Dear Editor,
The colourful advertisements for the El Dorado Chutney Masala rum giveaways are an insult to those women and men who have suffered as a result of the rum-drinking culture in Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean.
The prominent displays of ‘official rum’ are also a slap in the face of those who struggle to curb alcohol consumption in Guyana.
What is even uglier, is that there is no shame, no remorse in DDL targeting the rural Indian people. Chutney is one of the products of the rural Indian experience in the Caribbean. Is it so important to the Caribbean, that we will blindly ignore in this review of culture, that rum has to play this dominance? Doesn’t El Dorado have enough prominence already in the lives of those people, especially Chutney lovers, who have suffered through alcohol?
Once again, the government seems to have compromised on a commitment by the Ministry of Health to review alcohol advertising and the use of private sector funds to promote alcohol use. Surely the Indian supported government and the El Dorado sellers know that there is no such thing as drinking responsibly for many of the people. Ambiguous messages have not worked.
Or is that because people have started to drink responsibly that El Dorado has to get people to drink more of it?
Caribbean culture is rife with the caricatures of the ‘drunken Indian man.’ Few Indo-Caribbean works exist which do not refer to the problems of alcohol use in the lives of the Indian people in the Caribbean. Instead of using Carifesta X to change the culture, to show that it is possible to enjoy Chutney without rum as many have learnt to do, the government and DDL seem to be helping to reinforce the destruction of more lives of people, especially of Indian origin.
Yours faithfully,
Vidyaratha Kissoon
