7542 COHA Report, Uncharted Territory in Guyanese Legislative Elections

As Guyana prepares for its upcoming parliamentary elections, tensions between its two major political parties ride high.  The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and the People’s National Congress (PNC), bitter adversaries since their inception in the 1950s, are the main contenders for the presidency, with the majority party’s presidential candidate assuming office.  Guyana, a small nation of fewer than 800,000 people, is a former British colony and South America’s lone English-speaking country. The ramifications of British colonial influence have played a significant role in the development of the country’s turbulent post-independence political profile.  Racial tensions often have ignited widespread riots and violence, and citizens are increasingly voting along strictly ethnic lines.  To better understand the contemporary nature of Guyanese politics, it is worth examining how the nation arrived at its current state.

The Land of Many Waters

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the native Carib and Arawak peoples named the land Guiana, which means “land of many waters.”  The Dutch colonized the territory in the 16^th century, but the British assumed control in 1796, and in 1815 the Dutch formally ceded Guiana to England. Recognizing the fertility of the land, the British quickly set about cultivating sugarcane on plantations, and importing Africans as slaves.  The practice was abolished in 1834 but persisted until 1838, when freed Africans settled in urban areas.  Facing labor shortages on the plantations, the British contracted poorly paid Indians as indentured servants, setting the precedent for rural Indo-Guyanese settlement and later urban Afro-Guyanese consolidation.  Today, 43 percent of the Guyanese population is of East-Indian origin, 30 percent is of African origin, 17 percent is mixed, and 9 percent is Amerindian.