Une école malgré tout dans le Territoire de l’Inini (1930-1960)

• Main Author: Edenz Maurice
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Université Paris 3 2020-08-01
• Series: Cahiers des Amériques Latines
• Subjects: school; French Guiana; Maroon; racialization; Surinam
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cal/10573

This article focuses on the collaboration between the french and the boni political autorities from the late 1930s to the late 1960s on the issue of the schooling of the maroon population in the French system, in spite of the inordinate racial assignments discernible in the Territory of the Inini. This territory was located in the south of the colony of French Guiana, which became a department in 1946. This article establishes the context in which the French colonial government unanimously approved the boni demand to build a school in their “country”. Then it examines this project from the Boni’s point of view. It allows us to gauge how Surinam’s position as a common enemy enabled this unexpected collaboration. Indeed, this collaboration was inscribed in the Maroni basin, a coveted border area. Finally, even though both French and Boni hoped to capitalize on this school project, their alliance shows that the establishment of the border of French Guiana was the product of a necessary cooperation, one which transcends the dynamics of racialization.