Avuncular American

Tangier "the White City" Turns Red

 

Tangier, watercolor circa 1911, Tristam Ellis. From Enchantment: Pictures from the Tangier American Legation Museum by Diana Wylie

Beginning with the first day and continuing through all the years I have spent in Tangier, I have loved the white city that sits astride its hills, looking out across the Strait of Gibraltar to the mountains of Andalucia.

 Paul Bowles, 1958 "The Worlds of Tangier"

"Tangier... this blue Arab town..."

Jane Bowles, 1951 "East Side: North Africa," quoted in Morocco Bound, Brian Edwards

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When she referred to Tangier as blue, Jane Bowles may have been talking mood rather than paint pigment.  After all, she suffered from depression, and elsewhere wrote: "I love Tangier.  But like a dying person."

For centuries, Tangier, like other cities along the North African coast, loomed up from the blue sea as white as her husband Paul saw it, or as Tristam Ellis captured it (watercolor, top) at the outset of the twentieth century.

No wonder: the traditional treatment given to walls and roofs was whitewash, that timeless lime and chalk mixture that was ubiquitous in much of the Mediterranean world.

Until, that is, the advent of paint.  Especially paint with waterproofing properties.

Readers who think of Morocco as an arid desert devoid of rain need to think again.  Especially Tangier, with its exposure to precipitation from Atlantic, Strait of Gibraltar, and Mediterranean sides.

So it's no surprise that people should be conscious of waterproofing their exterior walls.  But why the red?

I'm told that when waterproof exterior paint first started to become available in Morocco, it was in the brune rouge color at left.  So the color started to become synonymous with its water repellent properties.  It would be like assuming that painting against rust is only good if you leave the orange Rust-oleum basecoat visible.  No matter that since then, you can get the same waterproofing in gray or white.  And I suppose that someone must have gotten wind of Home Depot and its "Morocco Red."

But Tangier isn't Marrakesh, despite someone insisting on planting pitiful palm trees along our corniche when something hardier (maritime pine, for example) might better withstand the winds off the Strait.  No, Tangier was The White City (Sir John Lavery's 1893 oil painting of that name attests), and Marrakesh is the Red City.

And now Tangier - along with Tetouan and other traditionally white cities - is turning red.  Wherever Colorado Paint is sold.  I guess I should be happy that it's red, and not apple green waterproof paint, which is now available. Yuck...

Tangier - painting the town red.

Gerald Loftus

Washington to Sultan: "Great and Magnanimous Friend"

Thankfully, someone remembered to mark the 225th anniversary of one of America's oldest treaties, the 1787 Treaty of Marrakesh - "The Treaty of Friendship & Amity" - between Morocco and the United States.

Appropriately, the event was celebrated by the Amity Series, an interfaith dialogue initiative between Muslims and Christians, and took place last week - on the eve of Ramadan - at George Washington University.

White House Special Envoy to the OIC, Rashad Hussain, addressed the conference.

Mount Vernon historian Mary V. Thompson's remarks at the symposium described the context:

On December 1, 1789, George Washington sat down to write a letter to an old friend of his country, someone he had never met.  Just over seven months before, Washington had been inaugurated the first president of the United States and had set up his office in the country’s temporary capital of New York City.  In the intervening months, he had begun putting together his cabinet; gotten Mrs. Washington and the two grandchildren they were raising settled in their new house; organized a scheme for his official entertaining; survived a near-fatal illness; and taken a one-month tour of the New England states.  Now, as he started the letter, he began with the salutation, “Great and Magnanimous Friend.”  Many Americans today would probably be surprised to learn that the recipient of the letter he wrote that day was Mohammed Ibn Abdullah, the Emperor of Morocco, and that Washington might have written more accurately, “Great and Magnanimous and Patient Friend.”

Thompson's stress on the Sultan's patience refers to the opportunity almost missed - the failure of the fledgling country, which had just declared its independence a year before, to respond to the Sultan's overture in 1777.  At the time, General George Washington was settling down to a harsh winter at Valley Forge, and the American Revolution's course was by no means assured.

So Morocco waited for years for the American Revolution to come to a successful conclusion, and continued to wait for an American response.  Finally, the capture of The Betsey, an American brigantine seized by Moroccan corsairs off the coast of Cadiz, succeeded in getting the attention of the United States.

Diplomat Thomas Barclay was dispatched to Morocco, and the fruit of his negotiations is what was celebrated 225 years later.

The GWU anniversary conference was covered by the Moroccan press service MAP, and by Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard.  Below, a portion of the Sultan's letter to George Washington.

 

Note: hegira date equates to 1788 in the Roman calendar

 Gerald Loftus

 

From Syria to Tangier

Tangier has its Syrian mosque, with its own Facebook page.

It has its Syrian quarter.  Google it, and you'll get a page full of real estate ads.  In Tangier, the quartier Syrien is a solidly middle class collection of villas built on slopes.

Why "Syrian?"  Because in the 1960s, a wave of Syrian exiles found a home in Morocco, many of them in Tangier.

The Syrian mosque's needle-like minaret has a distinctive style, much different to the more angular minarets of Morocco.  It's a striking building, and is seen by all who arrive in Tangier by road from the capital.  The mosque was built thanks to one of the main Syrian expatriate families in Tangier, the Tataris.  Originally in the textile business and in real estate, the family's second - Moroccan - generation has branched into various food and luxury brands.

This is definitely a diaspora that has thrived in its adopted country.  In light of the current upheaval in their native Syria, Maroc Hebdo profiled the community in a recent issue.

Fleeing the nationalizations and upheaval of the Baath takeover in Syria in the early Sixties, thousands of Syrians made their way to Morocco.  Maroc Hebdo says that there are some 2,000 Syrian families in Morocco, many of whom, like the Tataris, have been here for more than 40 years.

Morocco has seen street demonstrations in solidarity with the Syrian revolution, at least one of which happened in Tangier.  Morocco recently ordered the expulsion of the Syrian Ambassador.

Gerald Loftus

Tangier's Long Transition: Interzone to Moroccan City

From the blog "Space and Place," Dr. George F. Roberson

The Frontline Diplomacy collection of oral histories, part of the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, offers priceless insights into the practice of US foreign policy over the latter half of the twentieth century.  The collection was compiled by ADST, the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.

We've entered "Tangier" into their search feature and have come up with a valuable trove of recollections by diplomats and their spouses into life at the Legation (or later, Consulate General) mid-twentieth century.  The following excerpts highlight impressions and experiences of diplomats during the leadup to Moroccan independence in 1956, and the subsequent integration of Tangier, International Zone into independent Morocco.

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Late 1940s: Contacts with Moroccan nationalists irk France

Vice Consul Fritzlan (l), courtesy Franklin Koppel

Tangier was the abode of any Moroccan from the French zone, or the Spanish zone, who was out of favor. These people could come to Tangier , and there they were relatively safe. Wanting support for their cause, they'd come to the Legation and wind up in my office. The French representative complained strongly about my receiving these Moroccan nationalists but Childs [note: J. Rives Childs, US Chargé d'Affaires], and later Paul Alling who succeeded him, made it plain that we were not closing our doors to anybody.

 

Well, the reports that I wrote on the basis of conversations with these people, who later became leaders in the Moroccan government after its independence, were, I think, viewed as of little importance or interest in the Department. The feeling was that the French are there, and were going to stay there indefinitely. Nor were my reports received well by our Embassy in Paris... our despatches on the Moroccan nationalists' activities, their aims, their aspirations, their suppression by the French, were viewed with great hostility.

David Fritzlan, US Legation Tangier, 1944-1948

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1952: Rumblings of independence: the Tangier riots

This would have been about 1952, I think, more or less in the middle of my tour. The French had promised to turn Morocco over to the Moroccans and they didn't. And the Moroccans had an uprising in Tangier, calling in the Rifs [note: a reference to Berber tribes from the Rif Mountains] from the mountain zone nearby, and really just generally causing trouble. They were turning over parked cars in the streets and burning them. They were shoving Europeans off the sidewalks and, on a couple of occasions, beating up on them, all in resentment over the French breaking their promise. And, of course, bear in mind that an American is more or less indistinguishable from a Frenchman as far as a Moroccan is concerned. So we wound up carrying guns to work. I left my wife at home with a little 22 caliber target pistol, which was the only other gun we had, and I took along a Beretta that I'd picked up during the war. We actually didn't run into any trouble. But we felt safer if, walking down the street in the main part of town, we were carrying something a bit imposing...

Robert F. Franklin, VOA Relay Station Tangier, 1951-1954

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1957: Post-independence transition: dismantling the International Zone

With the independence of Morocco in 1956, Embassy Rabat replaced our Legation in Tangier. As Director of the Office of African Affairs, I had been handling Moroccan affairs in the Department. I was assigned to Tangier as Consul General to help facilitate the transition. In addition to the usual functions of a consul general, I was a member of the Committee of Control of the International Zone of Tangier which, together with the Spanish Zone and the French Protectorate, would be dismantled in the process of re-integrating the Sherifian Empire of Morocco. I believe Tangier was one of the last havens of extraterritoriality in the world. Decades of complex international arrangements were unraveled. As US member of the International Commission of Cape Spartel, I signed an international agreement whereby the several signatories returned to the Sultan of Morocco the responsibilities they had assumed in 1865 for the direction and expenses of the Cape Spartel lighthouse. I was pleased to be able to have a part in the re-integration of Tangier into the Sherifian Empire.

Leo G. Cyr, Consul General Tangier, 1957-1960

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Late 50s/early 60s: Tangier smugglers on the wane; Morocco asserts sovereignty

I got there in September or October, 1957. Morocco had become independent the year before. When I arrived, Morocco had a political unification, but it wasn't very effective, had no economic integration. Each of the three areas had its own laws and regulations, each had its own currency area, and most of the effective decisions were made locally rather than in Rabat, the capital. I was there during the time of the economic integration of Tangier and of the northern Spanish zone into the French zone. The Moroccan franc became the only national monetary unit; the Spanish peseta was withdrawn. But the free money market continued for some time in Tangier. And Tangier still had an aura of the old outlaw smuggler's haven. It still had a little bit of that feeling. Europe was still having problems with currency, and with import permits, and all sorts of import restrictions, and Tangier became a smuggling point, primarily for cigarettes to Italy, but also a whole range of goods for Spain where corruption ruled commerce. The smugglers bought old PT boats from the United States, surplus PT boats, modified them for speed and ran to the beaches of Spain and Italy to unload their cigarettes, or transistor radios and other items in demand, then head back to Tangier.

One of the unusual duties that fell to me in Tangier was the signing of re-export permits. Under the international regime for the territory, the US, like other signatories of the statute of 1923, enjoyed extra-territorial rights. No citizen of the United states could be a defendant in any but the local US court, and no US-origin goods could be transshipped from Tangier without the approval of the US government--mine. So I was the one who signed the re-export permits for US goods, most of which were to be smuggled into Europe. Whole boatloads of cigarettes, cameras, radios and household appliances were approved under a policy of denying permits only to dangerous or embargoed merchandise. But Tangier  was already losing some of that outlaw atmosphere and illicit activity when I got there. With the economic integration, it was almost entirely gone by the time I finished my tour of duty. Morocco was in fact governing Tangier , and the vestiges of the old international administration were being tidied up, and handed over to the Sultan [note: on August 14, 1957 Mohammed V was proclaimed King of Morocco].

Leonardo Neher, US Consulate General Tangier, 1957-1962

The Rooms Still Have a View

Art critic and social historian Terence MacCarthy has done it again: another historic hotel, another book.  The title choice A Room With a View may disturb E.M. Forster and Merchant-Ivory fans, but the subtitle shows that this is not plagiarism: A History of the Grand Hotel Villa de France.

And it's MacCarthy's Tangier, not Forster's Florence.  Here, the view is of Tangier and the Strait of Gibraltar and Spain, and even creeping medina rooftop escalation in the intervening century has probably not obstructed the view that Matisse made famous in his 1913 Paysage vu d'une fenêtre, which graces the cover of Dr. MacCarthy's book.

For a contemporary photo of what Matisse saw from the Villa de France, here's a link to the George Eastman House collection of French photojournalist Charles Chusseau-Flaviens.  Hard to imagine today, but back in Matisse's day, the Villa de France counted as a suburban address.

As with his earlier No Better Address, a social history of the extinct Hotel Cecil, Terence has gathered much of his material at the Legation's research library.  Our collection of the Tangier Gazette, which used to publish the guest lists of selected local hotels, was particularly useful for this growing series of books.

Dr. MacCarthy has a good sense of humor, and can be counted on to spot the odd news item, not always with a discernible link to the history of the hotel (in late 19th century Morocco, a literal interpretation of "head count" when delivering prisoners - or the heads of those who had expired - to the Sultan).  Stories about stevedores battling it out for tourists' luggage, and then taking the newly-arrived foreigners from the port... not to the hotel of their choice, but to the hotel that gave the porters the biggest tip.

And I like his analysis of why

did the Hotel Villa de France cease publishing its guest register in September 1939, whilst its sister hotel, the El Minzah, continued to do so? One interesting possibility is that the management of the former ceased doing so for reasons of political discretion. What is immediately obvious is that when the Villa de France started to publish her guest lists once more, in August 1945, within a few months of the conclusion of the War, they contained a large number of Jewish surnames including Heikke, Hertzenfield, Israel, Kann, Klein, Levcowitz, Levy, and Serfaty, etc. Presumably, some at least of these guests were European Jews, fleeing Hitler’s relentless and murderous persecution, who had sought refuge in the International Zone of Tangier in the hope of finding safe onward passage to the United States or one of the South American republics. The management of the Villa de France may well have deliberately wanted to avoid drawing the attention of the occupying Fascist Spanish Administration to their presence in Tangier...

Terence MacCarthy's book is timely, in that this summer is to see the "soft re-opening" (the owners' idea of a low-key relaunch) of the newly-refurbished hotel, which has been closed for the better part of two decades.  We never knew the original version, so we can't speak to its 2012 makeover.  It would have been nice to know what Matisse or other guests circa 1912 thought of the food there, so we could do some comparison dining.

For now, Hotel Villa de France has a placeholder website, which we hope will soon be replete with photos to entice guests to stay in one of Tangier's historic hotels.  And we look forward to Dr. MacCarthy's next foray into Tangier's social history.

Gerald Loftus

A Century of Moroccan Mail

Commemorations often have a political or symbolic edge, so the 1912 establishment of French and Spanish protectorates in Morocco has been noted, but of course not celebrated.

It's different with the centenary of the Moroccan post office.  Cause for celebration - and innovation, with the first "audio stamp," which can play the national anthem on your smart phone.  And we won't draw too much attention to the establishment of the postal service under protectorate tutelage.

In its heyday Tangier, meanwhile, had a plethora of post offices, since under the statutes governing the International Zone, "the Powers... shall be permitted to maintain at Tangier the post offices which they possess there."

There was the British Post Office, the Spanish, the German post office...  So what did the American Legation - the US didn't have a post office here - do when they wanted to mail a letter?  Stock British, Spanish, German, and Moroccan stamps, I suppose.

With the advent of email and relegation of letters to the pejorative "snail mail" category, stamps are no doubt much less a feature in most people's lives.  A pity, because they can be a wonderful geography and history lesson for young and older collectors, discovering the world through these tiny, colorful pieces of paper.

As vehicles for commemorating noteworthy events, stamps can't be beat.  When the US and Morocco celebrated the bicentennial of the 1787 Treaty of Peace and Friendship, both countries issued a joint commemorative stamp.

With another bicentennial looming between Morocco and the United States - the 2021 commemoration of 200 years of the Tangier American Legation - perhaps Moroccan and American stamp designers should get to work imagining the symbolism of the Legation.  Perhaps our chimney bridging Zankat America, or our Pavilion and its courtyard centered on a fountain?

Gerald Loftus

Legation Pavilion: Endangered National Treasure

 

The Tangier American Legation Pavilion; photo by Elizabeth Gill Lui

Though it is emblematic of the entire institution, the Pavilion was the last of the historic Legation buildings erected in this collection of structures built around and over pedestrians-only America Street in Tangier's medina.  Here's what Honor Bigelow wrote of the building 80 years ago - soon after its completion - in the Foreign Service Journal in October 1932:

From an architectural standpoint the American Legation in Morocco is unquestionably one of the most noteworthy... of the Government's program for the construction of offices and residences for its representatives in foreign countries... .  With a sum of twenty-two thousand dollars which Congress appropriated in 1926 the original building was completely transformed ... [using] the traditional features of Moorish architecture.

Twenty-two thousand dollars...  More than ten times that amount was invested in the 2011 Historic Structure Report commissioned by the State Department, whose cover is graced by a photo of the 1930s-era Pavilion.  The HSR is an exhaustive technical and archival achievement, representing many hours of measurement, analysis, and research.  The HSR pulls no punches: "differential settlement cracking" is found throughout the Pavilion building, in addition to leaks and rot of all sorts.

The owners of the Legation - the State Department's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) - are aware of the Pavilion's critical condition, and progress resolving some of the problems (the rotten doors that were being scratched away by cats) is in the works.

But at this pace, the beautiful Pavilion may just succumb to its plethora of settlement cracks, some of which are wide enough to stick your thumb into.  Neighboring buildings lean into the Pavilion, and given the haphazard construction of adjoining buildings, we fear that some may even collapse, as has recently happened in Casablanca.

We've already had to close off an entire room, for fear of pieces of ceiling falling on visitors' heads.  And we continue to discover problems.  Fixing some loose tiles unearthed this monster crack, invisible below the floor. 

Okay, now what?  This blog post is a call for action.

One way is to push for recognition of the Tangier American Legation as an endangered treasure.  The private National Trust for Historic Preservation, in Washington D.C., has a program to raise funds to save National Treasures.  At present, all the sites on their list are in the US.  Of course, the Tangier American Legation is the only US National Historic Landmark located outside the US.  But it's considered sovereign American property, thanks to the Moroccan Sultan who allowed the American Consul to reside at this address in 1821.

The New York-based World Monuments Fund also has a watch list of at-risk sites, with a large grant from American Express for preservation efforts.  The Legation Pavilion might qualify, if enough readers contact WMF.

Palo Alto, California is home to the Global Heritage Fund, working on behalf of UNESCO's World Heritage List.  There is no shortage of institutions or priority lists.  We just need to get recognition as a step to getting help.

There is a more direct route: contribute to TALIM.  US donors can make their tax-deductible contributions to:

Dr. I. William Zartman, President TALIM

c/o SAIS Johns Hopkins University

1740 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20036-1984

Contribute $25,000 and Dr. Zartman will welcome you to the Ambassador's Club of Donors.  Contribute whatever you can, and everyone who knows this unique piece of American history will be grateful.  As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said earlier this year, the "Legation building in Tangier stands as a testament to the continuity" of the relationship between Morocco and the United States.

So let's keep it standing!

Gerald Loftus

Moroccan Questions for War of 1812 Experts

http://www.pbs.org/wned/war-of-1812/home

Today's post is an admission of ignorance, prompted by the resurgence of interest in the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States, with its bicentennial commemorations (check the PBS link above, plus this great Navy/Marine/Coast Guard site, "Our Flag Was Still There").

With the resources at hand (8,000 volume library, JSTOR database of academic journals, and of course the internet), I have found precious little about the impact of the War of 1812 in North Africa and neighboring Spain.  Readers are welcome to chime in.

Here's what I've found, along with the questions raised by my informal research:

• James Simpson would have been the US Consul in Tangier during the war years.  But he was often resident in British Gibraltar.  Would he have been interned as the representative of a warring nation?  If he spent the war years in Tangier, what role did he play?
  

• War vs. Trade: British-French Peninsular War in Spain: G.E. Watson of University College Cardiff wrote in The Historical Journal (1976) that the British were dependent on American exports of foodstuffs to Spain right up to the declaration of the War of 1812, and beyond.  Did North African ports play a role?
  

• Naval action: "In 1810 [Stephen] Decatur took command of the United States and became Commodore of the Southern Station, the command he held when the War of 1812 broke out. On October 25, 1812, while sailing off the coast of Morocco, the United States engaged the British frigate Macedonian, capturing it after a short battle in which the Macedonian's masts were completely shot away."  From the Robinson Library. Question: with Decatur active off Morocco's Atlantic Coast, was there action in the Strait of Gibraltar too?
  

• Postwar naval action: Unbeknownst to the ships at sea, the USS Constitution captured HMS Levant and HMS Cyane on February 20, 1815, three days after Congress ratified the war's end.  The action took place off the coast of Morocco.
  

• Link to Barbary Wars: "In 1812, the new Dey of Algiers, Hajji Ali, rejected the American tribute negotiated in the 1795 treaty as insufficient and declared war on the United States. Algerian corsairs captured an American ship several weeks later. In accordance with an agreement between the Dey and British diplomats, the Algerian declaration was timed to coincide with the start of the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. The war with Britain prevented the U.S. Government from either confronting Algerian forces or ransoming U.S. captives in Algiers. Once the Treaty of Ghent ended war with Britain, President James Madison was able to request that Congress declare an authorization of force on Algiers, which it did on March 3, 1815. The U.S. Navy, greatly increased in size after the War of 1812, was able send an entire squadron, led by Commodore Stephen Decatur, to the Mediterranean." From the State Department Office of the Historian.

• That other Tangier: "British forces used Tangier as a base during the War of 1812..."  Tangier Island, Virginia, that is, in the Chesapeake Bay.

• Elsewhere in the Chesapeake, at Baltimore's Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key was inspired to compose The Star Spangled Banner, which became the US national anthem.  He kept the tune - but it's a good thing he changed the words - from a previous composition, When the Warrior Returns, his ode to the sailors of an earlier Barbary War.  Otherwise we'd still be singing "O say can you see" how the Navy "stained the blue waters with infidel blood..."

Gerald Loftus

Consul, Wrapped In Flag: Odd Legation Tales

On this Fourth of July, when across the United States, and in those places overseas where Americans meet, the red, white and blue decorates many a barbecue and picnic, we display this gift of Moroccans to Americans, dating back to the late 1950s.

American flags haven't flown over the Legation in, what, more than 50 years?  It was in 1961 that the building ceased to house the US Consulate General in Tangier, which moved to a new building.  But in the previous century and a half, Tangier had its share of flag incidents, involving Consuls with, as we would say these days, "issues."

From the State Department Office of the Historian, on James Leib, US Consul Tangier 1832 to 1838:

Near the end of his tour, Leib became an alcoholic and had fits of delirium tremens.  According to his successor, Thomas N. Carr, Leib would wrap himself in an American flag and “would spend whole nights upon the terrace, making signals, . . . to the fleet which he had ordered from the Mediterranean for the purpose of battering the town; at the same time uttering the most discordant sounds, and alarming all the inhabitants.”

Successor Carr (who actually served in Tangier on three different occasions) had troubles of his own:

Carr in turn quarreled with Moroccan authorities over the protocol of his departure.  When he left post in 1842, he chopped down the consular flagpole, which was a sign that relations had been severed.  Carr was reappointed in 1845, but disputes with Moroccan authorities and with the British consul led to his recall in 1848.

We don't know if the drawing at right depicts the repaired flagpole, but it does date to 1849, when Thomas Hart Hyatt had replaced the turbulent Carr. [Image from the State Department OBO Historic Structure Report].

So, on this Fourth of July, when the Legation neither flies the Stars and Stripes nor shoots off fireworks, we wish our readers and supporters a happy Independence Day.  In fact, we just welcomed an American group from Global Lab (Learning Across Borders), as well as a Fulbright scholar from Fez, who decided that she'd spend the 4th of July in America's oldest and first diplomatic building.  We hope it's a Fourth that they won't forget!

Gerald Loftus

Berber Societies: AIMS Conference 2012 at TALIM

After three days of conferencing, the Legation's fountains and birds are again audible in the relative calm of the medina.  Not that we're complaining: a better group of participants couldn't be found.  We have just hosted an illustrious group of experts on Berber Societies, the theme of this year's AIMS - American Institute for Maghrib Studies - conference.

Subtitled New Approaches to Space, Time, and Social Process, the conference organizers sought to provide a voice to

Recent scholarship on Amazigh populations [which] provides important correctives to the nationalist narratives that have long shaped understandings about both the region's populations and their relations to the nation-state.

Academic organizers Jane Goodman of Indiana University and Katherine Hoffman of Nortwestern University devised a lively format for discussion, where conference participants read each other's submissions in advance, and each session was presented in pairs.  This allowed for maximum give and take, and avoided dry reading of papers or endless Powerpoint slides.

More than one participant noted the truly pan-Maghrib nature of the program.  Though Morocco and Algeria, with their large concentrations of Berber-speaking populations and web of state institutions (Morocco's IRCAM; Algeria's HCA) devoted to Berber matters, provided the bulk of the participants, what particularly enriched the proceedings was the presence of scholars from Libya, Tunisia, and Mauritania, who are less frequently heard from in Berber studies fora.

One Tunisian Berber is constantly challenged by her fellow citizens' incredulity; for them, Berbers are in Algeria and Morocco, or if they acknowledge a Tunisian link, place it in a distant past.  "You're Berber?  Prove it!" - daring her to say something in her language, which in some southern Tunisian villages is all children under five can speak.

Berber identity in Algeria has had its political manifestations - parties like the FFS and RCD are largely populated by Kabyles - which has not necessarily been the case in Morocco, where Amazigh culture and language has been the focus of Berber associations.  Even Morocco's important independence movement in the 1920s, the Rif War, led by Abdelkrim el Khatabi, was not necessarily for Berber freedom, but rather to rid northern Morocco of Spanish and French occupiers.  But that hasn't kept some modern Berber activists from canonizing Abdelkrim as a Berber icon.

Pan-Maghrib Berberism is made difficult by the incredible multiplicity of language variants, where Algerian Berbers in the eastern Aures Mountains might have an easier time of understanding the language of the Moroccan Rif than that of their neighboring Kabylie.

In Libya, where under Gaddafi their language and culture were suppressed, Berbers joined the struggle early on, and their intervention was often decisive in the west of the country.  In newly-liberated areas, Tamazight language media began to flourish, and people were finally free to give their children Berber names.

Language was central to our discussions.  In the area around Agadir in south-central Morocco, communities might promote use of their Berber language Tashelhit, without necessarily feeling part of some wider Amazigh movement.  Some experts are concerned with the effect of homogenization of Berber, with the centralizing tendency to create a sort of "modern Berber," a standardized hybrid that may be rootless and ignore the rich variety of Berber across this huge expanse of North Africa.  

We included several cultural events as part of the program.  By a stroke of good luck, this year's Tarab Tanger festival - dedicated to Moroccan and world traditional music - featured Moroccan Berber ensemble Inouraz from Agadir, led by singer Khalid El Berkaoui.  This Amazigh spiritual music - El Berkaoui's lively vocals accompanied by a quartet playing traditional instruments - got the crowd going, with lots of young fans exhibiting their three finger salute.  This was even a revelation to some of the experts: it's a Berber symbol of akal, awal, afgan - land, language, man.

We were also treated to a showing of short film "The Red Apple," whose "making of" and analysis by graduate student Tilila Baida led to a lively debate over Berber symbolism and the meaning of what it is to be Berber to the youthful filmmakers.  Though the brief dialogue and voice-over, as well as the on screen text, were all in Berber, the filmmakers didn't hide the fact that they spoke to each other in Moroccan Arabic while shooting the film.  But the film is still a Berber film.

It hasn't always been easy to be Berber, whose language has often been suppressed, and whose communities have been subdivided by administrative boundaries, under both colonial rule and after.  But after years of Arabization and centralization, the recent flourishing of Berber languages, of cultural movements, of young people experimenting with new media, show a sort of "Amazigh Spring" that doesn't have to be political to make its impact.  In many parts of the Maghrib, it's okay to be Berber again.

Gerald Loftus