Suriname
Suriname , officially Republic of Suriname, republic (2005 est. pop. 438,000), 63,037 sq mi (163,266 sq km), NE South America, on the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Guiana region, it is separated from Brazil on the south by the Tumuc-Humac Mts., from Guyana on the west by the Corantijn (Courantyne or Corentyne) River, and from French Guiana on the east by the Maroni River. The capital and largest city is Paramaribo , which is situated on the Suriname River.
Land and People
Suriname is mostly rolling highlands covered by tropical rain forests. The relatively small population is concentrated along the flat coastal plain, where the use of dikes makes cultivation possible. The people are largely of South Asian or mixed African and European ancestry; there is a significant Indonesian minority. Dutch is the official language, although English, Sranan Tongo (a creole English), Hindi, Javanese, and Brazilian Portuguese are widely spoken. Hinduism, the Moravian and Roman Catholic churches, and Islam are the predominant faiths.
Economy and Government
Agriculture accounts for about 15% of the country's gross domestic product. Rice is the principal crop, and bananas, palm kernels, coconuts, plantains, and peanuts are also cultivated. The mining industry dominates the economy, accounting for about a third of the country's gross domestic product. Bauxite and gold are the principal minerals. Other industries include alumina and oil production, lumbering, food processing, and fishing. The main exports are alumina, crude oil, lumber, shrimp and fish, rice, and bananas. Capital equipment, petroleum, foodstuffs, cotton, and consumer goods are imported. Fluctuations in world mineral prices have a strong impact on the country's economy. The United States, Norway, the Netherlands, and Canada are the main trading partners.
Suriname is governed under the constitution of 1987. Executive power is held by the president, who is both head of state and head of government. The president, who serves a five-year term, is elected by a two-thirds vote of the national legislature, or (after two failed votes) by a majority vote of the United People's Assembly, which includes national, regional, and local representatives. The members of the legislature, the 51-seat National Assembly, are elected by popular vote and also serve five-year terms. Administratively, the country is divided into ten districts.
History
The first Dutch expeditions to the Guiana region took place in 1597-98, and the first Dutch colony, on Essequibo Island in present-day Guyana, was founded in 1616. The Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621 to exploit the territory. The Dutch hold on the east coast was interrupted by English and French attacks and by a slave insurrection (1762-63). The Treaty of Breda (1667, see Dutch Wars )
gave all English territory in Guiana to the Dutch, but in 1815 the Congress of Vienna awarded the area that is now Guyana to Britain while reaffirming the Dutch hold on Dutch Guiana (present-day Suriname). Slavery was abolished in 1863, and the Netherlands granted Dutch Guiana a parliament in 1866.
In 1954, Suriname officially became an internally autonomous part of the kingdom of the Netherlands, and in 1975 it became independent. Just prior to independence, some 100,000 Surinamese, mainly of Asian descent, migrated to the Netherlands. In 1980 the government was ousted by a military coup led by Sgt. Major Désiré Bouterse, and the soldiers' civilian allies were installed in office. Bouterse assumed complete control from 1982 to 1987.
A variety of insurgent guerrilla groups formed in the mid-1980s and did considerable damage to the country's infrastructure and major industries. Democracy was restored in 1988 and guerrilla activity decreased. President Rameswak Shankar, however, was ousted from office in a Dec., 1990, military coup led by Bouterse, who again installed his political allies. New elections (1991) gave his opponents, the four-party New Front for Democracy (NFD) coalition, control of parliament, and NFD leader Ronald Venetiaan became president. He implemented free-market reforms, but inflation soared and the economy continued to contract.
Bouterse resigned as army chief in 1992 amid corruption charges. In 1996, however, a former aide to Bouterse, Jules Wijdenbosch of the National Democratic party (NDP), won the presidency. Bouterse served as an adviser to Wijdenbosch's government until Apr., 1999; three months later he was convicted in absentia in the Netherlands of drug trafficking. Venetiaan's New Front won a resounding victory in the May, 2000, parliamentary elections, and the former president was reelected to the office in Aug., 2000. In the May, 2005, elections the New Front suffered large losses and surrendered its majority but remained the largest party in parliament. Bouterse's NDP won the second largest number of seats. The New Front formed an alliance with the A-Combination, a party representing the descendants of of former slaves, and Venetiaan was subsequently reelected president.
Bibliography
See W. N. Van de Poll, Surinam, the Country and Its People (tr. 1951); M. J. Herskovits and F. J. Herskovits, Suriname Folklore (1937, repr. 1969); R. A. L. Hoefte, Suriname (1990).
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