E/CN.4/2004/18/Add.1 page 10 managed, during their various terms in office, to devise a political programme or policy that might encourage interaction between the communities or promote a vision of the nation transcending the racial divides and highlighting shared values and aspirations. 1. Political dynamic of ethnic polarization 18. Some historians, among them Kean Gibson, see Guyana’s political and social life as marked by three cycles of racial oppression: first, the European oppression from 1580 to 1966, then the Afro-Guyanese oppression from 1966 to 1992; and since 1992 it has been the Indo-Guyanese who have held sway over Guyanese society. It is certainly true that Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese politicians have played on the fears of the communities as a means of attaining their electoral and hegemonic ends. 19. As independence approached, the Afro-Guyanese, who, as a matter of survival and adaptation, had embraced Christianity and obtained a European education, were recruited in large numbers into the civil service, business and the fledgling industrial sector. The Indo-Guyanese, who, having held onto their religious traditions, were excluded from the predominantly Christian British education system for a time, managed to improve their standard of living through rice farming and trade. The Afro-Guyanese were in the majority in the urban centres and the Indo-Guyanese in the rural areas. Thus the country’s two main racial groups, with their legacy of resentment, mistrust, prejudice and fear of subjection, settled into a cyclical struggle to win and remain in power as the ultimate means of survival and self-preservation. 20. United at least in their nationalism against the colonial occupation, the leaders of the two groups did in fact make certain attempts at political rapprochement in the pursuit of a shared vision of the country’s interests. Indeed, the PPP, founded in 1950, was originally a multiracial party led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, of Indian descent, his wife, Janet Jagan, from the United States the daughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg - and Linden Forbes Burnham, of African descent. The PPP won the first parliamentary elections with 18 out of the 24 seats. By an internal arrangement, Burnham became the leader of the party while Jagan became leader of Parliament. Disagreements between Jagan and Burnham arising out of their power struggle split the PPP and led to Burnham’s creation of the PNC in 1955. Both parties adopted racial rhetoric in order to sway the sympathies of their main voter base in the communities. The PPP took up the Hindi rallying cry “apan jhaat” (“Vote for your own”), the Afro-Guyanese responded with a similar call for racial solidarity and the PNC, evoking the fear of Indo-Guyanese hegemony, called for a racial vote. Both pre-independence elections, in 1957 and 1961, were won by the PPP, which had a solid Indian electoral base, and Cheddi Jagan became Prime Minister of Guyana’s autonomous Government. But the colonial Power continued to influence the independence process, which it wanted to mould to its own interests. The period between 1962 and 1964 was marked by a series of political and social upheavals and racial violence, with strikes, riots, guerrilla action and political purges. A strike called by the Guyana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) led to confrontations between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese and the deaths of 14 people from both communities. The situation deteriorated seriously in 1963, almost sliding into civil war, following a general strike called by the unions and political parties opposed to the PPP in protest at Cheddi Jagan’s budget proposal to Parliament. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), controlled by the Afro-Guyanese PNC, and United Force, the Portuguese party led by