In the lead-up to the general elections, former Stabroek News journalist Iana Seales is writing a series of articles on Guyana, focusing on life, democracy, and the responsibility to vote. We republish the first article with her permission:
What defines life in Guyana?
Life is about how we are living, our choices and our future, and based on these measures, life in Guyana is rough, limited and uncertain.
To examine how we are living, I’ll start with the majority of citizens. Karl Marx wrote of the proletariats in a society: individuals at the lowest rung of the economic ladder who possess neither capital nor the means of production.
But the proletariats in our country are declining; replaced by the group Marx called the ‘lumpenproletariats,’ or in simpler terms ‘the underclass.’ Guyana’s underclass is, by my definition, the growing category of citizens who are getting by ‘somehow.’
Economic disadvantage and social exclusion is as real as the sight of those living in scraps of wood and under plastic tents; those offered house lots but who could never realistically build a house; those working for a minimum wage that is as pathetic as the old age pension and those who pay taxes, pursue an education and work in organisations where they could never progress because of who they don’t know and or who they choose not to associate with.
Any real investigation of poverty would not only take years, it would reveal staggering numbers of Guyanese living in severe deprivation. Poverty undermines the quality of life for everyone in an economy with serious social implications. Our reality in Guyana cries out for changes in the social structure. Is there no place for an egalitarian ideology in our country?
In my years of journalism, I have seen poverty not in the expected slums but in ordinary homes where at least one parent is out there earning a living. There is real hardship which is easy to spot, just take a walk in the city and observe people as they go by. I’ve done it before and I was able to spot the folks who are living in the ‘real Guyana,’ not the one glossed over in stories on the campaign trail.
Some people are too ashamed to ever admit life is so hard that realistically, one job is not enough anymore. The American dream for so many equates to working two or three jobs to live decently. The Guyana dream is a visa to get to America. How it is in 2011 after democracy was restored and reports of progress are being trumpeted that Guyanese still believe in and desire the American dream or should I say, the American harsher reality?
Secondly, what are our choices in Guyana? The avenues for professional growth are mostly lined with doors opened to political partisanship, ethnic opportunism and favourable connections. If this doesn’t explain the reason our young, educated base is diminishing, go ahead and label me silly.
When we talk of a future, we dream, but it is rarely in realistic terms because of the burdens of our present and the truth about our existence. I’m Guyanese, I’m young and I often dare to dream of a future right here at home but when I consider that in another few years that I’ll also be a wife and a mother with children and I think of their future, I’m afraid to dream local.
Why should I be afraid to dream of my children’s future in the country of my birth? I shouldn’t be, but I am. I often hear people talk positively about Guyana and I allow them, I too have good things to say on occasions, but what I have serious issues with are the people who refuse to tell the truth about life in Guyana.
I’m not ashamed and or afraid to say our country is in crisis and has been for a long time. Today, we are in the throes of an important, relevant struggle at this moment in our history to demand a more decent and equitable living, irrespective of who takes power after November 28, 2011.
Our problems have always been our politics and policies, which is why we need to consistently struggle beyond the one vote we are allowed at elections for a better Guyana, a more just Guyana. This (the Guyana) we know today, it is not just; and the years of unjust has pushed too many of us out.
If we look around and without any biases, we would see what the real Guyana is: a society of ‘have,’ ‘never had’ and ‘not likely to ever have’ if no real changes are made to the policies which govern our lives.
What we must then endeavour to do is to wage a struggle, whether moral or physical, and I am by no means suggesting violence. The words of American Fredrick Douglass, who believed in the motto ‘No struggle, no Progress,’ are instructive:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
