From Chicago to Guyana: Janet Rosenberg Jagan takes over as president.

• Author: Steif, William

When Janet Rosalie Rosenberg was born at Michael Reese Hospital on Chicago's South Side, the odds were a zillion to one that she'd one day be president of Guyana, South America's only English-speaking nation.

Yet when the seventy-seven-year-old, who describes herself as "an old fuddy-duddy," scored a decisive victory in the elections this past December, it came as no surprise to the people of Guyana. She has devoted more than fifty years of her life to this Idaho-sized country, which won independence from England in 1966.

Throughout her five decades of involvement in Guyanese politics, she and her husband, Cheddi Jagan, were jailed for their activities, won high elective offices, and along the way had to fend off both the CIA and Britain's MI5.

In October 1992, Cheddi became president of Guyana. He served until March 6, 1996, when he died of heart failure. Prime Minister Samuel A. Hinds then became president and named Janet Jagan prime minister.

Now she is president.

Janet Jagan's father, Charles Rosenberg, worked as a plumbing and heating salesman on Chicago's South Side. The Depression and anti-Semitism took their toll. "Business was awful," she recalls. "Father couldn't make a good living." But he did spark her interest in the world. "My father took me to the public library once a week," she says. "He got me reading a lot."

Over the years, people have often asked her whether she is related to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953 for being Communist spies. She emphatically denies any familial relationship. "It makes me angry," she says. "People say that maliciously, but we're not related. Look in the New York or Chicago phone books, and you'll find a couple of pages of Rosenbergs." Janet's family moved to Detroit during the Depression, enabling her to go to Detroit University, Wayne State, and Michigan State.

Janet Rosenberg's interest in Guyana began in 1942, when she was a nursing student at Chicago's Cook County Hospital. One night at a party, she met a dental student from Northwestern University. He was a young man from British Guiana named Cheddi Jagan.

Janet's parents strongly opposed her marriage to Cheddi, and his parents didn't approve, either. But that didn't stop them.

Cheddi returned to Port Mourant, British Guiana, to set up his dental practice in the fall of 1943, using second-hand equipment he'd bought in the United States. Janet stayed in Chicago a few months, earning money as a proofreader for the American Medical Association. She arrived in British Guiana just before Christmas that year.

The couple quickly became involved in leftwing politics. "When the sugar plantation workers had problems, they always called on Cheddi," Janet Jagan recalls. Soon the couple started to participate in the trade-union movement. "We met the general secretary of affairs of the British Guiana Labor Union and formed a political-affairs committee. In 1946, there was a bauxite workers' strike, and in 1947, the British-controlled parliament restricted suffrage. A lot of workers came to Cheddi and wanted him to run for a parliament seat. Cheddi won; I lost in another district. Cheddi was a great success. He was...