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Public Culture 128 67. William F. S. Miles, Elections and Ethnicity in French Martinique: A Paradox in Paradise (New York: Praeger, 1986), 141 – 58; Constant, La retraite aux flambeaux, 67 – 86; Richard D. E. Burton, “The French West Indies à l’heure de l’Europe: An Overview,” in French and West Indian: Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana Today, ed. Richard D. E. Burton and Fred Reno (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 1 – 19; José Nosel, “Appréciation de l’impact économique de la départmentalisation à la Martinique” (“Evaluation of the Economic Impact of Departmentalization in Martinique”), in Constant and Daniel, 1946 – 1996, 25 – 71; François-Lubin, “Les méandres de la politique sociale outre-mer”; Nicolas, Histoire de la Martinique, 243 – 86; Alain Anselin, L’émigration antillais en France: La troisième île (Antillean Emigration to France: The Third Island) (Paris: Karthala, 1990); Fred Constant, “La politique migratoire: Essai d’un évalua- tion” (“Migratory Policy: A Tentative Evaluation”), in Constant and Daniel, 1946 – 1996, 97 – 132; David Beriss, Black Skin, French Voices: Caribbean Ethnicity and Activism in Urban France (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2004), 1 – 21, 61 – 72; Madeleine Dobie, “Invisible Exodus: The Cultural Effacement of Antillean Migration,” Diaspora 13 (2004): 149 – 83. 68. At the 1971 “Convention pour l’Autonomie des Quatres DOM” at Morne Rouge, representa- tives from across the anticolonialist Left in all four departments denounced departmentalization and declared their support for self-determination through a new autonomy status. Nicolas, Histoire de la Martinique, 294 – 95. 69. On the independence movement and parties, see Miles, Elections and Ethnicity, 45 – 55, 207 – 16; Richard D. E. Burton, “The Idea of Difference in Contemporary French West Indian Thought: Négritude, Antillanité, Créolité,” in Burton and Reno, French and West Indian, 150 – 52; and Burton, “French West Indies,” 16 – 18. Alfred Marie-Jeanne of the Mouvement Indépendan- tiste Martiniquais Party was elected deputy to the National Assembly in 1997 and president of the Conseil Régionale in 1998. But according to Justin Daniel, this is more a function of his association with effective management and good governance than of popular support for national independence (“L’espace politique martiniquais à l’épreuve de la départmentalisation” (“Martinican Political Space and the Test of Departmentalization”), in Constant and Daniel, 1946 – 1996, 250 – 52). (In 1999, along with the presidents of the Regional Councils of Guiana and Guadeloupe, Marie-Jeanne signed “La déclaration de Basse-Terre” demanding official autonomous status for the three departments.) 70. Césaire served as Martinique’s deputy to the National Assembly (1945 – 93), mayor of Fort- de-France (1945 – 2001), and president of the Conseil Général (1945 – 49, 1955 – 70) and the Conseil Régional (1983 – 86). resentment in Martinique.67 The Left, which had formerly supported depart- mentalization, now struggled to revise the territory’s legal status. Autonomists, represented by Césaire’s PPM and the Martinican Communist Party, hoped to institute formal political autonomy without separating completely from France.68 Another nationalist strand of the Left demanded full political independence.69 Despite their wave of popularity during the 1970s, these independentist parties failed to attract a mass following. Césaire, by contrast, became the most power- ful politician in Martinique.70 But Gaullist policies during the 1960s and 1970s allowed the conservative Right in Martinique to derail all attempts to redefine the territory’s legal status. These departmentalists effectively manipulated fears that any change in status would be a first step toward political independence.