We need to socialize and network across ethnic communities

Mar 31, 2021 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

Not everything in Guyana revolves around ethnic rivalry, but we cannot deny that it is a major factor in our lives. Guyana’s ethnic composition (39.8 percent Indian, 29.3 percent African, 30.4 percent Mixed and Indigenous) is distinctive. Only a few democracies have such large similarly sized ethnic communities.
This should not be a burden if we Guyanese, at home and in the diaspora, welcome, respect and celebrate our diversity, and organize together our Indigenous (Amerindian), African, Indian, Mixed, Portuguese, Chinese and European communities to bring their strengths and resilience to develop our young nation.
To achieve that, we have to explore and learn about the humanity of all our ancestors. How much does each of us know about the achievements of Indigenous (Amerindian) people, who arrived over 12,000 years ago; about the great African civilizations in West and Southern Africa, where our African ancestors come from; about the great civilizations in India and China, where our Indian and Chinese ancestors come from; and about Madeira, Portugal, where our Portuguese ancestors come from? What do we know about the contributions of Mixed Guyanese?
As individuals, each of us wants a better life. At the same time, each of us also wants to ensure the well-being of our ethnic community. But we will only achieve these goals when we understand that a nation cannot be developed for all its peoples unless we reject “us and them” thinking and the view that “if I win, you lose or if you win, I lose.” All ethnic communities must be able to equally contribute and benefit.
The origin of ethnic rivalry in Guyana is the 400 years of European colonialism that established a corrupt and brutal system of economic exploitation and horrific human rights violations. Extreme force, discriminatory laws and an ideology of racial and cultural differences were used to incorporate our ethnic communities and mixed offspring into the productive and service sectors.
European (White) planters and managers held economic and political power. Indigenous (Amerindian) people were marginalized in the hinterland areas. Africans were enslaved. Portuguese, Chinese and Indians were bounded as indentured servants.
At that time, British Guiana was a land of death. Within a few years after arriving, a large percentage of the African, Portuguese, Chinese and Indian communities had died from the terrible working and health conditions.
The colonial land policies ensured that Indigenous (Amerindians) peoples, Africans, Portuguese, Chinese and Indians were denied access to the best-drained and irrigated land. After the end of slavery, the colonialists deliberately prevented the creation of an African agricultural middle class, and they deliberately confined most Indians to very small rice and cattle farms.
Ethnic communities were separated into specific occupations, specific residential areas and specific cultural and religious organizations. The rainforest and savannahs were mainly populated by Indigenous (Amerindian) people, who worked as subsistence farmers, hunters, gatherers, porters and boatmen in the forestry and mining sectors. The towns of Georgetown, New Amsterdam and Linden were mainly populated by Africans who worked as dockworkers, domestics, street vendors, construction workers, bauxite workers and public service workers. Africans also worked in the rural areas as small farmers in their own villages and as factory workers in the sugar mills. Indians worked in the sugar fields and as small commercial farmers (rice and cattle) in their own villages in the rural areas. Most Portuguese and Chinese worked as shop owners and merchants in the towns, and as owners of gold, diamond and timber concessions.
Membership in trade unions, farming associations, churches, temples, masjids and local community groups were nearly all exclusively based on ethnicity. At one time, even the small middle class of lawyers, doctors, teachers and civil servants from the Mixed, African, Indian, Portuguese, and Chinese communities were separated into exclusive ethnic associations.
There was always resistance to the colonial system. African slaves revolted all the time. Indian indentured labourers also went on strike all the time. However, the occupational, residential and cultural separation prevented socializing among all workers and farmers. Consequently, resistance against the colonial system was deflected into rivalry between ethnic communities.
This was the strategy of European dominance that imposed a separate co-existence of ethnic communities. Two European colonial officials explained: “I think that the safety of the whites depends very much upon the want of union in the different races of labourers.” “They (ethnic communities) do not intermix (socialize), of course, that is one of our great safeties in the Colony when there has been rioting.” [See Alan H. Adamson “Sugar without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838 – 1904” (Yale University Press)].
Aware of these contradictions, there have been three major attempts to unite Guyanese. In 1924, Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow united African and Indian urban and rural workers to demand better wages and working conditions. In 1953, Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham united African and Indian urban and rural workers to demand equal rights and independence. In 1979, Walter Rodney united African and Indian working people to fight for democratic change.
These mass movements had limited success because the focus was on economic demands and independence, which it was believed would eventually change the occupational, residential and cultural separation of the ethnic communities.
Sufficient attention was not given to organizing networks and socializing activities to openly challenge the mistrust, fears and stereotypes between ethnic communities. Consequently, the limited understanding and misinformation about each other’s ethnic community enabled the international and local conservative and opportunist forces to divide the movements.
Today, although Guyanese co-exist and interact together in minibuses; in many secondary schools and in the university; in some Christian churches and masjids; in some major companies; at major cricket matches; in food markets; in some major restaurants; in meetings of legal and medical associations and in parent/teacher associations, most of us do not socialize across ethnic communities.
This was confirmed in a 2009 USA Vanderbilt University Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) Survey. Regardless of the type of association they were members of, Guyanese stated that at least 78 percent of the other participants were mostly or entirely from the same ethnic community.
This colonial legacy of separate co-existence has persisted for 55 years of independence. Socializing actually decreased after the violent inter-ethnic conflicts in 1962, 1963 and 1964. Africans and Indians who had lived in multi-ethnic villages were driven out into exclusively African and Indian villages.
However, we can no longer blame the colonialists. We are now solely responsible for this separate co-existence that has fostered unequal and unfair competition among ethnic communities for State land, civil service jobs and appointments, scholarships, construction and supply contracts in the public sector, careers in the legal, medical and teaching professions, quality education and health care services, commercial credit, support for businesses in agriculture and wholesale/retail trade, corporate and income tax concessions, jobs in the security services, and quality drainage and irrigation services.
What we urgently need are aggressive grassroots programmes for socializing and networking across ethnic communities based on a level playing field of fair and equal competition.

Yours truly, Geoffrey Da Silva

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