FOR too long, we have been looking north to New York, the Bronx and Toronto for our hopes and very survival. We now have the chance to start looking south and beyond towards a rich Continental Destiny full of great opportunities.

If the North is looking South at our vast oil reserves, then we should be taking seriously the diversification of our economy and investing in tourism, trade and agriculture and freeing ourselves from traditional ways of managing our economy. The time has come now for us, we Guyanese, to insist that we all look South and beyond our border to Brazil. The time has come for us to reach out to the fulfilment of our dreams towards productive and less dependent ways.

By our being the bridge that links and effectively brings together the hemispheres of North and South America, we will discover great new opportunities for our hard-working and patriotic people who live in the hinterland. Our Latin brothers and sisters to the South, who have understood the true meaning and the benefits of cultural and ethnic integration, will help us to think positively about each other for being a nation of diverse cultural heritage and one people.

The Rupununi is rising again. This time not through neighbouring encouragement to rise up against central government, but instead to partner now with fresh new ideas and to support the policy-makers through common sense and geo-politics to harness the potential of Brazil and the trading nations of Mercosur. The vision for Guyana should now be to integrate our infrastructure and provide hope for our suffering but proud people to become true Guyanese and place their energies into ensuring that Guyana is once and for all placed firmly on the map of South America. The time has come to stem the brain drain and to fill our lands with hope and opportunity for generations to come. For this to happen, we will need to learn to speak Portuguese, as we already do with Spanish when we go to study in Cuba. We also have to learn to understand the benefits of using the metric system, instead of the old, archaic imperial system of past times.

By so doing and using creativity and enterprise, we will discover new ways of becoming our own masters through developing small and large businesses, as the goals to economic emancipation of our lives. Let us put aside petty partisan politics and discuss “Think Guyana First,” by partnering together to make it a reality and achieve our rightful place through the destiny that some are already beginning to see.

Imagine if Henry Ford had been allowed to build the road to Brazil nearly 100 years ago at his own expense, where we would be now; all he wanted was to access rubber for his motorcar industry. He failed to do so, most probably due to petty colonial considerations that are no longer valid to us in the 21st Century and have nothing to do with Guyana’s present-day goals. Imagine if we enable tourism to become the major sustainable and environmentally friendly economic activity in Guyana. The Caribbean has been embracing tourism for decades now and they need to move away from a product based on sun, sand and sea. We have it all here: rainforest, wildlife, indigenous lifestyles, etc. Imagine if we had put our energies into agriculture in a way that was less dependent on sugar and rice. We need to open our eyes to the potential of agriculture by visiting the street markets of Boa Vista and learning from them how they manage to achieve results across the border with similar conditions to our own.

By looking South to Brazil and farther afield to Manaus and the benefits of a duty-free zone that has seen it grow in only 50 years from a Georgetown population, to that of one of two to three million with oil refinery, cement production, cheap electricity for manufacturing and creating development requires fresh new ideas and enterprise. We all need to work together and free ourselves from the shackles of dependency of past times. We do not have any time to lose.