the key dates of the movement against the high cost of living

An agreement was signed this Wednesday, October 16 in Martinique between large retailers, elected officials and the State to reduce prices by an average of 20% on 6,000 food products on the island. A decision which does not satisfy the members of the RPPRAC, at the origin of the mobilization launched on September 1, the first of the key dates of the protest movement against the high cost of living.

A mobilization against the high cost of living began on September 1 at the call of the Rally for the Protection of Afro-Caribbean Peoples and Resources (RPPRAC), notably temporarily blocking the Grand Maritime Port of Martinique.

The RPPRAC, led by Rodrigue Petitot known as “the R”, is calling for food prices to be aligned with those of mainland France, even though they are 40% higher.

After demonstrators were dislodged by the police near the port with tear gas, the first tensions broke out in Fort-de-France on the night of September 2 to 3, during which six police officers were lightly injured by gunshots and projectiles.

Peaceful actions take place: snail operations, distribution of red ribbons, fictitious races where foodstuffs are abandoned at the checkout because of their price…

The prefect of Martinique Jean-Christophe Bouvier is organizing a first round table on the 5th with major retailers, institutions and representatives of the RPPRAC. Without result.

New evenings of violence, mainly in Fort-de-France, from September 13, with roadblocks blocking major arteries, fires, projectile throwing or shooting against the police.

On the 14th, the Fort-de-France police station was targeted by gunfire while, on the 17th, six police officers were injured by shotgun blasts. uA young person is injured and taken to the hospital emergency room. A McDonald’s restaurant was set on fire and a Carrefour hypermarket invaded by protesters.

On September 18, a curfew was decreed in the districts of Fort-de-France most affected by violence between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Despite this, the violence continued over the following nights. A partial ban on demonstrations was taken by the prefect in Fort-de-France and in three other municipalities on the island on September 20.

The eighth Republican Security Company (CRS) was called to reinforce the island on September 21. The sending of this elite unit, specialized in the fight against urban violence and created in 2021, is perceived by some as a provocation, because no republican security company had been authorized to intervene in Martinique since the bloody riots from December 1959.

At the same time, several unions from different sectors of activity joined the protest and organized “convoys against the high cost of living” or launched strikes.

A tax on imported goods will be removed for thousands of essential products, the local authority of Martinique announced on September 25.

Renewed tensions at the beginning of October: four mobile gendarmes were slightly injured by gunfire on the night of October 7 to 8.

A “Martinique île mort” operation is organized on October 9, at the call of around thirty political and trade union organizations.

On the night of the 9th to the 10th, more than twenty gendarmes were injured, stores looted and burned, and barricades reinstalled. A man with a gunshot wound, found by the gendarmes during an intervention against the looting of a shopping center, died in hospital on October 10.

A nighttime curfew and a ban on demonstrations are decreed across the entire island. Demonstrators invade the runway at Fort-de-France airport on the 10th, forcing planes to be diverted to Guadeloupe.

On October 16, at the end of a seventh round of negotiations, an agreement was reached, particularly with distributors, to reduce “20% on average“the prices of 54 product families corresponding to the most consumed food products in Martinique.

However, it was not signed by the RPPRAC which demands a reduction in “all food“and called for”continue the movement“.