The last days brought a few articles in the press. From those articles, an unchecked.

French Guyana is part of France, part of the EU and NATO. It not part of the Schengen zone. Being an EU border makes local imports more difficult and expensive as it would be otherwise.

EU citizens can move to and work in French Guyana without restrictions. The reverse is of course also true. Doing this in reality is much harder because of things like:

40% of the pupils don't graduate school. At all.

15% of the population has access to potable water.

The official unemployment number is ~22%, and has been that high for decades. (France ~10%)

For those under 25 years the official unemployment number is 46.5%. (France ~24%)

Half the GDP of France, 45% higher food prices.

Arianespace is the biggest part of the economy. Tourism is next and growing. Forestry, tropical hardwoods, is also big. There is some agriculture at the coast for local consumption and crab fishing mostly for export. Gold mining closes the list.

Illegal gold mining is a major and long lasting cross border issue. Crime and serve pollution of the environment.

250k people in French Guyana. It is not the poorest oversea department but has the highest murder rate in France, averaging to once a week.

26k live in Kourou. Neighborhoods with Arianespace employees are easy to find at night, they are the ones with streetlights.

The main demands are: Higher wages, more workplaces, money for social infrastructure [schools, clinics], more support for the farmers, better protection of small local businesses.

Additional demands include: more police, deporting illegal immigrants.

One of the overarching complaints is that the government did not act on its past promises.

This is not the first conflict, just the most visible and longest. The upcoming presidential election adds visibility, the fear that the protests spread into other poor departments adds urgency for the politicians.

The clinic and medical situation is one of the old promises, the demand is for something more local than a ticket on the next plane to France for even slightly complicated issues.

One observation: When the guys with the balaclavas who are enforcing the strike are the ones demanding more police there is something odd here.

Again, sourced via this weeks news and magazine articles and not fact checked. (Turns out that is hard if you don't speak French.)