Valero, famous anonymous postman

What do we know about famous postal workers ? What heritage have they left ? There is Ferdinand Horse, a postman under the Third Republic, and a brilliant manufacturer of the ideal palace in Hauterives, masterpiece of Candide art. Or Gaston Bachelard who, before becoming the philosopher of knowledge and the inventor of psychoanalysis of objective knowledge, worked as a supernumerary posts in the Remiremont office. As for Eugène Vaillé, originally librarian at the ministry of Ptthe became the first curator of the postal museum and founder of the historiography of this institution. However, the figure of the postman remains that of our immediate entourage and our daily uses: the factor on tour or the counter of the neighborhood office.

Not that “ A postman among others »»

Christian Chevandier’s company, aimed at bringing the life of a postman, is part of a large tradition of memory: how can a particular existence light up general history ? At a high level of responsibility, Pierre Le Saux, the great clerk of the State Ptt From 1936 to 1985, delivered part of the answer, in the genre of autobiography. At the other end of the scale, Georges Valero (1937-1990), whose social trajectory is the object of this work, in book another, and questions us about the profile of a character that a priori, We would neither classify among famous postal workers, nor among anonymous, but in a third category with amendable contours, that of a famous anonymous postman.

Thanks to the sharp biographical work of Christian Chevandier, renowned historian of the world of work and the railway universe, Valero risks acquiring, twenty years after his death, a celebrity post mortem. The initiative of the author, who can appear surprising at first, finds its origin in several facts. First of all, it is a question of improving an incomplete first work: Chevandier is the author of an overly short notice in the Biographical dictionary of the workers’ movement. It is also a question of satisfying the will of the first wife of Valero and going further in his research. To do this, the author mobilizes archives of all kinds: administrative, union, journalistic, political and civil. The goal is to draw the life of a man, excluded from the great official historical account. This apparently ordinary life, however, testifies to the upheavals of a century, as much as the arranged biographies of the great characters.

Famous, it is also for the left -wing intellectual community, for the microcosm of scholars and writers, but also for his family and friendly entourage when he is real “ culture passer ». Indeed, during his life, man cultivates an insatiable passion for the world of cinema. Not so much for the technique of films, but first of all for the way of projecting them as well as the way in which the public receives them. He loves him “ The beautiful films ». It has a rare culture “ cineclubesque – He founded with his friend Michel Barroil the Ciné Club of the Postal Federation of the Rhône – and never tires of presenting their projections and animate the debates. His passion also feeds on the reviews he reads or fueling in articles, often with his wife, Denise, or his fellow Barroil. He works for the creation of the Cinémathèque de Lyon to compete with that of Paris. In any case, the cinema prevails in the theater, which it does not disdain, but which it sees more as a place of class struggle, where one can come to challenge the bourgeoisie. Culture also involves books and editorial projects. He participated in the Federop Project, a bookstore then a Lyon publishing house, as a collection director. Federop publishes the 1977 Nobel Prize in Literature, but especially welcomes the authors refused by the great Parisian houses. He also takes part in the movement of free radios, first pirate by being a member of the board of directors of Radio Léon Motivationon the Lyon agglomeration, in the early 1980s. He reads The social movement As early as 1972, he passionate about social sciences, and promoted reading within his section CFDT By opening a library there. It is captivated by the media that are Humanity And France Culture.

But he is especially famous for his books. Two of them are inspired by his own life. Published in 1980, The Mediterranean crossed France narrates the journey of a group of metropolitan soldiers in Kabylia at war. In a safe well -being in 1975 retraces the history of some postal workers from the Lyon – Gare sorting center. Because this is all the duplicity of Valero, with such banal life, but with little common actions. This double positioning lights up in particular under the day of its antialcoolism where however alcohol is part of a mode of sociability, in the army, in sorting, in inter -union: it necessarily becomes individualized.

A different man, whatever his environment

He was born in one of the poorest districts in the Lyon suburbs in Villeurbanne. The first name of Georges, whom he receives from his parents Louis and Marceline, carrying the very anchored fashion of “ Tiger “, Already tends to distinguish him from other children of his generation, he who is conferred on the affirmation of a strong French identity, while his origins feed” of a double Spanish and Oran stream ». Coming from a proletarian and modest environment, his father obliges him to follow a path related to his origins: it is the orientation in 4^e industrial and its failure. In 1954, however, he entered the prestigious Ampère high school in Lyon. He met his future great friend there, Joseph Goldberg. In his popular environment, he then appears to be the one who studies. Like many others, however, Valero also testifies to the republican meritocratic path and this hope that constitutes the school.

An accident in this meritorious journey will orient Valero towards public postal function. Failure to the first part of the baccalaureate leads him to prepare, certainly in dilettante, the entrance exam to Ptt. He obtains it brilliantly, which encourages him to present himself again in the bac, which he won the first part, even though he is already working at night in the administration in Lyon-Chèques. Unlike new entrants into the postal public service, Valero, “ mounted Not in Paris, at the Hôtel des Posts on rue du Louvre, to do its training.

To the Union of the Republican Youth of France, he met his future wife, Denise Zederman with whom he married in 1957. In parallel, he made his first steps as an activist in the Pc and at the CGT under the influence of his father. Called to military service, Valero cannot prepare the second part of the bac. He left for Kabylia and Tizi Ouzou in November 1958. There, he was both like the others, soldier, but he seems to find the elements of a distinction once again. In his assignment first, to the transmissions where he saw more a war of modernity, of technicality, more than that relating to inhumanity, to death and to massacres … in his relationship to culture and written Then, he made an overabundant use of the letter to his wife, via the post office at the armies but also the civil and traditional post office. The letter links him to his universe, makes him leave daily life and keep hope. This is where, a young postman already in office, he measures the social utility of his institution. In his room, a single other postman, an extra factor. Man reads everywhere, all the time, whatever the situation: reading allows him to isolate himself, to keep a healthy mind. New postal element of his “ survival », The Pacout-Post allows him to eat in works.

Such an ordinary postman

Finally, for the post historian who lends himself to the exercise of the review, the biography carried out by C. Chevandier has a double interest. It gives echo and historical incarnation to the already well explored postal study fields that are unionism and work in various establishments, sorting or financial centers. It also sketches a consubstantial relationship between the hero and the post: the author’s allusions in his story about a means of communication so vital, so central and essential to the daily society whose economic and cultural expansion is strong, strengthens the option of a total history relating to the object “ Job ».

Valero, postman ? Not so rare in a country where Ptt At the end of the 1950s, more than 260,000 agents have and recruited without counting to respond to the development of all their activities.

Valero depending on the mail service ? Obviously, since neither the wired telephone nor the telegram, barely democratized, allow a flow of exchange as satisfactory as the package and the letter.

Valero, an activist who has become a union leader ? THE Ptt cross the movements of 1968 hard. In the Lyon sorting center – Gare, Valero, as a simple activist CGTmeasure how eighteen days of blocking put nearly a million suffering folds and paralyzes all social activity. This observation strengthens him in his decision to switch later in union leadership.

Valero, as a symbol of a career so frequent among postal officials ? Without the shadow of a doubt, he who knows his first assignment as supernumerary in Lyon – checks. In this feminized professional universe, he is assigned to the service of arrival, where the rare men are, where the “ brigade », Where we open the bags of dispatches and brews the thousands of hooks that flock. He meets another postman there, Louis Viannet, who will become the secretary general of the CGT Between 1992 and 1999 after having climbed the union levels in the branch Ptt. By his side, he nourished his first reflections on political and militant commitment, built his first convictions confronted with the arduous work. In 1962, he was transferred to Lyon – Perrache station following the traditional game of greeting sheets, with new nighttime schedules that allow him to free himself for his personal, family and union activities. He discovers La Poste of the Night, on sorting, postal workers, dynasty from which he did not come. Valero goes up in grade thanks to seniority, becoming controller, up to head of section in 1990 and also apprehends this other aspect of the professional world that is supervision.

In the end, Valero turns out to be neither a postman who went to posterity, nor a completely erased civil servant, but the actor and the witness of a period of mutations, that of the Thirty Glorious Years. His biography makes him appear as a man that the richness of the journey, meetings and acts could however absolve illness. She won on May 6, 1990, at the age of 53.