Why mashramani celebrations are encouraged in schools

The Mashrmani events will not include an adult float parade on February 23 as is customary. National School of Dance students during their presentation at the Mash launch. Other competitions are carded for the Steel bands in the Minor and Large band categories and masquerade.

On February 23 there will be a grand Flag Raising Ceremony. Golden Jubilee planning on track Meanwhile, the minister reminded those gathered that next year, Guyana turns 50 and the idea is to have activities span the entire year.

That being said Minister Henry told those gathered that Mashramani celebration in is part of the jubilee year of celebration. At 50, we come closer to wisdom about the people and things that are truly important to us, even as we acknowledge that we can live to and still not have all the answers to life. Amerindians were the first to be enslaved, lasting until The first enslaved Africans to arrive were Akan from the Gold Coast, arrived in Essequibo around Powerful British planters, many of whom served in Parliament, demanded and received compensation and assistance to acquire replacement workers—indentured servants from Portugal, China and the largest group came from India.

Then-British Guiana received more than a quarter million Indian indentured workers—among the highest in the British Empire. Thirty percent are descendants of African slaves. About As the author and journalist Bahadur reported in a July dispatch for Foreign Policy magazine:. The [PPP] party seemed poised for an undoing of its own making…Critics charged that Guyana had become a corrupt narco-state under PPP rule and, even more unnervingly, that the government either tacitly condoned or actively sponsored a death squad run by a drug lord now in U.

Local government elections had not been held in two decades. Faced with a no-confidence vote in parliament last November, Ramotar simply suspended the body.

It was under this political context that the Mashramani festival took place in February 23, Once in power, Burnham vowed to use the authority of the state to actively affirm non-European culture and local identity. Burnham asserted cultural leadership in the region by hosting the very first Pan-Caribbean cultural exchange, Carifesta, in He vowed that the new government would create conditions for Caribbean artists to stay and thrive rather than migrate abroad for recognition.

He acknowledged the cultural influence of Europe, but warned against following its lead on cultural matters Cambridge Guyanese music was influenced heavily by the porous boundaries to Venezuela and Brazil, which gave the Latin influence on melody and rhythms, Seymour wrote.

The task ahead for newly Independent Guyanese was to create a new, post-Independence aesthetic. The Cuffy monument was erected by the noted sculptor and painter Philip Moore. In a nod to the Indo-Guyanese majority, Burnham commissioned the Enmore Martyrs memorial to commemorate a group of protesting workers who were shot and killed in by police protecting a sugar estate.

The regime privileged African culture and marginalized non-African ethnic groups, including Amerindians and Guyanese descended from India and smaller groups from China. The means of financing a seat National Cultural Center in was particularly fraught: Burnham used the funds held by colonial authorities in escrow to send back Indian indentured workers who completed their contracts.

The practice of indenture had ended in , so it was highly unlikely that original workers would exercise that right to return. Further, as Cambridge notes, to many Indo-Guyanese took cues in matters of high culture from their motherland in India. However, in naming Mashramani, some Guyanese accused the government of cultural appropriation of the Arawak tradition.

This continued to be a source of controversy with some respondents in It's a celebration of work accomplished and neighborliness. While widely held, this sentiment is an act of erasure of the Indigenous population that inhabited these islands and continents long before the European conquests. As mentioned earlier, in continental Guyana, the population of indigenous Amerindians who survived the brutality of slavery, genocide and colonialism and continued to live as centuries of their ancestors did in the rainforest hinterland remained a sizeable and influential political block.

Burnham declared Mashramani a celebration of freedom from colonial chains as well as the collective work of many. A procession of floats featuring hand-built structures play with popular music on loud speakers, some steel bands, and various groups parading through the streets of Georgetown.

Cambridge notes that other influences include the Christmas masquerade tradition, religious processions, and the New York West Indian Labor Day parades established in the s. From the beginning of his rule, Burnham faced internal pressures from Marxist anti-imperial critics including Indo-Guyanese Jagan and Black Power radicals such as the historian Walter Rodney Quinn Under internal pressure from the left, Burnham nationalized the bauxite and sugar industries. As sugar prices fell precipitously, devastating its coffers, Guyana sought other global allies.

Cuba, Soviet Union, China could provide limited help to Guyana. As part of the plan, Guyana banned food imports such as apple, wheat, and flour. Instead of relying on wheat imports, Burnham ordered Guyanese to buy cassava bread created in local Amerindian villages, a policy designed to boost indigenous markets and culture.

It is during this period in which calypso competitions—once a bedrock of fiery political critique—began to shift toward praise music of the ruling government. Carnival musicians performed praise singing for Duvalier and musicians told Averill of performing during carnival festivities under fear for their lives. In the Haitian carnival, Duvalier created four floats symbolizing important government projects.

But most of the rest of basic structure of Mashramani did not change. Under the Indian-dominated PPP, the political function of Mashramani continued to be a political tool of cultural patronage and control. So how to interpret the Mashramani scene that opened this essay? For the constituent, it may be an authenticity test toward the leader, to assess how much he truly embraces a tradition commonly associated with the Afro-Guyanese population.

For the Indo-Guyanese president, it is a bald attempt to court voters beyond his Indian base, to show he is willing to tango politically. Thus the dance between the Indo-Guyanese president and the Afro-Guyanese constituent he is courting would be a spectacle they observe with some ironic distance even as they tolerate the yellow rope around them by government officials.

The morning the sky was overcast, but the sun blazed through the clouds and reflected off the bright Mashramani costumes: fluorescent spandex, wide wire hoop skirts, rainbow veils, translucent wings, gold headdresses, gold paint splattered on bodies.

Onlookers populated a very wide median on Church Street, as well as the sidelines holding umbrellas to block the equatorial sun.

A large Chinese flag engulfed a tiny Guyana flag before a red backdrop. These were not the small group of Chinese who came as indentured sugar workers after the abolition of slavery, but an entirely new group of immigrants, many of whom have come to build the Marriott Hotel and other major infrastructure projects.

As I mentioned earlier was also concerns about the Chinese influence when the PPP government announced a deal to lease ancestral Amerindian land to the Chinese investors. The racial composition of the crowds was mixed. I saw a small number of Amerindian families looking on, and even more Guyanese of African and Indian descent wearing Amerindian-style cacique feathered headdress. There were quite a few Afro-Guyanese revelers, as they still dominated the urban Georgetown population.

A majority messaging of the floats was dedicated to iconography of PPP leaders, and outright election sloganeering. There were no hand-painted panels of the Supreme Leaders. However, echoes of the North Korean influence remained visible.

A huge yellow semi-truck bore a banner with the names of the civil engineering government contractors H. Plastered across the front of the semi-truck was an enlarged photo of President Donald Ramotar perhaps 10 feet tall.

Some of the young people on the floats wore business attire, others wore cricket uniforms alongside still more monumental-scale photographs of PPP candidates.

I was struck by the possessive ownership mentality among many government officials I encountered. This was evident by the yellow rope that encircled the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs procession. When I politely declined, he slipped me a card with his personal cell phone number on it.

Because these rituals. Although one might have been captivated mostly by the colours of the floats and costumes, and the adorable look of the children, the messages were still well received.

The parade took off from Independence Park formerly the Parade Ground , as is customary, and made its way into the National Park after parading through the city streets. The procession made its way east along Middle Street, then north into Camp Street western carriage , east into Lamaha Street and finally north into Albert Street and then into the National Park.

This year also saw schools from the various regions coming out to participate in the event. Despite the heat of the sun, they were energetic as they danced to the music blasted from the speakers closest to them. As for the teachers, they too were very active. It ensures participation of parents and guardians.

It promotes competitiveness and social cohesion from a tender age. It builds creativity and guarantees well-rounded children.