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"Al-Raee" (الراعي) vegetable-ghee jar
Object/Artifact
A yellow plastic jar with a red screw lid, printed in black with the brand name Al-Raee (الراعي — "the shepherd") in both Arabic and Latin script, surrounded by illustrations of sheep and a shepherd playing a flute. On the reverse, in English: "Made in Iraq. The General Company for Vegetable Oils." The base bears a Bekum mold mark and a "16" cavity number.
2025.7.2
Belonged to the household of Vitalina Alfonso Torres.
Vitalina Alfonso Torres collection
2025.7
Meyken Barreto Querol
Jairo Alfonso
Gift
The General Company for Vegetable Oils
Iraq
Middle East
Maker: Product of The General Company for Vegetable Oils (الشركة العامة للزيوت النباتية), an Iraqi state-owned enterprise; "Al-Raee" is its brand. The jar (container) was blow-molded on Bekum equipment — the base mark refers to the German blow-molding machinery maker Bekum, not to the product's manufacturer. Date: No explicit date on the jar. As the output of an Iraqi state vegetable-oils enterprise, it belongs to the era of Iraq's nationalized food industry (broadly 1970s–1980s for this packaging style)
Body: "الراعي" / "AL-RAEE"; "سمن نباتي" (vegetable ghee, apparent) with shepherd-and-sheep illustrations; reverse: "MADE IN IRAQ / THE GENERAL COMPANY / FOR VEGETABLE OILS." Base (molded): Bekum mark (oval logo) and "16" (cavity/mold number).
jar, cap
Plastic
Materials: Molded plastic (jar body, likely HDPE) with a separate red plastic screw lid; printed (screen/pad-printed) lettering and imagery. Technique: Blow-molded plastic jar (Bekum machinery) with a molded screw-cap closure; surface-printed label graphics.
Good
Vitalina Alfonso Torres
owner
Havana
Cuba
Caribbean
Central America
consumption
Bekum is a Berlin-based company founded in 1959 in West Berlin that designs and designs builds extrusion blow moulding machines to produce plastic hollow containers. The mark indicates the jar was blow-moulded on a Bekum machine, meaning the container itself was manufactured using West German technology, while the contents were produced by an Iraqi state enterprise.
According to oral testimony, Al-Raee ghee arrived in Cuba not through commercial trade but as a direct personal donation from Saddam Hussein in appreciation for the health treatment he received from Cuban doctors. Cuba’s friendly relations with Iraq dated back to the Non-Aligned Movement meeting held in Cuba in 1979, and Castro provided doctors to perform back surgery on Saddam Hussein. If true, this jar is one of the more unlikely diplomatic objects in the collection: a personal gift between two of the Cold War’s most defiant leaders materialized in a kitchen staple.
Maker/brand: The General Company for Vegetable Oils was an Iraqi state industrial enterprise; "Al-Raee" (the shepherd) ghee, with its pastoral shepherd-and-flock imagery, was one of its consumer brands of samn nabati (vegetable ghee).