My Guyana, El Dorado Our heritage of gold

The discovery and colonization of Guyana, or “Guiana” as it was formerly spelled, had its genesis at the beginning of the 16th century in the European search for treasure, rumoured to be bountiful in the New World.
While Christopher Columbus had explored sections of then unchartered territories believing he had reached parts of Old World Asia, later explorers realised they were in fact in New World territories.
Returning from these journeys, the travellers told stories of strange, advanced civilizations and their immense wealth. Ships returning from these lands were often laden with gold and other precious metals, and extraordinary and exotic artefacts that further fuelled European imagination – and greed.

One such story told of an empire in the Guianas that abounded with gold to rival that of the Incas of Peru and Aztecs of Mexico– not just gold in its natural form but in the artefacts created by these civilizations. These almost unimaginable treasures were thought to be most plentiful in a city called Manoa, or El Dorado, the capital of the Empire of Guiana.
The rumour of Manoa or El Dorado however, once located it in New Granada (present day Columbia) before its location shifted to a lake called Parime in Rupununi, Guiana during Sir Walter Raleigh’s lifetime.
According to legend, the Guiana Empire was founded when a Peruvian royal family member fled Peru to Guiana with many of his countrymen and much of their treasure, after Peru’s capture and the fall of the Inca Empire.
Raleigh’s descriptions of the empire of Guiana told of pure gold and silver furniture and heaps and chests of gold, and where its ruler ensured that “there was nothing in his country whereof he had not the counterfeit in gold”, including life-sized gold statues of local animals, birds, trees and fish.
Such lavish descriptions by Raleigh, who was quoting from a Spanish source, whetted the appetites of European royalty, adventurers and treasure hunters.  With (or without) permission from their monarchs, they arrived in the region seeking its rumoured treasures.
But while many would search for the fabled Manoa, only one man, Juan Martinez, told of actually being there. His account was recorded before he died, and reached the New World around the time Sir Walter Raleigh was beginning his first expedition to Guiana.
A former member of an ill- fated expedition to the area, Martinez found himself exiled from the expedition for accidentally setting alight all the party’s stores of gunpowder. He was set adrift downriver in a canoe with his weapon but no food. Rescued by some “Guiana Indians”, he was taken to the legendary city of which he would later give his extraordinary account.
According to Raleigh, it was Martinez who named the city “El Dorado” for what he said was its abundance of gold displayed on its temples, armour, shields and even its inhabitants’ bodies in the form of a fine gold powder. Later stories have claimed “El Dorado” (the Golden One) was the name of the monarch of Manoa.
As time has proved, no such city has ever been discovered, and Martinez’s tale has long been dismissed by historians. But while the golden city of Manoa has not been found, gold is currently one of Guyana’s main exports, if not its major export.
The search for gold provided a catalyst for European arrival in Guiana, whose later influence plays a major part in our history. Many Guyanese later began arriving in the wild interiors, creating a unique pork knocker heritage. Along with foreigners, who also still enter Guyana’s vast interior in search of gold, many others often come with the hope of finding their own “El Dorado”. (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)