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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
According to Frantz Fanon, decolonisation starts out as ‘a programme of complete disorder’. This idea is interestingly echoed in the Creole expression ‘ce on dezod ka me lod’, which translated means that through chaos comes order. In 1998–1999 Martinique lost 23,000 working days; strikers blockaded the ports of Pointe à Pitre in Guadeloupe and Fort de France in Martinique for several weeks at a time in 1998. Trade unions have built up membership levels of eighty to ninety per cent in hotels and in public administration. In this article we will be examining some of the consequences and causes of new forms of socio-economic action and political protest that have emerged in the French Caribbean since the end of the Cold War. For a long time, the French Caribbean was a haven of relative calm and prosperity in the Caribbean. The Dutch Antilles and Aruba and the British dependent territories (now renamed UK Overseas Territories) have also generally shared this good fortune. Today the relative prosperity of the non-sovereign territories is becoming more marked as independent Caribbean states slip into economic recession and growing poverty, so that their political systems and leaders face an endemic crisis of political legitimacy.
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