Martinique: behind the high cost of living, socio-identity tensions

« Les peaceful font la loi »: this cry from the heart of a Martinique woman, who is struggling to make ends meet, sums up the socio-identity tensions experienced by Martinique, a Caribbean island colonized by France in 1635 and still marked by its slavery past.

Of the seven large retail groups, at the heart of criticism of the movement against the high cost of living, three of the first four are owned by békés, these white Creole Martinicans descendants of slave-owning settlers.

The first group in the sector, GBH, founded by Bernard Hayot, an 89-year-old béké, crystallizes criticism.

“Noise does no good, good does not make noise”repeats, in private, Bernard Hayot to justify the discretion of the family whose fortune is estimated at 300 million euros by Challenges magazine, 431st of the 500 richest in France.

On paper, its journey looks like a success story, from a chicken farm in 1960 to GBH, a group with multiple activities, including automobiles, with a turnover estimated at around three billion euros.

“Bernard Hayot, before being a béké, he is a business leader, he is a captain of industry”assures AFP Emmanuel De Reynal, béké advertising executive.

“I don’t see how his +racial+ membership should be taken into consideration”declares the 58-year-old man.

Another pillar of the sector, Patrick Fabre, whose CréO group holds around 20% market share in mass distribution. He says he launched “successfully” its first hard discount store in Martinique, 30 years ago, after three bankruptcies.

“Inhumanity of slavery”

If, for some, these successes are those of entrepreneurs, for others, they are marked by the weight of History, because these white men have one thing in common: their ancestors were slave owners.

In 1635, France colonized Martinique and gave free land to the settlers. More than two centuries followed “slave economy” in a territory which had more than 80% slaves in 1789, recalls the historian Frédéric Régent.

“We inherit a history that is terrible”recognizes Emmanuel De Reynal, who signed in 1998, with several hundred békés, a text denouncing “the inhumanity of slavery”.

But in 2009, Alain Huyghues-Despointes’ comments in a documentary deeply shocked the population.

This Béké industrialist from mass distribution, in his eighties, spoke of “good sides” of slavery and the will of the community to “preserve the race”before presenting his “sincere regrets”.

“He did a lot of harm”regrets Béké accountant José Marraud des Grottes.

After the abolition of 1848, all owners were compensated by the State, approximately 400 francs at the time per slave, who themselves received nothing.

“It is not entirely correct to say that all those who are rich now in Martinique, békés, derive their wealth from the slavery period”affirms Frédéric Régent. Many owners, heavily in debt, used the compensation to pay their creditors.

Between compensation to former slave owners, “colonial bank” to support them and wave of Indian immigration to meet their demand for labor, this period will “padlock the social and economic structures around the ethnic order which was that of the slave system”summarizes Maël Lavenaire, researcher at the London School of Economics.

According to Frédéric Régent, the phenomena of social reproduction have continued.

“You have on one side a former slave who became free who owns nothing”, “on the other, you have someone who has a large plantation (…) who knows how to read, write and can send his children to school”.

For Maël Lavenaire, being born Béké means, even today, having a greater chance of reaching the top of the social ladder than an Afro-descendant of slaves, in Martinique where 27% of the population lives below the threshold. of poverty.

But for Frédéric Régent, it is also a “history of identity construction”: “those who assert their identity as descendants of slaves are also partly descendants of masters” because there was “an absolutely considerable mix”.

“+Békéland+”

In the eyes of a large part of the population, the Béké community – estimated at 3,000 people – has not mixed.

“Go take a trip to François in Cap-Est”suggests Lukombo, self-employed, about this wealthy and hilly residential area where a certain number of them live.

“It’s +békéland+, it has nothing to do with us”says the forty-year-old.

“Békés don’t bother me”says Nicole, a 70-year-old black Martinican, even if she regrets a lack of communication on their part.

“The problem with the békés is that they are perhaps too dominant” et “hold all the levers”says the retiree. “But they happily employ people from Martinique”.

Residing in a town south of Fort-de-France, she does not want to point the finger at the Béké community in the ethnic sense: “We are made of successive contributions, mixtures, crossbreeding”.

Emmanuel De Reynal, who does not live in the Eastern Cape, recognizes “a mode of operation that can be described as community”while ensuring that the “mixture exists”. With others, they intend to create bridges between communities within the association “All Creoles”.

For him, to qualify the békés as “profiteers” on the grounds of the presence of a few at the head of large groups is to fall into a “racist trap”.

“When you have a group which, through its way of life, has cut itself off from the population for decades, all fantasies flourish, since people have no place to meet”estimates for his part Fred Constant, professor of Political Science, evoking a “very strong resentment” of the population with regard to the békés.

A feeling fueled by the scandal of chlordecone pollution, a pesticide used until 1993 in the West Indies for banana plantations, whose owners are often Békés. And this despite knowledge of the health risks.

At the time, Yves Hayot, brother of Bernard Hayot, was president of a community of banana planters. Yves Hayot “was at the same time importer, producer and user of the product”assured in 2019 Serge Letchimy, president of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the chlordecone pollution scandal, which continues to have serious health consequences.

But if the community is historically dominant in agricultural land, according to Fred Constant, the economic weight of the békés is “overvalued”assures the author of “Geopolitics of Overseas” (Editions Le Cavalier Bleu).

Béké identity cannot be reduced to “economic leader”adds socio-history researcher Maël Lavenaire, evoking a community with large families but also fishermen and teachers.

So how to pacify relationships?

With a smile, the socialist deputy Béatrice Bellay evokes love, like “Martinique’s best friend”. Before claiming to have said to one of his acquaintances: “+Everything will be fine the day you are no longer fucked up”.

cheek/kl/mat/bow.