Racial Politics and Violence in Guyana, among Africans and Indians w/ Charrandass Persaud and Selwyn Pieters

A Story Club: Global Politics S1 E6
streamed live on FB from the US (San Francisco), India (Dehra Dun) and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, Thursdays 12pm EDT | 9am PDT | 9:30pm IST

Guyana, a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) but located in South America, is currently experience a spate of political-racial violence in the aftermath of an 18-month long strongly resisted transfer of power from one government to the next.

Guyana has a long history of racial violence, Cold War superpower interference, economic underdevelopment and astonishing under-population, despite it being a land of abundant resources including newly discovered oil and gas reserves on par with the richest countries of the Middle East.

While the world concentrates on the Black Lives Matter movement originating from the United States and concentrating on the relations between whites and blacks, the relationship between Africans and Indians in Guyana (and other former British colonies, in particular) is much more complex, and in some cases reversed.

How can we understand properly what is going on in Guyana at the present moment? What is its source? Is there a solution to the racial-political problem? Can development occur in such a context?

 
Join me, Dr. Kirk Meighoo, to discuss these issues with Charrandass Persaud, the former MP whose vote brought down the last Guyanese government, and Selwyn Pieters, a prominent Canadian-Guyanese human rights lawyer