Infrastructure and Authoritarianism in the Land of Waters: A Genealogy of Flood Control in Guyana

Abstract

Although often viewed as serving as a public good, infrastructure can have important political effects resulting from the way in which it is designed, built, and managed that preexist its stated or implied technical goals. It acts as a mediator and enforcer of state interests, defining the ways in which the state can enter everyday life and, in turn, it shapes the possibilities of life around the goals of the state. Although this politics of infrastructure has seen renewed interest from geographers, anthropologists, and other social scientists concerned with the power of artifacts, the role that infrastructure plays in defining and characterizing the particularly nationalist and racialized state remains undertheorized. Through a genealogy of water control infrastructure in Guyana, I show how apparently banal aspects of everyday life, such as infrastructure, can play an important role in the rise of an authoritarian government, first colonial and later postcolonial. Because 90 percent of Guyana’s population and most of the nonmineral economic resources are below sea level, water control infrastructure plays an important functional role in the country. Rather than just a means for preventing coastal flooding and irrigating the patchwork of sugar and rice fields that define the economy, however, I argue that this infrastructure played a key role in driving ethnic divisions between laborers in the colonial era that undermined anticolonial sentiment and laid the groundwork for the creation and perpetuation of an ethnic nationalist and authoritarian postcolonial regime. Key Words: colonialism, flooding, infrastructure, race, water.

尽管基础建设常被视为服务公众之用，但先于其所宣称或意味的技术目的存在的设计、建造和管理方式，则可能造成重大的政治影响。基础建设作为国家利益的中介物和执行者，决定国家进入日常生活的方式，并回头塑造围绕着国家目标的生命可能。尽管此般基础建设政治已重获关注权力构造的地理学者、人类学者和其他社会科学家的兴趣，基础建设在定义并描绘特定国族和种族化的国家中所扮演的角色却尚未充分理论化。我通过圭亚那水资源控制基础建设的系谱研究，展现诸如基础建设的每日生活平庸面向，如何能够先后在殖民与后殖民的威权政体的兴起中扮演要角。由于圭亚那人口的百分之九十、以及多半的非矿物经济资源皆低于海平面，水资源控制的基础建设因而在该国扮演重要的功能性角色。我主张，此一基础建设不仅只是预防海岸淹水以及灌溉定义该国经济的甘蔗田与稻米田相间的工具，而是在殖民时期驱动劳工间的族裔分野中扮演关键角色，并减损了反殖民的态度，且为族裔国族主义和威权后殖民政体的创造与续延奠定了基础。关键词 ：殖民主义，洪水，基础建设，种族，水。

Aunque con frecuencia es vista como algo que sirve como bien público, la infraestructura puede tener efectos políticos importantes que surgen de la manera como se la diseña, construye y maneja anticipando sus metas técnicas declaradas o implícitas. La infraestructura actúa como mediador y ejecutante de los intereses del estado, definiendo los modos como éste puede meterse en la vida cotidiana, en tanto que aquélla configura las posibilidades de vida alrededor de las metas del estado. Aunque esta política de infraestructura ha recibido un renovado interés de parte de geógrafos, antropólogos y otros científicos sociales preocupados con el poder de los artefactos, el papel que juega la infraestructura para definir y caracterizar al estado particularmente nacionalista y racializado sigue escasamente teorizado. Por medio de una genealogía de la infraestructura para el control del agua en Guyana, muestro el modo como aspectos aparentemente banales de la vida cotidiana, tales como la infraestructura, pueden desempeñar un papel importante en el encumbramiento de un gobierno autoritario, primero colonial y más tarde poscolonial. Debido a que el 90 por ciento de la población de Guyana y la mayoría de los recursos económicos no minerales se hallan debajo del nivel del mar, la infraestructura del control hídrico juega un importante rol funcional en el país. Sin embargo, más que un simple modo de prevenir las inundaciones de la costa y la colcha de retazos de campos irrigados de caña de azúcar y arroz que definen la economía, arguyo que esta infraestructura jugó un rol clave en el impulso de divisiones étnicas entre los trabajadores de la era colonial que socavaron el sentimiento anticolonialista y aportó el trabajo preliminar para la creación y perpetuación de un régimen étnico poscolonial nacionalista y autoritario. Palabras clave: agua, colonialismo, infraestructura, inundación, raza.

Notes

1 I use the term African in the Caribbean sense to refer broadly to the African-descended population of the country. In Guyana, African, black, and Afro-Guyanese are used interchangeably.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Morris and Anita Broad Research Fellowship from the School of International and Public Affairs and Doctoral Evidence Acquisition and Dissertation Year Fellowships from the University Graduate School at Florida International University.

Notes on contributors

Joshua Mullenite

JOSHUA MULLENITE is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199. Beginning in fall 2018 he will be Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Wagner College, Staten Island, NY 10301. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include the social, economic, and political factors that shape flood control decision making.