Widerstand in Guadeloupe (1983)

Guadeloupe is one of the small islands of the West Indies in the Caribbean, 7,000 km from France. Christopher Columbus discovered the island in 1493, and in 1635 Cardinal Richelieu gave orders for a French expedition to colonise Guadeloupe. The sugar cane planted by the colonists became the most important export product to the French "motherland" for more than 300 years. Until the 19th century the white masters employed slaves, deported from Africa to do the work on their plantations. The colonists had forbidden the slaves to speak their own languages, to play their music and to perform African dances. In 1946 the colony of Guadeloupe was declared an Overseas Department; the Guadeloupe people were given French nationality. Today the modern quarters of the capital Pointe-à-Pitre are built like the suburbs of Paris, the supermarkets are full of imported French goods, and social activities in the evening have been replaced by television. Meanwhile the overseas department has become an artificially created market for the economy of Metropolitan France. Collectively farm workers and farmers fight against the destruction of agriculture and of the sugar industry. They occupy fallow land and plant their own products for their own sustenance. They call them products of resistance. This agriculture of resistance is not only important for food, but also for the conscious effort of growing things: not to be a consumer of imported goods which they pay for with their government assistance.