Café Pele: The incredible return of colonial mentality in Guyana

Feb 05, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – Do you know the Brazilian hero, Pele, who is also an international icon and was one of the first Black sporting heroes to advance the pride of the Black race? Today, Pele is not in the best of health. He collects a percentage from every bottle of Café Pele that is sold.
Café Pele is made from the same Brazilian beans that Nescafe instant coffee is made from. Ask yourself as a Guyanese, who is a neighbour to Brazil, and ask yourself as a non-white person, why would you leave Café Pele and buy another brand of instant coffee?
I almost want to throw up when I see the foreign things that are in the trolley of non-white Guyanese from all classes not only the upper class, and the middle class. Ordinary Guyanese shun local products. Do you know one litre of imported box juice cost a hundred dollars more than the half gallon (which is 2 litres) of fresh juice that DDL sells? All box juices are made from concentrates. They are no good in comparison to what DDL sells. You are a fool that should go back to school, if you think a box of juice made from concentrate is healthier than fresh squeezed stuff from the fruits.
In Giftland Supermarket and Massy Supermarket, the shelves have foreign beef and local beef. Do you know all beef imported from the US are chemically treated and many scientists will argue is harmful? Ask yourself why would you want to eat chemically treated beef instead of the fresh cuts our local people sell?
Do you know that Sterling Products and Banks DIH produce a special ice cream, apart from their regular low price variety that is as comparable to any Nestle product? Two litres of Nestlé’s 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 in the supermarket and ask for a two-litre tub of “cookies and cream” ice cream from Sterling and from Nestlé’s and you will 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 kids to school.
Do you know the Beharry group of companies makes several varieties of pasta that is even better than many of the imported types? Go in the supermarkets and you will see a plethora of varieties of imported pasta. People have to be buying them, why then would the supermarkets keep having them.
I have watched how the era of pride in one’s country and pride in the colour of one’s skin have gone out of the window, maybe gone forever. Here is the sick part of the return of the colonial mentality in Guyana. There are humans in this country who will kill you if you make a flippant remark about their race. But go to the supermarkets and see what is inside their trolleys – all the items that the White countries manufacture.
Six years ago, I did three columns of how 99.99 percent of the advertisements in all the newspapers, on television, and the artwork on the exterior of commercial vehicles carried images of White people. I was so incensed that I did a column on a billboard I saw on Everest Cricket Club. It had a White man in a three-piece suit calling on you to do business with Hand-in-Hand insurance company.
There has been not even a letter in any of the newspaper from Indian and African cultural organizations condemning this cultural/racial contempt. Is there an explanation in psychology? I think there is. Dark-skin Indians and African Guyanese at a very weird level may be satisfied with their Fanonian imprisonment, meaning that they see light complexion as superior.
I have never seen in the print media or on television, a Hindu person who has voiced concern for the exclusion of brown or dark complexion actors in Bollywood movies. I did a column on that and one of Guyana’s most prominent medical doctors, who is brown skin, met me one day on East Street, and said, “Freddie, I read what you wrote about the Bollywood movies.” Then with a smile broader than the Essequibo River, he said, “but me like them like dat.” This was the Fanonian mind at work (adjective taken from the name of the West Indian political theorist and psychiatrist – Franz Fanon). I feel sorry for this country and its people but I love them both. All I could do is urge them to buy and eat local. It helps the economy.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)