Notes on Guyana
mattlakeman.org
mattlakeman.org
Curious if there are any other Guyanese folks out there who're willing to share their experience.
Everyone always (perhaps South Asians more commonly) asks where I'm from. I say I'm British. They ask "no, really". I say Trinidadian and Guyanese heritage. They say "you look like you are from India, your family must be from India". It does get a bit tiresome.
The only time it actually _really_ annoys me is when I have to fill out forms with ethnicity. There is never Asian-Caribbean, but always Black-Caribbean, so I always feel that I am never being represented.
People have written entire books on the politics behind how the government comes up with the sometimes-illogical categories into which folks are divided.
See e.g. https://reason.com/volokh/2023/03/25/my-comment-on-the-ombs-... for discussion on the "hispanic" designation.
Are you from India?
West Indies | South America | Guyana
Where are your parents from?
A couple hundred years ago, my ancestors left India
Oh <disappointed>
[every time: wait, what if I had said yes? nevermind]There are also downsides to being in these ethnocentric cliques. Know the crabs in a bucket effect, and the saying about how you can't become a prophet in your own town. There's a strong anchoring effect your own people have regarding you. When they see you rising up, they wonder why you're succeeding and they're not, and try to drag you down (instead of celebrating your rise). There's a strong hierarchy within these cliques, and you're not supposed to break-out of your "correct position" in the hierarchy.
Also, if it helps to know this: I have relatives who are thick in the middle of their Indian cliques. What do they do when they're not with their clique-members? Trash-talk about them.
The activity is good advice. Some of my closest friends I've meet though hobbies I enjoyed - I'll just need to apply the same strategy, though it definitely feels tougher to do without having school as a crutch to force socializing.
Hard thing to search for.. can you provide a book title or something?
I remember being lectured that I was latino since Guyana is in latin america and I had to explain that, nah.
Mostly consider myself Lucian and I feel like I've assimilated into the American tech population. My history now is just a interesting fun fact. Don't meet too many people from the Caribbean in general in tech circles, so it's always fun to get a reminder that they're out there.
The comment the author made about the caste system not coming to Guyana tracks too, my aunt has encountered people making quips about it at work every once in a blue moon.
Beyond this, I would suggest learning a little bit about the common topics we "Desi" people talk about at work. In the US most of us will talk about local issues way more than anything happening back in India. This is partly because India is quite siloed. So there is a good chance that people are talking about elections these days.
Btw language barriers play a huge role. I understand Spanish and Portuguese better than I understand many Indian languages. In many cases, I can't even figure out which language people are speaking. (As an aside, it is possible that some of your colleagues are not speaking Hindi but some other language altogether.) None of my Indian colleagues in my university speak my native language. Many of them don't speak Hindi. So we communicate only in English.
Shouldn't be surprised. It's a country the size of England with the population of a large neighborhood in Brooklyn.
2023 oil earnings by Guyana: $30 billion GYD
2023 oil company (Exxon, Chevron, China National) profits from Guyana: $1.3 trillion GYD
> Exxon is the operator of the Stabroek Block, with 45% interest, Hess Guyana Exploration Ltd. holds 30% interest and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Petroleum Guyana Limited holds 25% interest. Last year, the three companies earned $1.3 trillion in profits – entirely tax-free in Guyana.. the Stabroek Block partners are allowed to recover 75% of the oil produced to recover their investment costs, the remaining 25% is considered profit, which is split between Guyana and the Stabroek Block consortium, giving each 12.5%.
> However, the consortium pays a 2% royalty from its share to Guyana. From its 14.5% Guyana then has to pay taxes for the oil companies... for 2023, the Government of Guyana (GoG) had to pay the combined sum of $306 billion in income taxes for ExxonMobil Guyana Limited and its Stabroek Block partners, Hess and CNOOC according to the companies’ audited financial statements, while for the same period Guyana earned $336 billion from its oil.
1 Guyanese dollar equals 0.0048 USD.
Like they changed in Venezuela?
Venezuela nationalized oil production in 71, it collapsed 50% within a few years, briefly rebounded, and is currently down almost 90%.
That didn't work out for Venezuela.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela
[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/venezuela-un...
That would be worse than Qatar turning into Venezuela. Venezuela was richer than Qatar - by quite a bit.
I think people fail to grasp how good things were in Venezuela before 71.
Just like American Indians, the natives there are called Amerindian.
There’s also a huge Dutch history…dating back to the 1600 if I remember correctly.
WOW! It’s amazing to see Guyana mentioned on HN.
If you rally want to know Guyanese, get invited to one of our parties. Fun and down-to-earth folks…well most, some can definitely carry a massive ego seed.
If you haven’t met anyone in tech - greetings! A pleasure to meet you. 20 years building successful companies and products in the USA.
Wakenaam - Dutch - “Waiting for a name”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyanese_Creole
Side note: creoles are accepted as version of French/English etc. that evolved on a different timeline while getting heavy influences from the local languages. For a while it was common to call them "broken" or "bastardized" [0], in language circles that's pretty much a thing of the past I'd say. Same way we don't call French broken Latin.
[0] https://guyanachronicle.com/2013/10/13/the-rich-cultural-exp...
There's basically nothing about it on the English Internet. A point exists on Google Maps and some auto-generated SEO spam pages exist probably for that reason. There are no photos of the location, the terrain view just shows trees. No roads nearby. It's a few hundred meters from the marginally better documented Kukui River. The Internet has a video of some kids at another part of this river who take a raft across it every day to get to school.
It looks like there are lots of places in Guyana like this. Inhabited but undocumented, at least on the public Internet. It's fascinating to me that in an era where you just assume everything is online, there's so much of the world that still isn't.
I thought Suriname was the Dutch Guyana
Guyana has weak political institutions and high corruption & tribalism. It’s more likely to become a poor resource-cursed nation than a successful one.
I truly hope this isn’t the case, but if history teaches us a lesson..
Examples are most of Western Europe, the U.S., and Canada. There’s a clear correlation between low corruption and high economic development.
And I would love to hear from any non-westerners here as I suspect it's impossible to get a meaningful evaluation from the west.
My country is a fitting example. Most citizens (of all classes) don’t pay taxes, people pay petty bribes to violate laws, government officers request for bribes to carry out mundane activities like getting a driver’s license or passport, and citizens are happy to oblige.
Everyone wants to bypass the law and feel smart, not realizing that it makes the whole system terrible and everyone poorer in the long run (people generally don’t want to make long-term capital investments in corrupt countries, so that’s why most of Africa struggles to get foreign investment).
This kind of petty corruption is hard to explain to a Westerner who hasn’t experienced it. And it’s no surprise that corruption is keeping African nations (and many nations from other continents) behind.
The U.S. and the West at large aren’t perfect, but it fairs much better than most of the world in preventing corruption.
Capital also purchases influence in developing/underdeveloped countries, but in a much worse way. It’s often very cheap because desperate locals are willing to sell out their country for any meager amount.
Here’s a fitting example: Benny Steinmetz (a mining tycoon) paid $8.5 million in bribes to the spouse of Guinea’s former President to obtain exploration permits for a mine [1].
Steinmetz sold 51% of the mine shortly after for $2.5 billion [2]. In other words, he extracted 300x the bribe, and the Guinean official never bothered to think her country was being robbed in broad daylight by the bribe she received.
Many similar cases occur in Africa, wherein foreign companies pay cheap bribes to rob countries of their resources.
The African leaders (and populace) are often willing to part with their resources for cash rather than harnessing it for internal development (this part is difficult, unlike the easy way of collecting cash and spending it foolishly).
Add in endless petty corruption, and the result is the mediocrity of many countries that we see.
1- https://www.reuters.com/business/swiss-court-upholds-corrupt...
Places with big corruption problems have people demanding bribes at every turn.
GP says that looking at history, oil in a country soil seems correlated with more corruption.
I a way, you could see oil as a curse. I bet some locals does, I would if I’d face the political, societal and environmental drawbacks without much benefits.
It’s unfortunately not that simple for poor countries to benefit from resources
- Guayana and nearby places were British colonies.
- there's a vast Indian (i.e. descended from India) population in Guyana and nearby places brought over by the British as "indentured workers" (for some reason, Indians were never officially called "slaves" by the British) in sugarcane plantations. (Interesting to me because I'm from India).
- Guyana speaks English.
- Yes, there are countries in "Latin" America that speak English. There are also countries that mainly speak French.
- Guyanese are often considered "Hispanic" in the U.S. though they are "Anglo". In fact Guyanese and Belizeans are able to pick and choose what to indicate on forms regarding their ethnicity, as it suits them.
- My favorite Salsa dance teacher in the U.S. has the last name "Persaud" and looks "Latino". Took me about 15 years to realize he was of Indian stock (though might be mixed with Latino).
- if Guyana had lower crime, and a well-organized economy, I'd move there in a heartbeat. They speak English, have good weather, and have massive oil deposits.
The British Cellular Jail on the Andaman Islands were considered double jeopardy because of this as well.
The article says “My major historical sources include a 1992 US Military-commissioned study of Guyana and Belize. No, I have no idea why they lumped those two countries together”
This seems to be the connection: only mainland countries south of USA primarily English speaking. (Of course both related to British colonialism)
An indentured worker and a slave are not the same thing. While one would prefer to be neither of those things, generally the former voluntarily entered into the arrangement (or in lieu of prison), were bound for a fixed term, weren't considered property, and had at least some legal recourse. Were some indentured workers de-facto slaves? Almost certainly. That doesn't mean they were the same thing though.
I thought everyone could do this
The same goes for chinese, japanese and filipino "slaves". In official capacity, they may not have been called slaves, but unofficially, they were. There are old portguese books that claimed japanese made the best slaves. And there was a british viceroy who claimed indians made the best slaves.
> Guyanese are often considered "Hispanic" in the U.S.
Maybe in official documents but certainly not in everyday life. Guyanese are considered and treated like indians or 'hindus' and they themselves view themselves as indians, not hispanic.
I suppose it's because they weren't. It's sort of fashionable to compare hard conditions to slavery in many fields, but back in those times the difference would be obvious.
Frankly, I think the reason that it is not more often referred to as slavery is because it wasn’t officially referred to as such contemporaneously. But there is legitimate debate around the differences between Indian indentured servitude and slavery.
The author's heavy reliance on a historical narative authored by the U.S. military probably contributed to the rather sanitized recounting of the role Britain had in imigrating 286,000 Indians to Guyana.
I am curious to know if anyone else here shares this history in their family.
Which one?
"Latin America" has multiple definitions. Most of those definitions do exclude English-speaking Belize and Guyana (and Dutch-speaking Suriname).
What you say about the US just being one of the American countries is correct, and it's often a source of confusion (intended or not)
You are right. But also the term Latino "creates" Latin America, which are the countries Latinos come from. And then also a subculture of immigrants in the US, which funnily is a bit excluding of Brazilians as not real Latinos (as there is also a expectation that everybody below the US speaks Spanish).
You should have stopped right there.
Latino is a US term to refer to people in the US by their origin.
Outside of the US people use Latinoamérica to refer to the central and South American former colonies of France, Portugal and Spain.
Iberoamérica is used too if you want to be more specific and exclude the French colonies
Oh yeah it's very funny when you start the "actually Quebec is part of Latin America, but the Guyanas aren't, except for French Guiana, which isn't actually a country, and about Louisiana...."
It's a bit of a complex issue since it's the US taking over a term or culture and normalising it as the only valid one.
Imagine explaining this to middle-America.
Venezuela was threatening to invade Guyana*
Spellbinding ? More like propaganda. Historical ? "When the first spanish settler".
One can tell the nationality of the author from those.
> (including individuals of the male, female, black, Indian, white, Chinese, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish persuasion)
What "persuasion" means in this context?
> ...Janet Rosenberg, who to my knowledge is the only Jewish female head-of-government (and later state) in history outside of Israel (and more recently, Mexico).
There is one more, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Dreifuss>.
It doesn't have anything to do with the typical meaning of "persuade" because English is weird.
The modern usage of the idiom came about as a joke - as though someone's sex or ethnic heritage were merely a matter of preference. Over time, the original sense has been forgotten, and the humor has been lost through repetition, so it is now just an odd phrase.
"Of the ... persuasion" is a slightly fancy way of saying "who are ..."
When that list amounts to "I booked it to the next country because I exhausted everything worth doing in a day", coming from someone who tries hard to do interesting stuff well off the beaten path... it really sounds like the only reason to go to that country is to check it off the list of the countries to visit. Yikes.
Or at least that’s the kind of destination where you have to make more plans before travelling than asking the natives what to do once you’ve arrived.
Here's hoping their new oil wealth will improve their infrastructure and reduce crime.
French Guiana: South America
Guinea: Africa
Guinea-Bissau: Africa
Equatorial Guinea: Africa
Papua New Guinea: Asia
Bonus fun fact: the guinea pig is from Peru and has no known connection to any of these.
https://apjjf.org/2015/13/4/Moe-Taylor/4258
> Mass Games in North Korea.. are without comparison the largest choreographed performance in the world.. There are three central components.. gymnastics, music, and the panoramic backdrop.. The backdrop is created through tens of thousands of children aligned in one side of the stadium seats holding books of illustrated cards positioned contiguously with each other to give the illusion of an imperforate surface; by changing the pages of the book in precisely coordinated unison following the signals of a conductor, the backdrop image is transformed throughout the performance.
"No, Guyana, not Ghana."
"Pardon my ignorance, but where is that exactly?" :-)
Wow
Britain sent warships and 700 troops to oust Jagan in 1953, suspending the constitution, and later worked (with the US) to ensure Jagan could not reach the top job again. To be clear, Jagan’s PPP had won 75% of the seats in a democratic election.
An AP report on declassified MI5 documents about the 1953 coup: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/26/mi5-files-coup...
A good summary of the post-'53 machinations by historian Mark Curtis: https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-sooner-we-get-these-peopl...
Any ideas?
Theory is that 1) Guyana needs to wage war with Venezuela over oil-rich disputed territory [1], and 2) Guyana wants to build a lot of infrastructure. Might be opportunities there.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana%E2%80%93Venezuela_terri...
Someone should tell the Emiratis and Saudis. They keep hanging out with him and signing deals.
Ali studied in India so that probably played a significant role.
More critically, India's ONGC and Reliance have signifant stakes in Venezuela's ONG industry, and act as a mediator between Guyana and Venezuela.
Guyana is also trying to become a major ONG exporter now, and the biggest greenfield market for that is now India.
I know people in Guyana doing real estate who may have opportunities. Email in my profile if you are interested.
And, Alex Rothman, youtuber, used Gimlette as a source for (well produced!) videos he made both about Sri Lanka and Guyana. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2mszCGt830
The Banks billboard brought back memories. My mom used to work in the computer department (or whatever they called their IT center) at Banks D.I.H. when I was a kid. I remember playing with used punch cards and having bags of confetti from the punched out chads.
The slavery discussion brought out a LOL because it was almost exactly what I was taught as a Guyanese schoolkid in the 70's. Especially the part about the Amerindians basically saying, "fuck this shit" and disappearing back into the jungle.
Having lived in the US for over 40 years, I have essentially no connection to the country of my birth any longer (technically I was born in British Guiana, but whatever), so it was interesting to see how it's changed from what I remember. Captions on the photos would have been nice though.
"economically best and brightest". That’s a google search that only shows this article.
Now consider the caste makeup. Two thumbs up from the author to the caste system I guess.