Galya

INAUGURATION OF THE MEMORIAL TO LOUIS-DELGRÈS & HIS COMPANIONS

On Place Gabriel Péri, opposite the town hall of Blanc-Mesnil, a monument honoring the memory of Louis Delgrès was unveiled two days after the national commemoration of the memories of the slave trade, slavery and their abolition, on May 12, 2017.

Created by the artist Galya, the monument consists of three parts. Louis Delgrès is represented as a figurehead, a triangular base on which is engraved the famous phrase of the colonel "Live free or die" and on which rests the frame of a slave ship, and finally the representation of his companions, distributed on either side.

Historical

Galya's work contributes to the memory of the character of Louis Delgrès, his companions, but also more generally to all the resistance fighters and maroons who fought for their freedom.

It was Jean-Marie Musquet, deputy mayor of Le Blanc-Mesnil and a native of Guadeloupe, who commissioned the artist. The choice of Delgrès was obvious to commemorate the abolition of slavery, as he himself preferred death to being enslaved, along with his 300 companions.

Louis Delgrès (1766-1802)

Born on August 2, 1766, Louis Delgrès was a free man of mixed race, the son of a mulatto mother and a father who was a civil servant for the King of France in the Antilles. A republican and abolitionist, he was among the local officers who revolted against Napoleon's decision to restore the old order in the French colonies following the Haitian Revolution.

On May 6, 1802, General Richepance landed on the island to carry out the mission entrusted to him by Napoleon, at the head of an expeditionary force of over 3,500 men. On May 10, Louis Delgrès published a declaration, drafted with Monnereau, a white Creole from Martinique under his command, in which he refused to surrender and called for resistance. A few weeks later, cornered with his men, Delgrès chose death rather than surrender: the approximately 300 men blew themselves up with their barrels of gunpowder at Matouba (in the commune of Saint-Claude). A few days later, on June 16, 1802, slavery was reinstated in Guadeloupe.

Article from the FOUNDATION FOR THE MEMORY OF SLAVERY.