Michael Aubertin (1948-2020) was a multi-talented individual involved in several aspects of the Arts and Culture of Saint Lucia. He was an accomplished calypsonian, fiction writer, playwright, comedian, radio presenter. As a popular calypsonian singing under the name of Mighty Mighty, he won the first St. Lucia Independence calypso crown in 1979. His short story Calypso Finals won a BBC Caribbean Magazine prize in 1977 and was broadcast by them.
The story was later published in the popular anthology “The Sun’s Eye” in 1989. In 1978 the Lithographic Press (housed in the old home of the Walcott family) had published his short stories Mighty Laughs. He had also recorded a long-play album of the same name. From 1998-2001 he served as Saint Lucia’s last Director of Culture. His only novel “Neg Maron: Freedom Fighter” was published in 2000 by the Caribbean Diaspora Press of the Medgar Evers College in New York.
Historical fiction faces many challenges, among them capturing the truth of the history being creatively re-worked, judicious selection out of many strands of events – personal and collective – that suit the fictional narrative, avoidance of a sociological and academic setting-forth of the lives and circumstances even as one seeks to shape a creative, imaginative work. While this novel stays close to the history, and is an absorbing page-turning read, I don’t think it avoids some of these pitfalls as it follows a certain melodramatic path. The years 1794-1797 were a momentous period in the history of Saint Lucia.
The British and French fought over her constantly since she was ideally positioned to be a perfect military base in the chain of islands that comprised the Eastern Caribbean. The French and Haitian revolutions excited the enslaved peoples who saw opportunities to fight successfully for their freedoms. Even as they brought terror to Royalists and slave owners. Within the island the population became divided between the Royalists and the Republican patriots. When the French Republicans took control, a guillotine was set up and heads of Royalist planters rolled. The Neg Maron (Black Maroons) or Brigands were those slaves who fled their plantations with women and children to set up camps in the mountainous areas, from which they harassed and often defeated the British forces.
They were l’armée francais au bois, masters of the guerilla warfare that was fought in the forests and wooded valleys of the volcanic island. In February 1794, the National Convention in Paris abolished slavery, declaring all inhabitants including the enslaved, French citizens. Knowing that success by the British would mean re-enslavement, the blacks and mulattoes supported the Neg Maron in all kinds of ways. For a brief period, during 1795, before the re-establishment of British rule through the famous General John Moore, the island knew a large measure of independence. There were two major Brigand Wars, in 1794 and 1796.
Aubertin’s novel follows the history accurately. He describes convincingly the conditions of plantation slavery in the midst of continuous war and regular change of flags. His settings of the landscape of Saint Lucia, various sea-coast towns (which still exist), Amerindian sites, mountain areas, the Maroon settlements which can still be visited, are accurate. His main characters are a British deserter, 18-year old Alfred James; 35-year-old Golang, a slave of mixed parentage; the beautiful slave woman Emmanuelle for whom his love is unrequited; the owners of the Ti Anse plantation where they live, Claude and Victoire Leger and the cruel overseer Jacques.
Later on, Emmanuelle’s daughter by M. Leger, Gabrielle will be an important character. Aubertin handles the relationships between the women, Victoire the mistress of the plantation and Emmanuelle the slave, very well exploring the emotional and psychological relationships at play between the powerful and powerless. Many of the historical figures, British generals and Maroon leaders make appearances, including a famous female Maroon leader Flore Bois Galliard.
His beginning and ending of the novel attempt a kind of surrealistic, marvelous-realism treatment which I don’t find convincing—but he does give us a good read overall.
With McDonald Dixon, Aubertin is the only other Saint Lucian novelist to write fiction about these important years in Saint Lucian history. Their novels, alongside a number of history texts, provide a fascinating, rare perspective on the history of black Saint Lucians and their resistance to British and French imperialism and plantation slavery.
John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian writer. His Collected Poems 1975-2015 (2017) and Pierrot (2020) are published by Peepal Tree Press. His Saint Lucian Writers and Writing: an Author Index (2019) was published by Papillote Press.
This article first appeared in the December 2020 edition of the STAR Monthly Review, available on newsstands and here: https://issuu.com/starbusinessweek/docs/star_monthly_review_december_2020
