MGV News   Kenya: Drone Fighters Protect Shipping From Somali Pirates Vetican City: Bishops Say to Corrupt African Leaders, "Repent or Quit" Australia: Rights Body Claims Immigrant Children Being Detained Illegally Dominican Republic: Canadian Missionary Accused of Sex-Abuse in Haiti China: Prison Boss Dismissed Over Deadly Escape   Specials Graduate/Professional School Opportunities

Guyana

Before the coming of Europeans the northern South American region where Guyana is located was inhabited by the Arawak and the Carib. Archeological evidence show that native inhabitants had lived there for at least 12,000 years. The Arawak were the first native Americans to be encountered by Christopher Columbus when he arrived in the name of Spain in 1492. During the 1600s the Dutch French and English made claims on the region. The Dutch eventually prevailed and established colonies in the region. They penetrated into the interior where they made contact and traded with Arawak and Carib natives. By the end of the first quarter of the 18th century the Dutch had established vast sugar plantations in Guyana.

During the French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Dutch Republic and named it the Kingdom of Holland in 1806 and in 1810, he made the kingdom part of the French Empire. Anticipating Napoleon's intentions in the colonies, the Dutch handed over their holdings in Guyana to the British in 1795. The British consolidated the three Dutch colonies in Guyana into a single colony and named it British Guiana.

Most of the native population were killed off by unfamiliar European-introduced diseases. The Europeans imported Africans as slaves to work the plantations. After British abolition of slavery in 1833, indentured laborers from India began to be shipped in for the plantation work.

In 1928 Guyana was given a constitution by the British colonists. In 1953 the country was allowed limited self-government and in elections that year, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) -- a multiracial nationalist party founded in 1950 by Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, an Afro-Guyanese and Cheddi Jagan, a politician of Indian descent -- emerged victorious and formed a government with Jagan as government leader. A few months later, the British colonists found Jagan to be too radical and sacked his government, replacing it with colonial appointees.

Burnham broke with Jagan in 1955 and founded the People's National Congress (PNC). Internal self-government was restored in 1961 and in the elections that followed, the PPP won a majority in the legislature. Jagan as party leader became prime minister. His austere economic measures sparked riots in 1962 and 1963, and brought the country to the brink of economic chaos.

After some constitutional changes Jagan's PPP, which had the support of the more numerous Indo-Guyanese, won a plurality of the votes cast but failed to gain a majority in the legislature in the election of 1964. Burnham and his more moderate PNC, supported mostly by Afro-Guyanese, were then invited to form a coalition government.

On May 26, 1966 Guyana became an independent country. Burnham was re-elected prime minister in 1968 and Guyana became a republic on February 23, 1970. In 1980 Burnham became the president of Guyana under a new constitution. He would hold the office of president until his death in 1985. He was succeeded by the new leader of the PNC Desmond Hoyte.

In 1985 Hoyte won the presidency in his own right in an election that also gave the PNC a majority in the National Assembly. But in 1992 Hoyte and his party lost the presidency and Assembly-majority to Jagan and the PPP. Jagan died in office in March 1997 and was succeeded by his widow, Janet Jagan.

Jonestown Guyana was the site of a 1978 mass suicide and murder of more than 900 members (including 240 children) of a religious cult, the People's Temple, founded by James Warren (“Jim”) Jones. The commune of Jonestown was established in 1974 on land granted by the Guyanese government, northwest of Georgetown Guyana. Jim Jones, charismatic American preacher led his followers, most of them Americans, from their base in San Francisco, CA to Guyana. After ordering the shooting and killing of a visiting US congressman, Jim Jones quickly gathered his followers in a hall in the commune and ordered them to drink poison-laced drinks. Those who refused to drink or tried to escape were shot. Most, including Jones, drank the poison and died.