Brothers and Others: Fraternal Rhetoric and the Negotiation of Spanish and Saharawi Identity

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Notes

1. Spain was forced to relinquish Northern Morocco after France granted independence to the Protectorate in 1956. Several zones to the south were still under Spanish control, though: Tarfaya, which was turned over to Morocco in 1958; Ifni, which was ceded in 1969; and the Saharan colony, which Spain refused to relinquish (although at one point Franco did discuss with Hassan II the possibility of exchanging the Sahara for Moroccan acceptance of the status of Ceuta and Melilla [Criado 33–34]). Spain responded to the United Nations’ call for the complete decolonization of Africa by converting both the Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea (known at the time as “Spanish Sahara” and “Spanish Guinea”) into provinces, then maintaining, after further pressure from the UN, that the move simply functioned as a transition towards withdrawal. While the Guineans did finally gain independence in 1968, however, the Saharawis would remain under Spanish rule for over seven more years.

2. As with nearly everything else involving the situation of the Saharawis, the number of refugees residing in the camps near Tindouf has been highly politicized. Commonly cited figures range from the 160,000 I give here (also found, for example, in Bárbulo 319; Shelley 2) to upwards of 200,000; it must be noted, however, that proponents of Saharawi incorporation into Morocco argue that refugee numbers have been significantly inflated (Hernández 153–54). As well as in the Western Sahara territory itself, there is a sizeable community of Saharawis living in Morocco; significant numbers of both groups would likely assert that the POLISARIO does not represent their interests.

3. I discuss the interrelated development of a historically-specific fraternal and colonial rhetoric, which I believe distinguishes Spanish discourse on the colonization of Africa from that of other European nations, at much greater length in the first chapter of Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Cultural Mapping of Identity (forthcoming, Yale UP); the book scrutinizes a wide range of cultural texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that mobilize references to al-Andalus in order to assert the unique legitimacy of Spain's African colonies.

4. Examples abound in texts regarding the Spanish-Moroccan War of 1859–60. In his imperialistic Diario de un testigo de la guerra de África (Diary of an Eye-Witness to the African War; 1859–60), for example, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón expresses great ambivalence concerning the Moroccans he assumes are both threateningly resentful of the expulsion, and lulled by sweet memories of al-Ándalus (50, 147). Alarcón quotes General Ros de Olano, who in turn recounts a Moroccan friend's description of the founding of the city of Tetuán by Andalusis expelled from the Kingdom of Granada, who only carried with them keys to their former houses, and sang a ballad calling upon Allah to return them to their beloved Granada (419–21). By contrast, in Benito Pérez Galdós's anti-colonialist historical novel Aita Tettauen (1905), a cosmopolitan Moroccan character who preserves the keys to his ancestors’ house in Granada values his friendship with the cultured Ros de Olano, but clearly enjoys a comfortable status in Tetuán and has no interest in either conquering, or being conquered by, Spain (143–44). Patricia Seed discusses the modern-day tales of keys from Granada shared by Jewish and Muslim descendents of Andalusis, which remind them that their current homes are “a kind of home under erasure, a home that is home, but not the homeland” (90).

5. I have considered other aspects of the representation of Saharawi women and the construction of national identity in Los baúles del retorno in Feminist Discourse 284–87.

6. Canarians have historically been the ones to exploit the rich fishing resources to be found in the waters between the archipelago and the Western Sahara, and although in the past they may sometimes have employed Saharawi natives as crewmen, “fishing has never been a mainstream Sahrawi occupation.” Since taking control of the territory, Morocco has brought in seasonal workers to sustain the industry (Shelley 73–74). Here some of the material stakes of Spain's involvement in the conflict become clearer.

7. For example, Philip Silver refers to the Basque-Algerian connection: “a violent new rival protagonist has appeared to contest conservative Basque Nationalism: the radical Marxist-Leninist Movement for the Liberation of the Basque Nation (MLNV) (comprising ETA, HB, KAS [Nationalist Socialist Coalition] and LAB [Commission of Patriotic Workers]) which once liked to compare itself with the Third World revolutionary movement in Algiers” (57–58).

8. The POLISARIO surprised everyone involved by agreeing to consider the Peace Plan after their initial vehement rejection of Baker's document. Although the plan appears guaranteed to tip the referendum in Morocco's favor, POLISARIO leaders believe that since Moroccan settlers would lose their generous governmental subsidies as soon as the territory was incorporated into Morocco, they could be convinced that voting for full independence for the resource-rich Western Sahara would be in their best interest. However, POLISARIO's capitulation to the plan has only augmented Morocco's suspicious opposition (Mundy).

9. In his article, published in 1987 in the Revista de Occidente, Fernaud draws upon “our” Spanish language's “delicado matiz diferenciador entre ser y estar” ‘delicately nuanced differentiation between ser and estar’ in order to persuade his fellow Canarians that “las Canarias están en Africa, pero no son Africa” ‘the Canaries are located in Africa, but they are not [essentially] African’ (100). Fernaud appears to suggest that the Canaries were not colonies in the same sense that the Americas were, since the archipelago was “incorporated” into Castile before the unification of the Spanish nation, and were thus already an integral part of the entity that conquered the New World (104). In his critique of Canarian nationalism, Fernaud also emphasizes the complete and rapid assimilation of the Guanches by the Castilian settlers (114).

10. As C.O.C. Amate explains, the sub-committee did not actually meet until nine years later, in 1977. Despite the strong support of Algeria, Libya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola and Madagascar, Spanish protests, together with the reservations expressed by Morocco and Mauritania, and the general indifference of the remaining OAU members, prevented the Canarian separatists from ever receiving the full support of the Liberation Committee, which had played such a vital role in the final decolonization of Africa. In 1978, members of the OAU began to express the idea that proximity to the African continent was not sufficient cause to consider an island an African colony (311–14). Even so, “Afrocentric” Canarian independence movements have since multiplied.

11. While in exile in Algeria, Cubillo would be severely injured in an assassination attempt by the Spanish national police. Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika characterized the attempt as an “actuación criminal contra el proceso independentista de los pueblos de Africa” ‘criminal attempt against the African peoples’ independence process’ (qtd in Goytisolo 98). Juan Goytisolo has argued that the Algerians have sought to use their support for Cubillo and the Canarian independence movement as a bargaining chip with Spain (89, 97).That the MPAIAC was viewed as a real threat to Spanish unity and the Spanish state is evident from best-selling author Jordi Sierra i Fabra's 1979 political thriller, En Canarias se ha puesto el sol (The Sun Has Set on the Canaries—a play on the famous expression, “The sun never sets on the Spanish Empire”), which won that year's Ateneo de Sevilla Prize. In the novel, civil war is waging in the Canaries after MPAIAC terrorists kill thousands in a bombing in Madrid's Bernabeu soccer stadium; as the masterminds of the plot await execution, their cohorts seize a train loaded with nuclear material in Barcelona and threaten to destroy the Catalan city. It is important to recall as well that the terrible runway collision of two Boeing 747s at the Los Rodeos airport in 1977 was indirectly the result of the MPAIAC, for the ill-fated planes had been diverted from the larger facility in Gran Canaria after a bomb placed by Cubillo's supporters exploded in the terminal there. 583 people were killed in the crash, which remains the most deadly aviation accident on record.