Jacques Soustelle

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Jacques Soustelle
Académie française
SpouseGeorgette Fagot

Jacques Soustelle (3 February 1912 – 6 August 1990) was an important and early figure of the

Pre-Columbian civilizations, and vice-director of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in 1939. Soustelle and his followers opposed any compromise with anticolonial activists in Algeria in the Algerian War.[1]

As

Académie française in 1983.[2]

Biography

Jacques Soustelle was born in

École Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm. 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

Soustelle developed an interest in

Otomi people. Soustelle wrote his first major book Mexique, Terre Indienne (Mexico is Indian) about his time with the Otomi.[3]

France Libre

After the

Free French Forces (FFL) in London. Charles de Gaulle charged him with a diplomatic mission in Latin America (1941), to set up support committees for Free France, to cut short the diplomatic efforts of Petainists throughout the continent.[4]
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

Rassemblement du Peuple Français
(RPF) and was one De Gaulle's closest counsellors.

Algeria

He was nominated Governor General of

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 was unharmed after three

UNR) in 1960 and joined the terrorist Organisation 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 with Georges Bidault, former President of the World War II National Council of the Resistance
. His activities led his 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

Mouvement Réformateur. In 1974, he supported the bill legalizing abortion presented by Simone Veil.[5]

He died, aged 78, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Honours

  • Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur
    .
  • Médaille de la Résistance

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

  1. ISBN 978-1-4008-5558-2
    .
  2. ^ "Jacques SOUSTELLE". Archived from the original on 12 June 2010. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
  3. ^ V. S. Naipaul. "Jacques Soustelle and the Decline of the West". The Writer and the World. pp. 309–310.
  4. ^ "La France Libre dans le monde. - Histoire - France Culture". Archived from the original on 26 June 2010. Retrieved 26 June 2010.
  5. ^ "Assemblee Nationale" (PDF). Assemble-nationale.fr. 27 November 1974. Retrieved 10 December 2017.

External links

Cultural offices
Preceded by
Académie française

1983–1990 		Succeeded by
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