2023-12-15 23:03:10
Beninese President Patrice Talon, in Cotonou, July 27, 2022. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
A trip to Martinique by a serving African head of state: this had not happened since 1976. In February of that year, Léopold Sédar Senghor spent three days in the West Indian department. There he found his old friend Aimé Césaire, then deputy mayor of Fort-de-France, four decades after having founded the negritude movement with him in Paris.
Like the visit of the Senegalese president half a century ago, that of Patrice Talon, the Beninese president, from December 13 to 17, is above all part of a cultural approach. The high point of the Head of State’s trip was to be the inauguration, Thursday, December 14, of the “Revelation! Contemporary art from Benin” at the Clément Foundation, an art center installed by the Bernard Hayot Group (GBH), on the site of a former sugar plantation transformed into a distillery a century ago.
Over an area of 1,200 m², this exhibition presents around a hundred works produced by forty-two Beninese artists, to which are added life-size reproductions of the twenty-six royal artifacts returned by France in February 2022.
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This unprecedented event is far from unanimous in Martinique, and many voices have been raised to denounce it. “A President of the Republic who arrives in Martinique must necessarily go through a legal, legitimate channel: those who represent Martinique politically”criticizes Garcin Malsa, president of the International Movement for Reparations, a memorial association which has filed a complaint against France for its role in the slave trade and slavery.
“Control” of the béké community
In the eyes of this former independentist elected official, the arrival of the Beninese president “at the request of Bernard Hayot” is new proof of the ” stranglehold “ of the community of békés – white Creole descendants of settlers –, to which the octogenarian patron belongs. ” Nothing has changed “takes offense Mr. Malsa, who calls for « boycott » of the event.
“This visit is a shame”adds Mahamadou Diallo, founding member of the Afrique Caraïbe Fraternité association. “We cannot have an exhibition of African art at the Clément Foundation”, affirms this trade unionist of Malian origin. In his eyes, President Talon “could have done otherwise” than allow this highly symbolic event to be organized on the site of a former sugar plantation where several hundred slaves suffered in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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