Fabien Canavy has been the Secretary General of the Movement for
Decolonization and Social Emancipation (MDES) since 2019. Currentlyretired from the Departmental Directorate of Equipment where he was a
sustainable development technician, he was a regional councilor twice
and elected for seventeen years to the Region and the Department. ----
UCL: Can you introduce the MDES? Fabien Canavy: The MDES was created 33
years ago in November 1991. Unlike the movements that preceded us, we
believe that a transitional period is needed where France would put in
place the elements that allow the territory to ensure viable
sovereignty, a bit like in Kanaky, a sovereignty that is done in an
organized way. Things have thus evolved, such as the opening in 2013 of
the University of Guyana, some young Guyanese are training in many
fields. Our demand for a transitional status appeared before the
reparations movement of the 2000s, but it is in keeping with its spirit:
we must lay the foundations for viable sovereignty, particularly from
the point of view of training, health, and education. It is often said,
"if you are sick, go to France or the West Indies rather than to Guyana
because you will come out in worse shape than when you entered".
National Education in Guyana is a machine for creating failure, with
many newcomers and non-French speakers. The remedies are bandages on
wooden legs.
The MDES has chosen to go to elections. We are organized into sections
throughout the territory. The activists there sell the newspaper,
organize walks, training, and take care of recruitment. Since June 2022,
Jean-Victor Castor has been elected as a deputy, along with two women,
within the CDG as part of an alliance with other parties: Samantha
Syriaque and Karen Cresson, one delegate for disability, the other for
training, and municipal elected officials in several cities. Jean-Victor
Castor was re-elected by a wide margin during the legislative elections
of June-July.
Our motto is to tell our activists to participate in the associative and
union life of the country. We have structures very close to us and are
founding members of structures such as Konnèt to Péyi which brings
together young people to discover Guyana. We participate in the School
of Popular Knowledge and Language Learning. We are at the origin of the
land association La terre de nos anciens which occupied a plot of 300
hectares belonging to the State and settled people in the commune of
Montsinery: they divided it into lots of 2 hectares on average, settled
people and obtained regularization, 9% of the members became owners of
their land.
We created the Association recherche culturelle guyanaise (ARCG) and
have a lot of 2 hectares on which we wish to develop a future project.
Beyond political life, we ask activists to get involved in particular in
the permanent social forum, an international organization of Latin
America. Everything that relates to social issues is posed in the
workshops of these forums where activists come to present their reality
for their country, allowing us to discover the diverse situations of the
peoples of South America.
Our office is organized by poles: the International pole maintains
relations with other countries. We are a member of the Baku associative
group and participate in Latin American conferences: we walk on two
feet, the local and the international. At the local level, we are part
of the Free Palestine collective which is demanding a ceasefire in Gaza
(See the photo in the article Guyana under tension). We have permanent
relations with other movements: Kanaks, Polynesia, Martinique, Guadeloupe.
What can we say about the current situation in Guyana? I think that the
French State is applying a doctrine of organized chaos in order to keep
us dependent: the worse things get, the more the population will demand
security, forces of "disorder" since we are one of the most militarized
territories and yet there is no less trafficking in arms, drugs, gold,
human beings. When we see all this, we cannot help but wonder if all
this is not organized and wanted, because such disorder makes people
come to demand more State. Which comes into balance with the resources
of the territory, because if things were organized in favor of
development for the people who live there, the view would change in the
population: today, more than 50% of the population lives below the
poverty line, people are in survival and political thought is not a
priority.
Leaflet of the time - Justin Catayée - Claudia Berthier
It is difficult to project beyond the reason of the belly and to think
about the future together for the territory. The geostrategic objectives
of France and Europe take precedence to the detriment of the
populations: treatment reserved for Syrian refugees, undocumented
immigrants, schools and health and public facilities, landlocked
territory where it is easier to go to Paris or Fort-de-France than to
Maripasoula (two days by canoe) on the grounds of protecting the
environment: from October to November, the only airline that served the
territory was bankrupt and remained for a month without air links to
cities like Saul in the south. This landlockedness of the territory is a
double punishment. Organized chaos is the strong marker of the colonial
presence in Guyana.
Between the end of the colonial period (in the 1950s for Kanaky) and
today, what heritage and history does the MDES fit into? There have been
movements that have demanded autonomy and independence in the past,
notably the Guyanese Socialist Party with its leader Justin Catayé from
the SFIO, a former fighter close to André Malraux and therefore with
special ties to French authorities, and we see that France has fooled us
every time: from 1946, at the time of departmentalization, there were
already movements demanding autonomy. Departmentalization is a scam by
France to get around the UN request that asked the great powers for
decolonization (departmentalization which had the support of great
leaders like Césaire, Senghor, Monerville).
Dredger at Dégrad des Cannes in the Mahury River estuary in Guyana.
Cayambe
With behind the assimilation which is an ineptitude considering our
geographical, cultural reality and our respective histories. In the
1970s, very strong movements were born led by students, notably the
Guyanese Movement for Decolonization created in 1974, these were no
longer movements of notables like those before, but led by young people,
very well placed within the Union of Guyanese Workers (UTG, the largest
union in Guyana, close to the CGT) and who led the fight for
independence. These were radical movements and followed by the
population. They were part of a period marked by major strike movements,
a hot period when the French State did not hesitate to kill and
imprison: for example in 1974 with the "Christmas plot", or following
clashes, activists were arrested and imprisoned at La Santé in France on
the grounds that they had intended to plant a bomb in a church.
In 1996 again, following a movement of high school students who were
demonstrating because the conditions were not good in the high schools,
the parents of students and the union movements joined them, there were
three nights of riots, François Bayrou, then Minister of National
Education, negotiated and announced the creation of the rectorate of
Guyana. This was followed by waves of repression against high school
leaders, causing new riots at the beginning of 1997 and a new wave of
repression, including me and Jean-Victor Castor the leaders of the
National Popular Party of Guyana (PNPG, another independence movement).
We were sent to Martinique and Guadeloupe (me for a week but Jean-Victor
spent three months in prison in Martinique), accused of having wanted to
burn down the house of the Prosecutor, an accusation that fell through.
The movement did not back down. We were also activists within the UTG.
In 2000, the same thing happened again: actions, blockades, riots; there
will be an assassination attempt on Jean-Victor. In Guyana, things move
forward in fits and starts. The last one is 2017, a big movement that
starts from a feeling of fed up. A young man is killed in a
working-class neighborhood of Cayenne for his channel. This then creates
the movement of the 500 brothers, about forty hooded people march to the
prefecture, and a whole series of actions are mounted in February-March:
blocking consulates, the 500 brothers who block Ségolène Royal who came
as Minister of the Environment, farmers who block the agriculture
department, gold miners, transporters who block access to the port for
three weeks; In Kourou too, the space center is blocked, preventing the
rocket from taking off (the CSG tries to set up an airlift by
helicopter, they enter the space center, the blockers light smoke
fires). Rivers are blocked by boats, etc. The negotiations do not work.
An agreement is signed with financial commitments that are not respected.
Today we are in the early stages of a new mobilization. The sectors have
organized themselves into inter-sectors. Fishing, wood, agriculture and
mining say they have had enough of European standards: standardized
contracts in exchange for subsidies but with no impact on development in
Guyana. We go from one upheaval to another, which one will take place in
the years to come we don't know, but for us the MDES is not necessarily
a way to move forward and make progress. Because often these explosions
are undermined by the situation, the movement is spontaneous and does
not have a basic organization and these are the reasons for its
weakness. Everyone marched for their own reasons, some for security,
others for farmers, the natives for their own demands, and even if there
were attempts at organization, there is no underlying framework that
would unite everyone, nor is it able to constitute a force capable of
forcing the French government to give in.
What has changed since 2017 and the Covid years with the health and
repressive inequalities? The repression has been terrible. We have a
comrade who is going to stand trial, Serge Brumet. The State's response
to the protest is judicialization. Beyond the mistrust of the vaccine,
there has been contempt for the population with insulting remarks "what
are you waiting for, you bunch of idiots, to get vaccinated?" was
roughly the message written on the 4 by 3 distributed to the population.
The statistics were made to say that Covid is increasing, except that
after the fact no statistics were produced to say what is the rate of
the population that has been vaccinated and the mortality rate in
Guyana. We are from a culture where many people treat themselves with
plants traditionally and I'm not even talking about the indigenous
people or the Bushinengue who are completely isolated and without access
to vaccines. They managed on their own and the State does not want to
recognize it. So there was mistrust because culturally people take care
of themselves. There were deaths but it was not the carnage that was
announced. This discredits the official word. Covid entered Guyana in
2020 with four people who went to evangelical gatherings in mainland France.
At the MDES, we asked to close the airport because that's where Covid
was likely to enter, and they preferred security control measures at the
airport (still in place, this time justifying themselves by the fight
against drug trafficking) and there was poor treatment of Guyanese
leaving for France, treated as plague victims, put aside. Closure of the
St Georges border on the Oyapock, all people coming from Brazil were
considered plague victims.
Concerning drugs: when Gabriel Attal, Gérald Darmanin and the Minister
of Overseas Territories Sébastien Lecornu came in 2022 for the Assises
de la sécurité, they held a meeting on how to prevent drugs from
entering France (meaning metropolitan France). By prioritizing the
choice of stemming the "mules" at the airport and containing the problem
in Guyana, it means that drugs can continue to develop here and that is
what is happening: as the gangs have difficulty bringing drugs into
mainland France due to the increase in controls at the airport
(estimates are twenty mules per flight or twenty kilos, when they catch
a mule it takes so many police and customs officers that the others can
get through) suddenly the gangs try to sell their stocks in Guyana, and
from then on they kill each other to control the points of sale, that is
why you have one homicide per week in Guyana. There are more homicides
in Guyana than in Marseille, even though we are only 300,000 inhabitants
compared to an agglomeration of millions of inhabitants. There is
frustration among the population on the issue of insecurity and double
standards: for Macron's visit to Guyana, they are cleaning up, with
increased controls, but once Macron leaves, it will be open bar again.
How do you react to the desire to apply the challenge to the right of
the soil to Guyana? Darmanin and his ilk are playing on amnesia. The way
we read Mayotte is that it belongs to the Comoros. It is obvious that
the situation in the country creates a pull towards Mayotte, and it is
the same here with Guyana and Guadeloupe Martinique. The first thing is
to ask how we have the right to separate people from a family from an
ethical point of view. But we have heard of oil resources recently
discovered around the Comoros, as well as in recent years in Guyana, the
former poor relation of the region. They are now growing at 12% per
month: this country, which we looked down on, is going to gain weight,
in the Comoros this is what could happen.
How does the MDES raise the national question and the unity of the
Guyanese people? We are a party that has forged links with indigenous
movements and their demands, we were present at the funeral of Alexis
Tchuka, an Amerindian leader who worked hard to bring us closer, to
explain and better understand Amerindian demands. The indigenous demand
is legitimate for us, we raise it. In Guyana, there are three basic
communities: the indigenous, the Bushinengue and the Creoles. These
communities have been joined by Europeans, Brazilians, Asians, and we
welcome all people who decide to make their future in Guyana: we
consider the country large enough to accommodate everyone, in a common
destiny. Attempts have been made to divide and separate the indigenous
from the other communities: with departmentalization, attempts have been
made to put forward a political Creole elite, which did not favor the
indigenous. For example, the authorities' discourse with the Hmong [1],
who had fled communism, was to present the people of the MDES as
communists and therefore their enemies, but they come back to this
discourse. The instrumentalization is permanent.
How can we help you from mainland France? We read the press of French
organizations, we come from the workers' movement and we keep in touch,
so there is proximity with the political subjects developed by
Alternative libertaire . The development of supremacism in the colonies
is worrying, in Martinique for example, with conflicts over land with
whites who privatize beaches for locals. The rise of racist speech in
Guyana too and that can lead to explosions. We must relay what is happening.
For example, there are many cases of police violence in Guyana. A white
police officer told protesters: "we were in the same boat but not on the
same floor" referring to trafficking. The people filed a complaint for
condoning crimes against humanity, we supported them, and put the
subject on social networks. They were told that an investigation was
being conducted but no news since, we are waiting. The officer was also
known to be used to violence in working-class neighborhoods.
We must break away from the cliché "the Antilles are coconut trees, the
blue sea, Guyana is the green sea and the forest, exotic animals". A
territory with so many resources but so much poverty is an anomaly.
Covid has highlighted a certain number of realities that many were
unaware of. Like that of women's rights which is understood in these
local specificities: we have a variety of cultures, the place of women
in indigenous society is not the same as among the Bushinengue, which is
not the same as among the Creoles and the Hmong, I would say that it is
a subject not yet sufficiently explored, but women are also in combat.
Interview by Nicolas Pasadena (UCL Montreuil)
Read the related article: Anticolonialism: Guyana under tension
To validate
[1] Laotian refugee community that fled Vietnam between 1974 and 1977
and that the French authorities settled in Guyana.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Entretien-Fabien-Canavy-MDES-l-Etat-francais-applique-la-doctrine-du-chaos
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