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In this interview, the historian Jean-Pierre Chretien recalls his experience in Burundi in 1964, when he instructed student teachers from Bujumbura. He recounts his discovery of the rift between the Hutu and the Tutsi, the shock produced by the 1972 massacres and Rwanda’s influence on Burundi. He revisits the roots of “Hamitic ideology” a racial mythology that surfaced in the social sciences during the 19th century and which was subsequently spread by colonialism. At the beginning of the 1990s, Jean-Pierre Chretien became aware of the increasing radicalization of racial thinking in Rwanda. In early 1993, he tried to warn the French public of the risk of genocide. Today, he calls for serious public debate regarding this historic event.