Revista Brasileira do Caribe ISSN: 1518-6784 [email protected] Universidade Federal de Goiás Brasil

Spaas, Lieve Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo: Euzhan Palcy's Rue Cases-Nègres and Raoul Peck's Lumumba Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, núm. 11, julio-diciembre, 2005, pp. 169-184 Universidade Federal de Goiás Goiânia, Brasil

Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=159113676009

How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo: Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases-Nègres and Raoul Peck’s Lumumba

Lieve Spaas Kingston University

Resumo Este artigo compara dois filmes caribenhos, Rue Cases-Nègres (1992) de Euzhan Palcy, situado em Martinica em 1930, e Lumumba (2000) de Raoul Peck, cuja ação se passa na República Democrática do Congo em 1961, momento em que ocorre a transição da colonia belga para o estado independente. Os dois filmes revelam práticas trabalhistas equivalentes a práticas escravistas apesar do fato de que a escravidão já estava abolida em ambos os países nos momentos trabalhados pelos filmes. Este estudo também confronta a África idealizada pelos escravos com a África autêntica onde a exploração é algo constante e a luta pela verdadeira independência é algo constante.

Palavras-chaves: Diáspora, Escravidão, África Pós-colonial

Resumen Este artículo compara dos filmes caribeños, Rue Cases-Nègres (1992) de Euzhan Palcy, ubicado en Martinica en 1930, y Lumumba (2000) de Raoul Peck, cuya acción se sitúa en la República Democrática del Congo en el momento de la transición de una colonia belga a un estado independiente en 1961. Los dos filmes revelan praticas laborales que equivalen a prácticas esclavistas a pesar de que la esclavitud

* Artigo recebido em agosto e aprovado para publicação em outubro de 2005

Revista Brasileira do Caribe, Goiânia, vol. VI, nº 11, p. 169-183, 2005 169 Lieve Spaas ya se había abolido. Este estudio también confronta la idealizada Africa, que los antiguos esclavos idealizaron, con la auténtica Africa donde la explotación está muy extendida y la lucha por una verdadera independencia es constante.

Palabras claves: Diáspora, Esclavitud, África Pos-colonial

Abstract The article compares two Caribbean films, Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases-Nègres (1992), set in the 1930’s in Martinique, and Raoul Peck’s Lumumba (2000), located in the now Democratic Republic of the Congo at the moment of transition from a Belgian colony to an independent state in 1961. Both films reveal labour practices that are tantamount to slave labour in spite of the fact that slavery had been abolished. The study also confronts the idealised Africa, which the former slaves imagined, with the real Africa where exploitation is rife and the struggle for genuine independence ongoing.

Keywords: Diaspora, Slavery, Postcolonial Africa

***

With the exception of Cuba, film-making in the Caribbean by Caribbean people is mainly a phenomenon of the 1980s and beyond. The very few films that emerged in that period did so without any infrastructure of production or distribution. As in many other third world countries, the Lumière brothers exposed the Caribbean to cinema at a very early period following the invention of film. In Haiti the exposure came in 1899, only four years after the new medium had been invented. Like the other Francophone Caribbean countries, Guadeloupe and Martinique, Haiti rapidly became a consumer/receiver of film products from the Western world. Besides being a consumer of Western films, the Caribbean was also used (or misused) as a resource for Western films where the representation of the beauty of the tropical islands was at odds with the people’s daily lives. It was only in the late 1970s and the early 1980s that a shift occurred. Political events in the islands, such as the movements advocating independence from France in Guadeloupe

170 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11 Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo... and Martinique and the Duvalier reign of terror in Haiti, were instrumental in creating a climate of political awareness. These political, economic and cultural currents of the ‘70s and ‘80s slowly found expression in films where they became the main subject matter. Whatever contemporary events dominate the Caribbean narratives, the memory of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora continues to emerge as the “oneness” that underlies the identity of the different countries. Not only does Caribbean cinema evoke the memory of slavery it also denounces how slavery after its abolition has insidiously persisted. Two celebrated Caribbean films that are particularly revealing in this respect are Euzhan Palcy’s 1983 Rue Cases-Nègres (Sugar Cane Alley) based on Joseph Zobel’s novel Black Shack Alley (1953) and Raoul Peck’s Lumumba (2000), inspired by the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the only democratically- elected Prime Minister of the Congo. The films are located at opposite ends of the black diaspora: Rue Cases-Nègres shows how the freeing of the slaves in Martinique did little to change the living conditions of the people, while Lumumba reveals how in the Congo Free State the colony, set up under the pretence of abolishing the Arab slave trade, instated labour conditions that amounted to slavery. Both films earned considerable international fame, continue to be shown frequently and have become landmarks in the cinema of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Rue Cases-Nègres is set in poverty-stricken Martinique in the 1930s, Lumumba in the Belgian Congo shortly before the country gained independence on 30 June 1960. Both films open with pictures of colonial memory. Palcy’s film opens showing postcards of Fort- de-France and various local views, which French colonials were in the habit of sending overseas. They are picturesque, sepia photographs revealing nothing of the poverty in which José, a twelve- year-old boy and main protagonist of the film, is growing up. Peck’s film, made seventeen years after Palcy’s, uses a more cinematographic language by editing the opening sequence so as to create a to-and-fro movement from still black and white photographs

jul./dez. 2005 171 Lieve Spaas to the action of white colonials enjoying themselves at a party and back again to the photographs. These photographs, unlike those in Palcy’s film, reveal appalling colonial practices. One photograph shows well-dressed Belgian colonials relaxing around a table in the open air. On the table lie a few skulls; nobody looks at them, they seem to be everyday objects similar to a tea or coffee pot. In front of the table lies a young black boy who faces the camera in a position a domestic animal might adopt, or alternatively, as the contrived posture might suggest, like an ornament. From this glimpse of a tableau of colonial daily life in the Congo, the camera cuts to the party where expensively dressed guests hold glasses of champagne. Other photographs show two women chained together; a man tied up and lying on the ground while being beaten with the chicotte, the infamous whip made of hippopotamus skin. Another is a postcard showing the hanging of a black man in the presence of expressionless white colonials. Underneath the picture a caption reads: “Exécution d’un nègre à Boma”, and again the camera cuts from the black and white postcard to shots of the colourful and lavish party. Following this carefully-edited opening a statement appears on the screen: “Ceci est une histoire vraie” (This is a true story). Peck’s assertive and skilfully edited opening offers a powerful indictment of the treatment by the colonials of the indigenous people in contrast to the luxurious lifestyle the colonials not only adopted but also tauntingly displayed. Peck’s statement that this is a real story emphasises the fact that the murder of Lumumba has all the ingredients of an American thriller—a possible signal of an American involvement in the murder. Rue Cases-Nègres depicts the daily lives of the people in Rue Cases-Nègres, a microcosm of Caribbean colonial society with its old and young, its children, its white colonisers and its many kinds of black Caribbean people. The simple story is a powerful allegory of Martinique’s history, represented by José’s journey to adulthood. José lives with his grandmother, Amantine in Rue Cases- Nègres, next door to an old man, Monsieur Médouze. Both Amantine

172 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11 Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo... and Médouze work in the sugar cane plantation for a meagre wage, which barely allows them to survive, and in the case of Amantine, to care for her grandson. Through Médouze’s retelling of the past, José’s identity will be grounded in an imagined, yet real place of origin: Africa. Médouze’s story starts with “Once upon a time…” and then tells about his father, who was brought from Africa as a slave. Médouze now passes down the story to José, whose grandfather was also a slave from Africa. The story refers to the loss of a homeland and an identity that can never be recaptured. His father wept and wept and never understood what happened when the white people came. People were caught by lasso, then forced to march for days before being loaded on to the ships, then unloaded in Martinique to work in the sugar cane fields for white people, who stood over them with guns. Médouze is not very precise about the country; he speaks simply of “Africa”. The first layers of identity—family, village and country—have been lost; the descendants of slaves had all become “Africans”. Africa, the lost land also has the aura of a promised land for José: “If you go to Africa, I’ll come with you”, he promises Médouze, who is too realistic for such a dream. While he is talking, Médouze is sculpting a small African figure in wood, which will become the token of the cultural heritage from Africa and which is now passed on to José. Médouze then tells the story of the blacks’ revolt against the white people: one day all black people came down to Saint-Pierre, they burned the houses of the whites and that is how slavery ended. “The whites trembled with fear” he explains. The liberated slaves were now “free” to go all over Martinique but then realised that they were nevertheless forced to come back to the same place because the whites had all the land and paid very little. These words spoken by an emaciated black man, grandson of an African slave, still forced to work in the sugar cane fields for minimum wages, is a powerful indictment of neo-colonialism, where “free” people remain economically dependent. Equally telling is the representation of the grandmother who, like Médouze, is old and

jul./dez. 2005 173 Lieve Spaas tired and should not be working in the sugar cane fields. The ultimate irony is revealed when the children are looking for sugar in José’s house and search every possible place where Amantine might have hidden it until they realise there is none: those who work in the sugar cane fields cannot afford to buy sugar. Where Médouze’s anger explodes when recalling his father’s history, Amantine’s erupts when she pictures the future and refuses to let her grandchild work in the sugar cane fields but vows that she will not condemn children to misery like all these “gutless black people”. Médouze represents the African heritage; Amantine embraces French values and transmits these to José. Education becomes the means of giving him the freedom that was denied to her and so she carries on with her excessively demanding work, not even contemplating how she is going to find the obligatory contribution to José’s tuition fees. For Amantine, the road to freedom is through identification with French values. Monsieur Médouze and Amantine endow José with human, spiritual and political values that form the foundation of his identity. This, Stuart Hall suggests, consists of “the names we give the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past” (HALL, 1992, p. 224). Médouze provides this narrative, while Amantine is instrumental in instilling Frenchness in José. These two elements come together in a new cultural identity that integrates the African past and the French future. However, José will also develop a different sense of self through contact with his own peers and other members of society. There is the group of children, the little girl, bright like José, who is not allowed to continue school but has to start earning money. There is Leopold, the nearly white, second-generation mulatto boy, who is not allowed to talk to the “black” children but who is not white enough for his father, a French aristocrat, to recognise him officially: only “white” people can inherit a name liked de Thorail. The unwritten contract between Médouze and Amantine suggests both a balance and a dichotomy in identity formation: while Médouze conveys a black consciousness and an anti-colonial

174 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11 Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo... discourse of négritude, Amantine anticipates the hybridity of Caribbean identity. As Hall puts it: “Across a whole range of cultural forms there is a ‘syncretic’ dynamic which critically appropriates elements of the master-codes of the dominant culture and “creolises” them”(HALL, 1992, p. 235). When José obtains a full scholarship to study in Fort-de-France and prepares to leave Rue Cases-Nègres, Amantine dies. Médouze is already dead. For José, they will both return to Africa while he will go to Fort-de-France, taking Rue Cases- Nègres with him. In its merging of the past with the present, through Médouze, and the future, through Amantine, the film reveals that cultural identity is not solely a matter of “being”—it is also of “becoming”. “It belongs to the future as much as to the past” (HALL, 1992, p. 223). No other film captures so powerfully the past losses and historical rupture of the Caribbean peoples or restores what has been called an “imaginary fullness”. For the viewer from Martinique Rue Cases-Nègres represents a major event: “By bringing to the screen this novel which is at the same time a novel about roots and about education, the film-maker tackles what is maybe the most intimate part of the Antillean consciousness”(MÉNIL, 1992, p. 168). The film was hailed as the start of a new Caribbean cinema of the diaspora. But this was not to be. The promise the film generated has remained unfulfilled. Palcy herself went to Hollywood to make films. Palcy’s Rue Cases-Nègres placed Martinique on the map of world cinema. Raoul Peck was to do likewise for Haitian cinema with his Lumumba (2000). While Palcy captured the daily lives of the slaves taken from Africa and brought to the Caribbean, Peck sets his film at the other end of the diaspora and, instead of evoking the unspecified “Africa” of Médouze, locates the film in a specific country in Africa, the now Democratic Republic of the Congo, a former colony with a particularly tragic history starting with the Berlin Conference in 1884-85. At this diplomatic conference the European powers decided to whom the different African countries should be allocated for colonisation. The King of the Belgians,

jul./dez. 2005 175 Lieve Spaas

Leopold II, without being present at the conference, succeeded in gaining recognition of himself as sovereign of the “Congo Free State”, the so-called “heart of darkness” in central Africa, often perceived by Europeans at the time as an “empty” space. The name given to the country, “Congo Free State”, was most misleading since, in effect, the country became the King’s private property. In reality, the King had already embarked much earlier on his colonising of the country when, as early as 1879, he had sent explorer Henry Morton Stanley to persuade local chiefs to sign away their land to the King. Ruthless forced labour to collect rubber, needed for the recently invented rubber tyres, was instated almost immediately. Punishment for failing to collect the required amount of rubber was carried out in barbaric ways such as the cutting off of hands. It was not until 1890 when George Washington Williams, an American Civil War veteran and Baptist missionary, went to the Congo Free State that reports of the appalling treatment of the Congolese people came to light. Williams’s evidence was corroborated by Protestant missionaries and also by Edmund Dene Morel, an employee with a shipping company in Liverpool. Morel observed that ships laden with rubber and ivory arrived in Antwerp from the Congo while ships sailing to the Congo carried soldiers and large quantities of firearms and ammunition. Finally, Roger Casement, British Consul to the Congo Free State, produced extensive and detailed reports on what were “crimes against humanity”. The treatment of the indigenous population was tantamount to slavery. If Palcy’s film emphasises the fact that the lives of the freed slaves is no better than that during officially recognised slavery, Peck’s film reveals that the “Africa”, so idealised by Médouze, is here a country where slavery prevails in all but name. Peck’s choice of the Congo is linked to his family background. In 1961, when Peck was eight years old, his parents, wanting to escape from the Duvalier regime, like many Haitians migrated to the Congo, a country with which they felt an affinity: they were also keen to contribute to

176 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11 Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo... the building of an independent Congo. The Congo had gained independence on 30 June 1960 but soon thereafter Patrice Lumumba was brutally murdered after only four months in office as Prime Minister. Lumumba came to symbolise an ideal and a ray of hope for Africa and her dispersed people whom the slave trade had so cruelly transported. For Haitians Lumumba could not but remind them of their own great freedom fighter, Toussaint L’Ouverture. Lumumba had committed no crime: this was a political murder. The deed remained shrouded in mystery and the burning questions as to who were the real assassins, and who were the ones who ordered the execution of Lumumba, remained unanswered. It was known that Belgians and Congolese were involved in the actual killing of Lumumba but rumours soon began to circulate about the involvement of the Belgian government, the United States and the United Nations who, so it was claimed, ordered the killing. Not only was Lumumba savagely murdered, his dead body was torn to pieces and disposed of. Not a trace was left. The murderers had hoped that getting rid of Lumumba’s body would also erase his memory; but that was not to be. Lumumba embodied too important a vision of the Congo; he was not just a person but also an ideal that personified independence, freedom and equality. Far from being forgotten, Lumumba became a mythical figure, a true African hero. The Peck family arrived in the Congo shortly after Lumumba was murdered. Raoul was too young to understand the importance and the horror of this death but in the family Lumumba was referred to frequently. Peck’s mother worked in the office of the Mayor and Peck remembers many stories she told. In 1991, thirty years after Lumumba’s death, Peck, now an adult and aspiring film-maker, who had already gained an international reputation with his film Haitian Corner (1988) where he explores the life of a Haitian refugee in New York, made a documentary about the murdered hero, Lumumba, La Mort d’un prophète, in which he expresses in a personal way, using family memories, the empathy he feels towards him. It is a powerful and seriously researched document that was acclaimed internationally but was hardly to be found in Belgium. Yet, it had

jul./dez. 2005 177 Lieve Spaas greatly impressed sociologist and author, Ludo de Witte who decided to research the case further. This led to the publication of his impressive study, published in Dutch in 1999, De Moord op Lumumba (The Assassination of Lumumba) and in English in 2001. It was a bold book that shocked those Belgians who preferred not to hear anything more about Lumumba. The book’s main conclusion was that the Belgian Government was primarily responsible for the murder of the Congolese Prime Minister, but without the steps taken by Washington and the United Nations during the preceding months the assassination could never have been carried out. De Witte’s book aroused the interest of the press and the reaction was such that it put pressure on Belgium to set up a parliamentary commission to examine the conclusions De Witte had reached. Through the book Peck now also gained new insights into the case of Lumumba and, still keen to draw world attention to the murdered Congolese hero, he returned to the subject with scriptwriter, Pascal Bonitzer, and in 2000 brought out the feature film Lumumba. Peck wanted to make a popular film that would reach large audiences and draw attention to what happened to Lumumba. The film was shown in France in October 2000, and was on the programme of the Ouagadougou Film Festival in 2001. In Belgium, the film was shown only after the parliamentary commission had been set up. Unlike the book, the film does not proffer an investigation into the circumstances of the murder: it gives instead a dignified portrait of Lumumba, picturing him, with both his qualities and faults, not only as a well-meaning person, a loving spouse and a kind father but also a man engaged in a relentless struggle against a Western Goliath composed of Belgium and other Western powers. However, the political situation in the Congo itself was precarious and Lumumba had also to contend with internal hostile forces-fellow Congolese who turned against him such as Tshombe, Kasa-Vubu and Mobutu, all concerned with their own political advancement but also, so it appears, influenced by Western forces.

178 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11 Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo...

The film portrays Lumumba as a colonial creation and more specifically a product of Belgian colonialism. Here is not a man with a particular job or skill but a man with a vision who focuses exclusively on getting rid of colonial domination. It shows the ascent of Lumumba, his arrival in Leopoldville from Stanleyville, his oratorical talent already displayed in the job he takes just for the sake of being in Leopoldville—promoting Polar beer. It places him in the political and social context of the Congo and records the events that led up to his murder. The film gives an insight into the reluctance of the Belgian authorities to transfer power to the Congolese and shows the all too rapid transition from colony to independent republic when only a handful of Congolese held a university degree. It is a powerful indictment of the colonial situation in general but also an accusing statement of Belgian colonialism specifically in which Belgium had projected its own identity problems with the Walloon/Flemish divide. While the pre-credit sequence, using cinematographic language and careful editing, conveys the Congo’s colonial past and present in a semi-documentary way, the film proper adopts a very distinct fiction style reminiscent of film noir, and reminds one of an American thriller movie. The headlights of three big American cars of the late Fifties approach through the savannah. In the back of the cars are three corpses, the bodies of Lumumba and his two allies who were with him by chance and were executed with him. These bodies must be disposed of because nothing is to remain of Lumumba. The film shifts between past and present: the white colonials struggling with the bodies alternate with shots of Lumumba alive, in the back of a car, having been beaten and abused. The voice-over is Lumumba speaking: “Even dead I frighten them …”, his words punctuate the gruesome deeds of the white people who, themselves repulsed by the stench of the decomposing bodies, hack and cut the bodies to pieces, then dissolve them in barrels of sulphuric acid. Lumumba is heard in voice-over, “Tu ne raconteras pas tout aux enfants” (“You are not to tell the children everything”). These

jul./dez. 2005 179 Lieve Spaas two juxtaposed openings offer the essence of the film: the first preceding the credits recalls the colonial situation in the Congo, the second the elimination of the Congo’s most promising hero. The unfolding of Lumumba’s fate is virtually sealed at the ceremony of independence when Lumumba gives his famous address to the nation in reply to King Baudouin’s eulogistic speech. Peck gives a truthful account of the ceremony. First the King spoke and stated that independence was the result of “the undertaking conceived by the genius of King Leopold II” and, continuing in a paternalistic mood, he urged the Congolese not to compromise the future with hasty reforms and not to replace “the structures that Belgium hands over to you until you are sure you can do better. Don’t be afraid to come to us. We will remain by your side, give you advice, train with you the technical experts and administrators you will need”. After the King, it was Kasa-Vubu, the country’s first president who spoke. His speech was formal and conformed to the style expected at such an occasion. Then came Lumumba. His address was one of the most powerful anti-colonial speeches ever made. He did not address the King, instead, he opened his fiery speech: “Congolese Men and Women, fighters for independence, who are today victorious”. In the frankest terms he described the colonial system that Baudouin had just glorified:

We have known sarcasm and insults, endured blows morning, noon and night because we were “niggers”. Who will forget that a Black was addressed in the familiar “tu”, not as friend, but because the polite “vous” was reserved for Whites only? We have seen our lands despoiled under the terms of what was supposedly the law of the land but which only recognised the right of the strongest. We have seen that this law was quite different for a White than for a Black: accommodating for the former, cruel and inhuman for the latter. We have seen the terrible suffering of those banished to remote regions because of their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled within their own

180 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11 Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo...

country, their fate was truly worse than death itself…. And finally, who can forget the volleys of gunfire in which so many of our brothers perished, the cells where the authorities threw those who would not submit to a rule where justice meant oppression and exploitation? Belgium, finally understanding the march of history, has not tried to oppose our independence.

By this one act, Ludo De Witte writes, Lumumba reinforced the Congolese people’s sense of dignity” (DE WITTE, 2001, p. 3). The speech had been interrupted several times by sustained applause. The images of daily life under colonial occupation, shown in the opening sequence of the film, corroborate Lumumba’s list of abuses suffered by the Congolese. Indeed, the film shows how in both the public sphere in the city and in the intimate sphere of the home, the attitude shown is one of contempt for the Congolese and of belief in the superiority of the whites and the inferiority of the Africans. The verbal and physical abuse of prisoners is shown in an almost unbearable way in the treatment Lumumba himself was subjected to in prison before being, suddenly, released to be present at the round-table discussions in Brussels. There is total reluctance on the part of the Belgians portrayed in the film to even entertain the idea—or ideal—of an end to the colony and an independent Congo. One particular scene displays this most explicitly when General Janssens, commander-in-chief of the Congolese army, makes it clear that there is not going to be independence in the army. The old kind of discipline will prevail. He confirms this by writing in large letters on the blackboard: Independence = Pre- independence. In the domestic domain, the attitudes are no better. Recalling with irony a so-called “civilising” moment, the film shows a Belgian woman in close-up, an expression of utmost contempt on her face, rebuking the young Congolese servant because she has, yet again, forgotten to place the fork to the left of the plate. The film intertwines in a skilful way scenes that show not only the Belgians’ disbelief that independence is really happening

jul./dez. 2005 181 Lieve Spaas but also their complete disdain for the Congolese: “This is not a people, these are members of tribes. They hang together thanks to the Belgian administration” is the comment of one colonial. Yet, while expressing contempt for the entire situation, they also show awareness of their failure to train and prepare the Congolese for independence. Disbelief and denial prevail as revealed in the reflections made among the Belgians. When the large picture of Leopold II is taken off the wall in the Governor’s palace, a Belgian addresses the King: “Ils vont vous le cochonner votre Congo” (“They’ll butcher your Congo”), recalling for the viewer the butchery that actually took place in the colony. The butchery that is revealed is that of the murder of Lumumba and his two companions which opened the film and now closes it, repeating the same close-ups of Lumumba in the back of the car, accompanied by the voice-over which now continues the monologue from the beginning:

Don’t tell everything to the children. Just tell them that I came fifty years too early. I want my children to be told that the future of the Congo is beautiful. Throughout the struggle for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant that the sacred cause to which my comrades and I have dedicated our entire lives would triumph in the end. But what we wanted for our country—its right to an honourable life, to perfect dignity, to independence with no restrictions—was never wanted by Belgian colonialism and its Western allies …. History will one day have its say; it will not be the history taught in the United Nations, Washington, Paris or Brussels, however, but the history taught in the countries that have rid themselves of colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history full of glory and dignity.

The monologue, taken from the letter Lumumba actually wrote to his wife from prison, is, as De Witte writes, “a political testament that shows his unshakeable faith in the anti-colonial revolution’s final victory”.

182 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11 Remembrance of Slavery in the Caribbean and in the Congo...

It is spoken by Lumumba in the back of the car near the place of execution. From the car Lumumba sees his companions being executed, his words uttered between the sounds of the shooting. Finally he is taken to the tree. As he walks towards it the camera cuts to a close-up of the tree as seen by Lumumba on that final brief walk. It is scarred by bullets. He stands dignified against the tree, and as the order to prepare for execution is shouted, the camera suddenly cuts to Mobutu on his throne wearing an immaculate white suit and his well-known leopard-skin hat, the shot lasting the time between the order to shoot and the actual killing. The camera cuts back to Lumumba being shot then again back to Mobutu saying “Merci” which clearly closes the speech he has just finished. Another sudden cut to the crowd, black and white people together, applauding Mobutu. Most likely this concerns the declaration by Mobutu of Lumumba as national hero. The camera cuts back to the place of execution and the film closes showing the barrels of sulphuric acid, seen at the beginning of the film, in which the bodies are dissolved so as to erase all evidence of the murder. In burning Lumumba, it is not only a person that is killed but an ideal and the promise of the end of colonialism. Médouze’s nostalgic evocation of the past in Africa is, as it were, annihilated. The two films illustrate the displacement of state in the diaspora, that of rupture and discontinuity for the people dragged away in the triangular Atlantic slave trade and that of people becoming “other” in their own country, subjected to the most extreme exploitation that amounts to slavery but that does not speak its name.

Bibliography DE WHITE, Ludo. The Assassination of Lumumba. London-New York: Verso, 2001. HALL, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation”. CHAM, Mbye (Ed.). Ex-Iles. Essays on Caribbean Cinema. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1992, p. 221-36. MENIL, A. “Rue Cases-Nègres or the Antilles from the Inside”. CHAM, Mbye.

jul./dez. 2005 183 Lieve Spaas

(Ed.). Ex-Iles. Essays on Caribbean Cinema. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1992, p. 155-75.

Filmography Lumumba. Director Raoul Peck, 2000. Rue Cases-Nègres. Director Euzhan Palcy, 1992.

184 Revista Brasileira do Caribe, vol. VI, nº 11