Last week Marcus Colchester was in Guyana presenting his new work "Guyana: Fragile Frontier. Loggers, Miners and Forest Peoples", jointly published by WRM and the Latin America Bureau. The book is very comprehensive in its scope, summarizing Guyana's history since the arrival of the European colonizers until the present year and describes the situation of the country after a decade of "development" based upon foreign investment in logging and mining. The destruction of Guyana's tropical forests, that had been a rare case of virtually untouched ecosystems up to the mid-1980s, and the complete disregard of the Amerindians that have lived in these forests for centuries have been the result of such so-called economic development. The book contains the following chapters:
Foreword
Guyana in brief
Chronology
Map of Guyana
Introduction
1. From trading allies to colonial subjects
2. Plantation politics
3. Development domination
4. Roads and ranches
5. Undermining the interior
6. Forests for sale
7. Amerindian survival
8. Future options
Colchester Marcus.- Guyana: Fragile Frontier. Loggers, Miners and Forest
Peoples, UK, LAB/ WRM, 1997, 172 pp.