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ABSTRACT
Western Sahara has recently been termed the last colony in the world and the largest prison in the world. This essay will attempt, by focusing on daily points of transit, to assess the ways in which the regional conflict that has unfolded there is negotiated from within, and to reckon with the pervasive failure of decolonial logic, through the prism of geographic border crossings. It will further assess how, through border management and movements, the relationship between Western Sahara, Morocco and Spain is constantly reconfigured by the conflating geopolitics of human circulation and human containment. The unresolved colonial conflict in Western Sahara cannot be disassociated from former Spanish colonial interventions and the current Spanish possessions of Ceuta and Melilla. Some of these legacies will be explored through the lenses of two video essay exercises by Ursula Biemann: Europlex (2003) and Sahara Chronicles (2006–2009). Both projects engage in a visual theoretical analysis of the confluence of the politics and economics of mobility and migration, on the one hand, with contention and confinement on the other, as displayed in these territories. Europlex follows the trade routes and the daily border crossings and transactions between Morocco, the Spanish colonial strongholds of Ceuta and Melilla and the Straits of Gibraltar, as a metonymic passage between two continents. Sahara Chronicle follows various concurrent West African migration routes towards Europe stopping at pivotal sites of both passage and containment, including two heavily transited points at either end of Western Sahara: in the south, the Guantanamito migrant detention center of Nouadhibou in Mauritania and, in the north, the Cárcel Negra deportation prison in Laayoune. The two documentaries invite us to rethink patterns of migration and transit in relation to signifiers of the Spanish colonial presence in North Africa: Ceuta, Melilla and Western Sahara.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Rosi H. Song for her invitation to organize a joint Bryn Mawr College–Hofstra University workshop on some of the themes permeating this essay; this workshop took place at Hofstra under the title “Media and Migration from Africa to Spain: The Politics of Containment”, and afforded me the opportunity to reflect on, and engage with, the work of Ursula Biemann. I am also grateful to Domingo Sánchez Mesa and colleagues at Barnard College for their invitation to present an earlier version of this essay, for their feedback and the conversations that ensued. Portions of this essay were also part of my lecture at a symposium at Princeton University on “In(ter)dependence Days? A Conversation on Democracy, (Post)Nationalism and the Spanish State”, organized by Germán Labrador on the occasion of Ángel Loureiro’s retirement, and I thank them and the audience for the stimulating discussions. I am deeply indebted to Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo, Rocío Velasco de Castro and Eric Calderwood for their careful reading of this essay and their thoughtful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Benita Sampedro Vizcaya is Professor of Spanish Colonial Studies at Hofstra University and Associate Director of the Center for “Race”, Culture and Social Justice. Her research interests focus on Spanish colonialism in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She has written on the politics and processes of decolonization and postcolonial legacies, colonial carceral systems, colonial medicine, colonial archives, borders, and ruins. Her recent work includes Re-Routing Galician Studies: Multidisciplinary Interventions (2017), a critical edition of Ceiba II (Poesía inédita) by Raquel Ilombe del Pozo Epita (2015), and a special issue of Revista Debats on “Guinea Ecuatorial: Poéticas/políticas/discursividades” (2014). Her current project is tentatively entitled “Deportee Narratives and Atlantic Translatability: From Cuba to Fernando Poo and Back”. Email: [email protected]
Notes
1 Frank Ruddy, former deputy chairman of the UN Peacekeeping Mission for Western Sahara (MINURSO), addressed the World Affairs Council at its 2007 meeting in Alaska, delivering a speech titled: “Western Sahara: Africa’s Last Colony”. In the opening statement of his remarks, he declared: “I am so glad your attention is now focused on North Africa, Morocco, and how the United Nations performed and is performing in resolving Morocco’s invasion and retention of what is the world’s last colony: Western Sahara” (2).
2 Under the section “Disposiciones Generales”, and with the subheading “Jefatura del Estado”, the BOE entry reads:
El Estado español ha venido ejerciendo, como Potencia administradora, plenitud de competencias y facultades sobre el territorio no autónomo del Sahara, que durante algunos años ha estado sometido en ciertos aspectos de su administración a un régimen peculiar con analogías al provincial y que nunca ha formado parte del territorio nacional. Próximo a culminar el proceso de descolonización de dicho territorio … procede promulgar la norma legal adecuada para llevar a buen fin dicho proceso. … En su virtud, y de conformidad con la Ley aprobada por las Cortes Españolas, vengo en sancionar: Artículo único – Se autoriza al Gobierno para que realice los actos y adopte las medidas que sean precisas para llevar a cabo la descolonización del territorio no autónomo del Sahara, salvaguardando los intereses españoles. (Boletín Oficial de Estado. Citation1975, 24234)
3 The Sahrawi refugee camps, established in 1975 in the southwest Algerian province of Tindouf, form a collection of settlements for those displaced by Moroccan forces during the Western Sahara war of 1975–1976 and their families. Divided into wilayas (districts) named after cities in Western Sahara, they are also the headquarters of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Set in an inhospitable desert region outside the city of Tindouf, they have limited access to outside resources but are a lively political hub. According to a recent UN Refugee Agency report, the population figure stands at 173,600 Sahrawi refugees residing in the camps as of December 2017, although this might be a conservative number, estimated only for humanitarian purposes (Citation2018, 5). On the conditions and possibilities for life in the camps, particularly for women, Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo (Citation2015) – drawing on Judith Butler’s critique of identitarian discourses – suggests new constructive alliances for coalition and cooperation, including unexplored lines of solidarity between Sahrawi and Moroccan women, as a step towards breaking the current political stalemate.
4 For comprehensive coverage of the Sahrawi situation vis-à-vis Morocco prior to and after Spanish decolonization, the conflict’s regional implications, the various interests at play, the trajectory of the struggle for self-determination since 1975 to the present, the emergence of Western Saharan nationalism, the “Franco-American consensus” and Morocco’s autonomy plan for the occupied territories, see Zunes (Citation2013), and Zunes and Mundy (Citation2010). For the position of the United States regarding the conflict – described as “between a rock and a hard place” – in reference to the geopolitical interests of both Morocco and Algeria, see Entelis (Citation2013). For the place of Morocco in US diplomacy and strategic planning, as well as the relevance of the Sahrawi conflict for the US army and American regional interests, see Jensen (Citation2013). For a comprehensive assessment of the conflict from various positions and the role of the different actors at play, see Barreñada and Ojeda (Citation2016).
5 Echoing the analysis by Walther L. Bernecker, and others before him,
Esta forma de descolonización fue todo un fracaso. El problema del Sáhara no había sido resuelto, sino que en el fondo acababa de ser creado … pues con la división del Sáhara y su entrega a Mauritania y Marruecos, para los saharauis empezó el horror. (Citation2017, 377)
6 Bernecker reflects on the symbolic resonance of the date on which the Spanish government formally withdrew from the Saharan territories, on 20 November 1975, just hours before Franco’s death: it was in North Africa that Franco had first forged his military career in the 1920s, and the Spanish Foreign Legion had been fiercely loyal to him during the Civil War (Citation2017, 376). In reviewing the shifting position of all Spanish political parties in regard to the Western Sahara question, Campoy-Cubillo argues that Spanish political discourse seems to represent a rhizomatic paradigm:
It is not only that opposite political parties may present opposite interpretations, but that the discourse of each of these parties often defends opposing positions simultaneously. In true Deleuzian fashion, Saharawi nationalism becomes the object of a discourse that often turns on itself. (Citation2012, 159)
7 See Gimeno Martín and Robles Picón (Citation2013) for an analysis of Sahrawi-Spanish colonial relations, including moments of effective colonial violence (especially around the years 1930–1934 and 1956–1958, and during the 1970s), and alternating strategies of colonial ambivalence and colonial resistance. The essay provides important testimonies from some of the colonized subjects. As for the Franco regime’s expansionist aspirations in the Maghrib, see Velasco de Castro (Citation2014); for the pivotal role played by Sahrawi women during the Spanish colonial regime and after decolonization, including in the refugee camps, see Isidoros (Citation2017a, Citation2017b, Citation2018).
8 The Spanish Protectorate in Morocco was established on 27 November 1912 by a treaty between France and Spain that converted the Spanish sphere of influence into a formal protectorate. It consisted of a northern strip on the Mediterranean and a southern part bordering the Spanish Sahara. The northern zone was retroceded to Morocco on 7 April 1956, shortly after France had ceded its protectorate. The southern zone was relinquished through the Treaty of Angra de Cintra, on 1 April 1958, after the Ifni-Sahara war, and delivered to Morocco.
9 The outposts of Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, Peñón de Alhucemas, Perejil and the Chafarinas Islands are currently uninhabited and accessible only to the military or to authorized visitors.
10 For the twentieth century, see, for instance, Lluís Riudor Gorgás (Citation1999), although the bibliographic corpus on this field is extensive.
11 It was not only Melilla that played an instrumental role in Franco’s planning for the Civil War, but also the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco: Susan Martin-Márquez, along with historians such as Sebastian Balfour and Francisco Sánchez Ruano, have highlighted the importance of Morocco’s engagement in the conflict in Spain, while underscoring the misplaced hopes of Moroccan soldiers that they would be granted independence after the war (Martin-Márquez Citation2008, 204).
12 For the specific details of this political and economic arrangement, see Castan Pinos (Citation2012).
13 Alexander (Citation2019), among others, has published on some of the consequences of Spain’s transfer of its border control to Moroccan authorities, and on the liminal spaces inhabited by the growing population of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers who traverse Moroccan territory. See also Figueiredo (Citation2011) for a detailed description of the fences surrounding Ceuta and Melilla at the time of his publication; and for a more recent study on technologies of bordering in Europe, see De Genova (Citation2017).
14 For a history of the fortifications on the North African Spanish frontiers, including those at Ceuta and Melilla, from the early modern period to the present, see Bravo Nieto (Citation2003).
15 For an analysis of such linkages between the territories on both sides of a border, and more specifically between the city of Melilla and the Moroccan city of Nador, see Soto Bermant (Citation2014).
16 Those include American Samoa, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands/Malvinas, French Polynesia, Gibraltar, Guam, New Caledonia, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the US Virgin Islands.
17 Laayoune is the transliteration of the city’s name in Darija or Maghribi Arabic, transcribed in French as Laâyoune and in Spanish as El-Aaiún. Both the French and the Spanish names invoke a colonial geography over the territory. I have opted here for the most commonly used English denomination, cognizant that this is not exempt from ideological complexities. For a study of the large-scale architectural projects carried out in the colonial capital by the Spanish Dirección General de Plazas y Provincias Africanas during the 1960s, which encompassed urban planning and city housing, see the work of Pablo Rabasco, who defines the enterprise as “that of architectural and urban modernity supporting a late colonial network” (Citation2015, 316).
18 Lino Camprubí points to this paradox: while no country in the world acknowledges Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, most countries accept the phosphate reserves as Moroccan; this reveals the contradiction between international law and sovereignty over natural resources:
Marruecos es el propietario de facto del territorio y sus recursos. Incluso los mapas actuales reflejan esta ambigüedad: Google Earth divide ambos territorios con una línea continua mientras que Google Maps emplea la línea discontinua que suele usar para dividir provincias. (Citation2017, 199–200)
19 For a more expansive analysis of “three technological stages of the exploitation of phosphate in the Western Sahara”, underpinning the geopolitical history, from a Cold War technology and postcolonial market perspective, see Camprubí (Citation2015).
20 On extractive politics in the region, see also Trasosmontes (Citation2016).
21 For a traditional exposé of Spanish political geography, border and diplomatic history and territorial administration, including the North African frontiers, see Cordero Torres (Citation1960).
22 The symbolic date of the NAFTA implementation in 1994 has also given way to a wall-reinforcement effort, paired with new security protocols, along the Mexico/US border and, subsequently, the Mexico/Guatemala border.
23 As Biemann herself defined them:
My video essays are not committed to a belief in the representability of truth. Rather, my intention is to engage in a reflection about the world and the social order. This is accomplished by arranging the material into a particular field of connections. In other words, the video essay is concerned, not with documenting realities, but with organizing complexities. (Citation2007, 130)
24 As Amy Charlesworth puts it:
The clocks register the two-hour time difference. This simple technique acknowledges how the women’s social lives are rendered out-of-sync with their families, friends, local economies. Instead, their bodies are determined by the axis of the European economy. Here the administration, the numerical plotting of these bodies is made acutely visible. (Citation2013)
25 Agadez continues to flourish today as a market town and as a center for the transportation of uranium from the mining areas.
26 On the militarized control exercised over the Spanish Sahara, particularly after the 1950s, Pablo San Martín states that, although repression of the colonized population never reached the levels of neighboring territories, “The Spanish Sahara was in some respects a huge garrison in which almost the whole weight of the colonial administration rested upon the shoulders of the reactionary African army forged by Franco” (Citation2011, 44).
27 The proximity between the Mauritanian coastline and the Canary Islands, together with Spain’s long-term interests in the fishing industry in the region, fostered a set of diplomatic and economic exchanges and bilateral agreements between the two countries from 1960 onwards. The Maghribian migratory influx in the fall of 2005, which led to the reinforcement of border control at Ceuta and Melilla, saw, in turn, a displacement of the migratory pressure to the Canary Islands, with migrants departing from Mauritania and Senegal. Consequently, in the spring of 2006, Spain and Mauritania signed a number of bilateral “security” agreements aimed at regional migratory control; those included the repurposing of the school at Nouadhibou into a detention center. For a historical overview of Spanish-Mauritanian relations, see Larramendi and Planet (Citation2007).