Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0155/01550.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 29KB | 511 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01550}
$Pretitle{282}
$Title{Guyana
Chapter 5.    Ethnic Groups and Languages}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{William B. Mitchell}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{east
africans
indians
chinese
percent
guyana
african
amerindians
groups
education}
$Date{1969}
$Log{Table 5.*0155001.tab
}
Country:     Guyana
Book:        Guyana, A Country Study
Author:      William B. Mitchell
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1969

Chapter 5.    Ethnic Groups and Languages

     Ethnic identity is unusually important in Guyana and the problems of
cultural integration on both a local and a national scale are substantial.

     There are seven definable ethnic groups in Guyana. The two largest
groups, comprising the bulk of the population, are the East Indians (50
percent) and the Africans (30 percent). There are small numbers of Portuguese
(1 percent), other Europeans (1 percent) and Chinese (1 percent). A Mixed (or
Colored) element comprises 12 percent of the population. Finally, there is a
small number of aboriginal people (4 percent), known in Guyana as Amerindians.

     About 95 percent of the Guyanese people are concentrated in a narrow
coastal strip (see ch. 4, Population and Labor Force). More than 70 percent of
this population is rural, living on plantations or in villages strung along
the coastal road like a chain of beads. Most of the villages have
heterogeneous populations, but usually one ethnic group predominates. Almost
30 percent of the population lives in the cities of Georgetown and its
environs or New Amsterdam. This urban population is predominantly African,
but it is misleading to suggest that Africans are primarily urban; the
majority of the African population (57 percent) is rural (see table 5). A far
greater majority of East Indians (87 percent), however, lives outside the
cities.

     This uneven distribution of the extraordinary heterogeneous population of
Guyana results from the interplay of a number of historical processes and
cultural biases. The early European colonists were able to develop large-scale
sugar plantations along the coast by using large numbers of African slaves.
When slavery was abolished, many of the plantations were ruined, and the
Africans bought them individually and collectively. Living together in
hundreds of new villages, the Africans lacked sufficient capital, cheap labor,
and managerial control for their enterprises to be economically successful.
Land ownership became fragmented and complex, and the Africans resorted to
subsistence farming.

[See Table 5.: Percentage Distribution of Ethnic Groups in Urban and Rural
Areas of Guyana]

     Other developments, however, drew many Africans away from the villages
and into the cities. The foremost factor in this movement was education. Many
Africans perceived education as a means of economic and social improvement,
and denominational schools provided the necessary instruction. Africans soon
found positions in the civil service and skilled trades. Eventually they
organized the trade union movement, dominated the teaching profession, and
became prominent in medicine and law.

     The development of new industries and natural resources also provided
income for rural Africans who left their villages temporarily to prospect for
gold, collect balata (a kind of gum rubber), or mine bauxite. These
occupations led men into the bush, but they spent much of their income in the
cities.

     When slavery was abolished, the European planters turned elsewhere for
the cheap labor they needed. East Indians, Portuguese, and Chinese were
recruited for indentured service. The terms of indenture were nearly as harsh
as slavery, but the planters succeeded in bringing more than 340,000 persons
into the country. Seventy percent of these indentured workers were East
Indians.

     After completing their terms of indenture, the East Indians who remained
in British Guiana (about one-third of them returned to India) continued to
live in rural areas. Many of them chose to live on the edges of villages
already established by Africans. Unlike the Africans, however, the East
Indians had been permitted to retain much of their cultural tradition. The
continuity of Indian culture was not disturbed by the kind of Western
education the Africans received. Compulsory education was not enforced for
indentured families, and the East Indians shunned the Christian schools. As
a result the East Indians were not able to compete with the Africans for
skilled urban jobs, but they were much more successful in agriculture. The
colonial government provided them with good land and prevented the East
Indians from fragmenting it as the Africans had. The rising demand for rice
also gave the East Indians a cash crop to raise, and for many years the rice
economy has been protected by the government. Reinforced by a kinship system
that ties families and land close together, the East Indians have succeeded
in developing a viable rural peasantry.

     Most of the Portuguese came from Madeira in the 1840s. As soon as they
completed their indentures, they left the plantations and entered the retail
trades in which they continued to thrive. Indentured Chinese workers first
came to British Guiana from the south coast of China in 1853. Like the
Portuguese, they left the plantations as soon as they could, and now most of
them live in the larger villages and urban areas.

     The European colonists were Dutch, French, Scottish and English planters.
They maintained a dominant and exclusive position in the country until
independence. The Amerindians also remain unassimilated. Most of them do not
participate in the coastal life of the country. They live in the interior
practicing a mixed agricultural and hunting economy.

     The universal use of English as the national language of Guyana is one of
the very few unifying cultural forces in the country. It also helps bind the
nation with the other countries of the British Caribbean. On the other hand,
English language and other cultural traditions tend to isolate Guyana
socially, economically and politically from the predominantly Hispanic states
of Latin America.

East Indians

     Most of the East Indians who came to British Guiana were Hindus from the
United Provinces; about 16 percent were Moslems. These people were primarily
agriculturalists and artisans. Less than one-third of them were from the lower
castes and more than 10 percent were high caste Brahmans and Kshattryas. Today
most of the caste regulations on behavior have disappeared, but some elements
of the caste system persist. For example, high caste is associated with wealth
and high caste ideals are widely accepted by the East Indian community. Low
caste is associated with poverty, Moslems, and dark skin color (see ch. 6,
Social Structure).

     The East Indians brought four languages with them: Hindi, Hindustami,
Tamil, and Telagu. Today the total number of East Indians who are literate in
these languages comes to less than 10 percent. English is spoken universally,
and literacy is increasing. Fifty-six percent of the East Indians over 10
years old were literate in English in 1946. The figure probably is much higher
in 1968.

     Physically the East Indians have dark skin and straight or wavy hair.
They often refer to themselves as "coolies" or "cooliemen," and others may use
the terms without any pejorative implications. Within the East Indian
community, lower caste terms may be used as epithets.

     More than 85 percent of the East Indian population lives in rural
villages (on Crown lands or land bought from Africans), on land-settlement
schemes, or on sugar estates. They have close ties socially and economically
with the land. Farming is a family occupation. In one typical village, for
example, 90 percent of the married sons lived in their fathers' households or
within 5 miles of it. Thus each family has a source of free labor which
permits it to invest its income in more land or equipment. The demand for
land,