The hidden face of the Virgin of the Great Return
We are in 1948, Martinique is no longer a colony. Since 1946 it has become a French department. A department for sure, but if on the papers the initialling at the bottom of the decree is done quickly, the reality still takes all its time because it is much slower. Admiral Robert, the Vichy governor, held the island in his ruthless hands. The people are barely recovering from the shortage of the so-called antan Wobè era (Robert's time) when one fine day a boat appears, probably from the bowels of the sea. A Virgin all of molded lime is sitting on the back seat, she is called Our Lady of Boulogne, she has just visited the rural regions of France. She holds her son in her arms. She comes to the rescue of the population that she knows is so devout. She came to help them recover from their suffering and to rebuild the country, she knew how to do it, and she worked miracles. So, from town to town at 4:00 am, barefoot, arms crossed, the pilgrimage began. The Virgin changed her name, she became the Madonna, Our Lady of the Great Return. During three months, she passes in her boat hoisted on a truck which, with her on board, makes the tour of the island. " At home be queen " and they sing " We are yours " and they say litanies, " At home, at home " and they pray "We are on our knees..." and they cry as she passes by, and above all they give alms, gold, money that falls " To your good heart, sir lady " in the bottom of her boat, to make amends, to be healthy, to have money, or to have a good conscience. The Madonna passes and the total devotion shows itself. It is true that she had been preceded by the missionaries who married everyone in a household, "living in sin" as they say here. The miraculous Virgin arrives well, she reconciles the people with God, the people with themselves, she brings love to the whole country and everyone returns in grace with his own person. Let her go! Let her continue her tour! As mysteriously as its arrival, it will end at sea.
The Latécoère, a long-haul aircraft with the same name as its manufacturer, is on its way. It is a seaplane of the Air France company and its flight number is AF072. It links France to its overseas regions. That morning, it has on board 12 crew members and 40 passengers. They were Békés factory workers who were returning to France. The university dean Henri Vizioz, a metropolitan, was also on board with a colleague. On Sunday, August1 , 1948, the Latécoère was to perish, body and soul, off the coast of Africa with, it is said, the entire recipe for the Madonna. And we will find the Virgin in her abandoned boat, huddled in a small cove in Sainte-Thérèse. If this is not a miracle, then what is? The population saw her leave the coasts, they saw her getting lost even in the distant horizon. The deception was quickly unmasked, the credulous people bit their fingers off. However, the fervor of some was so powerful and unconditional that it is still difficult for them to perceive the fraud that they have all suffered. From then on, the church of Josseaud sheltered the Virgin and since then the place has been the object of constant pilgrimages. Even in the face of evidence, beliefs are still very strong.
The 16 of Basse-Pointe 1948
Martinique was no longer a colony and Prefect Pierre Trouillé, appointed from July 18, 1947 to March 31, 1949, replaced the governor of the department. However, nothing had really changed: as before, the workers were still housed in the Cases-Nègres streets, the place where they lived. The working conditions were still just as bad, the wages reflected the image of deep poverty, and the béké had his power and authority firmly in his hands. Martinique was in the midst of a workers' strike, and this context of deaf demands on the part of the bekes and the authorities led to the assassination on September 6, 1948 of the beke Guy de Fabrique Saint-Tours, administrator of Depaz housing. He had gone to the rescue of his brother Gaston, whom he believed to be under threat, and arrived at the scene with a revolver and two policemen. In order to calm down and bring peace, a shot was fired in the air, but in response a general brawl ensued. The strikers, about sixty of them, disarmed the gendarmes, who without being asked to do so, took their legs and ran away. Some strikers chased Guy de Fabrique through the fields where his body was found on September 6, stabbed with 36 knife wounds, three of which were fatal. 18 cane cutters were arrested and imprisoned. Two of them, who were not in the house on the day of the crime, were released two years later. From then on, there were 16 defendants who remained totally united without ever betraying each other.
They were imprisoned for three years in Martinique while awaiting trial. The case, which was too sensitive, was transferred to the Bordeaux Assizes. For lack of evidence, the 16 from Basse-Pointe were acquitted on August 13, 1951: the author of the fatal blows was never denounced.
Two books retrace these events: Histoire de la Martinique de 1939 à 1971 (tome 3) by Armand Nicolas, L'Harmattan, Paris, 1998, and Habiter le monde, Martinique 1946-2006, by Marie-Hélène Léotin, Ibis Rouge Éditions, Matoury (Guyane), 2008, as well as the documentary film by Camille Mauduech made in 2008: Les 16 de Basse-Pointe.
Cyparis, the survivor of Mount Pelee
His name is Louis Auguste Cyparis, he was born in Trinité on June1st 1874. Protected by the very thick walls of the dungeon in which he was held for having attacked a man with a knife, the man is known to have lived through the torment of the volcanic eruption of May 8, 1902. After breathing the hot and toxic fumes emanating from the volcano, covered with incredible burns, whimpering under the rubble, the man who survived will be rescued three days after the eruption, that is to say on May 11, 1902. He was hospitalized in a critical condition at Morne-Rouge, and the second fiery cloud, which he endured with the same success, raised doubts about his incredible robustness. However, his good faith will be proven by the president of the Court of Appeal of Fort-de-France who will pardon him.
The Barnum circus then hired him as the showman he had become, to show off his burns and scars and also to tell the story of his nightmare. Cyparis is the only man to have lived through the horrors of a volcano on the spot. The other two survivors of the disaster, Léon Compère, a shoemaker, and Havivra Da Ifrile were able to escape. Cyparis died in 1929 at the age of 55, in Panama, with no possibility of returning to his country, the country of the volcano that had spared him, while misery killed him.
"Granzonng"
The man who is still terribly frightening had a disproportionately long pinky nail, which earned him his nickname: "Granzonng". The man, however, is said to have remained tetanized in front of an anolis. This small reptile is similar to the fearsome crocodile, but a crocodile in miniature. He carefully looked after his fighting cocks. Always well dressed, he lived in Terres-Sainville, in Fort-de-France, where he owned several houses as well as a commune. Well-bred, always smiling, he took off his hat to greet everyone. He looked like a big clumsy teddy bear overflowing with kindness, under his thick hair. His black moustache added an elegant allure to the attire of this well-dressed man who would never dare to move without his inseparable silver-headed cane. It would be an insult to himself.
He spoke loudly, he knew how to make himself heard when necessary. He also knew how to make himself heard, since he could switch just as suddenly from a baritone voice to that of an aphone, from that of a man to that of a woman, depending on the effect he seemed to be seeking.
During the night of February 18 to 19, 1965, after a letter stating: "I hurt 402 people", one of the greatest quimboiseurs of Martinique committed suicide in Terres-Sainville.
Mr. Suffrin and shamanism
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, car cleaning companies were almost as rare as the cars themselves. Mr. Suffrin, a car washer by trade, would go around with buckets and mops in hand to clean the taxicabs parked on the Savannah. His grey rather than white coat showed everyone how honestly the man did his job. The bank opposite had not yet changed its name. The age-old tamarind trees were still there to shade the Savannah where Joséphine, placed under the royal palms, still had her head. Mr. D'Esnambuc, convinced that he was fixed on his pedestal to scan in vain the horizon for eternity, kept his illusions. (The statues of these two characters considered symbols of slavery were put down in 2020).
Did the clients of this very loyal man all know that Suffrin, the ubiquitous car washer, privately practiced the dogma of Cham, and his philosophy, shamanism, a very barbaric name in our Tristes Tropiques? Didn't those who knew him as a shaman sense in him a very rare kind of enlightened person, since the first idea of every adept remains the journey by and through the spirit? At Jeanne d'Arc in Lamentin, where Mr. Suffrin had his hut, large panels filled with cabalistic signs or other enigmatic formulas were growing in his garden. Words indecipherable for the common man, esoteric phrases which will however, it is said, make the happiness of a hermetic writer, much younger than Césaire (Glissant not to name him). Did Mr. Suffrin, the declared shaman, a great thinker in his own way, leave during the carnival to look for followers? He particularly liked to walk around with his placards, wearing his red and gold chasuble and his top hat. A kind of galurin, a perfect replica of a large cardboard laundry box.
From now on, in his neighborhood, a very clearly readable sign points to the road that bears his name, a crib that has replaced his hut.
Beauregard, the unsubmissive
We are in 1942, René Beauregard is at the time bursar on the Habitation Grand-Fond in Le Marin. The man, honest and appreciated, will however be dismissed for aggressive behavior towards his hierarchy. Rumor has it that he surprised and immediately beat up the foreman who, often taking advantage of his absence, went to visit his wife. In his revolt, he attacked his wife, whose infidelity seemed to be more a matter of gossip than reality. He will then have a violent altercation with the béké, his boss himself. The boss found him to be a brawler and very disrespectful and laid him off without any other alternative. Violence always leads to violence. The revolted man will commit aggressions and even accidental murders and, knowing he is being hunted, he will hide in the south of the island. He will escape from the police force for 7 years. The court of Fort-de-France sentenced him to death in absentia. He will continue to move around the island, under the nose of the police force, finding in the population an attentive commiseration.
While he was camouflaged under the straws of a cane field in Le François, the maréchaussée (the police force) made a mistake and shot a béké who was also said to be participating in the manhunt.
Recognized on September 30, 1949 in Poirier, Rivière-Pilote, he was denounced. The cornered man committed suicide, but not without wounding his informant. The soldiers arrived and found him dead, lying on the ground. Witnesses say that his body was then machine-gunned.
The population considered him as a victim of the factory owners, they supported him and sympathized with him, which allowed him to stay on the run for so long and to escape from the gendarmes.
Dr. Perronette, the forensic doctor, tells the story in Le Cas Beauregard published by Éditions Désormeaux in 1979. Armand Nicolas, historian, speaks about it in L'Historial antillais, editions DAJANI, and Christian Boulard, a young author, was inspired by it for his play Beauregard, Chimen libèté .
The prisoner of France who stayed the longest in the shade
Born on August 6, 1943 in a family of rather modest condition in Fort-de-France, Pierre Just Marny is rather a student who likes school halfway. By dint of going backwards, little by little he ended up becoming a specialist in all kinds of larceny and then, making his hand quickly enough, finally a great connoisseur in the theft of car parts and also tires. The customers were numerous, his activity became lucrative, to the point of giving the police enough reason to worry about the "business" of the man and his entourage. In 1963, drugs were not yet on the streets, and the police suspected this little world of stealing from wholesalers, who complained about the loss of income. They question them all. They are judged at the correctional court of Fort-de-France. The man arrested was undoubtedly a thief, but a man of honor above all, he refused to denounce his accomplices, and assured them that he was the only one in charge. He was then sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended. The case could have ended there, but on September 2, 1965, during a leave, the prisoner decided to go and visit his accomplices. In the meantime, some of them had built a family, put on the costumes of honest men, and as time had helped them forget the memories that they wanted to erase, they had returned to the ranks just as quickly. And the sharing contract, in all this... The contract? But what contract? The man whose name is Pierre-Just goes to Schoelcher to take justice into his own hands. He leaves dead and wounded in his path, and innocent collateral victims whose only fault is to have been in the wrong place at the time. As for the presumed accomplices, they hide.
All the gendarmes and policemen of the island are looking for Marny in vain. He was seen in Marin, Lamentin, Schoelcher and the hunt, which lasted 6 days, ended on the road to Redoute on September 8 at 3pm. On that day Marny gave the journalists a letter signed " La panthère noire". This is the new title, probably inspired by the Black Panthers of the United States, a protest movement, that he gives himself from now on. He explains the reasons for his massacres: he has been blamed so far and claims that he was not alone in the affair, now his accomplices who run away from their commitment must pay. On October 10, 1965, the man escaped this time. Given the "dishonest" behavior of his accomplices, which he mentions in his letter, a large number of the population rallied behind Marny, who had become a victim, practically a "hero" who benefited from the solidarity of the working class neighborhoods from which he came. On October 19, the man on the run was recognized in front of a grocery store in Sainte-Thérèse, a working-class neighborhood of Fort-de-France, where he was denounced by the owner. Marny did not have a weapon. Two policemen who recognized the fugitive ordered him to lie face down on the ground, which Marny categorically refused. The soldiers fired three bullets at the man who collapsed. Anger rumbles: the forces of law have fired on an unarmed man. It is the riot, the district is put to blood and fire more quickly than one thinks. The grocery store where the phone call originated was looted, stoned and then set on fire. The gendarmes called in as reinforcements were turned away with bottles, rocks, sticks, anything that was within reach. During three days of riots that left one dead and 40 wounded, the only access road to Fort-de-France from the south was blocked, and no one could get there.
On November 24, 1965, discreetly, to avoid new outbursts on the island, Marny was transferred by a military plane, during the night, to Paris. The case was transferred and, on September 27, 1969, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Although he had become practically blind and was still imprisoned, he was still considered very dangerous. In May 2008, with the help of the support committee "Agir sans voir", he asked and obtained to "see again" Martinique, where on his arrival he went directly to the cell waiting for him in the Ducos jail. He ended his life there in 2011.
He remained in prison for 48 years and is considered to be the prisoner with the longest incarceration in France.
Two books are dedicated to the memory of this exceptional prisoner: Jusqu'au bout du silence, Quarante ans de témoignages, by Marlène Hospice, sociologist, ethnologist and anthropologist and La Panthère de Térèz Léotin, French/Creole novel, Exbrayat éditeur.
The unrepentant carnival girl
Madame Marie-Thérèse Armède was born Charlotte-Cléria in Saint-Esprit in 1918. She lived in Saint-Esprit on the side of the presbytery, a proximity that made her a stubborn believer who married Mr. Armède and then followed her husband to Trénelle, in Fort-de-France. This lady, who easily declaimed Césaire better than a great scholar, is known to have run the Carnival every year, whether it rains, thunders or sells, until the age of 99, the year of her death. As a result, she holds the record for being the oldest carnival-goer. Since her death a street in Trénelle, her popular district, bears her name.
