ABSTRACT
In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2019, six armed men road motorcycles into the village of Yirgou, in Burkina Faso’s far north. In some African countries (Nigeria, Congo, Rwanda, etc.), mass killings targeting specific ethnic groups have not been uncommon. But in Burkina Faso they were rare. As elsewhere, Burkina Faso’s cultural fabric has been woven through historical interactions. Though imagined, this nation under construction was not artificial. It built on the ethnicities, languages, and religions of the inhabitants, with relations among them theoretically more equitable than before. The new identity, in turn, was not expressed in strictly cultural terms. It was part of a process of social advancement more generally – of the poor against the elites of all ethnic groups, of subordinate social castes against former oppressors, and of women and youth against patriarchal elders who previously monopolized local authority.
