Al Leader della Gran Giamahiria Araba Libica Popolare Socialista (Per conoscenza, alle e ai rappresentati del governo italiano e dell’Unione europea) Gentile Muammar Gheddafi, noi non facciamo né vogliamo far parte delle 700 donne che lei ha chiesto di incontrare il 12 giugno durante la sua visita in Italia. Siamo, infatti, donne italiane, di vari paesi europei e africani estremamente preoccupate e scandalizzate per le politiche che il suo Paese, con la complicità dell’Italia e dell’Unione europea, sta attuando nei confronti delle donne e degli uomini di origine africana e non, attualmente presenti in Libia, con l’intenzione di rimanervi per un lavoro o semplicemente di transitarvi per raggiungere l’Europa. Siamo a conoscenza dei continui rastrellamenti, delle deportazioni delle e dei migranti attraverso container blindati verso le frontiere Sud del suo paese, delle violenze, della “vendita” di uomini e donne ai trafficanti, della complicità della sua polizia nel permettere o nell’impedire il transito delle e dei migranti. Ma soprattutto siamo a conoscenza degli innumerevoli campi di concentramento, a volte di lavoro forzato, alcuni finanziati dall’Italia, in cui donne e uomini subiscono violenze di ogni tipo, per mesi, a volte addirittura per anni, prima di subire la deportazione o di essere rilasciati/e. Alcune di noi quei campi li hanno conosciuti e, giunte in Italia, li hanno testimoniati. Fatawhit, Eritrea : “Il trasferimento da una prigione all’altra si effettuava con un pulmino dove erano ammassate 90 persone. Il viaggio è durato tre giorni e tre notti, non c’erano finestre e non avevamo niente da bere. Ho visto donne bere l’urina dei propri mariti perché stavano morendo di disidratazione. A Misratah ho visto delle persone morire. A Kufra le condizioni di vita erano molto dure (…) Ho visto molte donne violentate, i poliziotti entravano nella stanza, prendevano una donna e la violentavano in gruppo davanti a tutti. Non facevano alcuna distinzione tra donne sposate e donne sole. Molte di loro sono rimaste incinte e molte di loro sono state obbligate a subire un aborto, fatto nella clandestinità, mettendo a forte rischio la propria vita. Ho visto molte donne piangere perché i loro mariti erano picchiati, ma non serviva a fermare i colpi dei manganelli sulle loro schiene. (…) L’unico metodo per uscire dalle prigione libiche è pagare.” (http://www.storiemigranti.org/spip.php?article67). Saberen, Eritrea: “Una volta stavo cercando di difendere mio fratello dai colpi di manganello e hanno picchiato anche me, sfregiandomi il viso. Una delle pratiche utilizzate in questa prigione era quella delle manganellate sulla palma del piede, punto particolarmente sensibile al dolore. Per uscire ho dovuto pagare 500 dollari.” (http://www.storiemigranti.org/spip.php?article67). Tifirke, Etiopia: “Siamo state picchiate e abusate, è così per tutte le donne”. (Dal film “Come un uomo sulla terra”). Siamo consapevoli, anche, che Lei e il suo Paese non siete gli unici responsabili di tali politiche, dal momento che gli accordi da Lei sottoscritti con il governo italiano prevedono ingenti finanziamenti da parte dell’Italia affinché esse continuino ad attuarsi e si inaspriscano nei prossimi mesi e anni in modo da bloccare gli arrivi dei migranti sulle coste italiane; dal momento, inoltre, che l’Unione europea, attraverso le sue massime cariche, si è espressa in diverse occasioni a favore di una maggiore collaborazione con il suo Paese per fermare le migrazioni verso l’Europa. Facciamo presente innanzitutto a Lei, però, e per conoscenza alle e ai rappresentati del governo italiano, alle ministre e alle altre rappresentanti del popolo italiano che Lei incontrerà in questa occasione, così come alle e ai rappresentanti dell’Unione europea, una nostra ulteriore consapevolezza: quella per cui fare parte della comunità umana, composta da donne e uomini di diverse parti del mondo, significa condividere le condizioni di possibilità della sua esistenza. Tra queste, la prima e fondamentale, è che ogni donna, ogni uomo, ogni bambino, venga considerato un essere umano e rispettato/a in quanto tale. Firmatarie: Federica Sossi, Alessandra Sciurba, Isabelle Saint-Saens, Glenda Garelli, Anna Simone, Floriana Lipparini, Cristina Papa, Enrica Rigo, Maria VIttoria Tessitore, Barbara Bee, Maddalena Bonelli, Chiara Gattullo, Elisa Coco, Gabriella Ghermandi, Elisabetta Lepore, Barbara D’Ippolito, Paola Meneganti, Anna Maria Rivera, Judith Revel, Vanessa Giannotti, Enza Panebianco, Angela Pallone, Di Lauro Gabriella, Sara Prestianni, Valentina Maddalena, ( per adesioni individuali semir@libero.it ) | |
Sunday 7 June 2009
Lettera a Gheddafi (giugno 2009)
African Diaspora..........History
African Diaspora
Over a period of almost four centuries, four milion Africans were transported to North America and the Caribbean Islands in the Atlantic slave trade. Captured from their homeland and seperated from their tribes and families they were enslaved in a new world, where all familiar customs were absent. The African diaspora is the story of how Africans, though scattered disperesed, managed to retain their traditions and reform their identities in a new world. Elements of African culture such as religion, language, and folklore endured and were their links to their past lives. In the process of americanization, Africans formed another culture known as Afro-Americans or Creoles.
Afro-American Culture
The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in the world. It created permanent ties between Africa and North America. Africans were shipped from many regions of Africa but mostly from those areas along the coast. The Bantu, along the Guinea coast had largest homogenous culture followed by the Mande, thus the culture of African-Americans was influenced the most by the people of these regions.
In the colonies the economic demand for slaves and the demographics of the slave population had an enormous effect on the developement of Afro-American culture. Never did their exist one Afro-American culture, for each area had a different social, economic, and political relience on slavery, which characterized a unique slave culture. For example, areas that depended on plantation farming such as the deep South and the Chesepeake had a huge number of slaves, while in comparison the North had relitively few slaves. As a result, the southern colonies more frequently imported new African slaves which constantly re-established African traditions. Each area in the colonies had the developement of a specific Afro-American culture.
Though Afro-American culture was specific to each area, there were several general cultural themes that ran throughout the Afro-American population in the colonies, one was religion. Christianinty is an execellent example of how Africans merged their own beliefs with the existing religion, and produced a theology of their own. Christianity spread rapidly throughout the slave communities during the Great Awakening, a surgence of evangelical Christianiy which swept the colonies. This movement illuminated the mystical and magical elements of Christianinty, a side which the Africans could understand and identify with. It is ironic, for white slaveholders originally used Christianinty as a tool to perpetuate obedience and docility in slaves; yet, Africans recognized the hypocrsy in the white's version of Christianity, realizing they were equal in God's eyes. Africans took the tool ment to manipulate them and used Christianinty to give them hope for the future and to strenghten their bonds between one another. While slaves were Christianized and assimilated to white culture they kept elements of their native culture alive.
African Americans blended old style with new when cooking, smithing, woodcarving, storytelling, and gospel singing traditions. Africans added their own spices and cooking style to some pre-existing European dishes. Slaveowners were also influenced by African cooking styles which is an example of the blending of the cultures. Many African traditions were kept alive by placing familiar, symbols (such as the snake) in smithed gates and window frames. The wood that the carver chose played an important role in native culture preservation. This meticulous tradition lead the way for woodcarvers to make canes, statues, and sculptures such as chains, to show the bondage they endured. The carvings were very detailed and had relevance to the family and friends of the woodcarver. Songs that began in the fields of the plantations to pass the work day evolved into a new type of music, gospel. Gospel music combined the themes of salvation and freedom of Christianity with a native style of singing and dancing. These examples show the integration of native culture with traditional european culture.
Language
In the past the Pigeon English spoken by Africans was seen as proof that Africans were not intelligent enough to learn the English language. Through recent studies, we have learned that in the English spoken by African Americans, ties to African Languages can be traced. The Creole languages like Gullah and Pigeon English, still spoken in parts of the U.S. today, reflect pieces of the African culture that survived slavery, not an inability to learn English.
The English spoken by the slaves was greatly influenced by their native languages. Gullah was influenced by the languages of the Fante, Ga, Kikongo, Kimbundu, Mandinka, Twi, Ewe, Ibo and Yorba. As time went on, the Creole languages (influenced and) were also influenced by the languages of settlers, such as, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, as well as Native Americans such as theCreek, Cherokee and many others. By mixing parts of the languages spoken around them, African-Americans created a way to express themselves and communicate with others in the "New World."
For more specific regional information on the diaspora, refer to:
William D. Pierson. Black Yankees(Boston, 1988)
Charles Joyner. Down by the Riverside(Chiacgo, 1984)
Ira Berlin, "Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on the British Mainland North America"American Historical Review 85, 1(1980)
Joseph E. Holloway, ed. Africanisms in American Culture(Indiana, 1990)
For further information on the diaspora in the Carribean, Brazil, and Latin America refer to:
Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas(New York, 1994)
For further information on religion refer to:
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion(New York, 1978)
For further information on cultural aspects refer to:
Black People and their Culture, Selected Writings from the African Diaspora,(Washington D.C., 1976)
To learn more about the African Diaspora, here are some cool links:
The roots of Afro-American music can be explored in Native African Music.
Look at Documents of the History of African Descents throughout the World or the Library of Congress
links to brush up on African history.