Revolution ranch. This is Pirara in the Rupununi (Guyana). When Evelyn Waugh called by, in 1933, here was ‘one of the most imposing and important houses in the district.’ He described a schoolroom, fruit trees and a compendious library with books on every conceivable subject ‘much ravaged by ants’.
The ranch was then owned by the Harts, an eccentric crowd. They were descended from a giant American, who’d arrived in 1911, after a spell digging railways in Brazil. Ben Hart had weighed over 200lbs, and had liked all this space. He settled, and married Amy Melville, whose mother was Amerindian. Waugh remembered Ben as ‘a kindly middle-aged American of wide experience’ and piety. But it was a curious type of piety. By night, he led moonlit processions through the grounds, accompanied by his six wild sons, their governess and their Wapisiana grandmother. By day, the boys were ‘tumultuous’, and spent their school hours reciting the rosary and getting whipped.
Waugh’s tumultuous urchins had, it seemed, turned into natural rebels. They held rodeos here at Pirara, and two of the boys had been in the US army, and had served in Korea. Fighting came naturally to them. Eventually they found themselves involved in the Rupununi uprising of 1969. That was it for Pirara. On the orders of President Burnham, the old ranch was burnt down, and today barely a trace of it remains.
