South America's English-speaking capital — where pepperpot stew, cook-up rice, and roti curry reflect a Caribbean heart in a continental body
Georgetown, Guyana's capital, occupies a unique position in South America — the only English-speaking country on the continent, with a culture that is decisively Caribbean rather than South American: cricket over football, roti over empanadas, Demerara sugar in everything. The food is an extraordinary fusion: pepperpot (a Christmas stew made with cassareep, a preservation agent from cassava, that can theoretically be kept going for years by adding new meat), cook-up rice (one-pot rice cooked with black-eyed peas, coconut milk, and whatever meat is available), and bake-and-saltfish. The Victor…
Guyana was colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century, then transferred to the British in 1814, who operated one of the hemisphere's most brutal sugar plantation economies using enslaved African labour. After abolition in 1834, British Guiana recruited indentured labourers from India and Portugal (Madeira), a demographic shift that created Guyana's roughly equal African-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese populations. The country achieved independence in 1966 under Forbes Burnham's socialist government, which nationalized the sugar industry, creating economic problems that drove emigration — the Guyan…