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Beyond Resistance and Collaboration: The “Bargains” of Cooperation in the Spanish Sahara, 1950s–1970s

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Abstract

Empires were bound to indigenous cooperation. To affirm its permanence and some sort of control throughout the centuries, empires had to provide some opportunities to participate in imperial power structures—at least to a chosen few. This essay critically analyzes the complex modalities of so-called indigenous cooperation within the Spanish imperial formations in Western Sahara. It breaks up the simplistic dichotomies of colonial and anticolonial constructs, focusing first on the modalities of colonial domination since the 1950s and then on selected empirical examples of Saharawi women and teenagers engaged within the state-sponsored Sección Femenina during the imperial endgame. By analyzing women’s strategic cooperation within the colonial state, this essay brings to light a topic that has all too often been ignored in the historiography of empire.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Research for this article was generously funded by the Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement of Research and Culture, 2015–18. The argument draws on my monograph Violence and Gender in Africa’s Iberian Colonies: Feminizing the Portuguese and Spanish Empire, 1950s–1970s (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan). Thanks to Paula Bradish for her ongoing support in preparing my work for publication.

  2. 2.

    Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (München: C.H. Beck, 2009), p. 627; Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 13–14; Martin Klein, “African Participation in Colonial Rule: The Role of Clerks, Interpreters, and Other Intermediaries,” in Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp. 273–285, 283; Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 [1983]), pp. 211–262, esp. p. 229; Tanja Bührer et al., “Introduction. Cooperation and Empire: Local Realities of Global Processes,” in Bührer et al. (eds.), Cooperation and Empire: Local Realities of Global Processes (New York: Berghahn, 2017), pp. 1–29, quotation: 6; Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds.), Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 117–140, esp. pp. 118, 120, 122, 133.

  3. 3.

    Dierk Walter, Colonial Violence: European Empires and the Use of Force (London: Hurst, 2017), pp. 85–105.

  4. 4.

    See Bührer et al., “Introduction,” pp. 5–6; Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn and Richard L. Roberts, “Introduction: African Intermediaries and the ‘Bargain’ of Collaboration,” in Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn and Richard L. Roberts (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks, p. 6, complicating our understanding of “collaboration” and “cooperation” in an imperial context.

  5. 5.

    See the declaration on informal rule in the semi-official history of the SF by Luis Suárez Fernández, Crónica de la Sección Femenina y su tiempo (Madrid: Asociación Nueva Andadura, 1992), p. 375.

  6. 6.

    See Francesco Correale, “Les origines de la ‘question du Sahara Occidental’: Enjeux historiques, défis politiques,” in Marco Balboni and Giuliana Laschi (eds.), The European Union Approach Towards Western Sahara (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2017), pp. 33–60, esp. pp. 39–43; and Anthony G. Pazzanita’s “Introduction” to his Historical Dictionary of Western Sahara (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2006), esp. pp. xlviii–xlix; as well as Maurice Barbier, Le conflit du Sahara Occidental (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1982).

  7. 7.

    Francesco Correale, “Le Sahara espagnol: Histoire et mémoire du rapport colonial. Un essai d’interprétation,” in Sophie Caratini (ed.), La question du pouvoir en Afrique du Nord et de l’Ouest: Du rapport colonial au rapport de développement, vol. 1 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), pp. 103–152. See on the war José Ramón Diego Aguirre, La última guerra colonial de España: Ifni-Sáhara (1957–1958) (Málaga: Algazara, 1993). For the broader context of the “second occupation,” see D. A. Low and John Lonsdale, “Introduction: Towards the New Order, 1945–1963,” in D. A. Low and Alison Smith (eds.), The Oxford History of East Africa, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 1–64, esp. pp. 12–16.

  8. 8.

    For the quotation see Enrique Bengochea Tirado and Francesco Correale, “Modernising Violence and Social Change in Spanish Sahara, 1957–1975,” Itinerario (forthcoming). Lawrance, Osborn and Roberts, “Introduction,” pp. 27–28; Ranger, “Invention of Tradition,” pp. 257–259.

  9. 9.

    Saturnino Valdueza Ayala, “Algunas consideraciones sobre el momento político en el Sahara Español,” El Aaiún, December 1969, Fundación Sur, Fondo Documental Luis Rodríguez de Viguri (DLRV), n° 836. Later on, Valdueza became a leading figure (subdirector) in Spain’s Radio Sahara, broadcasting from El Aaiún, which might explain his inclination for this channel in his 1969 report. See Robinson, “Non-European foundations,” p. 121, on the delicate balance of the “collaborative mechanism.”

  10. 10.

    Valdueza Ayala, “Algunas consideraciones,” 1969. On the shortcomings of Spanish education in Western Sahara, see Claudia Barona, Hijos de la nube: El Sahara Español desde 1959 hasta la debacle (Madrid: Langre, 2004), pp. 78–82, 92.

  11. 11.

    Valdueza Ayala, “Algunas consideraciones,” 1969.

  12. 12.

    Valdueza Ayala, “Algunas consideraciones,” 1969.

  13. 13.

    The other full-hearted africanista José Luis de Villegas y Bustamante, secretary-general of the overseas territories, died in August 1968, shortly before Spanish Guinea gained independence. See on the institutional dynamics and Spanish decolonization in Africa, Rosa María Pardo Sanz, “La décolonisation de l’‘Afrique espagnole’: Maroc, Sahara occidental et Guinée équatoriale,” in Olivier Dard and Daniel Lefeuvre (eds.), L’Europe face à son passé colonial (Paris: Riveneuve, 2008), pp. 169–195.

  14. 14.

    See the secret report by the Gobierno General de Sahara, El Aaiún, 20 November 1975, Fundación Sur, DLRV n° 1418.

  15. 15.

    Correale, “Les origines,” pp. 49–54; Jacob Mundy, “The Geopolitical Functions of the Western Sahara Conflict: US Hegemony, Moroccan Stability and Sahrawi Strategies of Resistance,” in Raquel Ojeda-García, Irene Fernández-Molina and Victoria Veguilla (eds.), Global, Regional and Local Dimensions of Western Sahara’s Protracted Decolonization: When a Conflict Gets Old (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 53–78.

  16. 16.

    See for the concept in the French context Martin Thomas, “Introduction: Mapping the French Colonial Mind,” in Martin Thomas (ed.), The French Colonial Mind, vol. 1: Mental Maps of Empire and Colonial Encounters (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), pp. xi–xlvii.

  17. 17.

    See on the institutional history Enrique Bengochea Tirado, “Políticas imperiales y género: La Sección Femenina en la provincia de Sahara (1961–1975)” (PhD thesis, Departamento de Historia Contemporánea, Universitat de València, 2016), chapter 3.

  18. 18.

    See on the changing realities during the endgames of empire, Barbara Bush, “Nationalism, Development, and Welfare Colonialism: Gender and the Dynamics of Decolonization,” in Martin Thomas and Andrew Thompson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198713197.013.31.

  19. 19.

    María Concepción Mateo Merino, “La situación y actitud política de la mujer saharaui,” October 1974, Real Academia de la Historia (RAH), Archivo Documental “Nueva Andadura” (NA), 3ª etapa, carpeta n° 166, 3-(9.

  20. 20.

    Lawrance, Osborn, and Roberts, “Introduction,” pp. 4, 27.

  21. 21.

    See for an example from the British empire, Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, “Reconsidering Women’s Roles in the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, 1952–60,” in Martin Thomas and Gareth Curless (eds.), Decolonization and Conflict: Colonial Comparisons and Legacies (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 159–175. A comparative view on the “crisis of empire” in Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and L. J. Butler, Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States, 1918–1975 (London: Hodder Education, 2008).

  22. 22.

    Miguel Ortiz de Rivero, “Primer curso de dirección y administración hospitalaria [Ifni]. Memoria final del curso, Junio-Julio 1965,” Archivos del Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 20, no. 80 (1966), 51–79, here 56.

  23. 23.

    Ortiz de Rivero, “Primer curso,” pp. 59–60, 66; and Guadalupe Pérez García, “La falacia histórica sobre la colonia de Ifni,” Historia y Comunicación Social, 8 (2003), 207–222, on Ifni.

  24. 24.

    I am expanding on Ronald Robinson’s perception of the “Non-European foundations,” p. 121.

  25. 25.

    Delegada S.F. to Don Dahaman Bachir, Jefe del Puesto de Tifariti, 17 October 1975, Archivo General de la Administración (AGA), Sección África (15), Fondo Ifni-Sáhara (24), caja S-2877.

  26. 26.

    See Barona, Hijos de la nube, pp. 99–100, for Saharawis’ complaints about bad treatment in SF schools.

  27. 27.

    Auixa S. from Villa Cisneros, 15 September 1975; Fátima T. to Carmen, 28 January and 18 November 1975, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2877, resp. caja S-2878. For the hierarchies in the colonial food chain, see e.g. Secretario General to Delegado gubernativo de la Región Norte, El Aaiún, 20 March 1970, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2161, and caja S-2272 for “Relación de las viviendas catenarias ocupadas por personal natural del Sahara,” [1966].

  28. 28.

    See on the SF’s domestic history, among others, Rosario Sánchez López, Entre la importancia y la irrelevancia. Sección Femenina: de la República a la Transición (Murcia: Editora Regional, 2007); Inbal Ofer, Señoritas in Blue: The Making of a Female Political Elite in Franco’s Spain. The National Leadership of the Sección Femenina de Falange (1936–1977) (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2009).

  29. 29.

    Sometimes “his Excellence” the governor-general was better at pulling strings. His driver was among the first to be provided with government housing. See the petitions for housing of December 1972 in AGA, (15)24, caja S-2153, exp. 4.

  30. 30.

    See the steps undertaken in this regard in Western Sahara for Arbia N. and Fatimetu A.: M. Angeles Mozaz to Gobernador General, El Aaiún, 16 April 1975; La Secretaria Provincial to Secretario General del Gobierno General de Sahara, El Aaiún, 20 September 1974, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2877, resp. caja S-2801.

  31. 31.

    Bengochea and Correale, “Modernising Violencce.”

  32. 32.

    These were the selection criteria for admission of Sahrawi SF students to a summer camp in 1974. See “Informe de las actividades realizadas durante el curso 73/74,” Escuela Hogar El Aaiún, 30 June 1974, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2804, exp. 1; “Informe resumen de la situación referida a la delegación provincial de Sección Femenina en Sahara en el momento de producirse la descolonización del territorio,” January 1976, RAH, NA, 3ª etapa, carpeta n° 166, 4-(3. Similar criteria applied in the late 1960s for girls from Ifni and their trip to the Canary Islands, AGA, Sección Cultura (3), Fondo Sección Femenina de Sáhara, Ifni, Región Ecuatorial (51.19), caja 243, 4/485.

  33. 33.

    Quotations stem from the selection criteria for students from Equatorial Guinea. See Soldead de Santiago to Otilia Soto (Bata, Río Muni), 6 May 1966, AGA, (3)51.19, caja 244, carp. 3/462.

  34. 34.

    See the report from the Escuela de Ayudantes Técnicos Sanitarios “Julio Ruiz de Alda,” n.d., and Teresa Loring to Director General de Plazas y Provincias Africanas, 2 December 1965, AGA, (3)51.19, caja 246, carp. 6/456, resp. caja 244, carp. 3/462.

  35. 35.

    See for examples of this rhetoric from Smara María Jesús Gálvez to Mari Angeles, 18 January and 11 February 1974, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2804, exp. 1 (emphasis in the original). For Spain and the founding days, see Kathleen Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism: The Women’s Section of the Falange 1934–1959 (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 102, 116, 121.

  36. 36.

    See the SF correspondence, 14 and 20 June 1974, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2802; Andreas Stucki, “The Hard Side of Soft Power: Spanish Rhetorics of Empire from the 1950s to the 1970s,” in Richard Toye and Martin Thomas (eds.), Rhetorics of Empire: Languages of Colonial Conflict After 1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 142–160, esp. pp. 151–154.

  37. 37.

    See the correspondence between Fátima T. and María Angeles Mozaz, 12 February 1972 and 21 February 1974, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2802.

  38. 38.

    [María Angeles Mozaz] to Soledad de Santiago, 20 July 1974, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2802.

  39. 39.

    “Informe resumen,” 1976 and “Informe propuesta. Incorporación de nativas a la labor de la delegación provincial de Sahara,” October 1975, RAH, NA, 3ª etapa, carpeta n° 166, 4-(4.

  40. 40.

    See the correspondence of late July 1975 between the provincial SF Delegate in El Aaiún and the Secretario General de Sahara as well as Gobierno General de Sahara, El Aaiún, 26 August 1975, in AGA, (15)24, caja S-2875.

  41. 41.

    Fátima T. to Soledad de Santiago, 30 July 1975 and SF delegate to Secretary-General Sahara, 9 June 1975, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2877, resp. caja S-2875. For a reconstruction of Fátima’s studies at the University of Granada and her integration in the inner SF, her personal files (still closed) in AGA, (3)51.19, caja 236, carp. 4-1/437.5 and caja 242, carp. 21/454 will be of special interest.

  42. 42.

    Pablo-Ignacio Dalmases, Huracán sobre el Sáhara: Memorias de un periodista en el último desastre colonial español (Barcelona: Base, 2010), pp. 33, 123; letter from El Aaiún to Delegada Provincial de la Sección Femenina del Movimiento in Barcelona, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2802.

  43. 43.

    See “Constitución de la Administración de Gobierno en el momento de evacuación Ejército Español” by Luis Rodríguez de Viguri y Gil, El Aaiún, 20 November 1975, Fundación Sur, DLRV n° 1418.

  44. 44.

    Ranger, “Invention of Tradition,” p. 248.

  45. 45.

    Mateo Merino, “La situación y actitud política de la mujer saharaui,” 1974; Joanna Allan, “Natural Resources and Intifada: Oil, Phosphates and Resistance to Colonialism in Western Sahara,” Journal of North African Studies, 21, no. 4 (2016), 645–666.

  46. 46.

    “Albergue ‘Sahara’ en Isla Tenerife,” n.d., AGA, (15)24, caja S-2877.

  47. 47.

    Concha Mateo to Soledad de Santiago, 19 October 1974, AGA, (3)51.19, caja 236, carp. 4-1/437.5. See the SF’s answer to Muina C.’s request, 5 July 1975, AGA, (15)24, caja S-2877.

  48. 48.

    “Notas para contestación al Marqués de Mondejar,” 21 February 1976, RAH, NA, 3ª etapa, carpeta n° 166, 5-(3.

  49. 49.

    Susan Martin-Márquez, “Brothers and Others: Fraternal Rhetoric and the Negotiation of Spanish and Sahrawi Identity,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 7, no. 3 (2006), 242–258; Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo, Memories of the Maghreb: Transnational Identities in Spanish Cultural Production (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 153.

  50. 50.

    Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam, and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014), esp. pp. 33, 66, 70–76, 107. For the trope, see Lippert, “Sahrawi Women in the Liberation Struggle of the Sahrawi People,” Signs 17, no. 3 (1992), 636–651, esp. 644; Dolores Juliano, La causa saharaui y las mujeres: “Siempre hemos sido muy libres” (Barcelona: Icaria, 1998), pp. 17–19.

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  1. Historisches Institut, Universität Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Andreas Stucki

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  1. Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Nuno Domingos  & Ricardo Roque  & 

  2. Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo

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Stucki, A. (2019). Beyond Resistance and Collaboration: The “Bargains” of Cooperation in the Spanish Sahara, 1950s–1970s. In: Domingos, N., Jerónimo, M.B., Roque, R. (eds) Resistance and Colonialism. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19167-2_10

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