Bernabé López García: or When Popular Stereotypes Override Objective Scholarship
The interview of Francisco Carriòn with the Spanish Arabist, Bernabé López García, published in El Independiente of March 14, 2023 under the title "A Marruecos tanta euforia le saldrá cara; su situación es complicada” puts on the table an interesting discussion around issues having to do with Morocco’s relations to Spain, Western Sahara and the whole North Western African and Western Mediterranean regions. It contains thought-provoking theses, but it does not lack its share of contradictions and misrepresentations. This is so much interesting as it comes from an Arabist scholar, who is supposedly an authority on matters Moroccan and Arabic in Spain.
On the other hand, espousing Algerian and Polisario positions and usually writing pieces that put Morocco in a bad light, the interviewer, Francisco Carriòn, has successfully oriented the discussion so that it shows Morocco as authoritarian, non-democratic and non-deserving of safeguarding its territorial unity, something that Bernabé López García, the scholar, seems to be comfortable with corroborating. Can we talk of a tacit collusion between interviewer and interviewee whereby truth and objectivity are compromised for the sake of confirming usual stereotypes about the “southern neighbor”, as the Spanish call it? It seems that way, given how the interview unfolded.
It is surprising that Bernabé López García, that some in Spain and in Morocco call “a respected scholar” on the Maghreb and the Arab World, expresses value judgments that are sweepingly general and unwarranted by reality. For him to say that he does not believe in the Moroccan élite is something unbecoming of a University professor; in Spain, those judgements usually come from TV commentators or journalists who repeat unsubstantiated judgements on Morocco; these “opinion leaders” refuse to get rid of the usual “anti-moro” rhetoric and never try to understand their southern neighbors for who they are. But from an Arabist, it comes as also strange but shockingly so.
Bernabé López Garcia has been a student of the Moroccan élite’s hard work to win the independence of Morocco, and has been a close witness of its resistance against the tyrannical forces within the system during what is called “the lead years” (years of oppression), and of its dexterous success in achieving a smooth and successful transition between the reign of Hasan II (1961-19919) and the new reign of Mohamed VI in the late nineties and the early 2000s. These are not small feats but great achievements of the Moroccan élite. Bernabé López Garcia could also testify that it is this very élite that made possible the success of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (a model in transitional justice) and negotiated the New Constitution of 2011 and oversaw its difficult implementation. Is this an élite to be distrusted or despised? I don’t think so.
Can an Arabist scholar resort to value judgements while forgetting that it took the Spanish élite more than eighty years (with an authoritarian interval during Franco’s time) to establish a working democracy (from 1889 to 1975)? Democracy is historically a long process that is built through piecemeal progress as was the case in most Western countries; in the case of Morocco, what a learned scholar should tell us is what has been achieved and what remains to be built. Morocco of the 21rst century is way different from the Morocco of the 60s or 70s of the twentieth century. Notable progress has been made and Bernabé López García knows that only too well; it is slow, yes, but that is a choice that Moroccans have made: to go slowly and make piecemeal progress and that choice should be respected, especially by scholars who, normally, look at the big picture, from a long historical perspective.
Moreover, the main thesis in Bernabé López García’s interview is that unless Morocco is fully democratic, it cannot be trusted if it gives guarantees regarding Western Sahara’s autonomy within sovereignty. Not only is this based on a fallacy but it is neither warranted by international law nor by history. Democracy has never been stipulated as a condition to achieving territorial integrity and unity. When the Westphalian order was initiated in 1648, none of the European countries was democratic but still, they negotiated a nation-state status, nevertheless. The United Nations does not put as a condition that countries should be democratic if they want to safeguard their sovereignty. Yoking democracy to claims of sovereignty is a rhetorical hoax, whereby Bernabé López García seems, in my opinion, more intent on criticizing the Moroccan regime than contributing, as a scholar, to finding a solution to the conflict. Territorial unity is a people’s rights not a political system’s right.
The theory that claims that Morocco’s designs on Western Sahara are the regime’s expansionist desire and not that of the Moroccan people (advanced by Algerian political élite and unquestioningly repeated by Spanish media) is simply and completely false. A scholar like Bernabé López García should know that. He should also know that if there is a question that will mobilize all Moroccans, with very few exceptions, it is the Moroccanness of Western Sahara.
This is why Bernabé López García fell into inappropriate contradictions: he incites the Polisario to “postpone the dream” (like the Basques and Catalonians) and rejoin Morocco and work from inside to make real development gains, while at the same saying that Morocco cannot be trusted to honor its commitment if the autonomy-under-sovereignty plan is accepted. On the one hand, he preaches the piecemeal approach, and, on the other, he puts democracy as condition for the autonomy-within-sovereignty option. This is not only a theoretical aporia, but real political cul-de-sac that scholars should normally avoid.
Finally, Bernabé López García says that for Spain to really trust Morocco, the latter should improve its image among Spanish public opinion. I would say that this assertion is no more than a Chutzpah. Spanish public opinion leaders never cease to repeat stereotypes about Morocco, without verifying them or engaging in discussions and debates with Moroccans around them; yet, according to Bernabé López García, it is up to the Moroccans to make an effort to convince the Spanish that their stereotypes about Moroccans are false.
For example, many public opinion leaders in Spain think that Morocco’s territorial claims are evidence of its expansionist designs to reinvent the historical Grand Morocco. No evidence is provided to substantiate such a claim. They also think that Moroccans played an important role in helping Franco win the civil war against Republicans, whereas Morocco was a colony of France and Spain then. And they think that Morocco exploited the power vacuum when Francisco Franco was laying dying in 1975 to win back Western Sahara, whereas Franco’s death simply accidentally coincided with the International Court of Justice ruling on Western Sahara on October 16, 1975 (when Hassan II declared the Green March). If anything, it is up to the Spanish élite itself to shed the drag and dispense with the rhetoric of stereotyping the other and move towards a more constructive and “neighborly” interaction with Moroccans, and not the other way around. Here is where scholars like Bernabé López García could play a vital role. I have not seen that expressed anywhere in the interview with El Independiente.
Therefore, I think Bernabé López García’s interview puts forward interesting ideas but I am afraid those very ideas were clouded with misrepresentations and unwarranted value judgements. What is unsettling is that the political and theoretical pitfalls of the interview come from an Arabist scholar, who is supposed to know better. If Bernabé López García indulges in unwarranted claims, what would say the simple bloggers or journalists who are simply and daily fed misconceptions and clichés on “moros”, “the southern neighbor”, the “authoritarian regime”, the “expansionist threat from the south”.
I always think that scholarly status consists of lifting oneself beyond the general doxa, beyond popular beliefs and ideas; a scholar leads by questioning what the populace cherishes dearly. He or she disturbs the intellectual comfort and complacency of the stereotypes and the clichés. I was expecting that from a scholar like Bernabé López García’s. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.