Spanish television cameras frequently capture images of undocumented African immigrants flocking to the Canary Islands.
Crowded into wooden fishing boats or disembarking with the help of Red Cross workers, the young men look impassively into the cameras, as if refusing to yield the secret of the other world they come from.
Their dangerous sea journey adds a touch of drama to their arrival, making them seem different from other immigrants, such as Latin Americans and Eastern Europeans.
They are said to flee extreme poverty and hunger. And they are black — a quality Spanish politicians and journalists avoid calling by that name, but nevertheless feel the need to convey, calling them ”sub-Saharans” instead.
The West and Central Africans are seen as Spain’s main immigration problem, despite the fact that they only constitute a small minority among the country’s more than two-million immigrants from outside the European Union.
Spain has about 100 000 West and Central African legal residents compared with half a million Moroccans and 370 000 Ecuadorians. About 500 Romanians and Bulgarians reportedly cross the Pyrenees daily, many of them to stay in Spain, but they rarely make the news.
About 10 000 Africans landing on the Canaries this year have put local reception structures under pressure.
Yet, while the numbers of immigrants arriving on the islands have increased, those using other routes, such as the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla or the Strait of Gibraltar, have declined.
Spain’s West and Central Africans have hardly ever been linked with violent crime, and the Canary Islanders’ fear that they bring diseases has proven unfounded so far.
Why, then, are the Africans seen as such a big problem that the European Union is sending ships and aeroplanes to patrol the West African coast?
The obvious reason is concern that the influx of migrants will not slow down and will even swell uncontrollably.
No less than 80 000 people are estimated to be waiting in Senegal, Mauritania and nearby countries to make the sea crossing of up to 1 200km to the Canary Islands.
Yet there are also other, less conscious reasons that are not discussed openly.
The sight of black masses disembarking on the tourist Canaries reawakens centuries-old racial prejudice, says historian Antumi Toasije, cultural councillor with the Pan-Africanist Federation of Spain’s Black Communities, who has studied Western stereotypes of Africans.
The prejudice has developed, especially since the 17th century, when blacks began constituting the largest number of enslaved people, Toasije told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Slaves had traditionally included also light-skinned people, and the word ”slave” may originally have referred to the Slav origin of many slaves.
During African-Arab Moorish rule in Spain until the late 15th century, blacks could be associated with Islamic high culture, power and wealth, according to Toasije.
Yet with the Atlantic slave trade, the image of the black person was degraded to justify his exploitation. ”We Africans were presented as brutish and fit for hard work,” Toasije says.
Later on, 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers saw Africans as uncivilized ”noble savages”, colonialists depicted them as lawless and immoral to justify white rule, and the African independence wars added violence to their image.
Such prejudice continues functioning unconsciously, alleviating Europe’s guilt over the gap separating the rich world from the poor, Toasije believes.
The Africans arriving in the Canary Islands are perceived simultaneously as helpless victims and as potentially dangerous, the Pan-Africanist Federation analyst explains.
In reality, however, they are resourceful, often educated young people, who have managed to make a difficult journey of several years to improve their chances in life.
”There is great impoverishment and mismanagement in Africa,” Toasije admits, but sees it as a phase in history.
”These countries have only been independent for a comparatively short time, and unfortunately their elites often serve Western and their personal rather than their people’s interests.”
The European Union realises that immigrants cannot be kept away only with policing, and intends to encourage Africans to stay at home by increasing aid to the continent.
Such measures will have no effect as long as economic structures such as trade barriers remain unfavourable to Africa, Toasije says. — Sapa-dpa