Guyana

Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America, independent since 1966. It is bordered by Venezuela, Suriname, Brazil, and the Atlantic Ocean. Two-thirds of Guyana's 83,000 square miles are covered with lush rain forests that yield valuable timber, especially greenheart. The country is also endowed with rich resources of gold, diamonds, and high-grade bauxite ore, as well as extensive areas of fertile coastland on which sugar and rice are grown. The Land of Many Waters, as it is called, boasts a plethora of rivers. The four major ones are the Demerara, on which Georgetown, the capital and chief port, is located; the Essequibo, the largest; the Berbice; and the Corentyne. There are innumerable rapids and waterfalls along the rivers. Kaieteur Falls on the Potaro River thunders into a gorge at the height of 741 feet. Mount Roraima (9,094 feet), on the borders with Venezuela and Brazil, was the setting for Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional The Lost World (1912).

The population of this Land of Six Peoples was approximately 769,095 (2007) and was composed of Amerindians; Africans and East Indians, comprising the majority; and smaller groups of Europeans and Chinese, with varying mixtures. However, according to the 2002 national census, the Indians represented a significant nine percent of the total population. In fact, by the year 2002 there were nine distinctive tribal groups and 90 percent of indigenous communities were located in the rural areas. The culture and religion of the country thus reflect these ethnic groups. Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, and Christian churches of several denominations are located throughout. The Guyanese are bound together by a common language—English, a legacy of English colonialism—international foods, and a passion for cricket.

The Dutch were the first Europeans to colonize the Wild Coast of Guyana, which extended from the mouth of the Amazon to the Orinoco. The early colonies began in the late sixteenth century, establishing friendly relations with the indigenous peoples and carrying on trade in dyes and letterwood. By 1675 they had established sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton plantations worked by African slaves. In 1763 there was a massive slave revolt against the Dutch, which was quelled with the help of the indigenous peoples. At the end of the eighteenth century, there were short intervals of British and French control before Dutch rule was superseded by British control in 1803. The Dutch heritage remains in many place-names, such as Stabroek, Vlissengen, Beterverwagting, in the kokers or sluice gates, and in the famous Sea Wall.

The main developments in nineteenth-century British Guiana were the emancipation of nearly 83,000 slaves in 1834, the establishment of villages along the coastlands by former slaves, and the importation of indentured workers from Africa, Madeira, India, and China to meet the labor shortage. Two outstanding events marked the end of the nineteenth century: the promulgation of the new Constitution of 1891 and the 1899 Paris settlement, which awarded the Orinoco River to Venezuela, supposedly ending the fifty-five-year-old border dispute. The 1970 Protocol of Port-of-Spain, which established a twelve-year moratorium on the resuscitated boundary question, was not renewed in 1982.

In 1917 East Indian immigration to the colony was stopped, and in 1928 British Guiana became a crown colony. The Court of Policy and the Combined Court, legacies of Dutch government, were replaced by a Legislative and Executive Council. The 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s were years of much political agitation and many strikes as the leading political parties, the People's Progressive Party (PPP), the People's National Congress (PNC), and the United Force (UF) jockeyed for power. The PPP won the 1953 and 1957 elections with Dr. Cheddi Jagan at the forefront.

On 26 May 1966, Guyana gained its independence under a coalition government headed by the PNC leader, Forbes Burnham. On 23 February 1970, Guyana became the first Cooperative Republic within the Commonwealth to be governed by an elected president rather than a British-appointed governor-general. The dual control system of education (controlled by both church and state) was abolished in 1976, and free education from nursery school to university was initiated. The University of Guyana, established in 1963, was engaged on a cost recovery program in the early 1990s. The standard of education in Guyana, which once boasted the highest literacy rate in the Caribbean, has dropped considerably since the 1970s, exacerbated by the migration of many teachers to the Caribbean, North America, and the United Kingdom.

International funding, through the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank, among others, is supporting improvements and the rehabilitation of the country's infrastructure. The immense interior resources, especially gold, are attracting foreign and local investments. Ecotourism is making marked strides and has much potential, but the country is sensitive to ecological exploitation. A large tract of forest—IWOK-RAMA—has been dedicated to an experimental project for the study of rain-forest resources and their careful development. The building of roads is seen as a sine qua non for the development of the interior. The 220-mile road from Georgetown to Brazil has as of 2007 yet to be completed.

Timehri, Guyana's only international airport, 25 miles south of Georgetown, is served by a number of regional airlines with international connections to all major destinations. Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC) connects the country with North America and with a number of locations within the mining and interior areas of Guyana.

Guyana is a member of the United Nations, and in the mid-1990s maintained diplomatic relations with over ninety countries, of which fourteen had missions to the country. Its respected role in international affairs was illustrated by the election of its ambassador to the United Nations as the president of the General Assembly for 1993–1994.

Despite a backdrop of rigid ethnic and racial divisions, two main political parties have dominated the Guayanese contemporary political scene through the 1990s. The governing People's Progressive Party-Civic (PPP-Civic), which is the coalition of President Bharrat Jagdeo, is primarily Indo-Guayanese. The opposition People's National Congress-Reform (PNC-R) is mostly Afro-Guyanese. The PNC dominated the political system for twenty-six-yeas. However, the PPP won the 1992 elections (the first free elections ever since) under Cheddi Jagan, who became president for a five-year term. Under Jagan, the economy began experiencing a more open investment climate in 1990; as a consequence, many private business enterprises have sprung up. In 1999, Bharrat Jagdeo from the PPP-Civic became the president of Guyana due to the sudden death of the previously elected Jagan and Jagan's wife resignation. Jagdeo's presidency was later reconfirmed by a general election held in March 2001 and he was re-elected again in August 2006. Despite a long-standing political stalemate that has a strong correlation between the specific ethnic and racial constituencies of both parties, this reelection has nonetheless forced both the PNC-R and the PPP-Civic to dialogue about municipal elections which have not been held since 1994. In May, 2007, a two-party local government reform task force met and in June, 2007 the current government agreed to sponsor a full voter registration exercise (the first since 1997) before local elections are held. This new plan was a direct result of the collaboration of both political parties, the Guyana Elections Commission, and diplomatic representatives of the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. Internal divisions within each party became clearer as well. The most evident sign of schisms within the PNC-R included the rising rivalries to the party leader Robert Corbin.

See alsoBauxite Industry; Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Jagan, Cheddi; Jagan, Janet; Plantations; Rice Industry; Sugar Industry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For an understanding of early Dutch and British relationships with, and policy toward, the Amerindians, see M. Noel Menezes, British Policy Towards the Amerindians in British Guiana, 1803–1873 (New Jersey: Biblio Distribution Centre, 1979). Major works on political and constitutional developments are Harold Alexander Lutchman, From Colonialism to Co-operative Republic: Aspects of Political Development in Guyana (Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 1974), and M. Shahabuddeen, Constitutional Development in Guyana, 1621–1978 (Georgetown, 1978). Economic and social relationships among the Guyanese are discussed in Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), as well as in Thomas J. Spinner, Jr., A Political and Social History of Guyana, 1945–1983 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984). For the evolution of the Venezuela-Guyana border conflict since the 1960s, see Jacqueline Anne Braveboy-wagner, The Venezuela-Guyana Border Dispute: Britain's Colonial Legacy in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984). Later works in religious and cultural history are Dale Bisnauth, History of Religions in the Caribbean, 2d ed. (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1996), and Mary Noel Menezes, The Portuguese of Guyana: A Study of Culture and Conflict (London, 1994).

Additional Bibliography

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2006 (March 6, 2007).

                      Sister M. Noel Menezes R.S.M.