The writer Maryse Condé on December 4, 2007 in Port-au-Prince (AFP /)
Pointe-à-Pitre-Le Raizet airport received a new administrative name on Sunday, Guadeloupe-Maryse Condé, six months after the death of the 90-year-old Guadeloupean writer, according to a decree published on Sunday in the Official Journal.
The decree, taken by the Minister of Territorial Partnership and Decentralization, Catherine Vautrin, follows a deliberation of the Guadeloupe regional council on April 26, 2024.
After the death of Maryse Condé, on April 2, 2024, the president of the Region, Ary Chalus, officially requested the change of name.
The decision concerns the administrative name of the aerodrome, until now Pointe-à-Pitre-Le Raizet, Alain Bièvre, president of the Management Board of the SAGPC (Guadeloupe Pôle Caraïbe Airport Company), told AFP.
The commercial name of the airport is Guadeloupe Pôle Caraïbe. This name could in the future, following this decree, evolve or remain the same.
According to local airport sources, “after verifications”, it would be “the first airport bearing the name of a black woman in France and perhaps even the first in the world”.
A national tribute, in the presence of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, was paid to Maryse Condé on April 15, at the National Library of France, in Paris.
The author of “Ségou” or “La Vie sans fards”, who died at the age of 90 on April 2, 2024, was one of the great voices of French-speaking literature, exploring in her novels, her theater and her essays the history of Africa and its diaspora, the legacy of slavery and black identities.
