Guyana is a country on the east coast of South America. It has a population of three-quarters of a million people. It was a poor country. Most of peoples’ income came from sugar plantations.

A few years ago, Exxon Mobil

discovered oil off the coast of Guyana. Today, Guyana is on its way to

becoming a rich country. Do not bet on that future taking place without rancor

and trouble. Guyana is and will be a mirror of some of the problems

facing other countries.  

Guyana is a country split between black people and Asians from India. It has two main political parties. The Afro-Guyanese party is the People’s National Congress (P.N.C.). The Indo-Guyanese party is the People’s Progressive Party (P.P.P.).

Five hundred years ago, there were no Afro or Indo Guyanese. There was an Indigenous population now called Amerindians. 

Britain enslaved people in Africa and brought them to Guyana.  They worked the sugar plantations. Britain abolished the slave trade in the late 19th century. Then Britain brought in indentured laborers from India. Today about forty percent of the population is East Indian. About thirty percent is African, twenty percent is multi-racial, and ten percent is Amerindian.

The Afro P.N.C. has been in control of the government. An election took place in March 2020.  The Indo P.P.P. seemed to with the election. The infighting started.

Exxon Mobil, the U.S., and neighboring countries put pressure on Guyana. They wanted the country to declare a winner in the election. After five months of counting ballots and lawsuits, power changed hands. The Indo-Guyanese leader of the P.P.P. was sworn in as president.

The new president has his hands full. Exxon-Mobil signed contracts with the old government. Many people say the nation did not have the ability to do business with a global oil giant. The agreements favored the oil company and not the nation. Another difficult issue is the environment. Guyana does not have in place proper guidelines to protect the nation.

For many Guyanese, the sugar industry was their life’s work. Workers charged the P.N.C. government with abandoning the industry. The new oil money was likely going to make Guyana an oil-rich nation. Perhaps like Saudi Arabia.

Most of all there is fear. The fear is that P.P.P.  will use oil money to benefit its own ethnic group. In short, the black citizens and the East Indians do not trust each other.

Will money bring people together? Or will money further divide a nation already split along ethnic lines? When nations are rich or poor, the internal tensions between groups can grow. When people share wealth and income in a fair way, nations have the best chance of succeeding.

Guyana is a test case in seeing if an oil-rich nation can grow for the benefit of all.

Source: The New York Times August 2, 2020