Fort-de-France les statues ne meurent pas¹

First, the acts of vandalism that have been perpetrated against the statues of Empress Josphine, Victor Schoelcher and Thodaure Baude in Fort-de-France, then the bust of Mahatma Gandhi offered by the Government of the Republic of India to the City of Fort-de-France, and finally the project of renovation of the park la Savane in Fort-de-France are the three parameters that sustain this analysis on the various strategies used to remember and reclaim a forgotten and suppressed history and criticize the power of an imposed official French colonial History in the city of Fort-de-France. This article contends that the mutilations and degradations committed against theses statues as well as the addition of new statues in Fort-de-France constitute an historical discourse that reshapes them as significant political places of memory. These lieux de mmoire in turn create a constructive dialogue between an official History and concealed local histories, and fill in the holes of a colonial memory.