Anything but Sugar!
DEAR EDITOR,
It is more than disappointing to see the current administration continue with sugar, an industry that produced nothing but suffering for our forefathers, and to this day creates an ethos and atmosphere that contributes to social problems from alcoholism, suicide and domestic abuse.
King Sugar was a feudal from its very beginning, the plant species an impostor brought over by Columbus himself from the Canary Islands. Huge labor, first transported from Africa and then from India, was needed to sustain its production here. Hundreds of thousands died or lived shorter lives, all for the benefit of absent planters and for the sweet teeth of European women sipping tea in their drawing rooms.
King Sugar saw the seizure of Amerindian lands along the coast replacing those tribes to the interior, creating a monotonous monoculture that extended to the grimy, grid-like estate villages that exist to this day.
He established power structures that place the native overseer over his fellow men that explain much of our current behavior towards each other as a people. Cruelty and coercion reigned in this country for centuries thanks to sugar even as it overshadowed the creation of other enterprises that could have developed this nation and raised living standards. This is the original resource curse.
There is nothing good to say about sugar. Like all other colonial institutions, it belongs in the dustbin of our history. And the PPP / C, as a Marxist-Lenininst party, knows this but insists on persevering with this feudal, barbaric practice. Imagine in the 21st century, men are being forced to carry a can on their backs after being trucked to their fields like cattle before dawn.
There is no romanticism here. Save that longing for the descendants of the planting class and their gin gimlets near the estate swimming pools.
Sugar was one of the purest forms of capitalist exploitation of the worker and colony that was British Guiana, and remains deliberately underdeveloped for the sake of sugar.
And he needs to stop. Not only because one self-respecting parent in this country doesn’t want to see his son break a stick, but because financially, it’s a bottomless sink hole. Economic madness is pouring billions of taxpayer revenue into an industry that has no prospect of making a profit.
The much cheaper and more humane way would be to give every former sugar worker a general basic income as they move towards selling the lands first to them and then others to other enterprises. For example, in the Welsh estate, 1000 acres are now being planted with rice, an industry that is profitable but also offers some dignity to its employees. Cash crops will also be needed to maintain what will be a growing population in the coming years.
Anything but sugar. The current policy intends to prove a point but is a foolish mistake and diverts resources that could be used to better end up continuing to scratch another generation, few of which want anything to do with ‘ the heartbreak and the scorching sun.
Yours faithfully,
Francis Newton