Gilda and Cemetary

Museums and archives are one form of remembrance and memorialization. Such institutional forms of memory share space with grass roots forms of memory as well as individual actions in former French colonies. These different forms of remembrance rarely remain separate. Instead, they intertwine and overlap, as do their differing objectives. This page features three examples: the Mémorial ACTe, a cultural institution established in 2015 under the auspices of the Region of Guadeloupe; the Slave Cemetery at Anse-Sainte Marguerite, on Grande Terre, Guadeloupe; and an oral interview with Gilda Gonfier about doing genealogy as a descendant of people who were enslaved.

The Mémorial ACTe, a museum and memorial sight “dedicated to the history, the heritage and the memory of the slave trade, slavery, and its abolitions” (https://memorial-acte.fr/decouvrir-le-macte/#genese), was inaugurated May 10, 2015. Built on the site of the former Darboussier Refinery (once the preeminent site of sugar processing in the Antilles) and in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Pointe-à-Pitre, the Mémorial integrates a history of Caribbean slavery within a global history of slavery and anti-Black racism. It also weaves in a plethora of contemporary artworks interpreting these phenomena and their impacts. The Memorial has been controversial since its inception, due in part to concerns that it downplays the specifics of Caribbean slavery, that it circumscribes slavery within its historical period thereby suppressing ongoing consequences, as well as concerns about its management and upkeep.

For Gilda Gonfier, the Guadeloupean and Antillean citizen’s role is to do their genealogy. Gonfier, currently a consultant for direct management of projects for the European Commission in Guadeloupe, worked for several years establishing the municipal library in le Gosier, co-founded Varan Caraïbes, an educational foundation for documentary film, and is invested through art and media projects in investigating Guadeloupean identity and heritage. Gonfier was careful to explain that her encouragement of genealogy was meant to exclude those not descended from enslaved ancestors. Instead, her aim is to reposition descendants vis-à-vis the identity quest. She pointed to two dominant conceptions of that quest—one, in which the descendant seeks to recuperate their African-ness, and one in which all of the energy for a quest is channeled into calls for justice, anger, and denunciations. « We are traumatized. But the trauma, we are not going to heal it by denouncing the perpetrator, only. We have to denounce the perpetrator, and there has been the law « Slavery : Crime against humanity. » But at some point, we are going to have to come back to ourselves, to the interior, to see the trauma from the inside”, she told me. Doing genealogical research in Guadeloupe, as evidenced in the 2009 documentary film Le Pays à l’envers by Sylvaine Dampierre (which features Gonfier), was, until very recently, a difficult task. And, certain more recent efforts, such as the Memorial ACTe’s opening of a genealogy center, have fizzled (the center has since closed with no given date for reopening). However, the Departmental Archives of Guadeloupe have since digitized records of plantation life and gone so far as to construct a platform specifically facilitating genealogical research. It is thus now more possible than ever for descendants to attempt a return to “themselves.”

Then, Gonfier added a more embodied step to this repositioning. “But for me, the Guadeloupean citizen, he should be from here. And when I say, be from here, I mean know the country. And knowing the country, it’s walking this country. It’s going to places, traversing this land, you see? It’s walking within it, going in the forest, taking hikes, knowing its places, and accepting its history.”

The cemetery is one of eighteen sites on the Route de l’Esclave-Traces-Mémoires en Guadeloupe, a project that is inscribed in the global UNESCO project known as the Route de l’Esclave. In Guadeloupe, the Route has been designed and curated by the Conseil Général of Guadeloupe, as an “invitation to become conscious that our geography (like our story) is ‘marked’ by indelible traces, significant vestiges, and memory-sites where the past emerges” (citation). In light of this, it is fascinating to visit to the Cemetery. One reason for this is that there exist no visible traces of the cemetary itself. Only signs marking the entrance, placards describing the anthropological excavation and research, and some non-official installations signal what lies beneath the surface. Meanwhile, visitors hardly incude only memory seekers; others come here to fish, forage, and swim. Consciousness of the past, thus, mingles with present-day pursuits of life. Another reason, though, are the more recent, unofficial “vestiges” left by a group that has actively accepted and engaged with the invitation extended by the Conseil Général. The group calls itself Lanmou Ba Yo. Since 2009, the year of the site’s opening, they have led a march from Le Moule to the Cimetière. This newly conceived ritual, as well as physical relics installed by the group, permanently link to site to present-day descendants and honor those buried there. According to founding member Jean-Luc Romana, « We said to ourselves, but our ancestors…they were enslaved. Do we ever think about them ? When, for example, we go to the Toussaint mass, when we place candles on the tombs of our relatives, we never think about them. So we said to ourselves, we have to make a gesture of love…” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTrhd-n18b0&t=207s).

For Gilda Gonfier, the Guadeloupean and Antillean citizen’s role is to do their genealogy. Gonfier, currently a consultant for direct management of projects for the European Commission in Guadeloupe, worked for several years establishing the municipal library in le Gosier, co-founded Varan Caraïbes, an educational foundation for documentary film, and is invested through art and media projects in investigating Guadeloupean identity and heritage. Gonfier was careful to explain that her encouragement of genealogy was meant to exclude those not descended from enslaved ancestors. Instead, her aim is to reposition descendants vis-à-vis the identity quest. She pointed to two dominant conceptions of that quest—one, in which the descendant seeks to recuperate their African-ness, and one in which all of the energy for a quest is channeled into calls for justice, anger, and denunciations. « We are traumatized. But the trauma, we are not going to heal it by denouncing the perpetrator, only. We have to denounce the perpetrator, and there has been the law « Slavery : Crime against humanity. » But at some point, we are going to have to come back to ourselves, to the interior, to see the trauma from the inside”, she told me. Doing genealogical research in Guadeloupe, as evidenced in the 2009 documentary film Le Pays à l’envers by Sylvaine Dampierre (which features Gonfier), was, until very recently, a difficult task. And, certain more recent efforts, such as the Memorial ACTe’s opening of a genealogy center, have fizzled (the center has since closed with no given date for reopening). However, the Departmental Archives of Guadeloupe have since digitized records of plantation life and gone so far as to construct a platform specifically facilitating genealogical research. It is thus now more possible than ever for descendants to attempt a return to “themselves.”

Then, Gonfier added a more embodied step to this repositioning. “But for me, the Guadeloupean citizen, he should be from here. And when I say, be from here, I mean know the country. And knowing the country, it’s walking this country. It’s going to places, traversing this land, you see? It’s walking within it, going in the forest, taking hikes, knowing its places, and accepting its history.”