Word: guyana
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...doctrine -- and with high-caliber weapons. Outside Waco, Texas, a cult called the Branch Davidians, apocalyptic and armed to the teeth, played out a siege drama that owed something to Jim Jones' last hours, when he and more than 900 members of his People's Temple cult died in Guyana, and to some older religious Americana, like Elmer Gantry, darkened with touches of the Road Warrior. The tragedy in Texas was self-contained, and seemed a familiar story of what happens when a group sealed away in paranoia succumbs to the influence of a sort of preacherly hypnotist...
...took 39 years, but at the age of 74, Cheddi Jagan finally made it. Long an avowed Marxist, Jagan has been contesting elections in the South American nation of Guyana (pop. 751,000) since 1953, when it was a British colony. He claims to have won several but says he was kept from serving out his mandates by British or American CIA machinations or by vote fraud. Last week he won yet another vote, and this time the loser, President Desmond Hoyte, urged Guyanans to accept the result and allow Jagan, who now supports free-market policies, to become head...
Empires were a powerful force for obliterating natural and demographic barriers and forging connections among far-flung parts of the world. The British left their system of civil service in India, Kenya and Guyana, while the Spaniards, Portuguese and French spread Roman Catholicism to almost every continent...
...evocative one-line descriptions is the saving grace of these sketches. For example, in "I Do Not Take Messages from Dead People," the sullen vice president is described as having "the gravitational density of an imploding star." The same story also presents the reader with a memorable image from Guyana at dusk: "a host of bats sewed up the great opal and silver clouds with their flitting, looping trajectories...
Another of Melville's strong points is her portraiture of engaging characters. Molly Summers, from "The Iron and the Radio Have Gone," makes her initial appearance wearing "a necklace of mosquito bites." An English schoolteacher who delights in being magnanimous and forgiving to the poor and sinful of Guyana, Summers is ludicrously shocked and sickened by the sight of a poor and sinful Englishman...