Cultural integration, the new paradigm in cross-border relations
Stories by Ruel Johnson
Guyana Chronicle
March 21, 2004
THERE are two borders separating Guyana and Brazil, our gigantic neighbour to the south-west. The official one, the Takutu River, is a couple of meters wide, and can be easily crossed, by speedboat or on foot, during the dry season. Travelling by speedboat takes less than five minutes to skim across the droll excuse of a river that is the stretch of the Takutu that separates Lethem from Brazil proper.
The other border is far more nebulous. It begins somewhere along the road to Lethem, a few miles, or a lot, past the pit-stop at 58 Miles (from Linden).Somewhere along the long road to the Rupununi, the Guyana that most of us know fades subtly away and we begin, gradually, by degrees, to enter the República Federativa do Brasil.
For example, at the Rock View Lodge, a hotel in the midst of the virtual Serengeti that surrounds the North Rupununi village of Annai, many of the items, from cutlasses to soft-drinks, sold at the little shop there are products of Brazil.
This obfuscation of borders works both ways.
About five kilometers from the official border is the town of Bomfin, which, like Lethem, is a collection of squat, one-storey houses sprinkled within a dustbowl, and on whose streets there is the likelihood that almost every other person you meet is Guyanese.
As Brazil’s Ambassador to Guyana, Mr Ney do Prado Dieguez said a year ago, the indigenous peoples of Guyana and Brazil make no distinction about “where Brazil ends and where Guyana begins.”
Beyond this, however, the differences between the two countries are far more obvious; far more clear-cut. Brazil, at 8.5 million square kilometers, is the world’s fifth largest nation; a hulking landmass that covers so much of South America that it borders most of the other countries on the continent, with the exception of Ecuador and Chile.
Founded on the cry of 'Independência ou morte!' uttered by the prince regent of Portugal, Dom Pedro I de Alcántara Francisco António João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquin José Gonzaga Pascual Cipriano Serafim, Brazil has enjoyed almost two centuries of independence.
The Cooperative Republic Guyana, on the other hand, at 215, 000 km2, a mere 2.5 per cent of Brazil’s size, is not yet half a century old, and is, arguably, yet to fully emerge from the debilitating legacy of colonialism, a challenge that occupied most of Brazil’s independent history.
Brazil’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of US $650 billion dwarfs Guyana’s US $2.7 billion, and with the Portuguese-speaking nation’s recent surge ahead of the United States (US) in beef production, this gap is expected to grow. Guyana, like many other Caribbean countries, currently faces a grim future with respect to its own major agricultural exports, sugar and rice.
Then, there is the question of influence.
In recent times, most notably the World Trade Organisation (WTO) debacle of last September at Cancun, Brazil has emerged as a maverick Third World state, ready to champion the cause of developing countries against the powerful trade lobbies of the European Union (EU) and the US. Guyana, which is heavily dependent on donor funds for developmental projects, can only imagine that level of defiance.
Culturally, the countries are vastly different as well, as can be epitomised by the respective national past-times of cricket and football, though it can be argued that most Guyanese football fans would more readily support Brazil’s World Cup team than they would Jamaica’s ‘Reggae Boys’.
Finally, there is the question of language.
While Brazil’s 170 million people makes it the largest Portuguese-speaking country on the planet, Guyana’s 700, 000 (inclusive of the tiny percentage of Portuguese heritage) are predominantly anglophone.
These differences notwithstanding, Brazil has been the more cordial of Guyana’s three immediate continental neighbours, the other two being Suriname and Venezuela. Outside of the traditional western diplomatic triumvirate (USA, Canada and the UK), Brazil’s envoy Mr Ney do Prado Dieguez has been the most visible foreign diplomat in Guyana, mixing his obligatory attendance at official events with a personal patronage of Guyana’s cultural life, the highest tribute being the restoration of his official Queenstown residence, a stunning example of colonial architecture, to its former glory. UNESCO subsequently named the building a World Heritage Site.
Last December, Brazil and Guyana celebrated 35 years of diplomatic ties; a relationship that is almost as old as this country’s attainment of nationhood. Bilateral projects between the two countries have covered a variety of areas, from health, to infrastructure, to agriculture, and cooperation, with the two recent spotlight projects being the hinterland road and the bridge over the Takutu River.
With the construction and continual refinement of the new road leading from Lethem, on the Guyana-Brazil border, to Georgetown, there has been a marked increase in the presence of Brazilians in the Guyanese capital, whereas, formerly, most Brazilians in Guyana were garimpeiros restricted to the hinterland mining communities.
In recent times, Brazilian-owned businesses have flowered (or mushroomed, depending on one’s perspective) to include restaurants, mining agencies, shops, a guest house and two night spots. There are also two churches.
The following series of articles will seek to explore the as yet minuscule, but increasingly dynamic [free?] movement of persons that is presently taking place between the two countries.