Store

The Guianas

Regional

⚠ A ROOT, DELIBERATELY. The Guianas — Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, with historical extensions into Venezuelan Guayana and Brazilian Amapá — are the part of South America that is not Iberian. English, Dutch and French rather than Spanish and Portuguese; CARICOM rather than the Andean or Southern Cone blocs; and a shared history of sugar plantations, Maroon wars, Asian indenture and a narrow inhabited coastal strip in front of an enormous forested interior. THE POPULATION LIVES ON THE COAST — in Guyana overwhelmingly on a strip of reclaimed land BELOW SEA LEVEL behind a sea wall, on polders the Dutch built. The interior is rainforest, savanna and Indigenous territory. ⚠ THIS SYSTEM DOES NOT FILE THEM UNDER LATIN AMERICA.

Atlas — where and when

Communities and languages

Languages: English, Dutch

What is recorded

  • Guyana and Suriname are recorded under a Guianas regional root rather than under Latin American foodways. Both are anglophone and Dutch-speaking respectively, both are CARICOM members, and their culinary, linguistic and migratory orientation is Caribbean. Filing them as Latin American on the basis of continental geography is recorded as a category error and is not done. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Amazonian Foodways documented

    The interiors belong to the Guiana Shield and the wider Amazonian cassava and river food system.

  • related to Caribbean documented

    ⚠ The primary orientation of both countries. Both are CARICOM members and their food, music and migration are Caribbean rather than South American.

  • related to Latin American Foodways possible

    ⚠ Geographic adjacency only. Recorded as a weak relationship deliberately: the Guianas are not Latin America and this system does not file them there.

Regional cuisines

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.