Pigment Politics in Guyana

...And the PNC government has begun to do just that...

...While Jagan's party, as usual, got the largest number of votes, it did not get a majority of votes or seats, and Bumham took office...

...It had been the explanation for equally drastic action in the past...

...In the last decade the number of Indian physicians and lawyers has grown from an insignificant minority to perhaps a slight majority in both fields, and it is now said that there are almost as many Indian as African schoolteachers...

...In Guyana, by contrast, the problem of nationalism is infinitely more complicated: The principal British legacy is an entire national history whose effects must be undone before the Guyanese can become a nation...

...It is not strange that the East Indian, pressed and patronized by the African, considers him, more than the white man, his oppressor...

...Indian professionals followed rapidly...

...The Africans have met the Indian political threat with racial cohesion of their own...

...Out of it, too, may emerge a new, less restless Indo-Guyanese and a less threatened Afro-Guyanese...

...If in the interim he can win the confidence of at least the increasing number of urban, middle-class Indians, he may be able to offset the electoral effects of the high Indian birth rate enough to stay in power by transforming his party into a middleclass, rather than Negro, organization...

...The consciousness of nation is almost absent...

...Each side believes that influential members of the other race distribute jobs on a purely racial basis...

...In the light of these demographic trends, Burnham's long-range hopes depend on the ultimate demise of the racial party system...

...Intellectuals, politicians and the masses of Guyanese speak the same language, both literally and figuratively...

...But Jagan's supposed communism doubtless troubled Whitehall as much as his racial communalism...

...The British instituted PR to oust Jagan from office under the guise of a more "democratic" electoral system...

...The various facets of Guyanese economic history have conspired to create and perpetuate these racial divisions...

...Guyana's only hope of viability rests with Burnham...

...British Guiana, independent since May 26 when it became simply Guyana, will probably prove the point once again...

...One of the reasons that racial antagonisms have been translated so easily into political battles is that government is a major source of the limited employment opportunities available, particularly of those affording upward mobility...

...The principal beneficiary of Indian voting strength has been the People's Progressive Party (PPP), headed by Marxist dentist Cheddi Jagan, whose American wife, the former Janet Rosenberg, was a member of the U.S...

...Meanwhile, rising aspirations, induced by high rates of literacy and political awareness, have been outrunning available rewards because of insufficient room at the top and middle levels of society...

...To begin with, British Guiana, always regarded as merely a sugar colony on the coast of South America, was a classic case of colonial neglect...

...If anything, it appears to have calmed racial tempers...

...And even today Guyana remains almost a model of national unviability...

...Only a black government can salve African apprehensions, keep the African bureaucracy functioning, and keep predominantly African Georgetown from perpetual revolt against the government, as it was under Jagan...

...It is no wonder, then, that having been given independence by a benefactor who has not really been beneficent, the Guyanese, who are not really a nation, must celebrate the event less as an opportunity than as an unexpected windfall...

...The sugar producers boast their 15 estates now produce 5.5 times as much as 230 estates produced in 1829, ignoring the fact that since then the population has multiplied 7.5 times...

...This was due to the absence of a strong indigenous culture and to the migrant origin of the population...

...No concerted effort was made to attract large numbers of settlers or significant amounts of capital and provide it with a diversified economy...

...PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS Pigment Politics in Guyana By David L. Horowitz NEARLY EVERY DAY, ambitious politicians learn the immemorial lesson that deep-seated social problems cannot easily be banished by the imposition of new political forms...

...There is a genuine, though still remote possibility of a Guyanese community developing-attested by the frequently expressed desire of all races for, above all things, "unity...

...The government recently announced that it would implement the recommendation of an International Commission of Jurists inquiry into "racial imbalances" in the public services by seeing to it that for five years 75 per cent of all police recruits will be Indians...

...Beset with the standard new-nation syndrome of underdevelopment, undercapitalization and unemployment, the central problem facing independent Guyana is the tenacious racial conflict between Negroes (or "Africans") and East Indians...

...Out of it may come the satisfaction of some of the unfulfilled aspirations that have given so much of the impetus to the racial conflict...

...they gained preponderance in the police force long ago...

...Unlike many other plural societies, Guyana is not beset by extraterritorial ethnic allegiances...

...The places of origin have long ago been forgotten...

...The first Indians were appointed to high civil service positions in 1951...

...Actually, the British appear to have had mixed motivations for dictating the change to PR...

...But in the present circumstances optimism must be greatly guarded...

...The PR maneuver has so far had no comparable side-effects...

...Thus most Guyanans are relegated to the narrow, sugargrowing coastal strip and are unable to move into the spacious but largely underdeveloped interior regions...

...but neither was persuaded, and the occasional sabotage and racial murder since then have not marred the official optimism in Georgetown...

...This situation has been further inflamed by an accompanying racially-rooted political conflict...

...In the 1964 elections, they more heavily than usual voted along racial lines and this, combined with a new system of proportional representation instituted by the British in 1963, contributed to the defeat of the previously dominant PPP...

...At the same time, it has continued to reward the racial and political allegiance of its supporters in the civil service by awarding compensation to government employes who lost wages during the 1963 general strike, which began as a protest against Jagan's repressive Labor Relations Bill and ended as a racial melee...

...Apart from a few flights to hinterland outposts, Guyana still has essentially the same internal transportation system it had at the end of the last century: a 69-mile railroad, a couple of poor roads and an occasional boat for coastal and river travel...

...Since Burnham took office there have been no large-scale riots such as those which engulfed British Guiana from 1962-64, resulting in considerable loss of life and property...

...Until then Jagan and Burnham had jointly led a united PPP, and the hasty British action may have exacerbated racial tensions by providing an inducement for a more moderate Burnham group to split from the PPP in 1955, taking most of the party's African support with it and ultimately founding the PNC...

...More than once in the past five years the eruption of racial hostilities has sent the country to the brink of civil war...

...The East Indians, however, stayed on the sugar estates until relatively recently...

...When the British finally leave Guyana, as they are scheduled to do in October, they will leave behind more than they have left in their former Asian and African colonies...

...While the subservience of colonial policy to the cultivation of sugar is at root of much of the new country's present diffculties, it is also true that the unifying influence of British culture penetrated far beyond the elite layer of the population...

...In some areas feelings remain so strong that Indians refuse to have their children taught by their former African teachers, and some postmen have still not returned to their routes in areas inhabited principally by members of the other race...

...There is no denying, however, that history, especially recent history, has left deep scars in Guyana...

...And politicians have rarely had notable success in reversing history...

...Hostile feelings were transformed into open hostilities...

...But if black government is for the time being a necessary condition of peace, it is by no means a sufficient one...

...The other party in the unequal coalition is the conservative United Force, led by Portuguese businessman Peter D'Aguiar...

...During the "disturbances" of 1962-64, 15,000 people were chased or burned out of villages where their race was the minority...

...The racial PNC has a genuine transitional function to perform in this multiracial society...

...The contempt, though, has turned reciprocal as the Indian himself has moved off the sugar estates...

...it alone can pacify its adherents, and the frustrations of the centrally-located African middle class out of power would have impeded the tasks of government more than any other force...

...If the contending groups are not Guyanese, neither are they really Africans and Indians...

...With the traditionally African preserves being invaded, the African feels threatened from below by the lower class Indian aspiring to a job in the government, and from above by the middle class Indian who currently dominates the professions and is thought to control the access to them that the African may seek for his son...

...Communist party when he met her in the 1930s, while the two were studying at Northwestern University...

...Jagan has recently shown signs of cooperating with the government, apparently on the assumption that before long the burgeoning Indian population will enable him to win an election even under proportional representation...

...In retrospect, it appears that the British were probably right in engineering Burnham's 1964 victory, if perhaps for the wrong reasons...

...The large postwar generation is approaching the voting age of 21-which Jagan has consistently demanded be lowered to 18-and Jagan thus has everything to gain from waiting for the next election...

...To fill the labor vacuum on the plantations, indentured laborers were imported, some from China and Madeira, but mainly from India...

...The result is personal frustration and social tension which takes the form of race conflict between the East Indians at the bottom of the social hierarchy and the Negroes at the middle-a stratification that is also a direct, if delayed, result of decisions made in the mid-19th century...

...Many are squatting on half-flooded land along the sea coast east of Georgetown in makeshift shacks...

...And they must wonder all the while whether there are more where that one came from...

...It is not his economic life alone, nor merely social status, but the very sources of the black man's final emancipation after slavery and oppression that have been put in jeopardy by-of all people-the coolie...

...To this day she is considered a strong proCommunist influence on her husband...

...Instead of Jagan returning to office, Forbes Burnham, leader of the mostly Negro People's National Congress PNC, became Prime Minister of a coalition government...

...In the 1830s when the Negro slaves were emancipated, they moved rapidly off the sugar estates, mostly to Georgetown and the other towns, where they formed the backbone of the urban labor force...

...The American consulate was bombed in June 1965, presumably in the hope that Washington would persuade the British to halt the plans for independence on the grounds that stability was impossible while Burnham held the reins...

...Burnham's government must therefore tread warily...

...David Horowitz, a new contributor here, has recently returned from an extended stay in Guyana...

...For one thing, they were probably convinced that an Indian government could not achieve stability in a country dominated by non-Indians anxious to protect their positions from Indian encroachments...

...Many Africans sought a measure of dignity and mobility in government service, teaching and the professions...

...The only other industry of any consequence is located 60 miles from the capital city of Georgetown, where a Canadian firm mines and processes bauxite, but the operation employs fewer than 5,000 workers and its expansion potential is limited...

...In some former colonies it has been necessary to invent a nonexistent national history...

...His first attempts at mobility were in retail trade, where he met mostly with Portuguese and Chinese competitors...

...The new arrangement awarded seats to parties in proportion to their total nationwide vote, and its effect was to favor the black, brown and white minorities...

...A creolized British culture looms as a potential homogenizing influence, which, given a solution of the mobility problem, could end the racial problem entirely...

...Thus, more than development turns on the solution of Guyana's economic problem...

...While it gives the impression of insuring that the African community is not losing ground, it must also begin to open up more places for qualified Indians...

...The crucial issue in Guyana is employment...

...Viewed by the African with contempt, the Indian's position is epitomized by the opprobrious name: "coolie.' When the inevitable strikes over wages and working conditions began on the plantations in the 1870s, the Negro police were used to suppress the coolies...

...Few of them have returned...

...In 1953, for example, the British suspended the Constitution and jailed Jagan on the ground that his policies as Prime Minister were leading to "Communist subversion...

...If you ask a Guyanese his nationality, he will tell you his race...

...Their resentment is considerable, and their exodus has only added to the residential segregation produced by the historical division of labor between African and Indian...

...The high Indian birth rate has given the Indians a bare majority of the Guyanese population and they now outnumber the Africans 8-5...

...But in the 1950s the education that Indian parents had secured for their sons began to bear fruit...

...When malaria was finally eradicated after World War II the Indian population, hit hardest because the disease tended to strike around the sugar estates, began to grow rapidly...