Since the beginning of September, Martinique has been shaken by demonstrations accompanied by violence, mainly due to soaring food prices. The cost of living, a reality, a recurring subject in overseas territories. Report from Rivière-Salée
From his garden chair, planted on the Nationale 5, Terry filters the cars with a nod of his hood, his hands resting on an iron bar.
Behind him, the flames tear through the Martinican night, in these times of struggle against the high cost of living. The 19-year-old boy has been holding this filter dam at the entrance to Rivière-Salée, a town near Fort-de-France, since Wednesday with a few dozen other young people.
In recent days, the island, where the price of food is 40% higher than in France (like Guadeloupe), has been living under a nighttime curfew.
It is the scene of a sudden outbreak of fever while a protest movement has shaken Martinique since September 1. Around twenty gendarmes have been injured since October 8, according to the gendarmerie.
“We’re fed up. We fight against the high cost of living but we don’t care“, judge on the night of Saturday to Sunday Terry (who, like all the roadblockers, refused to give his last name), salesman recently returned from France, where he lived for several years. “In mainland France, with 200 euros, your shopping cart is armored… “, he notes in the night humidity.
In Martinique, “you have a shopping bag that isn’t even full” for this price, Ketsia cuts him off, armed with a baseball bat.
On the roadblock where household appliances, furniture, an overturned car wreck and everything that could be recovered are burning, the 23-year-old young woman orders motorists – between two arguments – to turn around, unless there is a medical reason. .
“We’re tired of our parents paying 400 euros when there’s nothing on the table“at the checkout,” says this construction worker, in a tank top and hood that only shows her eyes.
“Mom, she works and the money she receives is not even enough to pay the rent, electricity, water and groceries. She can’t provide for us“, says a 20-year-old electrician requesting anonymity, also with his face masked, equipped with a wooden stick and wearing a mini pink backpack.
He summarizes, while a roadblocker revives the smoking mass of a jet of gasoline contained in a bottle of water: “It’s sad (to get there), to break, to burn. But we have to do damage to be heard. They need to hear us“.
Far from the roadblocks, dialogue began. But the previous night, a sixth negotiation meeting between state and local actors ended without agreement on lowering the cost of living. The prefecture reports progress “notables“before the next meeting, scheduled for Tuesday.”There can be no serious development, no serious discussion, in a climate of violence that would set in“, underlined for his part the Minister responsible for Overseas Territories François-Noël Buffet.
After a few nights of riots, looting and fires, the streets of Martinique regained relative calm between Saturday and Sunday under the Caribbean storm, despite invisible police forces and smoking dams. The latter are limited to sensitive areas on the outskirts of the capital.
At Quatre-Croées, a crossroads in Saint-Joseph north of Fort-de-France, the road junction remains completely under the control of men ready to fight, without the police attempting to clear this axis departmental erected in a fortified place by machines of all kinds and burning cars. “We hold the post. Until they take into account our demands on the cost of living“, explains on condition of anonymity a hooded and gloved man, among dozens of others equipped with bottles of vodka and projectiles.
The streets and roads, still lined with charred cars, blocked here and there with supermarket carts and other pallets, are not cleared either, even in the absence of rioters.
To mount the dams, one object is particularly popular: the refrigerator.
In Rivière-Salée, where the roadblockers claim to be responding to the instructions of the RPPRAC, the movement behind the mobilization against the high cost of living, Ketsia, the construction worker, watches a fridge burn. She lifts her hood, breathes. “The end of an empty fridge“.
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