By Dominique DOMIQUIN
My vaccinated friends and family are pressuring me: «We’re fed up—you have to speak up!»; My anti-vax friends and family are nagging me: «What about you—aren’t you going to say anything?» But speak up to say what?
That we can’t demand that France protect us and at the same time refuse the vaccine offered to all Gauls? That our elected officials in charge of water have misappropriated taxpayer money instead of ensuring we have access to this vital resource? That Prefect GUSTIN—a passing figure we’re told to hate—has made more progress on this issue in 15 months than our elected officials have in 15 years! That DOMOTA is merely imitating the bigwigs GADDARKHAN and RAMASSAMY, who are paralyzing Guadeloupe to blackmail Paris and are now whining about a «hostage situation»? That we can’t display an independence flag on caps, underwear, and T-shirts and then run and hide the moment we’re offered even the slightest glimmer of autonomy? That NOT A SINGLE one of the figures who’ve been muddling through politics in Guadeloupe for 50 years (politicians, ideologues, union leaders, journalists, academics, artists) has the stature or the vision of a head of state? The entire archipelago knows this—and you think they’re unaware of it in Paris?
But, some might say, when people bring up vaccines, you bring up independence—that’s completely unrelated!
No kidding! For 10 days now, our country has been committing suicide by blaming “racist, slave-owning, May ’67, chloredecone, vaccine France.” Except that this time, we don’t even believe it anymore. We’ve had enough! We’re tired of replaying the same old movie. We’re sick of burning our mattresses again over a bedbug. Please, LKP, don’t put 10,000 Guadeloupeans out of work like you did in 2009! We’re not going to demand another 200 euros to burn at the white bosses’ places—the ones we claim to hate—while throwing a wrench in the works of the Black bosses who are struggling to get by. Ladies and gentlemen of the labor unions, COVID is already slowly killing the country, so please, on our knees, we beg you: don’t help us anymore!
Until now, we thought the protesters were healthcare workers and parents who refused to have their pay suspended and were opposed to the vaccine mandate. For the most part, the public didn’t support them but understood their anger and respected their choice. But that was before this fringe group we call «the youth» (how convenient! a wonderfully vague term!) started looting, burning down our homes, extorting honest, hardworking Guadeloupeans, assaulting and robbing nurses, and shooting at our cops with live ammunition. All that for this? To stop us from working, from caring for the most vulnerable, from sending our children to school—for that? For a petty feud between the UGTG and COTELLON, one of the Guadeloupean Black leaders that this very same union has been clamoring for? You asked for a Black leader, and the white guy gave you one—are you going to burn down Guadeloupe just because he doesn’t agree with you? TCHIIIIIP!
Anyway! Any serious anti-colonialist will admit that burning down your own country just because the colonizer is trying to protect the colonized from a global scourge isn’t credible for a second! It’s either tragic or grotesque. Then suddenly, since this pyromaniacal cacophony needs a reason, our elected officials, union leaders, and opinion makers tell us that, in reality, it wasn’t about the vaccine at all but about deeper-rooted problems… They’re trotting out the same old 2009 refrain about «the high cost of living, catching up with the mainland, the failure of departmentalization (except for record champagne sales), we’re being looked down upon,» and blah, blah, blah… The thing is, we’re a little ashamed of the spectacle we’ve put on: sulking over a vaccine that the independent Caribbean is demanding from the UN (or even manufacturing, like Cuba) makes us look like schizophrenics or spoiled children. Meanwhile, it’s unprecedented: the country is on fire, a curfew has been declared, and helicopters are circling all night long, just like in Los Angeles. The French press is already having a field day: The “tropical folks” are going to break the ratings again! If only it could bleed, we’d be selling up advertising space!
Of course, since the country is in turmoil, our “konpè-lapen” elected officials—who’ve been in charge of water and economic development for ages—are going to take advantage of the crisis to beg, uh… demand that France foot the bill. Want to bet they’ll lament that the country is on life support while demanding that we turn up the flow? If I were a journalist, I’d ask them: So this time, are you going to embezzle the money given by the government again to buy your ranches in Santo Domingo, or do you plan to actually put water in the taps? Rumor has it that a certain union leader also owns property in this tax haven—can you give us some names so we know who really loves Guadeloupe? Lucette MICHAUX-CHEVRY’s death took place amid the indifference—if not the total, icy contempt—of a disillusioned population. Do you think her track record of mismanagement, embezzlement, and corruption—particularly regarding water—had anything to do with it? By the way, is a regional or departmental president elected with 80% abstentions after four rounds of voting a legitimate representative—or an unspoken farce? When Pierre-Yves CHICOT said that in the event of a serious crisis in Guadeloupe, these people would have no legitimacy, should we have scoffed or taken him seriously? Besides, right now, just as in 2009, who makes them credible if not the very government they pretend to rail against all year long? We want to establish power in Guadeloupe—fine! But who’s going to run the archipelago? The mayors who are incapable of managing their own towns? Or those facing criminal charges? When will we call for a referendum on autonomy or independence to clarify the situation? When we compare ourselves to Paris, we despair; but when we compare ourselves to the Caribbean, do we take comfort?
But let's get back to the vaccine. Because COVID-19 is mercilessly revealing our true selves to us.
At first, LKP was against the lockdown. Bad call—it saved billions of lives around the world. Then LKP demanded chloroquine from the Gallic druid RAOULT. Bad call—chloroquine fizzled out! Then we were supposed to take those «rimèd razyé» and Dr. JOSEPH’s miracle drug Virapic: boom! bam! 300 Covid deaths and a never-ending stream of obituaries. Only the PHYTOBOKAZ lab made a fat, fat, fat profit off it. Isn’t that right? Even the nationalists admit it in secret! When LUREL says it, RCI censors it! When Jacky DAHOMAY, one of our elders, after having long denounced the government’s failures, tries to address the role of local media in spreading obscurantism, Christelle THEOPHILE, a journalist paid with our tax dollars, shuts him down on Guadeloupe 1ère just like she would any dog. But aside from that, we love Guadeloupe! We love the people of Guadeloupe! We defend the pluralism of ideas and freedom of expression! Ay kwè sa pou yo kriyé’w kwata! If I were a journalist, I’d ask: “Dr. JOSEPH, everyone—except the media—is saying you were among the first to get vaccinated. Those are lies, aren’t they?”
Before I go on, let me make my position clear, comrade: I’m vaccinated. Two doses—and hopefully three soon. I’m free to be vaccinated, just like everyone who isn’t a healthcare worker. That’s the law passed by all our Guadeloupean lawmakers. Besides, rayi chyen, di dan a’y blan: LOSBAR, CHALUS, LUREL, BOREL, and the others have never stopped hammering home the message that people need to get vaccinated. At first, half-heartedly, then more forcefully when Guadeloupe’s morgues were overflowing with Covid-related bodies. Should we blame them for once, when they seem to genuinely care about us? And they aren’t the only ones, in this instance, who deserve our respect:
Patricia BRAFLAN-TROBO. I’m far from agreeing with everything she says, but she had the guts—sorry, the courage—to say, «I’m a nationalist who loves Guadeloupeans who are very much alive, not dead.» She hasn’t forced anyone to get vaccinated, but she is encouraging people to protect the most vulnerable. Why insult her and call her a «white-loving Black woman» or a «fake Guadeloupean» on social media or in our private conversations?
Luc REINETTE, a «white man’s black man»??? Louis THEODORE, a “white man’s black man”? Are they traitors because they’re siding with the “colonial” state on vaccination against a pandemic that’s ravaging the planet? What’s going on here? If the prefect says the sea is salty, does that mean an independence activist has to say the opposite? If ridicule could kill, we’d be dead a thousand times over.
Frantz SUCCAB, who is being called a lackey of capitalist pharmaceutical companies because he dared to ask whether, during the violent confrontation between Gaby CLAVIER and Gérard COTELLON «Do disagreements over methods and approaches to the health crisis justify […] a union representative making death threats against the Director of the University Hospital?» Is asking this question tantamount to betraying Guadeloupe?? It’s like a dream! This isn’t a country anymore—it’s a madhouse…
Over at our cousins’ place, the writer Raphaël CONFIANT—with whom I sometimes clash but whom I respect—has been shouting into the wind for a year now that the people of Martinique must protect themselves. Who is listening to him? Who is encouraging him? Who truly loves his people, for that matter?
Should we believe, as Luc LAVENTURE suggested on November 23 on France-Info, that people from the French West Indies are emotional beings with whom one should not try to reason—unlike white people from mainland France? I’m barely simplifying his remarks. Astonishing! As for the joke that we should be wary of the vaccine because the government has poisoned our land (at the urgent insistence of OUR politicians and OUR farmers—Black, Indigenous, and white)—we’d laugh at it if the situation weren’t so dire.
I’ll tell you why my mom refuses the vaccine: Because she took Mediator for years (a drug prescribed by nice, kind doctors—not “toubabs,” but good, black Guadeloupean doctors), and it ruined her health! It’s as simple as that, brothers! And is she the only one with a real, good reason not to get the shot? I have a friend who’s a nurse and refuses to let anyone inject him with a technology he doesn’t trust. They’re going to cut off his pay. He doesn’t endorse the activists who are shouting everywhere, and he regrets that instead of support from the general public, it was “scum” (his words) who answered the call. He doesn’t understand why public health in Guadeloupe is in such a state of disrepair. He isn’t a separatist; he just returned to his homeland to care for people where he grew up. So, that’s where we stand.
So what do we do? How do we get out of here before anyone gets killed?
Well, I don't know. I'm not a doctor, an epidemiologist, a union organizer, or a politician. I think we’re in deep trouble, and we’ve played a big part in getting ourselves into this mess. Maybe it’s time we started respecting each other and tried to talk things out to get through this, instead of calling each other all sorts of names. It’ll be hard, but I want to believe it’s possible. Just like in every other Caribbean country, our young people—the hard workers, the ambitious ones, the dreamers—are leaving. Mainly because they’re drawn to the world’s major cities, but also because of a certain mindset that turns them off. They’ll tell us straight to our faces one day—that’s for sure! We need to make our country attractive to them. And we must stop belittling those who return to take on leadership roles, calling them traitors, slave-driving managers, or «Bounty» types. No, high standards, rigor, discipline, excellence, and reason—these aren’t just “biten a blan.”.
One last thing: People like Mélenchon, Le Pen, Zemmour, Macron, Jadot, Montebourg, Hidalgo, Pécresse, Bertrand, etc.—who think they’re helping us by trotting out all those self-pitying, victim-mentoring clichés that, admittedly, we’ve been feeding ourselves for years—please don’t come and pour your dirty little oil on our fire! We’ve already been through this in 2009, you bunch of self-serving, hypocritical hyenas! Your own people no longer believe in you, so leave us alone! Thank you, and have a great presidential campaign under the coconut trees!
Dominique DOMIQUIN
An ordinary citizen, an artist who isn't on a fixed salary.
