1 Introduction
Over the course of the twentieth century, the Guadeloupe and Martinique societies followed a unique trajectory in terms of the relationship between heritage and inheritance. These social spaces developed singular strategies of survival in the face of colonization. In places where violence was a potomitan,1 the claims of “collective personality” and “collective heritage” as articulated by different authorities are confronted by the need for recognition and responsibility.
Thus, since the twentieth century, on the islands that have evaded sovereignty and have the right to self-determination, the question of political responsibility has been addressed via different strategies. These are deployed in service of the category of “identity.” Consequently, the emergence of “patrimonial” discourses and memory policies are at the heart of the process of the social construction of identity.
The mechanics of recognition and this intergenerational transmission of a “legacy” do not come without a selective decision-making process. In the same way, this procedural dynamic, or “patrimonialization,” is subject to a series of social interactions. Indeed, there is no such thing as “heritage” or “heritage objects” as an objective reality per se. However, a system of patrimonial constructs that operates through a series of actors is inserted into relationships of power.
In the so-called “French West Indies”, some of these actors, or social groups, have long been assigned the role of spectators. Rendered inferior and integrated into a dominant structure with its own vision of the world as its frame
As with analogous fields, the development of Martinican and Guadeloupean heritage studies was frenetic. Some themes were essential in the process of the instrumentalization of heritage. For instance, detachment from Western civilization, the Negritude movement, the anthropological study of the West Indies, the defense and illustration of the Creole language, Caribbean discourse, Caribbean or African heritage, and the praise of Creoleness were integral to guiding the direction of heritage preservation (Bernabé et al., 1993; Césaire, 1955 ; Fonkoua, 1995 ; Glissant, 1981).
Today, the demand for recognition, diversification of heritage elements (tangible or intangible), and participation in cultural life is accentuated in the different strata and social categories that link the processes of patrimonialization to those of claiming fundamental “cultural rights.” Heritage is thus moving into the field of citizen ethics and participation in public affairs, accompanied by the new stakes of international cultural and legal policies that, since the 1990s, have placed communities in the decision-making chain. The recent debates on the delicate relationship between ethical principles, ecological principles, and the preservation/conservation of heritage, particularly concerning restitution, bear witness to this.
The four examples of patrimonialization presented in this chapter are linked to a history of critical thought and knowledge that is non-Eurocentric, non-hegemonic, and questions the coloniality of knowledge. The concept of “coloniality of knowledge” is understood here as the architecture of hierarchies of power conceived through forms of thought, action, spirituality, aesthetics, pedagogy, political authority, or economy inherited from the colonial world. They therefore also describe a curve, oscillating between consensus and conflict, on the axes of institutional construction and multi-appropriation of public spaces. In this respect, through each case, we will evoke the modalities and forms taken by these different patrimonializations. We will also observe the close relationship between these processes and those of the political-economic construction of territories. We will end this presentation by validating the idea that Heritage—its anthropological references, its political definitions, its economic structures, and its legal status—is “an ideological field, an instrument of life (the set of social instruments of perception)” (Casimir, 2008).
2.1 Short History and Official Summary
The estate of Fonds Saint-Jacques is situated in Sainte-Marie, Martinique (Figure 8.1). This piece of land was granted to the friars preachers of the Order of Saint Dominic in 1659 by Marie de Saint-André-Bonnard, widow of the first governor, Jacques Dyel du Parquet, who himself was a Lord, the owner of the island of Martinique and nephew of Pierre Belain D’Esnambuc. The estate is located on the North Atlantic coast of Martinique, in the commune of Sainte-Marie, along the river of the same name.
Domaine de Fonds Saint-Jacques, Martinique
With Father Jean-Baptiste Labat’s support, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this unique site in Martinique witnessed historic developments in the slave trade, industry, and religion. The Conseil Général de la Martinique (General Council) acquired the estate in 1948; between 1968 and 1987, it housed the Centre de Recherche Caraïbe of the Université de Montréal, directed by Professor Jean Benoist. In its two decades under Prof. Benoist’s directorship, the center produced various works on anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, geography, demography, zoology, and ecology devoted to the societies of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. It was at the end of Prof. Benoist’s scientific career that the General Council created a management association in order to turn the estate into a cultural center dedicated to promoting the arts and heritage of the Caribbean.
2.2 A Thousand Lives and a Long History
The Fonds Saint-Jacques was established, in the early colonial period, by the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s agreement to grant a property to the Dominican Order, which “Father Boulogne consecrated to the apostle Saint James, in memory of the close obligations [owed] to the late Monsieur le Général, Messire Jacques Dyel, Lord of the Public Prosecutor’s Office” (du Tertre, 1654, p. 24). The right to enjoy and dispose of property was realized through the principles and methods of European colonization: in other words, the conquest of land, resources, and domination of the local populations, in this case the Kalinago, known as the Island Caribs. Thus, in 1658, at the end of an expedition that a General Council of Officers had organized to drive the Amerindians off the island, the General of the Public Prosecutor’s Office gave this building complex to Father Boulogne, who—like the Jesuits’ superior, Father Bonin—had accompanied the colonial troops. The habitation began developing in 1696, when Father Labat settled there and began sugar production on the estate. He subsequently established the basic model for the merchant dwellings of the Lesser Antilles, the “sugar-factory dwelling,” in which the colonist lived, unlike the colonists of Santo Domingo, who were generally non-resident managers. The Domaine de Fonds Saint-Jacques would expand to more than 230 hectares
The house passed from one owner to the next and accumulated leases of management. From 1803, the Fonds Saint-Jacques served as a factory with a railway and a locomotive before ultimately being liquidated; returning to the heritage of the colony, the land was then divided among farmers into 203 lots, constituting the current district of Saint-Jacques (1933). In the meantime, it hosted a school run by the Ploermel brothers, who were sent to the West Indies by the Ministry of Public Instruction to organize primary education, a correctional home for juvenile delinquents, and, later, a shelter for the Indian labor force “imported” to Martinique from 1855. Generations of individuals, born in Martinique or abroad, have thus lived there since the seventeenth century. They have comprised the majority of the population of the Saint-Jacques district since the 1930s. During and beyond the first half of the twentieth century, the neighborhood’s families (Wagram, Garnier, Cassildé, etc.) lived within the walls of what has now become a cultural center. This use of “popular housing,” perpetuated after the abolition of slavery, may be considered the first patrimonialization of the place. The usual social, cultural, and economic appropriation of heritage through time, by a population of direct heirs—without any documentation or rights—to the historical continuum of a singular space.
2.3 Uses and Representations, from the Other to Oneself
The Domaine de Fonds Saint-Jacques reflects a mise en abime. For instance, this account of the estate’s history engages—in a factual, measured, and neutral manner—with the content of the speeches and heritage stories that comprise heritage “at the level of the social body” (Bérard, 2014). These sources will result in making the colonial place Habitation Saint-Jacques an official heritage object having been among the first to benefit from the French “Monument Historique” label in 1980.
In fact, this initial impulse towards popular appropriation was followed by an official and institutional approach. This was the initiative of a mixed group of academic and political leaders led by the Canadian professor Jean
2.4 Dissolving Memory: History under Construction
From the 1970s to the turn of the 2000s, the French West Indies were the site of negotiations between pair center/periphery, continuity/breakdown, exogenous/endogenous, urbanity/rurality, dependence/independence, and domination/emancipation. History is thus conceived as a category for analysis and debate: it is a “trap” and “over-determination” on the one hand (Glissant, 1981), and support for “finding one’s roots, (and) becoming aware of one’s identity” on the other (Armand Nicolas, 1996). At the Fonds Saint-Jacques,
To this end, the category of enslaved people is dissolved in the sociological lexicon: enslaved people are styled as “workers” or “laborers” rather than dehumanized personal property. The memory of Habitation Saint-Jacques is scially and politically instrumentalized, and the concept of slavery is revived in the name of an embodied heritage (Cottias et al., 2000) or a “valorization and amplification of the historical heritage value of the site” (Association culturelle de l’habitation Fonds Saint-Jacques, Avant projet d’établissement du CCR, 2012). However, the real meaning is the dissolution of the museographic and interpretative implications that the historical truth should raise in a space that wishes to “invite the visitor to enter this noisy world of people, cultures, music, dance and noise” (Cottias et al., 2000, p. xx). A crucial sign of patrimonialization, with variable interests, was the “enslaved people’s” cemetery on the estate. The burials, placed on the premises of the Direction
3 The Case of Poterie Fidelin and the Fonds Rousseau Habitation
In the French West Indies, there is a physical heritage with a symbolic form from which emanates an emotional charge linked to the history of slavery. In this context, these places of memory—these temples where disorder takes place amid the architectural beauty—cannot be apprehended with the same international standards introduced under the UNESCO concept of patrimonialization. This patrimonialization, which aims at the creation, preservation, and dissemination of different forms of heritage from an intergenerational perspective, will be interpreted here with attention to identity and resilience.
Our goal is to present, through two examples, the economic challenges of two historical sites that speak to slavery, to the living memory of men who have been fighting for equality for hundreds of years. Therefore, the traditionally neoclassical economic development will be recounted and reframed by the authors, Afro-descendants, in its social and cultural context to propose and stimulate ambitious new public policies. It is fundamental that the goods inherited in this context of pain be preserved through a strategy that involves local people in its implementation. These places bear the silence and spirituality of history. To support our argument, we will look at two different sites: one in Guadeloupe, the other in Martinique. There are management challenges related to the historical monuments and the local population tends not to embrace this heritage. To reclaim this heritage, the owners of the premises have chosen to invest in human capital to prevent choices that too often lead to impulsive and regrettable destruction. The establishment of a social economy in this environment should lead to greater awareness and prevent looting and destruction of cultural heritage. Destruction of heritage can be operated in different levels. We have seen in a regional level that the henchmen of Jair Bolsonaro (previous president of Brazil) have set fire to the Amazon rainforest, the habitat of marginalized Amerindians, which represents the world heritage of humanity. Locally, a manifesto in favor of commemorating the abolition of slavery, written in Martinique on May 22, 2020 and signed by Lanmounité (Lanmounité in Carpentier, 2020) calling for the destruction of monuments. According to Lanmounité these monuments have been characterized by the
Our two examples illustrating the integrated economic development of heritage, one in Guadeloupe and the other in Martinique, have social and human ends in mind. These two sites “build” us; they bring the author and owner of these places back to their slavery past. These places are not museums, but sites that dream of being recovered.
3.1 The Poterie Fidelin
Poterie Fidelin (Figure 8.2) is a relatively well-preserved complex located on an island south of Guadeloupe, the island of Terre-de-Bas, which has approximately 800 inhabitants. Its uniqueness and location made it a destination for UNESCO emissaries, such as those who visited its pottery factory in early 2020. The pottery factory was established by Jean-Pierre Fidelin shortly after 1760. The Fidelins are one of the oldest Creole families in Guadeloupe. The factory sugar molds and the pots used for sugar refining. Each sugar refinery had more than two thousand pots and had to replace them regularly. The pottery activities flourished from 1760 to 1815, when the development of the sugar beet in metropolitan France sounded the death knell for the Caribbean sugarcane industry and, by extension, that of its suppliers (Bortolussi, 2015; Gabriel, 2016).
Top: Poterie Fidelin, Terre-de-Bas, Les Saintes; bottom: Habitation Fonds Rousseau, Martinique
Today, all that remains of the pottery production center are the raised walls, the traces of two kilns, a cistern, the ruins of an animal-driven mill, and several unidentified ruined buildings. The plot containing the ruins of the old pottery factory was classified as a historical monument by decree on December 15, 1997. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the factory has been overlooked in the forest. In 2015, the author acquired the old pottery factory and is planning its cultural valorization and opening to the public.
3.2 Habitation Fonds Rousseau
Situated along the Case-Navire river, in the commune of Schœlcher in Martinique, the Fonds Rousseau dwelling extends over 4 hectares in the immediate vicinity of the Schœlcher suburbs and the Grand Village district, a short distance from the hustle and bustle of the town. A short distance from the hustle and bustle of the city, the property, which has been listed in the supplementary inventory of Monuments Historiques since the early 1990s, is a treasure trove of art and history.
Centuries-old trees and local plant species rub shoulders with the stone walls and brick roofs of this complex. The masonry and stone floors, scaly tiles, and precious woods—everything here is reminiscent of the traditional codes of Creole architecture. Installed on a site occupied since pre-Columbian times, the mansion and its outbuildings, the manager’s house, the enslaved peoples’ living quarters, and the industrial buildings tell, in their own way, two tumultuous centuries of Martinique’s history.
The Habitation Fonds Rousseau is one of the oldest sugar-factory in Schœlcher and the only building in the community to be listed as a historical monument. In 1660, Gabriel Turpin owned 360 hectares in the parish that would later become the commune of Schœlcher. François Hurault de Manoncourt cultivated mulberry trees for silkworm breeding, which led to his land being established as a fief in 1687. Later on, sugar was produced there; then, until the beginning of the twentieth century, rum. Initially named Fonds Plumet, the house owes its current name to the construction of a distillation column from a Saint-Pierre factory belonging to Charles Rousseau after the 1902 volcano eruption. In the 1950s, the house was abandoned and became a ruin; in the 1980s, it was restored and the buildings rented as accommodations. In 2017, one of the author of this paper acquired the Habitation Fonds Rousseau and planned its cultural development and opening to the public.
3.3 The Formal Context of France
The difficulties in managing cultural policy in the region have not disappeared with the decentralization laws. “Overseas people” are often excluded from the management of their assets for lack of compliant diplomas. This hindrance leads to a decreased use of these premises, which leads to less vigorous heritage development of the sit. This translates to the absence of workers who can participate in the very expensive renovations due to the requirements imposed by state administration.
Certain advantages of France’s formal institutional framework should not be overlooked. As examples, let us mention:
- –an administration that is well-versed in cultural matters and has made France the world leader in the preservation of property for social and economic benefit;
- –historic house associations that bring together enthusiasts, advise them, and promote dynamism by awarding prizes to volunteers; and
- –the creation of the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, which is a public utility association aimed at diffusing and preserving material and immaterial goods related to slavery. This national association has its headquarters at the Palais de la Marine, a place that holds the symbolism of being the site where the French Republic ratified the Decree of the Abolition of Slavery of 1848.
3.4 The Economic Possession of Places of Memory: the békés of Martinique
The decree of April 27, 1848, disseminated by the provisional government of the Second Republic, proclaimed the abolition of slavery in the French colonies (Article 1) but also recognized that an indemnity must be paid to all owners (Article 5) to compensate for the loss of what the law had hitherto considered a patrimonial asset. A decree of June of that same year instituted a commission “charged with preparing proposals to be submitted to the National Assembly for the settlement of the compensation due to the settlers.” One year after the emancipation decree, the National Assembly set the amount of the colonial indemnity for all the territories concerned. On November 24, 1849, a decree signed by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte definitively established the terms of payment of the colonial indemnity. Settlers who lost nearly 250,000 workers
3.5 Paths to Sustainable Developments
The acquisition of the Poterie Fidelin and Habitation Fonds Rousseau with the private funds of parties sensitive to the preservation of heritage has generated subsequent initiatives. The missions of these places have been redefined and their identity, cultural, or even religious frameworks are privileged in opposition to the “tourist cash machine.”
The Poterie Fidelin has become a place for art and music festivals. The Fonds Rousseau has served as the site of the Pool Art Fair, a gathering of more than sixty Caribbean artists and a venue for screening historical films. The descendants of talented slaves, associations of the elderly, primary-school students, and artists bring these places to life. The intent is to privilege the cultural value of our places of memory per se: their aesthetic value, spiritual value, social value, historical value, symbolic value, and the value of their authenticity.
3.6 Personal Feedback in Relation to Both Examples
There is a form of loneliness in the process of safeguarding heritage. One might say that the local population is not interested in taking part of safeguarding process. It is, in addition, important to highlight that it is expensive to maintain the staff needed for conservation, and the upkeep of the property costs tens of thousands of euros. Administrative procedures are slow and exhausting; heritage culture is not a priority. Researchers must look at other forms of education: for instance, a public education policy that would adhere to the mission of valorizing Creole heritage. The Master’s program in heritage studies that the Université des Antilles has just launched has such a mission. Developing the public importance of heritage would obligate institutes to participate financially in the preservation of listed historical monuments. It may be useful to specify that local authorities in Guadeloupe are enthusiastic about such a prospect, and it is hoped that Martinican authorities will follow suit.
4 The Case of the Centre d’Animation et d’Interprétation de la Culture Amérindienne (CAICA)
In Martinique in 1502, there was a clash between two worlds, two civilizations: on one side were the Amerindians; on the other side, the Europeans. This clash of cultures forever transformed the history of the Caribbean. This year would also mark the beginning of the decline and annihilation of the Amerindian people, who until then had inhabited and exploited the resources of this vast Caribbean geographical space.
In 1635, the first French colony settled on Iouanacaëra, the Amerindian name for Martinique, and caused unprecedented sociocultural and economic upheaval. The mass arrival of the first enslaved people through the African slave trade and the development of sugar plantations profoundly transformed the Caribbean landscape.
In recent years, we have seen an increased collective awareness of our cultural practices. Indeed, our vision of “heritage” and “culture” is being questioned and re-examined through a new framework of “cultural rights.” The Fribourg Declaration on Cultural Rights, drafted in 2007 (Déclaration de Fribourg, 2007), is the result of twenty years of work by a group of international experts coordinated by the philosopher Patrice Meyer-Bisch. This declaration promotes the protection of the diversity of cultural rights within the human rights system.
We will demonstrate to what extent archaeology contributes to the transmission of common heritage in Martinique through the example of the Centre d’Animation et d’Interprétation de la Culture Amérindienne (CAICA) of Vivé (Figure 8.3). In addition, we will explain how cultural heritage can be interwoven into different layers of our contemporary Caribbean societies.
Centre d’Animation et d’Interprétation de la Culture Amérindienne de Vivé, Cap Nord Martinique
4.1 History of the project
The north of Martinique possesses numerous Amerindian archaeological deposits: thirteen spread over more than 30 km. The ancient ceramic deposits have quite exceptional burial and preservation conditions. The ancient
In fact, the General Council wanted to acquire the land to develop the site as early as the mid-1980s. By the end of the 1990s, the municipality of Lorrain was looking to build a reception and (cultural) mediation area for the local public and schoolchildren on the site. By cultural mediation, we mean strategies consisting of bringing the general public into contact with the site for educational, social and recreational purposes. Eventually, the project was taken over and redesigned by the CAP Nord Martinique community, and the Centre d’Animation et d’Interprétation de la Culture Amérindienne (CAICA) was born. A first feasibility study was carried out in 2002 and then updated in 2005 and 2009. The year 2019 will mark a considerable advancement in the project, with the recruitment of an archaeologist to fill the position of scientific advisor to the CAICA.
Why invest so much in this Amerindian heritage when historical and colonial heritage is also present in North Martinique? Besides the fact that the archaeological site of Vivé is an exceptional deposit, the answer lies especially in the fact that this Amerindian heritage is less painful than slavery heritage in the collective memory (Bérard, 2014). Consequently, this project succeeded in finding a process for claiming and reappropriating identity. Heritage projects of this nature tend to be a uniting factor in Caribbean and Martinican identity across cultural and racial.
4.2 CAICA’s Mission through the Framework of Cultural Rights
North Martinique has a strong cultural identity, which is reflected in its inter-municipal vision: Terre de mémoire, terre d’avenir (Land of memory, land of the future). This region holds 44% of the historical monuments on the entire island. CAICA is therefore part of the process of enhancing the heritage of the north, with its various challenges. One of its objectives is to recognize and engage the local population of Martinique, in all its diversity, in cultural life. Culture is understood here in the broadest sense of the term, covering “the values, beliefs, convictions, languages, knowledge arts, traditions, institutions and ways of life through which a person or group expresses his or her humanity and the meanings it gives to its existence and development” (Déclaration de Fribourg, 2007, art. 2). Cultural rights were incorporated into French law in 2015 under the NOTRE Law (ibid., 2007, art. 103), and in 2016 under the Law on Architecture and Heritage Creation (ibid., 2007, art. 2). These are the rights of a person, alone or in common, to choose and express his or her identity. This
Thus, CAICA aims to serve as a bridge and strengthen ties between the museums of Fort-de-France and Rivière Pilote, which deal with Amerindian themes. Given the current context, it is more important than ever to bring out and identify, to the general public, places of memory. This space would make it possible to find the right balance between the valorization of an archaeological site, preservation of nature, and preservation of the environment while allowing a territorial rebalancing at the level of tourism (BICFL, 2009).
Dedicated to memory, information, knowledge, and archaeological research, CAICA plans to emphasize the active and immersive participation of the general public and schoolchildren in the various educational, social and recreational activities. It would be a question of making visible the rich archaeological heritage left to us today at the Vivé site. This plan consists also in making the Amerindian heritage available to everyone, at each reading level, while explaining the means of interpretation, methods, and knowledge of archaeologists.
For these various reasons, the future park’s aims include:
- –a site dedicated primarily to the theme of “archaeology and Amerindian culture” in the context of Martinique, the Caribbean, and also internationally, capturing public enthusiasm with its specific items and high quality;
–a facility that is part of a strategy of networking with other touristic and cultural sites and projects in Martinique, as well as an interregional and international partnership; - –a facility that is part of a sustainable development approach and thus reconciles environmental, sociocultural, and economic constraints; and
- –a consensual tool for Caribbean identity across community and cultural divides.
- –Various actions aimed at the general public and schoolchildren have been set up in order to enhance and promote the future Caribbean Park:
- –On the road to Vivé: A historical journey to discover the Amerindian cultural heritage of northern Martinique through the lens of art and archaeology. This will be developed in partnership with schoolchildren. The course, based on Amerindian artwork-Adorno, will have only one QR code referring visitors to the information on the site of Vivé.
- –Abakéta: A discovery workshop on Amerindian archaeology. Abakéta, a word of Caribbean origin that means “to learn, to acquire knowledge,” sums up the scope of this workshop for the general public. The goal of this workshop is not only to present the results of archaeological research, but also to present the Amerindian heritage to contemporary society.
- –Abakétoni: An international colloquium that has been organized in 2021 under the following theme: La médiation scientifique en archéologie dans la Caraïbe. Un territoire, des peuples : transmission et savoirs Abakétoni, which means “what is taught” in spoken Kalinago, is the name of the program of knowledge sharing at the Caribbean Park of Vivé. This professional and scientific event has been organized in 2021, and will question the notion of territory and the theoretical issues and professional practices of cultural mediation.
Nowadays, the valorization and transmission of Amerindian heritage is a strong axis of the patrimonial policy of Martinique. Through the framework of cultural rights, we observe a collective awareness and appropriation or even reappropriation of this Amerindian heritage. For several years now, various local actors, such as the Karisko Association, have been mobilizing to highlight this heritage. Indeed, this association promotes the conservation, appropriation, and valorization of the historical and environmental heritage of the Caribbean through the transmission of this heritage to the youth. CAP Nord, through the creation of CAICA, wishes to go even further in these efforts to allow this heritage to radiate throughout the Caribbean.
5 The Case of Museums and Archaeology: a Brief History of Archaeology in the French West Indies
Three major phases punctuate the history of archaeology and its development in the French West Indies. During the 1930s, the first archaeological excavations took place on the islands of Martinique and then Guadeloupe
This “invisible” Amerindian is thus part of a memory and a history less painful than that linked to slavery, while at the same time, it permits an anchoring and a legitimacy of belonging to the local landscape. In Guadeloupe history was promoted through the creation of a departmental museum of Amerindian archaeology, the Edgar Clerc Archaeological Museum. According to a 2007 definition of the International Council of Museums (ICOM, 2020): “The museum is a permanent non-profit institution, at the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, preserves, studies, exhibits, and transmits the tangible and intangible heritage humanity and its environment for the purposes of study, education and enjoyment” (ICOM, 2007). A link between the past and the present, the Edgar Clerc museum presents artifacts from archaeological excavations. The objects take on their full heritage dimension because they are a “witness and narrative support, […] for the non-specialist visitor. Reputed as a mediator, it is in fact an instrument for putting oneself at a distance from a real unknown, a factor of astonishment, questioning, and reflection” (Colardelle, 2011). This is how the museum of Amerindian archaeology participates in rewriting the history of the first inhabitants of the islands now known as Martinique and Guadeloupe, and more broadly of the Caribbean archipelago.
5.1 Edgar Clerc Museum: Departmental Museum of Amerindian Archaeology
In Guadeloupe, the Edgar Clerc museum is a Guadeloupean council’s museum of Amerindian Archaeology that was created in 1984, although the idea for its creation dates back to 1978. It was conceived through the donation
Top: Four panels of the Caribbean Ties exhibition at Edgar Clerc museum. Bottom: Edgar Clerc departmental museum of Amerindian archaeology, Guadeloupe
5.2 International “Caribbean Ties” Exhibition
Initiated and designed by the ERC Synergy project Nexus 1492—based at Leiden University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the University of Konstanz, Germany—in collaboration with institutions, museums, and communities throughout the Caribbean, the exhibition “Caribbean Ties: Connected People Then and Now” focuses on the contributions of Amerindian heritage, including multi-ethnic Caribbean societies and cultures, particularly through the presentation of the research results of the Nexus 1492 project.
Thanks to a modern modular concept that adapts to spatial constraints, local context, and interest, the exhibition has been designed to be itinerant and allow the entire population to have access to the research results. Envisioned as a circular Amerindian dwelling, based on the results of excavations in the Caribbean, the exhibition is composed of four structures and a central column. Each structure deals with a different theme. The first theme, “Multicultural landscape,” approaches the Caribbean area as a place where people and cultures mix. The second theme, “Travel, migration, and exchange,” deals with the importance of navigation in the establishment of Amerindian ways of life. The third theme, “Food and beliefs,” is related to changes observed in the Caribbean before and during colonization. The last theme, dedicated to “The future of the past,” focuses on the contributions of advanced research to archaeology. In order to sensitize not only schoolchildren, but also the general public—whether amateurs or experts—interactive devices were created, such as facsimiles of artifacts to be touched and online games and programs. Texts, images, and photos, brief information—everything is done so that each category of visitor, from novice to expert, from children to the
5.3 Local Variation Exhibition: Liens Caribéens/Lyannaj péyi LaKarayib
Right from the design stage, the institutions hosting the exhibition were encouraged to create a local variation to best meet the specific expectations of the territories. Thus, in Guadeloupe, under the author’s curatorship, with local partners such as the Departmental Council of Guadeloupe, the Aï-ti Association, and Coreca, the exhibition “Caribbean Ties: Connected People Then and Now” was translated into French and Creole and renamed “Caribbean Ties: Connected People Then and Now/ Lyannaj péyi LaKarayib: Nasyon lyanné yè é jodijou.” The surveys carried out beforehand on the feeling of belonging to the Caribbean allowed us to target identity, culture, and population blended as well as music and the island environment as departure points for exploring the theme of the “multicultural landscape.”
Finally, concerning itinerancy, the concept of a museum “outside the walls” has been realized, with several exhibition locations selected throughout the archipelago (in various cities including Les Saintes, La Désirade, and Marie-Galante; further partnerships have been signed with St. Martin and St. Lucia).
The institutions’ enthusiasm for taking part in the programming of the exhibition itinerary, as well as the feedback from visitors, confirmed the Guadeloupean popular interest in this Amerindian past. However, persisting in the dissemination of obsolete data, especially in textbooks—such as the narrative of the “good” Arawaks having been chased away by the “bad” Caribs, instead of presenting dynamic networks of Arawak and Caribs—hinders its appropriation by the entire population.
5.4 A New Generation of Local Archaeologists
The discipline of archaeology has experienced a surge of interest in recent years, popularizing it on a national scale. In our territories, the creation of the Service régional de l’archéologie and the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles in the early 1990s enabled the arrival of continental archaeologists. The work undertaken—excavations, studies, inventories, and the development of preventive archaeology—shows an enthusiasm for the research and development of not only Amerindian heritage, but also colonial heritage.
5.5 Interest and Reappropriation of Amerindian Culture
Other projects emanating from civil society continue to flourish. Let us mention, among others, the Amerindian festival of Trois-Rivières and the projects of Jean Barfleur’s K’nawa association. The artistic world has also taken up these themes, like the visual artist Pierre Chadru, who promotes Caribbean art, invading even the most important hall of the Prefecture of Guadeloupe, a building symbolic of the French state. The artistic world has also taken up these themes, as well as the carnival community by organizing of parades where people are painted with roucou (Bixa orellana) to pay homage to the Indigenous ancestors, formerly called “red skin”
In Guadeloupe as in Martinique, many structures with varied fields of competence and activity take their names from Amerindian terms or names of Amerindian ethnic groups. In addition, many public projects, private projects,
The movement integrating the Amerindian heritage of the French West Indies with its Creole identity is underway.
6 Conclusion
These examples of heritage in Guadeloupe and Martinique remind us that the issues surrounding Caribbean heritage are integrated into a fabric of diverse social relations and interactions. Indeed, if heritage and memory policies have experienced substantial development over the last two decades, they are currently experiencing a resurgence of the tension or conflict that demonstrates their uniqueness.
Heritage policies serve projects that carry worldviews that are called upon to reach a consensus, that are intended to be universalist, but remain inserted in areas of social, political, and economic competition. Each individual (person, collective, or institution) uses them to defend his or her version of history and privileged memory. Consequently, if the perspective that these policies and processes reveal is that of pacifying society and learning “lessons from the past,” it is clear that they are not immune to the social realities of the present. This over-determination can be seen as a vector of encounter between actors and recipients of heritage and memory policies. It is through this renewed meeting of project bearers, who are at the same time bearers of values, that a reconciliatory and tolerant normative framework can take shape.
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The term Potomitan or “central pillar” is an Antillean-Guyanese Creole expression referring to the person at the center of the household. This is a strong person, generally the mother, around whom everything is organized.
Père Fouettard is one of the St. Nicholas’ companions. Contrarily to this one, he is mean and whips the children who have been disobedient.