suddenly he punched me in the stomach. The next evening, I was attacked in the street by soldiers in mufti. I was stabbed repeatedly in my back and slashed multiple times in my neck. But I survived.
Again, feathers are ruffling. This time I am wrongfully attacked for comments that I did not make. And, by now, the union must have realized that it mistakenly targeted me.
In that My Turn post I alluded to factual events that the union did not contradict. The plain truth is that sugar estates were closed under PNC, PPP and the APNU+AFC governments.
POST COLONIAL TRAGEDY
Those closures took place not only in Guyana but elsewhere in the Caribbean. They form part of the colonial and post-colonial tragedy of what was once “sweet sugar”. For our peoples, this legacy of hardships has always been bitter, from slavery through indentureship, and beyond.
Since the century turned, the Europeans abandoned us. Caribbean sugar had to find new ways to survive, or sink.
Way back in 2003 Trinidad closed the Caroni plantations. Over time, Barbados shut down what at one time were some 1,000 small estates. Today, just three estates remain. And in big Jamaica, Appleton and other huge sugar factories went under, resulting in job losses and economic hardships.
In Guyana, all major players decided that we were not going down the Caribbean way. We would keep sugar going in one form or the other. Alternating governments threw money, perhaps close to G$500 billion, at our sugar problem.
There is no need to distort the figures on factory closures, and the number of the workforce affected. The blame-game must give way to divestment/diversification plans. Sugar workers must guarantee land to become key stakeholders in the non-sugar revolution. GAWU might not have intended this truth: “Mr Nagamootoo attempts to burnish his care and compassion for the sugar workers and the sugar industry…”
ONCE UPON A TIME
Yes, once upon a time, I stood side-by-side with sugar workers in their struggles, especially for union recognition. And when the post-Jagan PPP clique threatened to derecognize GAWU, that precipitated my resignation from the party.
And yes, once upon a time when payment of redundancy benefits to sugar workers was delayed, I was on the precipice of resignation as Prime Minister in the Coalition government. A timeline for payment was guaranteed in January 2018. I rejoiced in proletarian solidarity and immediately reached out to our sugar workers in Berbice.
And, yes, once upon a time, after I had a face-to-face meeting with sugar workers, by sunset that day, I was diagnosed with what doctors described as cardiovascular stress. Days later, I survived open-heart surgery. Had the outcome been different, once upon a time, I would have closed the innings knowing that I did as best as I could for sugar workers and the people of Guyana. (Taken from author’s Facebook)
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Mr. Nagamootoo was Prime Minister & First Vice-President in the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance For Change government (2015-2020)
