Island protests evoke slave past

POINTE-A-PITRE, Guadeloupe (AP) — Protests that have nearly shut down the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are not just about demands for lower prices and higher wages: For demonstrators, they are a battle against the vestiges of slavery.

Afro-Caribbean islanders — most of whose forebears toiled in the sugarcane fields under the yoke of slavery more than 160 years ago — not only resent France’s handling of the global economic crisis, they have long resented that slaveholders’ descendants control the economy on both islands.

This resentment against the primarily white, elite slaveholder descendants, known as bekes (bay-KAY), has lent an especially sharp edge to weeks of demonstrations that at times have erupted in gunfire, arson, looting and the death of one activist in Guadeloupe.

Protesters in Martinique also have rejected the bekes, who own most industries in Martinique but represent only about 1 percent of the island’s 401,000 residents.

Deep economic and social disparities divide France from its overseas possessions: Unemployment in Guadeloupe is about 23 percent, compared with 8 percent on mainland France, and 12 percent of islanders live in poverty, compared with 6 percent of mainlanders, according to the most recent statistics.

Also, islanders living in mainland France are relegated to low-level jobs and are absent from senior positions in business, the military and government, revealing a “color fracture in French society,” said Patrick Lozes, head of the Representative Council of Black Associations.