IMPACT ON HISTORY

It’s A Fact

The Castor Oil Plant

Used for health, crime, and ritual

By JAMES SYDNEY

Many people who are adults today remember drinking castor oil when they were children. Castor oil was respected, and dreaded, as a laxative that worked, even when other laxatives were not up to the job. But castor oil was notably unpleasant to the taste. Little did parents know, however, that the oil had more deadly connections. The castor plant is grown commercially for the pharmaceutical and industrial uses of its oil and also for use in landscape gardening because of its handsome, large, fanlike leaves and its attractive bronze-to-red clusters of fruit. The versatile castor oil is used in the production of plastics, adhesives, soaps, textiles, inks, dyes, paints, lubricants, cosmetics, polishes, and numerous other products.

The Guyana Story

THE ENMORE MARTYRS

By 1948, most sugar workers in Guyana were giving support to the Guyana Industrial Workers Union (GIWU). On April 22, 1948, cane cutters, backed by the union, went on strike demanding the abolishment of the existing "cut and load" system in the fields. This reaping system which forced cane cutters to load the sugar punts with the cane they cut, was not popular among cane cutters. It was introduced in 1945, and from time to time workers had gone on strike to demand that it should be changed. As part of the demands of the 1948 strike, the cane cutters called for the replacement of "cut and load" with a "cut and drop" system by which the cane cutters should cut the cane, but other workers would load the cut cane into the punts for shipment to the factory.