dirty, dangerous, and demanding: an explanatory model applied to social exclusion in el ejido...

8/8/2019 Dirty, Dangerous, and Demanding: An Explanatory Model Applied to Social Exclusion in El Ejido (Almera)

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Dirty, Dangerous and Demanding: An explanatory

model applied to social exclusion in El Ejido (Spain)

BA Thesis

FranciscoArqueros

April 2003

Department of Anthropology,

NUI, Maynooth

William Wilde Award for Best Overall Undergraduate Thesis in

Anthropology, November 2003


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TableofContents

CONTENTS ERROR!BOOKMARKNOTDEFINED.

LISTOFTABLESANDPICTURES 4

ALMERIAANDTHENORTHOFMOROCCO 5

CHAPTER1:INTRODUCTION:CONTEXTANDMETHOD 10

ABSTRACT 10

ELEJIDO:BRIEFGEOGRAPHICAL,ECONOMIC,ANDSOCIALDESCRIPTION 10

FEBRUARY2000 12

FIELDWORK 15

ABRIEFLITERATUREREVIEWOFTHEANTHROPOLOGYUNDERTAKENINELEJIDO 20

CONCLUSION 21

CHAPTER2:THEAGRICULTURALMODEOFPRODUCTION 22

ABSTRACT 22

PONIENTE:ECOLOGICALANDHISTORICALBACKGROUND 22

THEUNITOFPRODUCTION:THEFAMILYFARM 24

EXOGENOUSFACTORS:THEPRESSUREFROMABOVE 30

CONCLUSION 33

CHAPTER3:LABOURMIGRATIONSANDIMMIGRATIONCONTROLS 34

ABSTRACT 34

LABOURMIGRATIONS 34

IMMIGRATIONCONTROLSANDCONTROLOFLABOURMOBILITY 41

CONCLUSION 46

CHAPTER4:LABOURRELATIONSANDSOCIALEXCLUSION 47

ABSTRACT 47

THESEGMENTEDLABOURMARKET 47

SOCIALIMPLICATIONSOFSEGMENTEDLABOURMARKETS 50

LABOURRELATIONSANDSOCIALCATEGORISATION 53

CONCLUSION 60


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CONCLUSION 62

BIBLIOGRAPHY 64


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List of Tables and pictures

TABLE 1

EVOLUTION OF THE POPULATION BETWEEN 1900 AND 2001 ....................2

TABLE 2

LABOUR ACTIVITY IN GREENHOUSES......................................................18

TABLE 3

EVOLUTION OF THE PRICES OF VEGETABLES ..........................................20


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Almeria and the North of Morocco

Sierra de Gdor

Poniente

Alpujarras

Sale


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Preface

Fieldwork diary entry, 19/8/2002

I had lunch this afternoon with Jos and Manuela in a cheap Chinese [restaurant] inRoquetas to which they go quite often. During the meal they commented that after [theethnic riots of] February 2000 [in El Ejido] farmers dont want to hire Moroccans becausethey only give problems: Romanians, Lithuanians or Ecuadorians they say are much

better and socially integrated [workers]. Jos claims to know other farmers who handedcottages over to [Moroccan] immigrants working for them and, soon after that, they [theimmigrants] filled them with many other immigrants, from whom they get rent.

On the way back to El Ejido we drove through a secondary road in the very heart of thegreenhouse land. In Roquetas immigrants are mainly black Africans and, as we were leavingRoquetas, we saw mostly black men: some of them walking along the road, others riding

bicycles, and many just chatting outside the cottages, in the late sunshine of the Sundaysummer day. Unexpectedly, a very old car, full to bursting with black men, pulled out ontothe road, just in front of out car, without indicating. Manuela had to slowdown with visibleannoyance. Theyre a danger driving, and if you have an accident with them youre fucked,

because they never have insurance she said. After this incident Jos told us what happenedto his cousins friends when he gave a lift to a Moroccan man:

The other day a cousins friend gave a lift to a petrol station to a Moor whose car had run outof petrol on this road. When they were at the petrol station the Moor said that hed got nomoney, so he asked my cousins friend for money. When he couldnt get money from him he

asked for a lift back to where his car was, and because he [my cousins friend] said that he hadno time to do it, the Moor tried to stab him. Fortunately, he [my cousins friend] was verylucky, because the knifes blade broke when he raised his arm to defend himself. I dont thinkhell ever give a lift again to a Moor.

Approaching Las Norias [a neighbourhood of El Ejido] the Moroccan community, suddenly,becomes the majority. I noted North Africans hanging around in large groups, in front ofphone call centres, Moroccan bars, and shops that have their signs in Arabic. Jos took thelead again to comment that Moroccans have taken over Las Norias, and that the localSpaniards are selling their houses, moving to other areas. However, he said that he is not aracist. I like cultural variety, people from different places coming to El Ejido to live and to

work; but most of Moroccans dont come to work; they always create problems; they aresocially very backward, and they dont adapt to our culture. I replied to him that most ofthe Moroccans I know dont fit into his description, but my comment provoked a hot-tempered reaction. You dont have to work with them! You dont have to do business withthem! When they talk to you, comfortably sitting in a bar, theyre very nice. Rent them ahouse and youll see! he shouted at me.

As we see in the narration, Jos does not believe his comments to be racist: he likes culturalvariety and people from other countries coming to live and work in El Ejido. The problem

is that Moroccans dont come to work, always create problems, and dont adapt to ourculture. The relationship between Moroccans and criminality is also clear in the narration


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of the incident at the petrol station. There is also a feeling of being invaded by Moroccansthat we can observe when Jos mentions that they are taking over. On the other hand,when I tell him that I have met Moroccans, and that most of them are not like that, Josaccuses me of not really having a clue of what I am talking about: You dont have to workwith them! You dont have to do business with them! When they talk to you, comfortably

sitting in a bar, theyre very nice. Rent them a house and youll see! Jos, therefore, claimsto have a real knowledge, based on his daily interaction with Moroccans, which I do nothave.

We had more conversations over the same topic, and I tried to explain him that the socialexclusion of Moroccans, and the subhuman living and working conditions into which theyare forced to exist are responsible for the troublesome relationship between Spaniards andMoroccans. However, Jos always went back to his own experience or real knowledge,how he used to call it in opposition to my books knowledge. And his is not an isolatedcase, most of the Spaniards I know in El Ejido hold to be true a similar belief about theMoroccan community. The practical consequence of this belief is that Moroccans are notallowed to go to most bars, pubs, and night clubs in El Ejido, or to rent houses. In a word,

there is very little social interaction between Moroccans and Spaniards, except in thegreenhouse. This is the only place where this interaction cannot be avoided becauseMoroccans have come to El Ejido to work in the greenhouses as labourers due to thescarcity of labour that the booming agricultural activity of this area has created. Thefollowing quote from the newspaperEl Pas (4/2/2001; my translation) gives us an idea ofthe daily social exclusion and discrimination that Moroccans suffer.

Thursday, February the first, 2001. At about 15:10. Bar Tahit. Prince of Spain Avenue [ElEjido]. A journalist asks for an orange drink. A North African comes in after a while and asksfor the same.

Theres only the big size, to take away.Ok, then give me one of those small ones that are there in the fridge.Ill give it to you, if you have it outside in the street.I want to have it here inside.Then go away, theres no drink.When the young man leaves the comments are:

If you let one of them come in, the following day there will be three hundred.And its not cos theyre Moors, its cos they dont know how to behave themselves.

This essay is, in a sense, a long and meditated attempt to account for the real knowledge of

the Spanish farmers of El Ejido, and for the exclusion and discrimination of Moroccanlabour migrants. However, during the process of writing this thesis, I realised that anexplanation of any social phenomenon needs solid theoretical foundations if it is going tohave any validity.

Therefore, the scope of this thesis is, firstly, to arrive at an explanatory framework ofthe process of social exclusion along ethnic lines, which could be applied to El Ejido; andsecondly, to test whether this framework holds true for El Ejido.

This is why this thesis does not deal directly with ethnicity, as was my initial purpose;rather, it explores how the mode of production and the organisation of labour1 can determine

1The organisation of labour is one of the aspects of the social relations of production. Narotzky (1997:29) define the latter as the purposeful organisation by human individuals or groups, of labour, land andinstruments with the aim of producing a specific output


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the construction of the ethnic boundaries that lead to the social exclusion of Moroccans; thatis, whether ethnically based processes of social exclusion are mainly a consequence of adifferential access to the means of production of different ethnic groups, and whether thisdifferential access causes the ethnic segmentation of the labour market.

In a multiethnic society such as El Ejido, belonging to a certain ethnic group

determines in practice, although not in theory2

, the range of jobs that a person of that groupcan get, and that range of jobs determines, in turn, the social status of the member of thatethnic group. Local Spaniards believe that Moroccans are the most troublesome and

problematic of all the foreigners that live and work in El Ejido. The fact is that they are atthe bottom of the hierarchical division of labour since they work overwhelmingly in farmsas labourers for local Spanish farmers. This work has the lowest social status in El Ejido

because, although it is not the necessarily the lowest paid work, the hardship and temporarynature of the work (partly due to the seasonal character of agricultural production) make itthe least attractive.

The point of view I take is from economic anthropology, drawing substantially onNarotzky (1997) and Wolf (1997). So I give priority to the analysis of the economicprocesses such as mode of production, relations of production, labour market, and labourmigrations in order to understand exclusion. A good explanation of social exclusion needsalso to be contextualised since it does not happen in a void; neither can it be separated fromthe wider processes in which it is immersed. The categorisation of Moroccans in El Ejido astroublesome workers and individuals, and their social exclusion come into being in a certaineconomic context; (1) is immersed in the world-wide process of migrations from developingto developed countries3; (2) it has an ethnic and a class character; (3) it is the product of aninteraction with another ethnic group (the Spaniards); (4) and it is determined by the historyof both ethnic groups, a history that has been sometimes common due to the proximity ofMorocco and Spain. Therefore, for all the foregoing reasons, practices of social exclusion,

although commensurable, are always local processes that have to be studied in their ownright.

This thesis is placed within the framework of an anthropological practice, and a quest for anunderstanding, closer to Social Science than to Humanities. Anthropology is an academicdiscipline that aspires to gain certain kinds of knowledge about the social and cultural life ofhumans. But, what kind of human knowledge or, at least, understanding do we get?Religion, astrology, or literature, contribute to human understanding of society, but not inthe way science does. Perhaps the most distinguishable feature of science is the belief in

regularities and patterns in nature, which can be known; and the scientific method: thesystematic comparison of alternative strategies (Harris 2001: xvi). The kind of knowledgeat which Anthropology aims is unclear. Jenkins (1997: 8), for instance, declares himself adisciplinary minimalist: comparative, epistemologically relativist, methodologicallyholistic, focusing on culture and meaning, stressing local perceptions and knowledge, anddocumenting the routine of everyday life. But, then, he goes on to say that the onlymaximalist position that he assumes is the possibility of sufficient cross-culturalunderstanding. And, if this was not enough, he admits a post-modern critique to this basicassumption: namely, the one contained in the works of Bourdieu (1990), Clifford and

2 We have to remember that Spain has a democratic constitution, which states that all individuals are

equal before the law.3 The use of categories like these ones can be problematic since they can reflect ethnocentric biases, butthey can be very useful. I borrow the opposition developing-developed from Nigel Harris (1995)


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Marcus (1986), and Grimshaw and Hart (1995), among others, about the possibility ofrepresentation and the collapse of faith in scientific ethnography (Jenkins 1997: 5). Afterthis final remark, what is left? Is it possible at all to explain human ideas and behaviour?

This is not a happy perspective for those who conceive anthropology as a sort of pan-human science of society, as Marvin Harris (2001: xviii) has tried to settle it. Any theory

that intends to explain something should take a clear epistemological stand if it is going tobe tested at all. In order to explain human behaviour, thought, and speech the componentsof human social life and make them susceptible of being generalised and commensurablecross-culturally, I start with the epistemological premise that the material conditions ofhuman life, namely, the mode of production and reproduction, can account for the differentways in which social life is organised. It can also be said that social life and culture alsoinfluence the way in which production is organised.

The four chapters of this thesis are organised in a logical explanatory order. In the first

chapter I describe the economic and social context in which this ethnography is placed (ElEjido), and also give an account of the ethnic riots of February 2000, which have markedthe recent history of El Ejido and the relationship between Spaniards and Moroccans.Chapter II examines the local mode of production in the context of the global capitalisteconomy, with a special focus on the family farm, which is the basic unit of production.Chapter III deals with the migration of labour between Morocco and El Ejido in the globalcontext, and the issue of immigration controls. Concepts such as control of mobility anddifferential reproduction costs will be fundamental in this chapter since the segmentationof the labour market and the social construction of race and ethnicity will be based on them.Finally, in chapter IV, I apply the theoretical framework developed in the previous chaptersin order to explore how the way in which labour is organised determines the social relationsthat Spaniards and Moroccans sustain in El Ejido.

Dublin, April 2003


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Chapter I

Introduction: context and method

Abstract

This chapter will familiarise the reader with El Ejido the local society in which thisethnography is set. Firstly, I briefly describe the economic and social context in which theethnography is placed, and give an account of the ethnic riots of February 2000. Secondly, Ioffer a brief report of how the fieldwork was done. Finally, I describe some of the relevantethnographic work that social scientists have previously carried out in El Ejido.

El Ejido: Brief geographical, economic, and social description

El Ejido is a municipality of 55,710 inhabitants4 located on the south-east coast of Spain, inthe province of Almera, about two hundred kilometres from the north coast of Morocco (Seemaps on pages v and vi). With La Mojonera, Vcar, and Roquetas, it is one of the fourmunicipalities of the region of Poniente (lit. the West), previously known as Campo deDalas (lit. Countryside of Dalas)5. Poniente is a tongue of land 30 km long and a maximumof 13 km wide (Martnez 2001: 14-5) enclosed by the sea to the south and the southernslopes of the Sierra de Gdor mountains to the north (see map on page v).

The main economic activity of the Poniente region is the intensive commercialagricultural production in greenhouses, during the winter months, of vegetables such as

peppers, tomatoes, watermelons, and cucumbers among others. The typical weather of thisarea, warm, sunny and dry6, allows the production of vegetables when other parts of Europecannot produce them because of the unfavourable climate conditions. Almera produced 3million metric tonnes of vegetables in the season 2001-27, which reached a final value of1,940 million euros8 (La Voz de Almera, p.3, 25/7/2002). About half of the production isexported to European markets. In the 1998-9 season, for instance, 44% of the total

production was exported (Gaviria 2002: 62). According to the government of Andalucathere are 28,500 hectares of greenhouses in Almera province divided among 24,500 farms,

with an average of 1.1 hectares per farm, which is an indication of the predominance of smallfarms (La Voz de Almera, p.3, 25/7/2002). However, most of this economic activity takes

place in the region of Poniente, which accounts for 75-80% of all greenhouses in Almera

4 Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadstica (Spain) 1/1/20015 Dalas is a town of 3,679 inhabitants (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica 1/1/2001) located in the nearby

mountains. El Ejido was a part of its territory since at least the times of the last Muslim Kingdom of Granada(XIII-XV centuries), but it became a separate municipality in 1981.

6 The web page of the municipal authority of El Ejido informs us that this town has stable climateconditions with an average temperature during the day of 27 degrees in summer and 15 in winter, and about3.000 hours of sunshine per year.

7

The typical agricultural season in Almera goes from September to June.8 However, the farmers only got 1,357 million euros. The other 583 million euros was the added valueobtained by the international supermarket chains. This issue will be dealt with in the next chapter.


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(Aznar & Snchez 2001: 78). El Ejido, which is the main municipality in Poniente, has abouthalf of all greenhouses: 12,500 hectares according to the Local authority, although Martnezestimates about 14,000 (Martnez 2001: 81-2). There is no exact information about thenumber of hectares, because in 1984 theJunta de Andaluca (Regional Government ofAndaluca)banned the construction of new greenhouses due to the over-exploitation of the

aquiferous deposits, but farmers continued building them illegally.The prosperity of Poniente9 is recent the first greenhouses made their appearance in1963 (Martnez 2001: 24) and has attracted an increasing number of migrants in the lastfour decades. The following table gives us an idea of the spectacular population growthcompared to the rest of Almera and Spain in the last century.

TABLE 1. Evolution of the population between 1900 and 2001 (1900 = 100)10

1900 % 1950 % 1970 % 1991 % 2001 %

Ejido/Dalas11 7,136 11,386 21,230 45,139 59,095

Roquetas 2,396 3,761 12,776 32,361 47,570

Vicar/Mojonera 802 657 4,022 17,424 23,424

Poniente 10,334 100 15,804 152.9 38,028 367.9 94,924 918 130,089 1259

Almera 359,013 100 357,401 99.5 375,004 104.4 465,662 129 533,168 148

Spain 18 M 100 23 M 127.0 33 M 183.0 39 M 216 41 M 227

Poniente has increased its population by 1,259% in the last hundred years while the provinceof Almera grew by 148% and Spain by 227% in the same span of time. These figuresindicate that the economic development of Almera is overwhelmingly centred on thePoniente area12. The population growth of Poniente has been mainly due to labour migration,and its context and characteristics will be discussed in detail in chapter III. Suffice it to sayhere that there have been two different processes of labour migration to the area. Firstly, aninternal process, within the limits of the Spanish State that has attracted migrants initiallyfrom the nearby region of Las Alpujarras from the 1950s onwards (see map), and

progressively, later, from other parts of Spain; secondly, an external process, from the 1980sonwards, which has drawn different ethnic groups from other countries. The Moroccans form

the largest of these ethnic groups, and they were also the first to arrive. This fact is probablyrelated to the proximity of Morocco and Spain. The two processes of labour migration can befurther differentiated by the fact that while the internal migrants have become farmers whoown land, the external migrants are overwhelmingly agricultural labourers.

According to the Statistics Unit of the El Ejido municipal authority there were 6,902non-nationals13 registered as living in the municipality in 2001, of which 72.7% were

9 I will refer to Poniente instead of El Ejido when dealing with phenomena which do not specificallyconcern El Ejido alone.

10 My own elaboration from data taken from the web page of theInstituto Nacional de Estadstica11

See footnote number 2.12 In the next chapter we will describe in more length the economic evolution of Poniente.13 These 6,902 non nationals are included in the total population of 59,095.


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Moroccans, 9.9 % Eastern European, 7.5% South Americans, 5% Sub-Saharan African, and4.49% were EU citizens. However, these figures do not account for all the foreign labourmigrants living and working in El Ejido. It has been estimated that the number of immigrantswithout legal residence could be similar to the number of those with legal residence (Aznar& Snchez 2001: 90). Martnez, for instance, gives the figure of 12,000 immigrants in El

Ejido in 1999 (2001: 81), and Aznar & Snchez 30,000 in Poniente in 1998. If this is thecase, then, at the end of the 1990s, about 20% of the population in Poniente were foreignimmigrants, which is a much higher proportion than the 3.17% overall rate for Spain at thesame time (El Mundo, 4/1/2003).

Therefore, we can consider El Ejido as a multiethnic society in which Spaniards are thelargest group, followed by Moroccans. In the next section I succinctly describe the ethnicriots of February 2000, in which both groups were implicated. These riots were the climax ofa decade of escalating tension between the two communities, and they already constitute alandmark in the recent history of El Ejido. They also triggered my interest in carrying outthis ethnographic project.

February 2000

Much of the work published about the ethnic conflict of El Ejido, and much of thesubsequent interest in it in Spanish public opinion, has been concerned with understandingthe causes that provoked it (Checa 2001; Martnez 2001; Martn 2002). Checa, for instance,mentions exogenouscircumstances such as: (1) a lack of immigration policies set by thecentral government; (2) the agricultural and fishing agreements between Spain and Morocco,in which, according to the farmers of El Ejido, the Spanish government traded fish forvegetables14; (3) the quotas of vegetables that the EU has granted to Morocco to sell in theEuropean market; (4) and the control distribution market for vegetables by a fewmultinationals. But he also mentions endogenouscircumstances such as labour exploitation,social exclusion and isolation of foreign labour migrants (Checa 2001: 13)15.

The reality is that most of the Moroccans who work in El Ejido come into the countryillegally, and live in precarious accommodation, in adapted warehouses or groups ofshantytownsoutside the urban centres, while they wait three to five years for legal residenceand work permits that will allow them to move to other parts of Spain, France, or elsewherein Europe to find better jobs. This clandestine situation has generated a feeling of insecurityamong the locals, who have become conscious that their town has become one of thegateways for undocumented immigration to Europe. But there are reasons for these illegalimmigration flows, apart from the proximity of the area to Morocco. Firstly, the large-scale

production of vegetables in El Ejido demands abundant manpower. Secondly, the

predominance of small farms means that demand for labour is not controlled centrally orlegally, but is based on direct contact and verbal agreement between employers andemployees16. Finally, the seasonal and unstable character of the work make the jobstemporary and vulnerable, only attractive for undocumented immigrants who do not haveany other choice. The combination of these three circumstances works to the advantage ofthe farmers, who tend to increase the exploitation of labour, which is the only element in the

14 The farmers of El Ejido believe that Morocco forced agricultural concessions of the EU as a conditionto renew the fishing agreement that this country has with Spain. These concessions are seen as a threat sinceMorocco can offer vegetables at a cheaper price.

15

The foregoing issues that led to the ethnic conflict in El Ejido, and others, will be analysed in detail inthe course of the essay, so there is no need to detain us now to explain them.16 Martnez estimates that over 80% of this seasonal hiring is verbal (2001: 129)


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production that they can control, and which represents approximately 48.1% of the runningcosts of the farm (Gaviria 2002: 40).

The clandestine arrival, residence, and work of the Moroccans, and their increasingnumber have raised suspicions among the local population, who relate criminality withundocumented immigration. Moroccans, for instance, are blamed for nearly all theft on

farms17

. But, as I have said above, endogenous developments are intertwined with exogenousones. Two months before the riots, Gabriel Barranco, president ofLa Unin, a vegetableauction centre in El Ejido, estimated that the 1995 agreements between Morocco and the EUhad resulted in a loss of 180 million euro to agriculture in Almera in the 1998-99 season,and he calculated (at the time) that the losses for the 1999-2000 season were going to be over420 millions (La Voz de Almera p.3, 3/12/1999; cited in Martnez 2001: 189).Consequently, on the 25th of January 2000, farmers from Poniente gathered at the port ofAlgeciras to stop the entry of Moroccan trucks loaded with vegetables, opening them anddestroying the goods that they carried. For the farmers, according to Martnez (2001: 191), itwas not difficult to establish an unconscious relationship between the invasion of Moroccantomatoes and Moroccan immigrants.

That was the mood in El Ejido when, on the 22nd of January, a Moroccan immigrant,apparently for no reason, stoned to death a local farmer and cut the throat of another one whowent to help the other farmer. The killer sat beside the two corpses and waited there for thearrival of the police18. On the 30th of January about 10,000 people gathered in the mainsquare of El Ejido in solidarity with the families of the farmers, and to protest against attacksof that kind. In that rally, Juan Enciso, mayor of El Ejido, made a speech in which hechallenged progressive intellectuals and the mass media to condemn not only crimes againstimmigrants but crimes against locals too: We miss the manifestos full of indignation of the

pseudo-progressive writers 19, who are only ready to shoot when the facts are accommodatedto their schizophrenic vision of reality. We miss more than ever [the support of] some

national media, which are quick to slander our people, and [we do not want this nationalmedia] even to defend them, but to understand them (La Voz 31/1/2000, cited in Martnez2001: 194; my translation). Juan Enciso expressed, and encouraged, the feeling of acommunity besieged by Moroccans and misunderstood by the rest of Spain. This feelingwould also fuel the ethnic conflict.

The incident that finally triggered the riots was the stabbing to death of a 26 year-oldSpanish woman in the weekly market of Santa Mara del guila (a neighbourhood of ElEjido), killed by another Moroccan and, again, for apparently no reason. The killinghappened on the 5th of February, at about 11am, when the market was at its busiest. Thecorpse remained at the scene of the crime until 3:30 pm, when the judge ordered its removal.Spontaneously, shortly after the crime, on the same day, Spanish neighbours began to gather

in the main streets of Santa Mara, Las Norias20, and El Ejido, stopping also the traffic on themotorway in order to protest for the lack of security that they thought were suffering. Theslogans in the protests blamed mainly Moroccan immigrants and the NGOs working towardstheir social integration. But these massive and, at first, peaceful movements of protest thenturned more aggressive and led to the arson and destruction of shops, bars and other

17 The head of the police in El Ejido declared, during the ethnic clashes, that foreign migrants areresponsible for 30% of all crimes denounced (Checa 2001: 34).

18 The following narration of the ethnic riots is mainly based on the lengthy account given by Checa(2001: 34-68) and Martnez (2001: 120-7).

19

Probably he is referring to Juan Goytisolo and the Nobel Prize Winner of literature Saramago. Bothhave written against the social exclusion of Moroccans in El Ejido.20 Another neighbourhood of El Ejido where there is a large presence of Moroccans.


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properties owned by Moroccans, as the North Africans fled the urban areas to vanish amongthe maze of greenhouses and nearby hills. There were no attacks on persons or properties

belonging to other ethnic communities, such as Sub-Saharan Africans (black Africans),South Americans, or Eastern Europeans, and, although over 50 people were hospitalised, nodeaths were registered.

The only properties of Spanish institutions attacked were the headquarters ofAlmeraAcoge

21 and Mujeres Progresistas de Andaluca (MPA Progressive Women of Andaluca) two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that work for the social integration of theforeign migrant labourers. A local business man summarised the feeling of the Spaniardsabout NGOs during the conflict: [the violence, on the immigrant part] starts [sic] two yearsago, when the so-called NGOs devote [sic] themselves to protect criminals and, from thattime on, life become unbearable in Poniente. Then a woman cannot go out to bin the rubbish,and children have to be escorted to schools and discotheques (La Voz de Almera10/2/2000; cited in Martnez 2001: 205)

MPA estimates that about 10,000 people took part in the protests. Shops, businesses,and farms closed for the three days that the riots lasted. Children did not attend to school onMonday. It has been claimed that small fascist organisations sent their members to El Ejidoto take part in the riots. Local Spaniards blame them for the violence. But MPA has accusedlocal Spaniards for, at least, encouraging groups of violent youths to attack Moroccan

persons and properties.

On Tuesday the 8th of February, economic and social activity seemed to go back tonormality, and the security of persons and properties seemed to be protected by 675 policeand national guards deployed by the central government in El Ejido. But on the same day,gatherings of Moroccans came together and demanded protection22. This culminated in aweek-long strike organised by the Moroccan workers who, for the first time, came out as anorganised social actor both as a class and as an ethnic group. This strike took place at the

peak of the agricultural season, when the demand for labour is at its height, and local farmersstarted to hire Romanians, Lithuanians, and Ecuadorians, who had begun to arrive in the areaa year earlier.

The Moroccan provisional organisation that arose out of the strike was called the North-African Council of Migration. It unified the demands of the workers on strike, but alsogrouped them together with shopkeepers and owners of properties lost during the riots.Therefore, it seems, at a first glance, that the ethnic element, and not the class one, was at the

basis of the Council. The main demands were: (1) the legalisation of all immigrants inirregular situation; (2) the compensation and accommodation of those who lost their

properties; (3) a plan to end the lack of public housing for all nationals and foreignersdeprived of decent accommodation (a social class based demand); and (4) the effectiveapplication of the minimum wage of 30 euros per day for agricultural labourers. The strikewas called off on Sunday the 13th of February, when the authorities promised a program ofabout five million euros for accommodation of immigrants, and the regularisation of thoseliving and working illegally in Spain. According to the North-African Council, in the endthey only achieved the regularisation of those without documents of residence and work, andcompensations worth 2,400,000 euros. The Council ruled out the possibility of another strikeand approved a lock-in in a church in Almera city the week before the 1st of May. UGT andCCOO, the biggest Trade Unions in Spain, did not support the lock-in. This fact distancedthem even further from the foreign migrant labourers of Poniente. On the 1st of May,

21

Almera Welcome, a charity institution promoted by the Catholic Church.22 On Tuesday the eighth, 500 Moroccans gathered in front of the police station in El Ejido, and in LasNorias another 500 Moroccans and some Spaniards organised a demonstration against racism.


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immigrants and native workers celebrated May Day in two separate parades. Theimmigrants parade had about 3,000 demonstrators and was double the size of the official

parade. UGT, CCOO, and the Moroccan Association of Immigrant Workers (ATIME)supported the latter. ATIME is mainly based in Madrid and does not have a realrepresentation in Poniente.

Fieldwork

The fieldwork for this thesis took place between the 22nd of July and the 9th of September2002, more than two years after the ethnic clashes. It was done mainly through a voluntarywork placement with the local branch ofMujeres Progresistas de Andaluca23 (MPA,Progressive Women of Andalusia) an NGO that mainly offers legal assistance to foreignimmigrants and that is considered close to the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE)24. Ialso organised a Spanish language course for foreign migrants in the headquarters of MPAthat was attended exclusively by Moroccans. Through these two activities I becamefamiliarised with the legal and social problems that the Moroccan community has in El Ejidoand in Spain. They also allowed me to meet some migrants who became informants and,later, friends.

The method I used was participant observation. Rather than organising interviews Ipreferred to spend time with them in an informal way. I followed in this the methods ofSocial Anthropology as formulated by John Beattie (1964: 37, 82, 245). In interviews andconversations we record merely peoples ideas about the social phenomena that are relevantfor them. They also express how social behaviour should be. The problem is that, sometimes,the observations that we make about what is happening do not match with the appreciation of

the people that we study. And opinions also differ between different people, according to thesocial position of each individual, such as ethnic identity, class, gender, age, or religion.Therefore, the information that we get observing peoples behaviour can be more accurate.At first, nearly all the conversations with Moroccans were about their legal situation in Spainand their quest for legal residence. Later, nearly all of them would talk about the socialexclusion that they suffer in El Ejido. They said that local Spaniards do not like Moroccans.Morocco, hospitality, friendship, and religion were also important themes for discussion. In asense, these conversations reflected the hierarchy of their priorities, and their main concerns.I also visited shacks, huts, old warehouses, and other sorts of dwellings where they lived,which will be described in the chapter IV. I recorded the information that I considered morerelevant in a diary that I kept at night. During my stay in El Ejido I resided in my parents

house. I am myself a local Spaniard, born in El Ejido.From the beginning, I thought that it was going to be impossible to understand the social

exclusion of Moroccans without spending some time doing fieldwork with local Spaniards.After all, the social exclusion of an ethnic group implies the existence of at least one otherethnic group the excluders. Ethnicity is, above all, an aspect of a relationship, not a

23 There are two other organisations that work with foreign immigrants in El Ejido: Almera Acoge(Almera Welcome), and the Red Cross. They give legal aid, information about getting accommodation andjobs.

24 PSOE held the central Government in Spain between 1982 and 1996. In the local corporation of El

Ejido it was the ruling party until 1990, when the PP (Popular Party; a right wing organisation) won the localelections. Although MPA maintains a good relationship with PSOE in Andalusia, in El Ejido that link doesnot exist probably due to the deep differences that they have about immigration policies.


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property of a group (Eriksen 2001: 263). Therefore, the social behaviour that Spaniards andMoroccans enact in their everyday interaction must reveal the nature of the relationship thatthe two groups maintain in El Ejido. The main problem that I faced was that I had to do thefieldwork in the summer months, when the agricultural activity is reduced to a minimum;that is, between 10% and 30% of its level at peak times. Many immigrants return on holidays

to Morocco (only those who are legally in Spain), and others migrate searching for summerjobs to other regions, such as Lrida (Catalonia) for the fruit harvest. The majority of theMoroccans I met were, at that time, unemployed. So, I could not observe them working.

I deal with some of the foregoing and other issues in this section. Firstly, I describe thejob I performed for MPA and the language course that I organised. I give a portrait of itsPresident, and comment on the relevance that this experience had for my fieldwork. I then

briefly depict my main informants, as they will come up in the course of this work. Their lifestories are very much intertwined in the history of El Ejido, and they are a good introductionto the main social actors that are the protagonists of this work.

MPA initiated its activity in El Ejido in 1988. It had two goals: firstly to increase theparticipation of women in the public spheres of society, and secondly to work against allkinds of discrimination. In 1993, as a result of the increasing arrival of Moroccan immigrantsto El Ejido, MPA launched a special program for the integration of Moroccan women.However there were far more male than female immigrants and, since the main principle ofthe organisation was to fight against any discrimination, MPA decided to extend their servicesto men, who are now the main clientele.

The president of MPA in El Ejido, since its establishment in 1988, has been MercedesGarca Fornieles. She is a local woman, born in El Ejido, in her forties and married with twochildren. She works full time for MPA. Her job has made her name very well known, insideand outside the town. She is invited to give talks in forums against racism in Spain andabroad, and is constantly interviewed by the national media. She is also in touch with thewriters Juan Goytisolo and the Portuguese Nobel Prize Winner Saramago, who have a keeninterest in what happens in El Ejido and have frequently visited the town.

However, this charismatic image in the broader world contrasts with her social isolationin her own town Mercedes is locally known as the one who is with the Moors25. SinceFebruary 2000 she and her family have continuously received anonymous telephone deaththreats. One of her sons was even warned to leave the town, threatened with a knife to histhroat. Rumours and gossip about Mercedes are normal currency in El Ejido. LocalSpaniards comment that she is receiving generous amounts of money for helping the Moors,and that she is getting rich thanks to that, because no one does anything for nothing. She is

even accused of having sexual affairs with them26

. In El Ejido, those who try to helpimmigrants to integrate into the wider society can pay a very high price, and the fear ofundergoing the same fate has had the power to silence leftist organisations and trade unionsin El Ejido, according to Mercedes. In a situation of open ethnic conflict, loyalty to the group

25 Moor is the term that local Spaniards would apply to any North-African. For North-Africans theyunderstand the inhabitants of Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia, and Sahara. Although by extension, anyArab, or even Muslim, would be called Moor in El Ejido. However, in the last few years, since most Muslimsin El Ejido are from Morocco, Moor and Moroccan have become synonymous terms.

26 I met Mercedes personally and I had access to all the files in MPA, and I have to say that these

rumours do not correspond with what I have seen. When she went on holidays in August she gave me a keyfor the office, and freedom to use all the material I needed and going in and out the office at any time. She hadprobably nothing to hide.


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is required, and the crossing of the boundaries between the two communities can be sociallypunished.

I started my period of voluntary work for MPA just after getting a short training in thelast week of July. I worked there for the month of August, twice a week, from 10am to 2pm.The office normally closes for holidays in August, so Mercedes looked for two Moroccans,

Hamid and Omar27

, to help me as translators and organising the queue of people seekinghelp, and I did not see her again until September. Hamid and Omar were also doingvoluntary work. My work chiefly consisted of dealing with inquires from undocumentedimmigrants who were applying for work permits. In most cases, the procedure began with anapplication to the Oficina de Extranjeros of the Subdelegacin del Gobierno in Almera (lit.Aliens Office, Sub-delegation of the Government) based on having roots in Spain28. In thatcase the immigrant is required to bring forward evidence of three years of stay in Spain29,such as bank account statements (it is possible in Spain to open an account in certain bankswithout having to prove legal residence), medical certificates from a local doctor or hospital,and so on. However, the government also sets maximum quotas in each province everyyear30 and, therefore, not all complete and correct applications are awarded with the permit.

Many applications are also submitted with incorrect or false evidence. If the application isdismissed, the applicants can appeal once. A second rejection means that the claimant has toask for a lawyer, because they have to go to law. Since they have no means to pay one, theState guarantees them free legal aid. According to one of the lawyers I talked to when I wasdoing my voluntary work for MPA, the whole legal process can last more than five years five years in which the immigrant has to work and live illegally in El Ejido.

My work for MPA also gave me access to the files, magazines and books of theassociation that contained a great deal of valuable information about migrants in El Ejido,although a large amount of it was lost in February 2000, when local Spaniards attacked theoffice, burned all the documentation, and destroyed the computers. However, the most

important thing about my work for MPA is that it gave me the chance to meet Moroccans,among whom I became known as the lawyer. Almost everyday Omar or Hamid introducedsomeone to me, in the street or in a park, who, outside of the office hours, wanted to getsome advice about how to get the legal residence. I also was asked, by some of them, tofalsify documents in order to prove residence in Spain since 1998. This fact made me thinkabout ethical questions in the course of my fieldwork, since it put me in the moral dilemmaof either failing to help people in a real need or else breaking the law. Life for anundocumented immigrant is very hard, and many would try desperate ways of getting legalresidence. There are in fact criminal organisations making a lot of money in the informalmarket for forged proofs of residence, and not all these organisations are made up ofMoroccans. Hamid spoke to me of farmers, lawyers, and consultancy companies that charge

a minimum of one thousand euros for a fake offer of work31

. Mercedes also confirmed this

27 I will talk about them later in this section.28 To be rooted, or to have put down roots in the Spain (translation of arraigo, lit. rooting). However,

there were also immigrants applying for family grouping, or renewing their work permits.29 According to the article 1,31. section 3 of the Ley de Extranjera (Aliens law) a foreign person (it

does not apply to EU citizens) can get temporary residence in Spain if she can proof that has been living inSpain for a minimum of five years. However, sometimes the central Government give temporary facilities toget the residence, as, for instance when the number of labour foreign migrants living illegally in the country isvery large. At the time I was doing my fieldwork the Government had come out with the law of the threeyears.

30

The quotas for 2003 are 10,575 permanent jobs and 13,672 temporary ones (El Mundo, p.12,21/12/2002)31 This is another of the requisites needed to get a work permit.


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information, but I cannot reveal what she told me. These facts show how difficult is toobserve the law, or even to consider it fair, when one is doing fieldwork at the margins ofsociety, between legality and illegality, between life and death.

Apart from my work in the office, I decided to organise a language course for foreignimmigrants, with the permission of MPA. This was to be held three times a week in the late

afternoon, and only Moroccans attended it. There was a minimum of two people and amaximum of eight each day. The sessions normally lasted two hours, divided into twosessions of one hour each. In the first hour I taught them Spanish, and in the second hourthey taught me Moroccan Arabic. I found that this was a very informal and friendly way tomeet Moroccans. They also highly valued my interest in learning Arabic; since they thinkthat local Spaniards only show disdain for their culture. After the classes we used to go for awalk or a coffee.

Informants

Although I met many Moroccans and Spaniards during my fieldwork, I only had continuous

contact with a few of them. They were two Moroccans, Hamid and Omar, and four locals,Jos, Manuela, Luciano and Carlos.

1) Hamid is a 36 year old man from Sale, near Rabat (see map on p.vi), where he left awife and two daughters when he set off to France in 1996. He only stayed a few months inFrance, with some relatives of his, and moved to El Ejido because he heard that it was easierto get the legal residence there. The only jobs that he has been able to get in El Ejido have

been in greenhouses, and never permanently. When I met him last summer he wasunemployed. In the riots of February 2000 he was stoned by local Spaniards in the streets ofEl Ejido, who also burned the shack32 where he was living, just outside the town. He suffereda severe brain concussion and stayed two months in hospital. Since then Hamid has been on

medication that he gets through the Red Cross. He did not apply for residence in 2000, whennearly all illegals were granted it, because he was sick and halfhearted. Finally, heapplied at the beginning of 2002 thanks to the encouragement of Mercedes, but he was notgranted residence. Last time I visited El Ejido, in December 2002, he was not there.According to some friends of his, he was in Jan, working in the olive harvest. Mercedes toldme that just before going to Jan he looked quite depressed. I remember that almosteveryday, that I met him during the summer, he used to daydream about the possibility ofgetting residence and going to Morocco, to be with his family for the holy month ofRamadan33. His dream did not come true.

2) Omar is a 27 year old single man from Kenitra (see map). He crossed the sea fromMorocco two years ago in apatera34, with thirteen other people, arriving at Barbate (seemap). There he spent several days in a friends house recovering from the crossing. Then, hetook a bus to Logroo (Rioja), where he worked for a while. From Logroo he went toFrance, where he lived for a year; and, finally, he moved to El Ejido, where he has stayeduntil now. He is still waiting for legal residence and, occasionally, works in the greenhouses.Omar currently lives, with three other Moroccans from Kenitra, in a little old cottage justoutside the town of El Ejido, among greenhouses, with neither water supply, nor electricity,nor toilet. The farmer who owns the cottage does not charge them any rent. He is happyenough with having someone who can keep an eye on his farm, beside the cottage, at night.

32 In chapter IV I will describe the living conditions of Moroccans in El Ejido.33

Ramadan took place last year between November and December. It is easy to go to Morocco withoutthe legal residence; the problem is to come back to Spain.34 This is the name given to the one motor engine boats with that Moroccans use to illegally enter Spain.


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One of the main worries of farmers is the theft of vegetables and machinery in farms. Hamidused to live in that cottage until he went to Jan to work.

All this time Omar has been able to move throughout Spain, and between Spain andFrance. He knows that once in Europe it is relatively easy to move around without beingstopped by the police, especially after applying for legal residence and a work permit,

because once the process of legalisation has started immigrants cannot be deported untilthere is a Government resolution, and it can take years. In El Ejido I have met manyMoroccans, who went first to France, and later moved to Spain because, according to them, itcan take ten years to get legal residence in France, and then only if they have a relative livingthere. In the course of my fieldwork I soon realised that there are highly effective informalinformation networks that immigrants use to find jobs and accommodation. They moveeasily between France, Italy, and Spain; and between different regions within Spain, lookingfor jobs and places to stay while they are working. They manage this information, and theymove around with little or no knowledge of Spanish. Within the same year they can work inLrida collecting fruit in summer; in Huelva, in the strawberry harvest; from November toFebruary in Jan, in the olive harvest; and the rest of the year in El Ejido. The Moroccans are

workers specialised in agricultural jobs and very flexible in terms of geographical mobility.3) My main Spanish informants were Jos and Manuela, a young married couple of

small landowners in their early thirties, with no children. They have a farm of 1.2 hectaresoutside La Aldeilla, in one of the neighbourhoods of El Ejido, but they are associated withJoss parents and work altogether two hectares, splitting in two the costs and earnings. Jossays that they cannot afford to pay wages to anyone because they have too many debts to pay(the mortgage for the house and the land). Before getting married Jos used to work for his

parents, and Manuela was in a cooperative, packing vegetables.

4) Then, there is Luciano, a friend of theirs, also in his early thirties, single and livingwith his parents in Carmona (a neighbourhood in Santa Mara del Aguila). He works one

hectare of greenhouse on his own. Recently, he got a house in El Ejido town, where he isplanning to move when he marries to Anita, his girlfriend. Anita works as a clerical officerfor COAG, a trade union of farmers and cattle holders. Luciano sometimes hires migrantlabourers from Romania or Lithuania, but he avoids Moroccans because he thinks that theyare too troublesome as workers. Lately, he has been thinking of selling the farm and gettingsalaried work. He told me that in two or three years all farmers are going to be fucked up,and we all are going to swim in shit again. He is probably referring to the control of thedistribution market by a few multinationals and the competition from Moroccanagriculture35.

5) Finally, there is Carlos, a 45 year old farmer married with two children. He lives inSanto Domingo, a well off neighbourhood of El Ejido, and has one hectare of greenhouse.Like Luciano he works on his own, and his wife works in a medical centre as a clericalofficer. Until last year he had two hectares of land, but at the end of the season 2001-2002 hedecided to sell half of the farm. The reason he gives is that the price he gets selling hisvegetables does not compensate for the cost of hiring labourers, so he decided to reduce hisgreenhouse in order to reduce the use of salaried labour. Carlos is member of the committeeof the cooperative where he sells his products36, and has been campaigning for the last fewyears, giving talks to members in cooperatives, in favour of the unification of all vegetable

35 We will deal with these issues in Chapter II36 We will deal with the issue of commercialisation in Chapter II. Succinctly, we can say here that there

are two ways for farmers of commercialising their vegetables. They can sell them in an auctioneer centre(Alhondiga in El Ejido), or they can associate themselves in vegetable growers cooperatives to sell themdirectly to the big European supermarkets chains.


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growers cooperatives. His dream would be to break the control of the big distributioncompanies and sell directly to the consumers. This move would give farmers an added valueof around 30%37 for their crops.

To finish this section I have to talk about my own status in El Ejido. I was born, grewup, and lived there until 1997, when I moved to Ireland, and I knew about the ethnic riots of

February 2000 through watching Euronews on television, here in Dublin. When I started inCollege, in September 2000, my decision to take Anthropology was influenced by theseevents. Therefore, the idea of this thesis has been in my mind ever since then. In one way, thefact of being here has giving me a more neutral, distanced, perspective about the ethnicconflict in El Ejido. In another way, the fact that I am from El Ejido has made it easier for meto meet local Spaniards. I also profit from a familiarity with the social and economic

background of the area. Local Spaniards do not trust strangers such as journalists or socialscientists, and would be reluctant to deal with them. They think that these strangers aredestroying the reputation of El Ejido, calling its inhabitants racists. But to be a local can be a

problem too. During my fieldwork I was warned many times about associating myself withMoroccans, or believing anything they told me. I also was told to treat El Ejido well in my

thesis. In some sense I felt that I was caught in a cross-fire either to be scorned as an enemyof my own kin (like Mercedes) or to face the accusation of being intellectually partial,subjective or, even, ethnocentric. Of the two charges, I consider the second to be the worst.Intellectual honesty is far more important if we want to contribute to humankind with somevalid and enduring knowledge, because, I believe, truth and not personal loyalties will makea better world. And for the kin, the pursuit of objective knowledge, rather than group interest,is far more important in the long run. This is valid for Spaniards as well as for Moroccans.

A brief literature review of the Anthropology undertaken in El Ejido

The most striking fact about the ethnographic work carried out recently in El Ejido is thatthere was little done before 2000, and nothing published, except some articles in specialised

publications38. After the ethnic clashes of Feb. 2000 three books were published in the year2001. They were: (1) El Ejido: la ciudad-cortijo edited by Francisco Checa, head of theDepartment of Anthropology of the University of Almera; (2) El Ejido. Discriminacin,exclusin social y racismo by Martnez Veiga, lecturer of Social Anthropology in theUniversidad Autnoma de Madrid; and (3) Estampas de El Ejido by Mikel Azurmendi,lecturer of Social Anthropology in La Universidad del Pas Vasco. This thesis substantiallydraws on the first two books. In relation to the third book, it is interesting to mention it

because it has been seen as a defence of the point of view of the local Spaniards in El Ejido.The work of Azurmendi has been even accused, in a document signed by a number ofSpanish Anthropologists, of committing an offence against the ethics of anthropology39.

The work of Checa is a collection of essays written by lecturers of the Departments ofAnthropology, Economics, and Social Psychology, of the University of Almera, amongother contributors. The book starts from the tenet that social and economic structures, and not

37 See footnote number 5.38 For instance: Roquero, A.Asalariados africanos trabajando bajo plstico in Sociologa del Trabajo

(1996); Martnez Veiga, U. Alojamiento y segregacin. El caso Almera in Demfilo (1999a); Checa, F.

Inmigrantes Africanos en la provincia de Almera in Demfilo (1996).39 This document came out from the fax of MPA when I was working there. It was signed by a numberof Spanish Anthropologists. They saw Azurmendis book as an attack on the Moroccan group in El Ejido.


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the racist nature of certain people, are responsible for phenomena of ethnic exclusion andracial violence. Therefore, the aim of this interdisciplinary approach is to look for a holisticas possible an explanation of the causes that sparked off the ethnic riots of El Ejido. Theanalysis of the exogenous and endogenous circumstances of the conflict, as it has beenexplained above, are central to this book which proposes that if the same structural

circumstances that provoked the clashes, such as those that create the social exclusion ofMoroccans, are not modified we will face the risk of another, and perhaps more serious,wave of violence.

Martnezs book deals with agriculture, labour, and the social and spatial segregation offoreign immigrants in El Ejido from the point of view of Economic Anthropology. Its authorstates, from the beginning, that his work is not neutral, but it has been written from the pointof view of the immigrant labourers. In chapter one he describes the agricultural economy ofEl Ejido. For him this agriculture is a sociocultural formation, economically completelycapitalist. Martnez defines El Ejido as an agro-industrial district. In chapter II he analysesthe labour market in El Ejido; in chapter III he deals with the accommodation patterns of theimmigrants and the spatial exclusion that they suffer; finally, in chapter IV, there is an

analysis of February 2000 and the general process of exclusion of the immigrants. This workis based on the fieldwork carried out by its author in two different periods. During 1994 and1995 Martnez undertook some intermittent fieldwork in Poniente, but he did not publish it.It was after Feb. 2000 that he decided to use the data collected earlier. Between February andMay 2000 he carried out further fieldwork, at the weekend, Easter holidays, and for a longer

period in May.

Mikel Azurmendi, instead, spent five full months of fieldwork in Poniente, betweenJanuary and June 2001. In his book, Azurmendi depicts the psychological nature offarmers, immigrants, and other characters of El Ejido, and, therefore, it is mainly a collectionofestampas (portraits; lit. prints). Mercedes, the president of MPA, is one of those estampas.

She appears in the chapter titled the good, the bad and the ugly, where she is the bad.Among other things Azurmendi accuses Mercedes of just being politically correct (2001:263), of defending only the immigrants, of living off the misery of other (2001: 264), and ofhaving an obsession with racism (2001:267). These judgements are identical to those made

by local Spaniards, and there is no need to be an anthropologist to make them. This book hasbeen widely sold in El Ejido. The municipal authority organised an official presentation ofthe book at Christmas 2001, and this fact was widely covered by the local media. And,although I do not draw on this book, it is interesting to note that the competition of folkdiscourses, about what happened, and still is happening in El Ejido, has now reachedacademic levels.

Conclusion

The social exclusion of Moroccans in El Ejido is framed in the wider context of economic,class, ethnic, and historical processes. But fundamentally, as I will develop in the course ofthis thesis, this social exclusion is grounded in the capitalist mode of production and the newinternational division of labour that underlines and set the frames in which human groupsnegotiate, and invent, their always changing boundaries. In order to familiarise the readerwith this perspective, I have described, briefly, the economic and the social context of ElEjido, and how the fieldwork for this thesis has been done. We have also seen what relevantethnographic work has taken place recently in El Ejido. In the next chapter I examine theagricultural mode of production in El Ejido.


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Chapter II

The Agricultural Mode of Production

Abstract

The economic process that underlines and frames the social exclusion of Moroccans inEl Ejido is the main theme of this chapter. I describe, first, the ecological environmentof El Ejido and its recent economic history. Then, I move to the analysis of the familyfarm, the basic unit of production in the area, in the context of the local and the globaleconomy. The focus of this analysis will be the organisation of labour.

Poniente: ecological and historical background

Poniente is a very dry area due to scarce and irregular rain, 200 mm per year, and a highlevel of sunshine, averaging about 3,060 hours per year (Martnez 2001: 15). These factorsmake the area one of the most suitable candidates for tourist development of the Costa delSol type, although it has the inconvenience of an average of 100 days per year of strongwinds of up to100 km/h. In fact, at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s,there were several attempts to create tourist resorts on the coasts of Roquetas and El Ejidosimilar to the major holiday destinations such as Benalmdena, Torremolinos, orFuengirola. But they did not develop into big holiday places because, as the Spanishsociologist Mario Gaviria (2002: 26) has pointed out, tourist and agricultural developmentsin Almera are mutually exclusive since they compete for the same land and water supply.In the following paragraphs we will see how the high productivity of farming activity inPoniente overcame tourism development.

In such a dry, windy, and seemingly barren land it is difficult, at first, to grasp how ithas become such a gigantic oasis for the production of vegetables. One of the reasons thatexplain the agricultural success of Poniente lies in its rich phreaticdeposits40, although theyhave a high level of salinity. The Eastern side of Almera province (Levante lit. the east:where the sun rises) has the same climate and landscape, but it does not have these deposits,and this is probably why that area has not adopted the greenhouses until recently. At themoment the region of Njar41 (Levante) has about 3,000 hectares of greenhouses, and a new

plant to desalinate seawater will be soon inaugurated. This plant is due to start to work onthe 30th of March 2003, and it will irrigate 5,000 hectares of land (El Mundo 3/1/2003).

However, the existence of underground water, important as it is, does not explain byitself the birth and rise of the highly competitive Almera model of agricultural

production. Other regions of the Mediterranean basin have similar or better conditions thanAlmera, such as Costa del Sol, Murcia, Valencia, or Catalonia, apart from countless regionsin other Mediterranean countries. But these other regions did not develop the greenhouses,which are largely a local innovation, and the product of an endogenous evolution (in the last

40

Relating to or denoting underground water in the zone below the water table (The Concise OxfordDictionary, tenth edition)41 See map.


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decade Morocco and Turkey have introduced the greenhouses on a big scale. In Israel theyhave been in production for a long time).

To understand how Poniente has become a rich agricultural area with a high level ofdemographic growth we should, firstly, briefly summarise the recent economic history ofthe region. I consider it essential to spend a certain amount of time in the description of the

material framework in which the ethnic process of exclusion of Moroccans has come about.Later, we will describe the specificities of the local agricultural mode of production(Chapter II), organisation of labour and labour market (Chapter II-IV), and migrations to thearea (Chapter III).

Economic History

Until the 1920s the cultivation of cereals, such as barley, and the husbandry of goats andsheep was the main economic activity in Poniente. It maintained a scarce population livingin dispersed cottages (see table 1 for a demographic growthof the area). At the end of thenineteenth century an irrigation ditch (Fuente Nueva [New Fountain]) brought water from

the mountains to Campo de Dalas, allowing the cultivation of oranges and, above all, tablegrapes. The opening of wells, from 1920 onwards, and the construction of the San FernandoCanal, in 1934, further developed the farming of grapes, and introduced cotton and sugar

beet. In 1950 the production of grapes in Campo de Dalas reached 40,000 metric tonnes(Martnez 2001: 17-8).

The structure used for the vineyardswas later the base for the construction ofgreenhouses42. It consisted of a dense fence made of long stems, around the plot of land, to

protect the grapes from the wind; a net of wire supported by wooden sticks to hold thebranches of the grapevine; and a dense network of irrigation ditches to bring water from awell. In Campo de Dalas there were about 800 hectares dedicated to the production of

grapes in 1950 (Martnez 2001: 24). The harvest was around September and it required alarge workforce. This was supplied by hundreds of temporary workers who used to comedown from the Alpujarras the mountainous area between the provinces of Almera andGranada, which was also the origin of the first wave of immigrants arriving to El Ejido.These temporary workers were accommodated in special barnsattached to the cottages. Thearrivals of labourers to work temporarily in farms is not, as we see, a new phenomenon tothe area.

But the greenhouses also gained from the practice of covering the soil with a layer ofsand, which made them more productive. The discovery of the agricultural properties ofsand is not clear. According to Palomar Oviedo (in Martnez 2001: 19) it has been in usesince the end of the nineteenth century in some villages of the littoral of Granada but,wherever it was first used, Martnez Veiga notes that it was in use in the local village ofBalerma, El Ejido, in 1945 (Martnez 2001: 20). The use of sand has a number ofadvantages: it reduces the loss of humidity from the plant and the effect of the salinity of thewater43; it makes plants ripen earlier; it prevents weeds; and it multiplies the productivity ofthe land by a factor of five. The greenhouse structure multiplies this productivity again by a

42 This structure is known as the Almera model of greenhouse. The difference between the cost of thestructure and its productivity makes this model of greenhouse more advantageous than the Dutch one (Gaviria2002: 42).

43 Sand soil was used, first, for the production of vegetables in plots of land near the sea. Balerma is, infact, a village by the sea. The soil of the fields near the sea normally has high salinity levels, so sand soilproved to be the best for farming near the coast.


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factor of five (Martnez 2001: 25). Basically, it can be said that vineyards were sanded andcovered with plastic.

On the other hand, State initiative, through the National Institute of Colonisation(INC)44, played an important role in the birth of the agricultural model based ongreenhouses. In 1953, a decade before the construction of the first greenhouses, the INC

offered houses, plots of land, advice, and credit facilities for new settlers in Poniente45

. Twonew villages were built in El Ejido: the New Las Norias and San Agustn. The INCexpanded the use of sand soil and promoted the testing of new agricultural techniques thatcreated an atmosphere of experimentation among farmers (Martnez 2001: 25). The firstgreenhouse, built in Roquetas in 1963, arose out of this context of experimentation, localfarming practices, and credit facilities.

The development of the area attracted an increasing number of settlers who camemainly from the Alpujarras, where, at that time, there was a large layer of young populationhoping to migrate to urban centres in order to improve their living standards. Thedestination of migrants from the Alpujarras changed from Madrid and Catalonia46 toPoniente in the 1960s and 1970s, where they could cheaply buy a plot of land (Aznar &Snchez 2001:82). Moreover, the relation of capital to labour was very low, so they couldquickly pay the debts (in two campaigns before 1984 - Martnez 2001: 27). When thegreenhouses appeared in 1963, these settlers could also easily adapt to working in them,since traditionally they grew vegetables in small terraces in the Alpujarras.

Initially, many of these rural migrants went to El Ejido to work as temporary labourersin greenhouses, as they had been doing before for the grape harvest. Later, they could get alease for a year or two, and finally, after saving some money, they could start their own

businesses (Martnez 2001: 29). The productivity of the greenhouses also led to the rapidconversion to greenhouses of the 800 hectares of vineyards47. By 1984 the expansion of thisagricultural model was so successful that the government of Andaluca had to introduce a

prohibition on the construction of more greenhouses due to an over-exploitation of theunderground deposits of water (Junta de Andaluca decree 117/1984). The low-interestloans for the building of greenhouses were, accordingly, frozen. But the construction of newgreen houses continued between 1984 and 2001 the number of hectares in production wasdoubled. In El Ejido, for instance, the number of hectares has gone from 5,700 in 1984 toabout 12,500 today (Martnez 2001:23). The increase in the number of hectares in Almeraas a whole was impressive. In 1971 there were about 1,114 hectares. This figure rose to8,250 hectares in 1981; to 13,200 hectares in 1985; to 19,000 hectares in 1990 (Gaviria2002: 36); and to 28,500 hectares in 2002 (La Voz de Almera 25/7/2002).

The unit of production: the family farm

The new farming system, then, was to be based, largely, on the small property run by thefamily unit or household. As we have seen in chapter I, the average of land per farmer in

44 The INC was a public enterprise established during Francos dictatorship to develop underdevelopedrural areas in Spain.

45 These first settlers produced mainly outdoor grapes, cereals and vegetables. The INC at that time wasopening new wells in the area, expanding the irrigated lands.

46 Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Madrid were the areas of greatest industrial development in Spainat that time, and the destination of many Southern Spanish migrants.

47 There was also another reason. The United Kingdom was the main buyer of grapes from Almera, butwhen it joined the European Community, in 1973, the introduction of higher taxes for the importation ofgrapes from Almera made this crop less cost-effective.


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Almera is 1.1 hectares48. In 1982, according to Palomar Oviedo (cited in Martnez 2001: 32),90% of the farms were family farms. He defines family farms as those that mainly use thelabour of the members of a nuclear family, and maintains that this type of organisation is the

best for the agricultural model that has developed in El Ejido. However, Martnez putsforward the criticism that the foundations of this argument are ideological49 (2001: 32); that

is, the family farm model of production and organisation of labour is the one that suit farmersbest in the social and economic context of Poniente. Let us examine, then, the nature of thefamily farms, since it will shed light on the social relations of production that are theframework for the social exclusion of Moroccans in El Ejido.

Palomars definition of family farms coincides with Barletts one (1989: 269-70) withinthe context of the industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture is characterised by the use ofthe products of industry in its own production process, and by being capital-intensive,substituting machinery and purchased inputs such as processed fertilizers for human oranimal labour (Barlett 1989: 253) 50. And family farms are enterprises that are owned andoperated by family units that combine their own labor with management of the farms.Although she admits that it is a frequent practice for them to hire labour, given that owner-

operators normally perform most of the work, we can still consider them as family farms.The other kind of farm would be the corporate one. In that type of farm labor, capital, andmanagement are linked to separate groups of people: owners, managers and workers. InAmerica, the latter type predominates mainly in fruit and vegetable production. There is not,of course, a clear-cut division between the two organisational types of industrial agriculture,and Barlett acknowledges that they are ideal categories that have to be assessed in the courseof the fieldwork. In El Ejido they sometimes overlap, but, as we are going to see, the averagefarm is the family one. So, let us assess the type of agriculture practised in Poniente.

The production of vegetables in a farm, unlike the manufacture of commodities in afactory, is characterised by a production time during which there is little or no need for

labour. The growth of plants is a natural phenomenon and requires no human labour.Production time and working time, then, do not always coincide in farming (Martnez 2001:42-3). For our purposes, the main implication of this disparity is that the demand for labourwill be at its height during harvesting and, to a lesser extend, at sowing time, and will be at itslowest in between. On the other hand, the amount of labour needed will also depend on thekind of crop. Peppers, for example, do not demand much work at off-peak times, and onlyone person can look after of a farm of one hectare. On the other hand, cucumbers have to betied to sticks with twine while they are growing. This work is tedious and slow, and requires

between four and five workers per hectare. Moreover, at peak times, farmers can postpone orspeed up the harvest, according to the prices in the market. Other than this, the agriculturalseason normally extends from September to June, although every year more farmers are

planting a crop in summer. So, the labour needed is at its lowest during the summer, when thework mainly consists in maintenance and preparation activities for the next season. Thenumber of crops produced, then, will vary between two and three a year.

The consequence of the seasonal character of agricultural activity, and the differencebetween production time and working time is that farmers tend to demand a very flexible

48 Martnez (2001: 33, 81-2) estimates for El Ejido the figure of between 12,500 to 14,000 hectares ofgreenhouses divided between 9,000 farmers, with an average per farm of between 1.38 and 1.55 hectares.

49 If we accept that ideology is a system of ideas and ideals [which forms] the basis of an economic orpolitical theory (Oxford Concise Dictionary, tenth edition; italics are mine). Any argument in this way wouldbe ideological. But the point that I think Martnez is making, as we are going to see, is that the family farm has

been the ideal unit of production because of the a scarcity of cheap labour, and not just the best model in anycircumstances.50 In this section we will see that the agriculture practised in Poniente is fully industrial.


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labour force that is available when necessary and can be laid off when no longer required.The following table gives an idea of the level of labour flexibility demanded by farmers inthe past few years. It is based on the estimations of Martinez Veiga and Juan Colomina,vice-president of the Mesa Hortofrutcola of Almera51 (Martnez 2001: 88, 117), and itdescribes the level of labour activity in greenhouses.

TABLE 2 Martinez (%) Colomina (%)

July-August 30 10-15

September-October 80-90 80

November-January 100 10

February-March 40-80 40April-June 100 100

From November to January and from April to June harvesting take place, and the demandfor labour reaches its heights (100% in the table). Between September and October, andFebruary and March sowing and maintenance work, such as watering, fertilising,fumigation, among others, takes place. Finally, between July and August farmers just

prepare the farm for the next season, although, as I have said earlier on, an increasingnumber of farmers are starting to introduce a third crop, which, if it is adopted by themajority, will change the common labour cycle described above.

In spite of this labour flexibility, most farmers agree that the average number ofworkers (which may be the owner) needed per hectare of land is two52. Jos and Manuela53,together with Joss parents, work two hectares. During the 2001-2002 season they had tohire one labourer for a few months due to Joss father having an illness. Luciano works onehectare on his own, and when he needs help he asks his brother and his father, who work ahectare each beside Lucianos farm. Luciano will return this help when any of them needs it.If they are busy when Luciano needs them, he has to hire one labourer. Carlos also worksone hectare on his own. Between September and December, last year, he planted peppersand needed a labourer for 36 days, which was a little less than a third of the total length of

time that Carlos himself worked. It has to be said that he decided to go for a crop that doesnot need much labour. Had Carlos, for instance, gone for cucumbers instead of peppers, andthen the amount of labour required would have increased substantially. His choice indicatesthat his priority was to save labour costs. The main reason that he gave me was the low

prices of vegetables in the markets in the last few years. Previously he had two hectares and,according to him, decided to sell half of his farm because he could not afford to pay thewages.

51 The Mesa Hortofrutcola is an institution that brings together all the social groups involved in Almerain the production and distribution of vegetables. Its task is to defend the interest of producers and distributors

of vegetables in the province, and to represent them outside it, in Spain and Europe.52 All the farmers I asked agreed with this figure. Pumares also gives the same number (2001: 106)53 These and the following persons were described in Chapter I (see informants).


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In the 1970s and early 1980s the members of the nuclear family could provide enoughlabour to perform most of the tasks needed to operate a farm. Those farms rarely exceededone hectare and farmers used the labour of wives and children, according to their needs.When I was in secondary school, in the mid-1980s, the students who came from farmsworked on the farms in the evenings on weekdays, and for the whole weekend. At peak

times the need of extra labour was addressed through the traditional tornapen ortornajornalsystem employed traditionally in Alpujarras. In this system, neighbours andother relatives with farms would work for you without payment, in return for your workwhen it was needed. The slogan was today for me, tomorrow for you, as Carlos puts it.The tornapen system is similar to the ideology of cooperation and family farm partnershipsfounded in some family farms in America in order to avoid wages: One for all and all forone (Barlett 1989: 271, 281). As we have seen above, it still survives in some of thesmaller farms in El Ejido: Jos and Manuela have established that partnership with Joss

parents, and Luciano, to a lesser extent, with his brother and father. But by the end of theeighties these methods turned out to be insufficient. There are two main reasons for this. Onthe one hand, there was an increasing demand for workers in the auxiliary industry that was

developing alongside the agriculture (Aznar & Snchez 2001: 82). On the other hand, therewas a growth in the number of greenhouses and in their size. Therefore, labour becamescarce during the 1980s.

Scarcity of labour and the development of the auxiliary industry

The development of the auxiliary industry in the area, which offered more attractive jobs toSpaniards, was a direct consequence of the industrial nature of the agricultural production inPoniente. Barlett (1989: 255) indicates six general characteristics of industrial agriculture. Iwill mention three of them that are particularly relevant for this discussion. Firstly, theincreasing use of complex technology and the technology treadmill; secondly, a tendency

toward competition, specialisation, and overproduction (we well see these twocharacteristics later on); and, thirdly, the increasing interdependence between farms andagribusiness that controls inputs, machinery, product sales, processing, and transport.

In Barletts formulation (1989: 267), the term agribusiness refers to food and fiber-related enterprises not engaged in actual production. In Almera there were 433 enterprisesthat responded to that definition in 2001. Among them, there were 77 seedbed companies,36 for installation and maintenance of irrigation systems, 28 for building greenhouses, 24for agricultural machinery, 18 multinational seed companies established in Almera, and 12

plastic factories. And these figure do not take into account another 122 companies for themarketingof vegetables54 (62 auctioneer centres, and 60 cooperatives in the hands of the

farmers) (Gaviria 2002: 47, 64).Agriculture in Poniente is highly industrialised, and farmers do not control most of the

productive process as is the case in tribal or peasant economies (Barlett 1989: 268). Forinstance: farmers depend on the hybrid seeds55 produced by a handful of multinationalcompanies; seeds grow in seedbeds, not in the farms; fertilisers bought from specialisedcompanies represent between 10% and 12% of the current costs; 810 agricultural engineersand 18 consultancy companies advise farmers, and so on (Gaviria 2002: 49, 51).

54 This data is from 1998. Gaviria estimates 215 companies to market vegetables in 2002 (Gaviria 2002:

63). 55 Plants that grow from these seeds do not produce fertile seeds, so farmers have to buy new seeds forthe next crop.


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Barlett (1989: 268) also points out a tendency in industrial agriculture toward theconcentration of agribusinesses and farms, which leads to the vertical integration of twoor more successive steps of production and distribution. In Poniente this process is far from

being accomplished, partly because the productive process is largely based on the familyfarm rather on the corporate one, but it shows some signs of happening. Martnez speaks,

for instance, of a vertical disintegration of production and of integration through the market(Martnez 2001: 72-3). He defines the dense productive fabric of El Ejido as an agro-industrial district56. This term can be, of course, be rightly applied to Poniente as a whole,since greenhouses and agribusiness are evenly spread throughout the whole region.

The development of an agro-industrial district has also modified the job preferences ofthe Spaniards, who now reject work as labourers in farms due to the short-term nature andhardship of this job. They prefer the more stable and better-paid jobs of the developingauxiliary industry. Consequently, Moroccans, when they arrive, take the jobs in the farmsleft by Spaniards with the follow-on segmentation of the labour market along ethnic lines, inwhich Moroccans are at the bottom of the labour and social scale. But we will explain thisissue in more detail in the next chapter.

Scarcity of labour

dirty, dangerous, and demanding: an explanatory model applied to social exclusion in el ejido...

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