Le Mémorial du Cap 110

Le Diamant

Cap 110 is a memorial dedicated to slavery, erected at Anse Cafard at the initiative of the town of Le Diamant on the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in 1998. Its designer, Laurent VALERE, a self-taught artist, is a native of Martinique born in 1959.

This monument commemorates the sinking of a slave ship on April 8, 1830, the date on which the slave trade was outlawed. The toll: 46 dead, many missing, and 86 survivors who, lacking a defined legal status, were sent to French Guiana. Laurent VALERE created this memorial in 1998, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. The Martinican sculptor designed a symbolic work: about fifteen monumental busts made of white concrete—the color of mourning in West Africa and the Caribbean—form a triangular arrangement reminiscent of the slave trade. Imposing and solemn, with their eyes cast down toward the ground as a sign of despondency, they bear no chains to remind us that the unfortunate shipwrecked victims were never slaves in Martinique. They face Cape 110, that is, toward the Gulf of Guinea, the likely point of origin of the ship.