THE TIMEHRI AIRPORT

On a high noon of April 27, 1989, I was waiting at the Timehri airport to meet Ciro De Falco, our powerful new manager. As in every work situation, and particularly in a multicultural bureaucracy, key personnel changes bring uncertainty. Our bank was rife with rumors about the new U.S. Treasury man, supposedly a hard-liner with a mission to put order in a Latin institution gone astray.

With its headquarters located two blocks from the Treasury Department in Washington, DC, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) was established in 1959 to finance economic and social development in Latin America and the Caribbean and thereby help prevent another Cuban Revolution from occurring in the Western Hemisphere.

One of the key characteristics of this institution was that Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) governments, with a combined voting power of 53 percent of the bank's capital, appointed its president, while the United States, the single largest shareholder with 35 percent, filled several key managerial positions.

As the IDB's resident representative in Guyana, I felt both honored and anxious to learn that the new manager's South American tour included the sleepy outpost of Georgetown. The visit and the timing were not chosen by chance. After prolonged negotiations, the government had reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US Treasury was expected to give the "green light" for the debt rescheduling. De Falco's Guyana "back-to-office report" was therefore invaluable.

A recent IDB publication displayed the new manager's photo: inquisitive eyes, aquiline nose, prominent cheekbones and a tall forehead sprinkled with thin graying hair. Since his name was of Italian origin, the joke abuzz at IDB headquarters was that ours was the only bank in the world that could have a manager with such a name: in Spanish "desfalco" meant "rip-off"; in Italian, in turn, it simply meant "of a falcon."

A few days prior to De Falco's arrival, I called an Italian colleague at the IDB headquarters and obtained some additional information. I was told he left Italy as a child and was raised and educated in New York City. Not a Republican appointee; but rather a career public servant who rose through the ranks of the treasury thanks to his ambition and hard work. He speaks fluent Italian and Portuguese and has a working knowledge of Spanish.

De Falco's mandate is not only to help restructure the bank, but also to promote market oriented reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean. As the manager in charge of "plans and programs," he effectively controls the IDB's fat checkbook and sends for approval to the new president and the board of directors only those loan documents that commit countries to "painful" policy and institutional changes.

Timehri is located on the right bank of the Demerara River, some 25 miles south of the capital Georgetown. Formerly called Atkinson Air Force Base during World War II, the British leased it to the United States to serve as an important airfield for planes crossing the Atlantic. The lease terminated in 1966 when Guyana obtained its independence from the United Kingdom.

The loudspeaker announced that Pan American 217 from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, was two hours late and scheduled to land at 3:15 p.m. This would have given me more time to revise the documentation prepared for De Falco. Instead, I started reflecting upon the Timehri images from the last 18 months that I had spent in this isolated and mysterious "Land of Many Waters."

THE BITTER TASTE OF SUGAR

Three flashbacks from the Timehri diplomatic ceremonies were symbols, in my mind, of the country's tangled predicament.

The first one had to do with the reception of the president of Suriname, a short East Indian who spoke Dutch, greeted by a tall Afro-Guyanese who spoke English. The former wore a dark-blue suit with a crimson tie, while the Guyanese President was clad in a long-sleeved, light-green shirt-jack. The British and the Dutch continued casting their long shadow.

It was the Dutch engineering talent that made these low-lying Atlantic shores viable for agriculture. They built extensive drainage and irrigation canals, established its capital, Stabroek, at the mouth of the Demerara River, and modeled it with a Vermeer-type precision and symmetry. When the IDB President informed me that he was sending me to Guyana, he was full of praise for the Dutch-inspired architecture of Georgetown.

One of Guyana's first explorers in the early 17th century, Sir Walter Raleigh, was convinced that he had found the entrance to the mythical El Dorado. He described in great detail his discoveries and concluded that Guyana could provide more gold for Britain than Peru had done for Spain. But after repeatedly failing to deliver on his promises to King James I he returned, resigned to his ignominy and beheading at Westminster in 1618.

The first white settlers, mostly rural poor from Northern Europe, did not fare any better as they died by the thousands from tropical diseases. Still, it was the natives first, and Africans thereafter, who did most of the suffering and dying. As the production of sugar became one of the most profitable businesses of the 17th century, the Dutch and the Portuguese brought in tens of thousands of slaves, first from Brazil and then, massively, from West Africa.

The British took Stabroek away from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars and in 1812 changed its name to Georgetown in honor of their reigning monarch, George III. All along the Guyana coast, they quickly expanded and vastly improved the technically demanding and labor-intensive plantation system so that sugar production became one of the leading precursors of the Industrial Revolution.

When in 1838, the Westminster finally abolished slavery, the British brought into Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean indentured laborers, mostly from West Bengal. This was the first time that real Indians set foot in the Western Hemisphere. The Caribbean became the West Indies, but Columbus' original misnomer for the indigenous populations of the Hemisphere persisted.

Well versed in the strategy of "divide and conquer" the colonial authorities stimulated racial antagonism because it afforded the plantation owners protection from social unrest. The maxim became: "negroes in the military and indians in the fields." The physical separation between the two major races sealed one of the principal characteristics of the country.

The Indo-Guyanese were the descendants and survivors of sugar plantations. Their social advancement was based on agriculture, and their cohesion was remarkable considering internal religious (Hindu and Muslim) and caste divisions. The Afro-Guyanese, on the other hand, owed their emancipation to the urban opportunities provided by the local colonial administration, especially in public service, education and the military.

The Amerindians, i.e. the original Guyana natives, decimated by disease brought in by the Europeans, (flu, smallpox and measles) had no choice but to flee deep into the interior. They survived thanks to their knowledge of the jungle and skill in navigating the mighty rivers; they nevertheless remained in permanent danger of extinction.

White Creoles are a rarity in Guyana, less than one percent of the total population; most left the country in the 1960s. Nowadays, almost half of the population is East Indian, a third West African, some five percent aboriginal Amerindians, some Chinese, and Indonesian, and the rest a cocktail of colors, ranging from black and brown to bronze and pale.

One of the country's characteristics is the profusion of churches, mosques, Hindu temples and other places of worship. Together with Haiti, it has one of the highest concentrations of missionaries per square mile in the western hemisphere. My daughters first learned the English language at the Georgetown American School, an institution managed by the Baha'i missionaries.

It is one of very few countries in the world that observes as its official holidays not only Christmas, Boxing Day, Easter and Carnival; but also the Hindu Dewali and Phagwah, the Muslim Milad-un-Nabi, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, as well as the Amerindian Mashramani. It is interesting to note that for the Muslim holidays, especially the Milad, the prophet Muhammad's birthday and the fatiha prayers are recited over food and in the Urdu language.

For the introverts, Georgetown is at its best during Diwali, when at sunset rows of clay oil lamps are lit on the window seats. The extroverts prefer the Calypso steel-band competitions for Mashramani or when people of all races take part in the celebration of colors at Phagwah. The latter is an ancient Hindu fertility festival celebrating Krishna's dalliance with the cowgirls and, in Guyana, the young, armed with pails of water and paint, make sure that no one is left dry or bereft of pink, green and yellowish-red powder

As a result of its colonial past, Guyana is essentially a small piece of West Africa and East India, inconveniently located at the northern shores of South America. Unlike the neighboring Caribbean Islands, it has neither the white sandy beaches nor transparent warm waters to attract tourism; but just like for many of its neighbors, the process of emancipation from sugar is still a work in progress.

THE ENGLISH CARIBBEAN CINDERELLA

The Second Timehri image: The Soviet Ambassador reclining comfortably in the back seat of his massive blue Mercedes after the door was carefully closed by a young blond driver; the U.S. Ambassador opening the left front door of a white, low-key Chevrolet, while her Guyanese driver never budged from behind the steering wheel. And a shining reflection in the blistering heat: that of an elegant Jaguar receiving the silver-haired U.K. High Commissioner.

The push for political emancipation gained momentum after India obtained independence in 1948. Educated as lawyers at prestigious English universities, most of the Caribbean leaders were gifted orators influenced by socialist ideals; they easily galvanized mass support in favor of West Indian independence. The British government proposed to first strengthen local institutions in order to gradually construct a West Indian Federation.

It took more than ten years to realize that the federation was an impossible dream. The three "Gullivers": Guyana, Trinidad and Jamaica, refused submission to the "Lilliputian's" (small islands) federal authority, as proposed by the Colonial Office. The "West-Indian Federation" collapsed in 1962 as competing political and economic interests, as well as personal rivalries, prevailed over a sense of common Caribbean destiny.

As a result, their fragmented economies, based primarily on commodities, agricultural exports and tourism, became vulnerable to foreign shocks and highly dependent on the outside world. Most of them, i.e. English–speaking Caribbean islands, in due course obtained independence peacefully and without much opposition from the white Creoles.

Guyana proved to be an exception. When universal adult suffrage was approved in 1951, it provided a golden opportunity for the first indigenous party, the People's Progressive Party (PPP), to win a majority in Guyana's parliament and seek independence. Indeed, the PPP won a decisive victory in 1953 and selected Jeddi Hagan, an East Indian Marxist and a U.S. trained dentist, as prime minister.

After only four months in office, Hagan was overthrown; the British Colonial Governor claimed that he had to intervene in order to prevent a communist revolution. A more moderate wing of the PPP, led by the Afro-Guyanese lawyer, Graham Burnley, created a new party called the People's National Congress (PNC). The resulting split in 1955 was essentially along racial lines and Hagan, the undisputed East Indian leader, was reinstated as PPP president.

In 1961, PPP again won a comfortable parliamentary majority, confirming that racial, not ideological, considerations were key and that Hagan could obtain an indefinite tenure in an independent Guyana.

All this coincided with the Cuban Revolution and the Missile Crisis that drastically changed the political environment not only in this region but worldwide. Fearing the expansion of Soviet influence in the Western Hemisphere, the Kennedy administration and the British government agreed to do everything to prevent an independent Guyana under a Hagan government.

Burnley led the opposition into a prolonged general strike that was covertly financed by the increasingly involved US government. As economic conditions continued to deteriorate, and the political situation became explosive, all sides looked to Britain for "good offices" in finding a face-saving way out.

After protracted negotiations in London, all parties agreed that elections would be held under a new system of proportional representation intended to dampen the effect of the East Indian numerical predominance. Hagan won again, but was ousted from office because the opposition formed a coalition with a slight parliamentary majority.

In 1966 the country finally obtained its most cherished goal: independence. The new government's development strategy was based on a free enterprise model. Unfortunately, as it failed to attract foreign capital, the country's emancipation from export-led agriculture failed to materialize. Sugar continued under the virtual monopoly of Bookers that owned the principal eight (out of twelve) estates.

Relegated to the role of an opposition figure for many years, Jeddi Hagan became an active member of the Communist International and his PPP adopted mostly pro-Soviet positions. It was therefore no wonder that the most active and the most "popular" ambassadors in Georgetown hailed from the UK the United States and the USSR.

THE CARIBBEAN KITH AND KIN

The third Timehri image: Waiting in a diplomatic line for the departure of the Barbadian prime minister. As soon as he entered the plane, a sudden tropical storm hit us with such a force that umbrellas were useless. Since the Guyanese president had remained on the tarmac braving the heavy raindrops we could not scramble for cover. The entire diplomatic corps ended up soaking wet and several of us caught a bad cold.

This stoic deference to the "Bajan" was symbolic of the special relationship not only between Guyana and Barbados, but also between Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean. It is deeply embedded love-hate relationship of kith and kin who have experienced similar hardships in the past and who have fared quite differently after independence.

A paradisiacal island of miniscule size, Barbados was called the "Westminster in the Sun", "Little England", "the richest place in the Americas", etcetera. Emulating the mother country, it managed not only to avoid major revolts and revolutions, but also to invest for decades in education and infrastructure and achieve a widely respected income distribution.

Tourism for the Caribbean is the sugar of the 20th century. Its magical attraction resides not only in the warm, sunny days all year long, the lush tropical vegetation and the white sandy beaches; it is especially the allure of its transparent, calm and clear waters, with all the shades of deep purple, light turquoise, pale emerald and lime green.

But for the small and open island economies tourism is often a double-edge sword. On the one hand, it brings jobs, new construction, crafts and agricultural markets: on the other, its fenced enclaves tend to create a "fata Morgana" of wealth beyond reach and temptation to try the illegal quick profits, like human and drug trafficking.

If substantial tourism receipts are not reinvested in the countries' development, it is impossible to emancipate the economy from the enclave tourism syndrome. Barbados is a prime example in the Caribbean that this emancipation is possible. Of course, this is less difficult to accomplish on an island that is only 20 miles long and 15 miles wide.

Even though the dream of a federation has evaporated, several institutions remain that have pursued ideas and actions towards a more integrated common destiny: The Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretariat is located in Georgetown, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) in Barbados and the University of West Indies has three campuses in the English speaking Caribbean: Mona in Jamaica, St Augustine in Trinidad and Cave Hill in Barbados.

ENTER THE MANAGER

As my new manager's plane landed on the long and worn-out airstrip, I was wondering what would be his first impressions of this strange land. Together with neighboring Suriname and French Guyana, it never belonged either to Portugal or Spain, the former colonial powers of South America.

De Falco's firm handshake and a friendly, "Hello, hello Vladimir," surprised me; his outfit surprised me as well: a white linen, short-sleeved "shirt-jack" worn loose over his dark grey cotton trousers. He was dressed according to the local protocol requirements; we had to proceed directly to our first meeting with the Guyanese President Derek Boyde. As our chauffeur was carefully negotiating the congested and winding road to Georgetown, I briefed De Falco on the latest local events and the status of the projects financed by the bank.

The meeting with the president took place at his Castellani residence. Surrounded by a tropical garden, this austere wooden mansion was full of luminous corridors and wide-open windows adorned by tall linen curtains. As we entered the president's office, we saw a weary-looking intellectual behind a huge desk with a modern telephone system, a small TV set, several books and Caribbean newspapers, including the Cuban official gazette "Granma."