Path to Freedom: My Story of Perseverance

By Conrad Taylor

If you like nonfiction - which reads like a suspenseful novel, enlightens, and inspires - then multiple award-winning PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance is for you. Its author, upon graduating from West Point, unwittingly returned to a government which had become a dictatorship - overnight. Its leaders obsessed about him being a spy for the United States - because of West Point. The Smithsonian displays the historically-accurate, coming-of-age memoir in its Anacostia Museum Library.

Little about Conrad Taylor's upbringing in a vibrant remote mining town - deep in impenetrable tropical rain forests of Guyana, South America - prepared him for West Point. An extraordinary opportunity for most, attending the highly-regimented United States Military Academy was a life-changer for him. Enduring culture shock, navigating rude awakenings, and surviving the rigorous West Point Experience hardened Taylor for return to a government turned repressive, anti-American, and paranoid - overnight. Paranoid about regime change, leaders of the dictatorship were fearful about the young graduate being a spy for the United States - because of West Point. His was the impossible task of proving that he was not - or else!

PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance offers a ringside seat to the cultural trauma of emigration, the unique experience that is West Point, the personal side of superpower geopolitics, and the toxicity of ethnic politics. The narrative charts a sometimes-humorous journey of resilience, hope, survival, and love. Its revelations will be nostalgic for some, shocking to many, and enlightening for others. Its subtly-threaded love story will enchant - at the very least. PATH to FREEDOM has a simple proposition. Fly-or-die!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780984839216

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I grew up in a vibrant mining community deep in the impenetrable tropical rainforests of Guyana. Formerly British Guiana, the name Guyana is from the Amerindian word G-u-i-a-n-a that means Land of Many Waters.

The country, now officially The Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is located on the northeastern shoulder of South America near the equator. It is east of Venezuela, west of Suriname, and north of Brazil. Its closest Caribbean neighbor is Trinidad and Tobago. At 83,000 square miles, Guyana is roughly the size of Kansas.

British Guiana, Guyana’s name in 1831, comprised the Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo colonies. The Spanish, French, Dutch, and British fought for centuries over those territories. Guyana received home rule from the British in 1953. The country became independent in 1966.

The national landscape reflects the impact of colonial wars, numerous rebellions, labor strikes, and umpteen race-based riots. The capital is replete with assorted colonial-era architectures, for example.

Dense tropical forests carpet more than eighty percent of Guyana. Its interior forests are relatively virgin. According to New World Encyclopedia, Guyana boasts one of the highest rates of biodiversity in the world. It is home to rare animals such as jaguars, tapirs, and giant river otters.

The rivers and canals, which crisscross the country, serve as natural arteries of transportation and commerce. Rivers in most countries pale in size to those in Guyana. Rivers elsewhere are streams there.

Guyana is home to one of the highest waterfalls in the world, Kaieteur Falls. Kaieteur is nearly five times as high as Niagara Falls. At eight hundred and twelve feet high, it has a sheer drop of some 741 feet.

Guyana is culturally West Indian and a part of the Caribbean. It is the only West Indian country that is not an island and the only English-speaking country in South America.

Guyana’s three quarters of a million people live on less than ten percent of the land. Over one million Guyanese and their descendants live outside of Guyana.

Abundant natural resources blessed largely underdeveloped Guyana. An enviable literacy rate of over ninety percent gave it bragging rights in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. The country avoided the extremes of wealth and poverty that dogged many Third World countries, then. Its middle class was large.

***

The rough and tumble hometown of my childhood had a reputation for its fiercely independent residents. Those of us from Mackenzie wore that independence as a badge of distinction. We thought of ourselves as pioneers.

Located on the mighty Demerara River, sixty-five miles from the Atlantic coast, the free-spirited mining town shares the ecological diversity of the Amazon basin. Not a day went by without at least some rain in Mackenzie. It usually stopped as suddenly as it started.

The Mackenzie of my youth was an almost mythical place. There were no roads there from the outside world. Pterodactyls would have roamed its remote environs in ancient times. It could have been the setting for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic novel, The Lost World.

The region’s rugged terrain bore deep scars from decades of extensive open-pit bauxite mining. Mackenzie’s isolation presented many of the problems of frontier towns all over the world. Intractable diseases from insects and poor sanitation tested the grit of the townspeople early and often. I almost died of typhoid as an infant.

Mackenzie’s isolation also presented many of the opportunities of a frontier town. The area attracted hardy types seeking employment. It also attracted entrepreneurial types willing to subsist serving the economic, cultural, and spiritual needs of the miners. It was a bustling community.

At times delightfully hedonistic, Mackenzie was home to boisterous, fun-loving, hard-living, raucous types. At times quaintly reserved, Mackenzie was also home to those more inclined to a god-fearing, amiable, no-drama, family-oriented lifestyle. The colorful assortment made for a rich mix of childhood experiences.

My overall memories are of fun times in Mackenzie, tarnished only by an unsettling period of ethnic strife in the early ‘60s. I remember swimming in Kara Kara Creek for relief, fishing in the Demerara River for food, and hunting in the rainforest for birds. At Christmas, we roamed the inner sanctums of hilly jungles playing at Cowboys and Indians. We usually outfitted ourselves with toy guns, holsters, rifles, and other western gear to lend realism to our youthful fantasies. Those recollections are the rosy filtrate of my youth. Life then was idyllic.

I remember my hometown as a beautiful place in a once beautiful country where anything seemed possible. The many feats of engineering in evidence there infused a sense of pride. Gigantic earth-moving equipment, capable of relocating large hills in a matter of days, bolstered that sense. Gritty miners, skilled at overcoming stubborn natural and unnatural obstacles, operated them.

Mighty steam locomotives and oversized trucks labored around the clock hauling raw bauxite ore from the mines to the processing plants. Loaded with the designer dirt, they meandered lazily around town day and night, every day. I hardly noticed the omnipresent rumble of the railcars and the belch of the diesel trucks as they delivered their precious cargo. The sounds and smells of the pervasive activity added to the rich tapestry of life in Mackenzie. In most respects, the environment there was tremendously self-affirming.

Times seemed to be good and getting better in Guyana in the late ‘60s. By 1969, as I was leaving for college, some of its best and brightest were returning in droves. They were returning despite complaints of widespread voter fraud in the prior year’s general elections. Their return to fill important positions in the public and private sectors signaled optimism about Guyana’s future.

I left a Guyana that was making strides in many key aspects of life. That, despite the adeptness of the two main political parties, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and the People’s National Congress (PNC), at exploiting racial and ethnic differences between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese. Historically bad relations were improving – at least among my school-age peers.

Guyana was also developing a generally positive international reputation when Chaitram Singh, now a Professor, and I left to attend the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York. We left for America right out of high school - highly optimistic.

***

We returned to Guyana after West Point still full of hope and optimism. The country, however, was in a starkly different mood. By 1973, the typical-Guyanese, easy-going, happy-go-lucky, hospitable manner had disappeared. Gloom had hijacked the national psyche.

Guyana’s historically democratic system had succumbed to a new political order during my schooling abroad. A power-hungry handful controlled virtually all political, civil, and military affairs. The people of Guyana had few means for exacting accountability from its politicians. They were practically powerless in changing their government because ruling parties routinely rigged elections. In fact, Guyana had completed one of its many infamously fraudulent elections shortly before my return from West Point. The PNC, the ruling party then, had won another term, consolidating its power in a blunt, brazen fashion.

I returned to a country that I barely recognized. The government no longer tolerated dissent. It used blacklists to track and intimidate dissenters. The government no longer tolerated an independent press. It treated free thinkers as irritants and agitators.

A brain drain was already well underway in 1973, replacing the brain flood that I had left four years earlier. The alluring light of hope and optimism had dimmed. Emerging totalitarianism had diminished freedoms that Guyanese once took for granted.

***

This coming-of-age story describes my odyssey over bumpy, twisting, ever-changing terrain. It describes a rude awakening as my journey traversed between underdeveloped Guyana and highly developed America.

This memoir shares the confluence of events that led me to West Point; the transformative experiences there; the consequences of my ill-advised return home; and the circumstances of my sudden retreat.

For context, I include a discussion of the political changes in Guyana that made my West Point education appear threatening. I describe an impractical geopolitical shift that derailed my country’s once-promising future, and made mine a casualty.

I have written this true story in a narrative style. My best recollection guides it. I have used very little re-imagined dialogue to minimize excursions into fiction. I have also tried to be historically accurate throughout.

In the words of the malapropism-prone philosopher, Yogi Berra, When you get to a fork in the road, take it. Yogi’s fatalistic statement encapsulates how I dealt with uncertainty at times during my journey. His words aptly describe my actions at several points along the way.

Join me as I retrace my circuitous PATH to FREEDOM!

CHAPTER ONE

DéJà Vu

I was a fifteen-year-old student at Mackenzie High School when the upheaval started. It was Sunday, May 24, 1964. I was doing homework at our oversized all-purpose table in an undersized dining room.

The series of explosions sounded very close, though they were not. The thunderously loud noise had come from across the river. It beckoned with an urgency that caused me to rush to our back porch. An unforgettable sight assaulted my anxious gaze. There, in the distance, flames illuminated the Wismar skyline with mesmerizing ferocity. The sight signaled mayhem.

My hometown assumed an ugly visage that day when ethnic violence suddenly erupted on the Wismar side of the Demerara River. Angry mobs of Afro-Guyanese took to the streets of Wismar setting fire to several businesses and homes. A brutal, divisive uprising known as the Wismar Massacre was in progress. The riot left nine Indo-Guyanese residents dead and their businesses and homes burned.

Though I was a carefree, teenage high school student then, I was aware of the rising tensions in many parts of the country through daily press reports. Still, the speed with which civil ethnic harmony had morphed into vengeful racial animus shocked me.

At first, the reports were only about the growing restlessness of rice and sugar cane workers in the rural areas. Then, it was about the crippling strikes of civil servants in Georgetown. Soon, allegations followed about CIA involvement in regime change.

Initially, the racial confrontations between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese that plagued other parts of the country steered clear of the Wismar-Mackenzie-Christianburg area. The Indo minority and Afro majority there had lived in harmony for years in my remote community. Agitators from elsewhere changed that overnight.

Many were already dead and much property damaged when British peacekeeping forces, which Queen Elizabeth II of England had sent to restore order, arrived. Eventually, the troops successfully separated the warring factions and quelled the disturbances with a display of overwhelming force. Contingents of the British Grenadier Guards and the Green Jackets erected checkpoints and enforced curfews. Motorized convoys and armed foot soldiers patrolled the streets day and night.

I remember soldiers barking orders and kicking down doors to ensure compliance with curfew rules. I remember them banging loudly on our door because our lights were on during blackout hours. The security forces arrested for such violations. Fortunately, we were not.

The violence drove many Indo families out of the predominantly Afro Wismar-Christianburg-Mackenzie community. Fearing for their survival, many Guyanese of East Indian descent simply abandoned their homes and fled. They became fugitives with frightening rapidity.

The contentious events weakened or severed many long-standing close relationships. Harmonious neighbors one moment, the ethnic groups were estranged the next. The worst of the violence occurred three days before the British troops arrived. The brutality that characterized the experience was scary and unforgettable.

When I think of the Wismar Massacre, I think of Vilma Bissoon. We had been classmates from kindergarten to high school. The Bissoons lived in Wismar where most of the burnings, lootings, and beatings had occurred. The senseless riots victimized the Bissoons and many other innocent Indo-Guyanese. They fled Mackenzie, in haste, never to return. Vilma and I would not meet again until years later at St. Joseph’s High School in Georgetown.

The destructive incident was the first telling blow to my idyllic way of life. The second occurred in July 1964 when an explosion on board the Sun Chapman, a passenger boat, killed thirty-eight Guyanese of African descent. The opposition party, the People’s National Congress (PNC), accused the governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and its Indo-Guyanese followers of sabotaging the Sun Chapman in retaliation for the Wismar Massacre. The crime remains unsolved.

My front row seat to the senseless carnage, which resulted from neighbor turning against neighbor, left an indelibly frightening impression. The rapid devolution of civility made me acutely aware of the lethality of race and politics in Guyana.

***

A radio broadcast during my drive home that January 1977 afternoon had triggered the painfully graphic recollections above. It was responsible for conjuring the horrific memories of the polarizing Wismar Massacre and the counterproductive Sun Chapman tit for tat. On the surface, the lead into the report was old hat. It described yet another clash between the ruling PNC government and the opposition PPP. The two parties had switched roles many years earlier. Their rancor, however, had a more ominous tone than recent past. Tensions surrounding a teachers’ strike in Corentyne was intensifying. The drive-time news reporter confirmed that.

The circumstances were reminiscent of precursor events to Guyana’s racially-charged, strife-heavy 1960s. The parallels were alarming. The same political actors who had led the nation into industrial unrest, social upheaval, and deadly violence, then, were the chief protagonists. They were still effective at fanning flames of discord with the potential to devolve rapidly into mayhem.

I spent the rest of the drive home from work pondering the implications of the latest developments in Corentyne that the newscaster had reported. Distressingly vivid memories of violent turmoil in Guyana’s past informed my worry. I feared an outcome beyond a war of words.

Here we go again, I thought anxiously, as I noted the antagonistic stances of the two political parties over the Corentyne Teachers’ strike.

Innocent citizens were likely to become casualties of the shenanigans. My family and I could easily become prime targets. The vitriol struck a chord of urgency. Time was of the essence. It was déjà vu all over again!

CHAPTER TWO

ENTERPRISING MOVE

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

A Well-known Proverb

GEORGE and Hyacinth Taylor taught me, by example, how to navigate the vicissitudes of life’s pathways towards a better tomorrow. My parents and I moved lock, stock, and barrel from Canje, Berbice to a remote bauxite mining area. A baby then, I was far too young to appreciate their enterprising nature and resilience in doing so. They relocated to the hinterlands for better opportunities, despite its harsh conditions, and persevered after my father was unable to find work in the mines.

The upper Demerara River region, to which my parents moved in 1950, comprised the three communities of Wismar, Mackenzie, and Christianburg. Most called the trio Mackenzie. The Government of Guyana officially unified them as a township in 1970. It renamed the area, Linden, in tribute to Prime Minister Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham. The town of between 30,000 and 50,000 in population became the second-largest city in Guyana. Old timers, like me, still refer to Linden as Mackenzie.

Mackenzie first rose to prominence when the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) secured leases to bauxite deposits there in the early 1900s. Alcoa mined the holdings through the Demerara Bauxite Company Limited (DEMBA) from 1917 until 1929, when it ceded control of the subsidiary to the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan). Guyanese from all regions aspired to work with Alcan’s DEMBA in Mackenzie.

***

DEMBA was the largest employer in Mackenzie, by far. A bauxite processing plant operated on its south end and an alumina refinery plant on its north. Mackenzie was a company town in the tradition of remote communities with a dominant employer. It was DEMBA’s town.

The company provided health care, food, clothing, housing, security, and transportation. DEMBA established grocery and dry goods stores, community centers, employee housing, and other facilities for its employees. It owned Mackenzie’s only hospital and neighborhood health clinics.

DEMBA assigned employee housing based on job levels. It reserved Mackenzie’s best housing area, Richmond Hill, for its primarily British and Canadian expatriate managers.

DEMBA assigned the next best housing, Watooka, to its growing number of returning Guyanese professionals. Most attended universities in Britain, Canada, Australia, and other British Commonwealth countries. They personified the value of education. I wanted to be like them.

Trades supervisors, who were almost all locals, were next. They lived in two-family or single-family housing located in an area between the bauxite and alumina plants.

Tradesmen, such as electricians and pipe fitters, lived in long ranges (four to five units) with communal toilets. A lucky few lived in single-family houses in a section next to the alumina plant called Retrieve. We would become one of the lucky few.

DEMBA housed unmarried employees in Bachelor’s Quarters commonly called BQs. However, it did not provide housing for laborers and non-employees. They lived across the river in Wismar or Christianburg. They were last in the pecking order.

CHAPTER THREE

HUMBLE ROOTS

MY parents relentlessly emphasized education. To them, it was a major stepping stone to a better future. They believed a good one to be of enduring value.

George and Hyacinth Taylor encouraged my siblings and me with more than words. They backed us with deeds. My parents unselfishly sacrificed their needs to fund our education, believing it to be a gift that no one could ever take away.

My sister, Della, graduated from Pace University on her way to vice presidential positions at institutions such as Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Merrill Lynch. My brother, Ian, won a DEMBA engineering scholarship to McMaster University before founding a Christian Ministry in Canada. My sister, Carmel, added a college degree, after age fifty, and after putting both of two daughters through college. She graduated while her youngest was a college