there would therefore be no need to speak of humiliation

So therefore, there would be no culprit. Nobody would be responsible in the West Indies for having massively spread on banana plantations for more than twenty years (1972-1993) chlordecone, a carcinogenic pesticide also having harmful effects on the nervous system, reproduction, the hormonal system, the functioning of certain organs (liver, kidney, heart, etc.) and infant development.

No one would be responsible for having continued to pour hectoliters of this substance into the ground despite the ban in the United States from 1976 on producing and selling this same poison, then a global alert issued in 1979 by the WHO. No one would be responsible for the derogation allowing the massive spraying of banana plantations with this poison to continue until 1993, when its use in France was banned in 1990 and its production by Brazil, the last country to manufacture it, stopped. since 1991.

S-metolachlor, glyphosate, chlordecone… Dangerous and sometimes still authorized pesticides

Each Antillean has three orders of magnitude in mind: the pesticide will remain in the soil, the rivers and the sea of ​​the two islands, that “with flowers” and that “with beautiful waters”, for about seven hundred years. 90% of the Caribbean population is infected. The Caribbean population has the highest cancer rate in the world.

But on January 2, seventeen years after the first complaints of poisoning, the judges of the Paris court, in their freedom of decision, found no room for interpretation of criminal law allowing the prosecution of those responsible and ordered a dismissal. Neither the large planters nor the State thus deserve to be held guilty for what the judges nevertheless called a “health scandal” and an “environmental damage whose human, economic and social consequences (…) will affect for many years the daily life of the inhabitants”.

We can say that the two judges did their job by sticking to a restrictive interpretation of the law. They did their job, but did not do justice. Because nothing will prevent the West Indians and many outside observers from thinking that another decision was possible. A decision allowing the victims to feel recognized instead of being violently rejected in the desert of the dismissal. A decision that would have made it possible to believe the State and the planters capable, in a burst of humanity, of recognizing themselves guilty and responsible for the anguish that has gripped the West Indians for more than forty years.

Martinique and Guadeloupe are two of the richest places in the world with fresh water. Now imagine the inhabitants no longer daring to drink this contaminated water and having to buy liters of water in plastic bottles every day. Imagine that while the WHO recommends that women breastfeed their newborns, in the West Indies, mothers are advised not to do so because they could contaminate their baby, if it is not already done in utero.

Imagine that hundreds of women hesitate, in this context, to even conceive a child. Think of the disarray of fishermen who are forbidden to practice their trade because of water pollution, of farmers who are ordered to destroy their crayfish pots or their vegetable production because the land, apparently so fertile, now bears death. And against all current trends, try to portray the anguish of simply feeding on fresh local fruits.

The nightmare seems endless: thirty years after the cessation of use of chlordecone, the current use of glyphosate eats away at the land so well that it brings up the doses of chlordecone deeply buried, intensifying its deleterious effect.

On the other hand, justice has allowed the large landowners responsible for these spreadings to be compensated for having made their land unsuitable for any cultivation. These great compensated landowners are the descendants of the slave families who were compensated for having lost, in 1848, the privilege of enslaving other human beings in their plantations.

This is what is called an annoying habit of France to mistreat an entire population. Population which, century after century, transmits not only the physical after-effects of the mistreatment to which it is subjected, but also the psychological after-effects.

This is what is called a constant diet of humiliation. And the State continues to humiliate since, recently, the Minister of the Interior declared with confidence that these populations owed everything to the Republic, which would have generously freed their ancestors who were enslaved. Thus deliberately ignoring the thousands of resistance fighters who died in this long struggle for freedom.

Referring to his dear Martinique, Aimé Césaire said in essence that he lived in a failed paradise. And that it was much worse than hell.

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