The Indelible Red Stain: The destruction of a tropical paradise: A cold war story

In 1950 Dr Cheddi Jagan began a movement to transform British Guiana into a Marxist state in South America and soon allied with the USSR in the Cold War then gaining steam. The failure of that dream and the flight of over 400,000 people to North America and Britain are almost forgotten tragedies even among the Diaspora. The Indelible Red Stain – this massive two-volume blockbuster--by Guyanese doctor and political insider Dr Mohan Ragbeer revives the story. His masterful opus will probably become the keystone to understanding the destruction of British Guiana, its bloody race war, and the massive exodus. Dr Mohan Ragbeer writes brilliantly in a style seldom seen from the Caribbean, with encyclopaedic knowledge of history, culture, medicine, forestry, sociology and more, coupled with an elephantine memory of events and discussions of the fifties and sixties. The background is a dangerous river trip in 1961 into remote forests by a multiracial forensic team to investigate a murder. The tales of witnesses to political events contribute to the grim story of the usurpation of another group's political agenda by Dr Jagan and Marxist comrades including Forbes Burnham, a future dictator. Their inept and stubborn pursuit of an unrealistic goal against sage advice, beguiled by an adoring and uninformed following, culminated in the fall of British Guiana, Dr Jagan’s disgrace and the shattering of many dreams, hopes and lives. The historical facts and the roles of international agencies--MI5, CIA, KGB and others--are as well-known as the ending of Salvador Allende’s socialist regime in Chile, but this book corrects errors and is a stunning insider exposé of Jagan’s bungling of government and his role in the ruin of Guyana and the sad fate of its people when it fell to the firebrand Burnham. Ragbeer comes from a family of early and faithful Jagan backers. He gives us first-hand and witnessed accounts of new material, particularly discussions with businessmen and farmers—Jagan’s major financiers—whose pragmatic development plans that would have realised a land of plenty. Jagan agreed privately but ignored and even lambasted them publicly as exploiters! He remained stuck in his Soviet rut and emerges like an emperor with no clothes, his body covered with an indelible red rash. Far from being a martyr betrayed by racists and imperialists, a view that has become an industry, Jagan is shown as a failure without original ideas, a poor judge of people who unwisely rejected Kennedy’s hand and swallowed Moscow’s fanciful promises, blindly believing in Soviet power and reach. His 1953 flaunting of Communism in the face of MI5 was reckless and against all advice. This book forces us to ask tough questions: what did Jagan really achieve? How does he compare with his contemporaries? The answers lie within will no doubt stain his hallowed reputation. The Indelible Red Stain is a brutally honest revaluation of Jagan’s place in history, and a caution that aspiring nations must be ever vigilant and critical of those who promise heaven. While personally honest, unlike most politicians, Jagan’s bungling of his was the tsunami that uprooted the lives of hundreds of thousands. The book will probably infuriate Jagan’s emotional supporters, but they too must face the fact of his ineptitude and the neglect of his people that drenched Guyana with the stubborn stains of blood and fire. This book is long and full of anecdotes, facts and comments by those who placed so much faith in one man; it is a riveting read aimed to inform host nations, diasporal Guyanese, Caribbean peoples and all those who need to see how easy it is to destroy a nation while pretending the very best intentions. It is fascinating and painful to see how a land of promise can become a waste-land, how a tropical paradise can become paradise lost. Mohan Ragbeer has put 50 years of his life into creating this book; it is well worth the wait. (Jagessar)