Police and thieves

FG has a reputation among the metros (people from mainland France) as being lawless, and there's no denying it can feel wild west.
The presence of the various forces of order are felt universally on the territory, and their ineffectiveness is universally commented on. Gendarmes-  military police, Police municipale - community police, Police national, BAC, Douane - customs... Babylon, as anyone who's crossed them may call them. Various unpleasant characters in all of their ranks (in the interests of fairness, surely some good cops among them too)
In Chicago, a shabby neighbourhood along the stinking crique in Cayenne, you can buy any drug, sexual service, weapon, you could dream of, more at risk of being mugged than being arrested. Dealers sit openly on street corners, they'll cheep for your attention as you pass. At night, small bars open, playing bachata, zouk, compa, dancehall. Creoles, Brazilians, Haitians  Dominicans, Guyanese, Surinamese meander from one bar to the next. Inside, old and young couples dance under dappled light in dark bars and lone men eye up groups of women like hungry dogs. Rum, Heineken, Guiness and Desperados are bought and drunk, from behind the counter or from tired Dominican grannies in backstreet houses.
Edge and Chez Fédé (known universally as 'shitty bar') are two joints popular among the young of Cayenne's neighbourhoods, playing booming dancehall (endless PULLUPS). The air is heavy with smoke from cigarettes and joints, you enter confronting the gaze of revellers lined back to the wall on either side of the room, dancing alone or backstyle, gently or vigorously. As long as the place is full there's atmosphere - joyous and tense. Fights can, and do, break out at any time on a Friday or Saturday night down la Crique. In the midst of the first row of bars, along the canal itself, where scooters buzz past and fancy cars cruising for something illicit drag by, a large open space, in the evening filled with vehicles, dealers, men. This is where things blow up, when they do. As it ''heats up'', some people will leave, some will crowd around whatever action is erupting, others standing back waiting for it to cool down again.

I heard that in most of France, Gendarmes work in the countryside and Police in the towns- here, Gendarmes organise check points along main roads, pulling you over to check your papers, your vehicle's insurance or your immigration status. Me, a white girl, I don't have much to worry about, all I've had from them is some sleazy chat up lines and been on my way, even without the correct paperwork. Friends have had their rides confiscated.

Gendarmes have periods of checkpointing; it must be some quota imposed by bureaucrats. End of April, end of December, round the 27th of some months. Sometimes it's not just routine, sometimes you sense there's a motive and a profiling to the whole game; perhaps the trail of some criminal.

One sunday afternoon, on the way back from the beach with some youth from my neighbourhood, one guy spots a checkpoint ahead and we turn fast into backroads. The sky is clear deep blue, dry season, we zip through suburban streets, two to a scooter, drinking, high spirits among us. There's no doubt we'd get searched if we passed the cops, and all the scooters are illegal in some way or other- lack of insurance, paperwork, over the limit, stolen. We emerge onto the main road, checkpoint behind us, passing through to get more beers before heading back the street outside our houses.


The BAC are one of the meanest police forces around.
THEY're the wild west.
The first time I met the BAC, I was driving with a friend towards the bars, late saturday night. Suddenly there's an SUV besides us, a squeel of sirens, and wound down windows with guns pointed.

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
-to the bars

And that's all. Then they're gone. The BAC deal with serious criminality but mainly they seem to deal in shows of force.

Early evening. Two cops walk up my road, Rene Jadfard, on the borderline of the calm and the 'chaud' districts of Cayenne. They're plain clothes, two huge, hench, rectangular white men, shoulders together, guns in pockets...They don't go unremarked.
The young people in this neighbourhood, mostly under 25, mostly unqualified, mostly first generation or immigrants, are unfazed. Several of them, the ones I see most often, work informally from their yards or apartments as tattooists, piercers and small time drug runners. Mornings, afternoons, evenings, sometimes through til dawn: sitting on steps or plastic chairs on the wide pavement, drinking everpopular Cayenne drinks: Rum, Heineken, Guiness; sharing joints and cigarettes. Boys talk nonsense, bravado and girls, girls talk girl talk.
The two cops walk past, robots to their mission, youths hang, normal.

Sometimes other cops will come hassle here: they know that there's always some vagabonds around they can work some tension out on. They roll up in their car, search all the guys, remind them of their failings, leave them to their business. The guys are resigned - there's no point putting up a fight, just comply and the cops won't even take your weed from you. It's such an old routine, Babylon know what they will get; the kids know it won't change anything. More than one amongst them here are illegal, but they've been here long enough that they're not going to get deported- so this old piece of theatre is played out, once again, on a slow hot afternoon.

Immigration and Migration facts and figures, French Guiana

Two thirds of French Guiana’s population are immigrants according to a report published last week by INSEE* and INED**. The wide ranging Migration, Family and Aging report explores these topics in each of France’s overseas département, in a publication that highlights the differences between the territories.

In contrast to Guadeloupe (20%), Martinique(16%) and Reunion(17%), 62.3% of French Guiana’s inhabitants are immigrants, and unlike the other overseas département, where immigrants are usually born in metropolitan France, the majority (42.8%) were born abroad, with only 13.2% coming from the mainland. A majority of these immigrants have been living in French Guiana for a long time (20 years or more); this trend is especially high among inhabitants originating from Surinam; and least reflected among immigrants of Brazilian origin who represent the majority (37.6%) of those who have arrived in the last 10 years. If the ‘native’ French Guianese population is examined, over seven in ten of those born in French Guiana are first or second generation immigrants – this figure is under two in ten across the French Antilles and Réunion.

The study also examines “natives”, people who were born in French Guiana and “returning natives”: those who were born in French Guiana; left the territory; returned. The latter category are more educated than the average -29% of them hold a higher education qualification compared to an average of 16% in French Guiana- perhaps not surprising given that pursuing studies is the most common reason for ‘’returning natives’’ to have left the département ; this is the case for 29.1% of them, with 22% leaving for family reasons and 18.1% for work.  This contrasts with the average for the overseas département where the main reasons for leaving are work (29%) and military service (24%).

54% of young people (18- 34) surveyed said they would be prepared to leave French Guiana for work if necessary, however for a majority of these (60%) this was on the condition of being able to eventually return to French Guiana.  Indeed, it is almost exclusively (99.8%) young people (under 35) who DO leave the territory for an extended period, most of these (72%) are aged 18 to 25, with the most common destination being mainland France.

Among new immigrants to French Guiana there are startling contrasts according to settlers’ countries of origin. 80% of people arriving from metropolitan France already have work before landing on FG’s soil and 4 in 10 benefit from pay bonuses as a result of their migration; for people from South America and the Caribbean, the search for work is the most common motivating factor in migrating. At around one in five, Metropolitans are the least likely to intend on settling in French Guiana, with Haitians and Surinamese (around 69%) the most likely to plan on making French Guiana their permanent home. The former are among those most likely to report having had a positive experience since arriving at 94%, along with 98% of Brazilians and 60% of immigrants in general; despite nearly half of recent arrivals reporting experiencing difficulties since arriving in French Guiana.

*INSEE is the French National Office of Statistics and Economic Studies

**INED is the French National Office for Demographic Studies

The is writted from a report which can be found on this link ; there's lots more information and the report goes on to discuss family make-up trends and ageing trends.

Refuse// The Future is Now

I’m back from Cayenne for the moment. I will continue writing as and when I feel like it. 

This happened a few months ago, near Chicago neighbourhood. Chatman is a neighbourhood guy -that’s Ch like shatman.

I’m at the door with Chatman and a guy in a blue striped tshirt. Monday night is bin night (Wednesday night, and Friday night too). Chatman motions me to look at the truck. Woah, new truck! That’s crazy maaaaan! The new truck is a layed-down cylinder , square mouthed,  digesting dustbins’ contents. 

Bin men wear a futuristic fluorescent yellow and green jumpsuit and a facial mask. They work in a team:  two at the back feeding the machine; one at the front driving. The truck makes regular stops and has mechanical arms that lift bins to its mouth once they have been placed in its talons by the waste disposal technicians.

This vehicle’s tour de force was the unusual movement of its abdomen: the cylinder turned upon itself like a smoothed out cement mixer, accompanied by an intense clonking rrrrohhring noise. Sometimes it stopped spinning. Sometimes it span when stationary, sometimes whilst moving. 

We sit there watching as this machine passes by. Chatman proposes a possible configuration of the cylinder’s interior functions. The machine seems most likely to chew things up inside; to compress things. 

Is this the first time you saw it? I ask Chatman

Yeah.

That shit’s crazy.

The future is now!

Toddler-type wonder ends as we talk and regain our adult, unimpressed fronts.
After that I went inside. 

When you try and imagine the future, there are many things we might have, like complete and extensive demographic records or total, inescapable mobile phone network coverage. The future colonises our lives with machines you never thought of.