Murder trial which put colonialism in the dock

by Daniel Brown

Article published on the 2009-04-29 Latest update 2009-05-02 12:27 TU

Mauduech interviews a Martinquaise
(Photo: Handout)

1951, in the former slave port of Bordeaux. Three years after 16 black sugar cane workers from Basse-Pointe, Martinique, were arrested for stabbing the white créole Guy de Fabrique, the accused go on trial. Sixty years later, French West Indian director Camille Mauduech devotes a feature-length film on the landmark trial, called Les 16 de Basse-Pointe.

“This trial was really the first time that people challenged those responsible for colonialism in Martinique, which, don’t forget, had been a French department for two years.”

French West Indian director Camille Mauduech does not mince her words as she describes the context in which her documentary is set.

On a blustery Parisian day, she explains how the tensions preceding the 1948 death of a member of the privileged white Martiniquais community (locally called the Béké) had made such a tragedy almost inevitable.

Camille Mauduech
(Photo: Handout)

On 9 August, the trial opened in a special court of the Gironde Department. The accused were farmworkers, sugar cane labourers and union members. They were accused of violence, wounding police officers, theft … and murder.

Defending the 16 West Indians was a formidable team of 11 lawyers, mainly supporters of the French Communist Party that was a dominant political force at the time.

In the space of a week, their arguments persuaded the jury that the accused were not guilty. It was a verdict that flew in the face of government attempts to use the trial to end protests and strikes by the 40,000 sugarcane-cutters in Martinique.

But, for Camille Mauduech, it was a Pyrrhic victory for the West Indians.

“I always say these men were heroes in Bordeaux,” she says with passion, “but never on their own island. Their acquittal was due to an excellent defence.

"But it was also the result of political calculations. The French government was trying to destroy Martinique’s Communist Party. When it saw that it couldn’t, it had to acquit the accused – otherwise, there would have been a revolution in Martinique. This acquittal allowed the colonial system to continue, untroubled.”

In her first feature-length documentary, Mauduech films herself as she gently prods the memories of  the survivors, family members and commentators.

“All the people living in Leiritz, where the murder took place, have someone implicated in the affair,” she narrates during the film. “But it is out of the question to talk about it. Nowadays, no one would easily admit that he had worked for the Béké.

“My own mixed background became an accomplice in my investigation. It allowed me to talk in Créole and to be accepted as somebody from here. I was able to reach people and acquire a kind of legitimacy to talk about an affair that no one spoke of in the last 60 years.”

Les 16 de Basse-Pointe is thus a personal voyage for Camille Mauduech. Her dual identity, a Marseillais father and a Martiniquais mother, has given her a privileged and intimate standpoint from which to tell this moving story of a forgotten part of France’s colonial past.

“It was very difficult for me to accept my mixed background when I was an adolescent in Martinique,” she acknowledges. “This personal challenge plunged me further into the making of this film, in a quest for my own identity.

“Now, I see that Martinique made me who I am: a film-maker and a woman with a composite family. And with this film, I feel like I’ve repaid a certain debt to this island.”

Mauduech’s 98-minute documentary comes out shortly after a prolonged social conflict in the French West Indies. The director feels there is a link between today’s crisis and the realities she studies in her film.

“Each time there’s been a strong economic crisis in Martinique, the people have mobilised," she says. "But since the country was founded on a colonialist basis that was very profound – and is still present nowadays -, all social conflicts very quickly get submerged by historic and racial questions.

“It’s absolutely inevitable in this country: as long as we haven’t worked out the fundamental questions of historic hatred and bitterness, nothing will change. Because the actors in our history are still present nowadays, even if the wealth is shared out differently.”

Without apparently being aware of it, Mauduech refers to Martinique as a country, and not a French department. Be that as it may, her gripping film has won several regional awards and is currently playing in Paris.