30/07/2010
It often happens when I tell people I lived in South America that they ask me about Brazil; the assumption being, anyone spending a substantial amount of time would obviously have gone. It’s part of that trendy BRIC acronym—not a developing economy—a developed economy, increasingly asserting its power on the world stage, whether it be playing hardball in trade negotiations with the U.S. over cotton subsidies, or a substantial humanitarian presence in Haiti.
At first I used to say that getting a visa was too much of a hassle. And while that was a copout—it was a disincentive for me, just as it was for my visiting Paraguay. The truth, though, with which I now exclusively reply, is that I don’t speak the language, and I’d like to be fairly competent before I go.
This is usually met with blank stares, the person with whom I’m talking having already exhausted every Spanish word they know. When I see their confusion, I remind them, “They speak Portuguese.”
Ah. The conversation usually ends shortly after that.
If Suriname were the topic, it wouldn’t even get that far.
“I’d like to go down south, but I need to work on my Dutch?”
It’s easy enough to forget about the three countries nestled in at the top of South America. For the most part, it’s pretty rare to find someone who’s actually been, and of those who have, many find the Darien Gap more accessible.
Despite its 593km border with Brazil, there’s no legal point of entry. So, short of a flight to Johan Adolf Pengel International Airport, there aren’t likely to be many tourists accidentally stumbling upon the country; any foreigner there most likely has a commerical purpose, and that purpose is increasingly golden.
To many Brazilians and Guyanese, Suriname has become a type of El Dorado. Years ago the population of the former was said to be somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000 (because of their informal work arrangements, it’s impossible to know)—not an insignificant number considering the Surinamese population is not even 500,000. And with the world’s decreasing faith in the American dollar and a de facto return to the gold standard (the mining community in the country actually uses it as a medium of exchange), the price of the commodity appears poised to rise—meaning more Brazilians will make their way through Guyana in search of work.
A massive influx of foreigners always brings out a certain amount of xenophobia—the example of Polish plumbers comes to mind—and Suriname hasn’t been any different. Peculiarly, though, this has mostly come from the Maroons—descendents of former slaves now protesting the presence of these freelance miners known as garimpeiros—this despite the fact that the Maroon leader Ronnie Brunswijk is believed to have once invited them.
Add to this mixture the quixotic and mercurial Surinamese President Desiré Delano Bouterse and the impossibly feral Surinam-Brazil border, and the prospects of an even more lawless no man’s land only increase.
Bouterse, or “Bouta” as he’s commonly called, can’t even leave the country because of a conviction for cocaine smuggling in the Netherlands; he’s also currently on trial for murder—though he’s confident he’ll have Presidential immunity; and concerning the border, as one veteran garimpeiro was quoted: “You have no documents, but nobody is asking for them either, so why bother.”
My concern is that all this volatility is a ticking time bomb. “Bouta” has already made promises to formalize these workers in an effort to placate his former enemies, but what happens if that’s unsuccessful? Brazilian technical knowledge and Maroon intermediary assistance is said to make the groups mutually dependent, but if last December’s clashes are any indication, that mutual dependence is tenuous at best.
Without additional international presence, Suriname’s isolation could easily make it ripe for unreported human rights abuses. The situation bears monitoring, and conventional journalism won’t be enough.
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