No regime-change in spite of US massa

THE EDITOR: When Dr Eric Williams declared in 1963, “Massa day done,” he was in fact making a courageous declaration that we must never give up the struggle of resisting massa the oppressor, and of seeking to liberate the oppressed.

Another powerful Caribbean voice resisting oppression was that of CLR James who, in 1938, wrote Black Jacobins. His courageous scholarship ensured that Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Haitian revolution (1791-1804), in which the slaves defeated the slave master, would forever remain authentically recorded in scholarly history.

But the most powerful voice of all to denounce massa, and to challenge the slave master’s oppression with such matchless eloquence that even the echoes of his voice still drive fear into the hearts of the oppressors of the world, was that of Malcolm X.

The time has come for us to remind our people, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and others, that the US Government and armed forces, as well as such economic and monetary agencies as the International Monetary Fund, over which the US has control, have continuously functioned as massa while oppressing all those who refuse to submit to their dictates. Europe has remained a faithful ally of the US massa, even while the French emperor’s crown is shaking on his gilded head.

I write to explain that the major weapon used all this while by massa, with which he wages economic and monetary war on the masses around the world, is inflation. It is more dangerous than nuclear weapons since it can be used to bring a people who oppose massa’s oppression to their knees, and facilitate regime-change, without any need for military intervention.

We can see that times have changed, but the “ostrich” with her head buried in the sand cannot see it. Massa’s dogs can bark as much as they want, it will not prevent our caravan from moving on.

There will be no regime-change in Venezuela without an American-led military intervention; and the Americans do not dare intervene militarily in Venezuela as long as Russia, Mexico and the Caribbean nations remain firmly opposed to it.

Just in case the US ambassador and his local “ostrich” continue to misjudge this country, as well as the rest of the Caribbean, a march of a hundred thousand or more to Marley Street in support of this Government’s courageous Venezuelan foreign policy may soon have to be organised.

IMRAN N HOSEIN, San Fernando