cholera outbreaks, famine and extreme poverty

Although, for now, the French government recognizes 31 dead and more than 1,000 injured of varying severity, the truth is that it is assumed that the victims, once the days go by, will reach hundreds or even thousands of people, according to the newspaper. Le Monde. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, will fly this Thursday to the archipelago, where a ship from Reunion Island will arrive shortly with 180 tons of aid in the form of food, water and basic resources.

The national secretary of the French Communist Party, Fabien Rousselpart of the left-wing coalition that maintains the largest number of seats in the National Assembly, criticized the head of state for not moving “from words to actions” and leave “more than 100,000 French people” to their fate “They have to sleep in the open air, without a roof under which to take refuge.” Likewise, he pointed out the acting Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, as one of those responsible for managing the catastrophe and accused him of “absolutely not knowing” the real situation of the archipelago.

Hours before, Retailleau had pointed out illegal immigration from the island of Anjouan(about 100,000 people in an archipelago that barely exceeds 320,000 in total) as one of the causes of the impoverishment of the islands and the impossibility of providing them with sufficient infrastructure to avoid this type of tragedies. The communist leader, however, described the immigrants as “part of the same people” who speak the same language, share the same culture and profess the same religion, in this case, Muslim.

The “cursed” islands

The point is that, even before the arrival of the cyclonethe Mayotte archipelago, one of the remaining overseas departments of the colonial era french, I was already living in absolute poverty, with an economic level much lower than that of continental France and even below the “crown jewels” of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, such as Guadeloupe, Martinique, New Caledonia or La Réunion. The rotary L’Opinion At the time he described the islands as “cursed” and the conservative newspaper The Figaro He dedicated his cover last Tuesday to them with a huge headline that described the archipelago as The France of the fourth world.

Located between Madagascar and Mozambique, Mayotte basically consists of two islands, known as Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre (the “big land” and the “small land”, referring to its size). Despite its location, trade with the African continent is scarce, Its economy is based on agriculture and its inhabitants They survive thanks to the support of metropolitan France. To give you an idea, the per capita income barely reaches 10,600 euros, which places the archipelago on a par with Morocco, Uzbekistan or Swaziland.

In comparison, France’s GDP per capita stands at 61,156 euros, while the department of Île-de-France, whose capital is Paris, exceeds 63,000, that is, six times more than the African colony. From the Matignon Palace, residence of the French Prime Minister, a 75% tax reduction was announced this Wednesday for those affected by the catastrophe, but the damage is such that the economy of the archipelago may have suffered an almost definitive blow that will take a long time to recover.

The influence of climate change

While aid and rescue teams arrive, citizens and associations of Mayotte have taken to the streets to help as much as they can. The acting health minister, Geneviève Darrieussecq, warned this Wednesday on public television TF1 of the possibility of cholera outbreaks if you don’t act quickly. The corpses float in the water and there are no means even to rescue them. Almost one hundred hours after the tragedy, electricity and drinking water services have still not been restored in much of the affected territory.

Behind the devastation of Cyclone “Chido” may be the climate change, according to experts from the Graham Institute, belonging to Imperial College London. “We estimate that the chances of a Category 3 cyclone becoming Category 4 upon landfall are now 40% greater than in pre-industrial times,” they said in a statement. Category 4, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale, implies a wind speed greater than 209 kilometers per hour, which would explain the severity of the consequences.

What remains now is a laborious reconstruction of a region already hit numerous times. Metropolitan France has come to the aid of those affected in the form of million-dollar donations and television marathons, but that is not enough. The Mayotte archipelago is, by far, the poorest department in the entire country. Without going any further, the aforementioned island of Reunion doubles its per capita income. Beyond the effects that immigration may have, it is necessary to provide resources and invest in a colony that has belonged to France since 1843, when King Louis Philippe I of Orleans annexed it.

Mayotte is not like Martinique, Guadeloupe or New Caledonia, French territories where, in recent years, social movements favorable to independence have grown. Mayotte could not stand on its own, not even in alliance with the neighboring archipelago of the Comoros. He needs support that he does not receive from Paris right now. As Melanie Vogel, senator of the Europe Ecology party, pointed out on the social network X, Mayotte is “an abandoned territory.” The next few hours will be decisive to try to avoid even more dramatic consequences.