Geography of our future

Nov 27, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

The recent November 25^th letter by Dr. Walter H. Persaud entitled “The Geography of our Future: A Pathway for Guyana for the 21st Century” provides undeniable proof why history must be taught in our schools.

The main theme of his letter is captured in his own words “our nation cannot walk creatively into its future while drawing its poetry primarily from a heritage that reinforces memories of captivity, plantation structures, and colonial domination, as they do not reflect the promise of the land beneath its feet. If history ruled us in the first sixty years of our independence, geography must be the handmaiden of our future”.

Dr. Persaud continues his argument that “the time has come for us to turn South”. When Guyana faces the South American mainland, it discovers an entirely different horizon of possibilities. The continent offers scale, diversity, creative inspiration, technological opportunity, and an economic landscape that rewards ambition. Brazil, Suriname, Colombia and the wider region present Guyana with access to new languages, grand economic corridors, continental markets, renewable energy grids, transportation networks, knowledge systems and creative impulses that reflect the land and the people of this hemisphere.

Perhaps the good doctor has degrees in science but surely not in history, culture, geopolitics and common sense.

The countries he mentions, namely Brazil, Suriname, and Colombia epitomize the same plantation structures and colonial domination he wants to run away from in the Caribbean. Brazil was the largest slave and plantation colony in the world and was dominated by Portugal. Suriname is the same and was a 200-year colony of the Dutch. Colombia was a colony of Spain for over 300 years. Yes, 300 years. Has the good doctor ever visited these countries?

So, according to Dr. H. Walter, tiny Guyana with a population fewer than 1 million, should leave its British and Dutch colonial slavery context and join Brazil and its Portuguese colonial past and its over 200 million people and 200 million cows and also join Colombia with over 50 million people… to access “new languages, knowledge systems, continental markets “etc.

Surely Mr. Persaud does not understand the deep-seated racism and marginalization of black and brown people in these countries. I wonder how Guyanese companies with little technology, little global management experience and expertise would survive when, for example, there are Brazilian companies that are larger than all Guyanese companies combined.

Oh yes, we can become an integral member of BRICS where our companies, even if they had the technology, capital and management expertise, would become even less competitive. And Dr. Walter H. Persaud is either black of brown, I would presume.

And who would defend Guyana in America’s backyard where Exxon and Chevron dominate. Where does the Unites States fit in this master plan of turning South. Guyanese are failing math and English with great abundance. But, to make us more competitive and cultural, Guyanese must now learn Portuguese and Spanish plus give up the vaunted US citizenship so many Guyanese crave for.

I do love Dr. Persaud’s enthusiasm, namely, “This radical reorientation of national identity must be matched by a transformation in national strategy. It requires that Guyana orient its trade, diplomacy, investment, transportation systems, digital infrastructure, and energy planning toward South America”.

More fantastically, according to Dr. Walter H. Persaud, “a cultural reawakening must accompany these geo-structural changes. South America is a continent of extraordinary artistic depth. Its literature, cinema, visual arts, music, theater, and Indigenous traditions form some of the most powerful creative currents in the world. Guyana has long admired these traditions from a distance but has never fully embraced them as mirrors in which we can see our own possibilities”.

How poetic. No more chutney songs.

Perhaps, Dr. Walter H. Persaud has mentally gone through this radical reorientation of national identity and has dug into his creature South American cultural instincts to have written this letter. Perhaps an ambassador job in Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia would expand his political and cultural innocence.

Yours truly,
Eric Phillips

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