Dear Editor,
Guyana is a plantation. Yes, it is the twenty-first century and many years removed from the past, but a closer look at the realities of today provides irrefutable parallels to a once harsh and bitter time that no amount of present-day mythmaking can dissipate or overcome.
I start at the top of the plantation structure. There are the masters thundering to and fro in their petroleum powered horses; there are the younger heirs in waiting being groomed within the relatively rarified confines of private education; there are the older siblings shipped off to the mother countries, whether historical or adopted.
The adult masters sup and imbibe at ‘exclusive’ hangouts; their womenfolk shop on the Avenue. No, not the former High Street, but those named Fifth and Michigan. In all of this, there is – and must be – no mixing with the downtrodden labouring class.
They occupy barricaded manors – remote, aloof, and increasingly forbidding. These masters of the Guyana Plantation help themselves to 18 carat rewards, including those of 18-year-old vintage and Coca-Cola bottle contours.
By the way, apologies to the powerful distaff side (including those favoured for the twilight hours) for the gender bias – simply a matter of convenience.
They may not wear bowler hats, but they are the keepers of the keys and, therefore, no less important. Be assured.
Then there is the middle of Plantation Guyana. This is the domain of the managerial class.
Here are the self-proclaimed God’s gift to Guyana: brown and black; loyalists and opportunists. Behold them in all their patriotic splendour – the ones who stayed and now reap working cautiously alongside the ones who sell and buy. These would be those who sell themselves to buy position and place in what is a lucrative, but oppressive, trade. Recognize the propagandists, the eyes and ears, the enforcers, the feather-bedders.
They inflict punishment, or dole out rewards, as the circumstances warrant. Or the masters dictate.
This is the second tier; despised players who waddle and wallow in a world of velvet and glove; who know not of economic hardship; who feel not the searing heat of suffering; and who fathom not the endless darkness of hopelessness.
They take care of the masters, who take care of them in return.
And now there is only one group left in this benighted land: these would be the workers, the field hands, the class who are hewers of wood and drawers of water. The men and women who face each day reluctantly and resignedly.
They wade through the swamps of Georgetown, Albouystown, and Albertown to toil and grind out subsistence. They hear that life is good, even as they are driven to make bricks without straw, and then forced to eat that too. Such are the wages of oppression.
Just like the workers of old, some earn freedom. They do so by walking through the portals of consulates, and past the turnstile at Timehri. But, there is also that rebellious subset – the runaways. Or in Guyanese parlance, backtrackers. And they are subjected to the worst public humiliation when caught.
Think of Grantley Adams Airport and the corrals reserved for escaping Guyanese. Think of Bridgetown and the claim that a huge number of Guyanese are sex workers in that hostile land. Yes, there is the lash of international scorn, and the sting of domestic ostracism. And now temporarily bowed, but undefeated, compatriots are returned against their will to the plantation, and its hardscrabble and hard-edged existence.
An existence at once mind boggling, backbreaking, and spirit sapping for those at the bottom of this plantation called Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
