Colonial Despatches

The Co-operative Republic Guyana is located on the northeast corner of South America. Its name reflects the Indigenous people who lived there prior to European settlement, whose anglicized name for the region, “Guiana”, means land of water.1 Politically, Guyana shed its colonial designation of British Guiana when it became independent in 1966—for three centuries prior, Guyana was a colonial wrestling mat for the Spanish, Portugese, French, British, and Dutch.2

• 1. Guyana, Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
• 2. Ibid.