1 of 3 Guyana is the only Englishspeaking country in South America and one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Most of its territory is covered by forest Photo: GETTY IMAGES Guyana is the only Englishspeaking country in South America and one of the least dense in the world; Most of its territory is covered by forest Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Located between Venezuela and Suriname, Guyana has never featured prominently in Brazilian or international news.
The discovery of oil in 2015 and the start of commercial drilling four years later changed that.
And in the end, it shed light on the curiosities of this small country.
Guyana is the only Englishspeaking country in South America, has one of the lowest population densities in the world, and is led by a Muslim president (the second to hold such a position in Latin America and the Caribbean).
One of the highlights is the main ethnicity of the population: four in ten Guyanese (43%) are of Indian origin. The country's leader, Irfaan Ali, is one of them Islam is the second most popular religion in Indiaaccording to Hinduism.
2 out of 3 Four out of ten Guyanese have Indian ancestry; The country's president, Irfaan Ali, is one of them Photo: GETTY IMAGES Four out of ten Guyanese have Indian ancestry; The country's president, Irfaan Ali, is one of them Photo: GETTY IMAGES
In the 14th century, the area where Guyana lies today was inhabited by seminomadic Indian tribes, mainly Warraus.
The Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus (14511506), who served the Spanish crown, sighted Guyana in 1498.
In 1580 the Dutch established trading posts there.
Starting in 1620, the Dutch West India Company began importing African slaves to work on their sugar plantations.
Between 1780 and 1813, Guyana alternated between the Dutch, French and British.
In 1814, the United Kingdom occupied Guyana during the Napoleonic Wars and later transformed it into the colony of British Guiana.
Twenty years later, as in other British possessions around the world, slavery was abolished.
In 1889, Venezuela claimed twothirds of Guyana west of the Essequibo River (more on this below), but ten years later international arbitration ruled in Guyana's favor.
At the same time, Brazil entered into a diplomatic conflict with the United Kingdom over an area of around 33,000 square kilometers lying between the border of the present state of Roraima and Guyana.
In 1953, the United Kingdom suspended a new constitution and installed a caretaker government after the IndoGuyanese PPP party was successful in the first free elections.
In 1960, a new constitution provided for full internal selfgovernment, but in 1964 an uprising sparked racial tensions and violent unrest.
3 of 3 Some Guyanese are descended from freed slaves, others from laborers in India Photo: GETTY IMAGES Some Guyanese are descended from freed slaves and others from laborers in India Photo: GETTY IMAGES
The arrival of Indian immigrants coincided with the abolition of slavery in Guyana.
The need for labor led to labor being brought in from India.
The first group of Indians left Calcutta in eastern India and arrived in Guyana on May 5, 1838, the same year that the final emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies took place.
These Indian immigrants, 396 in total, became popularly known as the “Gladstone Coolies,” after John Gladstone, owner of a sugar plantation in British Guiana and representative of the West Indies Association.
“Coolie” is a term historically used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to refer to workers from Asia, particularly China and India.
The term is currently considered a derogatory and racist nickname for people of Asian descent in Englishspeaking countries.
These immigrants arrived on two ships, the MV Whitby and the MV Hesperus.
The group crossed the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean before arriving in Guyana.
As wage laborers, they signed a contract agreeing to work in the fields for several years in exchange for a small sum of money.
This system remained in place for more than 75 years and had key features that were “very reminiscent of slavery,” according to Guyana’s Ministry of Education.
Within a decade, Indian immigration was largely responsible for “revolutionizing” the local sugar industry, the mainstay of the economy, ensuring its survival and prosperity.
At the end of the contract, some workers returned to India while others stayed and settled in Guyana.
Records show that between 1838 and 1917, 238,909 Indians were brought to British Guiana on around 500 ships as indentured laborers.
British Guiana imported the largest number of indentured laborers from India compared to the other Englishspeaking colonies.
For this reason, Guyana still celebrates the Day of the Arrival of the Indians, May 5th, as a national holiday.
Other wellknown Indian festivals are also represented in the Guyanese calendar, such as Diwali (Festival of Lights) and Holi (Festival of Colors).
At approximately 160,000 km², Essequibo is slightly larger than the state of Ceará and accounts for 70% of Guyana's territory.
It is a region rich in minerals such as gold, copper and diamonds. Huge deposits of oil and other hydrocarbons were recently discovered there.
Venezuela has claimed Essequibo as part of its territory for more than 100 years.
According to Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE), 10.5 million voters took part in the December 3 referendum, 95.93% of whom approved the official inclusion of Essequibo on the country's map and granted citizenship and identification documents to most of the 120,000 Guyanese live in the territory.
Guyana considers the referendum “provocative, illegal, invalid and without international legal effect.”
The Organization of American States (OAS) described the referendum as “antidemocratic.” He also said that “the regime’s recent actions in Venezuela not only endanger the development and stability of Guyana, but pose a broader risk to the security of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Recently, the United States, Guyana's ally, announced a military exercise with overflights in the country.
For his part, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) offered Brazil to host mediation meetings in the conflict between Venezuela and Guyana on the border between the two countries.
Although the Brazilian government still considers it unlikely that Venezuela will invade Essequibo, currently under the control of Guyana, there are fears that the escalation of the crisis will lead to the United States establishing military bases in the disputed territory, The region also includes the Amazon rainforest and borders the north of Brazil.
There is also an open territorial dispute with Suriname.
On December 9, the presidents of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and Guyana, Irfaan Ali, agreed to meet on the territorial dispute in the Essequibo region.
The conversation is scheduled for December 14 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a Caribbean country that temporarily holds the presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac).
The controversial elections in March 2020 were ultimately decided in favor of opposition candidate Irfaan Ali, who became the country's first Muslim president in August of that year.
Ali, a former minister of housing and tourism under People's Progressive Party (PPP) governments, defeated incumbent President David Granger of the National People's Congress after a full recount amid allegations of election fraud by the government.
A coalition led by the PPP also won a narrow majority in the parallel parliamentary elections.
Since its founding in 1950, the PPP has governed Guyana twice for long periods with a leftwing and socialist ideology.
Ali took power shortly after U.S. oil giant Exxon made one of the world's largest deepsea oil discoveries off the coast of Guyana, which could drastically change the country's economic prospects.
Guyana has been a member of the Commonwealth (an international group consisting of the United Kingdom and some of its former colonies) since 1970.
For a long time since Guyana gained independence in 1966, the country's forests (covering virtually the entire territory), sugar cane plantations, rice fields, and bauxite and gold reserves have been the main sources of the country's wealth.
Nevertheless, Guyana remained one of the poorest countries in South America in the first decades of the 21st century.
But in 2015, the country's fortunes changed dramatically when the first of a series of prolific deepwater oilfield discoveries took place in the Stabroek block along the coast.
An additional 17 oil fields were discovered in the same block in Guyana at the end of 2020, and these fields are expected to produce around 750,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025.
Languages: English, Guyana Creole and others
Life expectancy: 67 years (men) 73 years (women)