UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines political unrest in arguably one of the most stable regimes in the Muslim world, Morocco. It does so through a consideration of problems of historical reckoning, in line with the rhetoric and political stance of Rifian activists who point to the fundamental incompleteness of the nation’s postcolonial transition in the insistence on stamping out the radical legacy of the early twentieth-century Republic of the Rif and the challenge it posed to European colonial forces. The death of fish vendor Mouhcine Fikri in late fall of 2016 unleashed the strongest backlash against corruption and inequality in the country since 2011 and the wider context of the “Arab Spring.” Tied indelibly to the port of al-Hoceyma and a Mediterranean coastline whose (increasingly scarce) bounty is tightly constricted through a web of rules, both official and unofficial, Fikri’s death shifted the wider demands of national protest al-hirak (the movement) to a focus on historical regional tensions and in particular the status of al-shamal or the north. My research takes up questions of northern difference through a focus on the Andalusian city of Tetouan and in particular an infrastructural project to redevelop its Mediterranean port of Martil and the river connecting its northern hub to coastal waters. Closed since 1962, its abandonment coincides with a history of monarchical hostility toward the northern region as a whole following 1958 clashes in the Rif and a subsequent general move to disinvest from the Mediterranean coastline of the country. My ethnography probes attempts to resurrect Martil’s river and port, an endeavor on the part of civic activists and local historians that brings with it a host of resurrected past futures embedded in a centuries-long enmeshment with Spain extending from medieval times through twentieth-century colonial rule. In articulating these “futures past,” proponents of the port’s reopening strike a delicate balance, at one and the same time elaborating a vision for the future of the north in line with its co-constitutive role in the production of both Western Europe and western Islam and at the same time navigating a northern political difference which continues to disturb and provoke.