The Mulatto Solitude
The Mulatto Solitude symbolizes the Caribbean women and mothers who fought to protect the ideals of equality and freedom in the context of slavery.
Throughout the two and a half centuries of the slave system in Guadeloupe, the slave population tried to escape forced labour and slavery.
The hierarchical system created by the masters, in which the slave population governed itself, made it difficult to rebel. Nevertheless, there were many forms of resistance: slow work, sabotage, marronnage, and so on.
Women were the first to come into contact with the masters. It was especially difficult for them because, under the slave system, they were expected to be more subservient than men, as was particularly reflected in the division of labour between the sexes.
The slave population managed to get around the ban on their right to assembly. Associations were formed in Guadeloupe. Initially, slaves were grouped according to their language or the part of Africa from which they had come. Other groups were based on religion. Finally, some clandestine organizations were set up to help slaves escape or to bring an end to the slave society.
In the early nineteenth century, two associations emerged in Guadeloupe: the Grenats and the Violettes. Their members included slaves, free people of colour and petits blancs. They held frequent meetings, for example, every Sunday. Each association, in the districts in which they met, had two different leaders, one male and one female.
These associations were suspected by the grands blancs of encouraging slaves and free members to rise up against the whites.
Dancing scene in the 18e century (coll. Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe).
Some slaves chose to run away (marronnage) either alone or in small groups. The fugitives were called Maroons or Maroon Negroes, from the Spanish word cimarron, meaning someone who runs away from their master. They were brutally treated if caught: some were mutilated, branded or forced to wear iron masks.
Maroons lived secretly:
• In ports or cities;
• On the edges of plantations; and
• In communities, hidden away in areas with little accessibility, such as mountains or forests.
After the insurgents failed to prevent the re-establishment of slavery in 1802, marronnage in the forests and mountainous areas of Guadeloupe grew rapidly.
Women ran away for similar reasons to men: to escape ill treatment, to take control of their own lives and, in some cases, to join a loved one, whether a Maroon or a free person of colour.
Many female runaways took refuge in the city suburbs, where they looked for support from the free blacks living there. Others worked illegally near the edges of large plantations. Free blacks that lived in these areas often employed people regardless of their legal status (Gautier, 1985).
Some women worked in secret for petits blancs who could not afford to buy a slave, while others made a living from prostitution.
There were always fewer female Maroons than male (Gautier, 1985), since it was harder for women to escape because:
• They looked after children and may have been pregnant;
• Men often worked outside the plantations (as guards, cart or coach drivers) and therefore had more opportunities to run away than women (dressmakers, maidservants, laundresses, etc.);
• Once they had escaped, men’s qualifications made it easier for them at that time to find clandestine employment in ports or cities.
The fact that fewer women escaped than men was therefore not a result of better treatment of women on the plantations, but linked to their condition as women and mothers, which restricted their mobility and their ability to support themselves (Gautier, 1985).
With weapons and tools available, slaves in Guadeloupe rebelled several times in their history (1656, 1738, 1793).
However, slave uprisings were severely punished, almost always leading to imprisonment, torture or death.Although the number of rebellions was small, conspiracies were more common. Paradoxically, slave-led conspiracies were often reported to the authorities by slaves themselves, as masters would reward them for their loyalty, for example, by freeing them. Indeed, some slaves helped to control the agricultural work force, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the system survived for more than two centuries in Guadeloupe (Régent, 2004).
Women took part in the fighting from the start of the 1802 insurrection. They had many key roles including: preparing weapons; looking after, comforting and transporting the injured under enemy fire; and carrying messages between troops at the risk of their own capture and injury.
They also galvanized the troops with songs and dances, punctuated with cries of ‘Long live death!’
