Preface

I have chosen to do my term paper on one of the smaller and lesser known countries of the world; Guyana. My interest in this country stems from living there for a short time in 1992. Although I know more about this country than most people, with the exception of the Guyanese, I did not know the fundamental facts of the country, such as its geographic environment. While living there, I noticed political and racial divides that I did not fully understand. Through this paper, I hope to identify and explain the current political and racial problems Guyana faces and if these problems are related to its geographic environment.

Geography

The Co-operative Republic of Guyana, the official name of the country, is located on the northern coast of South America. It shares its borders with Venezuela to the west, Brazil to the southwest and south, Suriname to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the north. (See Figure 1.) Guyana has an area of 214,970 square kilometers (82,980 sq. mi.), comparable to the size of the state of Idaho. The capital city is Georgetown with a population of 248,500. It is the largest and most important urban center on the South Atlantic coast between the estuaries of the Amazonas and Orinoco rivers. It is situated near the mouth of the Demerara, one of the largest rivers in Guyana. Also worthy of note is that Guyana has the world's longest single-drop waterfall, Kaiteur Falls, at 750 ft.

The vegetation in Guyana is variable. The northeast of the country is covered by rainforest. The only cultivated area is around the river valleys of the Demerara and Essequibo Rivers. The southeastern portion of the country is flat land, called the Rupununi Savanna, which has most of the cattle farms of the country. The southern portion of the country is seasonal rainforest. The western part of the country is a mixture of intermediate savanna and dry forest. The only cultivated areas of the country are along the northern and central coastline, where the majority of the population lives.

The climate of Guyana is tropical, comparable to that of other ex-British colonies in the Caribbean. The climate varies from dry and hot seasons to rainy seasons due to the percentage of rainforests present in the country.

Boarder Dispute with Venezuela

When Great Britain gained control of Guyana in 1815, it became involved in one of the most heated border disputes Latin America has ever seen. The British asked a German explorer to map the boundaries of Guyana, specifically British Guyana's western boundary with Venezuela at the mouth of the Orinoco River. When the map was published in 1840, Venezuela protested and although negotiations began, the two countries could not reach a compromise. In 1850, both countries agreed not to occupy the disputed zone.

The dispute was reignited when gold was discovered in the area in the late 1850's. British settlers immediately moved onto the territory. The Venezuelans protested, but the British were uninterested. Venezuela officially broke diplomatic relations with Great Britain in 1887 and appealed to the United States for help. The US suggested arbitration; however, Great Britain rebuffed this action. It was only when the US threatened to intervene with the Monroe Doctrine that the British government agreed to let an international tribunal arbitrate the dispute. In the end the tribunal found for Great Britain and both countries accepted the decision.

People

The population of Guyana is not ethnically homogenous due to earlier colonial conquests and slave trading. There are 735,000 Guyanese made up in order of the following five main ethnic groups: East Indian, African, American Indian, Chinese and Portuguese. (The diversity of the population will be explained later in the history of the country.) The specific makeup of the population is as follows: 51% of the population with East Indian origin, 30% with African origin, 14% with mixed origin and 4% with Indian origin. Ninety percent of the population lives on the narrow coastal plain where the density is more than 115 persons per square miles.

The majority of the time, Guyana is said to have a Caribbean culture rather than a South American or Latin American culture. In that respect, Guyana's statistics on demographics compare most to Caribbean countries. The following are statistics of Guyana's culture: The prominent religions in Guyana are quite diverse. Fifty percent of the population is Christians, 33% are Hindus, 9% are Muslims and 8% are of other religions. English is the national language of Guyana; however, a small majority of the population speak Guyanese Creole and certain Indian dialects. Guyana has a 98% literacy rate, which is quite high even for the United States. The government provides free education for citizens from the ages of 5 1/2 to 14 1/2. However, the standards of educational system are not high because the government has not allocated sufficient funds to maintain buildings and textbooks. Infant mortality rate is 35/1,000. Sixty-one is the life expectancy for men and 68 for women. The work force is composed of 245,000 people with 45% in industry and commerce, 33% in agriculture and 22% in the services industry.

Government

Guyana is a Republic within the Commonwealth. It declared its independence from Great Britain on May 26, 1966, and it formally became a Republic on February 23, 1970. However, it wasn't until 1980 that it adopted its Constitution. The present government models that of its former ruler, the British. It consists of an Executive branch composed of an executive president and a prime minister, a Legislative branch composed of a unicameral National Assembly and a Judicial branch composed of Judicial Court of Appeals. Suffrage is universal at the age of 18.

History

Before Europeans arrived, the region was inhabited by the Carib and Arawak tribes, who named it Guiana, which means "land of waters." Although Christopher Columbus first sighted the Guyanese coast in 1498, it was the Dutch who first established a settlement in 1616. Their primary interest in the territory was commercial trading with the indigenous people to compete with the new British and French colonies in the Americas. However, the Netherlands began to acquire Guyana as territory soon after Spain showed interest. Early in the seventeenth century, Dutch sovereignty was officially recognized with the signing of the Treaty of Munster in 1648.

The Dutch established three colonies within the next 100 years: Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice. In 1746, the Dutch were eager to attract more settlers so they opened the area near the Demerara River to British immigrants. By 1760, the majority of the settlers were British. Tensions rose between the British and the Dutch over administrative reforms the Dutch were placing on the British settlers. In 1781, a war broke out between the two countries which resulted in British occupation of the three colonies. However, fighting still occurred between the two countries and it wasn't until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 that the colonies were ceded to Great Britain and 1831 that the colonies were consolidated as British Guiana.

Great Britain abolished slavery in 1834 and since British Guiana was mainly a plantation colony, indentured laborers were brought to replace slaves on the sugar cane plantations, "primarily from India but also from Portugal and China." The former black slaves moved to towns and became the majority of the urban population, while the Indo-Guyanese remained predominately rural. The small Amerindian population still lives in the country's interior.

So after years of colonization, the result is the present mixture of the Guyanese population. The Guyanese drawn from these diverse origins have coexisted peacefully for the most part. However, the fact is that the heart of the present ethnic problems root back to practice of the Dutch and the British of bringing over slaves and indentured servants. As was stated earlier, the Indo-Guyanese and the Afro-Guyanese make up the majority of the population. These two groups are responsible for the racial and ethnic conflicts in the country. Mostly these problems have played themselves out on the political field.

Political Parties and the Guyanese Government

The first political party in Guyana was the People's Progressive Party (PPP) established in 1950. The chairman was Forbes Burnham, a British-educated Afro-Guyanese. The vice-chairman was Dr. Cheddi Jagan, a US-educated Indo-Guyanese. The first popular elections were held in 1953; however, the British government fearing a planned communist state, suspended the constitution and sent troops to Guyana. These events did not have a settling effect on the new PPP. Burnham broke away and formed his own political party which became known as the People's National Congress (PNC). Great Britain permitted election in 1957 and 1961. In both occasions, Jagan's PPP won and he became the first Premier of British Guyana.

In 1963, a constitution conference was held in London. The British government agreed to grant independence to the colony only after another election in which proportional representation would be introduced. This system actually reduced the number of seats the PPP would have gained and it resulted in a PNC victory with Forbes Burnham, as the new government leader. Guyana achieved its independence in May 1966.

Forbes Burnham was in power from 1964 until his death in 1985. He ruled Guyana in an autocratic manner. Elections were viewed as fraudulent. Human rights and civil liberties were repressed. Some Indo-Guyanese allege that the PNC government, and specifically Burnham, established a pattern of racial discrimination in favor of the Afro-Guyanese. The Afro-Guyanese claim to have suffered racial discrimination at the hands of the Indo-Guyanese. Nevertheless, the rule of Burnham was cruel and long-standing and the country regressed, economically and politically. It wasn't until Burnham's death in 1985 and the accession of Prime Minister Hugh Desmond Hoyte to the presidency that the country began to reverse Burnham's policies. Guyana moved from state socialism and one-party control to a market economy and unrestricted freedom of the press and assembly.

On October 5, 1992, the first "fair" elections were held. The outcome was the election of Cheddi Jagan as President. Jagan returned to office in a country demoralized by years of misgovernment and facing serious ethnic and racial problems. He had a long road of reconstruction and recovery ahead. Guyana was still plagued with internal racial problems that hovered over Jagan during his tenure. However, after suffering a heart attack, Jagan died on March 6, 1997.

The Guyanese Dilemma

Guyana emerged from the colonial period with two strikes against it: one being an ethnically diverse population, and two being a population that could not foresee the problems of this diversity. Guyana was not as valuable to the British Empire during colonization as other colonies. It was, however, used for its natural resources and terrain. The outcome of this usage by the British resulted in a country whose people were lost in each other's heritages. Their differences could not be resolved and the division between the ethnic groups became worse.

While I was in Guyana, I witnessed firsthand these ethnic and racial problems. The Afro-Guyanese and the Indo-Guyanese did not live in the same parts of town; they did not work in the same factories; they did not share the same churches. Tensions were high, and a positive point in Guyana's history is that there were never any major physical conflicts between groups. I never understood why the Guyanese ethnic groups maintained grave differences year after year. (One could say the racial problems are comparable to those in the United States between whites and African-Americans.) In the end, it was only Guyana's misfortune that it happened to be a victim of colonialization.

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