In the early 1960s with the support of left of center People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Cheddi Jagan, an ardent Marxist and anti-colonialist, lead Guyana’s independence movement. In 1966 Guyana gained its independence from England. Jagan’s political rival Forbes Burnham eventually outmaneuvered him becoming the nation’s openly pro-socialist prime minister of Guyana. As a leader of Guyana’s People’s National Congress (PNC) Prime Minister Forbes Burnham championed a socialist black power development program in Guyana. After independence Burnham renamed the country the cooperative Republic of Guyana and made using a cooperative structure to feed citizens as one of his domestic policy goals. He used public funds to create grassroots self-sustaining rural farms and dairy cooperatives. Burnham also supported cooperative farming with government subsidies as a strategy to settle uninhabited rainforest and also suppress the Venezuelan state from squatting on Guyana territory on its western most frontier.
