Suriname is cleaning up, (still) dreaming of the World Cup and black gold: ‘If they don’t screw it up again’

Independence was not an issue at all fifty years ago during the 1974 elections in Suriname, Cynthia McLeod begins fanatically. The daughter of Suriname’s first president and one of the country’s best-known writers is a student of history. “It was Holland. That government of Jantje Pronk and Den Uyl, that left-wing government, had as its first program item: get rid of the colonies.”