Dear Editor,
In oil rich 2026 Guyana, where ministers flaunt mansions and the President reels off billion dollar figures to foreign investors, an Amerindian leader was forced to carry an elderly woman on his back through river and mountain for hours so she could see a nurse. That image alone — a Deputy Toshao, Elvis Francis, trudging through wilderness with a human life strapped to his shoulders — tells the real story of this so called modern republic. It is a metaphor so heavy, even the state itself should buckle under the shame.
While propaganda machines trumpet “One Guyana” and carbon credit earnings, the people who guard those very forests still wait for something as basic as an accessible trail or an outboard engine. The Minister of Amerindian Affairs, meanwhile, luxuriates behind walls bought by oil money, occasionally invoking her “cultural identity” to deflect criticism — as if heritage were a public policy. It is the worst kind of doublespeak: heritage for sound bites, neglect for the everyday.
And as this human act of endurance unfolded in Paruima, our capital—city Georgetown was aglow with the Oil and Gas Expo — a shrine to greed disguised as progress. Corporate executives and handpicked officials congratulated themselves for “lifting the world out of poverty.” The head of Exxon’s local operations, Dan Ammann, even declared that Guyana could save the world. Save the world? Our citizens cannot even save themselves from abandonment. Elvis Francis literally carried the nation’s conscience on his back because the government dropped it.
Our leaders love to quote numbers: production barrels, export earnings, and carbon credits. But moral deficits don’t feature in those reports. Only 15 percent of those carbon revenues trickle down to the very communities that sustain the environment the world is paying us for. We reward the guardians of the rainforest with speeches and slogans while rewarding politicians with contracts and real estate.
This is the anatomy of Guyana’s new oil economy — opulent on top, hollow beneath. A government that sells a global illusion while hiding local decay; masters of narrative, merchants of vanity. It is classic gaslighting: convincing the world we are rising, while the majority still carry the weight of state failure — quite literally, on their backs.
The story of that sick elderly woman and the man who carried her should stop policy briefs cold. It should silence the boasting at expositions and the applause in high ceilinged halls. Because it lays bare the truth that no investor brochure can hide: our leaders are hawking dreams abroad while their own citizens endure nightmares at home.
Until this country learns to treat its people with the same sincere care and decency that Elvis Francis showed that woman, every barrel of oil will only deepen the stench of our decay. No wealth can sanctify a nation rotting from neglect. The real treasure of Guyana was always its humanity — and right now, only the poor seem to have any left worth saving.