Court orders and bulldozers have left Guyanese homeless. One man can own hundreds of acres of land while others squat. We have witnessed women in handcuffs covered in mud as years of hard work and sweat was destroyed in a matter of hours. Those were the tears of Mocha and now Hill Foot cries. Hill Foot where two hundred families were displaced and there were cries of confused and frightened children. Bulldozers destroyed the places where they dreamed of a better life and left them traumatized. Hill Foot where parents with babies had nowhere to sleep when the sudden destruction of their homes occurred. Hill Foot where the people claimed they were assaulted by the police, and who do we believe when some of them were arrested for documenting what was happening? Is this what oil production and a fast-growing economy does to poor people? Must we expect that the displacement of the poor will continue in the most inhumane ways and those under a spell will continue to sing praises to their oppressors? How can we watch the tears of children who must now wait to have a place to call their home and believe that it is just, and we are a wholesome society? Aren’t the children the future? They will remember how rubble lay where their pillows once were like in a war zone. But perhaps it is a war zone as the battles for the minds of the people have increased. When the children remember, how bulldozers left their books in sand and dust, how will it change the course of their lives? How do children whose lives are interrupted under such harsh circumstances heal their scars? How are those who are rejected by society expected to build that society?
