Cattle rustling in the Rupununi: The indifference of the authorities
The Stabroek Business’ recent visit to Lethem and parts of what is known as the ‘deep south’ in order to secure an update on ‘how the other half lives’ allowed our reporter to run into Rebecca Rodrigues-Faria, the Chairperson of the Rupununi Livestock & Producers Association. Rebecca, as it happens is the Chairperson of the Committee planning what we hope will be the Rupununi Rodeo scheduled for next April though it has to be said that the spectre of the Covid-19 pandemic – whatever the variant that might obtain - leaves some measure of doubt about whether or not a Rodeo will be staged in April, after all. The doubts notwithstanding, Rebecca is going about the job of putting the pieces together for what we hope will be a Rodeo with a vigour that is not difficult to detect.
Rebecca has other things on her mind, however…like what she says has become the practice of cattle rustling. The practice is, she says, wreaking havoc with the livelihoods of cattle farmers and ranchers and, she predicts with a certain conviction that “if the rustling of cattle is not brought under control, cattle ranching in the Rupununi will die.” Here, one might add that the death of cattle ranching is likely to be attended by another requiem…for the Rupununi Rodeo.
To many of us coastlanders the threat of the demise of cattle-ranching may well be greeted by no more than an indifferent shrug. We decidedly lack that socio-cultural connection with cattle ranching and rustling. Moreover, whether Rebecca’s evidently deep concern for the future of cattle-ranching has registered with the country’s law enforcement regime, is, as well, unclear.
Rebecca, one expects would have a much more poignant attachment to cattle, being the daughter of a now deceased ranch owner. Some years ago, her father, who had owned the Point Ranch in the North Rupununi died of a heart attack while he was in the process of chasing rustlers who had made off with some of his stock. Rustling, Rebecca says, has played a major part in reducing the Point Ranch’s inventory from seven hundred to two hundred head of cattle.
The view among ranchers is that many of the rustlers travel from Brazil to make their raids. The cattle ranchers themselves are hopelessly lacking in the security-related resources necessary to push back the tide of cattle rustling in the Rupununi and whether or not the practice of cattle-rustling in the Rupununi is even on the radar of local law-enforcement is unclear. Never mind the fact that the rustling-related losses suffered by some of the ranches have been devastating.
The Stabroek Business learnt, for example, that the Dadanawa Ranch, located in the Rupununi River, reputedly once one of the largest cattle ranches in South America has, largely through cattle rustling, been reduced from more than fifty thousand cattle to seven thousand cattle to about one thousand,
Reports of cattle rustling in the Rupununi rarely if ever ‘make the news’ never mind the fact that cattle rustling continues to have a debilitating impact on the livelihoods of both the ranchers and their employees.
When account is taken of the double role that people like Rebecca play both as ranch owners and as functionaries that contribute significantly to the socio-cultural development of the community, what very much appears to have been a historic indifference to cattle-rustling in a hinterland which we claim is dear to us, is utterly shameful. Indeed, we have to ask ourselves whether the available evidence does not suggest that we continue to have political administrations that consider their jurisdiction to end where our non-coastal boundaries begin.
One might add, of course, that where official jurisdiction is not attended by a capacity for enforcement (which is one of the issues that arise when considerations of territorial integrity are at stake) it would do no harm if we move to register with Brazil, at the diplomatic level, some sort of official consternation in the matter of cattlerustling and seek to explore with our neighbours some kind of bilateral commitment to the creation of a regime that might at least serve to ‘raise the stakes,’ so to speak, for the perpetrators. To do nothing is to display a posture of indifference. That, from the standpoint of government, is unacceptable.