Guyana Introduction
Figure 1. Guyana: Administrative Divisions, 1991
GUYANA AND BELIZE belie their geographic location. Although
both are located on the mainland of the Americas, they more closely
resemble the English-speaking islands of the Caribbean than they do
their Latin American neighbors. Christopher Columbus passed near
the coasts of both countries, but later Spanish explorers and
settlers ignored the areas because they lacked the mineral riches
that brought the Spanish to the New World. The wealth of both areas
would prove to be not gold but agriculture. By the end of the
eighteenth century, the indigenous populations of both regions had
been greatly reduced or driven to remote areas, and the coastal
lands held growing populations of British or Dutch plantation
owners. Plantation work was labor intensive, and initially African
slaves, then other ethnic groups, were imported to work the land.
As the colonies expanded economically, Britain claimed formal
sovereignty, but title to each colony remained contested.
The twentieth century saw a shift in political power from the
old plantocracy to a new nonwhite middle class, a rising self-
consciousness among the various ethnic groups, and a slow evolution
toward independence. Formal ties to Britain eventually were broken,
but, like their anglophone Caribbean neighbors, Guyana and Belize
today still strongly bear the mark of their colonial heritage. They
retain their British institutions, their use of the English
language, their economies based on agriculture, and their societies
composed of a complex ethnic mix often divided along racial lines.
Unlike the great civilizations of Middle America that left
monuments and records for archaeologists to decipher, the early
societies in Guyana were relatively simple, nomadic cultures that
left few traces. Early Spanish records and linguistic studies of
the Caribbean reveal only a broad outline of pre-Columbian events.
We do know that several centuries before the arrival of the
Europeans, the Arawak moved north from Brazil to settle and farm
the area along the northeast coast of South America before
expanding farther north onto the Caribbean islands. Shortly before
the arrival of the Europeans, the aggressive, warlike Carib pushed
into the area and largely destroyed Arawak society.
Because of the warlike Carib and the region's apparent lack of
gold or silver, the Spanish ignored the northeastern coast of South
America. Settlement by Europeans would wait until 1616, when a
group of Dutch arrived to establish a trading post. The Dutch soon
realized the agricultural potential of the swampy coastal land and
aggressively set out to drain the coast using a vast system of
seawalls, dikes and canals. What had been swampy wasteland decades
before, soon turned into thriving sugar plantations.
The development of agriculture brought rapid change to the
colony. Because the plantation economy needed labor, the Dutch
imported African slaves for the task. The growing economy also
attracted the attention of the British, and British settlers from
neighboring Caribbean islands poured into the three Dutch colonies
established along the coast. By the late 1700s, the new British
settlers effectively controlled the colonies. Formal control by
Britain would come in 1814, when most Dutch colonies were ceded to
Britain after the Napoleonic wars.
In 1838 Britain completed the abolition of slavery throughout
the British Empire, and the problem of obtaining cheap and
plentiful labor arose anew. The planters first sought to attract
Portuguese, then Chinese, workers, but both groups soon left
plantation work. Concerned that the decline in labor would ruin the
sugar-based economy, the planters finally contracted laborers from
India to work the sugar fields. Large numbers of indentured workers
poured into British Guiana in the late 1800s. Although
theoretically free to return after their contract period had
expired, most East Indians remained, adding a new ethnic group to
the colony's mélange of Africans, Europeans, and Amerindians.
The twentieth century saw a rising consciousness among the
country's ethnic groups and a struggle for political power between
the new, disenfranchised, nonwhite middle class and the old
plantocracy. Economic changes gave momentum to the growing call for
political changes. The country saw rice production, dominated by
the Indo-Guyanese (descendants of East Indians), and bauxite
mining, dominated by the Afro-Guyanese (descendants of Africans),
grow in importance, whereas sugar growing, controlled by the
European plantation owners, declined. The British colonial
administration responded to demands for reform by establishing
universal suffrage in 1950 and allowing the formation of political
parties.
The People's Progressive Party (PPP), the country's first
political party, quickly became a formidable force. The PPP was
formed by two men who would dominate Guyanese politics for decades
to come: Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist Indo-Guyanese, and Linden Forbes
Burnham, an Afro-Guyanese with leftist political ideas. A new
constitution allowing considerable self-rule was promulgated in
1953; in elections that year the PPP, headed by Jagan, won a
majority of seats in the new legislature. The new administration
immediately sought legislation giving the labor unions expanded
power. This legislation and the administration's leftist rhetoric
frightened the British colonial authorities, who suspended the new
government after only four months.
Conflict with the British was not the only problem facing the
PPP. Personal rivalries between Jagan and Burnham and growing
conflict between the Indo-Guyanese and the Afro-Guyanese widened
into an open split. In 1957 Burnham and most of the Afro-Guyanese
left the PPP and formed the rival People's National Congress (PNC).
The two parties shared left-wing ideologies; the differences
between them were largely based on ethnicity.
The British promulgated a new constitution in 1957. Elections
in that year and in 1961 resulted in more PPP victories. Under the
new constitution, considerable power resided in the hands of the
governor, who was appointed by the British. The PPP administration
headed by Jagan was therefore unable to implement most of its
radical policy initiatives. The Marxist rhetoric, however,
intensified.
Convinced that independence under a PPP administration would
result in a communist takeover, the British authorities permitted
and even encouraged a destabilization campaign by the opposition
PNC. Antigovernment demonstrations and riots increased and in 1963
mobs destroyed parts of Georgetown, the capital. When labor unrest
paralyzed the economy, British troops were called in to restore
order. In the midst of the unrest the government scheduled new
elections in 1964.
Voting along ethnic lines again gave the PPP the largest
number of seats in the legislature. But the rival PNC, by allying
itself with a small business-oriented party, was able to form a
coalition government. Jagan had to be forcibly removed as prime
minister, and in December 1964 Burnham assumed the post. Under the
new administration, events stabilized, and independence was set for
May 26, 1966.
The independent Guyana inherited by the PNC was one of the
least-populated and least-developed countries in South America.
Located on the northeast coast of the continent just north of the
equator, the Idaho-sized country is wedged among Venezuela, Brazil,
and Suriname (former Dutch Guiana). More than 90 percent of the
population lives within five or six kilometers of the sea. This
coastal plain, constituting only 5 percent of the country's total
area, was originally low swampland but was transformed by the Dutch
into the country's most productive agricultural land. Inland from
the coastal plain lies the white-sand belt, site of most of
Guyana's mineral wealth of bauxite, gold, and diamonds. Farther
inland are the interior highlands, consisting of largely
uninhabited mountains and savannahs.
Guyana's ethnic mix at independence, still the same in 1993,
consisted primarily of Indo-Guyanese--about half the population--
and Afro-Guyanese--slightly more than 40 percent of the total.
Smaller numbers of Amerindians, Asians, and Europeans completed
Guyana's ethnic mélange. More than two-thirds of the population was
Christian, with significant Hindu and Muslim minorities.
Established by the British, the school system has resulted in high
literacy rates (more than 90 percent).
The small military, the Guyana Defence Force, existed
primarily as a deterrent to Venezuela's territorial claim.
Venezuela's claim to the western three-fifths of Guyana, a dispute
that dated from the colonial era, was thought to have been settled
by arbitration in 1899. When later evidence showed that one of the
judges had been influenced to vote against Venezuela, that country
declared the arbitration settlement invalid and in the 1960s
aggressively pursued its territorial claim on western Guyana. This
border dispute was to flare periodically after Guyana's
independence.
The first years of PNC administration after independence saw
Prime Minister Burnham vigorously establishing control over
Guyana's political and economic life. The 1968 elections were won
by the PNC, despite charges of widespread fraud and coercion of
voters. As the government's control over the country's political
institutions increased, Burnham began nationalizing industries and
financial institutions. In 1970 Guyana was declared a "cooperative
republic," and government control of all economic activity
increased. The 1973 elections were considered the most undemocratic
in Guyana's history, and by 1974 all organs of the state had become
agencies of the ruling PNC.
In the late 1970s, a number of events increased opposition to
the Burnham regime. The economy, which had grown immediately after
independence, began to contract because of nationalization. In
addition, in 1978 negative international attention was focused on
Guyana when more than 900 members of the People's Temple of Christ
led by Jim Jones committed mass murder and suicide at their
community in western Guyana. As opposition to the government
increased, the government responded by violence against opposition
members and meetings. The authoritarian nature of the Burnham
government caused the loss of both foreign and domestic supporters.
A new constitution was promulgated in 1980, shifting power from
the prime minister to the new post of executive president, but the
political and economic situation continued to decline. Government
programs had been financed by increasing the foreign debt, but in
the early 1980s, most foreign banks and lending organizations
refused further loans. The quality of life deteriorated: blackouts
were frequent, and shortages of rice and sugar, Guyana's two
largest crops, appeared. In 1985 in the midst of this turbulence,
Burnham died while undergoing throat surgery.
Vice President Hugh Desmond Hoyte became the country's new
executive president. He had two stated goals: to secure political
power and revitalize the economy. Establishing political control
was easy. The PNC chose Hoyte as its new leader, and in the 1985
elections the PNC claimed more than 79 percent of the vote.
Economic growth, however, would require concessions to foreign
lenders. Hoyte therefore began to restructure the economy. An
economic recovery plan was negotiated with the
International Monetary Fund (see Glossary)
and the
World Bank (see Glossary)
allowing for new loans in exchange for free-market reforms and
reversal of the Burnham administration's nationalization policies.
To win favor with Western governments and financial institutions,
Hoyte also moderated the previous administration's leftist tilt in
international relations.
The results of economic reform were slow to appear, but by 1990
the economy began to grow again. The last legitimate date for new
elections was December 1990. Sensing, however, that the PNC might
be able to win a fair election (and thus regain a measure of
international respect) if the economy continued to improve, the
government invoked a clause in the constitution allowing elections
to be postponed a year. Seeing a chance for an honest election, a
group of Guyanese civic leaders created the Elections Assistance
Board (EAB) to monitor the upcoming elections. The EAB appealed to
the Carter Center in Atlanta for international support in its
effort.
Despite threats and intimidation, in July 1991 the EAB
conducted a door-to-door survey to verify voter lists. When the
lists were shown to be grossly inaccurate, the Hoyte
administration, under pressure from the EAB and the international
community, declared a state of emergency and agreed to postpone the
elections until October 1992 and implement a series of reforms
suggested by the Carter Center. The reforms included appointment of
a new election commissioner and agreement that the ballots be
counted at polling centers in view of poll watchers instead of
being taken to government centers and army bases for tallying.
The election date was finally set for October 5, 1992. Hoyte
based the PNC campaign on the improving economy, which he credited
to his free-market reforms. The PPP, still headed by Jagan after
forty-two years, renounced its past Marxist policies and embraced
elements of a free-market economy. In a reversal of decades of
racial politics, Jagan attempted to downplay the country's ethnic
polarization by naming an Afro-Guyanese, Sam Hinds, as his running
mate.
Monitored by an international team of observers headed by
United States former President Jimmy Carter, election results gave
an alliance of the PPP, the smaller Working People's Alliance
(WPA), and the United Force (UF) 54 percent of the vote, and the
PNC, 45 percent. These results translated into thirty-two seats in
the National Assembly for the PPP, thirty-one seats for the PNC,
and one apiece for the WPA and the UF. Foreign observers certified
the elections as "free, fair, and transparent." The PNC conceded
defeat on October 7 and, after twenty-eight years, stepped down
from power. Following brief consultations, the PPP formed a
coalition government with the WPA and the UF (named the PPP-Civic
coalition) and named Jagan executive president.
Two days of rioting and looting in Georgetown and Linden in
eastern Guyana followed announcement of the election results. By
the time the army and police restored order, 2 demonstrators had
been killed and more than 200 injured. Many analysts attributed the
violence to the fear that a PPP government would mean fewer
economic benefits for the Afro-Guyanese population. Former
President Carter, however, stated that the violence was localized
and the looting unrelated to the voting.
In a radio broadcast on October 13, Jagan outlined the
direction of the new government. He stated his intention to build
a political consensus that cut across ethnic lines and to continue
the privatization policies of his predecessor. Analysts speculated
that the new administration would have difficulty in getting
measures approved by the National Assembly and would face strong
opposition from the PNC-dominated military and civil service.
Election observers noted also the need to lower racial tension in
a society that some characterized as one of the most racially
divided they had witnessed. The motto on the Guyanese coat of arms
proudly proclaims "one people, one nation, one destiny." In 1993,
however, this motto remained a distant goal.
The history of preindependence Belize parallels in many ways
the history of Guyana. Unlike the pre-Columbian inhabitants of
Guyana, however, the Maya in Belize left majestic ruins of their
civilization. Remains of the earliest settlers of the area date
back at least to 2500 B.C. By 250 A.D. the classic period of Maya
culture had begun; this period of city-building lasted for more
than 700 years. During this time, the Maya built big ceremonial
centers, practiced large-scale agriculture using irrigation, and
developed writing and a sophisticated calendar. Around the tenth
century, evidence suggests that the great cities were abandoned,
perhaps because of increased warfare among the city-states, revolt
of the peasants against the priestly class, overexploitation of the
environment, or a combination of these and other factors. Even
though the great ceremonial centers were left to decay, the Maya
continued to inhabit the region until the arrival of the Europeans.
The first European settlers in the area were not Spanish but
English. Although Christopher Columbus passed through the area on
his fourth voyage to the Americas in 1502, Spanish explorers and
settlers ignored the region because it lacked gold. English pirates
roaming the Caribbean in the seventeenth century began establishing
small camps near the Belize River to cut logwood, from which a
black dye was extracted. Logwood extraction proved more profitable
than piracy, and the English settlements on the Caribbean coast
grew.
The Spanish sent expeditions throughout the eighteenth century
to dislodge the British settlers. The British were repeatedly
forced to evacuate but returned shortly after each attack. Several
treaties in the late 1700s recognized the British settlers' right
to extract logwood but confirmed Spanish sovereignty over the
region, a concession that later would lead to a territorial
dispute.
The colony continued to grow throughout the nineteenth century.
Logwood extraction was replaced by mahogany cutting as the
settlement's principal economic activity, and slaves were
introduced to increase production. By the time emancipation was
completed in 1838, the settlement had evolved into a plantation
society with a small number of European landowners and a large
population of slaves from Africa.
In the nineteenth century, the colony was also a magnet for
dispossessed groups throughout the region. The
Garifuna (see Glossary),
an Afro-indigenous people descended from the Carib
Indians and slaves of the Eastern Caribbean, found refuge in the
area in the early 1800s. In the mid- and late 1800s, large numbers
of Maya, many of whom had intermarried with or become culturally
assimilated to the Spanish-speaking population of Central America,
fled fighting in the Yucatán or forced labor in Guatemala and
settled in the colony.
The nineteenth century also saw the development of formal
government. As early as 1765, a common law system for the settlers
was formalized, and a superintendent was named in 1794. A
rudimentary legislature began meeting in the early 1800s, and in
1854 the British produced a constitution and formally established
the colony of British Honduras in 1862. Political power in the
colony remained firmly in the hands of the old settler elite,
however; blacks working the plantations were disenfranchised, and
smaller populations of smallholder Garifuna and Maya lived on the
periphery of society.
The early 1900s were a period of political and social change.
Nonwhite groups, particularly an emerging black middle class, began
to agitate for the vote and political power. Mahogany production
slowed, and the colony began to depend on sugar for revenue.
Additional immigrants from neighboring Spanish-speaking countries
drifted in and settled among the rural Maya.
Creoles (see Glossary),
as the English-speaking blacks called themselves, began
to participate in colonial politics.
The Great Depression of the 1930s greatly accelerated the pace
of change. Mahogany exports virtually collapsed, and the colonial
officials responded with measures designed primarily to protect the
interests of the plantation owners. As a result, widespread labor
disturbances broke out. Pressured by persistent labor unrest, the
government eventually legalized trade unions in 1941. The unions
soon broadened their demands to include political reform, and in
1950 the first and most durable political party, the People's
United Party (PUP), was formed with strong backing from the labor
movement. Universal suffrage was granted to literate adults in
1954, and by the 1960s the colony was being prepared for
independence.
The final obstacle to independence proved to be not internal
problems or resistance from the colonial power, but an unresolved
territorial claim over all of Belize by neighboring Guatemala. The
dispute dated to treaties signed in the 1700s, in which Britain
agreed to Spanish sovereignty over the region. Guatemala later
claimed it had inherited Spanish sovereignty over Belize. Although
negotiations over the issue had occurred periodically for more than
a century, the matter of sovereignty became a particularly
important issue for Guatemala in the 1960s and 1970s, when it
realized Britain might grant independence to Belize.
Guatemala's demand for annexation of Belize was largely fought
in the international area. Realizing that Belize's small defense
force of 700 was no match for Guatemala's army, the British
stationed a garrison force to deter any aggression. Belize sought
support for sovereignty from the United Nations, the Nonaligned
Movement, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Organization of
American States. First, individual states and then the
international organizations themselves came to support Belize's
cause. By 1980 Guatemala was completely without international
support for its territorial claim, and the British granted Belize
independence in 1981.
Belize at independence was a small country whose economy
depended on one crop. Unlike many other newly emerging nations,
however, Belize was underpopulated in the early 1990s. The country,
approximately the size of Massachusetts, consists largely of
tropical forest, flat in the north and with a low range of
mountains in the south. Belize has traditionally depended on one
crop (forest products in the 1700s and 1800s; sugar in the mid-
1900s) for its economic livelihood. A collapse in the price of
sugar in the 1980s forced the government to diversify the economy.
The growth of tourism and increased citrus and banana production in
the 1990s made the economy less vulnerable to the price swings of
a single commodity.
Ethnic diversity characterized Belizean society. The two
largest groups were the Creoles, an English-speaking group either
partly or wholly of African descent, and the Hispanic descendants
of immigrants from neighboring Spanish-speaking countries or
Hispanicized indigenous groups called
Mestizos (see Glossary).
Smaller groups included the Garifuna and the various Maya peoples.
The 1980 census showed the population to be about 40 percent Creole
and 33 percent Mestizo. A considerable of influx of people from
Central America shifted these percentages, however, so that the
1991 census showed the Mestizos to be the larger group, a change
that distanced the country from the anglophone Caribbean and made
it increasingly resemble its Hispanic neighbors on the isthmus of
Central America.
The British legacy included a parliamentary democracy based on
the British model, a government headed by the British monarch but
governed by a prime minister named by the lower house of the
bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary. The
constitutional safeguards for citizens' rights were respected, and
the two elections since independence had seen power alternate
between the country's two political parties with an absence of
irregularities or political violence. The last election in 1989 saw
George Cadle Price, leader of the PUP, regain the position of prime
minister, a post he had held at the time of independence.
In 1993 Belize faced a number of challenges. The nation
endeavored to meet the needs of a growing population with only
limited resources. The makeup of the population itself was changing
as Belizeans became more like their Central American neighbors and
less like the English-speaking Caribbean. Most analysts agreed,
however, that as the twentieth century drew to a close, Belize
seemed well-positioned to deal successfully with the economic and
social changes confronting it.
March 3, 1993
* * *
In the months following completion of research and writing of
this book, significant political developments occurred in Belize.
On May 13, 1993, the British government, saying that it felt its
military presence in Belize was no longer necessary because
resolution of Guatemala's long-standing territorial claim seemed
imminent, announced that it would remove most of its troops from
Belize within a year. On June 1, buoyed by overwhelming victories
in by-elections for the Belize City Council and for a vacated
parliamentary seat, Prime Minister George Price called for the
governor general to dissolve the National Assembly on June 30 and
hold general elections the following day, fifteen months before the
mandate of his People's United Party (PUP) was due to expire. The
main opposition party, the United Democratic Party (UDP) headed by
Manuel Esquivel, and the newly formed National Alliance for
Belizean Rights headed by veteran UDP politician Philip Goldson
announced they would participate in the election. The PUP was
confident of victory because the economy was growing and the
opposition appeared disorganized. The PUP also claimed that
recently passed legislation giving Guatemala access to the
Caribbean through Belizean territorial waters had finally settled
the dispute with Guatemala.
Events in neighboring Guatemala, however, came to dominate the
issues in the Belizean election. On June 2, the Guatemalan military
removed President Jorge Serrano Elías, who had earlier accepted
Belize's right to exist and established diplomatic relations with
Belize. Later in June, the Guatemalan military announced plans to
impeach Serrano in absentia for his accord with Belize.
In its election campaign, the UDP seized on many Belizeans'
fears of renewed Guatemalan territorial claims, the consequence of
the British troop withdrawal, and resentment by Creoles over the
growing hispanicization of the country. Esquivel accused Price's
administration of making too many concessions to Guatemala to
obtain a settlement to the dispute and promised to suspend the
legislation granting Guatemala access to the Caribbean. The UDP
also charged that the PUP had not fought hard enough to keep the
British garrison in Belize and promised to reopen talks to maintain
a British presence if it were brought to power. In addition, the
UDP accused the PUP of having allowed too many Spanish-speaking
refugees into Belize (the 1991 census revealed that for the first
time there were more Mestizos than Creoles in the country) and then
catering to the Spanish-speaking vote.
These campaign charges, along with attacks on the PUP as being
corrupt and secretly planning to devalue the Belizean dollar,
resulted in a surprise victory for the UDP on July 1. Although the
PUP won a slim majority of the total votes cast, the UDP won
sixteen of the twenty-nine seats in the National Assembly. The UDP
victory for several seats was razor-thin (six of the seats were won
with a majority of five or fewer votes) and several recounts were
held. Results of the sixteen-seat victory for the UDP were
confirmed, however, and on July 5, Manuel Esquivel was sworn in as
Belize's new prime minister.
July 12, 1993
Tim L. Merrill
Data as of January 1992
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