French Guiana – April 3rd, 2017

Long live the rebellion of the exploited!

Let it not stop!
The colonial state and its French occupying forces must be destroyed!
Down with the French V Republic! Down Maastricht!

French Guiana, French overseas department of around 250,000 inhabitants, which borders on the south Brazil and Suriname on the north, functions as a peripheral territory and even belongs to the European Union, but is treated by the Fifth Republic as a true cheap colony.
Unemployment reaches 40% among young people between 15 and 24. Half of these young people are in school and only 12% are in high school. The unemployment rate is 22.3% of the population. The annual incomes are 44% less than the ones in the metropolis. The cost of living is very high; food prices are 45% and housing 20% higher than in France.

Dengue, Chikungunya and zika are commonplace and infant mortality and HIV-related mortality are high. There are only two hospitals and two maternity hospitals. One fifth of the population live far from an emergency service (over 30 minute rides); some women live over 400 km from a maternity hospital and arrive at them in canoes, given the poor state of the roads. Inhabitants of 7 communes (over 22) can only reach emergency centers by helicopters. There are only 24 specialist doctors for every one hundred thousand inhabitants.
This terrible situation pushed the inhabitants of Guyana for two weeks to carry out blockades of roads, barricades, protesting against the life conditions, which they cannot stand any longer. On March 27, the Union of Workers of Guiana voted a general strike, denouncing the territorial problems in matters of health, education, economy, security, housing.
The exploited are attacked by criminals, so far this year there have been 50 homicides, which resulted in the emergence of a group called "the 500 brothers against crime". The bourgeois press points out that this group is the head of this uprising that paralyzed the entire territory.

"The 500 brothers" asks for actions against insecurity, but also for health, education, development and energy. They show up dressed in black and with their faces covered, they say they are not violent and they are not armed. From Monday, March 20, together with another group called Toukans and the Electricity Workers' Union, they blocked the passage to the entrance to the Space Center, of the company Arianespace.
The collective "Toukans" fights against the privatization of the Hospital in Kourou, which was in charge of the Red Cross; it also fights for measures against insecurity. Electricity workers demand jobs to fill vacancies and investments in the sector in a territory where blackouts are happen all the time and where thousands of people do not have electricity.
The exploited people of Guyana, tired of so much misery and exploitation, set up barricades blocking over a dozen strategic roads from the coast of Guyana blocking the entrance to Cayenne, the capital, and looting supermarkets. Air France canceled its two flights and the space station operated by the European company Arianespace had to reschedule the launching of a rocket.

On Sunday, March 26, they opened the barricades to allow inhabitants to get supplies, and thefore shops opened partially.
The government of the Fifth Republic has voted a law about effective equality for this region. However, Guyana is hit by terrible budget cuts, not fulfilling with what they voted, which makes more and more impossible for inhabitants to live.
The exploitation of its maritime resources, of gold that is extracted illegally, the aerospace company that does not pay a concession of sea which would help to finance the territory, indicates the plundering and pillage of part by the metropolis, France.
With the excuse that the collective “The 500 brothers” covered their faces, the government refused to discuss with people like that. After days of blockades, barricades, they had to sit down to negotiate with them, and even ministers traveled to do it, as the several sectors in struggled demanded. Since the beginning, all the groups had refused to meet with the inter-ministerial figures that Hollande sent to negotiate, because they did not trust that they could not give them anything but empty promises, like an aid of 60 million € for Guiana ... that still have not arrived despite being voted. Finally Ministers arrived to negotiate with the Guianese but up to date they have not reached any agreement.

In France, all parties are in their electoral campaign and use the dramatic situation of the exploited ones of Guiana in their own benefit. Mélechon (Left Party) expresses his "solidarity" with the fight of the Guianese people; as does the presidential candidate of the SP Hamon, saying that "Guiana has a right to equality and security." What a shameless! If his government and himself as deputy are the ones who vote cutting the budget and delaying the deposits!
And can we say about the NPA? Its "worker" candidate Poutou showed his "solidarity" raising the right to self-determination of Guiana. But how can self-determination be achieved without raising the armament of the exploited to defeat the colonial state and expel the troops of French occupation? The solidarity expressed by the NPA is a formality because they have a social-Chauvinist and peaceful policy before the national liberation of the colonies. NPA and other imperialist social currents do not organize or articulate their program around the struggle for the national liberation of Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and other French colonies; by not demanding their unconditional and immediate liberation without indemnification of all the French colonies that French imperialism keeps them under its dominion. They do not fight for the defeat of the French imperialist troops of occupation and their expulsion of all French colonies.
And they are against Point 8 of Conditions of Admission to the Communist International (of Trotky and Lenin): Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International has the obligation of exposing the dodges of its 'own' imperialists in the colonies, of supporting every liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds, of demanding that their imperialist compatriots should be thrown out of the colonies, of cultivating in the hearts of the workers in their own country a truly fraternal relationship to the working population in the colonies and to the oppressed nations, and of carrying out systematic propaganda among their own country’s troops against any oppression of colonial peoples.

They do not give the rebel masses a revolutionary course to succeed. And the exit that they point out to them is that with "the mobilization of the whole of the society of Guiana in the cultural diversity of its components (is what will allow them to reach the victory"). Shameful!
And this is not surprisingly, in 2009/2010 in Guadeloupe and Martinique - France overseas departments- rose against their terrible living conditions, demanding a 200 € salary increase. When the masses there rose up against the "crown," which wanted the masses to pay the bailout they had made with the banks plundering the state, leaving them totally bankrupted; NPA and LO, renegades of Trotskyism, were containment walls of that uprising which had put at the first point of the agenda the seizure of power.
LO takes everything to a union struggle. NPA not only separated the workers’ struggle from the colonies from the ones of the metropolis, who were rebelling as well; but their presidential candidate Besançenot back then traveled to tell overseas departments workers that French taxpayers were not going to pay with their taxes the increase in wages that they demanded, that they should ask for it to the bourgeoisie of the region! And today, consistent with that nefarious policy, they turn a blind eye to the rebellion of the "slaves of the colonies."

We must tell the masses the truth! We must tell them that they will not achieve any conquest while the imperialist bourgeoisie holds power. The exploited of Guiana and the rest of the overseas departments of France have to take to seize power to obtain better life conditions; to get bread, earth, work and wages for the working class and the exploited; to achieve their national independence against the brutal imperialist plunder and pillaging. The masses of French Guiana have to impose the dictatorship of proletariat because only a government of workers, peasants, supported by the generalized armament of the masses, can break with imperialism to expropriate the expropriators. The working class must lead this struggle as leader of the poor peasantry and of the whole oppressed nation.
Only the lackeys of their own imperialism conceal these lessons and do so because they are the best defenders of the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie. So they never denounce them as butchers who crush blood and fire to peoples of the colonies, like Mali, Central Africa, Congo, Algeria and a long etcetera in the tormented Africa. 
A call to unify the struggle with their Guianese brothers and sisters, with the refugees, with the employed and unemployed French working class, as a motion in the trade unions -where NPA has influence- would unify the working ranks with the ones of the colonies and the semi-colonies to confront the imperialist offensive. Thus, a revolutionary general strike of the French and European working class would completely change the course of the struggle of the exploited in Guiana.

They refuse to do so; because they represent labor aristocracy, who looks the struggle of the impoverished masses of the colonies with contempt. Because they do not represent the most exploited sector of the working class, who are the workers in the colonies, the refugees, the unemployed. Divided in isolated struggles, the most exploited sectors of the working class, alone, will not be able to triumph.
But if the French and European working class does not take the demands of the working class of the colonies, the refugees, the most exploited sectors of its class, it can never free itself.
French and European working class together with the organizations that speak in their name, shouting "we are fed up" - as the exploited barricades of Guiana write- must fight alongside with those "slaves of the colonies". Because raising the demands of his brothers, the French working class will be in a better position even to defend their own conquests, which are being swept away by the Fifth Republic! Otherwise, they will be treated just like the exploited of the colonies!

Long live the rebellion of the exploited of French Guiana! Let it not stop!
Nothing will be achieved at the negotiating tables with the French V Republic!
Expropriation of all imperialist property and banks, without compensation under workers' control in France, throughout Europe and in the colonies and semi-colonies! There is the money to get: equal rights to the inhabitants of the metropolis! Work for everyone under the agreement! Equal work, equal pay! Decent housing, right to education! Right to health! Hospitals, free medical care like the people of France!
Against insecurity attacks and repressive forces: self-defense committees to safeguard the lives of the Guiana exploited!
For a workers', peasants' government, based on the self-determination organizations of the armed masses!
For the destruction of the colonial state and defeat the French occupation troops!
Down with the V French Republic! Down Maastricht!

For a Soviet and Socialist Guiana, Guadalupe and Martinique and other independent colonies in the road of conquering a Federation of Socialist Soviet Republics of Central America and the Caribbean.

 

Ana Negri