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203 u 12 African Voices in Contemporary Spain Cristián H. Ricci Introduction The two former Spanish colonies in Africa, Morocco and Equatorial Guinea, provide ambivalent literary responses towards autonomous, indigenous, and national identities. The fact that Spain had been in those countries for quite a long time, and that nowadays, the presence of the Spanish government has been replaced by private corporations, Spanish Satellite TV, Spanish NGOs, and official institutions such as Cervantes Institutes and Spanish Cultural Cooperation Centers, forces us to deconstruct irremediable “processes of hybridization” (García Canclini, “Noticias recientes ” 5–6) of identity markers between the autochthonous and the Spanish/European in the field of cultural production of both countries. As an example of the continued presence of Spain and of Spanish, one could mention the fact that there are six Cervantes Institutes in Morocco, the second largest number in any one country in the world (Brazil has eight). In Equatorial Guinea, a country that “does not have a single newspaper stand nor a bookstore” (Eloisa Vaello Marco), the work of the Spanish Cultural Centers of Malabo and Bata is key, not only to help local writers to publish their books but also for the promotion and distribution in Guinea and Spain of the same authors that Spanish presses publish in the Peninsula. In this essay I will briefly analyze the works of authors that reject the idea of monolithic identities and those of African intellectuals who, in Moroccan philosopher Mohamed Abd al-Jabri’s words, “break away with certain kind of fundamentalist relation with tradition [. . .] in order to artistically approach an ampler person­ ality, liberating, contemporaneous, dialogical, political, and religiously independent” (1, 129). At the same time, my purpose is to build my analytical discourse following reflections by Guinean writer Donato Ndongo. He has argued that the language of African writers makes it possible to impose the texture, sound, rhythm, idiom, and vocabulary of his/her culture as signifiers of a cultural experience constructed as “difference” (“Literatura guineana” 3, 6). In this vein, I advocate for a critical dialogue among texts and authors that creates an intracultural exchange with other 204 CRISTIÁN H. RICCI “­ southern-subaltern” cultures: “[Nuestra literatura] también debe ser útil, para que sirva a nuestras necesidades sociales, puesto que luchamos al mismo tiempo por la construcción cultural de nuestras sociedades, contra todas las formas de manipulaci ón, contra las tiranías que nos sojuzgan y condicionan nuestras vidas, contra el racismo, contra todas las formas de mixtificación de la realidad” (Ndongo, “Literatura guineana” 6) (a literature that aims to reconcile ethic and aesthetic towards the ultimate goal of representing the social needs of Africans; a literature that fights against all kind of manipulations, against the tyrannies that oppress African nations, against racism, against all forms of mystification of reality).1 The essay will be divided into three sections: 1) Moroccan literature in Spanish; 2) Amazigh (Berber) literature in Catalan; and 3) Equatorial Guinean Literature in Spanish. Spanish Language in Morocco: From the Protectorate to the “Return of the Moors” Moroccan intellectuals have been writing in Spanish since the times of the Protectorate (1912–1956). Most published journalistic chronicles and/or political columns (Abdul Latif Jatib, Mohammad Tensamani, and Mohamed Ibn Azzuz Hakim were the most active writers since the late 30s to the 50s). The latter, a pro-Franco historian , became a referent for short story Moroccan writers in Spanish with his books Rihla por Andalucía (1942) and Cuentos populares marroquíes (1955). Also, during the Protectorate, there were Moroccan literati who published short stories and poems in Spanish in newspapers such as España, Marruecos, Unidad Marroquí, Diario Marroqu í, Diario de África, El Lukus, among others. Later, on the verge of Independence, during the late fifties, sixties, and seventies, literary journals such as Al-Motamid (in Larache), Ketama (in Tétouan), Mauritania (in Tangier) and Cuadernos de la Biblioteca de Tetuán published Moroccan writers of Spanish expression. Besides the daily news section in Spanish of the Moroccan Television Network (RTM), that started in 1970, and that have been anchored by two journalist and fiction writers such as Mohamed Chakor (eight books of narrative and poetry published and self-published in Spain) and Said Jdidi (four novels published in Morocco), it is also important to mention that in 1980 the French newspaper L’Opinion started publishing a weekly section called “La página en español.” In the latter there were contributions from the mentioned Chakor...

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