So here we are protesting in Guadeloupe

After more than 40 days of protests and violence, the French island of Guadeloupe has been granted a salary increase for the least well paid. But is this only about the money? Or does the unrest betray a much deeper mal être in the French Carribean?

Guadeloupe is a butterly shaped paradise island located in the Carribean and holiday destination of well-off French people as it is officially part of France. Like Martinique its island neighbour, French Guyana - a small territory in the north-east of South America- and la Réunion, in the Indian ocean, Guadeloupe benefits from DOM status, that's département d'outre mer, and on paper is just another bit of France. For more than forty days and nights, until last thursday, the Guadeloupéens were on strike (told you they were French). The reason? A combination of being fed up with exorbitant prices, especially those of petrol and basic necessities, low salaries and the amplification of these with la crise, all tinted with a feeling of modern colonialism.

Elie Domota has emerged as the natural leader of the strike, which blocked the country for a total of 44 days and turned a little sour when a trade unionist was shot dead a couple of weeks ago by the police. The son of a carpenter and a cleaning lady, he is at the head of LKP, the "collective against profiteers", and represents the black population- the vast majority- of the island, who are denouncing a neo-colonialist system where the békés, the white descendants of the slavers, own and exploit the island's wealth, tourism and trade leaving only the menial jobs in the banana plantations and the factories for the blacks who are, of course, French citizens in equal right. There was a whiff of independence in the air as Domota talked of the "foreign press" to describe the journalists from Paris and as tens of thousands of Guadeloupeans sang "Guadeloupe is ours not yours" day after day outside official buildings.

It's true that they have something to complain about. As the island is part of France, it has the same wages and laws as metropolitan France. That said, prices are much higher : a quick comparaison showed that for the same goods, sugar was 98% more expensive, and milk and pasta 50% more. Petrol was also much higher and despite Guadeloupe being an island with a huge fishing industry, fish in the Caribbean markets costs the same as in Paris supermarkets. Those who own supermarkets and so on say that it is down to import costs and taxes, but for many it is simply exploitation of the ethnic population native to the island by the béké oligarchy. Oil was further poured on the fire when a prominent, rich béké said on TV that there had been no interbreeding in the last 250 years to preserve "the race". Ouch.

The population of Guadeoupe is just over 400 000, and had the same proportion of metropolitan French demonstrated, there would have been 15 million people in the streets. It took Sarkozy a while to realise there was a problem (I draw a parallel to bumbling George W. who took a good week or so to realise that Katrina was a bit worse than just a few blacks in trouble). He memorably didn't mention it at all in his TV speech on the crisis, despite the troubles having started a week before.

After many negotiations with the French business lobby and the government have decided to grant those with the lowest salries (up to 1400 euros a month) a 200 euro pay rise. Is that really enough though. It may help Gualdeloupeans feed their children a bit more and has crucially stopped the strike, which had schools, offices, factories, distilleries, supermarkets, post offices and so on shut for 6 weeks, but given the cries against exploitation and the white elite, it may not be enough. The crisis has spread to Martinique, where they seem to be more radical, and la Réunion, and Elie Domota has been accused of "incitement to racial hatred" since this morning.

rance has always prided itself on the DOM's management; a successful decolonisation where the colonised became equal french citizens. What the last six weeks have shown is that this is a myth and that the black population of the island is fed up. With the crisis, France's help is no longer seen as useful, and 200 euros seems too little for people to forget this.