LAUSR

ABSTRACT Implanted in 1846 as a pilgrimage site on Algerian soil after France's 1830 conquest, the majestic Virgin Mary of Santa Cruz statue overlooks Oran, Algeria's second city. This essay traces trans-Mediterranean journeys by Virgin Mary statues between France and Algeria that call for reflexive, mirrored readings. A key concept is the ‘repatriated,’ a French legal category for European settlers of Algeria that extends to objects and statues they carried with them along the ‘French Mediterraneans’ corridor. At Algerian independence in 1962, a smaller Virgin Mary statue used for mobile pilgrimages throughout Algeria was removed to Nîmes, France, where a recreated Oran Marian pilgrimage for the ‘repatriate’ settler community is celebrated to this day. Post-1962, statues and their roles have multiplied multi-directionally and trans-culturally as objects of veneration as well as reconfigured pilgrimages and cultural heritage reunions that enact and invent layered histories for the cities of Nîmes and Oran.