http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1150062/Britons-flee-French-island-Guadeloupe-rioters-turn-white-families.html
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Last updated at 3:17 PM on 19th February 2009

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Britons are among thousands of tourists fleeing Guadeloupe after full scale urban warfare erupted on the French Caribbean island.

Trouble broke out on the island earlier last month after protesters began rioting over high prices and low wages.

But the situation escalated this week after protesters began turning on rich white families as they demanded an end to colonial control of the economy.

The troubles come at the height of the holiday season, with thousands of mainly British, French and American tourists on the paradise tropical island.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/02/19/article-1150062-038E5703000005DC-583_468x286.jpg
Protesters ransacked shops and torched cars as the island descends into full-scale urban warfare

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but I assume that the true situation is more colonial.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090222/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_french_caribbean_roots_of_unrest_1
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– 1 hr 56 mins ago

POINTE-A-PITRE, Guadeloupe – Protests that have nearly shut down the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are not just about demands for lower prices and higher wages: For demonstrators they are no less than a battle against the vestiges of slavery.

Afro-Caribbean islanders — most of whose forbears toiled in the sugarcane fields under the yoke of slavery more than 160 years ago — not only resent France's handling of the global economic crisis, they have long resented that slaveholders' descendants control the economy on both islands.

They also suspect that businesses earn too high a profit on goods, most of which are imported.

This resentment against slaveholder descendants, known as bekes (bay-KAY) has lent an especially sharp edge to weeks of demonstrations that at times have erupted in gunfire, arson, looting, and the death of one activist in Guadeloupe.

"They've got the money, they've got the power, they've got Guadeloupe," snapped protester Lollia Naily. "This is not a race thing. It is a money thing and it is a power thing."

Protesters in Martinique also have rejected the bekes, with frequent chants of "Martinique is ours, not theirs!" Bekes own most industries in Martinique — but represent only about 1 percent of the island's 401,000 residents.

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