The feast of Grand Case is held every July 21, Saint Victor's Day, and also pays homage to Victor Schoelcher.
The Grand Case festival which also celebrates Victor Schoelcher every July 21 in Saint-Martin was held this year in a dematerialized form given the health crisis. The Collectivity broadcast the official speeches on its Facebook page this Wednesday at 10 a.m.
« Victor Schoelcher, I paid tribute to him again last year, taking care to distinguish his illustrious memoir from the schoelcherist ideology. On the one hand, a visionary, courageous man, often alone in his battles. On the other, a colonialist, paternalistic, infantilizing and vaguely contemptuous vision. A vision that stems from a sometimes unacknowledged colonial unconscious, which sometimes persists and which we must always fight ”declared the president in the introduction of the official speeches.
Daniel Gibbs then insisted on what makes the strength, the attraction and the fame of Grand Case: its gastronomy, its conviviality, its restaurants and restaurateurs. “Grand Case is the Caribbean capital of gastronomy”. And to continue: “in Saint-Martin, and particularly in Grand Case, village symbol of the cultural heritage of Saint-Martin, fishing village, traditional sailing village, multicultural village, we are reinventing the pleasures of the table in a mixed cuisine and welcoming […] Grand Case thus embodies an art of living, a Saint-Martin conviviality that must be defended at all costs ”.
On this July 21, when the health pass becomes mandatory in France to enter places that bring together more than 50 people, Daniel Gibbs criticized a measure that jeopardizes the economy of the island. “The economy of our territory will not survive if the constraints and controls are in the north of the island and customers and business in the south. It is legitimate to design incentive measures to speed up vaccination, but it is foolish to design a model of social control fundamentally foreign to our Saint-Martin traditions. We did not fight for so long against slavery and colonialism to get there. I hope that during the parliamentary debates during the examination of the text by the Constitutional Council, common sense will prevail ”.
Claire Guion-Firmin, the member for Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Martin then spoke in English, to recall the role of Victor Schoelcher in the abolition of slavery. She sent her thoughts to Haiti and expressed her hopes. Then wished the people a happy Grand Case.
The sub-prefect Mikaël Doré in turn delivered a speech in which he paid tribute to Victor Schoelcher and to those who worked for the abolition of slavery. “The French Republic knows and recognizes the historical conditions of this difficult and painful past, without being able to erase it. Its commitment is now to fight, on its own territory, where the germ of intolerance, extremism from all sides is to be eradicated, as everywhere in the world, against the barbarism of today and tomorrow. France recognizes slavery as a crime against humanity. She is engaged in new fights, against all forms of modern, economic, sexual slavery, organ donation, the closed door of violence against women and feminicides, France is raised against all forms of discrimination, slavery constituting the ultimate discrimination and the negation of humanity. The ultra-marine populations have long waited for the French state to confront its past in order to go beyond without forgetting a history so acute that it still emerges in times of social tension. This is today done. The memory and knowledge of our nation's slave history now exists within us. ”.
A fireworks display was fired at 20 p.m. in the bay of Grand Case.
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