THE CANARY ISLANDS THE LAST OF COLONIES (II)
Jose I.Diaz
The medium mentality of the islander people changed by the spanish colonialist politicians which ones said to us that we can't survive without Spain; LIES. All this happened before in all colonies, till they got the independence and then they saw that now can live much better then to colonized. The spanish government know very well how to steal and lie.The Canary Islands is one of the first country in Africa in production of bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados and flowers also fishing and tourism. We are the fifth in the world refinery of oil and the first of Africa. For the strategy situation of our islands we are better condition then many countries in Africa. In the islands we have a lot of technicians to develop our industry and export articles to our continent, Europe and South America, who prefer to buy from us. The spanish colonialism has stolen many millions of euros each year from harbours, airports, tourism etc. Another things that many people don't know is that we pay more to Madrid(Spain) than what we receive, and the mayority of the spanish enterprises in the islands are taxpaying direct to Madrid. We have more than 300.000 peoples most of them professionals without work and discriminated by spanish authority. The islanders only have the jobs as waiters, cleaners, the jobs that the spanish peoples don't want. We have a big future when our people get the descolonization and independence from Spain. We need the help and support of every country in the world to obligate Spain to obey in conformity with the Resolution 1514 of the United Nations, and descolonization of these african archipelago.
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The Empire Burden
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Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean are more typical. They are considered part of France's national territory, like the states of the United States. Yet despite massive subsidies funded by French taxpayers, they have been the scene of so much unrest over the past few months that Sarkozy has postponed a planned visit several times. The islanders are not fighting for independence, mind you, just for better deals from Paris to compensate for the higher cost of living in these tiny markets that have grown dependent on imports from a distant mainland.
Altogether, France's overseas possessions add about 2.6 million people to its population and 120,000 square kilometers of land to its territory, and give France the third largest area of exclusive maritime rights in the world. They produce nickel ore and codfish, they provided testing areas for atomic weapons in the past and are the site of launching pads for space exploration to this day. Yet whatever the benefits, the responsibilities and costs are greater. "Through the 1980s and even into the 1990s, some of these arguments carried real weight," says Robert Aldrich, author of Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. Now, however, they are mainly a drain on the French -budget, costing an estimated €16.7 billion per year. "In some ways," says Aldrich, "they are like old family jewels, perhaps not so valuable in monetary terms, though with a certain sentimental value."
Sentimental indeed. In the latter half of the 1980s, New Caledonia was on the verge of full-scale insurrection. Earlier this year the contagion of unrest spread quickly from Guadeloupe halfway around the world to the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. Undeterred, Paris pushed ahead this spring to make Mayotte, a tiny island between Madagascar and Mozambique, the 101st département of the French Republic. The residents will be taxed, and receive welfare benefits—mainly the latter—just like on the mainland. They will be fully represented in the French Parliament and will be able to vote in all elections, including the European ones, because they will be considered Europeans, too. And eventually they will have to observe all of France's and Europe's laws and regulations.
The ostensible reason Paris took this decision is because that's what the people of Mayotte want. When the whole of the Comoros archipelago voted on its future in 1974, the other islands went for independence. Mayotte went for … dependence. And in the referendum this March, the people voted overwhelmingly for even closer ties. In a wondrous bit of rhetorical excess, French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie said the whole show was "reaffirming the values that forge, today as yesterday, the unity of our Republic and our everlasting democracy."
Clearly the old "mission to civilize" endures, however culturally anomalous the results might be. Of the roughly 180,000 Mahorais, almost all are Muslims, and polygamy is widespread. But polygamy will now be against the law on Ma-yotte as it is in France. The problem of illegal immigration from the other Comoros islands to Mayotte, meanwhile, is enormous. Roughly a third of the population is considered, as the French say, clandestin. Many are pregnant women who risk their lives so their children will be born "in France" and be eligible for citizenship. The overall birthrate is such that in the next 15 years the population could reach 300,000. Already the maternity ward of the main hospital in Mayotte is France's busiest, with 20 babies born a day. Employment prospects for the kids as they grow up are slim. Of the 4,000 who enter the job market each year, only 1,000 find work. And then there's the position of the Islamic Republic of Comoros, which rules the other islands. It may be one of the most unstable governments in the world, but it claims that -Mayotte is still part of its territory, and so does the United Nations.
Indeed, attempts by the French to explain why France wants Mayotte verge on the surreal. Left-wing critics charge, with no apparent sense of irony, that the French mainland wants to exploit Mayotte for its vanilla beans and the aromatic oil of the ylang-ylang tree. If the real motive to hold on were its strategic naval value at the head of the crowded Mozambique Channel, then it's surprising a French base planned for Mayotte in the 1970s has never been built.
In fact, what made global strategic sense for Admiral Mahan in the 19th century, when he advised grabbing footholds in foreign lands, is not so logical today. In a world of missiles, nukes and Internet-inspired terrorists with box cutters, the projection of political influence is at least as important as the projection of force. The idea of empire is no longer plausible, the reality of it no longer credible. The problem is not just that old imperialists had no exit strategy, it's that in some places, there's no exit to be found.
With Tracy McNicoll in Paris
© 2009
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