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Global Guyana Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond

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View the page of Oneka LaBennett

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In Global Guyana, Oneka LaBennett uncovers how ecological erosion and gendered violence are entrenched in extractive industries emanating from this often-effaced but pivotal country.

Image courtesy of interviewee. February 22, 2024

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This video video discusses a book that emphasizes the crucial yet often overlooked significance of Guyana in understanding global environmental threats and the societal challenges faced by Caribbean women. Initially regarded as one of the poorest countries in South America, Guyana is now on the verge of becoming a leading per capita oil producer due to significant oil discoveries by ExxonMobil since 2015. This video video transformation allows the author to explore themes of gender, race, and the impact of extractive industries on local communities, particularly the lives of women and indigenous populations.

The book addresses how Guyana, despite its cultural ties to the Caribbean and unique demographic makeup—including a large South Asian population—is often omitted from discussions about the region. It highlights the environmental ramifications of oil and sand extraction, which disrupt fragile ecosystems and contribute to social inequalities.

The discussion on Rihanna connects her Guyanese heritage to broader themes of migration, cultural identity, and the historical relationships between Barbados and Guyana. The impact of colonialism and current resource extraction practices are shown to exacerbate issues like sex trafficking of vulnerable women.

Additionally, the book critiques the rapid modernization occurring as a result of oil wealth, warning of the environmental and social risks associated with this growth. It ultimately serves as a call to recognize Guyana's role in global environmental discourse and the interconnectedness of resource exploitation and gendered violence. The narrative insists that to grasp the broader implications of environmental catastrophe, attention must be paid to Guyana and the legacies shaped by its natural resources and women's experiences.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This book is motivated by a bold claim.

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Uh, it's motivated by the bold claim

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that we must put the small,

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easily overlooked South American country on

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of Guyana on the map, if we hope to understand the

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global threat of environmental catastrophe, as well

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as the pernicious forms of erasure

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that structure Caribbean women's lives.

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So with no tourism to speak of

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and previously ranked

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amongst the poorest countries in the hemisphere,

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Guyana is presently poised

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to become the world's largest per capita oil producer.

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This means that it offers, I think, a critical vantage point

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from which we can understand the undercurrents

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of transnational gender, race, gender formations, as well

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as the extractive industries

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that really fuel our modern world.

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If we're concerned with the economic, environmental,

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and social costs of fueling our modern world,

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I think we have to pay attention to Guyana.

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So starting in 2015, ExxonMobil discovered what's known

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as a super giant oil field, the coast of Guyana.

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And it was valued as, as one of the most,

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valuable petroleum and gas findings in decades.

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The significance of this oil boom can't be overstated.

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That initial discovery in 2015,

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was valued at about $200 billion.

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The oil has kept flowing.

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So within seven years, for example,

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ExxonMobil had made a string of additional discoveries,

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and the company started indicating

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that the petroleum in new wells that had found off

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of Guyana's Coast raised the recover, recoverable oil

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and gas, attentional to nearly 11 billion barrels.

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That's about a 10th of the world's conventional discoveries.

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So this is a massive oil discovery,

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and the petroleum that stands

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to be recovered off Guyanas Coast is really unmatched

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across the globe.

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So, for example, experts predict that it will,

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it will replace Kuwait

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as the largest oil producer per capita.

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And so this means that the country has transformed into a, a

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oil hotspot.

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And because of that, it started garnering international

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attention from industry insiders,

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from geopolitical observers.

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So, while guy's oil has been making headlines, one of the,

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extractive industries that I've put in conversation

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with oil in the book is sand.

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So it's starting to become known

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because of this massive oil, industry.

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But in fact, sand extraction in Guyana has been going on

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quietly and under the radar of all

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of these global observers.

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And it remains what many journalists have called the

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worldwide crisis that nobody has ever heard of.

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So sand is actually the most,

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exploited research around the world except for water,

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second only to water.

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And we think about water as a vital resource,

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but we usually don't think of sand that way.

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In fact, we need sand for so many things in modern life.

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Uh, the computer screen

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that I'm looking at right now is made from silica, quartz,

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or sand eyeglasses, cell phone cases,

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everything from building schools, hospital,

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glass structures.

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The building that you're probably sitting in right now is

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made of sand, aggregates.

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So Guyana is also rich in sand,

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and its sand is being mined,

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massively in conjunction with this oil discovery.

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The oil discovery is meant development

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and new buildings in Guyana

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and the, building of infra infrastructure and new roads.

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That means that the sand deposits in the country are being

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pillaged and actually sand deposits are really fragile

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ecologies, and they're important ecologies.

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We think of sand as vast and as you know, unimportant.

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Uh, we think of desert sand, for example.

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Desert sand is not of the same quality of the sand

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that exists in Guyana.

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This is untapped sand that is very pristine.

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So desert sand is too coarse to use for those,

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construction examples I just listed.

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So cocom mitten with the mining of oil,

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there's also this invisible sand crisis

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that's unfolding in in Guyana.

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So that's part of the answer to your question. Why Guyana?

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It's this place that's rich in resources

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and it's experiencing the sea change right now

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around oil extraction,

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but also quietly around sand extraction.

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And so the book tells those two stories.

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Uh, so to get to your question about Rihanna, why Rihanna,

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is Guy Rihanna's mother guy Guyanese?

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Yes. Rihanna's mother is Guyanese.

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Um, and looking at Rihanna's

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maternal line is a really great way

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to bring women into the story

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of resource extraction in Guyana.

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So intersectional race, gender formations

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and migratory processes come to a head in Guyana in ways

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that we don't usually consider.

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Rihanna's primarily known as Barbadian

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or Bain, as we say in the Caribbean.

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But in fact, her mother, Monica Braithwaite

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and her grandmother are both Guyanese.

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Her grandmother's passed away,

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but her mother, is still with us.

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Rihanna credits this maternal line, her close connection

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with her Guyanese maternal kin with shaping her worldview

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and inspiring her cosmetics empire.

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And when we look into Rihanna's family ties in Guyana,

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we begin to see a story of a long history of inner marriages

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between Bejan or Barbadian men and Guyanese women.

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So in the post emancipation period, right

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after slavery was abolished in Barbados,

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Barbados experienced a very large labor force,

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but a dearth of land, not a lot, lot of land

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that peasants could form, could farm.

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So Bejan men started going to Guyana to find work.

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Guyana had a surplus of land,

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but an Afro Guyanese population that was really striking

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and resisting the forces of, British colonialism

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and the ways in which they were being exploited.

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So troves of, troves of be men went

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to Guyana to find work.

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And when they went to Guyana to find work,

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they married local women,

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and they brought these women back to Barbados with them.

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So there's this long history of inner marriage

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and family ties between Barbados and Guyana.

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In that earlier period, the migratory processes brought men

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to Guyana and sometimes back to Barbados

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with their Guyanese wives.

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But in the contemporary period

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before the oil discovery, Guyanese started coming

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to Barbados to find work.

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And Guyanese women in particular found

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that they were objectified.

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They were exoticized as perhaps desirable mates,

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but then they were also scapegoated as, homewreckers

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because there was this idea that Guyanese women were coming

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and stealing Bei husbands.

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And so there are these stereotypes that

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that objectify Guyanese women

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and paint them as these sort of foreign homewreckers.

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And Rihanna is really attuned to those processes.

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When in interviews, when she talks about her experience

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as a guy, as a as, as a descendant

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of a Guyanese mother in Barbados, she talks about how

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the immigration discourse in Barbados is one

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that frames Guyanese women as foreign threats.

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And she likens this to the treatment

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of Mexican immigrants in the us.

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And she says that she knew from an early age

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that it was possible that,

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a mother could be taken from her child in the night

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by immigration officials.

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Rihanna's mother was there legally in the country, so,

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in, in fact, she probably should not have been worried,

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but she witnessed this with other children that she knew.

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And so Rihanna's story of her family

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and of her maternal line gives us some insight

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into the cultural, the exchanges in the inner marriage

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between these two places.

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Diana also has an outsize

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presence in America's largest city in New York City.

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Guy itself is a country of less than 800,000 people,

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but it has experienced a massive outmigration.

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And in fact, Guyanese represent New York City's fifth

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largest foreign born population

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and third largest Caribbean born group.

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That's remarkable that such a small country

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represents the fifth largest foreign

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population in New York City.

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So that's another answer to your question,

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why Guyana Guyanese hold this outsized

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presence in the United States.

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And so we have to understand

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where these people come from in order

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to understand the ways in which,

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their being incorporated into life in New York

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City and life in the us.

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So the research for this book was truly interdisciplinary.

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I combined archival research,

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Ethnographic observation, oral history, interviews

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with members of my own family,

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and I also interviewed contemporary scientists in Guyana.

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I like to use a metaphor

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to describe the research process for the book.

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I use the example of the pointer broom.

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The pointer room is a handle list, Guyanese yard broom

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that is traditionally handmade from the inner spines

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of coconut, leaves.

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Those spines are pointy and long

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and Guyanese women have traditionally gathered them together

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and tied them with a string at the top

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to create this handle list broom.

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It's ubiquitous in Guyana. You see it all over the country.

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Women and girls use the pointer broom to sweep up sand,

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in yards and in homes.

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And we can think about the broom as a way

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of culling together many different aspects,

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many different fields of research.

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So like the binds of the pointer room, I gather together

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archival research, ethnographic observation,

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oral history interviews to tell this story of

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un interrelated realms that we usually don't bring together.

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So I look at, for example, media representations.

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Women's kinship ties the circulation of people

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and resources in order to reimagine this understudy place

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as really central to our understandings of gendered

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and racialized notes of capitalism.

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And the point of room is a really terrific, tool

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and metaphor for the processes, for the processes of,

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research in the book.

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Because the broom connects women to the natural world,

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to the environment, they're shaping their natural world

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with the pointer broom, the ways in which the broom strokes

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and sweeps across yards and floors

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and into cracks and crevices.

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I use that as a metaphor for the type of sweeping

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that I do in the book.

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I sweep together all

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of these different inter-related realms,

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and I really get into these sort of issues

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that have been swept under rugs that have fallen into cracks

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and crevices that are seemingly, unimportant,

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that might be seen as refuse or rubbish.

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I bring them to the surface to say that all

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of these processes, media representations, global,

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capitalism, the circulation of people

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and resources are connected,

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and that women are integral to those connections.

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In a nutshell, Guyana is an outlier in in several regards.

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Although it's culturally Caribbean, it is not an island.

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It lacks the tourism industry that typically draws visitors

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to the Caribbean region.

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It's the only country in South America

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whose official language is English.

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Um, this is because it was a British colony

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before it gained independence in 1966.

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Guyana borders Venezuela, which

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of course we know is Spanish speaking it also.

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So Venezuela is to its west.

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It borders, Lucifer

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or Portuguese speaking, Brazil to it south.

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It also borders surname to its east,

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which is a polygon clock country of, of many languages.

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And it has closed proximity to French speaking French gaan.

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So it's a geographic

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and linguistic singularity that positions it both outside

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of the Caribbean while simul,

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but inside it, culturally,

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it's culturally considered Caribbean,

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but it's simultaneously placed inside.

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But outside of Latin America,

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because it's the only English speaking country

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in South America, and its landmass is large in comparison

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to other Caribbean nations,

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but it's amongst the smallest countries in in South America.

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Guyana is unique in all of these ways.

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Um, it's also demographically unique

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because it has a greater number of South Asians,

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than any than other nations in the Caribbean.

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South asians com comprise its largest ethnic group,

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but it also has, descendants of enslaved Africans,

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and indigenous people.

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Its social landscape actually has historically shaped

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by indigenous, dispossession by the enslavement

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of Africans and the indenture of Indians and observers.

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Note that race and ethnicity have been vexed in Guyana since

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the dawn of the colonial period.

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And so it's often been pigeonholed as this place of,

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extreme ethnic conflict.

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That's one of the narratives that I disrupt in the book,

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in the contemporary period is its global profile.

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Before the oil discovery was often linked to the mass murder

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of, of Americans in Jim Jones's cult,

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which is often misnamed as the world's largest mass suicide.

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And it's the origin of the expression drinking the Kool-Aid.

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So although Jones and his followers were Americans,

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Guyana's corrupt government

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and its remote jungles,

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arguably facilitated Jim Jones' ability to isolate

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and control his, his devotees

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and state corruption has, been ethnically divided.

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Uh, state corruption has been rampant

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and ethnic ethnically divided politics have characterized

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guyana's political structure since its independence from,

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great Britain in 1966.

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So at that time, Guyana's leaders changed the name

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of the country from British Guyana, spelt with an I

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to Guyana, spelt with a y

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and routine large scale election fraud perpetrated

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by a ruthless dictator,

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the country's first independent leader.

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Lyndon Forbes burden pegged the country as this sort

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of violent state that stifles democracy

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and fosters deep seated, ethnic conflicts.

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But I wanna note that Guyana's struggle for independence,

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was marked both by a sort

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of multi-ethnic political co coalition

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that often gets swept aside.

14:50.215 --> 14:52.245
So Burnham and Afro Guyanese

14:52.545 --> 14:55.885
and Guyana's Indoc Guyanese leader Chetty Jagan had an,

14:56.005 --> 14:58.565
a multi-ethnic coalition, but the US

14:58.585 --> 15:01.045
and British meddled in guyana's politics

15:01.065 --> 15:05.045
and stoked the ethnic conflicts that set into place,

15:05.045 --> 15:06.485
that that were set into place really

15:06.485 --> 15:07.925
during British colonial rule.

15:08.345 --> 15:09.925
And it's these outside forces

15:10.035 --> 15:13.805
that ensured Burnham's ascendants in 1964.

15:15.065 --> 15:17.005
Uh, in terms of extractive industries,

15:17.635 --> 15:20.405
Kana has always been rich in natural resources, and,

15:20.465 --> 15:24.085
and there's a long history of its resources being pillaged

15:24.085 --> 15:25.085
by colonial powers.

15:25.085 --> 15:29.325
So by Dutch and by British, powers, the Dutch

15:29.325 --> 15:33.285
and British empires were largely built on the extraction

15:33.305 --> 15:37.125
of resources from Guyana, including sugar, gold, diamonds,

15:37.265 --> 15:40.485
box site, and of course, more now in the present,

15:40.485 --> 15:44.125
period, the US is, benefiting from its oil extraction.

15:45.025 --> 15:48.125
Uh, the other part of the story of extraction in Guyana has

15:48.125 --> 15:50.085
to do with sand, which I mentioned earlier.

15:51.145 --> 15:54.805
We think of the Caribbean as a place of sandy beaches

15:54.985 --> 15:56.005
and blue waters.

15:56.005 --> 15:58.285
And this is really what attracts tourists to the region.

15:58.985 --> 16:02.285
Guyana has not had that typical, tourist industry

16:02.285 --> 16:05.805
because in part it lacks, white sandy beaches

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and it doesn't have the blue waters

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that characterize the Caribbean.

16:10.145 --> 16:14.165
But in fact, Guyana has a massive,

16:15.605 --> 16:17.085
resource of sand deposits

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that are not visible to the naked eye.

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They're under greenery, they're under foliage.

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Uh, the sand is under greenery and foliage.

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It's been untapped, untouched.

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So the sand in other parts of the Caribbean has eroded

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because of climate change

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and environmental, damage sand in other parts

16:35.885 --> 16:37.725
of the Caribbean has been extracted

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to build those beautiful, you know, resorts that people go

16:42.125 --> 16:43.605
to the Caribbean to enjoy.

16:44.305 --> 16:48.005
And in order to replace sand erosion in other parts

16:48.005 --> 16:51.485
of the Caribbean, other Caribbean nations have been

16:51.915 --> 16:54.605
importing sand for guy from Guyana for decades.

16:55.265 --> 16:58.805
So starting in about the 1990s, places like Jamaica,

16:59.025 --> 17:00.165
places like St.

17:00.165 --> 17:03.685
Vincent and the Grenadines started importing sand from

17:03.785 --> 17:05.605
Guyana to replenish their beaches.

17:05.995 --> 17:07.725
This is an untold story.

17:08.145 --> 17:10.925
We often, we don't know when we're lying on a beautiful

17:10.925 --> 17:13.045
white sand beach in Guyana in Jamaica,

17:13.155 --> 17:16.565
that the sand we are lying on may in fact come from

17:16.985 --> 17:18.605
Guyana, but it does.

17:19.265 --> 17:22.565
And so part of the story the book tells is about

17:22.745 --> 17:27.005
how sand extraction, has really from Guyana,

17:27.025 --> 17:29.365
has transformed the topography

17:29.425 --> 17:32.685
and the landscape of the Caribbean in these unseen ways.

17:33.525 --> 17:36.085
Guyana's outlier status that I talked about

17:36.085 --> 17:39.125
before, the fact that it's sort of unique geographically,

17:39.305 --> 17:42.365
linguistically, demographically in the region

17:43.105 --> 17:46.245
has been filtered through popular culture, academic

17:46.345 --> 17:49.925
and geopolitical rhetoric to either leave the country out

17:49.925 --> 17:52.925
of the picture in global imaginings of the Caribbean

17:53.345 --> 17:57.205
and Latin America, or to obscure its complex connections

17:57.225 --> 17:58.365
to the region and the world.

17:58.945 --> 18:01.605
And so many publish maps of the Caribbean.

18:01.625 --> 18:03.525
If you find a, a map in a textbook,

18:03.545 --> 18:05.885
or even if you Google map of the Caribbean,

18:06.055 --> 18:10.685
oftentimes these map simply end at the northern tip

18:10.685 --> 18:13.325
of South America and leave Guyana off the map.

18:14.395 --> 18:18.255
In the book, I sweep into light, what has been erased

18:18.275 --> 18:22.015
or o obfuscated, like Guyana itself,

18:22.015 --> 18:23.655
these hidden dust particles

18:23.655 --> 18:27.575
of intimate relationships in small regional migratory

18:27.805 --> 18:30.815
ripples alongside larger discourses

18:30.835 --> 18:33.535
around resources moving in and through Guyana.

18:33.995 --> 18:37.775
And this approach makes visible, connections

18:37.795 --> 18:40.135
and correlations between circum, Caribbean

18:40.135 --> 18:42.975
and transnational understandings of people,

18:43.185 --> 18:46.215
women in particular, and resource extraction.

18:46.835 --> 18:50.415
And I do this by sweeping into view what I call a political,

18:50.575 --> 18:52.695
a political economy of erasure.

18:53.315 --> 18:56.055
And I define this as a system for organizing

18:56.055 --> 18:58.895
and assessing interactions and exchanges that are races

18:58.955 --> 19:02.975
or obscures the inner linkages between local gyne,

19:03.095 --> 19:06.015
social constructions, and global racial capitalism.

19:06.645 --> 19:07.775
This political economy

19:07.875 --> 19:11.095
of erasure ef faces Guyana in global discourse,

19:11.145 --> 19:14.695
discursive spaces, and it is intimately connected

19:14.695 --> 19:16.575
to the forms of ecological erosion

19:16.875 --> 19:19.015
and, gendered violence that are

19:19.575 --> 19:21.535
entrenched in extractive industries.

19:22.475 --> 19:27.175
So, for example, resource extraction in Guyana, mining of,

19:27.355 --> 19:28.695
sand

19:28.715 --> 19:30.175
and the deep sea drilling

19:30.355 --> 19:33.055
for oil is devastating the environment.

19:33.445 --> 19:35.815
It's disrupting fragile economies,

19:35.815 --> 19:38.775
and it's jeopardizing the welfare of the country's,

19:38.965 --> 19:40.855
most vulnerable populations.

19:40.925 --> 19:42.775
It's women and it's indigenous people.

19:43.605 --> 19:48.055
Experts, have predicted that ExxonMobil or

19:48.055 --> 19:51.175
or rather experts have, have noted

19:51.315 --> 19:54.855
and argued that ExxonMobil,

19:54.995 --> 19:59.895
has really not followed proper safety measures in its,

20:00.255 --> 20:01.415
drilling for oil and Guyana.

20:01.415 --> 20:03.455
It's failed to sufficiently prepare

20:03.515 --> 20:05.255
for the possibility of an oil spill.

20:05.875 --> 20:09.095
And in fact, they've described ExxonMobil's

20:09.635 --> 20:11.495
safety measures as superficial.

20:11.835 --> 20:14.815
And ExxonMobil itself has estimated

20:14.815 --> 20:17.095
that an an oil spill off

20:17.335 --> 20:20.695
of Guyana's coast could spill oil throughout the Caribbean

20:20.795 --> 20:23.895
sea, across Trinidad and Vene Venezuela,

20:23.915 --> 20:25.695
and as far away as Jamaica.

20:26.275 --> 20:31.255
And so if oil extraction continues, a pace in Guyana,

20:31.275 --> 20:35.135
we really should be thinking about, this threat

20:35.355 --> 20:36.935
of a major oil spill

20:36.955 --> 20:39.935
and what it would mean for the region and really the world.

20:40.035 --> 20:41.415
We would feel the ripple effects

20:41.415 --> 20:44.775
of such a massive oil spill throughout the hemisphere.

20:45.435 --> 20:48.405
And we find additional dangers when we look at the

20:48.405 --> 20:50.765
development projects that are coming out

20:51.105 --> 20:53.125
of the oil wealth in Guyana.

20:53.125 --> 20:54.325
So, as I mentioned before,

20:55.065 --> 20:57.285
oil wealth is really reshaping the country.

20:57.315 --> 21:00.605
There's a massive push for development going on in Guyana.

21:00.605 --> 21:01.805
There's building of roads

21:01.805 --> 21:04.205
and, buildings and infrastructure.

21:05.155 --> 21:08.565
This means that the sand deposits are being depleted,

21:08.625 --> 21:11.525
at a very alarming rate in this quest

21:11.665 --> 21:13.885
to modernize the country's infrastructure.

21:14.425 --> 21:17.005
So we're at this in inflection point, really,

21:17.005 --> 21:19.365
where Diana's racing to modernize,

21:19.745 --> 21:22.045
but the road ahead is really rife with danger

21:22.065 --> 21:25.325
and uncertainty in terms of environmental catastrophe.

21:26.105 --> 21:27.445
And these signs of growth

21:27.445 --> 21:30.845
that we see everywhere are actually exacerbating the social

21:30.985 --> 21:33.645
divide between the wealthy people in the capital

21:34.145 --> 21:37.285
and rural communities, which are oftentimes adjacent

21:37.465 --> 21:40.805
to sand mines, massive craters, where

21:41.385 --> 21:43.325
trucks are hauling loads

21:43.325 --> 21:44.965
and loads of sand,

21:45.365 --> 21:47.805
creating dangerous conditions along roads,

21:48.335 --> 21:51.485
displacing animals, people trees.

21:52.025 --> 21:54.925
Um, so there's a great deal also

21:54.925 --> 21:57.165
of indigenous dispossession that's going on.

21:57.225 --> 22:01.445
The sand deposits are close, to rural,

22:01.445 --> 22:04.485
communities near the, not far from the coast,

22:04.785 --> 22:07.605
but the oil drilling we know is going off off the coast.

22:07.705 --> 22:12.205
But there, the oil drilling is really, causing

22:13.155 --> 22:15.285
life changes for the indigenous population.

22:15.625 --> 22:17.285
The, the extraction of oil

22:17.745 --> 22:20.965
and gold in Guyana's interior,

22:21.745 --> 22:24.925
is going on at the borderlands between Guyana and Venezuela.

22:24.985 --> 22:28.205
And so there are regional wars brewing between Guyana

22:28.205 --> 22:29.885
and Venezuela that we are hearing about.

22:29.925 --> 22:33.765
Increasingly in the news, the capitalist extraction of gold

22:33.765 --> 22:34.925
and oil, for example,

22:35.745 --> 22:39.965
is creating these is contaminating forests lands and, and,

22:40.025 --> 22:43.005
and contaminating the waterways that sustain life

22:43.025 --> 22:44.045
for indigenous people.

22:44.625 --> 22:46.485
And they're also,

22:47.075 --> 22:50.165
that extraction is also bringing in the trafficking

22:50.185 --> 22:54.565
of Guyanese women and girls who supply minors with

22:55.025 --> 22:56.325
and smugglers with sex.

22:56.825 --> 22:59.125
So the US State Department has noted

22:59.125 --> 23:03.285
that sex trafficking is one of the ramifications

23:03.945 --> 23:06.405
of resource extraction in Guyana

23:06.785 --> 23:09.805
and the book, I tell the story of this long history of how,

23:10.185 --> 23:11.965
African enslaved women

23:11.985 --> 23:14.725
and Indian indentured women were brought to guy

23:14.945 --> 23:17.885
to sustain global capitalism in the colonial period.

23:18.265 --> 23:21.885
And today it's the poorest Guyanese, women

23:21.985 --> 23:24.965
and Venezuelan women who are trafficked as part

23:24.965 --> 23:28.325
of the infrastructure of violent resource extraction.

23:28.925 --> 23:33.805
I hope that readers will think critically about the oil

23:34.075 --> 23:35.845
that fuels our modern world

23:35.985 --> 23:39.525
and think critically about the sand resources that we,

23:39.525 --> 23:43.605
that are unseen, but are also so critical to modern life

23:44.465 --> 23:48.045
and begin to understand the ways in which Guyana is central

23:48.585 --> 23:50.605
to, modern living

23:51.385 --> 23:54.125
and the ways in which Guyanese women's,

23:54.185 --> 23:56.445
social histories have been erased.

23:56.915 --> 24:00.925
When we look at just the economics of resource extraction,

24:01.035 --> 24:03.525
there's a social story here as well.

24:03.945 --> 24:07.205
Uh, the ways in which women, become, victims

24:07.345 --> 24:11.245
of sex trafficking, for example, that's CodeCommit with,

24:11.465 --> 24:16.125
oil extraction in Guyana means that if we pay attention

24:16.145 --> 24:18.765
to the environment, if we think about the environment,

24:18.765 --> 24:23.005
we also think about the lives of women and indigenous people

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and children, the sort of,

24:25.595 --> 24:27.925
most vulnerable citizens of Guyana.

24:28.925 --> 24:32.045
I think that the book is, important

24:32.475 --> 24:34.885
because readers need to understand

24:34.885 --> 24:39.045
that the Caribbean is not just a place of,

24:39.135 --> 24:40.965
sandy beaches and blue waters.

24:41.545 --> 24:46.005
And that, our Caribbean vacation has implications

24:46.315 --> 24:48.285
that go beyond, the sort

24:48.285 --> 24:51.485
of white sandy beaches on which we might be reclining.

24:51.985 --> 24:55.485
If we pause and we think about where that sand comes from,

24:55.865 --> 25:00.645
or if we pause and we think about, what inspired the,

25:00.865 --> 25:03.645
the song by Rihanna that we might be listening to on

25:03.645 --> 25:07.245
that beach, we begin to sort of uncover the story

25:07.245 --> 25:10.485
of Guyana's Central place in the Caribbean and in the world.

25:11.185 --> 25:14.485
And the, the threat of environmental catastrophe

25:14.485 --> 25:18.525
that Guyana now faces is not just important

25:18.585 --> 25:21.205
for Guyanese people, it's important for all of us.

25:21.865 --> 25:25.005
Um, the anthropologist Jenny Livingston has used the term

25:25.115 --> 25:29.125
self devouring growth to describe the push for modernization

25:29.225 --> 25:33.525
and the, the sort of insatiable quests to use more

25:33.625 --> 25:35.565
and more resource resources.

25:36.065 --> 25:38.005
The more resources we use,

25:38.425 --> 25:40.485
the more we devour the environment,

25:40.825 --> 25:42.365
and the more we also,

25:42.505 --> 25:45.925
put at risk vulnerable populations, like women

25:45.985 --> 25:47.365
and children in Guyana.

25:47.825 --> 25:52.005
So the, the book really tells is issues of warning call,

25:52.225 --> 25:54.045
that's applicable to all of us.

25:54.145 --> 25:55.445
That's important to all of us.

25:55.585 --> 25:58.565
If we hope to understand the, the global threat

25:58.565 --> 26:00.525
of environmental catastrophe and the,

26:00.585 --> 26:03.325
and the forms of erasure that structure,

26:03.395 --> 26:06.645
Caribbean women's lives, we need to pay attention to Guyana.

00:00 - This book is motivated by a bold claim. it's motivated by the bold claim that we must put the small, easily overlooked South American country on of Guyana on the map, if we hope to understand the global threat of environmental catastrophe, as well

00:18 - as the pernicious forms of erasure that structure Caribbean women's lives. So with no tourism to speak of and previously ranked amongst the poorest countries in the hemisphere, Guyana is presently poised to become the world's largest per capita oil producer. This means that it offers, I think, a critical vantage point from which we can understand the undercurrents of transnational gender, race, gender formations, as well

00:46 - as the extractive industries that really fuel our modern world. If we're concerned with the economic, environmental, and social costs of fueling our modern world, I think we have to pay attention to Guyana. So starting in 2015, ExxonMobil discovered what's known as a super giant oil field, the coast of Guyana. And it was valued as, as one of the most, valuable petroleum and gas findings in decades. The significance of this oil boom can't be overstated.

01:20 - That initial discovery in 2015, was valued at about $200 billion. The oil has kept flowing. So within seven years, for example, ExxonMobil had made a string of additional discoveries, and the company started indicating that the petroleum in new wells that had found off of Guyana's Coast raised the recover, recoverable oil and gas, attentional to nearly 11 billion barrels. That's about a 10th of the world's conventional discoveries.

01:49 - So this is a massive oil discovery, and the petroleum that stands to be recovered off Guyanas Coast is really unmatched across the globe. So, for example, experts predict that it will, it will replace Kuwait as the largest oil producer per capita. And so this means that the country has transformed into a, a oil hotspot. And because of that, it started garnering international

02:15 - attention from industry insiders, from geopolitical observers. So, while guy's oil has been making headlines, one of the, extractive industries that I've put in conversation with oil in the book is sand. So it's starting to become known because of this massive oil, industry. But in fact, sand extraction in Guyana has been going on quietly and under the radar of all of these global observers.

02:41 - And it remains what many journalists have called the worldwide crisis that nobody has ever heard of. So sand is actually the most, exploited research around the world except for water, second only to water. And we think about water as a vital resource, but we usually don't think of sand that way. In fact, we need sand for so many things in modern life. the computer screen that I'm looking at right now is made from silica, quartz,

03:10 - or sand eyeglasses, cell phone cases, everything from building schools, hospital, glass structures. The building that you're probably sitting in right now is made of sand, aggregates. So Guyana is also rich in sand, and its sand is being mined, massively in conjunction with this oil discovery. The oil discovery is meant development and new buildings in Guyana

03:37 - and the, building of infra infrastructure and new roads. That means that the sand deposits in the country are being pillaged and actually sand deposits are really fragile ecologies, and they're important ecologies. We think of sand as vast and as you know, unimportant. we think of desert sand, for example. Desert sand is not of the same quality of the sand that exists in Guyana. This is untapped sand that is very pristine. So desert sand is too coarse to use for those,

04:09 - construction examples I just listed. So cocom mitten with the mining of oil, there's also this invisible sand crisis that's unfolding in in Guyana. So that's part of the answer to your question. Why Guyana? It's this place that's rich in resources and it's experiencing the sea change right now around oil extraction, but also quietly around sand extraction. And so the book tells those two stories.

04:34 - so to get to your question about Rihanna, why Rihanna, is Guy Rihanna's mother guy Guyanese? Yes. Rihanna's mother is Guyanese. and looking at Rihanna's maternal line is a really great way to bring women into the story of resource extraction in Guyana. So intersectional race, gender formations and migratory processes come to a head in Guyana in ways that we don't usually consider.

05:03 - Rihanna's primarily known as Barbadian or Bain, as we say in the Caribbean. But in fact, her mother, Monica Braithwaite and her grandmother are both Guyanese. Her grandmother's passed away, but her mother, is still with us. Rihanna credits this maternal line, her close connection with her Guyanese maternal kin with shaping her worldview and inspiring her cosmetics empire. And when we look into Rihanna's family ties in Guyana,

05:32 - we begin to see a story of a long history of inner marriages between Bejan or Barbadian men and Guyanese women. So in the post emancipation period, right after slavery was abolished in Barbados, Barbados experienced a very large labor force, but a dearth of land, not a lot, lot of land that peasants could form, could farm. So Bejan men started going to Guyana to find work. Guyana had a surplus of land, but an Afro Guyanese population that was really striking

06:05 - and resisting the forces of, British colonialism and the ways in which they were being exploited. So troves of, troves of be men went to Guyana to find work. And when they went to Guyana to find work, they married local women, and they brought these women back to Barbados with them. So there's this long history of inner marriage and family ties between Barbados and Guyana. In that earlier period, the migratory processes brought men

06:31 - to Guyana and sometimes back to Barbados with their Guyanese wives. But in the contemporary period before the oil discovery, Guyanese started coming to Barbados to find work. And Guyanese women in particular found that they were objectified. They were exoticized as perhaps desirable mates, but then they were also scapegoated as, homewreckers because there was this idea that Guyanese women were coming

06:57 - and stealing Bei husbands. And so there are these stereotypes that that objectify Guyanese women and paint them as these sort of foreign homewreckers. And Rihanna is really attuned to those processes. When in interviews, when she talks about her experience as a guy, as a as, as a descendant of a Guyanese mother in Barbados, she talks about how the immigration discourse in Barbados is one that frames Guyanese women as foreign threats.

07:28 - And she likens this to the treatment of Mexican immigrants in the us. And she says that she knew from an early age that it was possible that, a mother could be taken from her child in the night by immigration officials. Rihanna's mother was there legally in the country, so, in, in fact, she probably should not have been worried, but she witnessed this with other children that she knew. And so Rihanna's story of her family

07:54 - and of her maternal line gives us some insight into the cultural, the exchanges in the inner marriage between these two places. Diana also has an outsize presence in America's largest city in New York City. Guy itself is a country of less than 800,000 people, but it has experienced a massive outmigration. And in fact, Guyanese represent New York City's fifth largest foreign born population and third largest Caribbean born group.

08:25 - That's remarkable that such a small country represents the fifth largest foreign population in New York City. So that's another answer to your question, why Guyana Guyanese hold this outsized presence in the United States. And so we have to understand where these people come from in order to understand the ways in which, their being incorporated into life in New York

08:46 - City and life in the us. So the research for this book was truly interdisciplinary. I combined archival research, Ethnographic observation, oral history, interviews with members of my own family, and I also interviewed contemporary scientists in Guyana. I like to use a metaphor to describe the research process for the book. I use the example of the pointer broom. The pointer room is a handle list, Guyanese yard broom

09:16 - that is traditionally handmade from the inner spines of coconut, leaves. Those spines are pointy and long and Guyanese women have traditionally gathered them together and tied them with a string at the top to create this handle list broom. It's ubiquitous in Guyana. You see it all over the country. Women and girls use the pointer broom to sweep up sand, in yards and in homes. And we can think about the broom as a way

09:44 - of culling together many different aspects, many different fields of research. So like the binds of the pointer room, I gather together archival research, ethnographic observation, oral history interviews to tell this story of un interrelated realms that we usually don't bring together. So I look at, for example, media representations. Women's kinship ties the circulation of people and resources in order to reimagine this understudy place as really central to our understandings of gendered

10:18 - and racialized notes of capitalism. And the point of room is a really terrific, tool and metaphor for the processes, for the processes of, research in the book. Because the broom connects women to the natural world, to the environment, they're shaping their natural world with the pointer broom, the ways in which the broom strokes and sweeps across yards and floors and into cracks and crevices. I use that as a metaphor for the type of sweeping

10:48 - that I do in the book. I sweep together all of these different inter-related realms, and I really get into these sort of issues that have been swept under rugs that have fallen into cracks and crevices that are seemingly, unimportant, that might be seen as refuse or rubbish. I bring them to the surface to say that all of these processes, media representations, global, capitalism, the circulation of people

11:13 - and resources are connected, and that women are integral to those connections. In a nutshell, Guyana is an outlier in in several regards. Although it's culturally Caribbean, it is not an island. It lacks the tourism industry that typically draws visitors to the Caribbean region. It's the only country in South America whose official language is English. this is because it was a British colony before it gained independence in 1966.

11:42 - Guyana borders Venezuela, which of course we know is Spanish speaking it also. So Venezuela is to its west. It borders, Lucifer or Portuguese speaking, Brazil to it south. It also borders surname to its east, which is a polygon clock country of, of many languages. And it has closed proximity to French speaking French gaan. So it's a geographic and linguistic singularity that positions it both outside

12:11 - of the Caribbean while simul, but inside it, culturally, it's culturally considered Caribbean, but it's simultaneously placed inside. But outside of Latin America, because it's the only English speaking country in South America, and its landmass is large in comparison to other Caribbean nations, but it's amongst the smallest countries in in South America. Guyana is unique in all of these ways.

12:34 - it's also demographically unique because it has a greater number of South Asians, than any than other nations in the Caribbean. South asians com comprise its largest ethnic group, but it also has, descendants of enslaved Africans, and indigenous people. Its social landscape actually has historically shaped by indigenous, dispossession by the enslavement of Africans and the indenture of Indians and observers. Note that race and ethnicity have been vexed in Guyana since

13:10 - the dawn of the colonial period. And so it's often been pigeonholed as this place of, extreme ethnic conflict. That's one of the narratives that I disrupt in the book, in the contemporary period is its global profile. Before the oil discovery was often linked to the mass murder of, of Americans in Jim Jones's cult, which is often misnamed as the world's largest mass suicide. And it's the origin of the expression drinking the Kool-Aid. So although Jones and his followers were Americans,

13:43 - Guyana's corrupt government and its remote jungles, arguably facilitated Jim Jones' ability to isolate and control his, his devotees and state corruption has, been ethnically divided. state corruption has been rampant and ethnic ethnically divided politics have characterized guyana's political structure since its independence from, great Britain in 1966. So at that time, Guyana's leaders changed the name

14:13 - of the country from British Guyana, spelt with an I to Guyana, spelt with a y and routine large scale election fraud perpetrated by a ruthless dictator, the country's first independent leader. Lyndon Forbes burden pegged the country as this sort of violent state that stifles democracy and fosters deep seated, ethnic conflicts. But I wanna note that Guyana's struggle for independence, was marked both by a sort

14:45 - of multi-ethnic political co coalition that often gets swept aside. So Burnham and Afro Guyanese and Guyana's Indoc Guyanese leader Chetty Jagan had an, a multi-ethnic coalition, but the US and British meddled in guyana's politics and stoked the ethnic conflicts that set into place, that that were set into place really during British colonial rule. And it's these outside forces

15:10 - that ensured Burnham's ascendants in 1964. in terms of extractive industries, Kana has always been rich in natural resources, and, and there's a long history of its resources being pillaged by colonial powers. So by Dutch and by British, powers, the Dutch and British empires were largely built on the extraction of resources from Guyana, including sugar, gold, diamonds, box site, and of course, more now in the present, period, the US is, benefiting from its oil extraction.

15:45 - the other part of the story of extraction in Guyana has to do with sand, which I mentioned earlier. We think of the Caribbean as a place of sandy beaches and blue waters. And this is really what attracts tourists to the region. Guyana has not had that typical, tourist industry because in part it lacks, white sandy beaches and it doesn't have the blue waters that characterize the Caribbean. But in fact, Guyana has a massive,

16:15 - resource of sand deposits that are not visible to the naked eye. They're under greenery, they're under foliage. the sand is under greenery and foliage. It's been untapped, untouched. So the sand in other parts of the Caribbean has eroded because of climate change and environmental, damage sand in other parts of the Caribbean has been extracted to build those beautiful, you know, resorts that people go

16:42 - to the Caribbean to enjoy. And in order to replace sand erosion in other parts of the Caribbean, other Caribbean nations have been importing sand for guy from Guyana for decades. So starting in about the 1990s, places like Jamaica, places like St. Vincent and the Grenadines started importing sand from Guyana to replenish their beaches. This is an untold story. We often, we don't know when we're lying on a beautiful

17:10 - white sand beach in Guyana in Jamaica, that the sand we are lying on may in fact come from Guyana, but it does. And so part of the story the book tells is about how sand extraction, has really from Guyana, has transformed the topography and the landscape of the Caribbean in these unseen ways. Guyana's outlier status that I talked about before, the fact that it's sort of unique geographically, linguistically, demographically in the region

17:43 - has been filtered through popular culture, academic and geopolitical rhetoric to either leave the country out of the picture in global imaginings of the Caribbean and Latin America, or to obscure its complex connections to the region and the world. And so many publish maps of the Caribbean. If you find a, a map in a textbook, or even if you Google map of the Caribbean, oftentimes these map simply end at the northern tip of South America and leave Guyana off the map.

18:14 - In the book, I sweep into light, what has been erased or o obfuscated, like Guyana itself, these hidden dust particles of intimate relationships in small regional migratory ripples alongside larger discourses around resources moving in and through Guyana. And this approach makes visible, connections and correlations between circum, Caribbean and transnational understandings of people, women in particular, and resource extraction.

18:46 - And I do this by sweeping into view what I call a political, a political economy of erasure. And I define this as a system for organizing and assessing interactions and exchanges that are races or obscures the inner linkages between local gyne, social constructions, and global racial capitalism. This political economy of erasure ef faces Guyana in global discourse, discursive spaces, and it is intimately connected to the forms of ecological erosion

19:16 - and, gendered violence that are entrenched in extractive industries. So, for example, resource extraction in Guyana, mining of, sand and the deep sea drilling for oil is devastating the environment. It's disrupting fragile economies, and it's jeopardizing the welfare of the country's, most vulnerable populations. It's women and it's indigenous people.

19:43 - Experts, have predicted that ExxonMobil or or rather experts have, have noted and argued that ExxonMobil, has really not followed proper safety measures in its, drilling for oil and Guyana. It's failed to sufficiently prepare for the possibility of an oil spill. And in fact, they've described ExxonMobil's safety measures as superficial. And ExxonMobil itself has estimated

20:14 - that an an oil spill off of Guyana's coast could spill oil throughout the Caribbean sea, across Trinidad and Vene Venezuela, and as far away as Jamaica. And so if oil extraction continues, a pace in Guyana, we really should be thinking about, this threat of a major oil spill and what it would mean for the region and really the world. We would feel the ripple effects of such a massive oil spill throughout the hemisphere.

20:45 - And we find additional dangers when we look at the development projects that are coming out of the oil wealth in Guyana. So, as I mentioned before, oil wealth is really reshaping the country. There's a massive push for development going on in Guyana. There's building of roads and, buildings and infrastructure. This means that the sand deposits are being depleted, at a very alarming rate in this quest

21:11 - to modernize the country's infrastructure. So we're at this in inflection point, really, where Diana's racing to modernize, but the road ahead is really rife with danger and uncertainty in terms of environmental catastrophe. And these signs of growth that we see everywhere are actually exacerbating the social divide between the wealthy people in the capital and rural communities, which are oftentimes adjacent to sand mines, massive craters, where

21:41 - trucks are hauling loads and loads of sand, creating dangerous conditions along roads, displacing animals, people trees. so there's a great deal also of indigenous dispossession that's going on. The sand deposits are close, to rural, communities near the, not far from the coast, but the oil drilling we know is going off off the coast. But there, the oil drilling is really, causing

22:13 - life changes for the indigenous population. The, the extraction of oil and gold in Guyana's interior, is going on at the borderlands between Guyana and Venezuela. And so there are regional wars brewing between Guyana and Venezuela that we are hearing about. Increasingly in the news, the capitalist extraction of gold and oil, for example, is creating these is contaminating forests lands and, and, and contaminating the waterways that sustain life

22:43 - for indigenous people. And they're also, that extraction is also bringing in the trafficking of Guyanese women and girls who supply minors with and smugglers with sex. So the US State Department has noted that sex trafficking is one of the ramifications of resource extraction in Guyana and the book, I tell the story of this long history of how, African enslaved women

23:11 - and Indian indentured women were brought to guy to sustain global capitalism in the colonial period. And today it's the poorest Guyanese, women and Venezuelan women who are trafficked as part of the infrastructure of violent resource extraction. I hope that readers will think critically about the oil that fuels our modern world and think critically about the sand resources that we, that are unseen, but are also so critical to modern life and begin to understand the ways in which Guyana is central

23:48 - to, modern living and the ways in which Guyanese women's, social histories have been erased. When we look at just the economics of resource extraction, there's a social story here as well. the ways in which women, become, victims of sex trafficking, for example, that's CodeCommit with, oil extraction in Guyana means that if we pay attention to the environment, if we think about the environment, we also think about the lives of women and indigenous people

24:23 - and children, the sort of, most vulnerable citizens of Guyana. I think that the book is, important because readers need to understand that the Caribbean is not just a place of, sandy beaches and blue waters. And that, our Caribbean vacation has implications that go beyond, the sort of white sandy beaches on which we might be reclining. If we pause and we think about where that sand comes from,

24:55 - or if we pause and we think about, what inspired the, the song by Rihanna that we might be listening to on that beach, we begin to sort of uncover the story of Guyana's Central place in the Caribbean and in the world. And the, the threat of environmental catastrophe that Guyana now faces is not just important for Guyanese people, it's important for all of us. the anthropologist Jenny Livingston has used the term self devouring growth to describe the push for modernization and the, the sort of insatiable quests to use more

25:33 - and more resource resources. The more resources we use, the more we devour the environment, and the more we also, put at risk vulnerable populations, like women and children in Guyana. So the, the book really tells is issues of warning call, that's applicable to all of us. That's important to all of us. If we hope to understand the, the global threat

25:58 - of environmental catastrophe and the, and the forms of erasure that structure, Caribbean women's lives, we need to pay attention to Guyana.

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