The Wismar Massacre: A case of ethnic cleansing Indians in Guyana

Baytoram Ramharack brings together an impressive two decades of archival research, transnational government and media document recovery, eyewitness accounts and oral testimonies, and legal and philosophical arguments to craft a gripping and sorrowful postcolonial narrative of trauma, memory, and loss that argues convincingly for the human rights framework of "ethnic cleansing" of Indo-Guyanese Wismar villagers in 1964. With a commendable focus on the voices of victims, especially women, this meticulously researched historiographic work calls for the un-silencing of "silenced history" and ultimately for clear-eyed examinations of the Guyanese past and the complex social, economic, cultural, and political relationships between Indo- and Afro-Guyanese, in the hopes of national healing.