Strikes Shut Down French Guiana, With Effects Resonating in Paris
By AURELIEN BREEDENMARCH 27, 2017
PARIS — A general strike and widespread protests over high crime and economic hardship paralyzed French Guiana on Monday, as the government struggled to quell growing unrest
that has disrupted travel, closed schools and thrust one of France’s often-overlooked overseas territories into the spotlight of the presidential campaign.
Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Front party, told Europe 1 radio on Monday
that French Guiana was "swamped by illegal immigration," and she accused the government of "averting its eyes." Ericka Bareigts, the minister for France’s overseas territories, responded on the BFM TV news channel by saying that "Ms.
" she said. that The economic problems that now confront France have led to a decline in the quality of local public services in French Guiana
and local people cannot make up the difference because they are poor,
Miranda Frances Spieler, a historian at the American University of Paris and the author of a book on French Guiana, said
that the territory’s legal structure as an overseas territory made it ill-suited to address local challenges like immigration and kept it dependent on the French state.
Spieler said that The people of French Guiana are trapped in an administrative and legal structure
that on the one hand guarantees them French-style institutions and benefits and on the other assures that local people will never be able to prosper there,
" Mr. Toth wrote in an email. that French Guiana has always had a rather unfortunate reputation as an economic backwater whose general neglect by French officials is only periodically interrupted by outbreaks of political protest
and acts of violence by various local groups demanding greater economic investment in the region,