When Barack Obama was elected US President over a month ago, the French satirical journal Le canard enchaîné published a picture of the new leader with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy. The famous slogan of the former, ‘Yes we can’, was pithily juxtaposed with Sarkozy’s rhyming imitation ‘Yes je crâne!’ (Yes I boast!).
The accession of the first black president in US history sparked off a series of lively debates in the French media on the question of racial and cultural diversity. Could France follow the American example and elect a black president? What measures are needed to address the question of race and socio-economic equality?
France’s historical cupboard contains many restless skeletons, most notably the legacy of its African and Caribbean colonies. Serious discussion of French atrocities in the Algerian war of independence remains, according to many polemicists, quite mute. However, just as this debate was taking place in the metropolitan salons of Paris, workers in the French Caribbean island of Gaudeloupe were taking to the streets en masse.
Despite the fact that a general strike has paralysed the French island for over a month, reporting on the Gaudeloupe crisis has been surprisingly scanty until now. Yet the signals were given to the Elysée Palace as early as 8 December last year that workers had had enough of exorbitant prices and meagre wages. Paris ignored the warnings. So on 20 January the Committee Against Extreme Exploitation (LPK) launched a general strike, crippling the island’s economy. But it took the French government 10 days before asking the Secretary of State for overseas territories, Yves Jégo, to visit the island in an effort to resolve the crisis.
Since then, the situation on the island has intensified, with riots and larceny on the increase. The procrastination of the French government, coupled with the incendiary comment by the president that the behaviour of the rioters (whom he described as hooligans and delinquents) proves that the conflict can no longer be considered social, has radicalised the animosity of many Gaudeloupeans.
The protesters are demanding a significant increase in their salaries, to which the French Prime Minister François Fillon has proposed an increase of €200 per month. It remains to be seen whether this measure will suffice to quell the flames of discontent that have gripped the island in the past few months.
The Guadeloupe crisis raises serious problems for France and indeed Europe. As a département of France, it is also part of the European Union. However, along with its neighbouring island of Martinique and the South American country of French Guiana, it forms part of the only EU region inextricably linked to the history of slavery. Conquered by France in 1635, it has remained in French possession ever since. And much of the old slave businesses stayed in the possession of white colonial families, whose descendants still have a monopoly on the island’s industries today.
But in spite of their traumatic past, Gaudeloupeans are proud of their French identity. Unlike their neighbours in Haiti who secured independence in 1804, Gaudeloupe sought equality at the heart of the French Republic, creating a concept of identity which transcended geographical and racial boundaries. They represent in this sense the essence of French republicanism, yet the historical wounds of institutionalised racism have been re-opened by what many perceive as the blind indifference of the French government to France’s most impoverished region.
President Sarkozy has confidently declared that there won’t be what he calls an ‘osmosis’ of the Gaudeloupe crisis on the French ‘métropole’. Judging by the sophistication of economic and ideological analysis in the country, he may live to regret his choice of words.
metrogael.blogspot.com / gaelmetro@yahoo.ie
