Lengthy periods rarely go by these days without one of more readable articles on Guyana appearing in one or another section of the international media. These, frequently, depart radically from the ‘Banana Republic’ themed pieces, virtually the only types of reportage on the country that used to appear in sections of the global media. If the issues that spawned the controversial pieces are far from non-existent these days, those, for the most part, have become subsumed beneath the rags to (potential) riches pieces that appear in the international media on a country that foreign journalists had previously taken to describing as a ‘banana republic’.
The banana republic scenario commonly embraced themes that included rigged elections, ethnic tensions and dire poverty, among others. If those themes are yet to disappear entirely from international reportage on Guyana, oil and its prospects for social, economic and (perhaps even) political transformation are now numbered among favoured journalistic ‘offerings’ on Guyana by sections of the international media.