Guyana

• 1. Land Of Many Waters

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  The name Guyana comes from an indigenous Amerindian language and means land of many waters. This vast territory lies between latitudes 1° and 9°N, and longitudes 56° and 62°W. It is one of the world's most sparsely populated countries with a population density of just 3.48 people per square kilometer. The country can be divided into five natural regions including a narrow and fertile marshy plain along the Atlantic coast where most of the population lives. A white sand belt further inland contains most of Guyana's mineral deposits while dense rain forests cover the southern part of the country. Some of Guyana's highest mountains are Mount Ayanganna, Monte Caburaí and Mount Roraima which stands at 2,810 meters as the highest mountain in Guyana on the Brazil-Guyana-Venezuela tripoint border. Mount Roraima and Guyana's table-top mountains known as tepuis are said to have been the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World. There are also many volcanic escarpments and waterfalls including Kaieteur Falls which is one of the world's most powerful waterfalls. North of the Rupununi River lies the Rupununi savannah south of which lie the Kanuku Mountains.

• 2. Colonial Shadows And Independence

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  Although Christopher Columbus was the first European to sight Guyana during his third voyage in 1498, the Dutch were the first Europeans to establish colonies starting with Pomeroon in 1581. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote an account in 1596 but it was the Dutch who built settlements like Essequibo in 1616, Berbice in 1627, and Demerara in 1752. After France invaded the Dutch Republic in 1795, the British assumed control in 1796. The Dutch and British signed the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 in London that ceded Demerara-Essequibo and Berbice to Britain. In 1831, the united colonies became a single British colony known as British Guiana. It was governed as British Guiana with a mostly plantation-style economy until the 1950s forming part of the British West Indies. Guyana achieved independence from the United Kingdom as a dominion on the 26th of May 1966 and became a republic on the 23rd of February 1970 remaining a member of the Commonwealth. Shortly after independence Venezuela began to take diplomatic economic and military action against Guyana to enforce its territorial claim to the Essequibo region. Five months after Guyana's independence in October 1966 Venezuelan troops crossed the international border and seized Ankoko Island which has been under occupation ever since.

• 3. The Tragedy Of Jonestown

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  In 1978 a total of 918 people died at the Jonestown mass murder-suicide led by American cult leader Jim Jones at a remote settlement in northwest Guyana. Following independence Forbes Burnham of the People's National Congress rose to power quickly becoming a repressive authoritarian leader. Politics became divided on race with the Afro-Guyanese supporting Burnham's People's National Congress and the Indo-Guyanese supporting Cheddi Jagan's People's Progressive Party in what became known as aapan jaat politics loosely translated from Guyanese Hindustani as for your own kind. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Guyana to lobby for the resumption of free elections. On the 5th of October 1992 a new National Assembly and regional councils were elected in the first Guyanese election since 1964 to be internationally recognised as free and fair. Cheddi Jagan of the PPP was elected and sworn in as president on the 9th of October 1992. This reversed the monopoly that Afro-Guyanese traditionally had over Guyanese politics though the poll was marred by violence however. In May 2008 President Bharrat Jagdeo was a signatory to the UNASUR Constitutive Treaty of the Union of South American Nations.

• 4. The Oil Boom Economy

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  In 2015 major oil reserves were discovered off the coast by ExxonMobil. Commercial drilling began in 2019 with its economy growing by 43% through the COVID-19 pandemic year of 2020. Since 2017 over 11 billion barrels of oil reserves have been found off the country's coast, the largest addition to global oil reserves since the 1970s. The crude oil production has made Guyana a major participant in international energy trade in early 2020s. Guyana is now ranked as having the fourth-highest GDP per capita in the Americas after the United States Canada and the Bahamas. According to the World Bank in 2023 abject poverty still exists and the country faces significant risks in structurally managing its growth. In December 2024 Guyana was projected as the third largest per capita petroleum producing country in the world. GDP grew sharply reaching 43% during the pandemic year while non-oil sectors contracted as public health measures were in place to control virus spread. The growth of GDP rests on the oil sector for these two years.

• 5. Territorial Disputes With Venezuela

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  Since its independence in 1824 Venezuela has claimed the area of land to the west of the Essequibo River. Simón Bolívar wrote to the British government warning against the Berbice and Demerara settlers settling on land which the Venezuelans as assumed heirs of Spanish claims on the area dating to the 16th century claimed was theirs. In 1899 an international tribunal ruled that the land belonged to Great Britain. From the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the British inherited Dutch territory which included lands between the Orinoco and Courantyne rivers. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro convoked a referendum on Sunday the 3rd of December 2023 to ask Venezuelan electors five questions including whether to create a Venezuelan state in Essequibo and whether voters support granting Venezuelan citizenship to the region's current and future residents. Venezuela does not recognise the United Nations panel's jurisdiction over the decades-old dispute but Vice President Delcy Rodríguez nonetheless characterised the ruling as a victory for Venezuela given that the UN did not halt the referendum plans. Both the US and Brazil made signs of supporting Guyana in the territorial dispute with Brazil sending troops to their border with the Essequibo region.

• 6. A Mosaic Of Peoples

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  The large majority about 90% of Guyana's 744,000 people live along a narrow coastal strip that ranges from a width of 50 kilometers inland and makes up approximately 10% of the nation's total land area. The largest ethnic group is the Indo-Guyanese also known as East Indians who make up 43.5% of the population according to the 2002 census. They are followed by the Afro-Guyanese the descendants of enslaved people brought from Africa primarily West Africa who constitute 30.2%. The Guyanese of mixed heritage make up 16.7% while Indigenous peoples known locally as Amerindians make up 10.5% of the population. Nine Indigenous nations in Guyana defined by language include Akawaio Arawak Lokono Arekuna Pemon Carib Karinya Makushi Patamona Wai Wai Wapichan and Warao. Most Indo-Guyanese are descended from indentured labourers who migrated from North India especially the Bhojpur and Awadh regions of the Hindi Belt in present-day states Uttar Pradesh Bihar and Jharkhand. A significant minority of Indo-Guyanese are also descended from indentured migrants who came from South Indian states Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh these are the plurality ancestry in the East Berbice-Corentyne region.