Anything but Sugar!

Dec 28, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
It is more than disappointing to see the current administration persisting with sugar, an industry that produced nothing but suffering to our ancestors, and to this day still creates an ethos and atmosphere that contributes to social problems from alcoholism, suicide and domestic abuse.
King Sugar was feudal from its very outset, the plant species an impostor brought over by Columbus himself from the Canary Islands. It required massive amounts of labour, shipped first from Africa and then from India to sustain its production here. Hundreds of thousands perished or lived shortened lives, all for the profits of absentee planters and for the sweet teeth of European ladies sipping tea in their drawing rooms.
King Sugar saw the confiscation of Amerindian lands along the coast displacing those tribes to the interior, and the creation of a monotonous monoculture that extended to the grim grid-like estate villages that exist to this day.
It established power structures that set the native overseer over his fellow men which explains much of our current behaviour towards each other as a people. Cruelty and coercion reigned in this land for centuries thanks to sugar even as it crowded out the creation of other enterprises that might have developed this nation and raised living standards. It is the original resource curse.
There is nothing good to say about sugar. Like all other institutions of colonialism, 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 compelled to carry cane on their very backs having been trucked to their fields like cattle before dawn.
There is no romanticism here. Save that nostalgia for the descendants of the planter class and their gin gimlets by the estates’ swimming pools.
Sugar was and remains one of the purest forms of capitalist exploitation of the worker and of the colony that was British Guiana, deliberately underdeveloped for the sake of sugar.
And it needs to stop. Not only because not one self respecting parent in this country wants to see their son cut cane, but because financially, it is a bottomless sinkhole. Pouring billions of taxpayers revenues into an industry that has no hope of making a profit is economic insanity.
The far cheaper and more humane way would be to simply give all ex-sugar workers a universal basic income while moving towards selling off the lands first to them and then others for other ventures. For example, at the Wales estate, 1000 acres are now being planted with rice, an industry that is profitable but also offers some dignity to its workers. Cash crops will also be needed to support what will be a growing population in years to come.
Anything but sugar. The current policy is intent on proving a point but it is a fool’s errand and is diverting resources that could be used to better ends while continuing to scar another generation, few of who want anything to do with the cutlass and the scorching sun.
Yours sincerely,
Francis Newton

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