A Brief History of Guyana, ancestral home to Torvald and Helen

Justin Emeka’s adaptation of A Doll’s House reimagines the story in New Jersey in the 1950s, and he recontextualizes the deeply complicated character of Torvald Helmer, Nora’s husband, and introduces a new character, Torvald’s sister, Helen. In Emeka’s version, both Torvald and Helen are immigrants from Guyana, a country in South America with a complex colonial history. The Dutch and British at various points controlled the country, while the French occasionally had indirect control, which shares its borders with Venezuela, Suriname, and Brazil. The Dutch, who put Guyana under the control of the Dutch West India Company in 1621, constructed trading posts and plantations for the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, and, most importantly, sugar. When their efforts to enslave the indigenous Arawak and Carib peoples to work on the plantations failed, they turned to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Following the end of the slave trade in 1807 and the British Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, the Guyanese sugar planters introduced indentured labor for a five-year term: some English, Irish, and German laborers came to Guyana, but they quickly deserted the plantations. However, there were others who stayed for their terms and became a major part of the fabric of Guyana’s political and cultural history: the Portuguese, Chinese, and East Indians. The East Indians were the largest group; almost 240,000 arrived in Guyana between the years of 1838 and 1917.

In 1900, the East Indian laborers started cultivating rice, which allowed them to steadily enter the middle class of Guyana alongside the more assimilated Chinese and Portuguese. This was fortuitous because the rise of European beet sugar led to the destabilization of the sugar industry, which had a substantial impact on the Guyanese economy and continued through the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s. The Afro-Guyanese were at the time in the majority and were considered the “urban proletariat” by Thomas J. Spinner, Jr. in A Political and Social History of Guyana, 1945–1983, whereas the Indo-Guyanese were the “rural proletariat,” as they lived outside of the major cities of Georgetown and New Amsterdam. The Afro-Guyanese community had become more Westernized, and their interest in formal education as a means of upward mobility was observed by their Indo-Guyanese neighbors; they were moving into civil service and other governmental positions, which the Indo-Guyanese also wanted to do. These aspirations between the two groups were cemented further on the road to Guyanese independence.

In 1953, universal suffrage was granted to all citizens following a new constitution. The first elected government, led by Indo-Guyanese Cheddi Jagan, was the People’s Progressive Party (PPP). There were fears that his government was too pro-communist, so the British returned and suspended the constitution, which was not restored until 1957. Afro-Guyanese Forbes Burnham founded the People’s National Congress (PNC) during the same period, which alleged that the electoral system favored the Indo-Guyanese community

after several years of tensions and strikes. The PNC formed a coalition government, and Burnham led the country to independence on May 26, 1966.

Today, the Indo-Guyanese are the largest ethnic group in Guyana at 44%, Afro-Guyanese make up 30%, 17% are of mixed heritage, and the indigenous Amerindians comprise the remaining 9% of the population. On Christmas morning, many open gifts after eating a breakfast of Guyana’s national dish, pepperpot. Pepperpot is an Amerindian dish comprised of a protein—usually beef, pork, or mutton, though some versions include venison—and a sauce made from cassareep (derived from the juice of cassava root). Cookup rice, often served over New Year’s, is another national staple that came directly from the West African tradition of one-pot meals that include meat, rice, and black-eyed peas. Guyana’s traditions are an amalgamation of each ethnic group, and Guyanese food, music, and culture are an eclectic celebration of their diverse identities.