A great injustice to Cheddi Jagan: The Kennedy administration and British Guiana: 1961--1963

This dissertation studies the John F. Kennedy administration's overthrow of the British Guiana government of Cheddi Jagan before that colony gained its independence in May 1966. Former Guianese Premier Jagan claims in his book The West on Trial (1966), that imperialists Britain and the United States collaborated to overthrow his democratically elected government. This dissertation provides support to that assertion.; After visiting with Jagan in October 1961, President Kennedy concluded that he was a Castro-type communist, and therefore unacceptable to Washington to lead British Guiana to its independence. The Kennedy administration feared that Castro and Jagan, young, charismatic and revolutionary figures, would threaten the stability of the region. Washington decided to destroy these regional rebels. The study uses the most recently declassified documents from the John F. Kennedy Archives to argue that instead of racial animosity within British Guiana, it was the Anglo-American collaboration together with Jagan's local opponents that caused his downfall. British Intelligence together with the CIA and the AFL-CIO worked together with Jagan's opponents and the British Guiana Trade Union Movement to bring down Jagan's regime.; The study differs from any other contemporary work on this subject. Its uniqueness begins in the personal experiences of the author himself, a Guyanese who lived through the ordeal of this era. As a young man during this period of upheaval, the author brings to his work the tensions, frustrations, and sufferings of Guianese masses.; The study concludes that Jagan was not a communist, and that Kennedy erred in his judgment of the Guianese leader. Kennedy's White House assistant Arthur Schlesinger subsequently in 1990 apologized for his boss and called it "a great injustice".