Ethnopolitics in Guyana’s Decolonial Transitional Justice Movements

Since the achievement of independence in 1966, Guyanese politics and society are seemingly unable to escape the hegemonic power of ethnic constructs over identity formation, social conflict, and governance. Academic discourse has persistently reflected and reproduced the centrality of ethnicity to Guyanese history and society, cast as one of the inescapable afterlives of British colonialism. These patterns have not only situated Guyana in a perennial state of coloniality, but have also obscured grassroots decolonial movements that have challenged ethnic divides or offered alternative conceptions of Guyanese history. During the dictatorial period of 1966 to 1992, decolonial movements in Guyana flourished in simultaneous resistance against state repression and the legacies of colonialism. My research links Guyana’s decolonial campaigns in this era to transitional justice movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, given their notable similarities in outlook and objectives. In analyzing Guyana’s decolonial movements as an early form of transitional justice in the region, my essay explores the potential consequences of ethnopolitics for the concomitant formation and obstruction of transitional justice processes. Ultimately, I argue that the politics of ethnicity shaped the concept of decolonial transitional justice in Guyana, creating two distinct interpretations which professed different objectives but common commitments to decolonization in ethnopolitical terms. These ethnopolitical patterns enabled the formation of decolonial transitional justice movements but precluded them from assuming concrete institutional form.