Cafe Pele: The incredible return of colonialism in Guyana
Kaieteur News – Do you know the Brazilian hero Pele, who is also an international icon and was one of the first Black sports heroes to promote the pride of the Black race? Today, Pele is not in the best of health. It collects a percentage of every bottle of Café Pele sold.
Cafe Pele is made from the same Brazilian beans from which Nescafe instant coffee is made. Ask yourself as a Guyanese, a neighbor to Brazil, and ask yourself as a non-white person, why would you leave Café Pele and buy another brand of coffee right away?
I almost want to throw up when I see the foreign things in the Guyanese non-white trolley of all classes not only the upper class, and the middle class. Common Guyanese shun local products. Do you know that one liter of imported box juice has cost one hundred dollars more than half a gallon (2 liters) of fresh juice that DDL sells? All box juices are made from concentrate. They are not good compared to what DDL sells. You’re a fool who should go back to school, if you think a box of juice made from concentrate is healthier than things freshly squeezed from the fruit.
At Giftland Supermarket and Massy Supermarket, the shelves have foreign beef and local beef. Do you know that all beef imported from the United States is chemically treated and many scientists argue that it is harmful? Ask yourself why would you want to eat chemically treated beef instead of the fresh cuts our locals sell?
Do you know that Sterling Products and DIH Banks produce special ice cream, apart from their regular low price range which is just like any Nestle product? Two liters of Nestlé ice cream is $ 5,540. This is $ 3,000 more than the Banks DIH and Sterling versions. Don’t take my word for it. Go to the supermarket and ask for a two liter tub of “cookies and cream” ice cream from Sterling and from Nestlé’s and you’ll see the price difference. There is no difference in taste.
Banks DIH, DDL and Sterling are local companies. When their products sell, their employees get money to spend, feed themselves and send their children to school.
Do you know that the Beharry group of companies makes many types of pasta that are even better than many of the imported varieties? Visit the supermarkets and you’ll find lots of different types of imported pasta. People must be buying them, so why would the supermarkets still have them.
I have watched how the age of pride in your country and your pride in the color of someone’s skin has gone out the window, perhaps gone forever. This is the sick part of the return of the colonial mentality in Guyana. There are human beings in this country who will kill you if you make ludicrous comments about their race. But head to the supermarkets to see what’s inside their trolleys – all the items that the White nations produce.
Six years ago, I made three columns of how 99.99 percent of the ads in all the newspapers, on television, and the artwork on the exterior of commercial vehicles carried images of white people. I was so enthusiastic that I made a column on a notice board I saw on Everest Cricket Club. He had a White man in a three-piece suit calling on you to do business with a Law-in-Law insurance company.
There has not even been a letter in any of the newspaper from Indian and African cultural institutions condemning this cultural / racial contempt. Is there an explanation in psychology? I think that. Dark-skinned Indians and African Guyanese at a very strange level may be content with their Fanonic incarceration, which means that they see a better light complexion.
I have never seen in print media or on television, a Hindu person who has voiced concern about the exclusion of brown or dark complexion actors in Bollywood films. I did a column on that and one of Guyana’s most prominent medical doctors, who is brown-skinned, met me one day on East Street, and said, “Freddie, I read what you wrote about the Bollywood movies.” Then with a smile wider than the Essequibo River, he said, “but I like them dat.” This was the Fanonic thinking at work (an adjective taken from the name of West Indian political theorist and psychiatrist – Franz Fanon). I feel sorry for this country and its people but I love them both. All we can do is encourage them to buy and eat locally. It helps the economy.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)