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Cheddi Berret Jagan (March 22, 1918-March 6, 1997) was the chief minister (1957-1964) and president (1992-1997) of Guyana. The son of ethnic Indian plantation workers, Jagan manage to attend Queen's College High School in Georgetown. He later studied at the Howard Dental School in Washington, D.C., and Northwestern University in Chicago before returning home in the early 1940s.
Disgusted by conditions in British Guiana, he founded the People's Progressive Party with Forbes Burnham in 1950. He was elected to the colonial legislative body in 1947 and was the controversial leader of the Guyanese government in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Jagan won in a colonially administered election in 1953, but Britain sent troops when Jagan's ties to Soviet Union were revealed. Jagan resigned as British Guiana prime minister after 133 days. Britain suspended the constitution and chose interim government. Jagan's movements were restricted to Georgetown from 1954 to 1957.
He was active in the government as a labor activist and leader of the opposition and was elected president in 1992, having broken off links with the increasingly authoritarian Burnham.
His presidential tenure was characterized by the revival of the union movement and a re-commitment to education and infrastructure improvement. Towards the end of his life, he abandoned his socialist philosophy and began to move his country to a free-market capitalist system.
He married Janet (née Rosenberg), a former member of a communist youth organization, in 1943, and the couple had two children. Mrs. Jagan followed her husband's footsteps and held the positions of prime minister and president in 1997 (succeeded as president by Bharrat Jagdeo in 1999). A museum in the capital, Georgetown, celebrates Cheddi Jagan's life and work, complete with a replication of his office.
Jagan was also an important political author and speechwriter, and his publications include Forbidden Freedom: The Story of British Guiana, The West On Trial: My Fight for Guyana's Freedom, and The USA in South America, among others.
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