The first to attempt to do the job was a man called Martin Vallet who, helped by his sons, moved heaven and earth to City Hall in order to get dump trucks. 24 Many of the initial inhabitants make reference to Aimé Césaire and to the appeal that he could have made...In any case the population of Fort-de France went from 60,000 inhabitants in 1954 to 97,000 in 1967, essentially in emergency and public accommodations... They will constitute the majority of the electorate of the PPM, the party of Aimé Césaire. 25 In the first stage, people raised goats and sheep... some had oxen that grazed nearby, on the soccer field. 26 It is important to note that no regulation of the land had intervened and that the land continued being under State administration. 27 The individuality of life stories should not be confused with modern individualism, which assumes the preeminence of the individual over society. Here people only exist by virtue of the group, and the vanishing of ties leaves them all alone. 28 The team of sociologist and anthropologists that accompanied us from the beginning of this adventure into informal territory described this state as “community anonymity”. During our encounters with people, we realized that the public discourses of the inhabitants responded to what each one thought the group expected, while the real intentions of each one remained well hidden, including among members of a single house. 29 In French the term “bidonvilles” has been used since 1950, speaking first of North Africa. Le Robert. 30 Cf. “Villes et démocratie” [Cities and Democracy], Gustavo Torres in Revue d’Anthropologie Tyanaba #4, Fort-de-France, 2000. 31 Popular system of savings that consisted of periodically contributing a preestablished quantity in common, which was then given by turns to each one of the participants of the group, giving each one capital that generally enabled an investment in the barrio to enlarge a room, remake a roof or improve a fence. 32 A form of syncretism from the field where African mythologies mix with very personal interpretations of the Catholic message. 33 “And we are on our feet now, my country and I, our hair in the wind, my hand, small now, in its huge fist and the strength is not in us, but on top of us, in a voice that pierces the night and the audience like the sting of an apocalyptic wasp. And the voice utters that, for centuries, Europe has stuffed us with lies and inflated us with foul smells, for it is not true that the work of man is finished and that we have nothing to do in the world, that we are parasites on the world, that it is enough that we bring ourselves to the heels of the world but the work of man comes from beginning and it is up to man to conquer all immobilizing bans in the corner of their fervor and no race possesses a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength and there is a place for all at the rendez-vous for the conquest and we know now that the sun revolves around our land, lighting the plot of land that alone has determined our will and all the stars fall from the sky to the earth at our command, without limit”. Aimé Césaire, directly translated from Cahier de retour au pays natal. Paris, 1947 23
34 Cf. Various articles by William Rolle, among others in Revue d’Anthropologie Tyanaba, No. 1, Fort-de-France, 1991. 35 A term that means “the reconstruction of the house in concrete”. 36 Gallet, a Béké, owner of a construction materials store in Volga-Plage played a discrete and deciding role at that time, accompanying the inhabitants of the barrio and frequently giving credit. 37 Traditionally in French law, the land registry –where four poles defined a surface in the soil– gave way to rights above and below the surface. It took until the end of the eighties and the problems created by the construction of the “Arche de la Défense” in Paris (under which there is a network of roads and rails) to witness the appearance of the notion of property in volume that separates the volume built from the soil upon which it is located. 38 The family structure of the majority made the woman the center of the family group. She accommodates her daughters in her house. Men, alone or in groups, come as visitors. 39 A medicinal and religious magic garden. 40 Naturally, there is a space for subsistence crops near the shack, often in the back, in less accessible sites, but it fulfills only a supplementary role and it is, in any case, far from sight. Cf. Corps, Jardins, Mémoires, by Catherine Benoît, CNRS Editions, Paris 2000 41 Cf. DSQ Volga Plage - Étude Anthropologique, William Rolle, Fort-deFrance, 1991. 42 Ibid. 43 Effectively, it is important to note that with the disappearance of the sousous, the savings of the barrio were contributing to the development of the bourgeoisie. Volga was cut off from all capital that would have contributed to its own development. The absence of land property titles prevented the banks from loaning without their traditional mortgages on the land. 44 We can, for example, note that under the pretext of doing away with the nuisances caused by the floods, the few interventions of the State –which also includes City Hall– had given priority to those who were last to arrive who had settled in the gullies and along the river... Nevertheless, these people were the least integrated. In all cases, the inhabitants of the first and second periods at once felt the injustice... 45 Some of the houses have been isolated from public space, at the mercy of the more or less violent elements that have taken advantage of the situation to drive them out or to re-buy them. 46 Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 1976. 47 Ibid, p.41 in the Spanish 1976 version of the book. 48 An ephemeral shelter used in the countryside by pastors, hunters and generally by the poorer people. 49 Los monumentos arquitectónicos de La Española (p.45, originally published in 1955 and re-published in 1984 by the Sociedad Dominicana de Bibliófilos, in Artes Gráficas, Manuel Pareja, Barcelona, Spain. ISBN 84-499-8057-7). 50 Directly translated from a poem in his book Tratados en la Habana. Ediciones de la Flor. Buenos Aires.
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