Berbice

The venture will focus drilling this year on the Corentyne block, the most promising of its three blocks, including Demerara and Berbice.

“Racism is connected to political power in Guyana,” said Deodat Persaud, a member of the government’s Ethnic Relations Committee, in a phone interview from the Berbice region.

Hundreds of Black residents took to the streets this week in the northeastern Berbice region where the murders took place, blocking roads, burning trucks and attacking Indo-Guyanese passers-by and businesses.

Those slave owners who survived were pushed to a handful of now-barren plantations near the mouth of the Berbice.

By the time the Dutch established their first colony on the Berbice River in 1627, Spanish explorers and colonizers already had a long history on that stretch of Atlantic coast.