The Spirit of the Jaguar

On the coat of arms of Guyana, two jaguars hold up the shield. One carries a pickaxe. The other carries rice and sugar cane. The men and women who drew it in 1966 could have left their paws empty, this is what most countries do to their animals in their coat of arms. Instead, they chose to represent hard work, and they made sure the claws in the paws were out. Sixty years later the jaguars are still working, on the passport and on every coin, and so are the people they were drawn for.

• The woman at Bourda who has her stall up before the sun.
• The porkknocker up the Mazaruni who has gone three weeks without a sign of gold and is going back in.
• The rice farmer in Essequibo who knows the rain by the smell of it.
• The cane cutter in Berbice who is in the field before the heat.
• The guide in the Rupununi who has read the jaguar’s tracks all his life but has only seen it twice.
• The nurse in Linden who sends half of every pay to her mother and never says so.

Nobody put their names on the shield. They hold it up anyway, every day.

A lion stops where the water begins, but the jaguar goes in. Guyana means land of many waters, hence, the jaguar cannot be stopped in his own land. No two jaguars wear the same coat, all are unique. No jaguar has ever been tamed, by anyone anywhere. The jaguar mother raises her cubs alone for two years, teaches them everything she knows, and then lets them go. The Jaguar hunts alone, in the dark, and asks no one to watch what needs to be done.

Ask anyone who has raised children on one wage, or started again after the flood, and they will tell you that is just how it is done in this land. Quietly, showing up to do what has to be done without coming to be seen. The jaguar was put on the shield for the people who carry this nation forward with the consistence of their work and the tenacity of their claws. They carry it today towards a bright future, and they carry it the same way the jaguars in the coat of arms do: standing tall.