Yekrik ! Yekrak ! AN TAN SORIN

"An tan Sorin" means "time of governor Sorin" in creole. Article published in Sept Mag, guadeloupean weekly magazine published in Baie-Mahault, August 12, 1993. This version is the simplified version of " You need to download Acrobat Reader to read this file Guadeloupe in the obedience of Vichy " , published in 1992 in the Bulletin of the Historical Society of Guadeloupe. You also can read the HLAS annotation (Library of Congress)

English version reread by Denis McKee, History teacher in European classes (Lycée CHAGALL, Reims ; Collège SIROT, Gueux ; FRANCE)

July 15, 1943, after three years spent under the rule of Vichy France, Guadeloupe joined the Allied Forces camp, which put a term to three years of deprivation coinciding with the governorship period of Constant Sorin. The latter being known in Guadeloupe as "An tan Sorin"

Constant Sorin, governor of Guadeloupe

After Félix Eboué, a black guianese governor, appointed in Guadeloupe by the Popular Front government in 1936, succeeded governor Pierre-Alype, then, from 1940 to 1943, Constant Sorin. For a long time, Sorin has been considerered responsible for all the evils inflicted during this period. One has to reassess the largely over-estimated role of this colonial civil servant. Constant Sorin was named in Guadeloupe on April 30, 1940 by the government of French Republic, ten days before the German offensive in the Ardennes.

The state of war limited his prerogatives largely because the governors of Guadeloupe, of Martinique, of Guyana and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon had been subordinated , since 1939, to the authority of a naval officer : George Robert, an old admiral in retirement who had come to take up service again.

When the news of the French rout was known in Guadeloupe, Sorin, like much of its contemporaries, expressed initially the desire to continue the fight before being resignated a few days later. First, because he was only a temporary governor at the mercy of his superiors. What is more, because it is hard to imagine which offensive the governor of Guadeloupe could have undertaken 5000 miles of the operation theatre .

It is thus especially because of admiral Robert, that Guadeloupe continued to obey the official government recently formed : that of the Pétain marshal. Being wary, Robert sent to Guadeloupe cruiser Jeanne d' Arc, whose commanding officer's duty was to control the actions of governor Sorin. Guadeloupeans know which bad memories, the sailors of this warship left in the town of Pointe-à-Pitre.

Vichy in Guadeloupe

In August 1940, began the National Revolution policy of Pétain, measures against the Jews or the Free-Masons, the nearly total abolition of the vote for all and, of course, the marshal's hand shake with Hitler. In Guadeloupean memories, two ideas stand out for describing the political action of the governor : racism and suppression of the democratic institutions.

Concerning the issue of racism, the methodical study of the action of the governor makes it possible to give credence to general opinion.
In 1941, in accordance with directing measures from Vichy, Guadeloupean mayors were suspended from their offices. But some of them remained in place who represented in majority the social circles of the White-Creoles and the world of the sugar plant directors. Political authorities justified then by alleging that they preferred the " world of work " to that of the politicians defrauders. However, one must admit, by reading the contents of the gendarmerie reports written before the war, that the majority of the politicians, white or black, had always defrauded as much as they could. In this case, one can say indeed that there were two weights and two measures. But, there still, Sorin was only the executant of a policy enforced in the whole of the French colonial empire.

Concerning the democratic institutions, claiming they disappeared with Sorin and the National Revolution means one supposes they had actually existed in the past, which is far from being obvious. As proof, we can considery, the mishap which happened to the mayors of the three Marie-Galantes parishs, between 1935 and 1943. Elected in 1935, suspended from their electoral mandates under governor Bouge, in 1936, reinstated under Eboué in 1937, these three politicians were again suspended and imprisoned under Sorin.

Now, it would be too simple to call upon only fraud to explain their situation because we have today proof that the governors acted in accordance with the political tendency which they wished to support, according to which one was responsible from tehir nomination, members of the French Parliament being at the time more powerful than ministers. Also, in 1941, for a great number of Marie-Galante people, the governor always had acted according to his goodwill. The official abolition of the vote for all did not change things except that the autorities recognized at last, in an official way, that the results (faked or not) of the elections, hardly mattered to them...

Third Republic in Guadeloupe (French regime between 1870 and 1940) had been a fictitious democratic legality, masking the quasi-absolute power of the governor. Sorin only replaced it by the frankness of an authoritarianism which showed, at last, its real face.
If there was, for the majority of Guadeloupeans, the feeling of a difference with the past, this was felt particularly on the economic side.

The Antilles between Washington and Berlin

The Guadeloupean economy was extremely affected by the diplomatic situation and the blockade which arose from it.

The announcement by France, of a policy of collaboration with Germany had made the USA afraid of the use of French planes based in Martinique in a military operation against the locks of Panama Canal. Obeying chiefs who offered each day new advantages to the Reich, admiral Robert was to negotiate the supplies of the islands with some, without dissatisfying the others... which became totally impossible after November 1942, when the US landing in North Africa (Torch operation) put an end to the trade between the Antilles and Africa. Robert, who persisted for six months to remain faithful to Pétain, ended up being forced, in July 1943 to join the US forces then the Free French Forces (the fleet did but Robert went back to Vichy) The inhabitants of the Antilles and French Guiana suffered from the choice made in 1940.

Guadeloupean Effort

The absence of imported food products was cruelly felt. Sorin tried a policy, " Guadeloupean Effort ", aiming at developping local productions. If Guadeloupean grandmothers still remember this heroic period, it should not be believed, by any means, that " Guadeloupean Effort " ensured the autosubsistance. Let us say that those hard times enabled at least to realize how the island was dependent on metropolitan France.

Sorin wanted to decide the rich landowners to cultivate food but the areas concerned remained not very wide. Thus, the gendarmes of Sainte-Rose noted that factory Bonne-Mère devoted to food only 30 hectares out of 1600, which was less than 2 %. Not very concerned for their workers and being wary about the laws that fixed quotas, the sugar plant directors and owners wanted above all to produce and store sugar to sell it after the war in order to benefit from a big price increase.

The few food crops which were undertaken were not thus enough to alleviate the difficulties of the time. However, even if many affirms that one never died of hunger in Guadeloupe, it is necessary to admit that the situation had a considerable impact on the health of Guadeloupéans, which is proved, for example, the mortality curve increased indeed after the total blockade at the mid of year 1943, which attests the extent of the deprivation. This situation probably contributed to accelerate, in 1943, the phenomenon of resistance which had been observed since the beginning of the conflict.

" Dissidence "

One generally gathers under the heading " dissidence ", a whole series of facts. All were presented by their authors as proof of an faithful attachment to the values of Republican France. With many regards, guadeloupean "dissidence" , though claiming gaullism, found a great part of its major causes in the local situation.

The immense majority of "dissidence" acts were acts of anger and bad mood made by ordinary people who were neither notable nor politicians. For example, the case, quoted in the book of Eliane Sempaire, of these two men, Collidor and Beaujour, arrested by the gendarmes in a bar of Terre-de-Haut (Les Saintes Islands, between Guadeloupe and Dominica), to have declared that Pétain had sold out France and that Sorin would sell out Guadeloupe. Since 1941, some Guadeloupeans had started to leave " to dissidence ", i.e. towards the English colony of Dominica. According to English colonial public records files, a thousand of these " Free French refugees " were in Dominica in 1941.

These first "dissidenciés", it is the name a Guadeloupean song had given them, were young men searching for adventure. They were sent to the front, particularly in Royan and Monte Cassino, the latter being one of the most important battles of the war. But at the end of 1942, the composition of the groups changed. Out of nearly 3000 of the " free French refugees " who were in Domenica in 1943, there were 12 % of women and 3 % of children, some of them being babies. If the justification remained the same one (" nou kalé d'en Gol "/ creole : " We are going to meet De Gaulle"), one must admit that these people were also economic refugees from the dramatic situation experienced by Guadeloupe. The English administrative reports says : Free French and French refugees.

On the 1st of July 1940, in the General Council (local assembly), political leaders had opposed the armistice policy. They also had mentionned a certain General de Gaulle who had called from London to continue the war. After long speeches, socialist leader Paul Valentino was elected, illegally, as president of an " executive delegation " charged to manage part of the guadeloupean problems . In fact, this commission never existed anywhere else than in the official report of the Council session. Composed of five members, it counted only political enemies of the socialist leader, except for Valentino himself. But " Tino " was president and it is the only thing which had been understood by poor workers who had come to support him.

A few days later, the colonial administration showed that they had appreciated the capacity of Valentino to talk to the crowd. The political leader was arrested after having made an anti-pétainiste speech in Schoelcher museum (dedicated to French abolitionnist Victor Schoelcher). Valentino was then prosecuted for "having pronounced a speech able to influence the population in a wrong way" by comparing Pétain's time to 1802's policy. Locked up in Fort Napoléon (Les Saintes Islands) and then sentenced, Valentino was sent to Evil Island, near French Guiana. In 1943, he came back clandestinely to Guadeloupe and tried unsuccessfully to cause the rallying of the Guadeloupe to Free France, while trying an assault on the central radio point. It is only after the effective rallying of Guadeloupe in July 1943 that he again tried to be recognized as the president of his commission by the gaullist governor. If all these initiatives failed pitifully, the suffering redemption of Valentino gave him an increasing support from the people and, therefore, political popularity.

Other forms of opposition appeared. In Pointe-à-Pitre, Virgile Chathuant, a freemason who owned the Colonial-Bar, used to display the news broadcast on a dark table. As he had refused to take part in the official propaganda, he was sent to Fort-Napoléon ... Others followed, in particular a doctor : Rosan-Girard. In Basse-Terre, little after Free-Masonry, was prohibited, Clovis Renaison and Leon Mathis formed themselves into a group called "France Combattante" (Fighting France).

Finally, it is when the blockade became unbearable that the most violents events took place. After the rallying of French Guiana, in March 1943, France Combattante made a distribution of leaflets in Basse-Terre. At the beginning of April, the sailors of the Jeanne d' Arc mutinied. But the naval officers could bring back cohesion by diverting the aggressiveness of the mutineers towards the repression of a gaullist demonstration in Pointe-à-Pitre. In Basse-Terre, a demonstration ended with the death of a 17 year old young man, killed by the gendarmes.

Other incidents took place in Bouillante and Pointe-Noire. After a strike in Beauport factory, the gendarmerie of Port-Louis was attacked by inhabitants of the parish, shouting "Vive de Gaulle" ("long live de Gaulle").

There had been similar troubles in Martinique. It made admiral Robert surrender to the mutineers who were supported by the crowd of Fort-de-France. An envoy of Free France settled in Fort-de-France on July 14, 1943 (Bastille day). The next day, one of his subordinates was sent to Guadeloupe and ensured the transfer of sovereignty. Guadeloupe had changed camps but the small provisionnal governor was surely far from imagining that he had attached his name to a mythical time : that of the time when Guadeloupe had been forced to provide a real effort to produce by itself what it could not receive any more from outside.