Jacques Soustelle

The ethnologist of old Mexico

Resulting from a modest family (of working father) Jacques Soustelle made studies of letters and philosophy to the Lycée of the Park to Lyon. Receipt, at the age of ten-seven-years, first to the contest of the National university in 1929, it is graduate of ethnology (1930), qualified schoolteacher of philosophy (received first in 1932) and doctor arts (1937).

Disciple of Paul Rivet, it is in charge of several scientific expeditions to the Mexico of 1932 with 1940, it is specialist in civilizations autochtones of America to which it devoted famous works.

He was sub-manager of the Musée of the Man, part-time lecturer to the Collège de France and the National school of France of overseas. He was professor with the École of the high studies in social sciences since 1951.

Political commitment

Marxist internationalist (anti-Stalinist), it takes part in the reviews Masses , Spartacus (directed by Rene Lefeuvre), sometimes under the pseudonym of Jean Duriez. He is also member of the Comité of vigilance of the intellectuals antifascists. Soustelle is pacifist of conviction, but denounces into 1938 the Accords of Munich.

After the armistice of June 1940, it joined the free French Forces with London. It is charged by the Général de Gaulle with a diplomatic mission in Latin America (1941), where it installs support groups in free France, which short-circuit the diplomats petainists on all the continent. It enters then to the French National committee of London (Government of the free France, then of fighting France), where it assumes the national police station with Information (1942). Named with the head of the Head office of the Secret services (DGSS) with Algiers in (1943 - 1944) by the French Committee of the national Release), he is police chief of the Republic (prefect) with Bordeaux with the Release then appointed Mayenne with the First constituent Assembly.

He is Minister for Information, then Colonies in the Provisional government in 1945. He is also elected, in 1945, appointed democratic and socialist Union of Resistance.

It is in Jacques Soustelle that the de Gaulle general entrusts to the beginning of 1947 the organization of the RPF of which he is the first general secretary, he represents this movement with the National Assembly like deputy of the the Rhone (1951). The president Auriol load then this figure-key of the Parliament to constitute a government, but the deputy of the Rhone will fail in his attempt, which will attract the lightnings of the de Gaulle General to him during a violent public discussion. De Gaulle reproaches Soustelle for being fallen in the trap tended by the " parties of the système" ; this incident will durably mark the relations between the two men. He is re-elected in 1956 under the label republican-social, and in 1958 under the label UNR, and defends a policy favorable to the State of Israel. He will be also Minister for Information in the government de Gaulle (1958) then deputy secretary near the Prime Minister, in charge with the Sahara, the DOM and TOM and the atomic Businesses in the government Debré (1959 - 1960). Resigner of the municipal council of Lyon in October 1961, it will leave his armchair to the director of the manufacture of the tobaccos of Lyon and old resistant André Girard.

Its name is narrowly interfered with the events Algeria from which he is the General governor (1955 - 1956). It is named with this function by Pierre Mendès France. Its policy tends to support the assimilation of the Moslems. It founds, in 1956, the Union for Safety and Revival of French Algeria (USRAF), then, in 1959, with Georges Bidault, Leon Delbecque or Robert Lacoste, the Gathering for French Algeria (RAF), dissolved in 1962. It works for the return of De Gaulle to the capacity but enters in conflict with the general on the Algérie, being opposed to the access to the independence of the three North-African departments, and decides for French Algeria. It is dislocated government and excluded from UNR in 1960. Its action in favor of the maintenance of the Algeria within the French Republic the conduit with being continued for attack with the authority of the State. With Georges Bidault, Antoine Argoud and Pierre Sergeant, it constitutes the executive committee of the National council of Resistance (C.N.R) the May 20th 1962 to Rome. He lives in exile of 1962 with 1969, and will correspond with his wife remained in France, in Aztec language.

Of return in France to the favor of the general law of amnesty on the events of Algeria of June 1968, it was the subject of a withdrawal of case next in October. It turned over then to the political life and was re-elected appointed National movement Progress and Freedoms of the the Rhone in 1973. Soustelle sat at the parliamentary Parliament of the the Council of Europe and at the Parliament of the Western European Union (1973).

It will give a discrete but constant support for Maurice Papon, in particular in the jury of honor composed of old resistant.

Jacques Soustelle was elected with the French Academy, the June 2nd 1983, where, irony of fate, it was accepted by an authentic gaullist, Jean Dutourd. He is buried with the cemetery of Miribel in the Ain.

Remote regions

After his exclusion of the French government in February 1960 and his departure of the movement gaullist because of his positions on French Algeria, Jacques Soustelle joined the OAS of which it belongs to the leading authorities. During a conference in which it exposes its convictions pro-OAS, it is continued for breach of security of the State, leaves in exile abroad and a warrant for arrest is launched against him (it will be pardoned in 1968).

A last scandal will finish its career: it is implied in an accounting scandal, bearing on 40 million dollars, in Paraguay. The money coming from Paraguay was placed on accounts to Switzerland. Soustelle was then the manager of a Parisian survey firm (the Survey firm for the international relations) and used its good contacts with the dictator Alfredo Stroessner for obtaining contracts. According to the communist newspaper Humanity , Jacques Soustelle would have placed this company at the disposal of the Secte Moon of which it would have chaired meetings, which no serious source seems to corroborate.

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