Let Them Eat Aluminium

by Burton Sankeralli

“But they are poor people”… the argument goes. They ought to be thankful for a smelter, for “development”. And those who oppose are hypocrites.
Well for the record, I have met the people of the Southern peninsula and they are NOT poor. They are richly blessed with the wealth of the land, creative intelligence and deep community spirit. All they ask is for the basic respect and support that ought to be accorded all citizens of this land and they will work wonders
Instead this regime believes they deserve an aluminium smelter, this regime believes they deserve “industrialization”. This counts as progress. The eternal ideology of the house slaves who run our country.
If the powers that be invested a fraction of the resources in our communities that they do in these wasteful schemes that only get the big boys rich then perhaps this country really would be a paradise.
Instead we get smelters, instead nature is plundered, instead communities from Deep South to East Port of Spain face deportation in their own country, instead farmers are displaced and our food security despoiled, instead savannahs are ruined, instead we get monstrous wasteful white elephants… Or are they Tsunami shelters…hotels… highways … industrial estates… all in the name of “progress”, the house slaves’ desire to be the slavemaster. Well at least they are doing a good job of that.
For anyone’s information, this is not a poor country, we are quite capable of feeding ourselves without resort to this madness. But the regime is merely revealing its contempt for people…. “Let them eat aluminium…”