In Guadeloupe and Martinique, the slaves are rising up
Let them not to stop their fight!
Revolutionary general strike!
Out with the French imperialism occupation troops!
The working class and the impoverished masses in Guadeloupe Island, a French colony, are up in arms. With roadblocks, burning down cars, barricades by health, hospitality, restaurant workers, by firemen, teachers and also the workers of Arcelor Mittal, which have been on strike for nearly two months, the exploiters express they hatred against this French imperialism regime of enslavers. In some towns, they set on fire banks; there have been lootings and even a policeman was set on fire. During the night, the neighbourhoods youth stood up to the police, so Guadeloupe’s prefecture had to impose a curfew between 6 pm to 5 am.
Since November 15, a general strike has been called by a collective of unions, in whose first line there are the firemen and health personnel. And in Martinique Island, since November 22, 17 unions have called for a general strike too.
The slaves are rising against their enslavers. Long live the struggle of the workers and impoverished masses of Guadeloupe and Martinique!
This struggle takes place facing the mandatory vaccination (to have a “health pass” to be able to work) which was imposed in Guadeloupe at the same time that in the metropolis, when the vaccination rate in the island, for adults over 18 years, is 46% and in France is 91%. The spark that lit the fuse was the 560 furloughs of health workers. The unions were negotiating a protocol with the government, but in late September, the French government broke away from those negotiation rounds and imposed the mandatory vaccination. This caused the rage of the workers, which took to the streets and are truly marching against the brutal unevenness imposed by the French imperialist bourgeoisie. Their living conditions are terrible, and for fifty years they have had to endure the use of a toxic carcinogenic insecticide in the banana production, with the endorsement of the authorities and ministries.
In Guadeloupe, 34% of the population lives below the official poverty line, the unemployment rate is 21%, and this was worsened during the pandemic, especially among informal workers and the youth. The food prices are 33% more expensive than in the metropolis and bread prices have gone up 68%.
For months, there has been no electricity, no public lights, garbage collection is sporadic, there are water supply cuts and the people has to walk along the highway until reaching places where there’s water.
The exploited are rising against all these.
As it is usual, the repression foces didn’t take long in showing up. But they were faced by the protestors and so the “democratic French republic” sent more gendarmerie to crush the heroic actions of the revolted ones.
And also it decreed a curfew in Guadeloupe, from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m., between Friday 19 and Tuesday 23 in November.
67 people were arrested in one week. Last Sunday night, the Republic prosecutor said 30 people were on trial immediately for allegedly participation in “urban violence”. On Monday 22, there was confirmation of the news of a weapons and ammo robbery at the coast guard station in Pointe-a-Pitre customs.
On November 26, the Macron government and the Health and Overseas ministries, in a joint press release, decided to delay the full implementation of the mandatory vaccination for health personnel until December 31.
As in 2009, the renegades of Trotskyism are at the feet of their imperialist bourgeoisie
In France, all the parties are in electoral campaign because of the presidential 2022 elections. Also, the NPA (New Anticapitalist Party), whose “worker candidate” Poutou came out to stand in “solidarity” with Guadeloupe and Martinique. In their statement, they say that the exploited of the Antilles should solve their problems fighting against local bourgeoisie. They had raised this anti-Marxist social-imperialist position before, in 2009, when the masses rose up against the imperialist oppression, protesting against their terrible living conditions, demanding a 200 euros wage raise. At that time, the NPA was one of the contention walls of that uprising that had put the taking of power at the order of the day. The NPA not only separated the struggle of the workers of the metropolis, which were on struggle, from those of the colonies, but also, back then, its presidential candidate, Besancenot, travelled to the isles to tell those workers overseas that the French taxpayers shouldn’t pay the wage increase they were demanding with their own wages, and so people in the isles should demand the rise to the regional bourgeoisie! So much for the class solidarity of this current! Being consistent with this notorious policy in defense of the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the French labour aristocracy, today, in their statement of “solidarity”, they say “The problems posed by the great struggle of 2009 have not been solved and local Medef (French bosses) never felt obliged to apply the 200 euro bonus for cost of living to all the employees.”
On the other hand, Combat Ouvriere (Workers Combat), sister current of Lutte Ouvriere (Workers Struggle), are now raising, as they did in 2009, a set of 32 demands for Guadeloupe, which was submitted to the government, where they demand wages, pensions, health protocols, drinkable water, special measures for teachers, health personnel and firemen, as if this were just a mere economic struggle and not a direct clash against the French colonialism.
What the working class and the impoverished masses of the isles need that today are rising against imperialism once again is a revolutionary path for victory!
The exploited of Guadeloupe, Martinique and the rest of the overseas departments of France need to storm the heavens to get the best living conditions, to get bread, land, work and wages for the working class and the exploited, to get their national independence against the brutal imperialist subjugation and plunder. No trust in the agreements with the Fifth Republic! In 2009, victory was not reached because of the betrayal of the reformist social-imperialist leaderships. Today, once again, none of their demands will be met if they don’t take power and expropriate the French transnational companies that plunder the colonies and plunge them into misery, without compensation and place them under workers control.
It is about centralizing and preparing a decisive combat, a revolutionary general strike to defeat the colonial state, the government and the regime of the French Fifth Republic, setting up self-determination organs to unify the workers, the unemployed, the agricultural workers, the immigrants, the struggling youth, the impoverished masses. And to organize armed committees, per factory, plantation, neighbourhood, region, to expel the French occupation troops and dissolve local PD.
Let’s expel the occupation troops of the Frech Fifth Republic from Guadeloupe, Martinique and all the overseas territories!
It is about their conquering a workers and peasants government, supported in the generalized arming of the masses, to break with imperialism and expropriate the expropriators. The working class has to be at the head of this struggle, as the leader of the poor peasants and the entire oppressed nation.
The French working class in the metrópolis has an obligation with their class brothers and sisters, the exploited in the colonies
The French working class of the metropolis has a task of honor with its class brothers and sisters of the over-exploited colonies; it needs to take in their hands, as the first demand, the liberation of the colonies, because a nation cannot liberate itself that oppresses other nations.
Revolutionary Third and Fourth Internationals said that the working class would have no chance of conquering the revolution in the imperialist countries without unifying their struggle with that of their class brothers and sisters from the colonies and semi-colonies against oppression and domination by imperialism.
Neither the NPA, nor LO or any other current of the former Trotskyists is organizing or articulating its program around the struggle for national liberation of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guayana and other French colonies. They don’t demand the unconditional and immediate liberation without asking any compensation of all the colonies that French imperialism keeps under control. Likewise, they are not for the defeat of the French imperialist occupation troops and their expulsion of all the French colonies.
In the 21 Conditions of Admission to the Third International, point 8 reads: “8. In the Colonial question and that of the oppressed nationalities, it is necessary an especially distinct and clear line of conduct from the parties of countries where the bourgeoisie possesses such colonies or oppresses other nationalities. Every party desirous of belonging to the Third International should be bound to denounce without any reserve all the methods of “its own” imperialists in the colonies, supporting not in words only but practically a movement of liberation in the colonies. It should demand the expulsion of its own imperialists from such colonies, and cultivate among the workmen of its own country a truly fraternal attitude towards the working population of the colonies and oppressed nationalities and carry on a systematic agitation in its own army against every kind of oppression of the colonial population.”
These currents have long split away from revolutionary Marxism.
Ana Negri - Luisa Campos
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