What better way to delve into the past than with old postcards? These speaking relics of the past always allow us to learn a little more about the present. In this article, we will present striking before and after comparisons of old and recent photographs of Guadeloupe.
Although it may be hard to imagine today, in 1962, an Air France Boeing aircraft crashed less than 800 meters from Piton Bungalows. It was the second-largest crash in Air France’s history after the Paris-Rio flight, yet it remains relatively unknown to this day. Engraved in the memory of the village elders, this unfortunate accident has given rise to several theories about its cause, which still remain a mystery. Declassified less than a year ago, documents from that time now shed some light on this secret story that has been kept hidden for over 60 years.
Who is Ali Tur ?
Ali Georges Tur was born in Tunis in 1889. He was of French nationality (his father was a Cévenole polytechnician and his mother was from Alsace). Passionate about the arts he studied at the School of Fine Arts but his studies were interrupted when he left to join the war in 1914. After serving four years and being awarded the War Cross, he resumed his studies in 1919. He then started to win various awards; two medals, the Nestor Prize and the Rougevin Foundation Grand Prize for Decoration. He then worked in Paris, opening an architectural agency and participating in the rebuilding of towns and their buildings after the First World War. In 1925 he was listed as one of the top ten architects by the Ministry of French Colonies.
So it was that in 1928, after a cyclone devastated Guadeloupe, with most of the public buildings destroyed, Governor Tellier called on his skills for the rebuilding of the archipelago. He arrived in Guadeloupe in 1929 and from that time an almost radical change came about in the architectural style of the houses and buildings constructed in Guadeloupe.
The legacy of Ali Tur in Guadeloupe
Between 1929 and 1937 he designed and rebuilt a number of private and public buildings. His style broke completely from the traditional architecture which favoured wood and stone. Ali Tur included a modern technique in his works: Reinforced concrete. Not only is the concrete stronger but it also enabled the fulfilment of the architect’s imagination. New types of buildings started to appear in the archipelago, with columns, beams, agglomerated building blocks and plaster board. Reborn from the ruins, Basse-Terre, like Grand-Terre, started to gleam again.
He started with the Governor’s Palace, the Prefecture, the Town Hall and the Courthouse in the main town of Basse-Terre. A little later, authorised to place orders, the parishes could then benefit from the talent of Ali Tur. As a result, Ali Georges Tur built the Town Halls at Pointe Noire, Anse Bertrand, Lamentin and Bailif. The churches at Sainte Anne and Baie Mahault and the post offices at Bouillante and Vieux Habitants also bear his signature. Other buildings that bear the mark of this remarkable architect are the Meat Hall at Port Louis and the Gendarmerie of Sainte Rose among others…
He designed a total of 120 buildings in Guadeloupe up to 1937.
Christopher Colombus ‘discovered’ Guadeloupe on the 4th November 1493 during his second voyage to the West Indies. That was the first time a European set foot on the Guadeloupian archipelago, but the islands had been inhabited for a long time before that…
Native American people (or Amerindians) from the coast of modern day Venezuela had reached the islands of the Lesser Antilles around 2,500 BC. They lived from hunting, fishing and gathering local fruit. As they were a nomadic people, sheltering in natural places such as caves, they have left almost no discernible traces of their time in Guadeloupe.
It wasn’t until another 2,000 years later that the first ‘Arawak’ Indians settled in the Guadeloupe archipelago. Originally from the Orinoco basin in Venezuela, they practised a shifting cultivation of small agricultural plots that were established in the heart of the forest where they grew mainly cassava, behind the villages where they lived on the coastline.
Over centuries, these Amerindian people colonised the Guadeloupe archipelago; the Arawaks were peaceful and wise and lived in perfect harmony with the nature surrounding them. Although cassava was their main crop they also varied their food with beans, fruit, and the results of their hunting and fishing. They cultivated cotton with which they made the hammocks they slept in, and they also made fibre rope.
It was the latter who were responsible for the many petrographs (rock engravings) that can be seen mainly in the south of Basse-Terre, particularly in the area of Trois-Rivières which was probably a major cultural centre for the Amerindians living in this part of the world at that time. Of all the French West Indies, Guadeloupe has the most petrographs although this localised profusion of rock engravings has not yet been fully explained…
At the end of the 7th Century, another civilisation invaded the area; the Caribs. It was the latter that called the island Caloucaera (Karukera), meaning ‘Island of beautiful waters’.
Originally migrants from the Orinoco as well, the Carib Indians (Caribs) or Kalinas were a formidable warrior race. They swept through the Antilles exterminating most of the people in their path, the original island inhabitants.
The warlike Caribs (who were said to have practiced cannibalism) therefore took the place of the Arawaks, inhabiting the islands they invaded although Columbus described them as naïve and easily ‘domesticated’…
According to legend, during their bloody raids on the Arawaks, the Caribs often spared the women. Not through gallantry but to keep them for personal use… Therefore, according to historical accounts, the Arawaks were exterminated as a separate race, the Caribs ate the men and kept the women, however studies have disproved this theory and tended to show that this was a simple cultural evolution.
The first colonists therefore had the surprise of hearing two different languages spoken by the same Indians; the Carib language by the men and the Arawak language by the women.
It was these people, the ‘Carib’ Indians that Christopher Columbus met in 1493.
This civilisation reached its end at the beginning of November 1493 when the 1,500 men of Christopher Columbus set foot in Guadeloupe which caused the Carib Indians to retreat from one island to the next finally retreating to the south of Dominica where there remains a population of around 3,000.
