In the Diaspora (this is one of a series of fortnightly columns from Guya-nese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)
The desires of many Guyanese to head north-yearning for the perceived opportunities of security and wealth in Brooklyn, Queens, Toronto, London, and the like, reflect the influence of how the thrust of American and European economic might have shaped the consumer realities and political imaginaries of many Guyanese. It is a reality that many at home and abroad are fully aware of, as they are constantly bombarded with American products, media and fanciful images of leisure and decadence. These products and media include, among others, the anthem of the summer, “This is Why We Hot,” playing in the background of commercials for Carib beer and for commercials commemorating 200 years of the end of the slave trade; and the locally produced commercials reminding Guyanese to, “Don’t forget to call me!” on a cell phone, a convenience most of us could live without just a few years ago.
These examples are countered by the demands of many working class Guyanese who articulated their frustrations over their everyday political and economic realities by protesting VAT earlier this summer. Marching through the streets of Georgetown, Afro, Indo, Amerindian and “red” Guyanese alike, called to “Axe the VAT!,” to take an economic burden off the backs of the poor and at the very least, to reconsider redistributing these state imposed taxes from “staple” goods to “luxury” items.
What was most telling about this march was its culminating moment, as the protesters made their way through Cummingsburg, tightly wrapping around the corner of Middle and Thomas streets, heading towards Independence Square across the way from the Promenade Garden, to assemble and announce their grievances and denounce state imposed fiscal commendations. They were reminded by an array of political and community organizers of two important points: 1) Political assembly is a right and 2) To not fret about a dread economic reality because, “You don’t have to go to America. America will come to us!”
What a prophetic statement, one not only ripe for describing the overwhelming sentiments of many Guyanese urbanites but also those of other Caribbean and Latin American denizens who desire to escape their current conditions for the perceived conditions of modernity in the ‘West.’ Needless to say, it does not take an academic to put the pieces of this puzzle together. Nor will her reflections on these everyday events bring any more nuanced analysis to these moments in history, than has already been made by many Guyanese including street vendors, taxi drivers, mothers and fathers, journalists, teachers, tour guides, academics, shopkeepers, artists, entrepreneurs, politicians, the list goes on.
With the above disclaimer in mind, my work and presence as an American travelling throughout areas of coastal Guyana is then without question a site of real and symbolic contestation. My above description of this yearning for the North is matched by my reverse desire and need, a false nostalgia if you will, as an American to find an egalitarian society in the postcolonial Caribbean. Specifically, I had a phantasm, an image of a racial utopia where, decades after independence and several years after the “return to free and fair elections,” anxieties over and about racial-ethnic difference were swept under the rug and made mute to the larger and more damning consequences of an encroaching, Western economic force. This of course, as any Guyanese knows, is far from the reality.
Whether I was in Buxton, Georgetown, Linden, New Amsterdam or Corriverton, I felt and perceived a sense of indeterminacy and radical impermanence over how to negotiate my own understandings of race, within a different context-a non-American context where a black/white dichotomy is not necessarily the perceived rule or order of the day. My inability to quickly grasp this difference of power and racial order is an example of how differing hierarchical regimes of political economy are employed by dominant modes of power-whether state or market driven, given the cultural context in question.
To ignore such an obvious and subtle point is to fall prey to a sort of vulgar idealism whose generalizations obfuscate rather than illuminate the real and immediate implications and consequences of globalization on the distribution of economic, social and political resources within Guyana.
So then, what are we to make of the prophetic statement: “You don’t have to go to America. America will come to us!”? I guess that is for each of us to decide on our own terms. At the very least, the statement provides a moment for one to critique his or her role within the democratic process wherever one may call home.
