The Rupu­nuni Sa­van­nah in Guyana is 5,000 square miles of im­mense rolling plains in­ter­spersed with vast wet­lands and dense forests. T&T, at just 1,900 square miles, can fit in­to the sa­van­nah more than two times. With its nu­mer­ous ranch­es and hors­es, the sa­van­nah is the per­fect set­ting to shoot a West­ern cow­boy movie.

The Rupu­nuni is just one ex­am­ple of how Guyana has been blessed with ex­pan­sive lands and oth­er rich, nat­ur­al re­sources. It is lo­cat­ed in the south-west­ern part of Guyana, bor­der­ing the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, and is the home of the Makushi, Wai-Wai and Wapis­hana Amerindi­an tribes who have in­hab­it­ed the re­gion for thou­sands of years. These na­tive peo­ples le­git­i­mate­ly be­lieve that all the lands in the Rupu­nuni should be re­turned to them, who in turn, would re­dis­trib­ute some to the State and oth­ers.

My friend, Jai Sears, and I took the one-hour flight from Ogle air­port to Lethem (300 miles away) to spend a week for va­ca­tion and re­search last Christ­mas. Lethem is the largest town and main com­mer­cial cen­tre in the Rupu­nuni Sa­van­nah which has a pop­u­la­tion of about 3,000 peo­ple. It is the cap­i­tal of Re­gion 9 and the hub link­ing many of the sur­round­ing Amerindi­an vil­lages. Lethem is al­so a raff­ish, hot, dusty bor­der town that is the gate­way to Brazil across the Taku­tu Riv­er to Bon­fim and Boa Vista which we al­so vis­it­ed.

Im­mi­grant Chi­nese mer­chants

The sleepy Lethem town awak­ens once a year for the Rupu­nuni Rodeo held on the East­er week­end. The com­pe­ti­tion among var­i­ous ranch­es in the re­gion at­tracts vis­i­tors from Guyana, Brazil, Venezuela and the rest of the world. It is one of the largest events in Guyana.

Lethem was once known as a place for the prof­itable busi­ness of milk­ing ven­om from the dead­ly Bush Mas­ter and labaria/labar­ria snakes to make med­i­cine. The sa­van­nah was al­so once abun­dant with cul­ti­vat­ed rice as well as cat­tle and fish. The few moun­tains, slopes and val­leys were abun­dant with cas­sa­va, corn, bo­ra (bo­di), ba­nana, wa­ter­mel­ons, let­tuce, ochro, co­conut and boulanger (baigan/egg­plant). There is not much farm­ing now.

Jai and I stayed at the three-star Rupu­nuni Eco Ho­tel in Lethem. The town should now be named Chi­nath­em be­cause Asian mi­grants have tak­en over al­most all the com­merce from the East In­di­ans, build­ing mas­sive stores like ware­hous­es in which they live down­stairs at the back end. If the Chi­nese are to em­ploy any­one at all as store clerks, it is young Amerindi­an girls who the chiefs be­lieve are be­ing ex­ploit­ed. Their main clients are neigh­bour­ing Brazil­ians who cross the near­by Taku­tu riv­er bor­der who come to shop for the day, par­tic­u­lar­ly on Sat­ur­days.

Since the re­tail trade is not so prof­itable again, Chi­nese en­tre­pre­neurs are in­vest­ing in the gold and lum­ber in­dus­tries. They said that the for­mer Bhar­rat Jagdeo-led Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty Civic (PPP/C) gov­ern­ment was more re­spon­sive to new busi­ness ideas such as the in­tro­duc­tion of casi­nos. The Chi­nese mer­chants said that since the Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty + Al­liance For Change (AP­NU+AFC) coali­tion gov­ern­ment came to pow­er, busi­ness has slowed down to a crawl. They are most like­ly to vote for the PPP/C par­ty in the March 2, 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Most Amerindi­ans are Catholics

From the ho­tel, we trav­elled every day by hired 4x4 ve­hi­cles to vis­it Amerindi­an tribes in Ku­mu, Nap­pi, Hi­awa, Mo­co Mo­co and St Ig­natius Mis­sion. We drove through me­an­der­ing and un­du­lat­ing rough, red, la­t­erite roads in the sa­van­nahs, some­times trav­el­ling about 80 miles to reach a vil­lage. We in­ter­viewed mem­bers of the Mukashi tribe who live in brick, wood­en and gal­vanised or thatched-cov­ered hous­es. Every house­hold has an out­door la­trine. Chil­dren were seen play­ing foot­ball and vol­ley­ball.

The Abo­rig­ines have been con­vert­ed to be­come Ro­man Catholics, Ad­ven­tists and Evan­ge­lists but still, main­tain their na­tive rit­u­als and be­liefs in syn­cret­ic and covert forms. The vil­lagers are qui­et and friend­ly, and there is no fear by strangers of rob­bery or vi­o­lence.

We spoke to youths, women, coun­cil­lors, of­fi­cials, med­i­cine men, ruler con­sta­bles and

toshaos [chiefs] about the con­di­tion of their lives, and for who and how they would vote in the March 2, 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion. The Abo­rig­i­nal pop­u­la­tion of all of Guyana is es­ti­mat­ed to be about 79,000 peo­ple (10.5 per cent) of the to­tal pop­u­la­tion of 747,000, ac­cord­ing to the 2012 cen­sus. Set­tle­ments such as Ku­mu has 400 in­hab­i­tants liv­ing in 64 house­holds with res­i­den­tial clus­ters like Cen­tral 1, Cen­tral 2, Ku­ru Ku­ru, Palm Grove, Crapo Pond, Tiger Plate, Cu­ba, Berbice, Ka­mana and Cara­cas.

Dr Ku­mar Ma­habir is an an­thro­pol­o­gist from Trinidad & Jai Sears is a com­pa­ny di­rec­tor from Grena­da.