Guyana: PNC-State vs Amerindians (March 1976)
In 1974, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) formed in Guyana as a political compact forged by the Working People’s Vanguard Party, the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA), the Indian Political Revolutionary Associates and Ratoon. The WPA, while best known for the involvement of Pan-African historian and theorist Walter Rodney, should be equally appreciated for its momentous challenge to the political orthodoxy of Burnhamism. Burnhamism reigned under the guardianship of its namesake, Forbes Burnham, the Afro-Guyanese statesman and progenitor of “co-operative socialism” in Guyana.
As Clash! contributor and founding member of ASCRIA Eusi Kwayana details, the idea of co-operative socialism was “born with ASCRIA [but] coopted and sabotaged by the PNC.” The split between Kwayana and Burnham (along with the split between ASCRIA and Burnham’s PNC) led to the development of the WPA and its confrontation with a Black-led, “socialist” government in Guyana. In Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean, the 1970s stirred battles in print and in the streets over the definition and practice of socialism. Of the many fault lines that opened in this period, a clash emerged between tendencies based in popular assemblies and workers self-management and others founded in democratic centralism and state-managed industrial development.
In Guyana, this clash preoccupied the critics of Burnham in the WPA. A less appreciated clash exploded between the political and trade union elites concentrated on the coast in Georgetown and communities in the interior, “hinterland,” and “upriver.” In The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics (1972), Kwayana demonstrates how the tensions between union bureaucrats in Georgetown and rank-and-file bauxite workers in Linden erupted into a series of wildcat strikes against the Burnham regime and trade union management. In a new edition of this text, Clash! co-editor Matthew Quest includes an appendix of related ASCRIA documents and details in his introduction “how Black Power activists began to come to terms with the centrality of the self-emancipation of Black labor as the basis for Black autonomy, which stands in distinct contrast to elite party politics and a Black led state power.”
In addition to the fault line between Black-led state socialism and Black workers’ autonomy, the drive for state capitalist accumulation under the guise of “nationalization” and “co-operative socialism” drove a wedge between the state and other marginalized communities in Guyana. Here, in an essay originally published by regional periodical Caribbean Dialogue in March 1976, the authors condemn the proposed construction of a dam and hydro-electric plant on Indigenous Akawaio territory along the Kamarang River.
At the heart of this polemic we find divergent definitions of socialism — between that of Burnham and that of his critics — as well as a more pointed question of Akawaio and Amerindian relations with the Co-operative Socialist State in Guyana. How does co-operative socialism appear when viewed from the interior, upriver, Akawaio homelands and waters?
In 1979, Walter Rodney would famously denounce Burnham in a speech entitled, “People’s Power, No Dictator,” before his assassination the following year. His address makes clear the methods by which Burnham adorns himself in the image of democracy and co-operative socialism while submitting the Guyanese people to brute violence and repression. Even Rodney, though, reinforces the dominance of the coast in Guyanese society and political life:
Most Guyanese live on the coastlands. These coastlands were once desolate swamps flooded by the sea and the savannah waters. The dams and the canals, the roads and the houses, the fields and the factories, the schools and the churches, the words and the gestures -all these represent our common heritage. Our foreparents planted their strength, their seed, and their intelligence in a country which is now ours. Neither the land nor the rights of the people are gifts of the Burnham dictatorship. On the contrary, that dictatorship has placed the nation in reverse gear. It is destroying the economy and it stealing the rights of the people.
By republishing this essay, “PNC-State vs Amerindians,” we call attention to the powerful critique of coastal hegemony and anti-Indigenous policies that thrived under the protective veneer of “co-operative socialism.” Here, Rodney’s words are anticipated by the commentary on the Kamarang hydro-electric project — regarded as a step further toward “political dictatorship” in Guyana. Moreover, the autonomy of Akawaio people as protectors of the lands and waters of the Kamarang River Basin is upended by the dictatorship of coastal political elites.
These conditions persist as offshore investments by ExxonMobil and Hess launch an oil boom in Guyana. The relations between the State and the masses — while no longer dressed up in the language of socialism — emulate those of Burnham. Likewise, mining operations in the interior continue to erode Amerindian autonomy in accord with what Lokono-Warau-African-Guyanese-American anthropologist Shanya Cordis calls “coastlander ambivalence” in which “the state continues to extend indigenous dispossession of their collective lands and territories, even as it distances itself from the colonial violence of the past through discourses of cohesion, unity, progress, and the ‘good life’ for all.”
In our founding Clash! editorial statement, we write: “We can be found in every corner of the Caribbean archipelago, along the Caribbean coast of South and Central America, in upriver communities of the Guianas, and in global diasporas concerned about the heritage and future of the region.” Indeed, the inclusion of upriver and Indigenous communities in a vision of Caribbean Federation from Below must be paid more than mere lip service. This essential fault line in divergent visions of Caribbean socialism and federation must be brought to light as it was by our comrades nearly five decades ago.
Note: Further research and consultation with Eusi Kwayana, elder contributor to Clash!, reveals that indeed this article was written by Walter Rodney. Kwayana remembers it well. Originally the title was “Cultural Death by Drowning.” This contribution stood out by Rodney for while he was known for his scholarly research and charismatic speeches, rarely did he write short agitational political journalism. This was a memorable exception.
PNC-State vs Amerindians (Caribbean Dialogue Vol. 2 No. 1, March 1976)
Originally published in Caribbean Dialogue, March 1976.
Transcribed by Ryan Cecil Jobson.
Lands confiscated for hydro-electric scheme
One of the most curious things about this great dam and its associated Hydro electric power station is that it does not make any economic sense. If Guyana built and aluminium smelter and added its requirements to our projected needs for the foreseeable future, the total requirement for electrical power would still fall below the estimated output of the Kamarang hydro-electric station. There is not likelihood that the power can be exported to neighbouring countries, so that the excess power will imply be wasted and will add to the cost of electricity to the Guyanese consumer. The dam, the hydro-electric station and the feeder roads are going to cost a fortune — upwards of $500 million (Guyana). It is the Guyanese people who would have to pay for this. At first, the amount involved would be borrowed, and we would then be burdened with the repayment of a huge debt for many many years to come.
WASTAGE
The hydro-electric project near Kamarang will waste people, it will waste money and it will waste land. Apparently, the government’s attitude is that Guyana has 83,000 sq.miles; and therefore to flood 1000 sq.miles is nothing. Curiously enough, they do not know what lies under the soil in those 1,000 sq.miles. Our country has shown all the indications of being rich in a wide diversity of minerals. However, geological surveys have not been extensive or intensive enough to locate all mineral deposits and to determine at what points they can be profitably extracted. When a lake will permanently flood an area, it calls for renewed geological investigations to ensure that wealth beneath the soil is not being squandered. These thorough geological investigations have not been attempted, partly because of manpower shortage and mainly because of government unconcern with forward planning.
KILLING A PEOPLE
There are alternative proposals for hydro-electric power stations at other places in Guyana’s numerous rivers. Some of these proposals would make more economic sense, apart from not inflicting inhuman abuse on a whole ethnic group amongst our people. To justify the government’s choice of the Upper Mazaruni as the site for the dam, there is speculation that the PNC regime is building in that particular area close to Venezuela in order to forestall expansionist claims of the Venezuelan government. However, imperialism and territorial aggression cannot be stopped by a dam. It will require the support of all patriotic Guyanese to defend our heritage from those who might wish to usurp it.
Can the Akawaio and other Amerindians be loyal and patriotic Guyanese when they are being deprived of their ancestral lands and are being forced to flee beyond our borders. Can the rest of us sit back and regard such action as being in the best interest of our young Guyanese nation? If we do, we will allow political dictatorship to take a further step in establishing itself in Guyana. If we accept this project; we will squander not only financial resources but also the potential wealth hidden under the soil which should be guarded by us for generations to come. If we accept the flooding and dispossession of the Akawaio, we will become accomplices to GENOCIDE — the liquidation of an etnic group, which is the most abominable crime in the history of man.
AKAWAIO
A recent report in the Guyana press indicated that the government is going ahead with a huge dam in Kamarang. The government press release tells of the great hydro-electric potential of the dam. However, the government and the press do not tell the Guyanese people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They refuse to mention that when the dam floods more than a thousand square miles of the Mazaruni basin it will completely drown out the Akawaio Amerindians who peacefully occupied those lands for centuries. Already, many of the 4,000 Akawaio have been forced to flee out of the country into neighbouring areas of Brazil and Venezuela. They are in fact already being liquidated as a cultural entity. As usual, government action was undertaken without informing or consulting the population as a whole or even the people who were directly involved. Plans for the huge hydro-electric project of the Upper Mazaruni were drawn up and approved without the slightest consultaton of the wishes of the Akawaio.
NO DEMOCRACY
One would have expected at the very minimum that the government would have called in those affected and discussed with them where they woulf go if their lands were actually flooded. One would have expected that the government might have attempted to make amends for their anti-democratic decision by offering the Akawaio generous compensation. But no such step has been taken. The actions of the Guyana Government with regard to the Kamarand hydro-electricity scheme and the Akawaio have been politically dictatorial and morally shameless.
FORCED CONSENT
Of course, the PNC Government of Guyana is good at manipulation and intimidation. In December 1973, the Minister for Energy and National Resources called the Akawaio captains to Georgetown and informed them of the decision. The representatives of the Akawaio were not given any opportunity to discuss the proposal. Instead, they were told that the dam would be built whether they liked it or not, and that they would be better off signing a document agreeing to the drowning of their own lands. Questions such as compensation and alternative living areas were not discussed. One of the captains refused to sign what amounted to the death warrant of his people. He was removed from office through government intervention and was subsequently reported to have been in fear of his life from opportunists who act as party henchmen and thugs. All of the captains later voiced disapproval, because, naturally enough their people would not accept such a savage decision. Nevertheless, the government brazenly reported that the Akawaio had enthusiastically agreed to the project.
HIDDEN BY GUYANA PRESS
This story has already been reported in the international press abroad, but the Guyanese people do not possess any of these details because our press is muzzled. Liberal minded individuals in other parts of the world are organizing to protest against this latest in a long series of historical outrages against the Amerindian people of this hemisphere. It would be scandalous if we as Guyanese citizens cannot demand truthful and detailed information on this project and confront the problem before it becomes irreversible. At least, it will take a few years before the scheme can be completed, and the working people of this country must raise their voices before it is too late. For us, it is not simply a question of helping others. It is our own self interest. In the first place, the Amerindians are part of the working population of this country; and in the second place, we must combat dictatorship and socially negative politics so as to lay down a firm, principled line for future socialist reconstruction.
