ABSTRACT
In early 2000, in the southern Spanish town of El Ejido, a hidden conflict between immigrant workers and the Spanish inhabitants escalated into xenophobic and racist attacks on Moroccan workers. The anti-Moroccan riots were triggered by two violent incidents: when a Moroccan worker, apparently in self-defence, killed two farmers who attacked him; and when a mentally disturbed Moroccan murdered a young Spanish woman in a market. The Spanish inhabitants encircled the town with burning tyres, expelled the Moroccans and destroyed their property, cafes, shops and call centres. At one point a large group of native Spanish youths entered the mosque, stole money, urinated on the Koran and chanted: ‘The village united can never be vanquished.’ It was also rumoured that the mayor had to empty the water reservoir because the Moroccans had allegedly poisoned the water supply. On the following day, the children took bottled water to school and repeated the slander used against Jews during the 13th century pogroms: ‘They have poisoned the water and infected the air.’ The context of these incidents was a climate of protest, the so-called ‘tomato war’, that had been developing over several months. A new agreement over fishing rights between Morocco and the EU caused resistance, as Spanish farmers perceived the agreement to be sacrificing Spanish intensive agriculture for fishing rights in Moroccan catchment areas. Responding to a call to protest in January, the port of Algeciras, the main transit point for tomatoes from Morocco, was blockaded. But when the crowd hunting for Moroccan tomatoes entered the harbour they found only a truckload of oranges. For both Spain and Morocco, tomatoes are the most important and competitive commodity since they generate the largest profit though they consume a lot of water and are very labour-intensive. For the Spanish producers, tomatoes thus epitomize a double invasion of the Spanish economy: on the one hand the foreign workers and on the other the imported tomatoes. In response to these racist attacks, the immigrants went on strike lasting from 7 to 13 February and causing a daily loss of about EUR 12 million. When they observed that the conditions claimed to end the strike were not being fulfilled, the workers occupied the trade unions’ building in Almería. The occupation ended on 1 May with a protest numbering some 3,000 immigrants while, independently, the trade union majority protested separately, which revealed the isolation of the immigrants. Finally, in September 2000 the Coordinated Organizations of Agriculturalists and Animal Graziers offered new jobs to all immigrants but excluded any Moroccans, who at the time, constituted the majority of workers thereby sending a clear message to the Moroccans that they were undesirable workers. All these events caused a fundamental change in the make up of the immigrant population in El Ejido — a trend which had already begun when the persecution of Moroccans had made some quite reasonably fear for their lives and move to other areas of the country. Of 12,000 mainly Moroccan immigrants, only a third remained in 2000. The rest were substituted by Ecuadorians, Eastern Europeans and sub-Saharan immigrants. The violent outbreaks of simmering conflicts represent a crucial turning point for Andalusia’s intensive agriculture.
