August 10, 1991, the bloodbath of Iavoloha, in the history of the country, there has been no military-civilian massacre of such magnitude as during colonization. Gap between the forces present, on one side tens of thousands of unarmed demonstrators playing on numbers and on the other men in fatigues trained to kill with firearms. The massacre was inevitable. Few historians or politicians have written about this pivotal period in the history of Madagascar, except perhaps Henri Rasamoelina, with his book “ 1991 public struggle » published by Ivonea in 2017. This is the phenomenon that is affecting this country, the lack of historical retrospective. Royal dynastic plots, colonization, March 29, 1947, “May 13, 72,” 1991, 2002, 2009… No literature has emerged from these painful periods. It’s as if the Malagasy are reluctant to face their past, to look at themselves in the mirror. During the First Republic, several national authors wrote books on colonial atrocities, the Malagasy authorities of a then independent country banned these writings from the country’s bookstores. In the 60s/70s, you had to go to France to find them on sale over the counter. Enough to question the Malagasy’s relationship with its history, the State’s vision of a contemporary cultural policy for a country with strong economic potential and the entity or person who finds it in their interest to have several generations remain in permanent oblivion, or even historical denial. In the digital age, without wanting to extrapolate, 95% of Madagascar’s history remains unknown to its 25 million inhabitants. The rest is sometimes made up of vagueness, imprecision, hateful debate… We always wonder who benefits from this cultural imbroglio. The collective Malagasy historical memory would undoubtedly reflect the current state of the Big Island, poor and without any real horizon. Yet of a quasi-civilization (of rice and the sea) dating back at least two millennia, quite capable of assuming its past.
Maminirina Rado
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