Plantation and village in coastal Guyana, 1887–1969: conflict or complementarity?

This study of livelihood patterns in a single rice village of coastal Guyana from 1887 to the present stresses economic and ecological linkages between the village and nearby sugar cane plantations. In the village of Bush Lot, typically populated by descendants of indentured plantation labourers from India, problems of maintaining drainage and irrigation canals have been compounded by a lack of village labour coordination. Varying yields from the community's ricefields have been affected by recurring drought and flood, so the villagers have never been full-time subsistence farmers. Rather, they have worked seasonally on the nearby plantations to supplement village farming activities. This part-time estate work has tended to inhibit social and political solidarity within Bush Lot. The plantations have coped better with water control than have villages. Nevertheless, the cane estates have depended upon nearby villages for seasonal labour. Although agricultural technology and scale of production have changed dramatically during the psst century, plantations and villages of the Guyanese coastal plain remain closely interlinked.