2021 is the worst colonised Christmas since Independence

Dec 25, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – What was Christmas like when I was growing up in colonial Guyana? The business folks were mostly Portuguese merchants who imported foreign goods that we bought because there were no local alternatives.
Independence came in 1966 and both Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham and Opposition Leader, Cheddi Jagan sought to cultivate a culturally Third Worldist outlook among Guyanese. Both of these two gigantic leaders at the time advanced the paradigm of an alternative to western models that would rely on local industries.
Simultaneous with the rise of the emphasis on local industries in Guyana, there emerged in the global halls of academia, the persuasive theory of Core and Periphery in global capitalism. Brilliant professors in economics around the world argued that the new independent countries should disengage from the world capitalist system because it is inherently disadvantageous to Third World producers.
The books on the theory of Core and Periphery were phenomenally persuasive and one of its best productions was from Guyanese UG professor, Clive Thomas. His 1974 magnum opus was: “Dependence and Transformation: The Economics of the Transition to Socialism.”
Two years later, I became a research assistant to Thomas to earn a living when I was expelled from UG for refusing to do compulsory national service. I mean it when I say I am still heart broken when I think of how much I politically and academically admired Thomas. Today, words cannot describe my revulsion of him.
Out of this new economic paradigm in global economics came an effort by the UN body named UNCTAD to sort out the unevenness of global trade. This was because Third World leaders, led by Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, were insisting on a transformation of global trade.
Out of the efforts of UNCTAD was born the North-South Dialogue where leaders from the capitalist core and the Third World periphery would meet to sort things out. The first one was held in Cancun, Mexico. President Burnham represented CARICOM. He took centre stage because of his satirical appearance. He wore high top purple boots that reached almost to his knees, purple shirt-jac and purple trousers.
I was at the University of Toronto doing my doctorate and my friends ran into the lunch room shouting, “Fred, Fred look your president.” It was clear to many that by 1982, Burnham was losing his marbles. He died less than two years after; a death that literally saved Guyana from a horrible descent into the chasm of Hades. Two years before, he had ordered the assassination of Clive Thomas’ best friend, Walter Rodney.
Guyana and the Third World have declined in incredible ways since the crazy dress style of Guyana’s insane dictator, Forbes Burnham. Burnham was on track with his “buy local campaign” but it failed because people hated him so much that they ignored the many virtues in many of his policies. Why would you respect your president who goes riding on horseback in south Georgetown pelting cassava sticks at people and telling them to plant them?
Today, Guyana is perhaps the leading country in the Third World where local products are scorned like a rotting animal on the parapet. What I saw this season is nothing short of the pathetic psychology of a nation in the 21st century.
I saw a line that was long and winding that it looked like the stallion that reached for the sun in that beautiful hit song of the 1970s, “Could it Be Magic” Barry Manilow (Donny Summers has a phenomenal disco version of that song that you should dance to on Old Year’s Night). It was at an outlet on Campbell Avenue between Middleton Street and Sheriff Street. This place sells only imported fruits and vegetables. What a sad, tragic tale of lost souls.
What I saw in the supermarkets this Christmas season began to tantalise my mind intensely. Is this the mentality of a billion Indians in India and the continent of Africa? Do they frown on local fruits and vegetables the way we Guyanese do here?
There can be nothing more pathetic this Christmas season for me to watch than that line on Campbell Avenue and how ordinary Guyanese (not only the wealthy ones) shopped in the supermarkets. The days of Burnham, Jagan, North-South Dialogue, buy local campaign are dead and gone.
Let me end with an attempt at satire. On Christmas Eve, I was at the Plaisance Market buying fruits when a gentleman came up to me selling neatly packed black-pudding. I read the label and it said, “Made in Arizona, USA.” I exclaimed: “what!” That is the state in the US where black-pudding man lives. That is my nickname for David Hinds.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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