EL ESTRECHO DE GIBRALTAR Y LOS IMAGINARIOS DEL CANNABIS: CULTURAS Y CONTRACULTURAS RIFEÑO-HISPANO-MAGREBÍES (1859-1995)

Abstract

The strait of Gibraltar and Cannabis imaginaries: Riffi-Hispanic-Maghrebi cultures and countercultures (1859-1995) evaluates the ways in which Moroccan and Spanish youths included each other in counter-national narrations through Rif’s Cannabis in the Strait of Gibraltar. I argue how these subterranean crossings reformulated Spanish-Maghrebi relations creating a shared state of subalternity challenging Spanish-Arab colonial and postcolonial practices.

The first chapter (1859-1939) handles Spain’s intentions of orientalizing Morocco during the African War of 1859-60, through painting or Bohemian literature. The end of the chapter uses military testimonies through which Bohemian and Orientalist imaginaries were opposed: Cannabis (Kif) was present as either a therapeutic method or as an escape from boredom, creating internal exchange contraband lines between Spanish soldiers and colonized Riffians.

The second (1940-1968) explores the role of the Legión, the recruitment of Riffi men for the Spanish Civil war and their compensation with grifa stashes, concluding with the arrival of American military bases and the leaking of countercultural values. This created a new affective space between youths towards a historical and cultural continuity based upon external Cannabis consummation. I also look at the exclusion of the Rif from Moroccan nationalism, forcing the area to find ways of economic and social rebirth in the midst of student movements.

Finally (1969-1992), I recover the hatching of counter-cultural manifestations where Hashish was taken as a militant or dissident symbol: Andalusian rock, Sufi rock, comic books and drug acquisition trips to the depths of Morocco’s Hashish fields facilitating ways out from the Moroccan and Spanish regimes. The chapter ends with the division of the Strait: the birth of new security methods in the Strait pushed towards new ways of escaping, either through undocumented migration or narco-trafficking giving birth to a new imaginary that brought back the idea of Orientalism and mutual othering.