Cherishing Cheddi.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Inter-American System - Activist Cheddi Jagan

In the early 1960s, Washington considered him Public Enemy No. 2, a dangerous Marxist following in the footsteps of Fidel Castro. Thirty years later, Guyana's Cheddi Jagan was being hailed by President Bill Clinton as a crusader for democracy and human rights.

And now, the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre has opened its doors in Georgetown to honor "Cheddi"--the eloquent dentist who led British Guiana to independence in 1966, headed the country's main opposition party for years, and finally served as Guyana's president from 1992 until his death in 1997 at the age of seventy-nine.

"We felt that this would be the best tribute we could make to him, to honor his ideas and what he stood for, as well as all his writing," says Jagan"s widow, Janet Rosenberg Jagan. "The center puts on computer all his papers and things related to his many years in the political forefront of Guyana. This allows students to do research about him and about the independence struggle, which was an important period in our history."

Janet Jagan, who became president of Guyana when her husband died, resigned three years ago for health reasons. Now eighty-one, she spends every morning at the headquarters of the People's Progressive Party, which she and her husband founded in 1950 in order to rid Guyana of British colonial rule. Much of her time is spent these days raising money for the research center, which was officially opened on March 22, 2000, by President Bharrat Jagdeo.

The Cheddi Jagan Research Centre is located at Red House, a rambling wooden structure on Georgetown's High Street that was the official residence of British Guiana's colonial secretaries, as well as the home of the Jagans from 1961 to 1964, when Jagan was the country's premier.

At the entrance, visitors are greeted with a larger-than-life, black-and-white portrait of the charismatic Jagan making a speech. The photograph is framed by two flags--that of Guyana on the left, and the black, red, and yellow flag of the PPP on the right. Dozens of additional photographs line the walls, depicting stages of Jagan's life from the time when he was a struggling dental student at Northwestern University in Chicago, to his civil wedding (neither his nor his wife's family approved of the marriage), to his days as leader of the opposition, and finally to his inauguration as president of Guyana.

From the early days of his dental practice, which he established in 1943, Jagan questioned established standards and norms...