the colony of Réunion was turned into an overseas department of France, which led to the gradual alignment of its social and public services with those of metropolitan France. Malaria eradication campaigns, started in Réunion in 1949 thanks to the new DDT insecticide, led to a dramatic decrease of malaria prevalence in the space of four years, and its complete eradication by 1967. Malaria had acted as a brake on population growth since its arrival in the island in 1868, and with its eradication the island's population soon started to grow tremendously due to high fertility rates. All these factors, combined with rural flight, led to a new period of rapid expansion for the city of Saint-Denis. After more than 70 years of stagnation, the city's population more than doubled between the 1954 and 1967 censuses. The June 1946 French legislative election was marked by political violence in Réunion, opposing Communist militants and the Christian-democratic Popular Republican Movement (MRP), which had both emerged from the underground resistance during Vichy rule over the island (1940-1942). On May 25, 1946, in the heat of the campaign, Communist and MRP militants confronted each other in the city center of Saint-Denis, and , Gaullist and MRP leader, who was running in the 1st constituency of Réunion (the one including Saint-Denis), where he faced Raymond Vergès, a local Communist leader elected the year before mayor of Saint-Denis, was shot and killed in the mêlée. Paul Vergès, son of Raymond Vergès, and future founder of the Communist Party of Réunion (with which he led the regional council of Réunion from 1998 to 2010), was accused of having fired the fatal shot with a gun belonging to his father found on the scene. Found guilty by the criminal court of Lyon (where the trial had been relocated in order to calm tensions in Réunion), he was granted amnesty in 1953 by the French government. In 1956 was begun the construction of a major road linking Saint-Denis and La Possession (and from there the seaport of Réunion and the western coast of the island), bypassing the big lava flow which had always impeded communications between Saint-Denis and the western coast of the island. Only a slow railway line built in 1878-1881 in a tunnel under the lava flow and a narrow, winding road climbing the lava flow existed until then, which hindered the economic development of Saint-Denis. The