Between Despair and Hope: Women and Violence in Contemporary Guyana

Introduction

The immediate aftermath of the 1997 and 2001 elections in Guyana was marked by violence, most of which targeted members of the Indo-Guyanese community. While far more men than women were directly assaulted in the recent waves of political violence, this essay specifically addresses the violence that women experience as members of racially marked communities and asks three questions: How is gender implicated in racialized electoral violence and community responses to such assaults? How can we account for women's different responses to violence? How might we begin to realistically construct a viable opposition against all forms of violence against women?

I begin by outlining some gendered aftereffects of the 1997 and 2001 elections. As a way of making sense of these events, I raise some questions about colonial inheritances and contemporary inequalities in an effort to suggest linkages between pasts and presents, private and public domains. I then explore how women come to symbolize racialized difference, and the investments women themselves may have in such self-other notions, as racialized subjects who are gendered female. The final section draws on the work of Red Thread, a women's organization in Guyana, in an effort to stimulate discussion of antiracist and antiviolence work that centrally acknowledges differences among women. The example is used here not as a final word on the subject but rather as a provisional gesture toward inclusion and conversation.

Gendered Political Violence in Contemporary Guyana: A Synopsis

In 1992 Cheddi Jagan came to power as leader of the People's Progressive Party (PPP/Civic) in an election hailed internationally as being free and fair, ending twenty-four years of authoritarian rule and rigged elections under the People's National Congress (PNC).¹ That election and the following two, in 1997 and 2001, have made it patently clear that the electoral process remains a site of racialization and racial reproduction.

This stalemate can be traced to the collapse of the broad-based, nationalist, Marxist- led movement (the PPP) in the 1950s. After winning elections in 1953, the PPP was removed from office following the suspension of the constitution by the British. In 1955 internal power struggles occasioned a split in the PPP and later the formation of the PNC, led by Afro-Guyanese Forbes Burnham. The split, originally along ideological lines, soon solidified into racialized polarities. Today, the divide between Afro-Guyanese/PNC supporters and Indo-Guyanese/PPP supporters is deeply embedded in Guyana's coastal fabric. In a country where "stubborn racial arithmetic"² determines electoral outcome (Indo-Guyanese currently account for some 52 percent of the population), the widespread marginalization that has resulted from economic crisis, and, since the late 1980s, neoliberal policies, is accompanied by increasingly polarized camps among these two dominant groups. As Rupert Roopnaraine, co-leader of the opposition Working People's Alliance Party wryly commented, "The perversity and paradox of Guyana is that the better the elections, the deeper the racial crisis."³ This deadlock also ensures the marginalization of other racial-ethnic groups (Amerindians are the most disadvantaged in Guyanese society) as well as "others" within Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese constituencies (such as women and children).

At the 15 December 1997 polls the PPP took 55.3 percent of the votes (thirty-six of sixty-five parliamentary seats), with 40.5 percent (twenty-five seats) going to the PNC. Simmering unrest erupted into various forms of violence amid opposition claims of electoral irregularity, a PNC call for civil disobedience, and the filing of an injunction against the inauguration of President Janet Jagan (who was nevertheless hastily installed).⁴ Events came to a head on 12 January 1998, dubbed "a day of terror" by the Stabroek News. The trigger was the dismissal of the PNC injunction as unconstitutional by Chief Justice Desiree Bernard, a decision that immediately prompted widespread looting and acts of brutality against Indo-Guyanese businesses, women, and men on...