Only a disciplined people can build a nation

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

Geography · Media studies · Sociology · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies