Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy 0820409774, 9780820409771

Citation preview

Series XI Anthropology and Sociology Vol. 39

PETER LANG New York • Bern • Frankfurt an1 Main • Paris

Randall Fegley

Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy

PETER LANG Main • Paris New y ork • Bern • Frankfurt am

t.,ihrar~· of Con~ress CataloJ!in~-in-Publicalion Data

Feglcy. Randall

. Equarorial Guinea : an Afncan tragedy I Randall Fegley. . . . . . p. ern. - (Amencan umvcrstty stmhes. Senes XI. Anlhmpolugy and sodology ; vol. 39)

Bif,liography: p. Includes index. 1. Equatorial Guinea- Politics and go"ernment1968~1979. 2. Equarorial Guinea- Politks and I:!Cwt'mnlL'nl- 1979- J. Human ri!!hls- Etfll:tlorinl Guinea. 4. Madas Nguema. Francisco. I. Title. 11. Series. 89-2478 96T.I803-dcl9 D11i20.74.F44 1989 CIP ISBN 0-8204-0977-4 ISSN 0740-0497

CIP-Titelaufnahme der Deutschen BibUothek Fegley, RandaU: Equatorial Guinea : an African tragedy / Randall Fegley. New York; Bern; Frankfurt am Main; Paris: Lang, 1989. (American University Studies: Ser. 11, Anthropology and Sociology; Vol. 39) ISBN 0-8204-0977-4

NE: American University Studies /11

. s·rAATS· /BIBLIOTHEK

~A S"OO+A © Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.' New York 1989 . All rights reserved. Repnnt or reprodu~tion, even partially. in all forms such as microfilm xerography, mtcrofiche, microcard, offset strictly prohibited. • Printed by Weihert-Druck GmbH. Darmstadt "' . Germany · . "·'est

TABLE OF CONTENTS Notes on the Text and Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Spain's African Wards 3

Chapter Two: The Plunge into the Dark 37

Chapter Three: Life under a Unique Miracle Chapter Four: International Silence Chapter Five: The Last Days of Francisco Macias Nguema

75 111 151

Chapter Six: Eventful Journeys

175

Chapter Seven: A New Leaf?

201

Chapter Eight: Options and Obstacles

235

Appendicies Maps of Equatorial Guinea A Glossary of Abbreviations and Acronyms Colonial Administrators of Femando Po and Rio Muni Victims of the Macfas Regime

255 256 259 264 266

Bibliography

277

Index

285

NOTES ON TilE TEXT AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In writing a book on Equatorial Guinea, I was faced with a sizable body of information from a very few authors, such as Cronje, Klinteberg, Ndongo Bidyogo, Pelissier, Femandez, Garcia Dominguez, Volio Jimenez and also the world's foremost expert on Equatorial Guinea, Professor Max Liniger-Goumaz of Lausanne, Switzerland. Also over the years there has been a vast quantity of related, and also seemingly unrelated but later useful, details in newspapers, magazines, official documents, etc. In fitting all these pieces together, I felt that it would be appropriate to relay as many direct quotations of Equatorial Guineans and other observers of the case as reasonable usage allowed. In a few instances the language of the quoted may be clumsy and the grammar imperfect, for many who were to describe the terror which had gripped their country made their statements in a language which was foreign to them and under the weight of bitter memories and great emotional stress. Nevertheless, I feel they deserve a hearing. There were numerous methods by which the reports filtering out of Equatorial Guinea could be confirmed. Indeed, such confmnation was absolutely necessary in the rum or-ridden climate of the times and in light of the disinfonnation campaigns which were waged both by and against the regimes in power. One way to untangle facts from fiction would have been to visit the country itself. Unfortunately, my attempts to apply for a visa have been repeatedly turned down -- for reasons which I believe this text makes obvious. How much a visit would reveal is questionable. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that the story recounted herein is true. I was able to use material from the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Anti-Slavery Society and several magazines and journals to confinn individual facts and figures. In addition to those sources, I was able to interview a dozen refugees and was able to acquire leads and confirmations from nine individuals who, when totalled together, gave a very coherent view of the situation described in this book from positions close to the action. Professor Liniger-Goumaz and the leading Equatorial Guinean dissident, Professor C.M. Eya Nchama were among these. The remaining seven, whose requests for anonymity I will respect, include three Equatorial Guinean exiles of opposing political views, a Spanish businessman, a Sudanese journalist, a Central African economist and an official of the US State Department. With the exception of direct quotations, all infonnation in this text has been either stated by or read and accepted as fact by one or more of these nine observers after confmnation by at least one published source. Footnoting such a book proved problematic. In some sections it would have been possible to footnote every sentence. However, to avoid the disruption caused by over-footnoting, I have kept explanatory footnotes to an absolute minimum and have given source footnotes for quotations, statistics and exceptionally unusual facts which I found in one source only. All remaining sources may be found in the

viii

bibliography at the end of this book. Also in the back of the book is a glossary of abbreviations and acronyms listing the various shortened forms of the names of organizations. companies and agencies which have been active in Equatorial Guinea over the years. Names and the standardization of terms were the final difficulties faced in linking the various threads that make up the history of contemporary Equatorial Guinea. Firstly, the name "Equatorial Guinea" is quite cumbersome. However, I felt that its use (along with "Equatorial Guinean") was necessary to avoid confusion \\,.ith the three other nations which use "Guinea" in their names. To a Spanish readership, "Guinea" may be sufficient, but the full usage is required elsewhere. Also several place names have changed two or three times (i.e., Femando Po to Francisco Macias Nguema Island to Bioko). I have used the Spanish names for the sake of continuity and in recognition of the fact that most Equatorial Guineans continue to use the old fonns. The only exceptions I have made are for the three cities of Malabo, Luba and Riaba, whose new names have acquired wider currency. Also I have standardized some common personal names For example I have used "M'ba" for Mba, Mba and M'ba. When in doubt I have used the most common spellings found in news reports and the writings of Max Liniger-Goumaz as standards. Both the Spanish and Equatorial Guineans have used a bewildering variety of designations for government structures and officials. Where possible, I have endeavored to simplify them without sacrificing accuracy in translation. For example, local govenunent executives drawn from their localities are called "mayors" throughout. In the case of the cabinet departments of the post-1979 regime, I have used the word "ministries" rather than the official, but rather confusing, tenn "commissions". I would like to remind the reader that in Spanish, personal names consist of a given name, the father's family's name, the mother's family's name and often other names (saints, elders, etc.). Thus, for example, Femando Volio Jimenez is referred to as Volio or Volio Jimenez. Where numerous individuals share a common name-no fewer than thirteen Ndongos have had important roles in Equatorial Guinea's past and present -- names have been lengthened to avoid confusion. Hence Atanasio Ndongo Miyone appears as Atanasio Ndongo and Ndongo Miyone, but never simply as Ndongo. I have, as far as I am aware, applied proper usage regardless of press usage. Appendicies have been included to provide maps of the region, to define the various abbreviations and acronyms in the text, to list the colonial governors of Femando Po and Rio Muni and to tabulate the victims of the Macias regime (19681979). Finally, I am indebted to a great many people for assistance in the completion of this book. They include Professor C.M. Eya Nchama who has taken much interest in this project, Professor Max Liniger-Goumaz who gave a good deal of his

ix expertise to help particularly on the colonial era, on educational and economic matters and on exiled opponents of Macfas and those involved in this case, both Equatorial Guineans and others, whose infonnation and opinions filled in a puzzle with many missing parts. Among the many who contributed to the researching and production of this book by giving everything from accomodations to encouragement and from proof-reading to patience are John Bambrick, Hugh Gaster, Kevin Harrison, Tom Langham, Peter Layton, Charles Nosworthy, Beverley Clayson and my mother Mrs. Mildred B. Fegley. For photocopying and much patient forebearance, my thanks go to Karl, Alfreda, Tina, Bob, Jim and all at Eitel. For information and guidance on copyrights, I am grateful to Albert W. Daub of Scarecrow Press. Thanks to Mike Gresh and all at GCC for the Mac and for their time and efforts. For their guidance, enthusiasm and assistance, I am grateful to Brigitte D. McDonald, Michael J. Flamini, Susan Steiner, Laura Gillespie and the staff of Peter Lang Publishers, Inc. However, my deepest gratitude goes to the woman in my life, Connie B. Reinholz, for all sorts of help and encouragement in countless ways, great and small. Randall Fegley, Ph.D. 5 May 1989

INl'R()DUCfiON A neiVous man accompanied by soldiers was led into the Marfil Cinema in Malabo, the capital of the tiny tropical African nation of Equatorial Guinea. Usually, he wore dark sombre suits, but on that day a white shirt and plain trousers were his only attire. He was deaf, impotent, nearly blind and looked much older than he actually was. His movements and speech could only be described as jerky. Yet he was so feared by his own people that his subsequent execution had to be carried out by elite Moroccan troops after Equatorial Guinean soldiers refused to involve themselves. He swore that his ghost would return to haunt those who had condemned him to death. The date was September 29, 1979 and his name was Francisco Macias Nguema. Having become president at independence in 1968, he had been overthrown by a group of army officers led by some disgruntled relatives. Nevertheless, the legacy of his policies of torture, mass murder, corruption and oppression lives on. For eleven years, Macias dominated Equatorial Guinea. He called himself "The Unique Miracle" and his ability to stay in power at any cost made that title very credible. He was a maniac with a record of corruption, sadism and psychiatric disorders which extended back many years before independence. Nevertheless, he was able to break the power of his political opponents and counter the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the few powerful institutions in the country. No one, either citizen or foreigner, was free from the fear which surrounded his regime. All political, religious and cultural activity emanated from him. Proportionally, his rule equalled that in Nazi-occupied Europe in tenns of brutality. In a tiny country, at least 20,000 people were killed. Another sixth of the population was forcibly recruited as slave laborers on cacao and coffee plantations and in timberyards. One out of three Equatorial Guineans became a refugee. Economic and cultural activity simply ceased. We are led to ask how one man could generate enough fear to stay in power so long under these conditions. Were his charms so great that hardly a word of protest came from abroad? A number of explanations have been put forward. Firstly, Equatorial Guinea is one of Africa's smallest nations and therefore its affairs are unlikely to arouse much interest. Secondly, as Spain's only colony in black Africa, its borrowed Hispanic culture has made it an odd man out from the very beginning. Hence, few people have ever heard of Equatorial Guinea and the country is often confused with Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau or even Papua- New Guinea. But twenty thousand deaths should have made news no matter how small or isolated a place may be. In fact, a substantial portion of the ignorance surrounding this case is clearly the result of the unwillingness of governments, corporations and international organizations to release information concerning the domestic affairs of Equatorial Guinea. As more and more facts come to light, a

2 shameful cover-up is revealed. Many nations in the Western, Soviet and nonaligned blocs ignored the ple.as of refugees and political exiles in favor of lucrative concessions, strategic advantages or ideological considerations. Although the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva has become interested in the case over the last ten years . Equatorial Guinea is a living illustration of the difficulties which the international community has in dealing with gross violations of human rights in even the smallest of nations. The scant interest in Equatorial Guinea, not only by the public and press, but also in diplomatic and political circles to this day, serves to underline the problem even more. After his trial in the cinema, "The Unique Miracle" was executed. He was replaced by a nephew whose rule has been better, but still not nearly good enough for the refugees to consider returning home or for the UN to contemplate dropping the case. Hence Equatorial Guinea has remained a dark corner of the African continent Whether any government, plan or ideology can restore human rights fully and develop this broken country to even its modest 1968 levels is a matter for conjecture. Nevertheless, we can all take note and ensure that such a reign of terror never goes wmoticed and unopposed again, in Equatorial Guinea or elsewhere.

CHAPTER ONE: SPAIN'S AFRICAN WARDS

"In a very short time gaunt figures of men, women and children might be seen crawling through the streets, with scarcely an evidence of

life in their faces, save the expression of a sort of torpid carelessness as to how soon it might be their turn to drop off and die. The Portino, a steamer, carried back fifty of them to Cadiz, who looked when they embarked more like skeletons of skin and bone than animated human beings." T .J. Hutchinson describing the result of an early Spanish attempt to colonize Femando Po. "For he who does good, having unlimited power to do evil, deserves double praise. He deserves praise not only for the good which he does, but also for the evil which he leaves undone." The Black Knight in Scott's lvanhoe

In the early 1470s, Portuguese seafarers under the command of merchantadventurer Feman G6mez da Minha made their way around West Africa as part of the continued European effort to evade the Venetian-Ottoman monopoly on trade with the East. In the course of a number of voyages in the Gulf of Guinea, they discovered four volcanic islands. The southemmost, later named Annob6n, was to serve the Portuguese empire well as a foothold in Africa, even though it was uninhabited and only seventeen square kilometers in area. Northeast were two larger islands which were also uninhabited: Sao Tome and Principe. Finally, a still larger island was found northeast of these. The Portuguese called it "Formosa" ("the Beautiful''). It was green with forests and populated by a small tribe later called the Bubis. These four islands along with Mount Cameroon and the Adamawa Range on the adjacent African mainland fonn a chain of volcanos which stick like a dagger into the continent. t "Formosa" officially became known as Femando Po, supposedly a corruption of Femao de Poo, the name of a Portuguese captain. The island was a place of both wonder and fear to the sea-weary sailors. With a coastline of 250 kilometers and an area of 2,017 square miles, the island consists of three extinct volcanoes. The highest, Pico de Santa Isabel, climbs to 3,007 meters and provides an excellent view

4

of the Nigerian and Cameroonian coasts, one of the most strategically important stretches of the. African coast. The summit of the second volcano, Moka Mountain, was the capital of the Bubi kings. Its crater lake at 1.800 meters gives it an uncanny and mysterious appearance '"'·hich has caught the eye of many a traveller. In this century Moka has proved to be economically useful as the only feasible livestock-breeding area in the tsetse flyrava2ed Gulf of Guinea. The third volcano is the broken-down crater rim which provides a deep water harbor on the northern end of the island. The southern shore is cut by numerous steep valleys and the shoreline in general is rugged with only occasional beaches and coves. According to available archaeological evidence, the inhabitants of Femando Po originally came from what is now Cameroon and settled the island in waves beginning at least 1,300 years ago. At sites on Playa Carboneras, three distinct ancient cultures have been uncovered. The first two, Bolaopi I and Bolaopi ll, were fishing settlements characterized by thin stone hatchets and very fragile pottery. The third culture, the Buela, produced large earthenware containers and rough, unpolished hatchets. All three groups hunted, fished and cultivated yams and oil palms. The presence of hoes and hatchets, also found at Cameroonian sites, provide evidence of connections with the mainland. The Buela are frequently called the "Old Bubi". However, the tribe which the Portuguese encountered and which continues to inhabit the island has more complex origins than this. Because of the variety of anthropological types and the presence of four dialects among the Bubi, it is more than likely that the tribe is a composite group fonned from mainland groups who arrived at different times. The Bubi have been monotheistic, monogamous and matrilineal as far back as their history has been recorded. Although their origins may have been fragmentary, they established a centralized kingdom with priests who guarded sacred fires and blessed fields, local chiefs known as Botuku and a king or Botuku of Botukus. Bubi currency consisted of roiga or rounded pieces of shell. These are still used for jewelry. The island's early society was divided according to occupation and the Bubi diet included yams, plantains and bananas. The Bubis were not interested in trade and had little desire to maintain contacts with the outside world. At various points in their history they retreated to Moka Mountain and Pico de Santa Is abel (0 Wassa in Bubi). Until well into this century, hostility and isolation were hallmarks of the tribe. Such attitudes enabled others to get an upper hand politically and economically. The Portuguese were quick to note both the economic potential and the strategic advantages of Femando Po. The island's volcanic soils and sloping mountains allowed the cultivation of almost anything. Cinchona, oil palms and sugarcane grew wild. Up to 800 meters in elevation the island was covered with forests teeming with pythons and monkeys, and only occasionally broken by villages and yam patches. Between 1,200 and 1,500 meters, meadow lands and

5

groves of tree ferns dominate. The Gulf of Guinea was rich in fish and other sea life. Given such a lush environment and the Bubis' seclusion, it is not surprising that the Bubis neither possessed nor needed iron-working skills. But one should not be led to believe that Femando Po was some sort of paradise. The islands and adjacent coast of the eastern half of the Gulf of Guinea have an extremely wet climate with saturating mists, frequent rains and oppressive humidity. Although the highlands are cooler, extremes in temperature cause illnesses and fevers of all sorts. By 1500 the first factories (trading agencies) were established on the healthiest island, Annob6n. With the European came the Transatlantic slave trade. Sao Tome and Principe were settled by Portuguese colonists and their Angolan slaves. But Annob6n and Femando Po remained sparcely settled; the former for reasons of size and the latter due to a variety of difficulties; the most important of which were disease, the Bubis' hold on the land and the technological limitations of the day which precluded the mass clearing of dense mountain vegatation under tropical conditions. In spite of these obstacles, some activity did take place during the period of Portuguese rule. In 1507, Femando Po was put under the control of the Governor of Sao Tome. A Portuguese colonist named Luis Ramos de Esquivel established a warehouse and sugarcane plantation near what later became the town of Concepci6n. Quite soon fevers and Bubi hostility overcame this community. Still the Portuguese were able to introduce two activities which were to have profound effects on the island: coffee cultivation and the slave trade. The Bubis spent much of the next four hundred years avoiding contact with all Europeans. In 1493 and 1494 a series of Papal Bulls split the "undiscovered" world into Portuguese and Spanish spheres of influence along 46° West longitude with Portugal gaining rights to everything east of Brazil and Spain acquiring the remainder of the New World. However, by the turn of the 18th century it became apparent to the Portuguese that Brazil's natural boundaries did not stop on a straight line and that the occupation of both southern Brazil and the Amazon valley would carry them well over their "rightful" share of the New World. Thus on the first of October 1777 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of San lldefonso which granted Portugal the Spanish colonies of Sacramento and Santa Catalina Island in South America and gave Spain a list of territories and rights which included Femando Po, Annob6n and a section of the West African coast. Six months later, a second agreement, the Treaty of El Pardo, reaffirmed Spanish sovereignty over the two islands and determined that Spain's rights on the African coast extended from the mouth of the Niger to that of the Ogoowe. It is important to note that at the time, no European state protested or challenged either treaty. Three weeks after the signing of the El Pardo treaty, a Spanish expedition under Brigadier Felipe Jose, Count of Argelejos de Santos y Freire was dispatched from Montevideo to take possession of the new colonies and establish a base for slaving. Arriving at Femando Po on October 21, 1778, Argelejos claimed the island

6 in the name of the Spanish king. Three days later the expedition set out for Annob6n. On the '"''ay Argelejos died and the fever-ridden crew mutinied. The Counr's lieutenant . Joaquin Primo de Rivera was imprisoned. Unfortunately for the crew . the expedition was forced to land on Sao Tome and the Portuguese authorities there set Primo de Rivera free and imprisoned the crew. After further decimation by illness. the force limped back into Montevideo on February 12, 1783. Primo de Rivera went on to have a successful career as a brigadier and later as Governor of Maracaibo. His great grandson was to be dictator of Spain in the 1920s. 2 The sight of an unsuccessful expedition returning with a crew in irons and 124 of its 150 men not returning at all proved too much for the Spanish. As a result of this five year fiasco, Madrid took almost no interest in West Africa for a half century. In hindsight the dealings between Spain and Portugal look ridiculously favorable to the latter. However, one must remember that the slave trade was at its height. The rich Spanish possessions in the Western Hemisphere were demanding more and more labor and a claim on the west coast of Africa was, in the thinking of the age, far better than equal amounts of South America. Nevertheless, eleven years passed before the Spanish began slave-hunting, even then their operations were tiny compared with those of other European nations. The court in Madrid had little time to do much with its African claims. Quite apart from the hazards involved, two trends were rapidly bringing the far-flung Spanish Empire to an end. Revolutionary ideas had spread from North America, England and France to Spanish colonies in Latin America. In the first half of the 19th century, insurrection was rife from Cape Horn to Texas. Until the late 1840s Madrid could not afford to turn her attentions and dwindling finances from the Western Hemisphere. Even so this may have been of little significance, had the very nature of impe~ialism not changed. The age of galleons roaming the seas in search of slaves, gold and silver had ended. Industrializing England was demanding raw materials for a mass society, not slave labor and luxury goods. The production of plantations and mines was becoming more important than the acquisition of slaves. With these developments came the occupation and administration of vast tracts of Africa, a strategy which the cautious Spanish court was unwilling and unable to pursue. In 1807 Britain outlawed slavery and ten years later Spain agreed to abolish the slave trade north of the Equator, leaving only the limited market of Brazil in this cruel commerce. The narrow-minded Spanish government felt that Fernando Po's raison d'etre had vanished. Following the failure of a few half-hearted attempts at development, the Spanish, who had almost abandoned their colony, leased the island to Great Britain as a forward naval base for anti-slavery patrols. The short period of British administration which followed brought changes with profound consequences. For several years the British had been trying to supplant the Spanish in Femando Po. Almost immediately after the Argelejos expedition, various British s~a captains attempted to subject the Bubi to the British crown. These ventures proved

7

highly unsuccessful. In 1810 six British sailors were killed by the Bubi after landing in San Carlos Bay. But in 1821 another captain landed on Femando Po. This time it was a Captain Kelly and he tried the eastern shore of the island. Kelly, who was the first explorer to use the tenn "Bubi", found a settlement at Concepci6n and chose the submerged crater on the northern end of the island as the site for a future base. After the signing of the 1817 Anglo-Spanish agreement leasing a Femando Po port to Britain, the crater harbor became a de facto colony of the Royal Navy. Ten years later the headquarters of the Mixed Commission for the Suppression of the Slave Traffic was transferred from Freetown to Femando Po, without Madrid's formal consent. This move was carried out by yet another Royal Navy captain, FitzWilliam Owen, whose party landed in the crater harbor and founded a settlement which they named Port Clarence. Within a few months, three quarters of the expedition's members had died of various diseases. Port Clarence was known as "death's waiting room", a nickname which would stay with the settlement for the rest of the century. Owen appointed a Captain Harrison as civil governor and two years later a Royal Marines Colonel, Edward Nicholls, was made governor of Clarence to assist Harrison, who died the next year. Owen left Femando Po in 1833 with the Warren Expedition, a flotilla whose principal mission was to rescue the suiVivors of several previous missions. Around this time another explorer arrived in Port Clarence: Richard Lemon Lander. As a servant of Clapperton, Lander had explored the Nigerian coast and embarked on an expedition along the Niger. After Clapperton's death, he continued to tr~ce the Niger from its delta to Sokoto. He returned to West Africa with his brother for another journey. Their party was captured by the Ibo. The newly appointed Governor of Clarence, John Beecroft had them freed. After that Lander used Femando Po as a base for further trips in the Niger delta. On one of his excursions in the "Rivers" in 1834, Lander was injured. Able to make it to Port Clarence, he died at age 30 and was buried in a small cemetery just outside of the settlement. One of his travelling companions, William Alien outlived Lander by thirty years and left an account of Fernando Po and a number of engravings of the region. John Beecroft was one of the most interesting characters in the history of European exploration of West Africa. A mulatto civil servant, he was superintendent of the 1827 Owen Expedition. In 1834 the British naval base at Port Clarence was closed down and Beecroft stayed on to administer the settlement. He opened trading posts in Port Clarence and on the Cameroonian coast as agencies of the British commercial house Dillon and Tenant. In 1833 Beecroft bought out Dillon and Tenant which went bankrupt four years later and was purchased by the West Africa Company which was to cease trading in 1843. Although not lucky in building up the massive sort of fortune acquired by many palm oil barons, he was by no means a poor man and his career as an administrator and imperialist more than compensated

8

for any luxuries he had to forego. There had been much discussion of ceding Fernando Po and Annob6n to the United Kingdom. as had been mentioned in 1827. The British government offered £50,000 for the two islands in 1839, but the Spanish held out for £60,000. When London finally agreed to meet the Spanish offer in 1841, public opinion in Spain prevented the sale. Indeed Spain's parliament, the Cortes, opposed the sale of any colonies and further attempts to sell the islands (to Gennany and to private companies) at the end of the century proved equally untenable. Moreover, the Spanish public expected to see their country's presence in Africa. Hence upon coming of age in 1843, Queen Isabella dispatched a commission to Port Clarence. The head of this delegation was Royal Plenipotentiary Juan Jose de Lerena y Bary. On arrival, Lerena appointed Beecroft governor without pay. After directing that all placenames be changed to Spanish ones, he set up the colony's first court and ordered the missionaries of the Jamaican branch of the British Baptist Missionary Society who had just settled on the island to depart. Leaving Beecroft in command, be left for the mainland where he signed treaties with several hundred chiefs and granted Spanish nationality to the Ndowe tribes. He then reaffinned the Spanish claim to Annob6n and returned to Spain. Lerena's trip was followed in 1845 by a lightning tour of the coast and Santa lsabel, as Port Clarence was hereafter known, by the Spanish consul in Sierra Leone, Adolfo Guillemar de Aragon. Guillemar notified French authorities in Gabon that the southern limit of Spanish territory was Cape Santa Clara. This claim was reaffinned by Commander Nicolas de Manterola, who arrived on Femando Po on Christmas Day 1845 to confinn that Beecroft had received royal assent for his appointment. Beecroft's administration of the island was by all accounts good. Between bouts of duty, he spent his time in the refreshing air of the Pico de Santa Isabel, which he climbed a number of times. Six years after Beecroft's appointment as governor, the British government created the post of Consul of the Bights of Biafra and Benin in order to protect their growing interests in Nigeria. Beecroft was appointed to this post as well and using Fernando Po as a springboard, he began to push Britain's sphere of direct influence up the Niger. In 1851 he authorized the naval attack which captured Lagos. Using his steamer, Ethiopia, his agents secured the Nigerian coast for Britain. In his other capacity, Beecroft introduced customs duties and maintained order on Fernando Po. His 21 years on the island are recorded in both London and Madrid with praise. His position as an agent for more than one government was by no means unique. One only needs to examine the careers of figures such as Charles Gordon, Henry Morton Stanley, Rudolf Slatin and Eduard Schnitzer to see that multiple employment of this kind, unheard of today, was not exceptional in the gentlemanly atmosphere of the last century. The most lasting effects of British influence on Fernando Po are all connected with the introduction of ex-slaves into the island's life. Slaves rescued by the Royal Navy's anti-slavery patrols were landed on the island and settled around Santa

9

Isabel, San Carlos and Concepci6n. Later liberated Angolan slaves arrived from Sao Tome and Annob6n where they had been resettled by the Portuguese. They were joined by Crioulos (Portuguese-African mulattos) and finally a large and steady influx of immigrants from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Collectively, these peoples became known as the Femandinos. Speaking pidgin English and frequently knowing a good many other coastal languages, they formed a tightly-knit entrepreneurial group conducting the trade which the Bubis shunned and profiting grandly on their positions as middlemen between the white man on one hand and the native residents of the Gulf of Guinea on the other. One arrival from Sierra Leone was a West Indian freeman named William Pratt. Noting the similarity between Femando Po's rich soil and humid climate and that of the West lndies, he sent off to the Caribbean for cacao seeds. Although the experimental plantings on Pratt's holdings proved successful beyond anyone's dreams, it was a Ghanian blacksmith named Tetteh Quashie who took the new crop to the mainland by returning to his homeland with a sack of beans in 1879.3 Within a very short time Femando Po developed into a latifundiary monoculture based on cacao. The Femandinos were ready to cash in on the economic revolution about to take place. Following Beecroft's death in 1854 his assistant James Lynslager, a British trader of Dutch descent, took over both the governorship and consulship held by his predecessor and mentor. Although he was confirmed as governor by Spanish sea captain Manuel Rafael de Vargas, the British government spurred on by the worldwide rush for palm oil decided that the consulship should be full-time. Hence a year after Beecroft's death, T.J. Hutchinson arrived to take the British posting. One American visitor to Femando Po during these early years was the Reverend Charles Thomas, chaplain to the African squadron of the U.S. Navy from 1855 to 1857. He described the island's cool breezes and thunderstorms which eased the oppressive tropical heat. The lush vegetation, colorful birds and many shaped clouds drew his most extravagant narratives. However, little on the human side seems to have impressed the good reverend who disliked black culture and the newlyintroduced Spanish Catholicism with equal vigor. He portrayed the colony's inhabitants and his own hopes by stating: "The colored population (5,000) is a degraded and ignorant mass-thievish, indolent, inoffensive, useless beings. Contact with Christian missionaries and civilized men of color, is, however, gradually elevating this mass, and permeating it with moral and intellectual life: but we live in daily expectation of hearing that the Spanish government (which has once, already, silenced the Baptist missionaries) has driven the teachers of truth from the island." 4 Lynslager retired to run his trading firm in 1858 and the Spanish government decided to put their own man on the scene. Hence in May 1858, the first truly

10

Spanish governor of Femando Po arrived with an engineer, a doctor, explorers, Jesuits and infantry. His name \\·as Carlos Chac6n and in his eight months as governor he "~as able to lay the groundwork for Spain's future colonization efforts. He proclaimed Catholicism the official religion and expelled the Baptist missionaries, "~ho had not obeyed the 1844 orders. Methodist missions were not affected. Chac6n had the access to the harbor improved, built some roads and conducted a census of Santa Isabel's 858 inhabitants. On the mainland, he levied a 10 peso toll on boats using the Muni Estuary, an act which infuriated the French based in Gabon. Chac6n's replacement was Jose de la Gandara who arrived with 128 Spanish settlers and 166 soldiers. After ten months of deaths and returns, only three settlers and about 80 soldiers remained. Gandara thought it best to retire in June 1862. Over the coming decades, the Spanish government struggled to populate the island. Je\\'S . Cuban political prisoners, Spanish colonists transplanted from Morocco and Algeria and Catalan traders were brought in. Most died, moved on or escaped the nightmare of disease which Santa Isabel had become. However, solutions to Femando Po's environmental difficulties would not elude the Spanish forever. In 1864 Lynslager died and his holdings were taken over by his secretary, John Holt. From the two agencies which Beecroft had built and Lynslager expanded, Holt erected a trading empire which spread into Cameroon, Gabon and Rio Muni. Along with another British finn, Hatton and Cookson, and the Gennan finn Woennanns, John Holt Ltd. controlled most of the commerce on the West African coast by the time of the First World War. Although the company no longer does business in either Femando Po or Rio Muni, it remains one of the largest import-export fmns on the African continent today with some 450 employees and an annual turnover of £50 million. A new and famous face appeared in Santa Isabel in 1861. Fresh from exploration in East Africa and in the middle of his quarrel with John H anning Speke over the source of the White Nile, Sir Richard Burton was appointed consul. His posting was a departure from the past practice of nominating a trader to the consulate in Santa Isabel. Indeed many have believed that the Foreign Office sent him there as a punishment. Burton was a linguistic genius and a brave explorer of regions previously closed to Europeans. But his quarrelsome, pedantic manner had earned him numerous enemies in the British Anny, the Foreign Office and the closely-knit community of explorers and scholars. He never had a journey without a major dispute with someone. Furthennore, his heavy drinking and pan- sexual appetites embarassed and offended Victorian society. As a negrophobe, he found little of interest in the Bights and his anti-religious attitudes made him few friends among the white missionaries. Hence it is not surprising that much of Burton's four year consulship was spent travelling throughout what is now Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and Gabon and around the lower reaches of the Congo. Although he was able to scale Mount Cameroon, he failed to fmd a gorilla, a goal he had set himself after reading Paul du Chaillu's travel accounts of the region. In general, his stay in the

11

area was bitterly disappointing for all parties involved. Unable to face the duties of his office and the discipline of regular work, he avoided Santa Isabel as much as possible. At that time the town was expanding and much labor was required by both the Spanish and the British. Many Kru tribesmen were recruited from Liberia on a very dubious basis. Reknown as dockers, porters and sailors, the Kru were hired in these capacities as well as for plantation and construction work. They were usually kept for longer periods than they had engaged themselves for. Their conditions were such that returning workers spread tuberculosis and venereal diseases throughout Liberia. Alcoholism, a tendency reinforced by plantation owners who paid part of their wages in low quality wine, was rampant. ObseiVing this state of affairs, Burton noted that, "'Nanny Po' was a word of fear to the Krumen; they had been made to work in gardens and on the roads and they complained -mostly falsely, I afterwards found -- of puoco eo mer, mucho trabajo (little food, much work). Some of them had been engaged for one year, not two, and had been kept for three -- the usual time -- to great sorrow of their mammies and to the abiding resentment of themselves. "5 Burton had no sympathy whatsoever towards Africans. His impressions contained a great deal of self-hating bitterness, which was really quite unrelated to the arrogance promoted by the confident optimism in European values during the Victorian era. Compare Burton's attitudes with those of Nicholls who wrote in 1830, "The intellect of a Negro is in no way deficient, he is on1y what all ignorant and savage men are and equally capable of being instructed and enlightened with the rest of the human race. This I know from experience." 6 Burton, on the other hand, was willing and able to write scientifically about "The Ethnology of Dahomey" and "The Lake Regions of Central Africa", but he could neither overcome his biases nor fathom the consequences of his own ideas. He must have known and seen the success of Africans in a number of important skills, such as the production of and trade in palm oil, which was a major world commodity at that time. Yet he could write, "the removal of the Negro from Africa (is) his only chance of learning that there is something more than drumming and dancing." 7 He complained that Africans "waste over a monkey's skin or a bottle of rum as much intrigue as is devoted to a contested election in England. "8 His volumes of such ravings on the inferiority of Africans have led some historians to

12

call him "the man \\·ho sa~' everything and understood nothing. "9 Fortunately, his influence on Femando Po ended in 1864 when he departed for England and his confrontation \\·ith Speke. Burton ~'ent on to an appointment as British consul in Santos, Brazil from whence he wandered around South America, claiming that his trips to prospect for minerals and observe wars were in Britain's interests. Posted in Trieste. he took another jaunt to West Africa which resulted in another massive book and a bitter argument with the Foreign Office who pointed out that hunting for gold in Ghana had little to do with affairs in the Adriatic. Ill and tired of life, Burton turned to translating eastern pornography and writing those sexual details of African life which he had refrained from trying to publish in his homeland. His last works had to be smuggled into Britain. He died in 1890 at the age of 69, miserable, unrepentant of anything and still in Trieste. Some years after Burton had left Santa Isabel, another, but very different, Briton arrived. Among the hardy traders and rough sea captains, a lady came to the island. Of course, there had been white women on the island from the time of the Portuguese. But they were wives of merchants and administrators or nuns with the missions. The new arrival, Mary Henrietta Kingsley was unique. Daughter of a highly educated but cruel father and a sickly demanding mother, Mary spent most of her waking hours trying to please her parents. Without the support of a loving family and forbidden companionship with others, she devoted what little free time she had to dreams of travel, scientific curiousity and the development of an exuberant sense of humor, three characteristics which shine through in virtually everything she was to write later. After both her parents died, she inherited an income of £500 a year for life. Although she wore mourning for the rest of her life, Mary Kingsley, at that time in her thirties, used the money bequested to her to dramatically alter her life in ways that few victims of unhappy childhoods are ever able to. She signed on to become a palm oil trader in West Africa. But she was not merely a merchant, but a scientist as well. Particularly interested in plants, fish and tribal religious customs, she kept in touch with the British Museum and a half dozen top scholars on West Africa, sending them samples, drawings and reports. Mary's books, full of her self-depreciatory wit, made her both rich and famous. But she was a haunted woman. In a letter to a friend she wrote, "Dead tired and feeling no one had need of me any more, I went down to West Africa to die. West Africa amused me and was kind to me and was scientifically interesting-- and did not want to kill me just then. I am in no hurry. I don't care one way or another for a year or so." I O Instead of dying Mary H. Kingsley made numerous valuable contributions to the body of scholarly knowledge on Africa. Kingsley arrived at Santa lsabel in 1893. Many changes had occurred in the town since the first colonization attempts by the Spanish. Houses, shops and

13

gardens had multiplied. Femando Po had become the watering hole of explorers, traders and missionaries. Health on the island improved after 1870 when Governor General Zoilo Sanchez Ocafia suggested that the island's elevated areas should be used. Another European to make similar recommendations was Henry Morton Stanley who visited Femando Po and the Corisco Islands in 1884. Stanley wrote that the island was "a jewel which Spain did not polish" and concluded that "therefore it has no commercial value, and I for one would not pay five crowns for the island in its present state."ll One year later, Governor General Jose Montes de Oca established his residence at Basile, 8 kilometers south of Santa Isabel at an elevation of 450 meters. A prison and several plantations were already in the vicinity and a mission school opened shortly after. Virtually the entire administrative corps moved to Basile and the benefits of higher altitude, which were freely offered to all Europeans, improved the health situation somewhat. In spite of this, Mary Kingsley wrote that the appointment of the Spanish governor general was still "equivalent to execution, only more uncomfortable in the way it worked out."12 She continues, "... ever since 1827 (Femando Po) has been accumulating for itself an evil reputation for unhealthiness which is only languishing just at present because there is an inteiVal between its epidemics -- fever in Femando Po, even more than on the mainland, having periodic outbursts of a more serious type than the normal intermittent and remittent of the Coast Moreover, Fernando Po shares with Senegal the undoubted yet doubtful honour of having had regular yellow fever. In 1862 and 1866 this disease was imported by a ship that had come from Havana."13

In fact the May 1862 outbreak of yellow fever had killed 78 of the 280 whites on the island. The thirty-one years which followed the epidemic saw the establishment of many new plantations and the increased use of the highlands but little change in the standards of health and sanitation in Santa Isabel itself. Disease combined with the removal of whites to Basile meant that few of the amenities found in ports such as Dakar and Freetown were available in Santa Isabel, which nevertheless continued to expand. Mary describes her arrival, "On the top of the shore cliffs stands the dilapidated little town of Clarence, on a plateau that falls away slightly towards the mountain for about a mile, when the ground commences to rise into the slopes of the Cordillera. On the narrow beach, tucked close against the cliffs, are a few stores belonging to the merchants, where goods are placed on landing, and there is a little pier too, but as it is usually having something done to its head, or else is closed by the authorities because they intend doing something by and by, the chances are against its

14

being available for use. Hence it usually comes about that you have to land on the beach. and when you have done this you make your way up a very steep path, cut in the cliffside, to the town. When you get there you find yourself in the very dullest town I know on the Coast. I remember when I first landed in Clarence I found its society in a flutter of expectation and alarm not untinged with horror. Clarence, nay, the whole of Femando Po, was about to become so rackety and disipated as to put Paris and Monte Carlo to the blush. Clarence was going to have a cafe; and what was going to go on in that cafe I shrink from reciting. I have little hesitation now in saying this alann was a false one. When I next arrived in Clarence it was just as sound asleep and its streets as weed-grown as ever, although the cafe was open. My idea is that the sleepiness of the place infected the cafe and took all the go out of it.. But again it may have been that the inhabitants were too well guarded against its evil influence, for there are on the island fifty-two white laymen, and fifty-four priests to take charge of them -- the extra two being, I presume, to look after the Governor's conduct, although this worthy man made a most spirited protest against this view when I suggested it to him; and in addition to the priests there are several missionaries of the Methodist mission, and also a white gentleman who has invented a new religion. Anyhow the cafe smoulders like a damp squib."14

In spite of her first impressions, Mary warmed up to Femando Po, after seeing Basile and particularly after getting a chance to study the Bubi who had just emerged from their isolation. She examined and reported on their ornaments, coinage, clothes and fetish channs and listened to their music. Commenting on their resemblance to the Efiks and Duallas, she noted the Bubis' preferences for hats and beards. Delving into past works on Fernando Po, particularly those of Dr. Oskar Baum.ann, Mary was able to combine good research with her own experiences and interviews to detail the Bubis' history, diet, economy and society as much as anyone could have done in her day. Returning on numerous occasions, she grew attached to the island, especially to its women who delighted her. However, there was one place which Mary could not understand, "When you spend the day on shore and when, having exhausted the charms of the town,-- a thing that usually takes from between ten minutes to a quarter of an hour, -- you apply to an inhabitant for advice as to the disposal of the rest of your shore leave, you are told to 'go and see the coals.' You say you have not come to tropical islands to see a coal heap, and applying elsewhere for advice you probably get the same.

15 So, as you were told to' go and see the coals' when you left your ship, you do as you are bid. These coals, the remnant of the store that was kept here for the English men-of-war, were left here when the naval station was removed. The Spaniards at first thought of using them, and ran a tram-way from Clarence to them. But when the tramway was finished, their activity had run out too, and to this day there the coals remain." 15 Little did Mary realize that in 1951, many years after her death and many years after the removal of the coal from the shore, the beach would reveal the origins of the Bubi she had shown so much interest in. For this was the Playa Carboneras (Coal Beach) where the Bolaopi and Buela cultures waited to be excavated by scholars of another age. Mary Kingsley went on to the Ogoowe in Gabon where she explored the river and a number of its tributaries, continuing her journals and collections of specimens and souvenirs. She traded and travelled for a year and a half along the Coast. A good deal of her research on both natural and human subjects has remained authoritative to this day. As an imperialist like her friend Kip ling, Mary supported her homeland during the Boer War and signed on as a nurse, an occupation she was well acquainted with after a lifetime of tending parents, sick traders and the epidemicridden tribesmen of the Rivers. In South Africa she faced the horrors of war caring for Boer prisoners who died of their wounds and disease at a rate of five or six a night. Eventually, she contracted enteric fever and begged to be left to die alone. The head surgeon at the hospital where she worked decided to operate for a perforated bowel. She had heart failure and on June 3, 1900 Mary Kingsley was granted her death wish. She was buried at sea, closing an amazing life of only thirtyeight years. 16 The last two decades of the 19th century were years of great competition on the eastern shores of the Gulf of Guinea. The British, French and Spanish were all involved in a race for territory, but the power running ahead of all these was a relative newcomer, Germany. In 1849 the Hamburg-based company of Adolf Woermann sent agents to the Cameroonian coast. Kept out of the Niger delta by the British, W oermann's agents opened offices and warehouses along the coast from Mount Cameroon to southern Gabon, expanding to both the Spanish and Portuguese islands and the inland river valleys by the 1880s. Other Gennan firms followed, including Moritz, Kiiderling and Jantzen & Thonnalen. These companies sponsored missions and assisted explorers such as the famed Gustave Nachtigal in surveying and claiming the vast stretch of territory which became known as Kamerun. The British continued to administer the Nigerian coast from Santa Isabel until 1882 when the office of Consul of the Bights of Biafra and Benin was moved to the mainland in response to German ambitions. The last consul to hold the title was Edward H. Hewett, who has gone down in West African history as "Too Late Hewett" because

16

he arrived to sign tre.aties on the Cameroonian coast just in time to see the German flag being raised. The French did somewhat better than the British in opposing the challenge from Berlin. Unable to extend too far from their principal base in Libreville. they still insured that German claims south of the Rfo Campo were invalidated.l7 The Spanish were the least successful imperial power in equatorial Africa. Had it not been for a handful of dedicated explorers and traders, it is probable that they would have been excluded from the continent's mainland entirely. Governor General Pantaleon Lopez de la Torre Ayll6n (1862-65) had advised the Spanish government to occupy the coast between the Bonny River and Cape Isterias. Around the same time Madrid commissioned Jose Pellon y Rodriguez to inspect Femando Po. Over a fifteen year period Pellon explored the coasts of Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon and Rio Muni. He also recommended that Spain take up its claims to the coast. Neither of these men were listened to, because Madrid's attentions were elsewhere. For years Spain and her colony Cuba had been plagued with revolutions and unrest. These upheavals were unsuccessful at first, but later on monarcbes were deposed (Isabella IT in 1868 and Amadeo in 1873). Nevertheless, there were circles interested in and concerned about Spain's role in Africa. In 1877 King Leopold IT of Belgium created a Madrid section of his Association lnternationale Africaine. In reaction to this move six years later the wholly Spanish Sociedad de Africanistas y Colonialistas was founded to maximize Spanish claims. A leap onto the continent was about to take place and foremost in this new adventure was a Basque named Manuel Iradier y Bulfy. He was a selfmade man but unlike most of that tough breed of humanity, Iradier's accomplishments were not in business, administration or the military. He was a graduate in philosophy and art. Yearning for travel, especially after meeting Stanley, Iradier was able to collect 10,000 pesetas and set out on an expedition on January 12, 1875. By the end of May he had landed on Corisco Island in the Muni Estuary. Corisco Island and the Muni Estuary already had a long history when Iradier arrived. Along the entire coast and on the nearby islands were several sma 11 tribes of the Ndowe group. Collectively, this group is often called Los Playeros (the Beach People). However, this name is misleading because some Ndowe groups extend well inland and the entire group is believed to have originated in the Ubangi river valley deep in the African interior. In the strictest sense, the Ndowe are those tribes which speak Kombe (the Kombe, Bomoundi, Asangon, Minko, et al.), but in a wider sense they also include the Benga, Balenke, Bujeba and even the Bayele pygmies. Like most peoples in the region, these tribes had a family-village-lineageclan system of organization and a diet consisting largeI y of root crops and bananas. The Benga of the Muni estuary were the best organized of these groups. Under a 19th century dynasty of three kings, each named Bonkoro, they saw Christianization and the establishment of a money economy. Although Corisco Island is less than five and a half square miles in area, it has

17

been important ever since the Portuguese used it in the 15th century as a slaving yard. After a brief spell in Dutch hands in the 1600s, the Portuguese set up the Corisco Company to centralize slave hunting operations. The Benga first arrived on the island in the beginning of the 18th century and as middlemen, guides and traders, took up a semi-European lifestyle. In 1815 an American Presbyterian mission was established on the island, a strange partner for the island's other outpost of white civilization, a Spanish slaving base which was destroyed in 1840. Two years before the first Spanish governor arrived, three American Protestant schools with 100 pupils were operating. In 1858 a local notable, King Munga, was made governor of the island by the Spanish. It was Munga who was in charge of the 10 peso toll on the estuary which irritated the French. Corisco and the nearby Elobeyes Islands became major trading depots. Holt, Hatton & Cookson, Woermann, Ktiderling and Theimpson & Duarte were all represented with as high as 22 ships anchored in the estuary at a time for just the last mentioned company. This hub of trade relied on the island which in 1887 had only 609 inhabitants of whom six were whites. The islands were quickly over-run with business and new sites on the mainland were developed. Along the Rio Utamboni, which flowed into the estuary from the east, the riverbanks were dotted with the warehouses of British, Gennan, French and Catalan firms. Capable of use by 600 ton steamers as far as sixty miles upstre .. the Rio Utam?oni became the penetration route of explorers and traders. Am '~;. them was lradter. rv.~ Mter criss-crossing the Muni, surveying the Utamboni and climbing Mo :nJl~' Paluviole and Crista!, Iradier settled down in Santa Isabel for a rest. It was Janua li.JJ.! 1876 and short of money he took a post teaching in one of the few non-confessional schools in the Spanish territories. He and his wife explored Fernando Po. Like many other European visitors, they climbed the Pico de Santa Isabel. But a wanderlust had imbedded itself in the young explorer and soon he was back on the mainland, this time to take a grueling but thorough tour of the Rio Muni territory. For 884 days and 1,87 6 kilometers, Iradier travelled both trade routes and lesser known paths. Feeling quite justifiably that he had something to tell the Spanish public, he returned to Europe. Like many innovators, Iradier faced a general lack of understanding when he told his countrymen of the great opportunities offered by colonization in Africa. But luckily, the ignorance with which he was greeted was not total. The Sociedad de Africanistas y Colonistas had found in Iradier the makings of a Spanish Stanley. With the backing of the society, Iradier set out on a second expedition to Africa. Two important companions joined the party. The first was Jose Montes de Oca, later to be governor general of the Spanish colony. The second was Dr.Amadeo Ossorio Zabala, a founding member of the society and one of Iradier's principal financiers. By September 1884 the three were in Santa Isabel. Time had become important. Two and a half months earlier, Nachtigal had completed the occupation of the Cameroon coast for Germany. The United Kingdom had secured its hold on the

18

Niger and in Old Calabar. French influence, spreading from Gabon, was strong in Rio Muni. Iradier's expedition turned into one of territorial acquisition. Signing hundreds of treaties with chiefs representing tens of thousands of people, the three explorers annexed 13,300 square kilometers in less than two months. Pushed to the point of exhaustion, Iradier was strickened ill and was compelled to return to Spain. Ossorio and Montes de Oca canied on with the expedition until the latter also became too ill to continue. Dr. Ossorio raced on. By the time he had finished, 50,000 square Jdlometers had been staked out for Spain. The remainder of the expedition retired to Femando Po where Mantes de Oca was by now governor general. Meanwhile in Madrid, Iradier received a hero's welcome. His two volume set, Africa Tropical was a bestseller in its day. However, the euphoria was to perish suddenly. While Iradier's party had roamed around the Equator, a meeting in Europe decided the future shape of the African continent. From November 15, 1884 to February 20, 1885, representatives of fourteen nations gathered in Berlin. The Spanish delegation, headed by Count Benomar and the geographer Francisco de Coello, was instructed to bargain. They began with a claim of 300,000 square kilometers, pointing out that the Treaty of El Pardo had granted them 800,000. The conference agreed to give the Spanish 180,000. But this appointment proved to be of little consequence because, although Germany agreed not to extend Kamerun south of the Rio Campo, the French claimed that Gabon extended north to that river. Therefore the Spanish were given a vast area but excluded from every point on the coast The conference ended without altering this situation. After vehement Spanish protests, a Franco-Spanish Commission was established to look into the problem. It was agreed that King Christian IX of Denmark should arbitrate. But mediation never took place for history struck Spain with a damaging blow. On February 15, 1898, the American battleship Maine mysteriously exploded while at anchor in Havana harbor. The short, but very costly, war which followed resulted in the loss of all of Spain's remaining colonies in the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Time and effort were lost which could have insured Spain a greater share of equatorial Africa. But much time was wasted. Nonetheless, for the first time, those who mattered in Madrid turned their eyes to Africa. But it would be misleading to imply that Spain's only reason, or even main reason, for giving new attention to her claims in the Gulf of Guinea was partial compensation for losses elsewhere. Iradier had already captured the Spanish public's imagination. Another reason was one of hard-headed business. The last half of the 19th century saw a dramatic rise in the world demand for cocoa. Attractive profits brought Catalonian planters to Femando Po, which continues to be reputed to produce the world's best cacao. But labor was a limiting factor and the Spanish government looked to the continent for a solution. It was not until 1900 that the Spanish and French were able to sit down to iron out their difficulties. In a conference extending from February to June, the two sides

19 argued and disputed each other's claims. But Paris had the upper hand and in the end only 26,000 square kilometers were conceded to Spain. This included the northwestern corner of Gabon and the islands of Corisco, Elobey Gran de, Elobey Chico, Mbafie and Cocotiers. In terms of the size of most European holdings in Africa, this enclave was miniscule. A Franco-Spanish joint boundary committee was set up in 1901. Among its members was none other than Dr. Amadeo Ossorio who was at hand to see politicians cutting his accomplishments almost in half. The French leader of the boundary survey team, a Captain Cottes, saw numerous geographical, economic and ethnic reasons why the enclave should remain part of Gabon. Believing that his government had made a serious mistake in ceding the territory to Spain, Cottes and his outspoken views did little to soothe the wounded pride of the Spaniards. Borders were drawn with Spain's territory hemmed in by the Rfo Campo to the north, the Rfo Utamboni to the south, 10° 30' to the east and the Atlantic to the west, a tiny fraction of the tropical empire given to Spain at El Pardo. Seeing the crumbling of Spanish claims so soon after a humiliating defeat in war, the head of the Spanish section of the team, Pedro Gover y Tovar committed suicide on the ship returning home on October 30, 1901. Madrid was really no longer the capital of a colonial power in the same sense as any of the other imperial nations of Europe. Iradier died in 1911. No official recognition was accorded him at the time. He had become the personification of lost chances which no one in Spain wished to be reminded of. Not until the Franco era was Iradier recognized for his accomplishments when the port of Kogo on the Muni estuary was renamed Puerto Iradier in his memory. The agreement between the French and Spanish acknowledged France's right of pre-emption in the event that Spain relinquished possession. But Mbaiie and Cocotiers islands were not mentioned in this context. Disputes over this pre-emption clause were to surface 72 years after the signing of the treaty, long after the departure of both colonial powers. The status of Rfo Muni, as the enclave was now fonnally called, was changed in 1911 when Germany obtained 107,000 of French Equatorial Africa in return for recognition of French dominance in Morocco. As part of this agreement, Woleu Ntem province and a strip of Gabon south of Rfo Muni were ceded to German Kamerun, thereby surrounding the Spanish enclave with Gennan territory and giving Berlin the right of pre-emption over Rfo Muni. Another provision of this same agreement gave Germany access to both the Congo and Ubangi rivers by assigning Kamerun two projecting anns of territory which cut Chad and Ubangi-Chari off from Gabon and the French Congo. This disruption of French colonial designs caused much resentment in both Paris and Brazzaville. Following the defeat of the Germans in Kamerun in 1916-17, a very unique refugee situation occurred. German troops sought refuge in Rfo Muni and Femando Po. Probably the only large group of Europeans to ever become refugees on the African continent, the Germans were followed by their planters and businessmen and by some 60,000 African soldiers and villagers. Among these were leaders

20 ranging from the Fulani chief Adjia Lifida to the Christianized Ewondo leader Charles Atangana. They were unanimous in their desire to maintain German rule in their country and petitioned the King of Spain to help them. Nothing ever came of these petitions. Several were taken to Cadiz, but by the end of 1919 the refugees had dispursed. Under the African provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, Kamerun became a League of Nations mandate, partly under the British but most under the French. The territory and rights given to Gennany in 1911 were returned to the Frenclt, 'Who were now able to completely surround Ri'o Muni. Gennan influence in the region continued with the presence of German companies and occasional white settlers. Atangana and Karl Ebennaier, the sixth and last Gennan governor, returned to Cameroon to assist the French in running the mandate. Other Gennans, using connections with Woermanns, Moritz and Kiiderling, started plantations and businesses. Among them was Otto Krohnert who started a 339 hectare oil palm plantation in Ri'o Muni. Quite a few German associations with the eastern shore of the Gulf of Guinea have remained to this day. By the time of Iradier's death, Ri'o Muni had still not been thoroughly occupied. The enclave was and is a rectangle, whose boundaries are almost rulerstraight. Behind a narrow coastal plain rise rolling hills and some of the densest forests on the continent. Although the soil is only mediocre, high rainfall, temperatures and humidity have spawned lush vegetation which includes okoume, walnut, mahogany and some 140 other species of trees. Animal and bird life is extremely varied though not very great in tenns of numbers. Most of the enclave drains into the Rio Benito, which runs through the territory from east to west. The Rio Campo fonns the northern border and the Muni estuary in the south has areas of almost impenetrable mangrove forest. The Spanish had organized an administration of sorts in 1904. Due to their very early and long associations with European and American merchants, missionaries and explorers, the coastal Ndowe were open to Spanish influence. However, further inland, conditions proved quite different and the permanent occupation of the interior only really began with the Spanish expedition of 1926. Ten years later the advance was slowed by the Spanish Civil War. IS The 1930s were years of conspiracy and conflict from which Spanish Guinea was not exempted. A socialist party called the Frente Popular (Popular Front) was fanned by about 150 Spaniards in the colony. Small though it was, it was highly influential because within its ranks were both Governor General Luis Sanchez Guerra Saez and Vice Governor General Parcel. Both the Front and the Sanchez administration opposed the colony's landowner elite on a number of issues ranging from concession allocations to local salary increases. The governor was also concerned about excessive lumbering and the lack of reforestation which went with it. In September 1936 the Frente Popular on Femando Po was crushed by Spanish troops which Franco has dispatched from the Canaries. In a bizarre imitation of what was happening on the Iberian Peninsula, the Falangists of Femando Po "pacified"

21

Republican Rio Muni. Sanchez had been dismissed but Porcel continued the fight on the mainland. For two months fighting raged in Rfo Muni. Franco's forces triumphed and by November the Frente Popular was no more. Its members had been exiled to the Canaries and its leaders executed. The Spanish naval officer in charge of the repression, Juan Fontan y Lobe, became governor general until 1941. Under his leadership, the push into Rio Muni continued. Although during the Second World War the expansionists in Franco's government dreamed of taking an equatorial African empire composed of the Cameroons, British Nigeria and French Gabon, the complete occupation of their own tiny possession was completed only in the late 1940s. Quite early in the Spanish advance into the interior, stories filtered through to the coast about a mysterious tribe of short men who filed their teeth to points. This tribe, known first as the Pahouin, was mistakenly believed to be nomadic. The name Pahouin was probably a corruption of the M'pongwe phrase for "I don't know" and the so-called nomads were really recent arrivals, who upon being pushed out of their lands some 150 miles north by the Fulani jihads were slowly moving into the equatorial forest belt. Their proper name was and is the Fang. Having suffered environmental dislocation, they brought with them few instruments and ideas applicable to their new forest home. The crafts consisted almost solely of decorative wood-carving, particularly the making of masks. As their position was ideal for trade, few self-generated material developments took place. Their entry into their present tribal area, which extends into Cameroon and Gabon, occurred from about 1820 to 1890 and coincided with European settlement on the coast adjacent to their lands.l9 The Fang were feared largely because a myth had developed around them. Starting with the accounts of Du Chaillu in the early 19th century, stories of Fang cannibalism spread. In fact the Fang were never cannibal in the sense that human beings were part of their diet. Their witchcraft societies practiced necrophagy or the eating of parts of unburied corpses to assimilate qualities of the deceased. Over the years these practices died out. The human sacrifices of the later Bwiti cult had no necrophaganous element at all and the skulls found in Fang houses to this day are not the results of cannibalism, but are used as the icons of an ancestor-worshipping culture. Both the Spanish colonists and the coastal peoples acting as middlemen perpetuated the myth. Among those taken in by the stories of man-eating was Mary Kingsley who recorded the horrific rumors even though she liked and trusted the Fang she met and studied the tribe quite thoroughly in other respects. When the Fang discovered that the ivory they sold to the Bakele, Mpongwe and Ndowe was being sold to Europeans for ten times as much, they made greater efforts to contact and deal directly with the white man.20 Still the rumors of Fang cannibalism persisted. After 1850 trade rapidly changed from barter to cash. Manufactured goods demolished the remaining handicraft skills and disrupted the circulation of marriage

22 pa)ments throughout the continent. Severe and irreversible disorganization took place. The Fang became victims of trade dependence and with this came inflation, unrest and even greater technological regression. Like many other Bantu peoples, the Fang paid little attention to fanning, which was an almost purely female activity. Using spearheads as currency the men traded. He hunted and pursued the sport of obann raiding or mock warfare. However, as the cash economy spread, more and more men went to work in the timberyards and on plantations. The 1920s was a period of economic growth. Okoume wood was first exploited. Cacao, coffee and o£her crops were introduced. The population became more settled. Houses were built for permanence and cash agriculture became well- established. But deep inside not all was well. The social structure of the Fang is exceedingly complex. They are polygynous and patrilinear with authority vested in head men (etungahot) and sorcerers. In the northern sectors of the Fang area there are clear subdivisions, but in Gabon, Fang groups are fragmented and interspersed. In Rio Muni the tribe is divided into Ntumu (northern) and Okak (southern) branches. In order to strengthen inter-group relations and prevent incest, double exogamy is practiced. This is to say that a man is prohibited from marrying not only his father's kin but also his mother's, regardless of how distant the relationship may be. Sexual n1orality is highly valued and is thought to be the most important prerequisite for the divine granting of fertility. Exogamy promoted the geographical extension of kinship ties and with them, trade. All this is reinforced by the region's very low fertility rate. Gabon has the lowest in Africa and Rio Muni the second lowest.21 In spite of all these close family ties, migration to do wage labor added a burden to the Fang social system which it could not bear. The tribe underwent an identity crisis. Suspicion and superstition surfaced. Rapid development led to a belief in the white man's ability to perfonn miracles (akunge) and subsequently fostered attempts to counteract the "Europeans' medicine".22 Misinterpretations and misunderstandings on the part of both the Spanish and the Fang were the rule rather than the exception. As the 20th century rolled on, the Spanish built model villages, plantations and timberyards. They built a good road network and struggled, but succeeded, to improve health conditions. The Fang were awe-struck by these innovations but soon came to suspect them. Their suspicions were well-founded. On the other hand, the Spanish, Ndowe and the island peoples admired the fierceness, independence, energy and intelligence of the Fang and although they failed to notice Fang society's lack of direction until the eleventh hour, they too had their doubts. And these suspicions were also based on finn foundations. Both on Femando Po and in Rfo Muni, small exploration parties and lorie traders had given way to larger concerns. A few of the old style warehouses remained to trade textiles, alcohol and firearms for ivory, rubber, skins, pahn oil and hardwoods. But it was the shipping and plantation finns which were conducting the overwhebning majority of business and which were also having the greatest impact.

23 One Spanish firm with great influence throughout the colony was the Trasatlantica Compafiia. Founded in 1850, Trasatlantica had a monopoly on connections with Santa Isabel. The company's president, Marques de Comillas sent an agent, Lt. Col. Emilio Bonelli y Hemando to explore the rivers Campo, Benito and Utamboni for commercial possibilities. Montes de Oca and Ossorio were also connected with this firm. By the 1880s the company had expanded greatly, but it came under the heavy criticism of certain Spanish business circles who accused it of buying German instead of Spanish trade goods. In response, Trasatlantica started the first Spanish messenger steamer service to Santa Isabel in 1888. This service replaced British and German ships on the same line. However, Trasatlantica's capital was limited and Fernando Po offered the highest returns. Hence the company ignored Rfo Muni and Woermann's steamers (and with them Gennan trade and influence) continued to be regular features on the Rio Muni coast. In 1898, a new manager arrived at Trasatlantica's Santa Isabel office. His name was Pedro Bengoa Arriola and he had strong ideas about how Femando Po should develop. Official Agricultural Chambers (Camara Oficial Agr{cola), representing producers, processors and shippers, were set up in the two parts of the colony to market African produce in Spain. Bengoa became chairman of Femando Po's Camara and the chamber's general secretary was Juan Bravo Carbonell. Bravo was a man full of suggestions on how to improve the colony. He recomn1ended the introduction of banana plantations and thought that moving the colony's capital to Rfo Benito would help develop the mainland and give the administration a more central location. His writings are probably the best pre-Franco works on Spanish Guinea. Bengoa and Bravo molded the colony's economy. In 1905 Bengoa set up a cattle ranch on Moka Mountain. A few dozen head of cattle grew to a herd of over a thousand in a decade. As a great hunter and outdoorsman, Bengoa saw the colony's potential for tourism and safaris. But in 1925 for reasons still unclear Pedro Bengoa shot himself. He had spent 28 years in the colony. The next year Trasathintica sold out its Femando Po holdings to the Compafifa Naci6nal de Colonizaci6n Africana (ALENA) and in 1934, Transt:nediteminea Company obtained the shipping monopoly. Until its dismemberment, Trasathintica and a few other large finns controlled the development of Femando Po and oversaw the island's plantation combines or casas fuertes. Spanish-owned plantations averaged 56 hectares (compared with African-owned farms which averaged 4.8). Eventually, as a result of the 1944 Land Act every Fernando Po family was entitled to no less than 4 hectares on which to grow export crops. This was the beginning of the island's dependence on food imports, which has continued to the present. Rfo Muni's economy \vas quite different. Firstly, cacao was unimportant and unlike neighboring countries, the enclave did not depend on palm oil. Rubber also proved to be insignificant for although wild rubber was gather in the area as early as 1864, only one plantation of a little over a thousand acres was ever devoted to its cultivation. The enclave's

24

development \\-'aS based on two commodities: coffee and timber. It was not until a hundred years after its introduction that coffee was produced in Spain's African possessions. This is partly because of heavy Spanish import duties. But after the loss of Spain's Latin American territories and once Rfo Muni was fully occupied production skyrocketed from 9 tons in 1917 to 2,451 in 1939 to 6,471 in 1950.23 As the mainland is covered almost completely with forests, tropical woods have been a major source of revenue. Europeans were first interested mainly in ebony and mahogany. But later okoume, available only in Rio Muni and Gabon, became the most sought after wood. The first large Spanish company began exploiting in the Rfo Benito area in 1910 and by 1941 some 103,000 hectares were being lumbered. However, after 1948 the Spanish government limited the okoume allowance to 30%, thus encouraging interest in other species in order to avoid the depletion of the forests.24 Several innovations gave added impetus to the economy of Spanish Guinea in this century. The steady rise in demand for coffee and cocoa insured high profits. In 1935 the introduction of the power press brought about a revival in the palm oil trade and the invention of plywood, for which okoume is excellently suited, caused a steep climb in revenues. Spain's tiny possessions were booming and great changes came with the introduction of wage labor, new technology and foreign ideas. Another vehicle of change was Christianity. Portuguese priests had introduced Catholicism to Femando Po after 1533 when the Bishopric of Sao Tome was extended to cover the island. A Sierra Leonean Baptist minister Scott arrived with the 1827 Owen Expedition and built a chapel in Port Clarence. The Baptists did well throughout the 1840s, particularly under the carpenter-turned-missionary Alfred Saker, who arrived in 1844 with Jackson Fuller, the son of a freed slave. Saker and Fuller started a mission school but were forced to leave Femando Po under Spanish pressure. Re-establishing their mission on the Cameroonian coast, they shuttled back and forth to the island. Despite the expulsion of the Baptists ordered by Guillemar de Aragon in 1845, the missionaries did not cease activities on the island until Chac6n's arrival in 1858. Saker went on to create the Victoria Mission in Cameroon from which the city of Victoria developed. He returned to England in 1876 after thirty years in the field. Fuller was ordained in 1859 and carried on missionary work throughout the Rivers. Once interest in Africa revived in Spain in the 1840s, priests soon followed the traders and explorers. Father Jer6nimo Mariano de Usera y Alarcon, the naval chaplain on the Lerena Expedition of 1843 was one of the first Spanish priests to set foot on Femando Po. Concerned about Protestant activity on the island, the chaplain of Queen Isabel 11 was sent to the island with priests, nuns and teachers. This clergyman, Miguel Martinez y Sanz, became Santa Isabel's first Apostolic Prefect. Martinez urged Spain to settle the island with European convicts and Creoles, but his own group was obliged to return to Spain due to illness. As they left, a group of Jesuits arrived with an annual budget of 6,000 pesos and a mandate to combat the

25 spread of Protestantism. Seventeen of their 36 missionaries died by 1868 when a revolution in Spain forced their return. In 1883 a more lasting missionary effort was begun with the arrival of Claretian missionaries. Two years later the Barcelonabased Conceptionist Sisters started missions on Femando Po and Corisco. Between them, the Claretians and the Conceptionists ran almost all of the colony's schools, hospitals, orphanages and welfare institutions. The section of Spanish Guinean society most open to missionary influence was the Femandino community. Since their arrival on Femando Po, the Fernandinos had met with success in almost everything they engaged in. Retail trade, skilled seiVices and plantation management were dominated by them. By the turn of the century the main Fernandino families had become planters. There were the Barleycoms of Nigerian ancestry and the Dougans of Sierra Leonean origin. The ex-slave group were very tightly knit, socially and economically. For instance, archives record that an important Fernandino palm oil and yam merchant named Allen Vivour married Amelia Barleycorn and then became a cacao planter in the 1880s. Although a Methodist, he helped the Claretians establish a boarding school in Batete. He died in 1900 and his holdings were passed on to the Dougans in 1920. Vivour was quite characteristic of the Fernandinos; shrewd in trade and ecumenical in religion. Also of this mold was the most prominent Femandino of all, Maximiliano C. Jones. Educated by Jesuits, Jones began his adult life as a carpentry teacher and subsequently became a plantation foreman and finally a planter himself. Like Vivour, he was a Protestant and he helped the Claretians to establish themselves. In 1900 he opened a printer's shop in Santa Isabel and slowly acquired more wealth and status than many Europeans on the island. By 1920 he was the only African among the colony's ten largest planters. His influence was such that he helped to get the island's first thermal power station built in 1925. After having his seven sons educated in Spain, J ones retired and spent most of his time at his house in the Spanish coastal town of Bilbao. Bubi society also changed dramatically over the frrst hundred years of Spanish colonization. During the first half of the 19th century a king named Lorite had ruled them. He was succeeded by King Moka, who fonned the Lojua or Bubi royal guard; Reputed to have lived to be over 100 years old, Moka maintained an isolated life in Riaba and refused to have personal contact with Europeans until1889. Because of this isolation, many travellers and scholars, both at the time and since, believe that Moka may have been a series of kings pretending to be one. At this time missionaries sought Bubi converts with little success. Mary Kingsley related a story illustrating one problem faced by those clergymen whose mission was the proselytization of the Bubi, "... a priest had enterprisingly settled himself one night in the middle of a Bubi village with intent to devote the remainder of his life to quietly

26

but thoroughly converting it. Next morning, when he rose up, he found himself alone, the people having taken all their portable possessions and vanished to build another village elsewhere. The "·orthy Father spent some time chivying his flock about the forest, but in vain. and he returned home disgusted, deciding that the Creator, for some wise purpose, had dedicated the Bubis to the Devil." 25 On Moka's death, his prime minister, Sas Eburea, seized power using the Lojua and forbade all contact with Europeans. However, the Spanish were too well entrenched to let the Bubis isolate themselves again. Quite a few Bubis on the northern end of Femando Po had either converted to Christianity or fonned trade ties with Santa Isabel. Traditional discipline was cracking. After encouraging a tax strike in 1904, Sas Eburea was arrested by the Guardia Civil and taken to Santa Isabel where he fell ill and died. The Spanish claimed that he had converted to Catholicism and was baptized on his death bed. This is a very unlikely story. With Sas Eburea out of the way, Moka's legitimate successor, Malabo, became king. Tribal order broke down again in June 1910 when Chief Luba of Balacha in southern Femando Po ordered a rebellion against Spanish forced labor policies. Three soldiers were killed and Spanish troops, advised by none other than Maximiliano C. Jones, put down Luba's clan with great violence. Whether Malabo had anything to do with his vassal's revolt is not clear. However, the 1910 disturbances were the last acts of resistance by the Bubi. From then on, the tribe worked within the system. Malabo, a weak leader and an alcoholic, died on Moka Mountain in April 1937. His brother Alobari took the throne and another brother Oriche was the last king of the Bubi. By the time of Oriche's death in 1952, the tribe's traditional religion and institutions had been set aside for the ways of Roman Catholicism and modem education. Over the years, the casas fuertes persuaded the Bubi to shift from their holdings to less favorable land in exchange for pensions and secondary and higher education scholarships in Spain. Returning students either entered Spanish employment or loaned money from the combines to establish themselves in a profession. Fanns were amalgamated into some fifty plantations totalling 50,000 hectares. The Bubi did some market gardening while the Femandinos dominated retail commerce. Both island groups were deeply involved in plantation management and in the professions. By the middle of the century, this economic system, combined with the islanders' finnly rooted Catholicism insured the Bubi and Femandinos places on the middle rungs of the ladder of Spanish patronage. One colonial administrator who did a great deal to further the cause of assimilated islanders was Angel Barrera y Luyando. After serving as captain of Santa Is abel harbor in 1905 and interim governor general in 1906-7, Barrera ran the colony as governor general from 1910 to 1924. His rule was paternalistic and many of his efforts were spent in trying to fmd solutions for Femando Po's labor shortage.

27

Chronically short of manpower, the Spanish cocoa combines tried to find a work force for the island. Even if the status of the Bubis and Femandinos had not eliminated them from the pool of agricultural laborers, their numbers were insufficient to keep the plantations running. Hence the practice of recruiting Kru from Liberia continued. Parties to labor recruitment negotiations included figures as diverse as Alfred Woermann, Angel Barrera and members of the Barleycom family. New malpractices emerged. "Liberians, acting as Spanish consuls, recruited the laborers and took a commission for each man hired. When the laborers returned from Femando Po they would hand the consul a voucher for the balance of their wages. Dishonest consuls, as many undoubtedly were, would steal part or all of this money on fabricated pretexts .... In 1923, under pressure from the American economic adviser, the Liberian government banned the recruitment of boys for Femando Po. The trade resumed after the Spanish consul had 'fixed' the Liberian legislature for the moderate price of £150." 26 Spain feared that the Liberian connection could not be maintained for long and the uncertainty of the situation led in part to the 1926 push into Rfo Muni's interior. Following the Liberian presidential election of 1927, the defeated candidate, Thomas J. Faulkner, left for the United States where he accused the Liberian government of election irregularities and of condoning the forcible recruitment of laborers for Femando Po. He claimed that work on the island was tantan1ount to slavery. President C. B. D. King of Liberia denied all accusations and asked the League of Nations to send an investigative commission. This commission, which consisted of a former Liberian president, a black American and a Scot, reported in 1930 that, "... a large proportion of the contract laborers shipped to Femando Po and French Gabon from the southern counties of Liberia have been recruited under conditions of criminal compulsion scarcely distinguishable from slave raiding and slave trading and frequently by misrepresenting the destination. "27 President King resigned, even though he had not been personally criticized and his government had been cleared of most of the other charges. The Liberian co1mection was well and truly broken. But even before the reading of the commission's report, Spain had turned to British-ruled Nigeria, where the crowded Eastern Region had a resource of manpower accustomed to migration. A labor law was passed by the British colonial authorities in 1929 and a fonnal Anglo-Spanish labor agreement was signed at the height of the Second World War in 1942. Although this pact was

28

revised ten ye.ars later and again in 1956 and 1962, the level of wages and recruitment conditions were hardly improved and dissatisfaction was high. Crowded housing in barracks was provided free and 12 foot square rooms were allocated to each family or every two unmarried males. Nevertheless, Ibo, lbibio and Eftk contract workers quickly fonned the largest group on Femando Po, outnumbering all other groups combined. By the end of World War ll, Santa Isabel had become a city of importance. Stone buildings and spacious streets bore witness to the island's cocoa wealth. A cathedral was built in 1916 with money donated by the Marques de Comillas. Meditenanean architecture graced the town, giving it the look of Mallorca. Cacao and coffee processing plants, factories related to fishing, a distillery, soap factories and dozens of warehouses, workshops and stores maintained premises in the city. Almost half of Femando Po·s residents lived in Santa Isabel, where schools, hospitals and markets insured a prosperous and secure life for all who co-operated with the Europeans. Far from being "death's waiting room", the city had become a place of sophistication and comfort. San Carlos was a banana port, Moka was the centre of cattle ranching and Concepci6n became something of a holiday resort. Rio Muni was very different. It had the atmosphere of a frontier town, just as active as the island but without the frills. Cultivation had expanded not in the form of plantations but on the basis of smallholdings, the total area of which eventually grew to some 10,000 hectares. Because they were alien to the plantation system and not trusted by the colonial authorities, the Fang were denied employment on Femando Po. Thus they were spared the questionable conditions and the dislocations that go with latifundia. However, the attitude of the administration was such that the Fang were isolated from those other Africans who could have aided them in adapting to the new world being created in the region by Christianity, imperialism and technology. Furthennore, few Fang were ever able to gain access to Spanish patronage and those few who did seldom left the mainland. The economies and societies of the mainland and the island were diverging both in terms of structure and complexity. Development under Spanish rule was purposely unequal. Post-primary education in the colony was neglected and dependence was further ensured by the sending of the best students to Spain. The paternalism of colonial authorities, plantation owners and priests often clouded the country's real issues. Femando Po had experienced many changes in the centuries it had been exposed to outside influence, but virgin Rio Muni now began to see rapid social transfonnation. The Ndowe, particularly the Benga of Corisco and the Muni Estuary, were Christianized early. In 1850 an American Presbyterian missionary and linguist James Love Mackey founded a mission on Corisco and began the first scientific study of the Benga. He was followed by George Paull who opened a mission at Mbade and by Robert Hamilton Nassau. Arriving in Rio Muni with his wife in 1861, Nassau was a doctor, folldore expert, clergyman and, like Mackey, a linguist. He explored Rfo

29 Muni with great curiousity. In 1870 his wife died at sea during her transfer to a Gabonese hospital. Nassau left Africa the following year, having completed a Benga translation of the Bible. In 1868 a Benga named J. Ikenge lbia became the first Christian clergyman of an African background in the whole of Spanish Guinea. Trained at a Presbyterian college in the United States, Ikenge took charge of the Corisco mission. A good indication of the level of Spanish pateralism is the fact that it was not until sixty years after Ikenge's ordination that a Bubi, Joaquin Maria Sialo, became the frrst Spanish Guinean African to become a Roman Catholic priest. Eager to eliminate Protestant influence, the Spanish authorities exiled Ikenge to Femando Po after he wrote a letter to the governor general which was judged disrespectful. Throughout the last quarter of the 19th century, Catholic missions replaced the Presbyterian one, but little was done to extend Christian influence deeper into Rio Muni. The uncertainty of Rio Muni's status led to a dearth of missionary activity in the early days of Spanish rule. From 1885 to 1904 French and Spanish authorities argued over whether Rio Muni should fall under the Vicariat of Gabon or that of Femando Po. After the Vatican settled the issue in favor of the Spanish and a Claretian, Gomez Marijuan, was installed as the first Bishop of Santa Isabel, missionary activities in Rio Muni were given more attention. The Fang had been exposed to missionaries from 1844 when French priests first came to Gabon. Then for several decades there was almost no contact. Throughout this century, especially after 1926, Spanish missionaries pushed into the interior. A generation gap emerged between the village elders who subscribed to the ancestor-worshipping Bieri cult and the shifting young workers who were influenced by the missionaries who came with traders and explorers or set up chapels near lumber camps. Slowly Christianity replaced old beliefs. But in some remote areas, the missionary activity backfired and the result was the Bwiti cult, a syncretistic sect which combined Christianity and traditional beliefs in a way quite similar to the Voodoo cults of Haiti and the Candomble in Brazil. Of all the syncretistic movements in equatorial Africa at that time (Kimbangists, Kakists, Lassyists, Ngols, Labis, etc.), the Bwiti, it can be argued, had the smallest Christian input. The Creation and the Aight from Paradise are clearly recognizable in their mythology and God is a concerned actor in human affairs, rather than the aloof deity of most Bantu religions. A female deity, combining the qualities of Mary with those of Mboumba the spirit of rivers, is regarded with equal importance as her brother, the Creator. Originally, a male secret society, the Bwiti recognized the equality of the sexes early. This cult appeared first in the Mitsogo and Apindji tribes of Lower Gabon, but eventually it became an almost totally Fang organization. It drew displaced laborers and soldiers to its ranks. It spread north and during the 1920s the sect gained adherents along the Ogoowe, in Libreville, into Wolen-Ntem and finally into Rio Muni and Cameroon. The future president of independent Gabon, Uon Mba, used the Bwiti as a means of rebuilding the solidarity of the Muni Estuary's

30

many fragmented clans. By 1960 there were about a hundred Bwiti chapels with some 20,