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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
As the 1970s drew to a close, Forbes Burnham (1923-85), Guyana's controversial leader of 21 years, received Pyongyang's assistance in importing the North Korean tradition of Mass Games, establishing them as a major facet of the nation's cultural and political life during the 1980-92 period. The current study documents this episode in Guyanese history and seeks to explain why the Burnham regime prioritized such an experiment in a time of austerity and crisis, its ideological foundations, and how Guyanese interpreted and responded to Mass Games.
I argue that the Burnham regime's enthusiasm for Mass Games can in large part be explained by their adherence to a particular tradition of socialist thought which holds education and culture as the foundation of development. While such a conception of socialism has roots in the early Soviet Union and, in the case of Guyana, was greatly influenced by the North Korean model, it was also shaped by local and regional contexts.
The deep aversion of parents to their children losing class time to Mass Games training, along with ethnic division and Indo-Guyanese hostility to the Afro-Guyanese dominated government in particular, proved the central obstacles to widespread public support for the project. Despite these contradictions, Mass Games, which took on a local flavour distinct from its North Korean progenitor, did in fact resonate with those who believed in Burnham's promise of a brighter, socialist future, while also appealing to a certain widespread longing with in Guyanese culture for a more “disciplined” society.
1 “Mass Games will be stupendous affair,” New Nation, 27 January 1980.
2 George K. Danns, Domination and Power in Guyana: A Study of the Police in a Third World Context (New Brunswick, USA and London: Transaction Books, 1982) 108.
3 Ralph R. Premdas, “Guyana: socialism and destabilization in the Western hemisphere,” Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 3, Social Change (September 1979): 25-43.
4 Italics in the original.
5 Forbes Burnham, A Destiny to Mould: Selected Discourses by the Prime Minister of Guyana, C.A. Nascimento and R.A. Burrows, ed. (Trinidad and Jamaica: Longman Caribbean, 1970) 70.
6 Forbes Burnham, Declaration of Sophia (Georgetown, Guyana, 1974), PNC Collection, National Archives, Georgetown, Guyana.
7 Timothy Ashby, The Bear in the Back Yard: Moscow's Caribbean Strategy (Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1987) 143-145.
8 Tyrone Ferguson, To Survive Sensibly or to Court Heroic Death: Management of Guyana's Political Economy, 1966 -1985 (Georgetown, Guyana: Public Affairs Consulting Enterprise, 1999), 251-255.
9 Ashby, 145-146.
10 Gail A. Eadie and Denise M. Grizzell, “China's Foreign Aid, 1975-78” The China Quarterly, No. 77 (March 1979), pp. 217-234.
11 Ibid.
12 Charles K. Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013) 168.
13 John Chay, “North Korea: Relations with the Third World,” in Jae Kyu Park and Jung Gun Kim, eds., The Politics of North Korea (Seoul: Institute for Far Eastern Studies, 1979), pp. 263-276.
14 Chay, p. 268-269, 273-274.
15 “After 34 years the struggle continues,” New Nation (Georgetown, Guyana) 1 July 1984.
16 “Pak Song-Chol Speaks at Banquet for Guyanese Vice President,” Pyongyang Domestic Service in Korean, reprinted in Korean Affairs Report (US Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA) 21 May 1982.
17 Ibid.
18 Hamilton Green, interview with the author, 11 December 2010.
19 Rudiger Frank, “The Arirang Mass Games of North Korea,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 11, Issue 46, No. 2 (December 2013).
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Lisa Burnett, “Let Morning Shine over Pyongyang: The Future-Oriented Nationalism of North Korea's Arirang Mass Games,” Asian Music, Vol 44, No 1 (Winter/Spring 2013): 3-32.
23 Kim Jong-il, On Furthering Mass Games Gymnastics: Talk to Mass Gymnastics Producers, April 11, 1987 (Pyongyang: Foreign languages Publishing House, 2006), 1.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 1-2.
30 Ibid., 2.
31 Ibid., 2-3.
32 New Nation, 27 January 1980.
33 “The People Who Made Mass Games Possible,” New Nation, 16 March 1980.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Fr Andrew Morrison, SJ, Justice: The struggle for democracy in Guyana, 1952-1992 (Guyana: self-published, 1998), 106.
38 George Simon, interview with the author, 30 April 2012.
39 New Nation, 27 January 1980.
40 Patricia Cambridge, interview with the author, 29 July 2013.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Simon, 30 April 2012.
44 Ibid.
45 This was the title of one of the PNC's earliest and most central development goals: national self-sufficiency in food, clothing and housing production. The original target date was 1976, but as this proved overly ambitious FCH morphed into an open-ended campaign throughout the Burnham era.
46 New Nation, 16 March 1980.
47 Raschid Osman, “Mass Games a resounding success…and spectacular,” The Chronicle, 29 February 1980.
48 “The People Who Made Mass Games Possible,” New Nation, 13 April 1980.
49 Ibid.
50 “Mass Games at Albion: a truly spectacular affair,” New Nation, 17 June 1984.
51 “MASH – our biggest mass participation event,” New Nation, 12 January 1986.
52 Yolanda Marshall, interview with the author, 2 November 2010.
53 “Thousands Thrilled At Mass Games Spectacle,” Guyana Chronicle, 24 February 1985.
54 MASH – our biggest mass participation event,“ New Nation, 12 January 1986.
55 “Mass Games '87 to highlight Guyana's beauty,” New Nation, 17 August 1986.
56 Such a tribute to Jagan, leader of the opposition, would have been unthinkable in Burnham's time, and reflected the new direction being initiated by Hoyte.
57 Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow(1884–1958), dock worker who founded the British Guiana Labour Union (BGLU) in 1917, the first trade union in the Caribbean.
58 “Preparations for Mass Games '88 underway,” New Nation, 20 December 1987.
59 On Guyana's economic challenges during the Burnham era, see Hope (1985), Jeffery & Baber (1986).
60 Clive Y. Thomas, “State Capitalism in Guyana: an Assessment of Burnham's Cooperative Socialist Republic,” in Crisis in the Caribbean, Fitzroy Ambursley and Robin Cohen, ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983): 32-36.
61 Percy Hintzen, The Cost of Regime Survival: Racial mobilization, elite domination and control of the state in Guyana and Trinidad (Cambridge: University Press, 1989), 93-94.
62 In Burnham-era Guyanese parlance, a slacker.
63 Taken from various issues of New Nation during 1979-81.
64 Burnham (1970), 61-62.
65 Ferguson, 158.
66 Kim Il Sung, Works, Vol 20 (Pyongyang: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1984), 451-452.
67 “National Cultural Construction is an urgent question in the independent development of newly emerging countries,” Kulloja, No. 12, (December 1983): 55-60.
68 Ferguson, 158.
69 A number of scholars have discussed a historic tendency of the middle-class leadership of the Caribbean Left to gravitate towards a particularly elitist variety of vanguardism. See James 1962, Wilson 1986, Mars 1998.
70 Ferguson, 189.
71 Burnham (1974), 26.
72 Ferguson, 332.
73 “A Mass Games Perspective,” New Nation, 2 February 1980.
74 Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 94.
75 Paraphrased by McDonald on the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation radio program Viewpoint, 22 November 1988. The author thanks Ian McDonald for sharing the written transcript of the broadcast.
76 Jenny Persaud, letter to the editor, Stabroek News 30 November 1988.
77 Janet Forte, letter to the editor, Stabroek News, 16 Nov 1988.
78 “Where national service beckons we follow,” government advertisement, 1980, PNC Collection, National Archives, Georgetown, Guyana.
79 Radio program Viewpoint, Guyana Broadcasting Corporation, 22 November 1988. The author thanks Ian McDonald for sharing the written transcript of the broadcast.
80 “Mass Games and McDonald's Quackery,” New Nation, 27 November 1988.
81 Ibid.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Radio program Viewpoint, Guyana Broadcasting Corporation, 6 December 1988.
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid.
89 Green, 11 December 2010.
90 Simon, 30 April 2012.
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