The Convict and the Colonel -Richard Price

In 1925 in Martinique, a riot resulted in ten deaths and fourteen injuries. In the town of Diamant, fishermen brandished a wooden effigy of a colonel, the wealthy owner of the local factory, to protest against electoral fraud. The author of this statue was Médard Aribot, an eccentric who lived in a cave. It is said that it was for this act of insolence that he was condemned and sent to the penal colony. Fifty years later, his life is celebrated in postcards, tourist guides, plays and carnival costumes. Using testimonies, field notes, official reports, novels, films and photos, Richard Price unravels the threads of this story. He shows how the tensions in Martinican society between colonialism, the slave past and modernity crystallize around this sculpture and the story of its author, emblems of resistance. And how memory can produce the folklorization of everyday life and transform the habitat and work of a marginal person into simple tourist manifestations