أفريقيا بالوكالة.. كيف أصبحت غيانا مركزًا لحركات المناهضة للاستعمار

How Guyana Became a Center for Anti-colonial Pan-Africanist Movements Located between Brazil, Venezuela, and Suriname, Guyana is the third-smallest sovereign nation in continental South America, and one of the youngest. Originally a Dutch colony, Guyana remained under British rule from the late 18th century until it gained independence in 1966 and became a republic in 1970. With the exception of the 1978 Jonestown Incident, in which followers of cult leader Jim Jones died, Guyana has remained largely marginal in the mainstream geopolitical landscape. However, for a generation of black revolutionaries from around the world, Guyana was a vital center of Pan-African activism. The country was particularly attractive to veterans of the American civil rights movement who sought alternative places to build prosperous post-colonial African nation-states. In this first comprehensive historical book of its kind examining Guyana's pivotal role in the international anti-colonial black liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, historian Russell Rickford traces the history of African Americans who traveled to Guyana to work with, learn from, and coach Guyanese politicians, activists, and international figures in the long struggle for black freedom. Encouraged by Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, they enthusiastically responded to the invitation to move to Guyana to establish new cooperative settlements. Rickford narrates in an interesting way the appeal of Guyana and its promises to black Americans, along with the challenges they faced when their ideology collided with the lived reality, especially the political reality, after arriving there.