These Gated Communities

Oct 20, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The news is that another set of foreigners is taking care of its employees and in fine style too. On this occasion, the Dutch are the ones leading the way (‘Dutch FPSO to lease gated community with recreational facilities from Guyanese developer’, KN October 19. It seems that the more we explore this oil wealth of ours, and should progress into the modern era, the more it is that this country revisits and experiences what prevailed before in the past.

In the past, Guyanese were treated as dirt, and were less than second class citizens. The sugar kings from the United Kingdom came here, setup shop, and ruled the roost for the longest while. We were the chickens running about and scratching about to get by, while they lived in their mansions, reserved clubs, and with a quality of life and standard of living that all the ordinary and outside the connected ranks of Guyanese could do was dream about. This was also what the citizens of this country were forced to contend with in our bauxite industry with the foreigners running the show, and cracking the whip over our parents and grandparents, as the outsiders strutted around like princes and dukes. Those were in the days of sugar and bauxite and before nationalisation.

Now, Guyana has discovered oil in billions of barrels, and many flocks of foreigners fly here to feast on our riches, and get their sweet piece of this country’s already huge and ever-growing mineral rich pie. They are paid differently than locals, just like before. They have or carve out facilities that are day to night (modern to ancient) when matched up against what Guyanese have, where they are with this wealth. This is what is becoming more and more apparent in prime locations in the heart of our rushing ahead oil and gas sector. Already, oil is in the double digit billions of barrels, and with much more likely to be found sooner than later. Oil has its mouthwatering and irresistible attractions, and the foreign predators come here to grab all they can get.

Prime land for housing is what the Dutch have their eyes set on, and they are on the move. Think of this, fellow Guyanese, owner of this wealth: a gated community means nothing but what those two words represent. That is, who can go in and who is prevented from entering. It is a reserved area and a segregated space, and an exclusive neighborhood all blended into one. This is how the foreign kingpins and lords set themselves up at the heights to look down on us and to identify themselves for who they really are. Sugar and bauxite and rice were all the economic kings at one time or another, now it is the turn of oil to be coronated as Guyana’s new monarch.

For sure, Guyanese will be going into those gated communities with their state-of-the-art facilities, for whatever purpose. Guyanese get to fetch their golf clubs, even caddy for the foreigners, if the exploiters will allow them the favor of doing so. There are other Guyanese who will be made to feel at home amid the foreign country within this national community, and those Guyanese are, and will be, the ones who sell this country out for a pittance. The powerful locals (Politicians and business elites) already stand as the equivalents of African tribal leaders who sold out their own brothers, and Indian Maharajahs who bonded with the British to drain and devastate the riches of their country. History just doesn’t repeat itself- it reinforces eternal truths. They are about who is in (because the betrayed their own), and who is out for the simple reason that they contributed to their own self-destruction, through being feeble when they should be fearless. How the foreigners arrange to house themselves and their own always provides confirmation about who is in charge, and who is of the exploited class.