ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses secondary school teachers and their role in French Guiana. As major political actors since the late 1960s, they helped to reshape Guianese identity and achieve the country's symbolic transition from a colonial European society to a post-colonial American society, placing Creoles at the heart of 'Guianese nation building'. The chapter analyses the more certain social relations created within the colonial and post-colonial society, based on Creole supremacy, which has been challenged by two formerly marginalized populations – Natives and Maroons – whose symbolic and political weight is increasing. The Guianese population increased three-fold in 30 years thanks to the unexpected dynamics of a much more diversified and demographically vigorous type of migration. Guianese exceptional and increasing cultural diversity has introduced a special dimension to nation-building processes, that is their confrontation with subnational ethnic identity claims.
