Memory and resistance: A historical account of the first “intifadas” and civil organizations in the territory of Western Sahara

Abstract

The annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco and the administrative measures imposed on the territory caused various collective memory omissions. This chapter analyses the ways in which the Sahrawi people have come to break the silence and how a cultural resistance based on elements of traditional social organization and re-invented opposition strategies has been created. Materials from Spanish historical archives and around 150 interviews conducted in Western Sahara in 2008-09 and 2011-12 shed light on different forms of Sahrawi resistance-micro-resistance-which have been present in the Western Sahara territory since the final stage of the Spanish colonial rule and the Moroccan takeover, although they have only become visible for the outside world and achieved an impact on the global level and the Moroccan state/national level over the last two decades. The recovered and examined data disclose a collective history that has been waiting to be articulated for decades.