معنى أن تكون أسودَ في مغرب اليوم On Being a Black Moroccan

Here is a piece from Al-Monitor that originally appeared in Arabic in  Al-Safir. Its an imporant  discussion of Moroccan racism ( not just against sub-saharan "African" immigrants, but against Moroccans with dark-skin). We Shall Overcome
______________________

The question of race in Morocco

by Mohammad Benaziz , translated by Rani Geha

In the summer 2013, Moroccan newspapers published a sign posted on the wall of a residential building in Casablanca that said, “It is strictly prohibited to rent to Africans and unmarried persons. [Signed]: The general assembly of the building’s residents.”

The declaration sparked a wave of disapproval and condemnation of anti-African racism. The event revealed the country’s well-established racist behavior, a microcosm of which was represented in that building. The most recent example of racism was when Moroccan Muslim Brotherhood MP Al-Muqri Abu Zaid told the Saudis in Jeddah about “well-known traders of an inferior race,” referring to the tribes of Sous, in Agadir, Morocco.

The story spread and triggered a wave of anger. Abu Zaid denied being racist, yet as the campaign by Amazigh groups against him intensified, he issued an apology. The issue apparently ended with the apology. It’s like the story of the young man who collected all the cruel jokes against his father in a book and burned it. But the jokes didn’t die, because they represent real feelings.

There are jokes about the fear of having a black baby, about black smell, and about women using a harmful, cheap face cream that whitens the skin. The lyrics of one song say something along the lines of, “Put the henna [skin dye that is dark] aside, you are white, and that’s better.”

These utterances about race and skin color are very common in sport stadiums during football games between teams from Casablanca, Agadir and the countryside. In those stadiums, nationalism is reduced to repugnant regionalism and reveals that the people can be divided into 20 separate parts. That’s one world, and what’s happening in Moroccan areas near Mauritania is another. Over there, a contagion is hard at work.

FULL ARTICLE: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/culture/2014/01/racism-black-slavery-morocco.html##ixzz2qlvWxWmU

Stolen: A Film about Modern-Day Slavery in the Western Sahara

Here is a piece from popmatters.com about the newly released documentary film "Stolen," that talks about the uncomfortable reality of modern day slavery in the Western Sahara and other places in North Africa.
_____________________________________
'Stolen': Seeing More Possibilities
By Cynthia Fuchs 5 April 2011
PopMatters Film and TV Editor

You can’t change these ideas until you get out and see other possibilities.
—Tizlam

“Is it true my white grandmother beat you as a child?” asks 15-year-old Leil, Her mother, Fetim, looks at her hard, still chewing her lunch. They sit at a table, a TV behind them, as well as a doorway, open onto a bright white daylight. Leil continues, “Violeta already knows,” as the camera cuts to filmmaker Violeta Ayala, seated across from them. Her face turns cloudy as she listens: “You’ll be in trouble, by saying that we were beaten,” cautions Fetim. Again, the camera shows her instructing her daughter, “It’s always been that slaves are beaten from a young age.”

The scene breaks here, as Leil gets up to welcome a younger sibling inside, through that bright-lit doorway. And the film, Stolen, has changed. Before this moment, as Ayala has narrated, the documentary was observing preparations for a family reunion. Fetim had come to a refugee camp in the Algerian desert as a child some 30 years ago, leaving behind her Moroccan mother Embarka and her siblings. At first, Ayala says, she and Dan Fallshaw meant to film Spanish-speaking refugees in the Western Sahara, and felt lucky to have access to a family about to reunite, thanks to a program initiated in 2004 by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that brings Moroccan family members to the camp for five-day visits. With some 27,000 on the waiting list, the fact that Fetim and Embarka have been selected seems miraculous.

And yet: this story is now reframed, as Ayala and Fallshaw learn that their subjects are not only refugees, but also slaves. The filmmakers can’t begin to guess at the complications that follow from this discovery.

Stolen—screening 5 April at Stranger Than Fiction, a co-presentation with the African Film Festival, and followed by a Q&A with Ayala and Fallshaw—charts their efforts to understand what they find. Their questions elicit astonishing and also cryptic stories, as Fetim and Leil, as well as Fetim’s cousin Matala, sort through what is safe to tell “the foreigners.” The storytelling process, as it unfolds on camera, is at once fascinating and alarming, as it becomes clear that saying “too much” is more costly for Fetim than her Australian visitors anticipate.

At the same time, the filmmakers’ parts in the process are also complex, as they are increasingly responsible for what they’re filming—whether by paying for part of the celebration for Embarka’s visit or by documenting stories told by Fetim and her family, descriptions of the system of slavery still in place in the camps and elsewhere. As the film reports, the Polisario Liberation Front, a nationalist organization backed by Algeria, have been fighting with Morocco over the Western Sahara for the last 34 years. Neither the Moroccan government nor the Polisario wants such stories documented. And yet, with at least 2 million black people living in slavery in North Africa, Stolen insists, telling such stories is only a first step.

Indeed, Fetim’s initial revelation that she has a “white mother,” Deido, surprises Ayala, who wonders how they ended “up together, with so much racism in the past?” Deido explains, sort of. “Saharan people are not all the same,” she says, her interview shot as she sits before a striking red tent wall. “Some of them buy black people and own them, others free them, but keep them as their family. We don’t talk about this anymore.”

Still, Ayala and Fallshaw find that some black Africans do talk about this, but only when they are alone together, and for a brief time, in front of the “foreigners.” The film pieces together bits of conversations, a fragmented structure that results from the filmmaking process per se, as the Polisario and then the Moroccans try to confiscate and at last steal their tapes. The effect of the fragments is to the point, however, as the stories are shared and whispered, then covered over or repressed, as experiences are acknowledged and then denied, as autonomy is named—in the form of “liberation,” as Deido says she has granted to Fetim—and then rescinded, when papers are withheld and daily life continues as such.

As Ayala and Fallshaw tell it—their own voiceovers working in tandem, finishing each other’s sentences—they’re struck by Fetim’s submission to Deido, her performance of chores and her lack of independence. Further, though no one will “speak about this,” they also discover that Embarka belonged to Deido’s father, and that she bore him several children. “Deido’s father fucked her,” says Fetim’s friend Jueda after Fetim becomes so unnerved by the conversation that she leaves the room. “That’s how the white girl Fatma was born,” Fatma being Fetim’s sister, still living with Embarka in Morocco.

A friend of Leil, Tizlam, is also outspoken concerning what it means to be a slave. “You’re just scratching the surface,” she says, her face at once poised and fierce in dim shadows. “They come and take the children and the parents can’t say anything, they have no rights.” Her grandmother concurs, and they seem willing to speak, though they don’t seem to expect a change. “There is no law for us,” Tizlam says, “What we want is for this not to exist. It should be erased, it should be from the past, not the present or the future.” Ayala and Fallshaw describe their growing concern, not only for their own safety but also for “all the people who trusted us with their stories.”

Their worries are well founded, as they are detained by the Polisario. The filmmakers bury their tapes in the desert—an apt and awful metaphor for the experiences they’ve heard about—and then escape to Paris, where they pursue the story, hoping to recover their material and make public what they’ve witnessed. A phone call with Leil reveals, however, that their own ambitions and hopes don’t matter much: Leil cries, “Trying to do good, you did bad. Now the police are all over us.” As Ayala ponders this notion in voiceover, that “without intending to, we got Leila and Fetim in a lot of trouble,” the film structure makes clear the problem: she’s in a hotel room, at a distance. None of us can know what Leil and Fetim are experiencing—off camera.

The film traces how Ayala and Fallshaw come to know the ongoing complexities of slavery. As it is denied by most North African regimes (in Mauritania, Mali, and Senegal, as well as Algeria and Morocco) and described here by Ursula Aboubacar, the Deputy Director of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, as “a cultural issue that is existing.” That is, as Aboubacar puts it, the UN can only “combat” the practice by bringing it to the attention of local police forces, the Polisario included. Ayala is horrified by the lack of power wielded by the UN, or anyone else, it seems. Indeed, as Tizlam has said, “There is no law for us.”

The documentary makes this case forcefully. In addition to assembling interviews that officials and others have tried to keep quiet, it includes footage of a screening and audience responses in Sydney. The ethical questions here impossibly tangled: even after Fetim, Leil, and Deido withdraw their consent to appear in the film, Alaya and Fallshaw include not only their interviews, but also footage of Fetim at the film’s premiere (the Polisario, a note explains, “flew Fetim to Sydney to protest at the film’s premiere,” along with her husband). Her objections have led to other repressions, as the Swedish public broadcaster SVT-UR has pulled the movie from its schedule. While the truth remains elusive off-camera, Stolen insists that still more needs to be exposed, that documentation is indeed only a first step.

The Adventures of the Moroccan Berber who Explored America in the 1500s (c.e.)

Let's take a little break from current affairs. Here is a piece that ran in Saudi Aramco World a few years ago about a Moroccan man of Amazigh ancestry from Azemmour who was enslaved and ended up accompanying Spanish explorers to America in the 1500s c.e.. History has generally referred to him by the name the Spanish called him, Esteban.
____________________________________________________________

Esteban of Azemmour and His New World Adventures

Written by Kitty Morse


In the spring of the year 1539, a tall black man lay mortally wounded by Zuni arrows in the village of Hawikuh, in what is today northwestern New Mexico. If he prayed in his last breaths, he surely addressed God as "Allah." How did a Muslim come to visit—and die in—New Mexico in the early 16th century? I had never come across such a figure during my university history studies in the United States, nor had I read of him in French history books at the lycée in Casablanca, Morocco, where I grew up. I heard of him only quite recently, by accident.

My father lived in Morocco for more than 50 years until his death in 1994. He left to me and my brothers a restored pasha’s residence in the old city of Azemmour, near the Atlantic coast. While sorting through his personal papers, I came upon a small sketch in a leather-bound guest book. It portrayed a handsome young man with full lips and high cheekbones. A solitary feather adorned a head of tight curls. The drawing bore the signature of John Houser of El Paso, Texas.

Intrigued, I called the artist on my return to the United States. He explained that his drawing was the likeness of a 16th-century North African slave called "Esteban" or "Estebanico" by his Spanish masters, a man better known in his native Morocco as "al-Zemmouri" ("the man from Azemmour"). He was, in fact, one of the first natives of the Old World to explore the American Southwest.

In 1993, Houser had been a guest in my father’s home while he worked at the nearby studio of noted Zemmouri sculptor Abderrahmane Rahoule. Over a period of three weeks, using a Moroccan model, Houser created a clay bust of the "black Arab, and...native of Azamor" whom we know today thanks to the lengthy, detailed memoir of conquistador Cabeza de Vaca, which carries the title La relación y comentarios del governador Alvar nuñez cabeça de vaca, de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias (The Account and Commentaries of Governor Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, of What Occurred on the Two Journeys That He Made to the Indies).

Al-Zemmouri’s town derives its name from a Berber word for "wild olive tree." Today, the reflection of the town’s massive white ramparts in the Oum er Rbia River is one of Morocco’s more picturesque landmarks. The walls surround the labyrinthine madinah, or old city center, as well as the 500-year-old ruins of a Portuguese garrison, established there during a 30-year occupation. Portuguese cornices, decorated in the ornate Manueline style, still frame the majestic windows of their 16th-century military headquarters.

Long before the Portuguese occupation, however, Phoenicians and, later, Romans traveled down the Atlantic coast to trade with the indigenous Berbers of Azemmour. By the 12th century, the town had become a center of Islamic culture; philosophers like Moulay Bouchaib Erredad attracted disciples there from across the Arab world. One of them, Lallah Aicha Bahria, undertook the long journey from her native Baghdad to visit Erredad, but she died on the northern bank of the river, just a stone’s throw away from her long-awaited meeting with her mentor and lifelong correspondent. The town erected a monument to her at the river’s mouth and to this day women from around the country visit the site to seek guidance in resolving affairs of the heart.

Three centuries after Lallah Bahria’s death, the Republic of Azemmour was composed of a patchwork of tribes and shaykhdoms. At the time of al-Zemmouri’s birth, around 1500, skirmishes between local Berbers and Portuguese invaders were on the rise. In 1508, the king of Portugal exacted an annual tribute in kind from the town: 10,000 achabel, a species of shad prized as much for its delicious flavor as for its oil, which the Portuguese burned in their lamps.

In 1513, Shaykh Moulay Zeyyam defiantly withheld the tribute. Portugal responded with a flotilla of 400 ships bearing 8000 men and 2500 horses. On August 27, during a fierce battle that lasted more than four hours, the Portuguese set fire to barges on the river and delivered a crushing military blow to the Zemmouris. Their dominance restored, the Portuguese regained access to the achabel—and also to wheat, wool and horses, which they traded for gold and slaves in sub-Saharan outposts.

As a young man, al-Zemmouri may have heard rumors and stories of adventure from Portuguese sailors. There was no shortage of adventure to be had: Prior to his circumnavigation of the globe, Ferdinand Magellan was among those who spent time in Azemmour, and in fact was severely wounded in a battle with Berbers.

In 1521, drought and famine ravaged the Maghrib. Shad, once so plentiful, virtually disappeared from the shrinking Oum er Rbia. The fertile Doukkala plains surrounding Azemmour became parched and barren. Many starving Zemmouris were captured by Portuguese and sold into slavery; others sold themselves to the Portuguese in exchange for food. The exact circumstances of al-Zemmouri’s enslavement remain a mystery. We do know that a Spanish aristocrat of modest means, Andres de Dorantes, looking for a personal servant, purchased him in a slave market of Castile.

In 1527, Dorantes’s royal connections won him a commission and orders to join the expeditionary force of Pámfilo de Narváez, a one-eyed, red-haired veteran of the conquests of Cuba and New Spain (now Mexico) who was already infamous for his cruelty toward the people of the Americas. Esteban, as he was now known, accompanied Dorantes. King Charles V of Spain granted him the authority to settle all of La Florida, a territory that stretched from the southern tip of the Florida peninsula westward to the "Rio de las Palmas," today’s Soto de la Marina River in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico.

The route of the Narváez expedition remains subject to debate. Cabeza de Vaca, the group’s treasurer, did not write his Relación until 12 years afterward, and it includes great miscalculations of distances and dates, and confused chronology.

The expedition’s departure from Spain, however, is well documented. On June 17, 1527, Narváez and his crew of 600 set sail in five caravels from San Lucar de Barrameda in Andalusia. It would become, according to translators Martin A. Favata and José B. Fernández, "one of the most disastrous enterprises in the annals of Spanish history."

The Atlantic crossing proved so arduous that 140 men jumped ship upon reaching the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Soon afterward, 60 people and 20 horses perished in a hurricane off the coast of Trinidad. The Spaniards finally dropped anchor off the La Florida coast on April 12, 1528, somewhere near today’s Old Tampa Bay (or perhaps Sarasota Bay). Narváez took formal possession of La Florida on May 1 of that year.

He then decided to send his ships and 100 of his men ahead to their final destination, Pánuco, on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, while he led the rest of his force there overland—a journey whose length he apparently underestimated.

Narváez, Esteban and the rest of the expedition headed north to the province of Apalachee, near the present city of Tallahassee, where, according to captured Timicuan Indians, there were great quantities of gold. Instead, the Spaniards found 15 huts and a few meager plots of maize. Narváez was bitterly disappointed.

The ensuing weeks were fraught with fever, drownings and Indian attacks. To ward off starvation, some of the men resorted to eating their horses. Only the threat of mutiny persuaded Narváez to abandon the march on August 4. He gave orders to return to the coast. There, he and his men built five small boats. "And we agreed that we would make nails, saws, axes and other necessary tools out of our stirrups, spurs, crossbows and other iron items we had, since we had such a great need for this," noted Cabeza de Vaca. They used horsehair to fashion riggings and rope, and sewed their shirts together for sails. They "skinned the legs of the horses in one piece and cured the hides to make skins for carrying water."

By the time they set sail, they had lost more than 40 more of their number to illness and starvation, not counting those killed by Indians. Only one horse remained. Esteban, his master Dorantes, Castillo and a crew of 45 left the "Bay of Horses"—possibly in today’s Apalachee Bay—on September 22. "So great was our hardship," wrote Cabeza de Vaca, who took the helm of another of the boats, "that...it forced us...to go out into such rough seas without having anyone with us who knew the art of navigation."

The water bags made of hide rotted within a few days, and the men who attempted to drink seawater died in agony. The meager rations of raw corn were soon depleted. Yet Esteban and his companions clung to life. At the mercy of capricious winds, they drifted westward along the Gulf Coast, coming ashore periodically to forage for food and replenish their water supply. In this manner, they covered more than 1500 kilometers (930 mi) in just over 40 days.

At the mouth of the Mississippi, strong currents pushed two of the boats, including the one piloted by Narváez, out to sea. They were never seen again. Relief came to the others on November 6, when, according to Cabeza de Vaca, "a great wave took us and cast the boat out of the water as far as a horseshoe can be tossed. The boat ran aground with such force that it revived the men on it, who were almost dead." They were on the island of Malhado near modern-day Galveston Island, Texas.

The Indians inhabiting the island, while friendly at first, quickly turned against the expedition. Fifteen of the survivors—including Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, Dorantes and Esteban—were enslaved and dispersed among several local tribes—an ironic twist for the already enslaved Zemmouri.

The Indians, in awe of their prisoners’ mental and physical fortitude, ordered them to act as medicine men during an epidemic of dysentery. Cabeza de Vaca relates that "they wanted to make us physicians, without testing or asking for any degrees, because they cure illnesses by blowing on the sick person and cast out the illness with their breath and their hands. So they told us to be useful and do the same. We laughed at the idea, saying they were mocking us and that we did not know how to heal. They in turn deprived us of our food until we did as they ordered."

Castillo was the first to try his hand at healing, and—doubtless to his own surprise—he was successful. As word spread, he enlisted the aid of Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca. Esteban, too, soon became a healer, ministering to increasing numbers of patients. Cabeza de Vaca wrote, "Our fame spread throughout the area, and all the Indians who heard about it came looking for us so that we could cure them and bless their children.... People came from many places seeking us, saying that we were truly children of the sun. Up to this time Dorantes and the black man had not performed any healings, but we all became healers because so many people insisted. They believed that none of them would die as long as we were there."

Nonetheless, the "children of the sun" still hoped to reach Pánuco. On September 15, 1534, when their captors were busy harvesting prickly-pear fruit, they made an escape, and were taken in by another tribe that had heard of their abilities. The four began performing minor surgical procedures, using European techniques of the day: On one occasion they opened a man’s chest to remove an arrowhead. "The entire village came to see [the arrowhead] and they sent it further inland so that the people could see it. Because of this cure, they made many dances and festivities as is their custom...and this cure gave us such standing throughout the land that they esteemed and valued us to their utmost capacity."

The Spaniards thought it wise to appoint Esteban as intermediary between themselves and any natives they might encounter in their wanderings, for only he had learned six of the local dialects. Cabeza de Vaca explained another reason as well: "We enjoyed a great deal of authority and dignity among [the Indians], and to maintain this we spoke very little to them. The black man always spoke to them, ascertaining which way to go and...all the other things we wanted to know."

Esteban’s abilities, and the position of the four men as wanderers in a new world where their very survival was in question, made his status that of companion rather than slave. And none of the four men could have imagined how their understanding of native medicine was to change their status, and their standard of living, among all the other tribes they would encounter.

As their medical miracles multiplied, so did the gifts. The four were held in such awe that they could lay claim to anyone or acquire possession of anything. Yet they sought no riches. "After we had entered their homes," writes Cabeza de Vaca, "they offered us everything they had.... We would give all these things to their leaders for them to distribute."

Medicine men from the Arbadaos tribe, who made their home on the banks of the Concho River near present-day Big Spring, Texas presented Esteban and the others with two sacred gourds and an engraved copper rattle. These objects greatly added to their credibility as shamans. "From here on we began to carry the gourds with us, and added to our authority with this bit of ceremony, which is very important to them." For the Indians, hollow gourds with pebbles in them were "a sign of great solemnity, since they bring them out only for dances and for healing ceremonies, and no one else dares touch them.... They say that those gourds have powers and that they came from heaven, because there are none in that land.... They are washed down by the rivers during the floods."

Around Christmas 1536, the four healers and the legions of Indian followers they had acquired reached the Pueblo de los Corazones ("Village of Hearts"), today the town of Ures, 160 kilometers (100 mi) from the Gulf of California, in the state of Sonora, Mexico. "At this time," Cabeza de Vaca writes, "Castillo saw a buckle from a sword belt around an Indian’s neck, with a horseshoe nail sewn to it.... We asked the Indians what it was. They replied it had come from heaven. We questioned them further, asking who had brought it from there. They told us that some bearded men like us, with horses, lances and swords, [had done so]."

Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, Castillo, and probably Esteban as well, desperately wanted to make contact with their countrymen, the first they had heard of in more than eight years. De Vaca’s Indian companions, however, were reluctant to search for them. They knew of Spanish plunder, slave raids and brutal killings, and that local Indians did not plant crops for fear of attracting the attention of the avaricious Spaniards. De Vaca writes: "When I saw [the Indians’] unwillingness,... I took the black man and eleven Indians and, following the trail of the Christians...caught up with four...on horseback, who were quite perturbed to see me so strangely dressed and in the company of Indians. They looked at me for a long time, so astonished that they were not able to speak or ask questions. I told them to take me to their captain.... After I spoke to him, he told me that he had quite a problem because he had not been able to capture Indians for many days...[so] he and his men were beginning to suffer want and hunger.... He wanted me to ask [the Indians] to bring us food, although this was not necessary since they always took care to bring us everything they could."

The fact that their countrymen were taking slaves, and indeed demanded that de Vaca turn his Indian followers over to them, caused Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo and Dorantes great distress, and made the long-hoped-for reunion only bittersweet. "They said that they were lords of that land, and that the Indians should obey and serve them, but the Indians believed very little or nothing of what they were saying," especially that there was some kind of bond between the slave-raiders and the "children of the sun." "Speaking among themselves, [the Indians] said instead that the Christians [the Spaniards] were lying, because we [the children of the sun] had come from the East and they [the Spaniards] had come from the West; that we healed the sick and they killed the healthy; that we were naked and barefoot, and they were dressed and on horseback, with lances; that we coveted nothing but instead gave away everything that was given to us and kept none of it, while the sole purpose of the others was to steal everything they found, never giving anything to anybody."

Cabeza de Vaca could not hide his dismay at the other Spaniards’ cruelty and greed, and in fact in his Relación he would urge more humane policies on the Spanish crown. Years later, as governor and captain-general of the South American province of Rio de la Plata, de Vaca would initiate a number of progressive reforms in Indian affairs.

Under Spanish escort, the four reached San Miguel de Culiacan, 150 kilometers (90 mi) away, where they met with the mayor, Captain Melchior Diaz. He seemed to lend a more receptive ear to their pleas of leniency towards the Indians. Diaz instructed the Indians that if they professed a belief in God, they would be left in peace. (His promises were broken before the four Narváez survivors had reached Mexico City.)

On July 24 in Mexico City, Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain, greeted the four with fanfare, but their return to the Spanish fold was not without difficulty. For almost nine years, they had gone naked and lived off the land like the Indians. They found it hard to adapt to contemporary Spanish life.

For his part, Esteban became a well-known figure on the streets of Mexico City, and he enjoyed relative freedom. However, his linguistic abilities soon caught the viceroy’s attention. He acquired Esteban from Dorantes, and appointed the Moroccan interpreter and scout for the expedition of the French-born Franciscan Fray Marcos de Niza, who was being sent north to investigate rumors of great wealth beyond the northern border of New Spain.

Hernando de Alarcón, a contemporary of Esteban’s who would later investigate his death, describes the dashing Moroccan’s departure from Mexico City on March 7, 1539 with an entourage of women, Indians and several Spanish friars, including Fray Marcos, the titular head of the expedition. Esteban was wearing "certain things which did ring, ...bels and feathers on his armes and legs," and he was flanked by a pair of what were probably Spanish greyhounds. The animals must have been a comforting presence to Esteban, since this breed of gazehound is descended from the North African saluki, a dog believed by Moroccans to possess baraka, or a blessing.

The Moroccan and the friar did not see eye-to-eye. Pedro de Castañeda, a soldier who accompanied Coronado on a subsequent northward expedition, gives us this explanation:

"The Negro did not get on well with the friars, because he took the women that were given him and collected turquoises.... Besides, the Indians in those places through which they traveled got along better with the Negro, because they had seen him before."

Esteban traveled some distance ahead of the main body of the expedition. Near their destination, in spite of strict orders to await Fray Marcos, he pressed onward to the village of Hawikuh, 20 kilometers (12 mi) southwest of today’s Zuni Pueblo. He apparently expected the Zunis to greet him with the same fanfare he had experienced when visiting other tribes. He was, it turned out, overconfident.

He sent messengers ahead to the fortified village bearing his gourd rattle adorned with a white and a red feather. But the village chief reacted with scorn, either because the decorated gourd came from a hostile tribe, or because Esteban had unknowingly disrupted a sacred ceremony. According to Nick Houser, an anthropologist and project historian for the Twelve Travelers Memorial of the Southwest, "al-Zemmouri was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The chief denied Esteban and his entourage entry to the pueblo, and ordered them confined outside the village. For three days, they were denied food and water while the council of elders debated. Some suspected Esteban of being a Spanish spy. Others thought it unreasonable that the white-skinned Spaniards would send a black man as a herald to their pueblo, as the Moroccan had claimed.

According to a secondhand account in Fray Marcos de Niza’s Relación, which is taken from testimony of surviving Indian members of Esteban’s party, "in a great rage [the chief] threw the mace to the ground and said: ‘I know these people; these bells are not of the same style as ours; tell them to go away at once, because otherwise there will not be one of them left alive.’" Unfortunately, as they were virtually imprisoned, leaving "at once" was not possible. Desperately thirsty, Esteban attempted to reach water at a nearby river, and was immediately shot down by Zuni bowmen. According to Alarcón, the chief appropriated Esteban’s precious belongings, including "four green dishes which he had gotten, together with that dogge, and other things of a blacke man."

Learning of the massacre at Hawikuh, Fray Marcos retreated to Mexico City, where his account of the journey referred to the village and others around it—which he had not laid eyes on—as "The Seven Cities of Cibola," and described them as immensely rich. Scholars disagree on the reason for his mendacity; perhaps it was simply a desire to have something positive to report to the viceroy. The result, in any case, was Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s expedition of 1540 to conquer what by then were believed to be cities of gold.

Five hundred years later, a centenarian Zuni oral historian told the following story in the 1992 television documentary Surviving Columbus: The Story of the Pueblo People, produced by the Institute of American Indian Arts for PBS:

The people who lived at the steaming springs had a giant who led them, who
walked ahead of them as their guide. And the people from Hanihipinnkya had
the twin war gods as their leaders. The Sun Father knew that the giant could
not be killed, so that when they brought the weapons to the twin war gods they
pierced them with arrows, but the giant wouldn’t die.... Sun Father said: ‘His
heart is in the gourd rattle. The gourd is his heart, and if you destroy it you will
kill him, and your way will be cleared.’ The younger war god stepped forward
from the fighting and shot the gourd rattle. The giant fell and all of his people
ran away.

Could this legend be a reference to Esteban?

Four hundred fifty years after his death at Hawikuh, Esteban returned to the American Southwest in the form of John Houser’s clay bust. After plaster impressions, waxing and investing, a bronze replica was finally cast, and it is currently on display at the XII Travelers Gallery in El Paso. Nick Houser hopes that a two-meter (12’) statue of Esteban al-Zemmouri will be unveiled soon as one of the 12 such statues commissioned by the city of El Paso to commemorate the most important explorers of the American Southwest.

The Gnawa Music of Morocco

This article from Afropop Worldwide seems to be a rare treat. It talks about the Gnawa, their spiritual music, collective history in Morocco, as well as race and slavery in Morocco in general.
__________________________________

The Gnawa Music of Morocco
By Dr. Chouki El Hamel

Dr. Chouki El Hamel received his doctorate from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in January 1993. His training in France at the Centre de Recherches Africaines was in precolonial African History. His interest has focused on the spread and the growth of Islamic culture and the evolution of Islamic institutions in Africa. His research is evidenced in his published articles and a book concerning intellectual life in precolonial Islamic West Africa. He taught courses in African History at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and at Duke University from 1994 to 2001. In 2001-2002 he was a scholar in residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and in 2002 he joined the History Department at Arizona State University. He is currently finishing his book entitled "Ethnicity, “Race/Color “and Gender in Moroccan Slavery." He contributed this essay to Afropop Worldwide for the program African Slaves in Islamic Lands.

Westerners who have visited Morocco have likely encountered Gnawa musicians. In the coastal Atlantic town of Essaouira, where an annual festival of Gnawa music takes place, and in Marrakesh, at its spectacular central square called Jamaa el-Fna. The colorful gowns and caps of Gnawa musicians, covered with cowry shells, coupled with the distinct sound of their instruments - metallic castanets, heavy drums and a three-stringed bass lute (guembri) – provide both visual and audio confirmation of the Gnawa presence.

Some of the best known genres of music to all Moroccans come from the classical Andalusian legacy, and reflect Morocco's historic relationship with Spain. Andalusian music is recognized as a national music and is repeatedly featured on national audio-visual media. By contrast, the Sephardic music and folksongs from the Jewish communities in Morocco are unfortunately vanishing because Morocco lost its Jewish population to help create the state of Israel. Another important but often neglected genre of music is that of the Gnawa, who came from West Africa to Morocco by way of migration, both voluntary and forced. Although the Gnawa are now fully integrated in Moroccan society, the Gnawa still remain a cultural and a social distinctiveness.

The term Gnawa has three important meanings. First, it refers to black people who were enslaved in West Africa. It is commonly believed that Gnawa of Morocco were originally black slaves and who over time had become free under various historical circumstances. Historians believe that the Gnawa population originated from black West Africa - from Senegal to Chad and from Mali in the north to Nigeria in the south. Many of these enslaved people are thought to come from Old Ghana (a kingdom north of Mali) in the 11th through the 13th century. These enslaved groups were called “Gnawa.” There is also some historical evidence that a large enslaved population came from the great market of Djenne in Mali, and that Gnawi is a slight deformation of Jennawi. The term Gnawa is thus a color designation. It historically means “the black people.”

Second, it defines both a religious/spiritual order of a traditionally Black Muslim group. The Gnawa are traditionally a mystic order which marks their exclusiveness within Islam and the religious and spiritual components of Gnawa practice incorporates references to their origin and their enslavement.

Third, it denotes the style of music associated with this order. The ancestral memory (turath) of the displaced and enslaved people that were brought to Morocco is preserved mainly in their songs and dances.

Not all blacks in Morocco were slaves that originated from black West Africa. Some blacks were actually native to southern Morocco. Some sources suggest that groups of black people were indigenous of the Draa valley. They were sedentary agriculturists. With the advance of the Romans into the Moroccan interior in the 3rd century B.C.E., the Berbers, who inhabited the coastal areas of the Maghreb of North Africa, may have been forced to move towards the south and competed with the blacks inhabitants in the oases of the Draa, entering into an interdependent or clientele relationship with the Blacks, with the Berbers assuming the patron role.

Etymologically speaking, the meaning of Gnawa likely derives from the Berber word aguinaw, which is connected with skin color. It means “black man” in contrast with the white Berber. This word could be itself the origin of the name Guinea because akal n-iguinamen in Berber means the “land of the black men” just like the Arabic term bilad as-sudan, which means, “land of the black people.” The term was also adopted by the Portuguese and appeared mainly as “Guinea” on European maps dating from the 14th century.

Arabic sources indicate that there was a steady flow of human trafficking across the Saharan desert from the 10th to the 19th centuries. Since the Almoravid dynasty in the 11th century, enslavement, conscription and trade brought people from West Africa (mainly from the area of present-day Mali, Burkina Fasso and Senegal) to the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). These enslaved groups were usually called `abid or sudan, both Arabic words, or else haratin or gnawa, Berber words. We can thus name among the ancestors of the black Moroccans of today the Soninke, the Bambara, the Mossi, the Fulani, and the Hausa. Archival sources indicate the use of blacks in the armies of the Makhzen, the central authority of Morocco, and in many cases, entire garrisons consisted solely of black soldiers. Many dynasties relied on black soldiers to maintain their power.

The first ruling dynasty in Morocco to use a large number of black slaves in the army during the Islamic era was the Almoravids (al-Murabitun). During the Almoravids, the ruler Yusuf Ibn Tashfin “bought a body of black slaves and sent them to al-Andalus.” With the additional troops provided through the slave trade, Almoravids defeated Alfonso VI of Castile in 1086 A.D. at the crucial battle of Zallaqa (near Badajoz). Arabic sources indicate that 4000 black soldiers participated in this famous battle. During the succeeding Almohad dynasty, the rulers had a private garrison of black soldiers, who also served as royal guards and during the rule of Muhammad an-Nasir, around 1200 A.D., their numbers reached 30,000. During this dynasty, the recruitment of enslaved blacks in the government became institutionalized, known as `Abid al-Makhzen, meaning “servants to the government.”

A third dynasty that used a large army of blacks was the Sa‘dis, who under the rule of Mawlay al-Mansur, invaded the Songhay Empire (in present day Mali) in 1591 A.D., which allowed them direct access to acquiring more black slaves for military purposes. In the late 17th century, Mawlay Isma`il gave orders to enslave all blacks including free black people to create his own army. Of course an act completely against the Islamic law, but he did it anyway.

In addition to the conscription of the blacks in the army, enslaved Black West Africans were assigned numerous occupations, including tasks in the home, farm, mines, oases, and ports. In many towns, slaves were primarily women who performed domestic labor or were concubines to the affluent class, while rural slaves were mainly male and worked in farming. Gradually, enslaved black people were freed either by manumission, by running away, or because their masters were forced to grant them freedom under different circumstances. After many generations, these freed black slaves eventually formed their own families and communities, such as those of the Gnawa mystic order.

Elements of pre-Islamic West African animism such as the belief in the spirit world are fundamental to the Gnawa order. For the Gnawa, the spirit world is inhabited by ancestral spirits who, among other spiritual creatures, can be used for either good or evil purposes. Ancestors are believed to act as intermediaries between the living and the supreme god, and the Gnawa communicate with their ancestors through prayer and sacrifice. The spirit world is also invoked through special ceremonies, constituted by drumming, clapping, the sound of the castanets, and dances, all designed to enlist the aid of ancestral saints to protect human beings from evil spirits and other predicaments, such as helping persons recover from an illness or a misfortune. These rites often involve spectacular trances through which contact with and appeal to ancestral spirits may be gained.

Even while adopting Islam, Gnawa did not totally abandon their animist traditions but rather continued to observe ritual possession. They combined Islamic tradition with pre-Islamic African traditions, whether local or sub-Saharan West African. After their conversion to Islam, while probably still in their country of origin, the Gnawa adopted Bilal as their ancestor and saint patron. Bilal was the first black person to convert to Islam and to become a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Claiming Bilal as a patrilineal figure was not only to emphasize the nobility of belonging to Bilal but also an attempt to legitimize their identity in Islamic terms.

Historically, as a racial minority, the Gnawa suffered much discrimination and injustice at the hands of the Arab-Berber majority within the regions that the Gnawa inhabit. Conscious of their difference and their blackness, they chose Bilal a black man as agnate. Bilal was a special man. Originally from Ethiopia, he was born into slavery. He converted to Islam while still in captivity and was tortured for his conversion by his master Umayya b. Khalaf. When Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, a very close friend to the Prophet Muhammad, heard about the valor of Bilal, he bought him and set him free in the name of Islam. Bilal became the personal servant/assistant of the Prophet. He was also the first muezzin—meaning “caller to prayer”—of the newly established Islamic community in Medina. This special relationship with the Prophet brought Bilal a special Baraka (a divine blessing). The Gnawa have constructed their Islamic identity by emphasizing a privileged status among Muslims - they converted to Islam even before Quraysh, the tribe to whom Muhammad belonged. Hence, it is not surprising to find the name of Bilal in many Gnawa songs. Additionally, to honor their spiritual and emotional link with Bilal and Islam, the Gnawa built a unique shrine in Essaouira dedicated to Bilal: the Zawiya Sidna Bilal, a place to celebrate their culture. Bilal is the symbol of the dialectic between Diaspora and homeland.



The Gnawa are a diasporic culture and one finds artistic and spiritual parallels between the Gnawa order and other spiritual black groups in Africa such as the bori in Nigeria and the stambouli in Tunisia, the sambani in Libya, the bilali in Algeria, and also outside Africa as in the case of the vodoun religion practiced in Caribbean countries (vodoun is a mix of Roman Catholic ritual elements and traditional rituals from Dahomey). The similarities in the artistic, spiritual and scriptural (e.g. related to Abrahamic written traditions) representations seem to reflect a shared experience of many African diasporic groups. The belief in possession and trance is crucial to Gnawa religious life. Music has served a patterned function in this belief and it is intrinsically linked to the Gnawa religious rituals and to their specific historic and cultural memories. It is their specific historic and cultural memories celebrated and invoked in songs, dances and musical chants that the Gnawa claim to provide access to the spiritual realm.

The Gnawa have influenced other Berber/Arab mystic orders or brotherhoods, as in the case of the Issawiya (16th century) and Hamdushiya (17th century). These brotherhoods added new elements to the usual sufi devotional rituals, such as trances and contacts with spirits, most likely influenced by contact with the Gnawa order. But these Zawaya and other sufi Berber or Arabic orders have been far more socially accepted within the regions where they are found than that of the Gnawa. The Gnawa, as a spiritual order within Moroccan Islamic society, was marginalized and is still marginal. Through their musical ceremonies and trances, they claim to cure insanity and free people from malign influences. They believe that God is too powerful for bi-lateral communication and direct manifestation and thus God can only be reached through spiritual manifestations in our world. Hence, the Gnawa are generally not considered a mystic order proper because they do not seek the conventional personal union with the divine but rather contact with the spirit world which acts as an intermediary through which contact with the divine may be accomplished.

The Gnawa have found legitimacy for their cultural distinctiveness within the regions and societies they inhabit even given their unusual and often marginalized religious rites, ceremonies, and musical practices. The images conveyed in their songs construct a coherent representation of displacement, dispossession, deprivation, misery and nostalgia for a land and a former life kept alive through their unique musical and ceremonial practices. The historical experience of the Gnawa sketched in this essay is very similar to those found in all forced diasporas. Through their ceremonies, their songs and gatherings, these people made restitution not of an "imagined community" but a real one to reconcile a fragmented past. The Gnawa provide a fascinating story of how they re/constructed their identity against a broken cultural continuity.

The Gnawa have, over many generations, productively negotiated their forced presence in Morocco to create acceptance and group solidarity. Unlike the conventional question in Black America, "Who are we?," the Gnawa ask, "Who have we become?” Similar to the model of “creolization” – the integration of freed black slaves into the French cultural landscape of the American state of Louisiana , the Gnawa have created a model of their own creolization and integration into the Moroccan social landscape. This is one of the most crucial and striking differences between blacks in America and blacks in Morocco.

Over the past fifty years in North Africa, Gnawa music, like the blues in America, has spread and attracted practitioners from other ethnic groups, in this case Berber and Arab. Although most present-day Gnawa musicians are metisse and speak Arabic and Berber, some West African religious words and phrases do survive even though their meaning is lost. In Morocco, Gnawa music is found mainly where black people live in a relatively large number; large enough to form a distinctive community like the ones in Marrakech and Essaouira. These two cities are known historically to have had slave markets connected to the trans-Saharan slave trade.

Gnawa people have created a distinct space in Moroccan society. They play a social and spiritual role and in recent decades have become well-known public performers. Public, non-ceremonial performances outside the Gnawa mystic order is a recent development. In order to survive, the Gnawa have turned the mystical aspect of their music into a musical art. In the 1970’s, when the only popular music available was the Middle Eastern type, some Moroccan artists start to look into other Moroccan traditions. Some of the best examples are Nass al-Ghiwan who were inspired by the Gnawa mystic order to create an original Moroccan pop music. One of the members of the band was Abd er-Rahman Paco who was himself a Gnawa master musician from Essaouira. Gnawa music has engendered a popular style of pop music for mere entertainment such as Nass al-Ghiwan and Jil-Jilala. These two bands were the most listened to in Morocco in the 70’s and 80’s. In the 90’s, other groups emerged such as Nass Marrakech who blend traditional music with new songs that connect with contemporary themes and audiences. Yet, for the Gnawa, their music is primarily spiritual and used for healing purposes.

However, curiously, Gnawa music, similar to jazz in America, is not recognized as a national music. The national Moroccan music is the Andalusian music, which developed, in "Muslim" and came to with the expulsion of the Moors in 1502 A.D.. Gnawa music has inspired the development of popular Moroccan music in general and is analogically similar to the African-American spirituals, gospels, and eventually the genre known as “the blues,” also founded by former slaves. Gnawa music provides a perspective through which we may view the history of blacks in . It is a medium to discover and recover the African roots that still live on in Morocco.

Recently, Western musicians interested in African traditional music, have “discovered” the music of the Gnawa. As a result, many collaborations have ensued with famous jazz artists such as Randy Weston. The Gnawa are modernizing their style to make it more secular and with more commercial appeal. With these recent developments and their appeal to tourists, the Moroccan government in 1997established The Gnawa and World Music Festival in Essaouira.



Q&A with Banning Eyre

B.E: What do we know about slavery in Morocco before the Arabs came, even before the Romans came?

Chouki el Hamel: There was always slavery. Berbers were slaving blacks. Blacks were also enslaving other people. But before the coming of the Arabs, black West Africa was not perceived like a huge pool of slaves. It did not have great slave markets. That was a development that came with the Islamization of Africa. So with the Islamization of Africa there was an increase of the trans-Saharan trade. It is the conquest, actually, that stimulated this need for black soldiers. So there was a huge demand for enslaved people from West Africa. And why? It is because, legally, you can slave only people perceived to be “pagan.” And the area that was perceived to be “pagan” was the area of the Sudan and beyond that.

The race question came during the Crusades where Europe emerged as a strong power, and basically, the enslaved people who came from areas in Europe were diminishing. So the Arabs and Berbers dynasties that ruled North Africa turned, of course, south. And then slowly it became color slavery. So that is why I have said that in many dynasties, that ruled Morocco for instance, they relied on black soldiers. And during Mawlay Isma`il, it went even further because he enslaved all blacks, including the free ones, including the Muslims. That is an act that is actually outright illegal in Islam, but he did it. But the muftis, judges and scholars of Islam in Fez were against that. They went against the voices that had influence on the society, they were sometimes killed. We have evidence that one of them was killed. His name is Gassus. He was a very strong voice against the enslavement black Muslims.

B.E: How, ultimately, did slavery disappear from Morocco?

Chouki el Hamel: I don't know of any text that formerly and officially abolished slavery. Slavery just went away with the coming of the colonization in 1912. Slowly, and gradually, slavery just died. It stopped existing because it was no longer needed. For instance, I'll give you just one example. In the south of Morocco, until recently under colonialism, the black people, especially Haratin in the southern oases, in the area of Aqqa or Tata, blacks did not own land. The Berbers owned the land. Some were not slaves, but they worked as sharecroppers. And they were called khammasin. They worked as farmers on the land that belonged to the Berbers, and they got a fifth of the harvest. But they never owned the land. And it is through colonization, when the capitalist system was introduced, and cash was introduced, some of these black people who worked as sharecroppers went to Europe. They were able to have enough cash to buy the land. So it was through colonialism and the general capitalist system that these people who were marginalized, who were not entitled to own land, they suddenly had cash. And cash of course is power. So they bought land, and this has created a social mobility in the south of Morocco.

B.E: When Afropop Worldwide went to Morocco in 2004, we found the very first two CDs by Nass el Ghiwan. They were just bootlegs, but rare stuff?

Chouki el Hamel: Nass el Ghiwan emerged, actually, from very poor neighborhoods. Their songs were what we call engaged, engaged for social causes. They were singing basically for the voiceless people. They represented them, their oppression and their misery and also subjects that were taboos. Some of them actually suffered for that. They went to jail because of that. They really reflect the cultural legacy in a way of the Gnawa. Because of the times, when there were Egyptian songs playing on the radio all the time, and these people came along, and said, we have to look at Moroccan traditions, what is authentic. And they looked into the Gnawa. And some members of Nass al-Ghiwan and Jil-Jilala were actually Gnawa.

B.E: They were widely influential also. I remember interviewing Khaled in Algeria, and him saying that Nass el Ghiwan really inspired him when he was young. To hear this local sound elevated to this level of high popularity. That's an interesting collateral effect that you would not necessarily predict?

Chouki el Hamel: And now, there is a step even further, because we have westerners involved, right? You have a lot of jazz and even popular music artists they come and collaborate with the Gnawa. Randy Weston comes to mind, but he is not the first one. Dizzy Gillespie went to Tunisia, right? So they all look for this, the African roots. Even in the early sixties. They were aware of this Diaspora. I think the artists were onto something. The artists, they are pioneers in making the other Diaspora actually known to the world. By the “other Diaspora,” I am talking about the internal African Diaspora, which is the Diaspora of black Africans in North Africa and the Mediterranean.

B.E: So it was not so much historians and writers who led the way on this. It was musicians?

Chouki el Hamel: If you like, hearing music is more powerful, more influential, than reading books sometimes.

…Just the same, if books are your cup of tea, here’s Chouki el Hamel’s Selected Bibliography:

Abu, Madyan, and Vincent J. Cornell. The way of Abu Madyan : doctrinal and poetic works of Abu Madyan Shuayb ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari (c. 509/1115-16-594/1198), Golden palm series. Cambridge, U.K.: Islamic Texts Society, 1996.

Brunel, Rene. Essai sur la confrérie religieuse des 'Aissaouas au Maroc: Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1926.

Diène, Doudou. La Chaîne et le lien : une vision de la traite négrière, Mémoire des peuples. Paris: Editions Unesco, 1998.

Diouf, Sylviane. Servants of Allah : African Muslims enslaved in the Americas. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

El Hamel, Chouki, “Blacks and Slavery in Morocco: The Question of the Haratin at the End of the Seventeenth Century,” in Disaporic Africa. A Reader, ed. by Michael Gomez, New York University Press, 2006.

Ennaji, Mohammed. Serving the master : slavery and society in nineteenth-century Morocco. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Laroui, Abd Allah. The history of the Maghrib : an interpretive essay. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.

Pâques, Viviana. L'Arbre cosmique dans la pensée populaire et dans la vie quotidienne du Nord-Ouest africain, etc, [Université de Paris. Travaux et mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie. no. 70.]: pp. 702. pl. XVII. Paris, 1964.

Pâques, Viviana. La religion des esclaves : recherches sur la confrérie marocaine des Gnawa. Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 1991.

Willis, John Ralph, ed. Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa. Vol. 1: Islam and the Ideology of Slavery. Totowa, N.J: Frank Cass, 1985.