Marine Le Pen may not have won the French presidency, but she caused a shock in the French Caribbean and Guiana, where the mostly Black electorate voted for her by a wide margin. In the second round run-off on 24 April, the far-Right candidate trounced Emmanuel Macron locally, receiving 70% in Guadeloupe and 61% in both Martinique and French Guiana.
When did this all start? Was it in July 2020, when young people waving red green and black flags – Rouge, Vert, Noir in French, hence the name “RVN” – removed a series of colonial-era monuments? Or was it in 2009, when Martinique and Guadeloupe saw a general strike, in protest at la vie chère and pwofitasyon, the cost of living and exploitation? It was certainly not obvious back then that people would vote en masse for Le Pen. But this time, they did.
Double consciousness
Geographically speaking, Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana lie somewhere between France and the Global South. Their feet are in the Caribbean and South America but their heart is in France. Or if not the heart, then the head: they are departments of France and their inhabitants are French citizens, living in a love-hate relationship with the motherland, which they still call by its colonial name: la Métropole. The slogan of the 2009 protests, péyi-a sé pa ta yo (“our country is not theirs”) cast the relationship as one of ‘us and them’ – much like Bob Marley did when he sang “me nuh know how we and dem ago work this out, but someone will have to pay.”
