DiscusiÃ³n de la moralidad

Toponymy

N.B. : the French tradition envisages, for the C-W communication of names of the administrative or political units, of the Hyphens between the various elements of a made up name and a capital with all the elements (except articles…). It would be thus more suitable to write “ Equatorial Guinea ”. Nevertheless the majority use is to write Guinea Equatoriale as in particular the annexed Liste with the Arrêté does it of November 4th, 1993, the Petit Larousse 2007 (and 2003 ), or the Dictionnaire Hatchet 2007 … The the Petit Robert of the proper names 2006 writes however Equatorial Guinea and Republic of Equatorial Guinea (to note small the R ).

Time of colonization, the country constituted the Spanish Guinea .

History

Prehistory

Our knowledge of the prehistory of the Equatorial Guinea follows a geographical subdivision, the island of Bioko on the one hand, the province of the Littoral between Cameroun and Gabon on the other hand.

The island of Bioko was always connected to the continent until -8000 years by a “bridge” which as from this time will slowly be immersed by the continuation of the rise of water of the Atlantic. This movement of the marine level had begun towards -11000 years with climate warming from the end from the last Ice Age. So it is certain that this territory was to be inhabited by wandering populations of hunter-collectors, following the example what is known on the current continent.

The vestiges of a human presence were discovered excavates some with the site of Mossumu (prov. Littoral) dated before -30000 years. It is about an industry known as “Sangoenne”, well-known at that time through central Africa. Some other sites, of surface or in stratigraphic outcrop, indicate that the Middle Age of Pierre is well represented in this part of the country. Thereafter, of the vestiges, still badly dated, illustrate around Bata and of Rio Muni permanence with the presence with the Man, nomad, mason stone and hunter-collector, until -3000 years.

On the island of Bioko, it is about another reading; this one will be doubtless modified in the years to come with the installation from archaeological research projects. Three layers “pre-Neolithic eras” were listed. Only that of the seminar of Banapa in the south of Malabo was excavated in the Sixties by a Spanish anthropologist. All that can be known as that it is former to the “Timbabé Tradition” of Bioko, is dated it from -2000 years. It should be noted that on the Large island of Elobey, of the stones cut similar to a Recent Age of Pierre were discovered on the surface. These lucky finds support the idea of a great seniority of the human presence on the whole of the équato-Guinean islands before they are definitively separated from the continent.

Lastly, the expansion of the village lifestyle in central Africa implies in its modeling, and with the bringing together of the data of linguistics, the installation on the island of Bioko of villages as of -3500 years. For the moment nothing was discovered to check this assumption. The archaeological sequence of the island, in addition to the pre-Neolithic era already mentioned, starts with the “Timbabé Tradition” known on thirteen points of the littoral, perhaps as of -2000 years. A continuity of occupation of this island from now on is well attested until the historical time. Following the “Timbabé”, one knows the Traditions “Carboneras”, “Bolaopi”, “Buela”, and finally “Balombe”. This last Tradition is historical.

On the continent, between Cameroun and Gabon, the data of excavations remain lacunar but are sufficient to affirm that the sequence supplements which remains to be discovered will be in the broad outlines similar to what is known in south-Cameroun and in the area of Libreville in Gabon.

First contacts with Europe

The Portuguese navigators occupied the islands of Príncipe and São Tomé since the medium of the 15th century and it is from there, between 1469 and 1474, which they explored the zone of the Golfe of Guinea.

January 1st 1471, Juan de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar unloaded on an island which they called “C anno good” (of the happy new year) and which was to preserve the name of” Annobón” until today. In 1474 another Portuguese, Fernando Póo, discovers in the Golfe of Biafra an island which it names “Formosa” (the beautiful one) but which will bear finally its name. These two islands, with that of Corisco, were used a long time like landing stages for the slaves.

The climate and the diseases decimated many Spaniards, members of the successive forwardings sent starting from 1830.

With the treaties of San Ildefonso and Pardo (1777 and 1778), the Portugal delivered to the Spain the islands of Fernando Póo, Annobón and of Corisco, in exchange of the Colonia LED Sacramento. In same time, Spain saw itself granting freedom to trade on the Guinean coasts since the Delta of Niger until the Cape Lopez, located at the current Gabon. In this year 1778, a forwarding started from Montevideo to take possession of these territories; but after the unloading with Fernando Póo (current Bioko), the members of forwarding were touched by serious diseases which caused a mutiny and the failure of the voyage. During many years, the islands were thus isolated from the metropolis, except for some ships of Buenos Aires or Montevideo which made stopover there.

British occupation (1827 - 1845)

In 1827, Spain authorizes the colonization of the island by the Britanniques. Santa Isabel, port and principal city of the island of Bioko, takes then the name of Port Clarence. It is there that a court intended is made up to repress the traffic of slaves.

Starting from 1832 of many Spanish, travellers, scientists or official visit the island, which are finally asserted again by Spain in 1845, year during which Nicolás de Manterola unloads the first missionary there.

Return of Spain (1845 - 1968)

In 1856, the Spain founds officially the Spanish Guinea, initially reduced to the maritime field of the Guinean coasts, and its principal island. In 1858 is sent the first general governor of the island, the latter profiting one year later from the statute of Spanish colony.

However, the field of more than 800 000 km ² left in Guinea by the Portugal with the Spain by the treaties of San Ildefonso (1777) and of Pardo (1778) are more or less abandoned, and Spain meets many difficulties to make admit its property rights near the other European powers which come to settle there: the France with the Gabon, the Germany with the Cameroun and Great Britain with the Nigeria.

Spain sends a geographer, Manuel Iradier there Bulfy, which gets busy starting from 1884 to reannex the territories of the Rio Muni, while passing from the treaties with the local leaders.

The Conférence of Berlin of 1884-1885 on the “division of Africa” turns to the disadvantage of Spain, which sees itself granting only 180.000 km ², without counting the dispossessions whose it is the object on the ground on behalf of France.

Vis-a-vis its recriminations, a Franco-Spanish commission is created, which ends to the treated of Paris of June 27th 1900 which leaves in Spain only one territory of 26.000 km ² on the continent, corresponding to current the Rio Muni.

During the Spanish civil war, on October 4th 1936, 488 men embark port of Las Palmas in direction of the Spanish Guinea. They meet in water of Bata the republican ship the Fernando Poo , which is cast following the attack of the pro-Franco .

Throughout the end of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, many Spaniards settle, mainly with Bioko, and begin or continue the exploitation of the Cacao and the Café, which had been brought back islands close to São Divide into volumes-and-Principle. Little by little the infrastructures and the administrative organization develop, the economy being based on the plantations, but leaving with the variation the African populations, as well from the point of view of the occupied stations as of the access to education. go

The transition towards independence (1959 - 1968)

Political and institutional evolutions

Spanish Guinea knew several institutional configurations. Until 1959 Guinea is a “colony”. It is managed by the director of the places and colonies of Africa, Jose Diaz de Villagas since 1945. This one is placed hierarchically under the under-secretary with the Presidency, which will become Vice-président, Luis Carrero Blanco. The director names a General governor with Santa-Isabel, which appoints itself a civil governor in Rio Muni. These governors exert an absolute power in the colony and must return of account only to their superiors. Juridically it is the system known as of the “patronage of the natives” which is in place. There are in the colony two types of individuals: “émancipés” and “natives”. The latter are regarded as minors and are attached to a “house of the natives”, managed by Spaniards, to which they must be addressed to be able to move, to be able to buy landed property, to be able to marry, and for all their relations with the colonizing state. In the event of lawsuit, it is their house which represents them in front of the judges. Émancipés are Europeans, Fernandinos and certain colonial civils servant Bubis and fangs. One also finds the “semiones” which has a mixed statute. The natives can become émancipés by a contest very difficult to obtain. Indeed if education is obligatory in primary education it remains of a very basic level, one requests from the Masters only one level lower than the Spanish baccalaureat. And it is only very late that, in particular through the Indigenous School Superior, the colonial administration starts to send Guineans in Spain to study. At the time of independence they are less than one around fifty in Spain and none still returned to Guinea with its diploma.

But as from the years 1950 Spain starts to yield with the requirements of UNO, it wants to put an end to its insulation on the international scene. In 1955 it integrates the community of the Nations Plain and in 1956 Franco names a new Minister for the external Businesses, Fernando María de Castiella. This one wants to give again gloss in Spain in the world and its first project is to reinstate Gibraltar in the Spanish bosom. This British enclave in the Iberian peninsula is, from the point of view of the pro-Franco mode, a humiliation for Spain. All along the presence of Castiella to the government, until 1969, UNO is thus the theater of a confrontation between the United Kingdom and Spain. (Today the question still regularly does the one of the newspapers but an agreement signed in 2005 seems to have found a durable solution with the problem.) To mitigate its disadvantage UNO to be a small dictatorial power vis-a-vis a great democracy, Castiella decides to present Gibraltar like an English colony in Spain. He thus seeks to attract himself the support of the new Afro-Asian countries which fight for the decolonization using the Résolution 1514 of UNO.

Only Spain can present itself with difficulty as a colonized country while at the same time it still has colonies in North Africa and equatorial Africa. Castiella and its ministry support an independence of the Spanish colonies which, moreover, would make it possible Spain to gain two additional allied votes at the General meeting of UNO. But the colonies are regarded as integral parts of the Spanish territory and do not depend logically on the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, but of the Presidency of the Government, in load of the Sous-secrétaire minister to the Presidency and right-hand man of Free, Luis Carrero Blanco. However this one is savagely opposed to the decolonization, some affirm that it would have private interests in the colony although Javier Tussel, its biographer, the lunatic one. Always it is that the transition towards independence from Guinea, from the Constitutional Conference of October 30th, 1967 to the coup d'etat of March 1969, will be marked painfully by this competition.

In 1959, after a compromise between the two tendencies, Spain thus changes the statute of its colony, and transforms it into two Spanish provinces in theory like the others: that of Fernando Poo and that of Provided Rio. This implies the end of the system of “patronage”. Officially the Guineans become Spanish citizens with whole share, with equality with Europeans. The Guineans thus obtain the right to vote like the Spaniards. But the “organic democracy”, places from there in pro-Franco Spain, restricted the vote with the corporations of trades, the “household heads”, and personalities named by Franco. This limits the impact of the elections logically. Moreover Spanish elected officials have only one advisory role. To grant the full Spanish citizenship to the Guineans thus does not represent a great risk for a capacity which leaves already if few rights to its citizens of metropolis. However the situation remains discriminatory, for example the Guineans must require an authorization to travel of one province to the other and in metropolis, the school programs are far from being on the level of those of the peninsula. The freedom fighters thus continue to maintain the pressure while UNO criticizes the lack of integration of the Guineans in the leading authorities their provinces. Spain must thus be solved to concede a new statute known as of autonomy in Guinea Equatoriale.

With the end of the year 1963 is adopted in Guinea by referendum the ley bases LED regimen autonomo. By this law an entity is created gathering the two provinces of Fernando Poo and Rio Muni. The model of the organic democracy Spanish is respected with its system of limited vote, but the Guineans are proposed, one founds for example a president of Guinea Equatoriale, incarnated by the catechist Bonifacio Ondo Edu helped by eight advisers with attributions of ministers and persons in charge before a general meeting. Finally the budget of Guinea cannot contribute any more to that of the metropolis and the political parties, even independence are authorized. But Free guard the upper hand on Guinea, in particular thanks to the figure of the General Police chief, directly under his control, and which has a right to veto on all that occurs. For this reason a party as MONALIGE will divide between those which around Pastor Torao Sikara agree to militate in their country, and those which around Atanasio Ndong Miyone prefer to remain in exile and to fight of outside.

However it is necessary well certainly to recognize that, with the provincialisation and especially with autonomy, Spain starts, tardily but with a certain effectiveness to develop its colony. For Carrero Blanco and its partisans, it is the best means of keeping the colony while showing than it is not one, to make a “African Puerto Rico of it”. For Castiella and the Spanish civils servant with UNO it is a first stage towards an independence under control of the metropolis. Spain rather poor, it is profited forever from assistance to the rebuilding after the civil war and after the second world war it was found very isolated. But if one compares with the Portugal, quite as poor, and its immense colonies very difficult to manage, Spanish Guinea profits from a considerable advantage: she very small and is inhabited little. Thus it is enough there to an investment relatively relatively low, that Spain can agree, to emphasize it. Guinea becomes even the province of Spain where the public investments are highest and which knows the strongest growth. In 1968 the effort bore its fruits, the primary education education system extremely before reduced made it possible Guinea Equatoriale to be able to pride on the best rate of schooling of Black Africa. The development of the plantations and the forestry developments caused a rise of the GDP per capita until making some highest of Black Africa with 326 $. Finally the promotion of the black elites developed much. A few years before nobody was not interested in the underdeveloped colony of an underdeveloped colonial power, in 1968 one does not speak any more but about “small Switzerland” of Africa. One includes/understands well the astonishment of Rene Pélissier who wonders since 1964 “how these three tens of thousands of km2 could be transformed into one of the richest areas of Africa and best equipped, when they even were not completely explored only 37 years ago”. Admittedly the richness is not well distributed, corruption reaches tops, education developed tardily does not make it possible yet to have a number of sufficient local graduates to make function the colony. Actually all still depends on the Spaniards, but Guinea seems to be itself resolutely committed in the way of the development.

However 17 months after the process of decolonization was engaged with the opening of the Constitutional Conference on October 30th, 1967 Guinea Equatoriale disappointed all the hopes and sank in a dramatic economic bankruptcy.

The madness of Francisco Macias Nguema

In April 1969, after one year and half of fight for the capacity, Guinea Equatoriale passed under the control of only one man, Francisco Macias Nguema. However of many authors underline the psychological disorders from which would have suffered first president de Guinée Equatoriale. Among them most convincing is Agustin Nze Nfumu which worked a long time in its cabinet before being exiled in 1979 and to return the same year after the fall of Macias. According to him, Macias is before a a whole victim, it describes it like a sick being of long time, paranoiac, prone to crises of panic and delirious puffs. It would have been thus at the same time easily easy to handle and unverifiable. To look after Macias in great quantity a local opium, the banga smoked, which seems it did nothing but worsen its state. It attests with other authors that at the time of its two visits in Spain as vice-president of the autonomous mode in 1965 then like participant in the Constitutional Conference in 1967, Macias had to consult, on request express train of the general Police chief of Guinea, anxious of its crises of recurring hysterias, two famous Spanish psychiatrists. Emiliano Buale Boriko gives even the name of these experts, Doctor Lopez Ibor of Barcelona and Doctor Manuel Duran Sacristan of Madrid. Always according to Buale Boriko they would have diagnosed concert a cerebral suffering caused by the regular ingestion of substances hallucinogens. Later, at the time of the voyage of Macias to UNO paid by the lawyer Garcia-Trevijano to plead the cause of sound secretariado cojunto in 1968, the same authors tell that it would have also met an American therapeutist at the request of the Spanish delegate to UNO Jaime de Piniés. Finally the debates which took place at the time of the Constitutional Conference testify to a certain imbalance of Macias in its speeches. It shows a fickleness which can surprise, passing from an apology for Hitler and Nazisme with that of the Soviet Union, glorifiant the United States then insulting Spain before swearing an eternal fidelity to him. Donato Ndongo Bidyogo does not hesitate to speak about it about a “deep mental disorder”. And indeed once the capacity is completely acquired to him, it sinks in a violence without terminal. It makes stop and generally assassinate the majority of the deputies and the ministers. It pushes almost all the Spaniards who lived over there to give up their houses and especially their stations. I.e. there are no more civils servant to make go the State. Finances are quickly in a dramatic state. Guinea sinks at a vertiginous speed: in January 1971 the Spaniards are solved to prohibit the publication of any nonofficial information coming from Guinea Equatoriale, this true setting under forty is the obvious sign of the impotence of the Spaniards who prefer to hide in the world what occurs over there. The international community, UNO and OAU at the head also decide to give up denouncing this new dictatorship which, after pro-Franco colonization, extends on this small country.

The role of the United Nations

The role of UNO in the transition towards independence is at the same time essential and rather obscure. Its African and Asian novel members implied themselves much in the process of emancipation of Guinea Equatoriale with respect to the metropolis, in particular within the Comité for the Decolonization of UNO or Committee of the 24 because of the number of countries which composed it. Guinea Equatoriale is a true practical exercise for UNO. The preceding decolonizations were carried out by the colonizing powers, often without dialog with UNO. Spain on the other hand does not seem size nor very motivated in fight against the resolutions and instructions of the United Nations. It cannot manage only its withdrawal of its colonies like made France or the United Kingdom and must be based on the international community. For the first time of the countries just decolonized, joined together within UNO but also of the OAU (Organization of African Unity), have the possibility of influencing themselves efficiently the decolonization of a third country. But this first attempt shows what it is allowed to call a failure. The decolonization of Guinea Equatoriale is to be arranged among the transitions least successful from Africa. The objective posted to give birth to a new state and to achieve a making of the capacities under good conditions completely failed.

In 1968, thanks to the Spanish investments for the development finally agreed with autonomy under the pressure of the United Nations and the OAU, Guinea starts to reach a certain prosperity finally. One in any case promises a bright future within the under-area to him. At the same time the Guineans know a progressive widening during several years of their rights and freedoms. Obtaining independence, very awaited, was to be a new stage, a means of accelerating the development process of the country. However it was only one kind of apogee. After independence, Guinea Equatoriale regresses at an impressive speed as well on the economic plan as on that of the rights and freedoms. The Guineans will wait a long time before finding the level and the quality of life which they had with independence.

One can wonder why thus these so effective international institutions up to now were unable to prevent this true fall of an entire country. And beyond, once dictatorship of Macias installed, why the international community keep silent itself. That raises the question of the goals of UNO, and in its wake of the OAU. The objective posted vis-a-vis in Guinea Equatoriale is double. To bring this country until independence, but also to bring it until the democracy. Indeed when Spain proposes to make of Guinea a state independent but organized according to the model of the pro-Franco mode, UNO refuses. This project fills one of the two objectives. Thus not-democratic Spain is forced to write a democratic constitution for its colony. It is a success of UNO and a demonstration of its influence.

Only once the independence obtained under satisfactory democratic conditions, UNO gives up its right of interference in Equatorial Guinea. The second objective of democratization is abandoned since first is filled. Guinea sinks then in a dictatorship, undoubtedly quite worse with that of Free which it left just, without UNO making the least remark. Once the completed decolonization, it does not matter that the new mode is dictatorial and sanguinary, they are internal businesses with the new country from now on. If UNO can impose its democratic principles on the still colonized states, it seems to become impotent vis-a-vis independent states.

One can thus in the final analysis think that a dictatorship postcoloniale exerted by somebody of the country is more legitimate with the eyes of UNO than a colonial dictatorship thus exerted by a foreigner, when well even this one is much less hard. UNO can intervene only when she considers that several nations are concerned. Thus it intervenes in the decolonization between Guinea and Spain, but not between the Biafra and the Nigeria at the same time. And when Bubis de Fernando Poo take again the vocabulary and the arguments of the rights of the people to have them-even to reject what they regard as a colonization of their island by Rio Muni, they are not heard. UNO sliced, Guinea Equatoriale is a nation and any separatist movement is spring of the internal policy of Guinea. Biafra either is not regarded as not colonized, it is thus out of the question to intervene against Nigeria, so dramatic is the situation on the ground. It is an internal business. With stronger reason when there is no more no separatist claim but simply of respect of the human rights. All occurs like so with a dictator who martyrise his own people, all confused ethnos groups, such a small intervention is it, is proscribed. The objective of decolonization of UNO is definitely priority on that of democratization.

This question of the Droit of interference remains very current. Today there remains the principal justification with interventions but one sees appearing a new jurisprudence which would legitimate an U.N. intervention in an internal business in a sovereign state in the event of genocide.

A dictatorship forced to carry out a democratic process in its colony: a paradox

First Spanish to exert their right to vote according to democratic criteria after the Civil war was the inhabitants of the provinces of Guinea Equatoriale. To include/understand that it should be known that, during all the XXe century, Guinea is the only country whose decolonization was carried out as a whole by a dictatorship. One knows the difficulty which the great liberal democracies with émanciper had their colonies, although their existences were in open contradictions with all the humanistic principles and values which these countries preached.

Spain of Free, it, forever defended the democracy, the Human rights or the freedom of the individual. However, following the international pressure, it had to apply them to its colony and to give its independence to Guinea. It will still have to be waited ten years so that the metropolis concedes with its own citizens the rights which it had already granted to its colony. It is necessary to consider this paradox to include/understand the difficulties of the transition towards independence. One can wonder whether it were possible to democratize Guinea before Spain. Wasn't the end of the dictatorship in the metropolis a stage obliged before the decolonization?

One can note two great influences of the dictatorial culture of Spain in the course of the process of decolonization of Guinea Equatoriale. According to Alicia Campos Serrano at the time of the Constitutional Conference the pro-Franco mode is rather dissatisfied to see the Spanish press explaining to its readers how the government is granting a liberal and democratic constitution its colony of Guinea Equatoriale, whereas at the same time it represses the movements for the democracy in Spain. This is why the government decides the law of the “Official Secrecies” in April 1968 which more largely censures initially all information on the Constitutional Conference then all that relates to Guinea Equatoriale. This law was repealed in 1976, but the classification of “will matiera reservada”, therefore inaccessible to the researchers, remains over all this period of 1967 (the law having had a retroactive effect to cover all the Constitutional Conference) with 1976 and only another law could allow the declassification of these files today. When one sees the difficulty of Spain of opening the files of the Civil war, more than 70 years afterwards, one can be rather pessimistic as for the opening of those which relate to the decolonization of Guinea Equatoriale. The absence of clear rupture between the democratic regime current and the pro-Franco dictatorship makes difficult any return on a past near often ashamed.

This paradox of a dictatorship decolonizing according to democratic principles also arises in the political culture of the actors of the processes, as well Guinean as Spanish. Initially the selection criteria of the Guinean representatives to the Conference are largely arbitrary. Then during the Conference even, the Spanish delegation will find itself in a difficult situation: a majority of the Guinean delegates supports a constitution project very little democratic written by a Spanish opponent with Francoism, Antonio Garcia-Trevijano. The motivations of this man are doubtful, one can think that he seeks to embarrass the Spanish government before the international community in the incentive to adopt a nondemocratic constitution for his colony. The Spanish delegation thus finds itself in front of a difficult dilemma. Either it satisfies the democratic rule of the majority and adopts a nondemocratic constitution for Guinea, but it is exposed then to the anger of UNO at the time when it makes disproportionate efforts to be made accept by the international community to recover Gibraltar. Either it finds its old reflexes authoritative and despized Guinean majority within the Conference to arbitrarily impose a constitution written by it, but democratic this one. It is this option which chooses finally the Spanish government to leave this imbroglio. But it discredits at the same time this Constitutional Conference which it itself had convened.

After the adoption of the Constitution by referendum and the election of Macias Nguema with the presidency of the Republic, the new country has many difficulties of functioning. In addition to counting only on very little trained personnel, its policies must act in the respect of a democratic constitution contrary completion with their political culture inherited Spain. Macias, which was a long time a colonial civil servant is unable. He can control only same manner that he always saw the Spaniards doing it: with authoritarianism. The frictions are inevitable with the countervailing powers which implies necessarily a democratic constitution. Macias will finish finally, a year after the promulgation of the first constitution, by repealing this one and to return to a mode of sole party like that in place to Spain, putting thus fine at the Guinean democratic experiment.

One can finally wonder whether this decolonization were possible so much on behalf of pro-Franco Spain the lack of democratic culture is obvious in the course of the Constitutional Conference as in the behavior of the elites at the time of independence.

The last movement colonialist

One can also charge the failure of the transition to the double game from certain Spanish. Indeed the majority of the colonists, grouped around the vice-president Luis Carrero Blanco believed until the end, even after the proclamation of independence, that Guinea Equatoriale, or at least the island of Fernando Poo where their interests were concentrated, could remain Spanish. They fought until the end and by all the means against this independence which they refused. Their responsibility is large in the failure of democratic Guinea Equatoriale. Today, with the distance, it seems to us that this decolonization was inevitable. The wave of emancipation of the people colonized, since Ghandi and the Independence of India in 1947 until the fight of the Angolans for their independence in the Seventies, while passing by the emergence of the third world to the Conférence of Bandung in 1955 was irresistible. But in 1968 one did not have the same retreat and one could, even while being realistic, to think that the wave of decolonization touched at its end and that part of Africa was going to remain under the control of Europeans. This can explain the eagerness of which made proof certain Spanish refuse the independence of Guinea Equatoriale.

Admittedly UNO defended a total decolonization and a withdrawal of the European powers of Africa. Even at that time most credible was to imagine that the last colonial bastions of the British, Portuguese and even of French in Djibouti and in the Comoros were going quickly to yield. Besides except for Portugal these countries wished to get rid of these somewhat anachronistic remainders their colonial empires and to return the capacity to the Africans. But at the same time a contrary movement is reinforced and appeared increasingly realistic, with the eyes of the colonists at least.

First of all the great Utopias of the decolonization are repercussions. The independent countries are not more prosperous than those remained under European influence. The worse war of Biafra, direct consequence of a decolonization badly undertaken by the English, beats full sound with a few miles of the coasts of Guinea Equatoriale when this one reaches independence. Portugal de Salazar does not seem to have any intention to consider its African colonies differently than like provinces of Portugal, the number of white colonists is there even in constant increase.

To the same moment, the Rhodesia gives an example bursting of resistance to the vagueness of decolonization. Ian Smith proclaimed unilaterally in 1965 the independence of its country to safeguard the white domination. In 1968 the experiment rhodésienne can seem durable (it lasts in addition until 1980), with the South Africa, the Namibia, the Angola and especially the Mozambique, Rhodesia forms a block of resistance to the movement of decolonization. Better since 1967 and the War the six day old in the Middle East, Suez Canal is closed. The maritime trade must thus be folded back on the Cape of Good Hope. In this manner, the wearing of Southern Africa become stages impossible to circumvent of the world commerce and it becomes increasingly difficult for Europe to maintain a policy of boycott vis-a-vis these segregationist countries.

Finally the United States embourbés in full war of Vietnam so viscéralement does not see a so evil eye these modes anticommunists, whereas the new African states are often close to the USSR. The work of Jacques Lantier on the history of Africa published in 1968 gives well an account of the climate of uncertainty which reigned at the time. In its epilog, thus writes at the end of the Sixties, this historian announces his doubt about the future of the continent, it wonders whether the decolonization will continue or not.

Thus one includes/understands better than the Spanish colonists of Guinea believed until the end capacity to keep the control of this country. This baited fight, initially within the Spanish government, then against the new state independent of Guinea Equatoriale will be extremely detrimental. It will feed the racial hate, will make it possible to the president Macias Nguema to give free course to its paranoiac tendencies, providing him good excuses to monopolize all the capacities, while showing the Spaniards of interference.

The myth of the “golden age”

Finally it is not useless to consider that the period of autonomy was not this boom only one often presents. It is current in Africa to intend to say with a certain nostalgia which the end of colonization was a kind of “golden age” of Africa. There is a share of truth in this belief. At that time the metropolises fear the push of the independence movements and try to be opposed to it by widening the rights of the natives and while finally launching consequent policies of investment in their colonies. In the case of Guinea this vision of the things is particularly developed. The autonomy whose this country profited from 1964 to 1968 left the one period memory of development without precedent in a climate of freedom ever found until today. Many buildings go back to this time and Bonifacio Ondo Edu president of the autonomous mode assassinated by Macias in 1969 left in the spirits the idealized image of a leader débonnaire and devoted to his people.

But when one looks at there more closely, one discovers that this last phase of the pro-Franco domination on Guinea is far from being exemplary. Corruption had reached tops. Reports/ratios of the time for the under-secretary with the Carrero presidency, tell an edifying anecdote. The number plates of the vehicles of the members of the self government carried the letters GUARANTEES like Gobierno Autonomo de Guinea Ecuatorial, but the population read there Gastos Abusivos de Guinea Ecuatorial, i.e. Abusive Dépenses of Guinea Equatoriale. At that time the members of the government gained 100 managed times the average wages of one their and bought properties with prolifically in all the country. And Rene Pélissier in the account which it makes of his voyage in Guinea in 1964 described infrastructures in very bad condition and a population exceeded by the sumptuous expenditure of his government whereas the roads are in a lamentable state. It is thus seen that the situation was not ideal for this period known as of the " autonomie" and that to speak about “apogee” in connection with this period is certainly excessive. It thus should be relativized the recession that would have brought the independence and the arrival of Macias Nguema to the capacity.

It is probably in comparison with the hardness of the mode of Macias which followed, that the Guineans kept until today a so soft memory and undoubtedly idealized EC period of autonomy.

When in April 1969 president Macias puts an end to the multi-party system, the majority of Europeans were already evacuated in catastrophe. The country, suddenly private of its frameworks, its civils servant, and its investors sinks right now in economic stagnation. This situation is seen unanimously like a failure of the policy of opening promoted and carried out by the Foreign Minister Fernando Maria de Castiella. If one adds his failure to obtain the retrocession of Gibraltar by the United Kingdom like consequence of the withdrawal of Guinea, one understands that the minister, already isolated for a long time in this government, falls definitively in disgrace. As of the end of 1969 it is replaced by Gregorio Lopez-Cheer of Castro. Consequently Shine Carrero Blanco, vice-president since 1967 and enemy eternal of Castiella in the government, finds the upper hand on the colonial businesses.

The decolonization is not then any more with the day order. The astonishing bracket “third-mondiste” of the Spanish foreign politics is closed again. Guinea Equatoriale is an already folded business and Spain is unaware of as much as possible sound old colony. All occurs as if Spain sought to make forget its responsibility in the situation for Guinea. The policy towards the Sahara, last Spanish colony after the withdrawal of Ifni in 1969, becomes, with the manner of that of its Portuguese neighbor, much more intransigent. Spain, benefitting from the conflicts bringing into play its Moroccan, Algerian neighbors and Mauritanians, is opposed to any form of independence. It is necessary to await the death of Shine Carrero Blanco, assassinated by ETA the year even where it replaces Franco with the Presidency of the government in 1973, to consider an evolution of the situation. It is finally following the “green Marche” by which Morocco invades the Sahara into 1975 peacefully that Spain withdraws its last colony. Today the consequences of this too late and not negotiated decolonization are still felt, the problem of the the Western Sahara is not regulated and continuous to do the one of the topicality regularly. The retreat of the decolonization of the Sahara rises directly from the dramatic events of the transition towards independence from Guinea Equatoriale.

Which are these events, which it exactly happened between October 1967 and March 1969 to Guinea Equatoriale? How a rather favorable situation a priori, could degenerate into such a drama? The comprehension of the events is essential to hear the geopolitical configuration of today, exacerbated by the oil which runs with flood since 1995 in Guinea Equatoriale. But it can also bring an original lighting on the postcoloniaux power struggles in general. The decolonization of Africa is not a simple business, the stakes which it recovers are multiple. Was the objective of UNO right, in the final analysis, to promote local dictatorships in place and places of the colonial dictatorships? Did the decolonization here also allow, as one could observe it elsewhere in Africa, to perpetuate this pro-Franco colonial State of which she wanted precisely to get rid? Why did none the African States succeed in being democratized whereas the majority of its leaders had been educated in Europe and had even exerted responsibilities sometimes there?

Policy

See also: Political of Guinea Equatoriale

The Equatorial Guinea is a republic of the presidential type. The current president is Teodoro Obiang Nguema, nephew of Macias Nguema, preceding potentate. The legislative power is exerted by the National Assembly.

The work of the institutions is very family, since all the stations with responsibility are held by family members of the president, resulting from Mongomo (Fang ethnos group). This country is often described as démocrature (dictatorship under democratic tinsels) since there exists a “legal opposition” controlled by the presidency and that the real opposition is taken refuge in Spain. Its chief, Severino Motor bike NSA, were already condemned to more than 100 years of prison by contumacy, shown by the president to have taken part in the coup attempt of State launched in 1997 against him.

Arrived at the capacity on August 3rd, 1979 following a coup d'etat, Teodoro Obiang Nguema is regularly renewed by itself with the head of the capacity:

1982: appointed Head of State for 7 years by the military council

1989: elected with 99,99% of the voices like one applicant

1996: elected with 97% of the voices like one applicant, in an officially multi-party poll

2003: elected with 97,1% of the voices in a multi-party poll (5 authorized candidates).

Ruben handbook dongo, an opponent équato-Guinean in exile in Paris, which directs the collective of the democratic parties of opposition summarizes the exercise of the capacity thus: “the capacity is today between the hands of ten people, all close relations of the family of the president. You have on a side president Obiang, under the influence of his wife whose manifest will is to propel at all costs his/her son at the top of the State. Other side, Armengol and the general Mba Nguema, the brothers of the president, who regard Teodorin as incompetent, even dangerous”

Subdivisions

See also: Provinces of Guinea Equatoriale

Geography

Bioko

This province includes/understands the old islands of Fernando Póo and Annobón or Pagalú. It has an total surface area of 2.034 km ², of which 2.017 correspond to the island of Bioko itself and 17 km ² with the territory of Annobón.

The island of Bioko

Named “Isla of Fernando Póo” during Spanish colonization, in the honor of the Portuguese sailor who discovered it, it is at the bottom of the gulf of Guinea, in Bay of Biafra, with 33 kilometers of the African coast, opposite Cameroun. The Stanley adventurer had called it the “pearl of the Atlantic”.

It with the shape of an irregular rectangle, measuring 76 kilometers of North in the South, with an average width of 35 km. With its angles are Punta Hermosa (Northern), Punta Europa (North-western), Punta Santiago (South-eastern) and Punta Sagre (South-western).

The island of Annobón

It 17 km length is of oval form, and is with 355 kilometers of the continent. It is of volcanic origin and counts only 1.500 inhabitants. She was discovered in 1471 by the Portuguese, the New Year's Day, from where its name ( Anno Bon ), and was yielded in 1778 to the Spain.

Economy

Demography

Culture

See also: Culture of the Equatorial Guinea

Official languages

Constitutional law amending article 4 of the Fundamental law, establishing that “the official languages of the Republic of Guinea Equatoriale are Spanish and French”. The languages autochtones are recognized like forming integral part of the national culture (constitutional Law No 1/1998 of January 21st). In July 2007, president Teodoro Obiang Ngumema announced the decision of the government to adopt Portuguese like third language of the country to become memble full with CPLP.

National festival (October 12th)

The national festival is the major event of the year in Equatorial Guinea. It is about an organized revolving demonstration each year in a different city. All the country is put at contribution to organize the event. The selected city is thus renovated to accommodate the president, his court and the many équato-Guineans come to lend allegiance to the president.

Codes

Guinea Equatoriale has as codes:

EK, according to the Code list countries used by NATO, code alpha-2,
GEQ, according to the Code list country of the CIO,
GNQ, according to the standard ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 (code list country),
GNQ, according to the Code list countries used by NATO, alpha-3,
GQ, according to the standard ISO 3166-1 (code list country), code alpha-2,
GQ, according to the international Code list of the number plates,
3C, according to the international Code list register of aviation.,

Others

Population: 486.060 inhabitants (in 2001). 0-14 years: 42,56%; 15-64 years: 53,68%; + 65 years: 3,76%
Surface: 28,051 km ²
Density: 17 hab. /km ²
Land borders: 539 km (Gabon 350 km; Cameroun 189 km)
Littoral: 296 km
Ends of altitude: 0 m > + 3.008 m
Life expectancy of the men: 52 years (in 2001)
Life expectancy of the women: 56 years (in 2001)
Growth rate of the population: 2,46% (in 2001)
Birth rate: 37,72 ‰ (in 2001)
Death rate: 13,11 ‰ (in 2001)
infantile Death rate: 92,9 ‰ (in 2001)
Fertility rate: 4,9 children/woman (in 2001)
Rate of migration: 0 ‰ (in 2001)
Independence: October 12th 1968 (old Spanish colony)
Telephone lines: 6.000 (in 2004)
Cellphones: 20.000 (in 2004)
Radios: 180.000 (in 1997)
Television stations: 4.000 (in 1997)
Users of Internet: 500 (in 2000)
Many suppliers of access Internet: 1 (in 2000)
Roads: 2.880 km (0 km tarred) (in 1996)
Railways: 0 km
inland Waterways: 0 km
Many airports: 3 (including 2 with tarred tracks) (in 2000)

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