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By Sydney Allicock, Dr. Carolyn Walcott, Dr. Terrence Blackman

The indigenous peoples of Guyana, known locally as Amerindians, comprise nine distinct groups, each with their own unique culture and traditions, three in coastal areas and six in the forest and savannah areas of the interior. The indigenous peoples, Arawaks, Wai Wai, Caribs, Akawaio, Arecuna, Patamona, Wapixana, Macushi, and Warao, are approximately 90 thousand strong and are the fastest-growing population of the six ethnic groups of Guyana. There are over two hundred and fifteen Amerindian villages and communities.

Amerindian life in Guyana is governed by the Amerindian Act established in 2006, and both past and present administrations have acknowledged Amerindians by granting them legal land ownership. As a result, Amerindians are the second largest land and forest owners after the government of Guyana.

The Amerindian way of life is based on subsistence, a cooperative approach, living in harmony with nature, and following the laws of nature. Amerindians believe that there are four elements of true life: fresh air; pure water; sunlight; and common sense; without this, nothing survives. Amerindians do not sell land; the land is their mother, and many Guyanese Amerindians still speak their native tongue.

The Arawak, the largest indigenous group in Guyana, located mainly in the country’s coastal regions, are known for their pottery and basket weaving. The Carib are known for their traditional lifestyle, closely tied to the natural environment. They have a strong connection to the land and the rivers and are known for their fishing and hunting skills. The Wai Wai, located in the remote southern region of Guyana, are known for their self-sufficiency and close relationship with the natural environment. They are also known for their traditional hunting and fishing practices and their knowledge of medicinal plants. The Warao, located mainly in the northern regions of Guyana, and known for their traditional fishing, hunting, and agriculture practices, have a rich cultural heritage that includes traditional music and dance. Finally, the Makushi are located mainly in Guyana’s central and southern regions and are known for their traditional farming practices and knowledge of medicinal plants.

The National Toshaos Council represents all the Indigenous peoples of Guyana, and the Amerindian Purposes Fund, which still lacks complete functionality, is supposed to do business on behalf of Guyana’s Amerindian community.

With the development of oil and gas reserves in the country, these indigenous communities have been and will continue to be affected positively and negatively. In this essay, we explore the challenges and opportunities that indigenous communities in Guyana face in the emerging fossil fuel extraction economy. The panelist on GBJ’s Transforming Guyana Episode VII: Guyana’s Indigenous Peoples and the Oil and Gas Economy serve to inform our reflections.

Guyana’s recent sale of 30 percent of its carbon credits to Hess Corporation to the tune of US$750 million and the allocation of 15 percent of the proceeds from that sum to the indigenous communities across the country is the most recent manifestation of the intersection between the oil and gas economy and Guyana’s Indigenous Peoples. The sale of carbon credits is a mechanism that countries and companies will use to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing credits from other countries or entities that have reduced their emissions below their targets. Guyana has vast rainforests which act as a carbon sink, and the government has been selling carbon credits to companies to monetize the environmental services provided by its forests.

Key Amerindian stakeholders, however, question the capacity of the indigenous communities to absorb and harness the resources effectively to the benefit of the community without an existing menu of prerequisites. While many have acknowledged the coordinating role of the National Toshaos Council in advancing the aspirations of Guyana’s indigenous communities, they simultaneously cite the lack of training interventions, particularly within Guyana’s most populous indigenous regions, as potentially undermining sustainable development and inclusion of indigenous citizens. Key indigenous stakeholders believe that Guyana’s First Peoples may be unable to optimally derive the benefits from the carbon credits and wider oil sector without additional technical capacity and the appropriate training in the service and agricultural industries, where the essential components of local content engagement with the oil and gas industry are located. They have proposed the establishment of an indigenous bank and training in environmental and natural resources conservation as critical educational components that must be facilitated through direct involvement of the state, private sector, Hess, and members of the Diaspora if the actual capacity is to be met.

Florence Alexi La Rose, a local consultant on indigenous development, has proffered a micro-level approach to building local capacity through meaningful engagement. She posits that education, training, and access to critical information on available opportunities in the oil and gas sector are precursors to the inclusive engagement of hinterland communities. Even with the local content act’s institution, La Rose has suggested that members of the indigenous community across Guyana can be excluded from opportunities due to a lack of awareness, and linguistic barriers only further compound the situation for the indigenous population. One of the most significant challenges facing the community today is the need for meaningful consultation with companies and governments about developing projects in their communities. Stakeholder intentionality around substantive consultation is likely to preempt the emergence of issues these communities face in adapting to the already evident broader impacts of the new Oil & Gas economy on the larger Guyanese society, i.e., changes in prices, employment opportunities, and access to services.

Despite the potential challenges the new Oil & Gas economy poses to indigenous communities in Guyana, there are also opportunities for these communities to benefit from the industry. One of the most significant opportunities is the potential for the development of Indigenous-owned businesses connected to the oil and gas value chain. For example, suppose Indigenous people can increasingly own and operate companies that provide various services to the fossil fuel industry, from exploration and production to pipeline construction and operations. In that case, they will be able to provide employment opportunities for indigenous people and help communities generate revenue from the fossil fuel industry. In addition to these Indigenous-owned companies, various government and private sector initiatives can help Indigenous communities deploy existing cultural assets to benefit from the fossil fuel extraction economy. These initiatives could include targeted tax incentives, capital access, and other technical support for Indigenous-owned businesses.

The emerging Oil & Gas economy is a complex system that has existed for centuries in many parts of the world, including Guyana. This system has significantly impacted indigenous communities globally, and we can expect the same in Guyana, both positively and negatively. Guyana’s stakeholders must be intentional in their engagement with the Amerindian community. We have outlined some challenges and potential opportunities that Amerindians in Guyana face and will continue to face and some strategies they can use to navigate Guyana’s emerging oil and gas economy. The Oil & Gas economy will inevitably have an impact on Amerindian communities, and it is essential to ensure that Amerindians, in all their communities, are adequately consulted and supported to ensure that, as a community, they benefit from the industry. We close by reiterating the Amerindian maxim: The four elements of true life are fresh air; pure water; sunlight; and common sense; without which nothing survives.

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Mr. Sydney Allicock, MP (former) Minister of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs of the Republic of Guyana, South America is from the North Rupununi, Upper Takatu-Upper Essequibo, Region No.9. He is a pioneer of community-based tourism in Guyana. He was Public & Civic Contributions 2010 Laureate and a Representative of the Guyana Action Party (GAP) in A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). Mr. Allicock has articulated and promoted a vision of Indigenous Rural Community Development based on Communal Effort, Wise Use of Natural Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Social Systems, and Equitable Partnership with Outside Agencies. He has been a key figure in the development over the past two decades of the village of Surama, the North Rupununi Region more widely, and Guyana’s Indigenous Communities, which account for nearly a tenth of the Country’s Population. A Former Toshao of Annai, Mr. Allicock pioneered celebrations for Amerindian Heritage Day, which was later adopted as a National Event by the Guyana Government. His writing has been published in the distinguished Literary Journal Kyk-Over-Al, and he has performed his poems at Guyana’s National Cultural Centre. Mr. Allicock served in the Tenth Parliament of Guyana, with responsibilities for Local Government and Hinterland Development.

Dr. Carolyn Walcott is a media and communications educator and scholar with a diverse background in journalism education, international communication, and media development. She received her undergraduate degree in Communication and her Graduate Diploma in International Studies at the University of Guyana. She completed her M.A. in Communication and Development at Ohio University and her Ph.D. in Communication at Georgia State University. Her research agenda focuses on media pedagogy and practice, national identity, rhetoric, and political communication.

Dr. Terrence Richard Blackman is a member of the Guyanese diaspora. He is an associate professor of mathematics and a founding member of the Undergraduate Program in Mathematics at Medgar Evers College. In addition, he is a former Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT and a member of The School of Mathematics at The Institute for Advanced Study. He previously served as Chair of the Mathematics Department and Dean of the School of Science, Health, and Technology at Medgar Evers College, where he has worked for more than twenty-five years. He graduated from Queen’s College, Guyana, Brooklyn College, CUNY, and the City University of New York Graduate School.

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The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) notes the efforts made by various groups of Haitian stakeholders to negotiate political accords since 2021 to contribute to resolving the protracted political stalemate. This includes the latest agreement that was made public by the Interim Prime Minister on 21 December 2022.

CARICOM urges all stakeholders to come together in their search for a consensus agreement. The Community remains willing and ready to assist in achieving this goal and in that regard had commenced sounding Haitian stakeholders over the past few weeks about their willingness to attend a meeting in a CARICOM country.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

By Natalia Marques

Scientists in Cuba believe that the breakthroughs they have made in the health care and technology sectors should be used to save and improve lives beyond the country’s borders. This is why the island nation has developed important scientific and medical partnerships with organizations and governments across the globe, including with those in Mexico, Palestine, Angola, Colombia, Iran, and Brazil. However, such collaborations are difficult due to the blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States, which has now been in place for the last six decades.

In a conference, “Building Our Future,” held in Havana in November 2022, which brought together youth from Cuba and the United States, scientists at the Cuban Center of Molecular Immunology (CIM) stated during a presentation that the blockade hurts the people of the United States, too. By lifting the sanctions against Cuba, the scientists argued, the people of the United States could have access to life-saving treatments being developed in Cuba, especially against diseases such as diabetes, which ravage working-class communities each year.

A Cure for Diabetes

Cuban scientists have developed both a lung cancer vaccine and a groundbreaking diabetes treatment. The new diabetes treatment, Heberprot-P, developed by the Cuban Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), can reduce leg amputations of people with diabetic foot ulcers by more than four times. The medication contains a recombinant human epidermal growth factor that, when injected into a foot ulcer, accelerates its healing process, thereby, reducing diabetes-related amputations. And yet, despite the fact that the medication has been registered in Cuba since 2006, and has been registered in several other countries since, people in the United States are unable to get access to Heberprot-P.

Diabetes was the eighth leading cause of death in the United States in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killing more than 100,000 patients in that year. “Foot ulcers are among the most common complications of patients who have diabetes,” which can escalate into lower limb amputations, according to a report in the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Each year, around 73,000 “non-traumatic lower extremity amputations” are performed on people who have diabetes in the U.S. These amputations occur at a disproportionate rate depending on the race of a patient, being far more prevalent among Black and Brown people suffering from diabetes. Many point to racial economic disparities and systemic medical racism as the reason for this.

“If you go into low-income African American neighborhoods, it is a war zone… You see people wheeling themselves around in wheelchairs,” Dr. Dean Schillinger, a medical professor at the University of California-San Francisco, told KHN. According to the KHN article, “Amputations are considered a ‘mega-disparity’ and dwarf nearly every other health disparity by race and ethnicity.”

The life expectancy of a patient with post-diabetic lower limb amputation is significantly reduced, according to various reports. “[P]atients with diabetes-related amputations have a high risk of mortality, with a five-year survival rate of 40-48 percent regardless of the etiology of the amputation.” Heberprot-P could help tens of thousands of patients avoid such amputations, however, due to the blockade, U.S. patients cannot access this treatment. People in the U.S. have a vested interest in dismantling the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

“So after five years [post-amputation], that’s the most you can live, and we are preventing that from happening,” said Rydell Alvarez Arzola, a researcher at CIM, in a presentation given to the U.S. and Cuban youth during the conference in Havana. “And that also is something that could bring both of our peoples [in Cuba and the U.S.] together to fight… to eliminate [the blockade].”

Cuban Health Care Under Blockade

Perhaps one of Cuba’s proudest achievements is a world-renowned health care system that has thrived despite economic devastation and a 60-year-long blockade.

After the fall of Cuba’s primary trading partner, the Soviet Union, in 1991, the island saw a GDP decrease of 35 percent over three years, blackouts, and a nosedive in caloric intake. Yet, despite these overwhelming challenges, Cuba never wavered in its commitment to providing universal health care. Universal health care, or access to free and quality health care for all, is a long-standing demand of people’s movements in the United States that has never been implemented largely due to the for-profit model of the health care industry and enormous corporate interests in the sector.

As other nations were enacting neoliberal austerity measures, which drastically cut social services in the 1980s and 1990s, Cuba’s public health care spending increased by 13 percent from 1990 to 1994. Cuba successfully raised its doctor-to-patient ratio to one doctor for every 202 Cubans in the mid-1990s, a far better statistic than the United States’ ratio of one doctor for every 300 people, according to a 2004 census.

As the blockade begins its seventh decade, Cuba is not only upholding universal health care but also continues to be at the forefront of scientific developments globally.

This was evident during the COVID-19 crisis. Cuba, faced with the inability to purchase vaccines developed by U.S. pharmaceutical companies due to the U.S. blockade, developed five vaccines. The nation not only achieved its goal of creating one of the most effective COVID-19 vaccines but also launched the first mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign for children from two to 18 years old in September 2021.

To Share Knowledge Without Restrictions

Despite its achievements, Cuban health care still faces serious, life-threatening limitations due to the economic blockade. CIM, for example, has struggled to find international companies willing to carry out vital services for them. Claudia Plasencia, a CIM researcher, explained during the conference that CIM had signed a contract with a German gene synthesis company which later backed out because it had signed a new contract with a U.S. company. “They could not keep processing our samples, they could not keep doing business with Cuba,” Plasencia said.

Arzola explained how it is virtually impossible to purchase top-of-the-line equipment due to trade restrictions. “A flow cytometer is a machine that costs a quarter-million dollars… even if my lab has the money, I cannot buy the best machine in the world, which is from the U.S., everyone knows that,” he said. Even if CIM were to buy such a machine from a third party, it cannot utilize the repair services from the United States. “I cannot buy these machines even if I have the money, because I would not be able to fix them. You cannot spend a quarter-million dollars every six months [buying a new machine]… even though you know that this [machine] is the best for your patients.”

I spoke to Marianniz Diaz, a young woman scientist at CIM. When asked what we in the U.S. could do to help CIM’s scientists, her answer was straightforward: “The principal thing you can do is eliminate the blockade.”

“I would like us to have an interaction without restrictions, so we [Cuba and the U.S.] can share our science, our products, [and] our knowledge,” she said.

This article was produced in partnership by Peoples Dispatch and Globetrotter.

Natalia Marques is a writer at Peoples Dispatch, an organizer, and a graphic designer based in New York City.

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President Irfaan Ali said that the region must make practical steps in securing its energy future and be logical in its undertakings given the heavy financial burden of climate change.

The Head of State called on governments across the region to lead from the front in understanding the ramifications and creating the needed structure. He told the Trinidad and Tobago Energy Conference 2023 today, in Port of Spain, that the region must move forward with its survival in mind.

The President asked some tough questions and noted that although renewable energy should be the main pursuit, as a region, we should be practical in our approach in understanding the implications and necessities of energy needs.

REGIONAL ENERGY SECURITY

“We in CARICOM all have lofty renewable energy targets but the reality is that the energy demands in our countries continue to rise, and our energy systems are being challenged to meet our growing population centres and appetite for energy services.”

The President spoke of the large amount of energy that the region requires and the billions of US dollars needed to achieve “the most fundamental of targets”.

“So, we can safely say that in this region fossil fuel and natural gas has a long future ahead of us.”

He reinforced the call that every country in the region with potential in natural gas should be allowed to explore that potential to its fullest for the energy security of the region.

“Here in Trinidad and Tobago that opportunity exists and that opportunity should be allowed to blossom for the benefit of the people of this region and the globe.”

He noted that high energy prices contribute to high inflation in both developing and developed countries. With the idea of imported inflation in mind, political leaders and policymakers must face the reality of inflation that is not a result of bad policies or measures.

ACCESS TO CAPITAL

President Ali said that amidst these crises, there is a “strange movement” driven by a policy agenda of a few countries which is not fixed in “facts and reality”.

“We have seen an unwillingness to lend to companies related to oil and gas. We have seen the cost of capital increasing for companies related to oil and gas….”

When this occurs, he added, the consumers and supporting industries suffer.

“If you increase the cost of capital and make capital less available to investors, wherever they get the capital to invest, they will also increase the costs of the product because they also have to get back their investments, and who suffers at the end of the day?”

As such, Dr Ali emphasised that stakeholders from the government and the industry must speak out in a collective voice.

The President also spoke on the Caribbean region’s energy potential, including the plans in place in the Guyana Shield, which will be the collaborative energy effort between Suriname, French Guiana, Guyana and Northern Brazil.

He called on those gathered to examine the “remarkable” policy measures that governments in this region implemented to cushion the effects of inflation.

“In Guyana today, we have no other room to deal with the increases in fuel prices. We took every cent of tax off. What more? Together with short-term measures, government must take long-term steps either to increase or diversify oil and gas supply or look to accelerate structural change, very simple.”

He added that by using practical and innovative approaches, the region can “secure our future and advance our cause”.

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The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is hosting an HIV/AIDS estimates and projections workshop with government data experts from 13 Caribbean countries in Kingston (Jamaica) from January 23-27.

The workshop’s purpose is to train the staff of Caribbean national authorities responsible for the estimates and projections of the HIV pandemic using the methods and procedures recommended by UNAIDS.

HIV estimates are generated with the support of country teams generally comprised primarily of epidemiologists, demographers, monitoring and evaluation specialists and technical partners.

The software Spectrum is the main program used to produce the estimates such as HIV prevalence, new HIV infections, AIDS-related deaths, and the need for treatment for adults and children.

During these five days, national staff will be trained to obtain country-specific estimates by the end of March 2023. These estimates are the basis for regional and global HIV estimates and national and regional planning and decision-making. They are published in the UNAIDS global reports, generally launched every July.

Data have long served as the bedrock of the Global AIDS Response. Timely, accurate data also inform HIV policies and programmes, strategic planning, and resource allocation to maximize the impact of the response. Data on HIV and its innovations are also integral to the United Nations Decade of Action for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote gender equality, protect human rights and accelerate UN Reform.

Efforts to reduce HIV-related inequalities are guided by two primary documents: the 2021 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS `Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030′ and the Global AIDS Strategy 2021-2026 ‘End Inequalities, End AIDS’. Both documents call on countries to improve the collection and use of data to accelerate progress towards the global targets for 2025.

“UNAIDS is grateful to the Government of Jamaica, especially the Minister of State for Health, Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn, for the continued strong partnership with the UN system and for hosting the regional workshop”, said Luisa Cabal, UNAIDS Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “As the old saying goes, ‘what is not measured is not treasured`, and therefore not taken into account. So, we need data! And beyond that: quality and disaggregated data to address inequalities and reach the most vulnerable to HIV.”

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