Community leaders and fokonolona chiefs head to plague awareness centers. An invasive scourge, a supernatural curse, prophylaxis considered sacrilege, fraud through clandestine burials and exhumations to respect traditions... This summarizes the first part of a study by researcher-teacher Faranirina V. Esoavelomandroso titled "From Plague as Disease to Plague as Politics - Merina Interpretation of Endemic Plague Phenomenon on the Central Highlands (after 1921-1936)".
In the second part, the author indicates that "in this atmosphere of terror and in the specific context of colonization with its inequalities and oppression," the idea of a disease "invented" by the French administration took hold quickly among the Merina. Beyond credulity, the hope of obtaining a "good diagnosis" was justified by the belief that the disease exists—though Malagasy were not always convinced—but could not be dangerous, given "the comedy of prophylactic measures" as denounced by Paul Dussac in "Nation Malgache" on December 6, 1935.
Since colonizers' official reason was ensuring indigenous welfare through effective social policy, "the anti-plague struggle reflects the incoherence, arbitrary nature and limits of medical and sanitary action," the author states. Living in a fundamentally unequal society, Malagasy interpreted certain legitimate prophylactic measures as "pretexts seized by colonial power to make them feel their complete subjection."
Esoavelomandroso explains this opinion first through prophylactic measures that intensified colonial control over the population. Accompanied by European police agents representing superior authority, "mpiadidy" (notables) and indigenous governors contributed to disease detection and received orders to patrol their quarters, question inhabitants, "visit houses and report to doctors all those with sick people, as well as all deaths appearing suspicious." Such control violated family privacy.
Secondly, movements were strictly monitored. Militiamen guarded sanitary cordons around major centers. The author cites nationalist leader E. Razafindrakoto, who compared 1921's capital (when he was 15) to a besieged city held by "Senegalese" soldiers—who terrified Malagasy during colonialism—armed and ready to shoot "escapees" from contaminated zones.
Razafindrakoto even saw in this measure a colonizer desire to prevent Malagasy contact. He compared colonized conditions to defeated Germans during World War II: "Because of the sanitary cordon, Malagasy cannot communicate; because of the Berlin Wall, Germans are cut off from each other."
The historian interprets this "exaggerated comparison" as the painful impression plague left on Merina memory. Indeed, severe and arbitrary sentences—from days in prison to years of forced labor or immediate armed repression—struck those attempting clandestine escape from contaminated zones. Within the capital, epidemic-affected quarters were isolated by barbed wire.
"A troublesome measure since other family members cannot visit sick relatives or provide material aid, while administration proved inefficient here," the author notes. In rural areas, under less strict aspects, provisions were actually more constraining for inhabitants. "Fokonolona members had to ensure surveillance of cordons marked only by raphia fiber."
By Pela Ravalitera