Lutter ensemble contre la Montagne d’or. Les mobilisations anti-extractives à l’épreuve des fractures ethno-raciales

Abstract

This article explores the ethno-racial divisions and cooperation taking place within social movements in French Guiana. It particularly focuses on the opposition movement to the mining industry in this French overseas territory, where politicization of ethnic questions and reproduction of unequal and colonial power relations intertwine. Basing itself on three months of field work, the analysis highlights the attempts in creating alliances across ethno-racial lines, between environmentalist groups – mostly white and from the French “metropole” –, indigenous and maroon groups. The article explains how these attempts were complicated by the reproduction of systems of power within the movement, and by the lack of politicization of such questions from anti-extractive groups. Furthermore, the opposition movement to the gold mine “Montagne d’or” gives us a glimpse of the deep divide between the creole elite – attached to the “development” of the Guianese territory through mining operations and industrialization –, and indigenous activist groups, standing up for an alternative vision, resolutely anti-extractive and based on the valorization of their indigeneity.

Keywords

• coloniality
• social movements
• race
• French Guiana
• extractivism