A strategic axis
The Perrin roundabout is not yet finished, but on its unfinished sidewalks the metal rods of the construction site rub shoulders with tear gas capsules. Further on, it is a car wreck, lying on its side to prevent motorists from taking the national 5 through the town of Abymes. Demonstrators against the vaccine obligation and the health pass intermittently occupy this strategic location in Guadeloupe. A few kilometers from the Guadeloupe Pôle Caraïbes international airport, it borders both the main fire station of the island – from which the social movement started – and the site of the future hospital center in the region, still under construction. .
Burning firefighters
More than half of the 265 professional firefighters at the Abymes barracks are participating in the strike launched on November 15 to protest against the suspension of health and rescue professionals refusing to be vaccinated. During the day, some of them sit with the residents at the Perrin roundabout to maintain the blockage. At night, they are requisitioned to go and extinguish the fires on the island’s roadblocks. “In Pointe-à-Pitre, the vast majority of firefighters mobilized are both unvaccinated and on strike”, said with a smile Jocelyn Zou, the unionist of Force Ouvrière within the departmental fire and rescue service (SDIS), to better underline, according to him, the absurdity of the vaccination obligation.
A hospital in pain
At least 600 million public investments, 618 hospital beds and 14 operating theaters: the new Guadeloupe hospital center, to which the Perrin roundabout will facilitate access, must be put into service in mid-2024. Much too late, according to some trade union organizations on the island, which deplore the slowness of the authorities in realizing the chronic deficit in the supply of health care in the territory.
Affected by a serious fire in 2017, the current University Hospital of Pointe-à-Pitre, very heavily in debt, is not renovated pending new equipment. Its entrance is now used as a base camp for some of the 1,400 health and rescue professionals suspended for refusing to comply with the vaccination obligation.
A large mobilization
The presence of firefighters helped to publicize the Perrin roundabout, the scene of tense confrontations between demonstrators and the police during the first week of the indefinite strike. The mobilization is however the same in dozens of places in Guadeloupe, where roadblocks are installed on country roads and in town centers.
The movements of the inhabitants are disrupted by the social conflict, led by a minority of Guadeloupe but whose demands are supported by part of the population. A completely decentralized strike, of which the Abymes firefighters have retained the symbol: their chairs are not installed in the center of the roundabout, but always outside. Like a step aside.