David Gistau (d) and his father Pierre, on the site of a former steel plant, in Decazeville, January 6, 2022 (AFP / Valentine CHAPUIS)
“It’s the same story repeating itself, followed by the same social tragedies”: like his steelworker father, and his miner grandfather, David Gistau helplessly witnesses the closure of his factory in the disaster area of Decazeville, in the Aveyron.
A headframe some twenty meters high stands on the hill whipped by an icy wind. Formerly used to descend into the mine and bring up the coal, it is the pride of residents concerned with preserving the “memory” of this emblematic place of deindustrialisation, one of the dominant themes of the Elysee race.
“This basin represents a land of resistance, which has suffered a lot and given a lot to the country: coal mining and the manufacture of steel and cast iron have made it possible to supply thousands of kilometers of rails in France”, explains to the ‘AFP David Gistau, 51 years old.
His father Pierre found it difficult to contain his emotion in front of the immense vacant lot on which stood the steel plant where he worked in Decazeville.
“Here it was the foundry, over there the mechanical workshop and further on the boiler-making”, explains this 76-year-old man with faded blue eyes, recalling the ghosts of buildings razed, of machines dismantled, even sent to the breakage.
“It’s hard to come back here, to see this completely devastated area, it hurts a lot”, he whispers, remembering the winter of 1987, when the blast furnaces died out, leaving hundreds of workers. on the tile.
Before him, his father Marius, who came from Spain, saw the end of underground mining in 1962.
“They murdered us, and now it’s the stab in the back of the workers of the SAM,” he says.
– “Same betrayals” –
A poster displayed in solidarity with the workers of the SAM foundry, in Decazeville, January 6, 2022 (AFP / Valentine CHAPUIS)
The Aveyron company of metallurgy (SAM), in Viviez, on the heights of Decazeville, employed some 350 employees and produced auto parts for Renault.
In December 2019, she was placed in receivership. Then, on November 26, the Toulouse Commercial Court declared the cessation of activity and its liquidation, after the refusal of the diamond group to support the only takeover project.
“Are we condemned, in a territory like ours to undergo from generation to generation the same policies, with the same consequences?”, Protested David Gistau.
“It’s my story, but also the story of hundreds, even thousands of families here. Same betrayals, same social dramas, and dying territories,” laments the 50-year-old.
The basin had more than 30,000 inhabitants in 1968, against barely 18,000 in 2018, according to the latest figures from INSEE.
“As long as there was money to be made, it was done, and when we judged that it was no longer profitable to fatten the capitalist system, the human and social cost, we sat on it”, enrage Yves Lacout, founder of a memorial museum in Cransac, another mining village near Decazeville.
– “Red ass” –
Land for sale in Decazeville, January 6, 2022 (AFP / Valentine CHAPUIS)
This 60-year-old Aveyronnais evokes a “unique feeling of belonging” to the basin, due to the history of its inhabitants.
Faced with a significant need for manpower at the beginning of the 20th century, mining companies, traces Mr. Lacout, called on thousands of Polish, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Armenian and Russian workers. Many were migrants who fled dictatorships and persecution.
“In a rural, sparsely populated and conservative Aveyron, the coal and industrial basin of Decazeville was doing“ stain ”, with the structuring of a workers’ movement and unions. It was red asses against white asses,” he recalls. laughing.
Today he supports the SAM workers who occupy their factory because, he says, “when you fight, you win or not. But when you don’t fight, you have already lost”.
For his daughter Manon Lacout, 29, school principal in Decazeville, the basin has a future.
“There are a lot of young people who want to build our life here and we will do everything to maintain what exists,” she says.
The maternity hospital where she was born no longer exists. In the city center, many businesses have drawn the curtain. The apartments are emptying and signs “for sale” or “for rent” line the facades.
But, humming “Our grandparents fought, they went on strike, they defended themselves, they walked together in the street, never resigned, they always believed in it”, song learned as a child, Manon Lacout is determined to stay in the country.
© 2022 AFP
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