https://elpais.com/opinion/2024-05-28/ninguna-sociedad-colonial-puede-durar-eternamente.htmlNo colonial society can last foreverYou can't praise the historical resistance in mainland France and at the same time repress the kanakos in New CaledoniaMAY 27, 2024
New Caledonia is a colony. The UN Special Committee on Decolonization considers it to be one of the 17 territories "whose people have not yet reached full self-government." The French Government is proud to be European, open and liberal, but with New Caledonia it is acting the same as Napoleon III, imposing itself by force. "There is no acceptable violence," says the French president; except for colonial violence, which seems more acceptable than resistance to oppression.
For a few days, the French leaders have been outraged by the uprising of the young Kanakos: they have hardened the tone, declared a state of emergency and sent reinforcements. Public buildings, company headquarters, cars, and we have no choice but to ask ourselves if the flagrant inequalities in education, health, income and in life in general have nothing to do with this anger; if the amazing insolence of the Government, 30 years after the Matignon Agreements, has not rekindled a feeling of inequality that has a very real basis and if, deep down - which is terribly sad - all this destruction is nothing but the explosive and chaotic manifestation of a conscience. Because the young Kanakos of the suburbs of Numea also have a conscience.
Of course, all independence fighters would prefer, like any reasonable person, that New Caledonia did not burn in flames. But first we have to withdraw this crazy reform. You cannot change the electoral census without the agreement of the Kanakos, nor can you reach that agreement without a global pact. In addition, to put an end to the scandalous asymmetry between the kanakos and the caldoches (the white Caledonians), whose origin dates back to the violent colonial conquest, it is necessary that everyone has the same access to education, employment, wealth and power. No separate society can live in peace, no colonial society can last forever.
You can't praise Maurice Audin and Missak Manouchian in mainland France and at the same time repress the kanakos; it is very good to celebrate the historical acts of resistance, but you have to move from words to deeds. If not, any tribute to the past becomes suspicious and society ends up schizophrenic, deeply disoriented: it honors the same as it represses, pretends to admire in the past what it is oppressing in the present and applauds the dialogue while exercising a brutal policy, that is, enshrines some principles at the same time that it crushes them.
The French president has appealed to the law, to a legality that is a mere facade, and has affirmed that the electorate could not remain frozen, that the Numea Agreements provided for this break of equality before suffrage only as long as the three referendums of self-determination were held and that, now that the three have already been left behind, it was necessary to normalize the electoral census and return to Republican legality; with this rigid attitude, which relies on the law and despises history, Emmanuel Macron is forgetting the fundamental reasons of the agreements and seems to respect the lyrics, but it betrays the spirit. In reality, the content of the agreements is not simply the holding of three referendums of self-determination, the formal management of a crisis, but the opening of a process of decolonization, a peaceful but inexorable process. By unblocking the electoral census in the name of equal suffrage, the Government overlooks the suffering of the Kanako people, who were deprived of all their rights for almost 100 years. What the Numea Agreements provided for was not only to ask the inhabitants of New Caledonia to give their verdict on three occasions for or against independence and then return to the old electoral census; the primary objective was to decolonize, finally return to the Kanako people their place in the center of all decisions.
The president has just made a brief visit to Numea, an 18-hour stay. Despite showing a seemingly more open attitude, he began in a firm tone: "The first thing is order." He talks about appeasement, but he immediately contradicts himself when he emphasizes again and again everything that appeasement cannot be. It is difficult to exercise the functions of the State without resorting to rhetoric and, nevertheless, in such tense and tragic circumstances, there was not a single eloquent phrase, nor an energetic and sincere _expression_, nor a genuine sign of compassion. And what attracts the most attention of that brief visit, what most attracts attention in those long speeches, is the absence of the word "kanako", from the Kanako people.
The kanakos are numerous, they constitute more than 40% of the population, but they live against the wall. Armed civil defense groups, white militias, have been seen roaming the city. The State is supposed to have a monopoly on legitimate violence, but no one can think of condemning white patrols. Numea is a rich city, with residential areas, marinas, recreational boats and the Rotary Club. Numea is also a poor city, of huts, with the settlements of Sakamoto, Caillou Bleu and Soleil. Wealth must be redistributed. There has to be a true equality of rights for everyone. In New Caledonia, it should be impossible to decide anything without the agreement of the Kanako people.
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Éric Vuillard is a writer. In 2017, he was awarded the Goncourt Prize. His last novel published in Spain is An Honorable Exit (Tusquets).
Translation by María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia.