By Fidel García Gutiérrez and Emilio J. Gómez Ciriano
In the city of Elmina (Ghana), a group of people met last September, sponsored by Justice and Peace, to reflect on the legacy and consequences of slavery.
When personal stories come together in spaces that have been significant both historically and emotionally, situations such as those experienced at the international seminar recently held in Elmina (Ghana) between September 10 and 17, organized by Governance, can occur. of Justice and Peace of Ghana together with the German Justice and Peace Commission. A seminar-workshop that, under the title Confront and deal with the legacy of the slave trade and the consequences of human trafficking and slaverydeveloped a contribution to overcoming the toxic legacy of history and finding inspiration for the fight against slavery today. 45 participants from three continents were reflecting, debating and posing future challenges about past slavery and its consequences, as well as its current manifestations. The spirit that animated us in Elmina is reflected in the questions proposed by the historian Esther Mayoko Ortega: «How can we give an account of our stories when they have denied us the name, the memory, the body in the territory or the archive? How can we account for our stories when we have been denied humanity itself? “How can we account for our stories when they have been told from the supposed objectivity of the modest witness? What story counts as history?”
The meeting was held at Elmina Castle and the Gross Friedischburg Fort – places of pain, suffering, violations of dignity and rights – which ceased to be a place where tourist activities were carried out, to become a space of resignification, of memory (not a museum), where the experiences of enslaved people resonated and were reconnected with the stories, feelings, knowledge and commitments of the African-American people who participated in the seminar alongside the African and European representatives. During those days we addressed issues such as the slave trade in Africa, the business that transatlantic trade entailed for Europe and America, as well as the role that the Church played in all of this. But there was also talk of how we can make truth and recover memory in our streets, museums and squares.
The phrase that invites us to action and that is still in full force is collected from The damned of the Earth (1961) by the Martinican Frantz Fanon, where the author, in response to the look at a continent humiliated and offended by the conquests of Western countries in search of wealth and raw materials, warns us: «The well-being and progress of Europe has been built with the sweat and corpses of the blacks, the Arabs, the Indians and the yellows. And we have decided not to forget it. We can say that this “not forgetting” must overcome the dominant scheme that makes certain events and their consequences invisible. One of them is European colonialism. This system based on military control, the use of enslaved African labor and the appropriation of land and raw materials at a global level is at the root of Western modernity and its legacy continues to affect human and political relations throughout the world. world. The conquest of freedoms on the European continent has been based on a slave economy that involved the transatlantic trafficking of between 12.5 and 15 million human beings, the vast majority coming from the African continent. A trade, that of slaves, which in countries like Spain was legal until less than 150 years ago and with which the hardest and most discredited jobs were covered but which, above all, profoundly changed the perception that the European continent had of Africa. While during the Middle Ages the African kingdoms and states enjoyed clear recognition, the consolidation of racism since the 16th century to justify slavery and the expansion of scientific racism from the 19th century to justify colonization have extremely influenced the perception that today it is from the African continent. Thus, the overseas territories became a “separate world” where the civil rights present in Europe lacked validity, and where enslaved people were the basis of the extractive productive system.
This seminar-workshop was intended, therefore, to create an environment in which to break amnesia and colonial forgetfulness to recognize the devastating consequences that slavery entailed for many peoples. Starting from this historical reality, it was not only an exercise of inquiry into the history of slavery, but, above all, it sought to redefine that history, decolonize our perspective and ask ourselves, from now on, how our colonial heritage manifests itself. in the face of new slavery linked to immigration and human trafficking, as well as intentional wars to maintain the plundering of human and material resources.
A heritage in which Churches and religions also participated, as Father Christopher J. Kellerman states in his recent work All oppression shall ceaseincluding Bartolomé de las Casas himself who, although he opposed the enslavement of the Native Americans, was permissive with that of the Africans, although he later regretted it. Along with him, many others justified slavery, although it should be noted that there were exceptions such as those of the Capuchins Miguel García and Gonçalo Leite. Questioning and recognizing this other view of history from the processes of evangelization – and even from projects such as the reductions and their relationship with slavery – is a healthy exercise that we were able to carry out during the days of the meeting, not so much to demand accountability from the past, but to learn from it and reconfigure the future.
In this line we can mention the bull of convocation of the jubilee year 2025 by the Vatican entitled Hope does not disappoint. In its No. 16, it includes the urgent invitation addressed to the richest nations to recognize the seriousness of so many decisions made and determine to forgive the debts of the countries that will never be able to pay them, because, as can be read in the text “if We truly want to prepare the path of peace in the world, let us strive to remedy the causes that give rise to injustice, cancel unjust and unpaid debts and satisfy the hungry. It would be more appropriate to affirm, however, that the countries plundered for centuries are not those that are in debt, but rather the dominant countries that continue to perpetuate models of colonization, plunder and exploitation. Therefore, the forgiveness of unjust debt is not enough to break the vicious circle of the dominant model of international relations. It is also necessary to put an end to the capitalist models of plunder and exploitation, to follow paths of respect and autonomy in the decisions of each people, and to create new relationships on equal terms based on justice as a guarantee for peace.
the novel go back home by the Ghanaian author Yaa Gyasi expresses the reunion with a continent and its cultural, social, historical, and religious roots that suffered plunder, repression, domination, and colonialism with the trade of millions of slaves torn from their land. In this suggestive and imaginary fable, the writer reconnects with her family and ancestral history after having spent a few months on a research scholarship in her native country, from which she left in 1992 for the United States at the age of 2. The work does not so much narrate his return home, to his roots, but rather the story of a return as a response to leaving through the ‘door of no return’. We perceive Gyasi’s ‘coming home’ both in the physical and geographical locations of the slave trade trade in which the seminar-workshop was held, and in the expression of the feelings of the African-American participants. They made us participate in their need to feel like a ‘people’ due to the lack of their own and recognized territory, and their feeling of being in a ‘no place’, in the sense of Marc Augé. A space that they need to resignify and appropriate, recreate and recover roots from uprooting, and achieve respect for their dignity and basic rights, violated by continuing to live as a population that is still marginalized and excluded in the countries of America.
It was clear to us from the testimony of the African American and African representatives participating in the workshop, as well as the historians and researchers who offered us their academic knowledge and life experiences, that modern European colonial expansion continues to have important consequences. On the one hand, in the postponement of many African countries and in countless indigenous and Afro-descendant communities and, on the other hand, in the rejection of blackness in both American and European countries. The marginalization and dispossession that began during the arrival of African slaves to America, along with the exploitation and oppression of native peoples, continued and intensified with postcolonial states. Until today. And that lacerating history continues to affect south-south and south-north migrations, as well as fueling new slavery, human trafficking and endemic impoverishment.
This experience has made it possible to rediscover the present and project the future from a past that continues to determine and influence situations of human rights violations for the same subjects. It is not just about asking for forgiveness for events that occurred in past centuries, or is that not the most important thing. It is about, however, recognizing the current consequences of those excesses and trying to correct them from a humanization and respect for the dignity of all people and the rights of peoples, nations and continents. It is also about managing and deciding on equal conditions and autonomously the destiny of its wealth, promoting true continental integration, strengthening ties of solidarity, and fighting to eradicate all marginalization, all imperialism and all colonialism from a interreligious and intercultural dialogue to build a single world, “the great human family, children of the God of life.” It is, therefore, imperative to end this political, economic, ideological and cultural, even religious, colonization. The liberation of peoples means much more than independence, since it must constitute a process of self-liberation and self-recognition that will allow them to strengthen their sovereignty against the new imperialisms. For this reason, more than ever it is necessary to promote decoloniality through the decolonization of our perspective and, thus, give new meaning to stories.
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If you want to delve deeper into these questions, we first recommend the works of Frantz Fanon The wretched of the earth and Black skin, white masksalong with that of the Kenyan writer Wa Thiongo Decolonizing the Mind: The Linguistic Politics of African Literaturewhich will allow us to delve deeper into the decolonial question. Secondly, to further understand the impacts of slavery, you can approach the work Slavery in the south of the Iberian Peninsula coordinated by Rafael Pérez and Manuel Fernández, to the book by José Antonio Piqueras entitled Slavery in Spain. A transatlantic bondto the text by James Walvin Brief history of slaveryor to the monograph that will be published by News Now Nigeria in 2025 written by José Luis Cortés History of slavery in Spain. Thirdly, it remains to recommend the title All oppression shall cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Churchwritten by the American Jesuit Christopher J. Kellerman, to understand the role of the Church in these stories.
Above image provided by the event organization.
