Basket Case of the Caribbean

Amid physical violence, the banning of foreign observers, the beating of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and expected allegations of fraud, Guyana has now elected Desmond Hoyte to succeed President Forbes Burnham, whose long rule over the country ended in August. Burnham, known to his friends as Odo, died during throat surgery performed by Cuban doctors. Hoyte, a 56-year-old lawyer, had been his vice president. The continuation of Burnham’s PNC (People’s National Congress) party in power will maintain Guyana as—in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s recent description—one of the most densely packed Soviet forward bases in the world. It more than compensates the Soviets for the loss of Grenada.

A beautiful, bankrupt country, Guyana more closely resembles an impoverished African sub-state than its sophisticated neighbors Venezuela and Brazil. Today a beggar state, desperately in debt to the International Monetary Fund, Guyana is the poorest country in the Caribbean, with a per-capita income below Haiti’s. Hemorrhaging currency, this “suitcase economy” considers even the importation of toilet paper a drain on foreign-currency reserves, while a packet of Kleenex costs upward of U.S.$10 on the black market.

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Amid physical violence, the banning of foreign observers, the beating of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and expected allegations of fraud, Guyana has now elected Desmond Hoyte to succeed President Forbes Burnham, whose long rule over the country ended in August. Burnham, known to his friends as Odo, died during throat surgery performed by Cuban doctors. Hoyte, a 56-year-old lawyer, had been his vice president. The continuation of Burnham’s PNC (People’s National Congress) party in power will maintain Guyana as—in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s recent description—one of the most densely packed Soviet forward bases in the world. It more than compensates the Soviets for the loss of Grenada.

A beautiful, bankrupt country, Guyana more closely resembles an impoverished African sub-state than its sophisticated neighbors Venezuela and Brazil. Today a beggar state, desperately in debt to the International Monetary Fund, Guyana is the poorest country in the Caribbean, with a per-capita income below Haiti’s. Hemorrhaging currency, this “suitcase economy” considers even the importation of toilet paper a drain on foreign-currency reserves, while a packet of Kleenex costs upward of U.S.$10 on the black market.