Visible scars, a "necessary" "revolution," a wake-up call... where is New Caledonia one year after the riots?

Market stalls sometimes line up on the ground in the park in the Rivière-Salée neighborhood. Jacqueline, in her forties, adjusts her jars of jam and her homemade dishes. "I'm here to make a little money," sighs this mother, unemployed since February: "I have to."

The riots of May 2024 , which left 14 dead and more than two billion euros of damage , left visible scars in this multicultural district, one of the largest in Noumea.

"There's not much left. The media library, burned down. The town hall, burned down and closed down. The CAFAT (local social security) branch, burned down and closed down. The middle school, closed down. The only supermarket that offered reduced prices: closed down," says Francis Maluia, head of the Solidarité RS association, which helps local residents.

Mr. Maluia has 600 names on his list of families to help in the neighborhood. "But we know we're missing some," he admits. Every week, as he distributes food in his own backyard, "we see five or six new families."

In this setting of wasteland and charred shop windows , common to several working-class neighborhoods in Noumea, solidarity has been reorganized. Solidarité RS, created in the wake of the riots, is not isolated. Each neighborhood seems to have set up its own association, as if it were necessary to recreate social ties.

"The Forgotten"

In Kaméré, north of Nouméa, Jacques and JB, both in their twenties, are grilling the kebabs they're selling at a small neighborhood event. Dressed in faded T-shirts, they've come from their PK4 neighborhood to "support" the organizers, a local association.

"This movement, this solidarity has been created everywhere. It has been structured in the neighborhoods since last June. Without it, we would have already fallen," JB says gently.

With a smile on his lips, he does not hide the fact that he was at the roadblocks in Vallée-du-Tir, another district of Nouméa, on May 13, 2024. "For me, it wasn't riots, it was a revolution," he says.

For Jacques, the older man, the riots gave a voice to the "forgotten, the classless." A surge before falling back into oblivion, continues the man who "no longer has confidence" in politicians of all stripes. "They have done nothing for us and they no longer represent us."

When asked if the riots brought New Caledonia closer to independence, he shakes his head: "No, on May 13, people were fed up. But after that, people managed. They pulled together."

"Necessary"

In Vallée-du-Tir, one of the neighborhoods most affected by the riots, Marion Leclerc, 27, is busy in the office of the Union of Parents' Groups (UGPE). With her fine braids and a discreet tattoo on her neck, she joined the association three days after the first flames. "That's what gets me up in the morning," she says.

She has not forgotten the night of May 13. "We were there with our flags, we were singing, it was joyful. And then suddenly, it started," she recalls, recalling shops being ransacked and the intervention of the police while the vote on the definition of the electoral body, which triggered the riots, was still underway in the National Assembly.

Having returned home to avoid the risks, she joined the medical center of the neighborhood's anti-trafficking committee the next day. Without "condoning" the violence, a year later she believes that it was "necessary, in the sense that young people have finally managed to make themselves heard."

Faced with criticism of the destruction and the economic crisis it has caused, Marion dismisses the argument. "These difficulties have existed for years. People are only just waking up to it," says the young woman, who is unemployed despite her BTS in hospitality and catering.

And tomorrow? She hesitates, then decides: "I imagine an independent Kanaky (the name given by Kanak independence activists to New Caledonia, editor's note) - necessarily independent. But the thing I would like above all is to have peace." She sighs, tired of the endless quarrels: "It's heavy, in fact."