Jacques Soustelle
Jacques Soustelle (3 February 1912 – 6 August 1990) was an important and early figure of the Free French Forces and an anthropologist specializing in Pre-Columbian civilizations. He became vice-director of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in 1939.by He was elected to the Académie française in 1983.[1]
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Biography
Jacques Soustelle was born in Montpellier, into a Protestant working-class family. A brilliant high school student, he was admitted at the first place at the École Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm, which is still the ultimate college within the French educational system (many Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists are among its alumni). At the age of 20, he was admitted at the first place at the competitive exam of agrégation de philosophie (high-level grade for teaching). An anti-fascist, he was general-secretary in 1935 of the French Union of Intellectuals against Fascism.
Anthropology of Mesoamerica
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France Libre
After the Armistice of 22 June 1940, he left Mexico to join the Free French Forces (FFL) in London. Charles de Gaulle charged him of a diplomatic mission in Latin America (1941), to set up support committees to free France, to cut short the diplomatic efforts of Petainists throughout the continent.[2] He headed the intelligence service Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA). He joined the Comité national français, (Government of the Free France, fighting Vichy France, and the Axis powers ) in London, then ran the commissariat national à l’Information (1942).
Appointed to head the Special Services Branch (DGHS) in Algiers in (1943–1944) by the French Committee of National Liberation), He was Commissioner of the Republic (prefect) in Bordeaux then in the Liberation deputy of Mayenne.
Reconstruction of France
In 1945, he served first as Minister of Information, then as Minister of the Colonies. From 1947 to 1951, he served as Secretary General of the Gaullist party Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF) and was one De Gaulle's closest counsellors.
Algeria
He was nominated Governor General of Algeria by Pierre Mendès-France in 1955–56, favouring the integration of the Muslim community in the French Departments along the Mediterranean coast . Thanks to Soustelle's essential support during the May 1958 Algiers revolt, De Gaulle returned to power.
Though he believed he would become Algeria Secretary, Soustelle was only named Information Minister in June 1958. In 1959, he was appointed Minister of State in charge of Overseas Departments by De Gaulle. He miraculously was unharmed after three Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) terrorists attempted to assassinate him by shooting his car on the Place de l'Étoile in Paris. He got from De Gaulle a presidential pardon for the only attacker who had been arrested and sentenced to death. Soustelle disagreed with De Gaulle's sudden turn for Algerian independence. He has analyzed this turnaround in his book L'Espérance Trahie (Broken Hope). Soustelle was dismissed from the cabinet and the Gaullist party Union pour la nouvelle République (UNR) in 1960 and joined the terrorist Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) in the fight against the independence of Algeria. When the OAS was replaced by the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR), he joined this new organization as one the heads (around Georges Bidault, former President of the World War II National Council of the Resistance). His activities led him to being sued for attempting to undermine the authority of the French state. He lived in exile between 1961 and his 1968 amnesty.
National Assembly
Soustelle was elected to France's National Assembly (France's lower House) three times, first representing Mayenne in 1945–46, then the Rhône (1951–58) as a Gaullist, and from 1973 to 1978 as a member of the centrist Mouvement Réformateur. In 1974, he supported the bill legalizing abortion presented by Simone Veil.[3] He died, aged 78, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Honours
Selected Publications
- La culture matérielle des Indiens Lacandons (1937)
- La famille otomi-pame du Mexique central (1937)
- Envers et contre tout: souvenirs et documents sur la France libre (1947, 1950)
- La vie quotidienne des Aztèques (1955)
- Aimée et souffrante Algérie (1956)
- Le drame algérien et la décadence française (1957)
- L'espérance trahie, 1958–1961 (1962)
- L'art du Mexique ancien (1966)
- Les quatre soleils: souvenirs et réflexion d'un ethnologue en Mexique (1967)
- La longue marche d'Israël (1968)
- Mexique, terre indienne (1971)
- Les Olmèques (1979)
- Lettre ouvert aux victimes de la decolonisation (1973)
- L'anthropologie française et les civilisations autochtones de l'Amérique (1989)
References
| Cultural offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Seat 36 Académie française 1983–1990 |
Succeeded by Jean-François Deniau |
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles using small message boxes
- Use dmy dates from June 2011
- 1912 births
- 1990 deaths
- People from Montpellier
- French Protestants
- Politicians from Languedoc-Roussillon
- Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance politicians
- Rally of the French People politicians
- National Centre of Social Republicans politicians
- Union for the New Republic politicians
- Ministers of Information of France
- French Ministers of Overseas France
- Governor generals of Algeria
- Members of the National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic
- Members of the National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic
- Members of the Organisation de l'armée secrète
- Members of the Académie française
- French anthropologists
- École Normale Supérieure alumni
- École des hautes études en sciences sociales faculty
- French Mesoamericanists
- Mesoamerican anthropologists
- Aztec scholars
- 20th-century Mesoamericanists
- Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur
- Recipients of the Resistance Medal
