No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Ethnic Hegemony and Problems of Inclusion in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago: Retrospect and Prospect
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
Extract
Ethnic hegemony has been the pattern of governance in the Caribbean since the first century of colonialism, with a small but powerful elite of European ancestry directly controlling the destiny of these territories until the 1960s, when a new African-based political hegemony developed. The conquest and subsequent disappearance of the native inhabitants, followed by the steady development of plantation economies on the basis of slave and contract labour, which in turn influenced heavily the emergence of a race-based system of social stratification in these colonies, are too well known to warrant repetition here. The main concern of this paper is to examine, in the context of ethnic and class formations, the political and social dynamics of the post-colonial period with a view to prognosticating probable developments in the ensuing decades of the twenty-first century.
- Type
- Conference: ‘Costs and Benefits of Independence in the Caribbean’
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2001
References
Notes
1 Hintzen, P.C., The Costs of Regime Survival: Racial Mobilisation, Elite Domination and Control of the State in Guyana and Trinidad (Cambridge 1989) chapter 1Google Scholar; Ryan, S.D., Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago: A Study of Decolonisation in a Multiracial Society (Toronto 1972) chapters 11–18.Google Scholar
2 Hope, R.K., Guyana: Politics and Development in an Emergent Socialist State (Oakville, NY 1985) 45–52.Google Scholar
3 On African thuggery in Trinidad, see Brassington, F., The Politics of Opposition (Trinidad 1979) 20Google Scholar and Oxaal, I., Black Intellectuals Come to Power: The Rise of Creole Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago (Cambridge, Mass. 1968) 172Google Scholar. For Guyana, see Guyana: Fraudulent Revolution (Guyana Human Rights Association, London 1984) 43Google Scholar and Singh, J.N., Guyana: Democracy Betrayed (Kingston 1996) 118–119Google Scholar. Sallahuddin contends that British troops and the African constabulary abetted the thuggery and violence: Sallahuddin, , Guyana: The Struggle for Liberation (Georgetown, Guyana 1994) 265.Google Scholar
4 Brassington, Politics of Opposition, 83.
5 Political challenges were launched in 1966 by the C.L.R. James-inspired Workers and Farmers Party and a middle-class trans-ethnic party called the Liberal Party. In 1976 a much stronger working class-based party, the United Labour Front also failed to dislodge the P.N.M.
6 Fraser, C., ‘The “New Frontier” of Empire in the Caribbean: The Transfer of Power in British Guiana, 1961–1964’, The International History Review 23/3 (2000) 595–597.Google Scholar
7 Guyana: Fraudulent Revolution, 46.
8 Sutton, P.K., Forged From the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches of Dr. Eric Williams (Port-of Spain 1981) 242–250.Google Scholar
9 This programme underwent several official re-designations. From ‘Crash Programme’ in the 1960s, to ‘Special Works’ in the 1970s, ‘Development and Environmental Works’ in the 1980s, and ‘Urban Renewal Programme’ in the 1990s.
10 Kiely, R., The Politics of Labour and Development in Trinidad (Trinidad 1996) 96–103Google Scholar. Abdulah, D., ‘The Role of Labour in the Development Experience’ in: Ryan, S.D. ed., The Independence Experience, 1962–1987 (Trinidad 1988) 118–119.Google Scholar
11 Scotland, L., ‘The Impact of the Black Power Revolution on Banking’ in: Ryan, S. ed., The Black Power Revolution of 1970: A Retrospective (Trinidad 1995) 345–350.Google Scholar
12 The Trinidad Express (10 Nov. 1979) and The Trinidad Guardian (28 Dec. 1979).
13 See, for example, the article by J. Bain in the election year, 1976, The Trinidad Guardian (25 April 1976) In September, 1990, Selwyn Ryan is reported to have told the New York Times that the Black community in Trinidad was desperately afraid of the economic power of the Indian community. The Trinidad Express, 26 Sept. 1990. The Indian economist and politician, Trevor Sudama in a series of newspaper articles presented a strong counter argument which was later published in book form: The Political Uses of Myth or Discrimination Rationalized. Battlefront (Trinidad 1993) especially 16–21.
14 The most notorious of whom was the African-American called ‘Rabbi Washington’ whose ‘Nation of Israel’ functioned as a paramilitary arm of the P.N.C.
15 Fraser, ‘The “New Frontier” of Empire in the Caribbean’, 592–594.
16 Ferguson, T., To Survive Sensibly or to Court Heroic Death: Management of Guyana’s Political Economy (Georgetown 1999) 9–16.Google Scholar
17 Address to Tapia House Convention in San Fernando. The Trinidad Guardian (6 Dec. 1975).
18 The Trinidad Express (5 Aug. 1988).
19 See article by J. Bain already cited, The Trinidad Guardian (25 April 1976). The real fear of the corporate interests represented by the paper was that the left-leaning United Labour Force might win the elections, as revealed in its editorial of 11 Sept. 1976.
20 An English journalist, Jeremy Taylor, was an eye-witness to these scenes and commented on them. The Trinidad Express (10 May 1976).
21 The intense debate in Trinidad and Tobago over the language test for voters in 1944 brought this to the fore. See Singh, K., Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State: Trinidad 1917–1945 (Calgary/Trinidad) 221–222Google Scholar. For a typical Indian response to the African advocacy of miscegenation, see the blistering attack mounted by H.P. Singh on C.L.R. James who expressed optimism about reports that Indian women were mating with African men. H.P. Singh, The Indian Enigma: A Review of C.L.R. James' “West Indians of East Indian Descent’. Reproduced in The Indian Struggle For Justice and Equality… The Indian Review Press, 1993, 93–97.
22 Singh, K., ‘Tradition and Modernizing Indo-Trinidadian Elites’, New West Indian Guide 70/3–4 (1996) 244–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 For the debate on Chutney music/dancing, The Trinidad Guardian (11 Dec. 1990) Discussion hosted by the Hindu Prachar Kendra; Phoolo Danny, The Trinidad Express (12 Dec. 1990).
24 Indian film music was revolutionised in the 1950s and 1960s when Sebastian de Souza of Goa joined the musical team of Shankar andjaikishan in Bombay. He used his training in western classical music to help write the scores for Shankar and Jaikishan. A useful review of this period in the history of Indian music is given by Caldeo Sookram in The Sunday Express (Trinidad) (23 March 1999) section 2.
25 By 1985, when Burnham died, Guyana had received aid from Trinidad amounting to US$ 500 million. Singh, Guyana, 143.
26 See, for example, The Trinidad Guardian (17 Jan./6 March 1981).
27 S. Ryan, The Trinidad Guardian (22 Feb. 1974); L. Best, The Trinidad Express (23 May/19 Aug. 1982).
28 S. Ryan, The Trinidad Express (25 Oct. 1981).
29 ‘Difficult Decision the NAR must Deal With’, The Sunday Guardian (31 March 1985) and ‘Tapia Calls for a United National Party’, The Trinidad Express (30 Aug. 1993).
30 As indicated by John Humphrey, a close ally of Basdeo Panday, leader of the U.L.F. at the time, The Sunday Guardian (12 Jan. 1986).
31 The Sunday Express (13 Dec. 1987).
32 The Trinidad Guardian (11 Dec. 1990).
33 Patrick Manning subsequently commented on how difficult it was to manage a pluralistic society, The Trinidad Guardian (20 March 1993).
34 The Trinidad Guardian (25/28 Dec. 1990) and The Sunday Express (20 Jan. 1991). The Afro-Guyanese who had made a similar proposal for Guyana was Eusi Kaywana, founder of the African Society for Closer Relations With Independent Africa (ASCRIA).
35 Formalised in July, 1994, it was an initiative of the now defunct West Indian Commission headed by Sir Shridath Ramphal, The Trinidad Guardian (18 Aug. 1994).
36 The Trinidad Guardian (25 Sept. 1993), for the views of African leaders Khafra Kambon and Vernon Guischard.
37 Guyana's Starbroek News (13 April 2001) has spoken of racial hatred, arson violence and robberies directed primarily against Indians; while Selwyn Ryan has accused Desmond Hoyte, leader of the P.N.C. of making an ‘incendiary call’ to his supporters for ‘social revolution’, The Sunday Express (22 April 2001).
38 Like the P.N.C. in Guyana, the P.N.M. is making the charge that the elections in Trinidad and Tobago were rigged. Mr Manning, the P.N.M. leader, is currently anticipating the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal would disqualify two U.N.C. winning candidates over a legal technicality involving dual citizenship and that President A.N.R. Robinson, who has had some differences with the current Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday, over senatorial appointments would appoint him, Manning, as Prime Minister, thus preempting any attempt by Panday to call fresh elections.
39 For a review of the debate, see Premdas, R., ‘Ethnic Domination and Reconciliation in Multi-Ethnic Societies: A Reconsideration and an Alternative to J. Furnivall and M.G. Smith’, Caribbean Quarterly 41/1, 76–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 Lewis, W.A., Politics in West Africa (London 1965) 71–72.Google Scholar
41 P. Mars, in examining the case of Guyana, argues that the class character of the state tends to condition the nature and extent of inter-ethnic conflict and the overall level of political instability. For him, the level of ethnic divisiveness and conflict is a dependent rather than an independent variable in the political process. He neglects to relate this, however, to the role of powerful external states in promoting such instability for economic and/or strategic reasons. ‘Ethnic Conflict and Political Control: The Guyana Case’, Social and Economic Studies 39/3 (1990) 63–94.Google Scholar
42 This, however, is difficult to achieve if a post-colonial society has inherited from the colonial period a pattern of gross ethnic imbalance in key public institutions such as the public service and the security forces. The attempt by die new Indian-led governments to rectify this in Guyana and Trinidad has generated considerable resentment in the African middle class in these societies. The Africans see this as a form of ‘ethnic cleansing’. On this see, Brown, D., ‘Ethnic Politics and Public Sector Management in Trinidad and Guyana’, Public Administration and Development 19 (1999) 367–379.3.0.CO;2-L>CrossRefGoogle Scholar