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Guyana Relations with Communist Countries
Guyana enjoyed close relations with Cuba in the 1970s and early
1980s. The two countries established diplomatic ties in 1972, and
Cuba agreed to provide medical supplies, doctors, and medical
training to Guyana. President Burnham flew with Fidel Castro Ruz in
Castro's airplane to the NAM conference in Algiers in 1973. Castro
made an official state visit to Guyana in August 1973, and Burnham
reciprocated in April 1975, when he was decorated with the José
Martí National Order, Cuba's highest honor. After the United States
invasion of Grenada, Burnham distanced himself somewhat from Cuba,
fearing United States intervention in Guyana. Under Hoyte's
administration, relations with Cuba have been cordial but not
close.
Relations with other communist countries were close under
Burnham. Diplomatic relations with China were established in June
1972. In 1975 China agreed to provide interest-free loans to Guyana
and to import Guyanese bauxite and sugar. In 1976 the Soviet Union
appointed a resident ambassador to Georgetown. Burnham paid
official state visits to Bulgaria and China in 1983 to seek
increased economic aid.
The rapidly changing world of the 1990s provided numerous
challenges for the Guyanese government. Two decades of rule by the
Burnham administration had resulted in a profound weakening of the
country's democratic process and close ties with socialist
countries, punctuated by frequent vocal support for leftist causes
around the world. Driven by the need to obtain financial support
from the West to rejuvenate a collapsed economy, Burnham's
successor, Desmond Hoyte, began loosening ties with socialist
regimes and downplaying leftist rhetoric. The fall of communism in
the early 1990s only accelerated this trend. Financial help and
closer relations with the West, particularly the United States,
however, came with a price: free-market reforms and genuine respect
for Guyana's democratic institutions. In 1992 it remained to be
seen whether Guyana had undergone merely another tactical policy
shift as an expedient or was truly set on a path of democracy.
* * *
The literature on Guyanese politics remains relatively limited
and perhaps too narrowly focused. The dysfunctional nature of
modern Guyanese governance has generated studies of race relations,
ideology, and political economy. Lacking are analyses of the postBurnham period and, most notably, of the absence of progress toward
democratization since the late 1980s.
The most current and balanced book-length overview is Chaitram
Singh's Guyana: Politics in a Plantation Society, a work
whose very title is suggestive of the environment the author
addresses. In the same vein, but a bit older and less reliable, is
Guyana: Politics, Economics and Society, by Henry B. Jeffrey
and Colin Baber. In addition to the limited journal literature, any
reader interested in Guyanese politics should consult, with care,
a number of classics, including Leo A. Despres's Cultural
Pluralism and Nationalist Politics in Guyana and The West on
Trial by Cheddi Jagan, a fixture on the nation's political
scene for almost half a century. Tying many elements together is
Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy, by well-known
author Shiva Naipaul.
The nation's foreign relations are to a degree covered by the
above titles. Guyana's nonaligned foreign policy and the border
dispute with Venezuela have been the two key subjects. There is
little to work with, except for a few journal articles. One
exception is The Venezuela-Guyanese Border Dispute by
Jacqueline Anne Braveboy-Wagner. (For further information and
complete citations, see Bibliography).
Data as of January 1992
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