Conference paper for the 4th Annual Pacific Islands Studies Conference, "The Emerging Pacific Island States," 1979, UH-Mano

Finney, Ben R.

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Tahiti et Mama France by Dr. Ben R. Finney Department of Anthropology University of Hawaii at Manoa French Polynesia is a colony. In a world that has seen so many former possessions of colonial powers achieve independence, French Polynesia remains an Overseas Territory of France. Yet, in the early post World War II years, there were prospects for political evolution. There was a nascent nationalist movement, a literate citizenry--at least in comparison with many other colo-nial territories--and a moderately stable economy based on farming and fishing and the export of cash crops. What happened? Why has political evolution in French Polynesia lagged behind most other South Pacific nations, as well as most other French overseas possessions? This is not meant to be a suspense tale. As you well know, France has been most reluctant to consider independence for French Polynesia. While the South Pacific dependencies of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have progressed to independence, or close to it; while the French colonies in Asia and Africa have gained their freedom; French Polynesia remains an integral part of the metropole in French eyes. France has found this southeast corner of Polynesia to be real estate too valuable to give up, and France has also found that she can easily push the Polynesians around, or at least gain a re-signed acquiescence from them for continued French control. In 1958 French President Charles De Gaulle gave the French Polynesians a choice between voting "yes" to remain in the French community, or "no" for immediate severance from France. The late Pouvanaa A Dopa, the charismatic 19 20 Tahitian leader and head of the majority political party, campaigned for a IInoll vote. He lost by a 64% to 36% margin. Shortly thereafter he was dis-missed from office by De Gaulle. Then he was arrested, tried and convicted of the unlawful possession of arms and of having been an accessory in an all eged attempt to burn down the town of Papeete. Pouvanaa was sentenced to enough years in French jails, and then exile in France, to see him safely dead. Charges that the French denied Pouvanaa transport and radio time to reach outer island electorate and used other pressures to assure a lIyes ll vote, and charges that the case against Pouvanaa was trumped up, may well be true. But the apparent fact remains that a segment of the Polynesian population then, and perhaps an even larger segment now, has been very timid about the idea of independence. It is this timidity that the French have played upon to keep Polynesia ~ightly bound to France .. It is tempting, however, to imagine that French Polynesia might have gone the way of the majority of French African territories that voted lIyes ll in 1958. The African territories have evolved towards independence, while retaining close political, economic and cultural ties with France. The ironic fact, however, is that evolution, and the more violent process of achieving independence in Algeria, meant that French Polynesia had to remain French--to provide De Gaulle with a site for testing his atomic bombs once it had become politically impossible to continue testing in the Sahara. The decision to transfer testing to the Pacific may well have been taken back in the late 1950's, although it was not announced to the Polynesians until 1963. The announcement was in the form of an offer that could not be refused, a Faustian bargain by fiat. The bomb, after all, was a matter of national defense, and hence beyond the concern of the Polynesians and the limited powers of their local assembly. The bomb was really a blessing, 21 argued De Gaulle. It would bring prosperity: the metropole would build magnificent new port facilities and undertake other infrastructure improve-ments; the metropole would assume a larger share of the government budget and would institute many new educational and social programs; and most of all, there would be thousands of well paying jobs for the people. 1 While it might be an oversimplification to argue that opposition to the bomb--and to continued French rule--was bought off, the promise of massive French expenditures and increased economic opportunities was not lost on the Polynesians. I recall one day in 1962 when I was attending a meeting held in a rural Tahitian district. French administrators were explaining to the Tahitians a proposal to have that district, and other districts, transformed into municipalities with locally elected mayors and other officials, and local budgets. Horrified by the thought that this change might mean new taxes, one old Tahitian got up to declare that such a change might be for the good, but only so long as "Mama France ll kept footing the bill. Even then, in 1962, the Tahitians were enjoying a new prosperity in large part paid for by metropolitan taxpayers. Since then the French have, in a manner of speaking, kept their side of the atomic bargain. The tremendous inflow of funds with the bomb has transformed the territory. Agriculture and fishing no longer form the economic base. Most French Polynesians live off wage labor--and now most jobs are on Tahiti, the central island of the five archipelagoes that make up the territory. Out of a total population for French Polynesia of almost 150,000, almost 100,000 live on that island. Tahiti has become virtually one urban-suburban unit, focused on the port town of Papeete, lSee Bengt and Marie-Therese Danielsson, Moruroa, Mon Amour, Penquin Books, Ringwood, Australia, 1977, for a detailed account of the French testing program and accompanying political maneuvers. ., 22 the adjacent airport and nearby military facilities. 2 Despite attempts to promote tourism and other industries, the testing program is the largest single employer for the Tahitians, the backbone of the economy--at least according to Paul Cousseran, Francels High Commisioner in French Polynesia. Listen to what he has to say: 1I0ne can be intell ectua lly for the CEP [Atomi c Testing Program, ed.], or one can be intellectually against it. But the fact is that this country lives off it. Three thousand, two hundred families do so quite directly, not counting Polynesian military personnel. Abo~e all, thousands of families live off it indirectly.11 But salaries paid to Tahitian personnel employed in the testing program is only part of the picture. Especially now that the main construction phase of the testing program is over, France must keep a high level of funds flowing into the territory in order to keep the urban proletariat and the wage econ-omy afloat. Official government transfers, excluding salaries for military personnel and civilians employed in the testing program, probably now exceeds $1,000 per capita per annum. Two hundred years ago Diderot used Tahiti to argue that man could live free from the constraints then binding French society. However ironic it might seem, this island, so beloved by European philosophers and romantics, has now been transformed into a IImilitary-urbanll complex. But that fate is not so unusual for Pacific islands. Hawaii has pioneered this type of develop-ment, followed by Guam, the Marshalls and now, it would seem, the Northern ~1arianas. This is a new type of dependency, different from the commercial arrangements of more typically colonial and neo-colonial relationships. The 2See Ben Finney, Polynesian Peasants and Proletarians, Shenkman, Cam-bridge, Mass., 1973. 3pacific Islands Monthly, April, 1979, p. 7. 23 islands are not significant producers of export crops for metropolitan profit, nor are they great markets for metropolitan industrial goods. Their contri-bution to the mother country is to provide real estate for military bases and testing facilities for exotic weaponry, with the rent paid by French taxpayers and their American colleagues. Have the French Polynesians kept their part of the atomic bargain forced upon them? Have they remained loyal to France? In a manner of speaking, yes. At least 99.9 plus per cent of them have not openly revolted. There are two main political persuasions among the French Polynesians: a Gaullist one and a Nationalist one. The Gaullists are in the minority, although at times with the aid of French voters, including thousands of soldiers and o.ther metropo.l-itan testing personnel encouraged to. vo.te in local' elections, they have se-cured control of the local assembly. Needless to. say, this group has basically supported the bomb and continued French rule on the basis that it is best fo.r the Polynesians. While it might be easy to say that these pro.-French po.li-ticians are but representatives of the local bourgeoisie desirous of maintain-ing their privileged position, many would appear truly to believe that it wo.uld be economic suicide for the territory to sever its ties with France. 4 They are, of course, encouraged in their sentiments by French logic. Let me continue the quote from Francels High Co.mmissioner, Paul Cousseran: 5 "I have said before and I repeat: Independence is no.t the problem faced by this co.untry. On the co.ntrary its problem is its dependence. Po.lynesials pro.blem is that it does no.t pro.duce what it co.nsumes, it do.es no.t pro.duce the mo.ney necessary to pay for \'/hat it co.nsumes, so. someo.ne must always be fo.und to pay in its stead. II 4This paragraph simplifies a much mo.re complex situatio.n. Tagupa, Po.litics in French Polynesia, New Zealand Institute of Affairs, Wellingto.n, 1976. 5pacific Islands Monthly, April 1979, p. 7. See, Wi 11 i am International 24 The Nationalists, who command the majority of French Polynesian voters, and who have been in power most often during the last decades, have not fol-lowed a particularly radical strategy since the defeat and imprisonment of their leader Pouvanaa. Occasionally, their leaders threaten to ask for independence. Mostly, however, they have occupied themselves with protesting the bomb and asking for internal autonomy, or self-government, within the French community. The Cook Islands next door provide the Nationalists with a model for a type of self-government that greatly loosens the political ties with the mother country but which does not cut off the flow of metropolitan funds. The Cook Islanders elect their own legislature, and their own premier, and pretty much run their own country under New Zealand auspices. Yet they are New Zealand citizens, can travel freely to New Zealand and work there, and continue to receive sizable grants from their obliging metropole. Tahitian Nationalists generally prefer this model to the one with which the French threaten them should they seek independence, the model offered by the French treatment of their former colony of Guinea. When Guinea voted "no" in 1958, the French government pulled out and cut Guinea off without a sou--at least that is what the French love to tell the Polynesians, adding that, should they wish to be-come independent, they will go the way of Guinea. The Nationalists' protests against the bomb would appear to have been in vain. Protests and boycotts by New Zealand and Australia have, in contrast, been effective in helping to force the French to explode their bombs under the atoll s south of Tahiti rathe-r than in the atmosphere above them. Nor have the Nationalists' pleas for self-government been effective. The French have given way here and there, but never enough to make a crucial difference. A very sick Pouvanaa was returned early to Tahiti from exile--to die at home. And, in 25 response to the most radical protest staged by the Nationalists--an occupation of the house of assembly in 1976--the French promulgated a new statute which appeared to give the Polynesians a measure of autonomy. The Governor was re-placed by a High Commissioner, and a local cabinet with a kind of local prime minister was instituted. However, it has not taken long to see that, despite these changes, the French are still firmly in control. ~Jill French Polynesia always be an Overseas Territory, a dependency of a European country half a globe a\</ay? Will the French Polynesians continue to be split between those who wish to stick tightly to France and those who ask for self-government but do not wish to totally renounce France and her aid? Jean-Claude Guilliband, the foreign affairs editor for Le Monde, has gone on record as unsure of a continuance of the pattern that has prevailed over the last decades. In his 1976 book, The Confettis of Empire, devoted to the tiny fragments of the French Empire scattered around the world, Guilli-band ends his chapter of French Polynesia with the sentence: IITahiti reserves some surprises. 1I6 Actually, four years earlier in 1972, there occurred a seemingly sur-prising departure from the pattern of Tahitian acquiescence. Six young Tahi-tians, including one part-American who had served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam, stole a supply of munitions from the French army to start a rebellion. Though caught in two weeks, they immediately escaped from jail, were recaptured and then promptly instigated Tahiti's first prison riot. Although this affair has its comic opera aspects, the idea of stealing arms from the French to foment a rebellion is definitely something new in recent French Polynesian hi story. 6Jean-Claude Guilliband, Les Confettis de l'Empire, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1976, p. 155. 26 In 1977 came further surprises. A self-styled commando group calling themselves liThe Blood of The Ancestors ll dynamited Tahiti's waterfront post office. Then, apparently choosing their victim at random, they shot a French Metropolitan in his bed. The alleged organizer of this commando group, lithe serpent in the Polynesian paradise ll according to the French prosecutor, was a relative of the late leader Pouvanaa, a 42-year-old Tahitian with the im-probable name of Charles Ching. Ching and the other four who actually did the dynamiting and shooting were tried and found guilty this past February. But they did not pass up the opportunity their public trial offered to publicize their cause. Aided by Tahitian politicians ca·lled to the witness stand, Ching, especially, succeeded so well in airing Tahitian grievances against the bomb and continued colonial rule, that the Le Monde reporter offered the following comment which I will use to close this brief talk: IIThis trial which was supposed to be about terrorism has become a trial of colonialism. Do these words, in 1979, mean something to the French of France who for the most part have ignored 'the crumbs of their empire ' ?117 7Le Monde (weekly edition) 1-7 February, 1979, p. 7. 

Tahiti et Mama France

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Tahiti et Mama France

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