Racial rhetoric in black and white: situational whiteness in Francoist Spanish Guinea through Misión blanca

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes through the interactions of its racially encoded characters under the lens of whiteness. The objective is to locate the representational strategies that Francoist cultural production used to convey moral superiority through racial teachings. The study specifically examines Francoist practices of racial representation to suggest how Spanish whiteness may have been traditionally situational; that is, conceived as a highly rhetorical cultural tactic to assimilate non-whites into the fringes of Spanish whiteness, which in this historical period led to the totalization and silencing of racial dissidence. As a result, the essay will demonstrate how Francoist cinema displayed rhetorical race notions and situational whiteness in Africa to build relationships of moral superiority with regard to Spain’s European counterparts.

KEYWORDS:

• Francoist colonialism
• Imperial rhetoric and representation
• Equatorial Guinea
• Situational whiteness
• Hispanic whiteness
• Misión blanca

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This paper is part of the R+D+i Project “Africans and Maghrebins in the Iberian Peninsula (1850–1975). A history on the margins of Spain and Portugal” (AFROIBERIA) (PID2019-108397GB-I00/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033), financed by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and “FEDER Una forma de hacer Europa”.

2 All translations from Spanish found in this essay are the author’s unless a different source is indicated. Original source: “ … los negros no quieren bien a ningún blanco. Espero que cumplirá con la ley denunciando al culpable. La ley de Dios nos manda perdonar. ¡Que majadería!”

3 A detailed discussion or even survey overview on the Anglocentric studies on whiteness to date would exceed the scope and aims of this essay as suggested by ERS for this publication. However, to situate the present essay in a much broader, interdisciplinary context as well as a transnational framework, consider reading the “Introduction to the Special Issue: Another Turn of the Screw Toward Hispanic and Lusophone Whiteness Studies” (Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2018).

4 The commentary of some contributions of Hispanic studies field to the discipline of whiteness –which is not intended to be exhaustive– has been incorporated in the analysis of Misión blanca. For further consideration on the matter, see the preamble to the Journal of Hispanic and Lusophone Whiteness Studies to the first issue “De Whiteness a Blanquitud y Branquitude – From Whiteness to Blanquitud and Branquitude” (Vol. 1, 2020a) as well as “Neither Your Hispanic Nor Your White: Transitioning Between Whitenesses From Spain to the United States.” The Journal of Hispanic and Lusophone Whiteness Studies (1–2020b): 1–28.

5 See Alfonso de Ascanio’s España Imperio (1939), in which the author refers to fascism and Hitlerism as rising beacons of Europe.

6 A great political and cultural shift occurred in Spain, again, after joining NATO in 1982 and becoming a member of the European Union in 1986, when Spain routinely felt pressured to assert the nation’s modernity by adherence to Europe and whiteness rather than stressing Hispanic cultural traditions and miscegenation to express Spain’s racial ideology and national identity (Persánch 2018).

7 “Situational whiteness” was conceptualized in a far-reaching framework. See Blancura situacional e imperio español en su historia, cine y literatura (s. XIX-XX)” (Dissertation, The University of Kentucky, 2016), for a comprehensive study of this concept in various periods of Spain’s history.

8 International resolutions to decolonize Africa failed for decades despite pressures from the United Nations, with Spain retaining the colonial territories until Morocco’s independence in 1958, Equatorial Guinea’s independence in 1968, and the de facto takeover of the Western Sahara by Moroccan Marcha Verde in 1975 (Nerín 1997; Huguet Santos 1999, 2008). Francisco Franco Bahamonde (1892–75) found in the policies of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970), who would also keep Portugal’s African territories until Angola and Mozambique gained independence in 1975, a legal maneuver to prevent Spain from decolonizing Africa by changing the legal status of the overseas territories from colonies to national provinces.

9 This work and the special issue were supported by the Research and Development Project directed by Y. Aixelà-Cabré “Africans and Maghrebis in the Iberian Peninsula (1850-1975). A history on the margins of Spain and Portugal” (AFROIBERIA) (PID2019-108397GB-I00/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033), funding by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and “FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa.”

10 See Diego Galán’s (2015) “Misión blanca, el pecado no tiene color,” published in El País, julio 9, 1984.

11 Orduña capitalized on three films: Benito Perojo’s Le danseur de Jazz (La fatalité du destin) (1927), Alas Crosland’s Jazz Singer (1927), and El negro que tiene el alma blanca –keeping the original title of the novel of Alberto Insua (1885-1963)– also filmed in 1927. (In addition to this 1927’s silent era version, exist two remakes: one by Perojo himself in 1931, and Hugo del Carril’s (1912-1989) as late as 1951).

12 See the introduction to “Blancura situacional del imperialismo franquista, héroe sacrificial y maniqueísmo racial en Héroes del 95” (Cuadernos de Literatura del Caribe e Hispanoamérica, N. 33, 2022), where I elaborate on the three main propagandistic ramifications of francoist cinematographic production: religioso, bélico e histórico.

13 Between 1939 and 1950, Spain released 442 titles, 42 of which dealt with colonial themes, according to the Anuario del cine español, 1955–56 (1956).

14 Original source: “en Tuango podrán hablarle de un padre que cumplió abnegadamente con su misión blanca. Esa misión blanca nuestra que no distingue de colores en los hombres.” (Orduña, Misión blanca)

15 Original source: “Hay que ir pueblo a pueblo, ganando con la cruz las almas blancas de los negros.” (Orduña, Misión blanca)

16 Original source: “Y algunas veces, las almas negras de los hombres blancos.” (Orduña, Misión blanca)

17 The construction of a common racial imagination in the West through cinema —deeply rooted in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s romantizazing myth of the good savage postulated in Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1754)— contributed to the processes of justification and legitimacy of colonial enterprises in the wake of the twentieth century.

18 See also Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa (1988), in which he examined the West’s multifaceted idea of Africa as a product conceived and conveyed through conflicting systems of knowledge. Specifically, Mudimbe pointed to “the episteme of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that invented the concept of a static and prehistoric tradition. Travelers” reports localize African cultures as “beings-in themselves” inherently incapable of living as “beings-for-themselves” (1988, 202).

19 Original source: “Un lagarto, es de lo más inofensivo de aquí. Otros son los peligros de Guinea […] antes, no hace mucho, desenvolverse en Guinea era un auténtico problema: había que luchar con el clima, con la selva, con los negros … y con los blancos. Ahora la semilla echada empieza a fructificar, por eso me gusta su juventud, de ella esperamos, los que no tardaremos de irnos para siempre, la continuación del trabajo.” (Orduña, Misión blanca)

20 Original source: “África se porta bien conmigo y los negros me parecen a veces más civilizados que los blancos” (Orduña, Misión blanca)

21 Original source: “uno de los peligros de Guinea, que no incluyen los tratadistas, es el peligro sexual: la lejanía de los centros de cultura, la escasez de mujeres blancas; dan un mayor atractivo a la raza negra. Ciertamente, se van borrando los prejuicios del hombre blanco y, cuando cae durante un tiempo en brazos del Ébano … es muy difícil librarle de él” (Orduña, Misión blanca).

22 Original source: “Souka: ¡Defiéndame! ¡Padre defiéndame! Brisco: Ya sabía que llegaba uno nuevo. Padre Javier: Sí, y esperaba encontrar en la selva lo peor menos a un hombre blanco maltratando a una muchacha. Brisco: Y a usted qué le importa, hago lo que me parece. ¿Le importa mucho? Me pertenece.” (Orduña, Misión blanca).

23 Original source: Padre Javier: ¿A quién pertenecen esas tierras? Minoa: A Brisco, hombre blanco malo. Padre Javier: ¿Malo? ¿Por qué? No se debe hablar mal de nadie. Eso no está bien. Minoa: Solo hablar así de Brisco (…) Padre Javier: Ya … ¿Entonces se trata de Brisco? Tienes miedo a ese hombre porque seguramente te ha amenazado y pretende algo a lo que no puedes no debes acceder porque él es cristiano. ¿No es cierto? Souka: ¿Cómo sabes tú? Padre Javier: Tu silencio me lo dice. Souka: Hombre blanco no me deja, me persigue. Es verdad, tú saberlo todo. Dice que algún día aparecerá Minoa muerto en la selva. Hombre blanco saber que yo querer a Minoa. (Orduña, Misión blanca).

24 Original source: “mediante el reglamento de concesión de terrenos de 1944, los blancos se apropiaron de las mejores plantaciones, y los propietarios guineanos solo consiguieron mantener fincas en los distritos más alejados de los centros de comercialización” (Sanz Casas 1988, 13).

25 See also Woods-Peiró’s “Whiteness as Airmindedness: Juan de la Cierva (1923-1925), Film and the Airplane,” where she investigated modernity’s technology through the implicit assumptions of this race rhetoric, which were built into the material specificity of the airplane, were the control of the Spanish and European-identified race over this conquest of the air and the maintenance of the white viewer-driver-pilot (Transmodernity 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Secretarı´a de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación: [Grant Number PID2019-108397GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033]; Afro-Iberia Project, CSIC [PID2019-108397GB-I00].