Remnants of French empire feel economic meltdown pain

Christine Pochot buys croissants in her corner bakery, votes in French elections and is as French as her president – but lives a hemisphere away, on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

The island’s primary schools use the same textbooks, the currency is the euro and city halls are engraved with “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.”

But lately weeks of strikes and outbursts of rioting on Guadeloupe and nearby Martinique have disrupted the Caribbean calm. The economic crisis is pushing up prices of staples that already cost more than on the French mainland and reviving the resentment of the mixed-race majority toward the French, who still run much of the islands’ economies.

The Caribbean unrest is a big challenge. France is used to strikes and ethnic unrest on its European mainland, but torched cars and trashed stores on its far-flung islands are stoking worries of contagion to other overseas holdings or even to disenfranchised housing projects on the mainland that saw similar destruction in 2005.

“We need a new conversation with the mainland,” Pochot said during a visit to see family in Paris.

In Guadeloupe’s main city, Pointe-a-Pitre, Judith Leborgne agreed. She said the 400,000 islanders should have more control over their economy.

“We could tend better to our own affairs,” she said. “They said they were going to send a negotiator to tell us what is good for us. But they aren’t the ones who should tell us what we need.”