Caribbean unrest has roots in slavery

Feb 22, 2009 1 min read

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 no less than a battle against the vestiges of slavery.

Afro-Caribbean islanders – most of whose forbears 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.