Jan West­maas

From the mod­ern city of Man­aus in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, the Rupu­nuni Sa­van­nah in the Guyanese out­back now beck­oned. But we must first get to Boa Vista, Ro­raima’s pur­pose­ful­ly planned cap­i­tal, with its de­light­ful­ly wide, bright av­enues on the Bran­co Riv­er.

But it’s some dis­tance away.

“12 hours by bus!” re­spond­ed one trav­eller in­cred­u­lous­ly when I re­marked about the time it was go­ing to take to get from Man­aus to Boa Vista.

“Nev­er mind, we take a brief stop for lunch, there’s a toi­let on the bus and you can al­so catch up on sleep,” I re­as­sured him. “And don’t for­get, on our way back to Man­aus, we fly from Boa Vista. It’s a mere one hour and 15 min­utes’ flight.”

In­deed, it took 12 hours to get to Boa Vista. We left Man­aus at 10 am and ar­rived at our ho­tel in Boa Vista at 10 pm.

My last vis­it to that part of the globe with a group of Tri­nis was way back in 2013. As we jour­neyed this time along the 760-kilo­me­tre High­way BR-174, I dis­tinct­ly re­called cross­ing the equa­to­r­i­al line that de­mar­cates the north­ern from the south­ern hemi­sphere.

At pre­cise­ly this point, there was a mark­er in­di­cat­ing ze­ro de­grees lat­i­tude. I al­so re­called the sig­nage on the side of the road in­di­cat­ing to trav­ellers that they were pass­ing through the Waimiri-Atroari Re­serve—ter­ri­to­ry of in­dige­nous peo­ple.

What the signs did not say then, in 2013, nor now, in Au­gust 2026, was the num­ber of lives that were lost—high­way work­ers and of­fi­cials, as well as mem­bers of the Waimiri tribe—dur­ing the build­ing of the high­way in the pe­ri­od of Brazil’s mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship, from 1964 to 1985.

In 2019, a his­toric in­quest by a fed­er­al court took place in a makeshift court—a tra­di­tion­al thatched hut—on Waimiri-Atroari land. Many in­dige­nous el­ders tes­ti­fied that state-spon­sored mas­sacres, aer­i­al bomb­ings and chem­i­cal war­fare were per­pe­trat­ed against them by the Brazil­ian army dur­ing the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship.

As we trav­elled fur­ther south, I no­ticed a dis­tinct change in the veg­e­ta­tion at the side of the high­way since my last vis­it. Trop­i­cal rain­for­est, graz­ing pas­ture­land and scrub­land gave way to tidy, al­most man­i­cured plan­ta­tions of palm oil.

Do­ing some re­search when I re­turned home, I dis­cov­ered that Brazil, in its haste to com­bat cli­mate change, in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in a “sus­tain­able” avi­a­tion fu­el (SAF) project us­ing bio­fu­els like palm oil as raw ma­te­r­i­al.

This sat well with Pres­i­dent Lu­la, who dubbed it “the fu­el of the fu­ture,” much to the dis­gust of en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­perts who be­moaned fur­ther de­for­esta­tion of the Ama­zon rain­for­est as a re­sult.

We were due to spend the night in Boa Vista at Ho­tel Aipana Plaza, whose Guyanese-born Front Of­fice Man­ag­er, Travis D’Aguiar, wait­ed pa­tient­ly for us to turn up.

We did, if not a wee bit lat­er than ex­pect­ed.

The fol­low­ing af­ter­noon, we reached Ho­tel Taku­tu in Lethem, Guyana, at about 4 pm.

From Boa Vista via the bor­der town of Bon­fim, we trav­elled on a re­cent­ly paved first-class high­way and crossed a mod­ern, 230-me­tre con­crete and steel bridge built by the Brazil­ians over the Taku­tu Riv­er.

Com­plet­ed in 2009, the con­struc­tion of the bridge was a clear sig­nal that Brazil meant busi­ness. And Guyana like­wise.

The bridge was even de­signed to al­low dri­vers com­ing from Brazil to Guyana to tran­si­tion smooth­ly to the left side of the road and dri­vers leav­ing for Brazil to tran­si­tion eas­i­ly to the right side.

Bar­ring some de­lay caused by un­du­ly of­fi­cious Guyanese bor­der of­fi­cials, we would have cov­ered the Boa Vista-Lethem leg of the tour in less than two hours!

Boa Vista, cap­i­tal of a state rich in pre­cious met­als, in­clud­ing gold and sil­ver, and boun­ti­ful min­er­als, shone in com­par­i­son to dusty Lethem, on­ly just be­gin­ning to come out of its shell.

Sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments by the Chi­nese in road build­ing, re­al es­tate, ware­hous­ing, re­tail and whole stores with just about every­thing on sale stared you in the face.

In these bor­der­lands, Brazil­ians flock to Lethem, where prices are at­trac­tive, while Guyanese tourists, with more dis­pos­able in­come from the coun­try’s oil boom, make a bee­line for Boa Vista and Man­aus for some­thing rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent.

In both cities, they get hints of what life can be like in an up­per-mid­dle-in­come na­tion, as de­fined by the ex­perts.

“East­er time is the tourist high sea­son here. The place is packed with lo­cal and for­eign tourists who’ve come to ex­pe­ri­ence the an­nu­al rodeo, cel­e­brat­ing the life of the lo­cal cow­boy—the va­que­ro—on the cat­tle ranch­es of the Rupu­nuni,” said Mar­va John­son, Man­ager­ess of Ho­tel Taku­tu, prob­a­bly the old­est and best ho­tel in Lethem, part­ly found­ed by her grand­fa­ther, Ivan John­son, in the 1960s.

“I’m here for oth­er pur­pos­es and my group is fine with that,” I thought to my­self, think­ing that one day I’ll bring a group to ex­pe­ri­ence the tra­di­tions of the va­que­ro at East­er.

The land­scape of the Rupu­nuni, with its sweep­ing sa­van­nah, punc­tu­at­ed by huge ter­mite mounds against the back­drop of the Kanuku Moun­tains, was unique.

We al­so un­der­took a chal­leng­ing hike, fol­low­ing the course of a riv­er over rocky ter­rain at the base of the moun­tain. We even­tu­al­ly reached a wa­ter­fall, where we were re­ward­ed with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cool off.

As far as the Rupu­nuni was con­cerned, Venezuela’s ridicu­lous claim on all its ter­ri­to­ry notwith­stand­ing, I had fi­nal­ly stepped foot on the land on which my fa­ther worked in the 1930s, when the bound­ary with Brazil was be­ing sur­veyed by Colonel Hud­son and the Bound­ary Com­mis­sion.

In con­ver­sa­tion with An­dave, a guide in his ear­ly 20s, I tried rais­ing the ques­tion of the Rupu­nuni re­bel­lion, which took place in 1969, long be­fore he was born.

“Nev­er even heard of it in my his­to­ry class­es at school,” he as­sert­ed.

I pre­ferred not to pur­sue the ques­tion and must re­ly on my own re­search, thanks to re­ports in Guyanese news­pa­pers at the time of the re­bel­lion.

In a nut­shell, three years af­ter British Guiana be­came Guyana, an in­de­pen­dent state, a num­ber of priv­i­leged cat­tle ranch­ers and their sup­port­ers, in­clud­ing Amerindi­ans from the Rupu­nuni, fear­ing a takeover of their land by Pres­i­dent Forbes Burn­ham and en­cour­aged by Va­lerie Hart, a politi­cian as­so­ci­at­ed with the mi­nor­i­ty par­ty Unit­ed Force, crossed the bor­der to Venezuela.

It was ru­moured that the Hart and Melville fam­i­lies—the Sa­van­nah elite—want­ed to form an in­de­pen­dent “Re­pub­lic of the Rupu­nuni” with help from neigh­bour­ing Venezuela.

There, it is al­leged, they re­ceived weapons and train­ing from the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary.

They re­turned af­ter a week with weapons such as bazookas and al­most im­me­di­ate­ly launched an at­tack on the Lethem Po­lice Sta­tion, re­sult­ing in the deaths of five po­lice of­fi­cers, two of se­nior rank, and two civil­ians.

Mean­while, the Guyanese De­fence Force got word of the plot and flew in air­craft with sol­diers aboard, stop­ping a re­bel­lion that was clear­ly poor­ly planned.

While Hart and oth­er key lead­ers sought and re­ceived asy­lum in Venezuela and Brazil, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of rebels who were ar­rest­ed and brought to George­town for tri­al had charges of mur­der and re­lat­ed crimes dropped al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

In Jan­u­ary 1970, of the 10 men who were put on tri­al for mur­der, sev­en were found not guilty by the ju­ry, while the re­main­ing three were dis­charged with­out con­vic­tion by the mag­is­trate on no-case sub­mis­sions.