Black Water Politics: Navigating Oral History, Memory, and Power Along the Rivers of the Guyanese Northwest

Abstract

This article enriches the narrative of ethno‐racial politics in Guyana by analysing the lives and histories of people who live and work in the Guyanese Northwest. It narrates how histories of escape, freedom, and fortune—along with the associated development of the Guyanese interior as an extractive space—were essential to understanding the broader forces that shaped working peoples’ mobility in the region. Using a combined method of conducting oral history, memory analysis, ethnography, participant observation, and archival research, the article demonstrates how histories of mobility (or lack of) and notions of being Black produced—and were produced through—the gendered historical politics of socio‐cultural mixture. The borderland space between the Caribbean and Amazonia, this article argues, helps deepen and recontextualise aspects of the divisive political history of Guyana.