Remembering the Village Movement:
– By Cecilia McAlmont – Stabroek News – September 29, 2005
On August 1 every year for the past one hundred and seventy-plus years, Guyanese, but especially Guyanese of African descent together with their counterparts in the rest of the English speaking Caribbean, celebrate the end of chattel slavery. However, it was to be four more years of semi-slavery, known as apprenticeship, before they were truly free.
The end of apprenticeship ushered in what could easily be regarded as the most significant decade of Afro Guyanese achievement. The purpose of this article is to remember that achievement and to narrate how it happened particularly for the benefit of our uniformed young men and women.
Caribbean historians describe the village movement and the rise of the black peasantry in British Guiana and elsewhere as a continuation and an extension of the struggle and resistance against the domination and the exploitation of the planters. In British Guiana as elsewhere that resistance had taken place throughout the period of slavery.
READ MORE: Remembering the Village Movement – By Cecilia McAlmont
Comments
Nice article. Just wondering where you obtained your information, and if similar information is available for the Portuguese, East Indians and Chinese. Together, that would make a great history of Guyana.