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CARIBBEAN QUILT
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1

Guyana’s Racial Politics: Causes, Issues, and its

Welcoming of Western Neocolonialism

Brittney Bahadoor

Centre for Caribbean Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto

Brittney Bahadoor is in her fourth and final year of her undergraduate degree, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts with a Specialist in History and Minor in

Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto. Her Indo-Caribbean heritage has spurred her love for Caribbean history and instilled a desire to shed

lights on the histories of the West Indies that are so often overlooked, specifically Guyana and Trinidad post-emancipation. All of those interests

culminated in her Senior Thesis for the Department of History in which she researches the history of racial relations between Afro and Indo Caribbe-

ans in their migration to Toronto. She has continuously been involved with the Caribbean community on campus and is the incumbent President of

the West Indian Students’ Association (WISA).

KEYWORDS:

Politics

Race relations

Neocolonialism

History

Guyana

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the history of ethnopolitics in Guyana and how the racial divide between the two largest ethnic

groups in the country—the Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese—not only fractured society but allowed for Western su-

perpowers to exert neocolonial influence. It explores the historical origins of race relations between the Indians and

Africans in Guyana from British colonization to the modern political era of the 1960s. It looks at how politics was utilized

both as a unifying and dividing factor—dependent on the goals the political leaders sought. This article breaks down the

ever-complicated political parties and their general history and discusses the causes of this political divide, both due to

internal pressures and external forces. It also aims to show how the racial politics in Guyana were orchestrated by both

the United States and Great Britain as it occurred during the ushering in of the neocolonial era. It is built around the

argument that the racial divide caused by the Guyanese politics of the 1960s became the basis for the complicated mod-

ern-day race relations and the various causes. The goal is to essentially tell part of Guyana's racial and political history

in a way accessible to everyone. Guyana is a country with such a deep history which is frequently obscured; this article

aims to dissect just a portion of it, especially a part that has affected and continues to affect the population and diaspora

even today.

Guyana is one of the most fascinating countries in the Car-
ibbean. It has been singled out in its unique culture and
politics compared to other Caribbean nations due to its

ethnic population being highly different from the rest of
the region. While the Caribbean has been dubbed a cultural
melting pot, some will inevitably clash with all these

Caribbean Quilt
Journal Homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index

CARIBBEAN QUILT
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1

different groups coming together. That was precisely the
case between the Indo and Afro-Guyanese in Guyana. That
racial clash caused the country to destabilize and created
tensions still visible in modern-day life. Guyanese politics
in the 1960s created an environment where the tensions be-
tween the Indo and Afro-Guyanese stretched to an all-time
high and eventually collided. That era of ethnopolitics also
shows how Guyana became a product of Western neocolo-
nialism due to tampering by the United States of America
and Britain. This paper seeks to show just how those eth-
nopolitics affected society, the neocolonial impact of West-
ern global superpowers on Guyana, and the aftermath left
on Guyanese society moving forward.

As stated previously, Guyana is an anomaly of a country.
It is the only English-speaking country located in South
America. However, it is tied to the Caribbean due to the
closeness of history and culture it shares with the other is-
lands, mainly Trinidad. It is a country that has so many nat-
ural resources, diverse peoples, and plenty of lands, yet it
falls relatively low on many international indicators of
civil and political freedoms.1 How did a country with so
much potential fall apart so quickly? The history of Guy-
ana is very complex, especially when it comes to race re-
lations between both the Indians and Africans. However, it
needs to be discussed to understand how the tensions were
built and why they were utilized within the political sphere.

Formerly known as British Guiana, the country2 switched
hands between all the major metropoles of the colonial era
before being formally ceded to Britain in 1831. Under Brit-
ish rule, Guyana saw the growth of the plantation and the
institution of slavery. Due to the immense amount of fertile
land, Guyana became one of the most prosperous sugar
colonies, which meant it received an influx of enslaved Af-
ricans. The system of slavery that developed within Guy-
ana was very similar to the system used within the United

1 Lisa Ann Vasciannie, “Electoral Politics in Guyana,” Interna-
tional Election Observation in the Commonwealth Caribbean,
2017, pp. 129-154, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59069-
1_5, 129.
2Guyana was formerly three separate colonies: Berbice, Deme-
rara, and Essequibo but Britain combined them into British
Guyana when the land was ceded.
3 Joseph B. Landis (University Microfilms, 0AD), pp. 1-424,
16.
4 Ibid.

States of America.3 That system ensured that the enslaved
were viewed as less than people, meaning they could not
marry, hold familial relations, or do anything while under
their master. This contrasts with the rest of the South Amer-
ican colonies under Spanish and Portuguese rules in which
the enslaved could have some autonomy.4

When Britain outlawed slavery in 1834, the plantocracy
wanted to ensure the sugar industry remained profitable.
This, without surprise, did not work, as it was still equated
to slavery and caused many issues with the formerly en-
slaved—many complained it was worse than slavery,5 and
was ended after four years. Apprenticeship caused much
backlash, yet the British still needed to find a way to con-
tinue the sugar industry once again. Thus came the imple-
mentation of Indentured Servitude in the British Caribbean
colonies. In May 1838, the first ship from Indian carrying
indentured labourers arrived in Guyana. Indentured Servi-
tude is contracted labour under a person or group for a cer-
tain period. Often it was a contract of five to ten years, with
a meagre payment in return—25-45 cents per day, depend-
ing on the type of work.6 When the contract was made, the
Indians were offered the choice of returning to India or
staying in Guyana, where they would be given some land
in return for starting their lives there. Many of the Indian
indentured workers stayed after their contracts were fin-
ished.

The indentureship scheme lasted until 1917 when the Brit-
ish also outlawed it. In those 79 years, about 240,000 East
Indians came to Guyana. 7 The island's population in-
creased to about 150,000 by 1920, and the freed African
population went from 10,000 in 1833 to 95,000 by 1940.8
When the institution of slavery and indentureship had both
been outlawed, there were now two dominant ethnic
groups within Guyana—Indians and Africans. Approxi-
mately half the population was Indian, a third or so African,

5 Cheddi Jagan, “Indo-Caribbean Political Leadership,” in In-
denture & Exile: The Indo-Caribbean Experience, ed. Frank
Birbalsingh (Toronto, ON: TSAR, 1989), pp. 14-25, 15.
6 Ibid., 16.
7 Ann Marie Bissessar, “Race and Politics in Guyana,” in Eth-
nic Conflict in Developing Societies Trinidad and Tobago, Guy-
ana, Fiji, and Suriname (Cham: Springer International Publish-
ing, 2018), pp. 43-71, 46.
8 Ibid., 47.

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2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1

and the rest were the others.9 The issue then arose about
racial tensions, with the two dominant groups being people
of colour and the European plantocracy. To avoid any re-
bellions and uprisings by the two groups, the European
plantocracy pit both groups against each other.

This was done in two ways: unintentionally and intention-
ally. Cultural retention was the first vital difference that
caused resentment between the two groups. When brought
over as enslaved, Africans were stripped of their culture
and forced to create something new. The East Indians were
allowed to bring religious customs, food, and practices
from India into Guyana. This began to stir resentment from
the formerly enslaved Africans as the British plantocracy
encouraged the Indians to uphold their culture as much as
possible.10 The differential treatment and unequal burdens
that the plantocracy demonstrated between both groups
caused a heavy ethnic divide and tensions to stretch.11

All of this background is important in the narrative that
frames the political discourse of Guyana’s 1960s. There is
an inextricable link between race and politics in Guyana,
and become the source of many electoral issues in years to
come. 12 Indentureship and slavery were still a recent
memory to many Afro and Indo-Guyanese, and many
blamed the British government. Due to the environment
that colonialization built, the alienation of both groups and
the overall social consequences provided the background
for a cohesive mass-based national movement for inde-
pendence.13 This was the creation of the Peoples' Progres-
sive Party (PPP). The party emerged in 1950 under the
leadership of Cheddi Jagan, an Indo-Guyanese politician
who was a socialist and multiethnic party. He brought
Forbes Burnham, an Afro-Guyanese politician, as his sec-
ond in command to raise African support for the party.14
With the leadership being two members of the two major
ethnic groups in Guyana, it looked like the masses were

9 Joseph B. Landis (University Microfilms, 0AD), Ph.D. The-
sis, Yale University, pp. 1-424, 299.
10 Andra P. Thakur (National Library of Canada, 1973), MA
Thesis, University of Alberta, pp. 1-144, 47.
11 Cheddi Jagan. “Indo-Caribbean Political Leadership,” 16.
12 Vasciannie, “Electoral Politics in Guyana,” 130.
13 Ralph C Gomez, “Race, Class, and Politics in Guyana: The
Role of the Power Elites,” The Western Journal of Black Stud-
ies, 1979, pp. 1-9, 3.

going for a change.

The creation of this political party can be seen as a form of
colonial resistance on all fronts. Universal suffrage was
gained in Guyana in 1951, allowing the masses to partici-
pate in an election without the direct control of the colonial
government. The PPP was the first organized political
party in Guyana and presented a goal of self-government,
economic and social development, and the development of
a socialist state.15 However, this went against everything
that Britain wanted for the country. Guyana was still a
crown colony in 1950, only gaining independence in 1970.
Thus, it became a slap in the face to Britain as Guyana now
had a mixed party with very anti-colonial goals.

The party won the 1953 election, winning 18 of 24 seats in
the new electoral system that had just been introduced after
constitutional reforms. Jagan, the new Prime Minister, in-
troduced many policies intending to turn Guyana into a so-
cialist state—that stance it held made Britain extremely un-
easy, causing the metropole to intervene shortly after. Brit-
ain suspended the Guyanese constitution, removed all the
PPP elects in the house, and sent in military troops to en-
sure no backlash.16 This effort by Britain caused the PPP
to split into two factions—the Jaganites under Cheddi
Jagan and the Burnhamites under Forbes Burnham. This
eventually turned into Jagan keeping his faction known as
the PPP and Burnham creating his party known as the Peo-
ples National Congress (PNC) at the time of the 1957 elec-
tion. As stated previously, both Jagan and Burnham were
founding members of the PPP, meaning both were still so-
cialist parties. The difference was that the PPP was heavy
Marxists, and the PNC was more of a moderate socialist
party.17

However, the main difference between the PPP and the
PNC was race. The split was not race-based—Jagan and

14 Stacey-Ann Wilson, “Guyana The Uncooperative Republic,”
in Politics of Identity in Small Plural Societies: Guyana, the Fiji
Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago (New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016), pp. 75-97, 79.
15 Andra P. Thakur (National Library of Canada, 1973), pp. 1-
144, 65.
16 Stacey-Ann Wilson, “Guyana The Uncooperative Republic,”
79.
17 Ibid.

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2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1

Burnham were the two prominent men leading the party,
so it was natural that the split happened that way. However,
a census taken during the 1957 election showed that over
90% of registered Indo-Guyanese voters voted for Cheddi
Jagan's PPP, and over 90% of Afro-Guyanese voters voted
for Forbes Burnham's PNC.18 This became the ongoing
pattern for any electoral politics in the years following.
Both parties lost the support of the other races in the years
following. While the split was not forcefully race-based,
the result of the Indian versus African Guyanese factions
became the primary issue. The brief moment of unity that
both groups shared was now replaced with the same nega-
tive perceptions each group held from colonial times.19

The fact that the PNC was almost exclusively African and
the PPP almost exclusively Indian became a significant as-
pect of Burnham and Jagan’s politics. This was the birth of
Guyana's infamous politics, in which race determines
whom you vote for over any other factor. The first election
after the split, 1961, was fought mainly on racial lines in-
stead of a political ideology.20 Jagan’s PPP won 42% of
the popular vote and 20 of the 35 seats. The PNC won 41%
percent of the popular vote and 11 seats. Both parties won
all their seats in areas that were majority Indian or African.
It became clear that the population voted for the party led
by their ethnicity. This is ironic, to a degree, because both
Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan once worked together
to unite the masses. However, the 1961 Election created
the opposite problem. Following that election, the PNC be-
gan utilizing racial tensions as their primary campaign
strategy under the direction of Forbes Burnham.

The 1964 election was deemed one of the messiest elec-
tions in Guyanese history, as this was the first election in
which both the PPP and PNC told the people to ‘vote for
their own.’21 The PPP used the strategy of telling all the
Indian voters to vote for "Apan Jhatt" or their own kind.22

18 Joseph B. Landis (University Microfilms, 0AD), pp. 1-424,
2.
19 Stacey-Ann Wilson, “Guyana The Uncooperative Republic,”
78.
20 Joseph B. Landis (University Microfilms, 0AD), pp. 1-424,
171.
21 Stacey-Ann Wilson, “Guyana The Uncooperative Republic,”
81.
22 Ibid.

The PNC favoured a campaign which compared the Indo-
Guyanese and their values to white supremacy, intending
to wipe out Afro-Guyanese culture.23 While these are only
two examples of racial polarization, they caused hostile
feelings, including riots that destroyed businesses and vil-
lages and harassment of both groups in Guyana. This strat-
egy now became the set basis for all Guyanese elections
moving forwards. Additionally, the significance of the split
vote in racial blocs bled over into society. While Jagan’s
PPP won the most votes, Forbes Burnham’s PNC joined up
with some smaller parties, including the United Democrat
Party, to form a majority coalition and had control over the
government. Eventually, by 1967, the PNC and Forbes
Burnham had won enough votes to become the majority
government.

It was under Forbes Burnham and his time as leader of the
PNC that many ulterior motives for Guyanese politics
seemed to come into play. As mentioned, his party esca-
lated the ongoing tensions between Indians and Africans
and used that to his advantage. When Burnham rose to
power, he made several changes to how the government
ran, which was highly authoritative and almost dictatorial.
In particular, he passed legislation that allowed Guyanese
living abroad to vote in elections.24 This became a contro-
versial action because the majority of Guyanese who were
living abroad were African.25 By passing this law, Burn-
ham continually tipped the results of his election in his fa-
vour. He also manipulated trade unions, introduced the pat-
ronage system for labour, and rigged referendums to create
a new constitution. All of these aspects favoured Afro-
Guyanese over the Indo-Guyanese. The overseas vote
caused immense controversy and garnered attention inter-
nationally, including that of the United States.26

While he did much more, as will be explained later on,
there is another aspect to the racialized elections and

23 Ibid., 88.
24 Joseph B. Landis (University Microfilms, 0AD), pp. 1-424,
6.
25 Ibid.
26Nigel Westmaas, “1968 And the Social and Political Founda-
tions and Impact of the ‘New Politics’ in Guyana,” Caribbean
Studies 37, no. 2 (2010): pp. 105-132,
https://doi.org/10.1353/crb.2010.0003, 111.

CARIBBEAN QUILT
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1

tensions in Guyana that is often overlooked—the role of
foreign governments. As stated previously, Guyana was a
country that had enormous wealth within it. To the British,
the sugar industry. To the United States of America, off-
shore oil and minerals. Thus, Guyana was a country that
attracted international attention. However, the rise of so-
cialist politics in Guyana in the 1900s coincided with the
Cold War Era, in which both the United States and Britain
were thoroughly opposed to socialism or communism.
Cuba was already an issue enough, and the idea that Guy-
ana may become a communist country in South America
posed an issue to Western alliances and values.

Guyana gained independence in 1970 after Burnham and
the PNC rose to power. It was an implicit idea that the gov-
ernment which brought forth independence would contin-
uously stay in power,27 and both the United States and
Britain knew this. The PPP was a unique party as it was the
only socialist party in the Caribbean and South America at
the time. Cheddi Jagan's politics were more left-leaning,
which, when he gained power, allowed him to make many
decisions for Guyana that aimed to benefit the country and
people over anything else—he wanted to create a socialist
state. An example would be the revival of the Labour Re-
lations Bill in 1963, which garnered significant attention
from Britain and the United States of America. The passing
of this law was the beginning of Britain's acknowledge-
ment that Guyana was straying from their intended idea of
self-government and becoming too independent of their
ideas.28

When the split occurred in 1957, both the PNC and PPP
were socialist at the core, but one side was less left-leaning
than the other—Burnham's the more moderate while Jagan
was more Marxist. The United States of America was
aware of this and began subtly interfering with Guyanese
politics. In 1961, Cheddi Jagan made a trip to the United

27 Stacey-Ann Wilson, “Guyana The Uncooperative Republic,”
86.
28 Andra P. Thakur (National Library of Canada, 1973), pp. 1-
144, 65.
29 Joseph B. Landis (University Microfilms, 0AD), pp. 1-424,
206.
30 Ibid.
31 Joseph B. Landis (University Microfilms, 0AD), pp. 1-424,
208.
32 "CIA Meddling Led to Race-Based Politics in

States to meet with President Kennedy, as Guyana—at this
point—was seen as a possible new valuable ally. However,
during this trip, Jagan made no effort to say anything crit-
ical about the Soviet Union or communism, causing Ken-
nedy to question Jagan’s leadership qualifications.29 Ken-
nedy stated that “if we gave aid, there would be a 50 per-
cent chance of his [Jagan and his party] going communist,
that, if we didn't there would be a 90 percent chance, and
that we would all catch hell whatever we did.”30 However,
in 1962 when Forbes Burnham visited Washington, he was
met with favourable reactions from the United States gov-
ernment as he presented himself as very anti-communist.31
Forbes Burnham and the PNC were the favourable options
for the support of the United States.

In 1964, the year of the 'messy' election, the racial tension
reached a point where riots began. While I had already spo-
ken on this earlier within this paper and how the split
caused it, the riots were also caused by America's CIA. Ac-
cording to a report by the Financial Times, the CIA helped
aid the race riots of 1964 to prevent Jagan's PPP from win-
ning the election in December of that year. The United
States also sent aid to Forbes and the PNC to help aid their
campaigning and other strategies.32 All this was because
the United States was nervous about Guyana becoming a
communist stronghold in South America once it gained in-
dependence.

The British were not exempt from this either—they also
met with Burnham and several political opponents of Jagan
to work on unseating him at the next election.33 Because
Guyana was not an independent country at the time of the
election of 1964, the United States and Britain still held
power to intervene. The United States was able to because
both Jagan and Burnham came to Washington and met with
the Kennedy Administration to discuss the future of Guy-
ana. Britain still held power because it was still the

Guyana." FT.Com (Jun 10, 2015). http://myaccess.li-
brary.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.
com%2Ftrade-journals%2Fcia-meddling-led-race-based-poli-
tics-guyana%2Fdocview%2F1695302165%2Fse-2%3Fac-
countid%3D14771.
33 Perry Mars, “Ethnic Politics, Mediation, and Conflict Resolu-
tion: The Guyana Experience,” Journal of Peace Research 38,
no. 3 (2001): pp. 353-372,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343301038003005, 358.

CARIBBEAN QUILT
2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1

metropole. Due to this fact, Guyana relied heavily on for-
eign governments to maintain some form of balance, which
allowed both countries to directly interfere with the racial
tensions in Guyanese society and utilize them to change
who the leader and party in power were.34

As Britain had monopolized racial tensions during the co-
lonial era, it was not a surprise that they did it again in
Guyana pre-independence by instigating the split of the
original PPP party in the 1950s into an Indian party and an
African party. However, the United States of America and
its tampering with the elections and race riots demonstrate
the rise of western neocolonialism within the Caribbean.
Since Guyana held socialist values and was leaning into
them and the potential under Cheddi Jagan and the PPP, it
was unsurprising that the United States decided to play
dirty politics in Guyana. However, the United States en-
sured Guyana would no longer achieve any of its potential
by choosing to support Forbes Burnham to unseat Jagan
and the decision to fund race riots and Burnham's authori-
tarian platform. This ensured U.S. dependence and ensured
that the 'communist' values of the PPP would not return.
History shows that the next twenty years that Burnham and
the PNC were in power were some of the most challenging
years in Guyanese history, especially for Indians. It was the
primary reason for the mass migration elsewhere.35

How race has been utilized in Guyana from colonial to
modern politics has not changed. It continues to be a sig-
nificant aspect of who gets to advance based on your skin
colour and what that entails. The political environment of
the 1960s with Cheddi Jagan's Peoples Progressive Party
and Forbes Burnham's Peoples National Congress height-
ened racial tensions to the point where both the Indians and
the Africans viewed the other as wrong. It also allowed the
United States of America to utilize the racial tensions in a
neocolonial way to ensure that Guyana did not fall into
communist hands. However, this all traces back to Britain's
hand-splitting of the original PPP. Guyana was a country
that had enormous potential with its natural resources and
people. However, due to messy politics and foreign inter-
ference, it remains one of the poorest countries in the

34 Andra P. Thakur (National Library of Canada, 1973), pp. 1-
144, 108.

Caribbean, with some of the highest migration rates today.
The impacts of racial politics are also heavily evident to-
day in how Afro and Indo-Guyanese view each other, even
if they migrated out.

35 Vasciannie, “Electoral Politics in Guyana,” 134.

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2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1

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