US neocolonial bauxite extraction in Guyana reveals resource curse patterns amid shifting geopolitical alliances
Original framing: “The US turns to Guyana’s bauxite in its latest push for Latin America’s resources - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
Guyana’s bauxite sector traces back to colonial British Guiana, where Reynolds Metals and Alcoa extracted ore under exploitative labor regimes, leaving behind polluted rivers and abandoned mines. Post-independence nationalization in the 1970s under Forbes Burnham’s socialist government failed to break dependency, as structural adjustment loans in the 1980s forced privatization to foreign firms. Similar patterns emerged in Jamaica (1950s–70s) and Suriname, where bauxite wealth enriched elites while impoverishing local communities through tax evasion and environmental degradation.
The US’s pivot to Guyana’s bauxite is not merely a geopolitical maneuver but a reenactment of the resource curse, where colonial-era extractivism has morphed into neoliberal dependency under the guise of 'strategic partnerships.
' Guyana’s Indigenous communities, Afro-Guyanese laborers, and environmental activists are the primary victims of this cycle, their resistance framed as 'obstacles' to progress in mainstream narratives. Historically, bauxite wealth has enriched foreign corporations and local elites while impoverishing the land and its people, a pattern repeated from Jamaica to Suriname. The solution lies in dismantling the IMF’s structural adjustment straitjacket, enforcing FPIC, and redirecting mineral wealth toward local industrialization—challenges that require confronting the US’s own role in perpetuating extractive economies. Anansi’s trickster wisdom reminds us that the 'US push' is a familiar tale of cunning dressed as benevolence, where the real resource being extracted is the public’s capacity to imagine alternatives.