Linden as a metaphor

The protests by Lindeners against the gradual equalisation of their electricity rates with the rest of Guyana and the killing of three of those protestors have once again made that interior community the cynosure of all eyes. In more than one sense, Linden is a metaphor for all Guyana and maybe a recap of its history will offer us all lessons towards a resolution of our troubled politics.
The discovery of bauxite in our “Hilly Sand and Clay Belt” eventually led to some interesting “robber baron” manoeuvres by one Mackenzie, an agent of Aluminium Company of Canada (Alcoa), who bought up huge swathes of land cheaply. Production grew and fell after WWI but received a fillip during WWII with the demand for aluminium for aircraft. By 1957 production totalled 2,200,000 tons.
Most of the bauxite was shipped as raw ore to the parent companies’ plants in Canada and the United States. The workers in the bauxite industry were mostly African Guyanese, but by 1964 there were some 3000 Indo-Guyanese, mainly in business, in Wismar.
Wages were low in the beginning but rose by the fifties to levels that were several times those in the rest of the country – especially in the other great expatriate enterprise – sugar. The bauxite company established facilities which provided for workers’ accommodation, education, health, and recreation – and from its generation for bauxite production, free electricity. Bauxite workers were the envy of the rest of Guyana.
But Wismar was not spared from the virtual civil war unleashed on the coast as the PNC went along with the CIA’s plot to remove the PPP from office after 1961. On May 25, 1964, reacting to the killings of an aged African couple aback of Buxton, Guyana’s first mass ‘ethnic cleansing’ was conducted in Wismar.
Ninety per cent (3000 persons) of the Indian population were evacuated to the coast. An inquiry concluded: “The thorough destruction of East Indian property, and the fact that the security forces were in no case able to apprehend arsonists, force us to conclude that the destruction. . . was organised, and well organised.”
On the economic front, contrary to what some are asserting today, and not withstanding their effort to play the race card, the contribution of bauxite to the rest of the country was minimal. The royalties and export duties paid to the government were extremely low, being 25 and 45 cents per long ton respectively. This was the major reason that Burnham used for nationalising the industry in 1971. In 1972, Burnham complained that Guyana over the last fifty years had received less than three per cent of the profits from bauxite.
But the PNC administration ran the bauxite industry into the ground after nationalisation through its policy of political favoritism in appointments. From being the fourth largest producer of metallurgical bauxite and the largest (90 per cent of calcined bauxite, we fell off the radar through poor delivery. The same had been done to the sugar industry.
But when President Hoyte initiated the turn-around in the sugar industry in 1990 by bringing back foreign management (Booker-Tate), he could not do the same for bauxite with MINPROC. By 1992, bauxite operations were declared technically bankrupt but were not closed as demanded by the IMF’s SAP. It continued operating with a government subsidy and was finally privatised in 2004 after great downsizing. Linden has never been able to attract significant foreign or domestic investment after its socio- political and economic catastrophes, despite assistance in various forms, including the LEAP and LEAF programmes.
Over the past five years, for the first time, Linden has shown the potential to achieve an economic turn-around. The bauxite company Bosai has announced an ambitious investment plan. The forestry company Bai Shan Lin has also announced large-scale investments in the area. In addition, the increased traffic through Linden presents unprecedented opportunity for the mining town.
Furthermore, the demand for logistical and other support services when major projects like Amaila come on stream also augurs well for the town. Taken together, the future of linden looks brighter than before, that is, until this opportunistic politically motivated action. What is important is that the people of Linden recognise that they stand to lose the most by this action, and that they take a stand and not allow themselves to be used by those who have no real interest in Linden.