Poor turnout for Guadeloupe Pride speaks to poor community outreach, and maybe fear
Only six people turned out for a Pride March on the French Caribbean island Guadeloupe
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The second Guadeloupe Pride March was held last month and once again it was a flop, with just 6 participants, compared with 4 last year.
Held July 22 in Pointe-à-Pitre and chaired by Lydie Siwsanker from the local organization Ma différence LGBT+, the paltry turnout has raised questions about the effectiveness of coordination among LGBT organizations in the French Caribbean territory, where queer people enjoy all the legal rights that LGBT people in metropolitan France do, but LGBT visibility is somewhat harder to find.
Ma Différence LGBT+ invited the LGBT+ communities of Guadeloupe to a pride march through the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre, between the working-class district of Lauricisque and the emblematic Place de la Victoire, close to the seafront and the cultural heart of the city.
Participants chanted “ansanm nou pli fò” (French creole for “stronger together”) and “divèsité sé fòs pou Gwadloup” (“diversity is an opportunity for Guadeloupe”), in empty streets.
At the event, Siwsanker laid the blame for the poor turnout on security concerns.
“People have withdrawn for security and logistics, because you need a civil liability certificate and if you’re not rich enough to afford one, you don’t have the right to demonstrate,” she said.
Siwskander has not responded to 76crimes’ attempts to ask her about the low turnout for this year’s event.
Jean-Michel (pseudonym), 48, a gay man from Guadeloupe who is not involved in LGBT associations, has another explanation.
“I didn’t even know there was this march. I didn’t see any publicity about it. What a fiasco! I’m not sure that gays are unhappy in Guadeloupe, although attention needs to be paid to younger people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods who are discovering their sexual orientation or gender identity. Similarly, locally, there isn’t much to demand, which is perhaps why there hasn’t been any mobilisation,” he says.
By contrast, a Gay Pride in nearby Martinique on July 1 was well-attended and the atmosphere was particularly festive, joyful and colourful.
This year’s march was Ma Différence LGBT+’s third attempt at organizing a Pride Parade, after the 2021 event was cancelled due to COVID lockdowns, and the 2022 event attracted only four participants, three of whom were supporters from a Paris-based organization.
Pierrette Pyram, who presides over the Paris-based Afro-Caribbean lesbian organization Diivines lgbtqia+ came to Guadeloupe with two supporters to lend a hand to Siwsanker, who would otherwise have paraded alone in the streets of Pointe à Pitre or cancelled the event.
Pyram, a native of Guadeloupe, said it was important to show solidarity through the march.
“I was surprised that there were so few of us, and if we hadn’t been there, the march probably wouldn’t have taken place. But in a spirit of sisterhood, we decided to march anyway, even in the rain, because we were already there,” Pyram told 76crimes at the time:
Siwsanker told Guadeloupe’s La1ere.FranceTVinfo that homophobia was the reason for such a low turnout.
“LGBT people in Guadeloupe are still in a state of fear, afraid to come out, to show their faces, afraid of reprisals. It’s not at all easy to show your face and demand your rights,” she said.
In Guadeloupe and the French West Indies, as elsewhere in France, homosexuality has been decriminalised since 1982 and marriage and adoption for same-sex couples have been legal for 10 years. Finally, gender transition programmes have been accepted since 2023 and medically assisted procreation for lesbian women has been available since 2021.
Locally, a helpline called Voix arc en ciel for LGBT+ people to prevent suicide was opened in 2019, with the help of the Amalgame Humanis association.
