The colonial legacy lurking beneath financial unrest within the French Caribbean

For weeks, the French Caribbean island of Martinique has been the positioning of at-times violent protests over excessive residing prices and worsening financial situations. And Martinique isn’t alone; within the neighboring French island of Guadeloupe, placing employees stormed the management room of an influence station on Oct. 26, 2024, inflicting a blackout that led to a government-imposed curfew.

Media protection of the unrest has usually centered narrowly on the speedy financial causes. However there’s a for much longer backstory to the protests, one which takes under consideration social and political inequality and the lasting legacy of colonialism within the French Caribbean.

Martinicans, who’re French residents, pay considerably greater costs for items than residents on mainland France, together with 40% extra for meals and 13% extra for well being care.

On the identical time, Martinicans earn considerably much less. About 30% of the island inhabitants falls beneath the poverty line, roughly twice the speed of European France.

With family budgets already tight, the affect of inflation triggered the newest wave of protests, with one other scheduled for Nov. 1.

However present financial difficulties replicate solely the newest illustration of Martinican and Guadeloupean anger over what they really feel is an inequitable relationship to mainland France. Related protests occurred in 2009 and 2021.

Whereas nearly all of demonstrations have been peaceable, this resentment has boiled over in current weeks into violence and vandalism.

Inequality’s colonial roots

The pressures of inflation and a better value of residing are hardly distinctive to the French abroad territories – referred to as “départements” in French. However a protracted historical past of French colonialism complicates the problem for locations like Martinique and Guadeloupe within the Caribbean’s Lesser Antilles, and equally in New Caledonia within the Southwest Pacific, one other website of current protests that centered on independence and illustration for the indigenous Kanak folks.

Direct French colonial rule over Martinique and Guadeloupe started within the seventeenth century and structured the native social system and financial system to primarily profit French financial pursuits. Like many Western European nations, France developed plantation economies by the enslavement and transplantation of Africans. In abroad territories, enslaved folks have been exploited to extract commodities – first sugar, and later bananas and rum.

Early French settlers created a minority white ruling class in these colonies. And their descendants, referred to as “békés,” grew to become the dominant power of a deeply inegalitarian society.

Regardless of France’s abolition of slavery in 1848, these wealth and energy gaps endured for generations, with a lot of Martinique’s property and enterprise pursuits right this moment nonetheless concentrated in a number of palms – lots of them related to the unique béké households. For instance, certainly one of France’s wealthiest family-owned companies Groupe Bernard Hayot dominates the native market in a variety of sectors, together with agriculture, vehicles and retail.

From colonialism to claims of neocolonialism

Folks in Martinique and Guadeloupe are extremely conscious of their colonial previous, and it informs a lot of their current resistance to the excessive value of residing on the islands. Martinicans and Guadeloupeans have confronted ongoing social, financial and environmental disparities with their abroad compatriots. That is regardless of the islands transitioning from colonies to départements in 1946, a transfer that gave the folks of Martinique and Guadeloupe French citizenship and the identical rights as these in mainland France.

At the moment, Martinique and Guadeloupe, with populations of round 342,000 and 375,000, respectively, stay essentially depending on France by subsidies and imported items, in addition to commerce agreements that promote European imports that makes up greater than 80% of the meals provide. This includes items touring for much longer distances – and thus incurring better prices than in the event that they got here by regional commerce with Caribbean or Latin American nations.

Furthermore, because of the transformation of the islands into monocrop plantations throughout the colonial period, it’s tough for native farmers to provide sufficient items for themselves.

Compounding the difficulties of home manufacturing are recurrent native grievances over the rampant use of pesticides, which has impacted each fishing and agriculture within the French Caribbean, with sure zones now off-limits for fishing.

For a lot of a long time, the pesticide chlordecone, recognized in america as Kepone, was extensively used throughout the globe. Whereas banned within the U.S. within the Nineteen Seventies, the pesticide was not formally banned in France till 1990, with an exemption permitted for its use on Martinique and Guadeloupe by 1993. From the Nineteen Seventies to 1993, chlordecone had a very excessive utilization fee within the banana plantations of the French Caribbean.

Because of runoff into water sources, roughly 90% of the inhabitants of the 2 islands take a look at constructive for chlordecone of their blood. Charges of prostate most cancers, that are linked to the carcinogenic pesticide, are the best on the earth, in accordance with one research.

Because of this, the sentiment for a lot of of those abroad French is that first they have been enslaved, after which they have been poisoned – a state of affairs that many protesters see as an ongoing instance of neocolonialism.

The decolonial perspective

Given the legacy of colonialism and its penalties on the standard – and equality – of life in French abroad territories, many protesters have embraced a decolonial strategy. Alongside a rise in discussions round independence, there was a discernible shift within the French Caribbean towards regional collaboration, as seen by Martinique’s government council president Serge Letchimy’s try to combine with the Group of Japanese Caribbean States. This transfer towards a extra self-sufficient and regional financial mannequin goals to offer better autonomy from France and, in so doing, assist reduce the wealth hole.

Echoing this angle, Martinican sociologist Malcom Ferdinand noticed in 2022 that the continuing financial struggles within the French Caribbean “are usually not solely linked to the colonial, slave-making, and patriarchal structure of the fashionable world … [but] they’re, above all else, its penalties.”

A imaginative and prescient of a greater future

As Martinicans and Guadeloupeans proceed to take to the streets, there are indicators that the demonstrations, as they head into their third month, are having an impact.

The French authorities lately established an settlement with personal sector entities concerned in retail in Martinique, aiming to chop the worth of widespread items by 20%.

Whereas many French Caribbean residents will possible view this as a transfer in the best path, I consider it’s unlikely to mollify native want for a extra equitable future. Channeling the views of lots of his fellow abroad French residents, Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau lately argued for better social and environmental reforms to maneuver past the cycle of dependency with Europe.

With out such reform, the French Caribbean, as Chamoiseau writes, will likely be compelled to take care of the “synthetic financial system” established by colonialism, and Martinicans will thus proceed to have “no management over meals safety … or over a future something apart from tragic.”