“The labour of women in the house certainly enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way, women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.” Charlotte Perkins Gilman (“Women and Economics” 1898)
Tomorrow is Labour Day, and Friday will be Indian Arrival Day. The latter commemorated the arrival of these “indentured” labourers to our shores. Now that President Granger has acknowledged “Portuguese Arrival Day” and “Chinese Arrival Day,” I hope some researchers would discover when the first West Indian Africans arrived as indentured labourers. Some 39,059 did, more than the Portuguese and Chinese, and we can at last acknowledge their role in shaping our society.
There were also 13,355 persons from Africa who were brought under indentured conditions by British ships that intercepted slave ships, and some were recruited as indentured labourers. They, too, should be remembered. While the Portuguese and the Chinese generally left the plantations immediately after their indentureship ended to open shops – especially rum shops – the indentured labourers from the West Indies, mostly from Barbados, and Africa generally remained on the sugar estates. My grandfather (Aja) mentioned the “Bajan Quarters” that were aback the logies of “Letter A” at Uitvlugt, WCD, and he could remember the names of some of their descendants who still live in the Casbah section of our village.
I mention this because it is important to remember that it will not only be the descendants of Indian indentured labourers who would be affected by the mass closures of sugar estates, as announced by the Government.
I spent the last six weeks in Guyana — four of them at the GHPC — but managed to travel around Guyana, as my family members are wont to do whenever we have holidays. From Demerara, where I live, to Berbice, where I spent a long weekend, most affected persons expect great hardships to occur in the coming years. As I listened to people talk (mostly to my dad, I must confess), I was struck by the similarities from the situation after the abolition of slavery I had read about in my textbooks on WI History. England had decided to move to “free trade” then — for her own benefit — and remove the tariffs that gave WI sugar an advantage. The price of sugar also fell, and the local planters found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Many of them abandoned their plantations; some sold them to freed Africans, but the majority cut wages, which the freed Africans refused because there was land they could farm, or move into the towns and interior.
Only the indentured labourers would accept the low wages for field work. In Barbados and the small islands, there was no alternative employment, and low wages also prevailed there. In India, millions has been displaced and suffered famines. Those freed Africans who remained on the plantations usually received higher wages because they could perform the skilled tasks in the factories or the distilleries etc.
Now that the price for sugar has been cut by Europe and the factories will be closed, the thousands who will now be out of jobs will have to take whatever wages are offered them as in the period of indentureship. Since there aren’t many jobs opening up, some will seek to emigrate, as the Bajans did back in the 19th century, or our own Guyanese did after the 1980s. But Suriname, Venezuela, Trinidad, St Kitts — and even the US under President Trump — will not be as welcoming.
When economic conditions are harsh, it always falls on the women to ensure families survive, as was the case during indentureship and during the 1980s. Some were forced to make desperate choices. We will have to stand together with sugar workers in the days ahead. They are literally our sisters and brothers; and yes, we are their “keepers”.
