In The Diaspora

Michelle Springer is a features writer with the Nation Publishing Company in Barbados.  She is also a fiction writer and recently returned home from Guadeloupe where she lived for six years. This second issue looks at migration of Guyanese people into Barbados during pre and post independence periods.

By Michelle Springer

. . . is they who heard the shell blow and the iron clang.
is they who had no voice in the emptiness
In the unbelievable
In the shadowless
O long is the march of men and long is the life and wide is the span.
Martin Carter – University of Hunger

It is not a new concept to think of events in world histories and cultures as occurring in cycles.
So too with migration.

In the 19th century the movement of working class Bajans into Guyana was to help boost the work force there. They worked as agricultural labourers, artisans and policemen.

That trend continued into the late 19th and early 20th centuries to include middle class Bajans, who went over as lawyers, doctors, teachers and trade unionists which developed and strengthened bonds between the two countries – bonds that were at times strained and even volatile.

That the reverse would happen in recent times, with Guyanese labourers coming into Barbados at a time when the country needed workers with technological expertise in line with the industrial advances in sugar production was, therefore, a continuum in the labour relations already established between the two countries.

“In the early 20th century East Indians came over from Guyana to Barbados specifically as pan boilers. This was probably after the first World War (1914-1918) when there was a slump in the sugar industry,” said historian Trevor Marshall.

The pan boilers, being prolific in the vacuum-pan process, were instrumental to the 25-year conversion from windmill to steam powered factories in Barbados during a period when there was no such local expertise.

The arrival of the Guyanese labourers coincided with and facilitated the centralisation of the mills and factories that would have occurred after the 1911 Central Milling Act.

The most significant wave of Guyanese settlers in Barbados, however, would occur during and shortly after the turbulent political tenure of the late Forbes Burnham as leader of the People’s National Congress (PNC 1961-1985).

“The political turmoil had to do with ideology and race and it was often very difficult to separate the two. Both [Cheddi Jagan’s] People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and the PNC claimed to be socialist oriented and internationalist, both of them had East Indians and Africans within the structures of their parties. This was their way of saying ‘we are multiracial in character and in our appeal’,” noted Caribbean political journalist Rickey Singh.

He explained that they shared visions of national unity without discrimination against either Indo or Afro Guyanese ethnic group, until the time of elections.

“Openly neither practised racism but the reality is race was a factor oftentimes exploited systematically at elections by both parties,” Singh said.

But by 1966, the year of independence, the political climate changed.
“People had started to vote with their feet. Movement [away from Guyana] started in the midst of the political turmoil and ideological struggle between Burnham and Jagan,” Singh said. He added that during this period there was major emigration by the working classes as well as the professional middle class, especially when the turmoil was manifested by institutional racism [which saw discrimination in employment and promotions] and by race-wars on the streets.

Brain drain
“The intellectual classes moved out and the brain drain was very costly to Guyana in the 60s and 70s,” Singh explained.

Singh further noted that there was also migration in the post-independence period of Burnham’s reign – 1966 to his death in 1985 and continued for seven years under his successor Desmond Hoyte.

“Guyanese left the country in droves. Burnham became a dictator in the sense that he maintained power by rigging the elections. That has become part of the documented history of Guyana,” Singh recalled.

They fled to nearby Caribbean territories as well, in particular Barbados and Trinidad.

An Afro-Guyanese born educator, who preferred to speak on condition of anonymity, told the SUNDAY SUN of her experience by telephone on Wednesday.

“Like myself who had Barbadian ancestors, a lot of educated Guyanese fled under Burnham. It wasn’t all bad even though it looked so. Burnham – in his rise to power and his craving to stay there – did not treat his people well. People, specifically Blacks, became disillusioned and started to move,” she said, indicating Barbados was one such destination targeted.

Another Guyanese national, Celena, who contacted the SUNDAY SUN via email from Canada after reading last week’s article on www.nationnews.com shared her experience growing up in Guyana during Burnham’s regime.
“Forbes Burnham was a visionary, ahead of his time. He went about doing things perhaps in a wrong way, but he can be credited with doing quite a lot. Education was free and he taught us to appreciate what we had instead of importing.

“Life was tough, yes, especially when he decided to place a ban on wheaten flour. This was a staple for all families, we found ways to improvise, we relied on and had to on our own locally grown food stuff.

“Families would line up for hours just to get oil or soap or some other such staple. [As a result] the barrel culture was born. Burnham told us to produce or perish, that was a slogan. Now the present government is urging people to do the very same thing. They have been very critical of Burnham and his ideas, but things have come full circle.

“I remember there was an atmosphere of fear, where freedom of speech was unheard of; people could not air their views freely. Then you had to have a ‘party card’ (belonging to the ruling PNC) to get jobs. It felt suffocating to me as a child and a teen. I felt powerless and that hurt. I belong to no political party and have never identified with any,” she wrote.

While debates rage on the tightening of immigration policies in Barbados and throughout the region, the experts have been able to contextualise the processes and phases of intra-regional migration.

“There was more freedom of movement under British colonialism than there has been in the post independence phase. It is applicable to current relations between Barbados and Guyana. There was a time when no one asked questions of other nationalities present in any other Caribbean society,” Singh said.

He rejected the notion that nationalism necessitates the systematic preservation of borders, an ideology currently being touted in the United States [campaign elections].

“That is a narrow form of nationalism. It has become more and more parochial and insular, he stated, adding “they breed and foster a narrow sense of patriotism” which essentially lead to xenophobia.

Nonetheless, Singh supported policies that regulated influx.
“Management of migration is quite acceptable particularly for small economies like Barbados. Freedom of movement [as in visitors] should not be confused with the freedom to live and work [migration]“.

However, the journalist carefully queried the fairness in the execution of managed migration when it disadvantaged one nationality or ethnic group in particular.

Then, he said, it was a clear case of xenophobia.
Next week we continue the series of  testimonies from Guyanese who speak about their experiences in contemporary Barbados.