Contribution short abstract:

The long crisis of European African Studies has been especially deep after the impact of Post-decolonial studies. I want to expose the debates by the case of the Krió Fernandino community of Spanish Guinea. Were they “asimilados”, “black colonizers” or transcontinental and afropolitan people?

Contribution long abstract:

Fernandino was a very rich and selective African bourgeois elite empowered by the British informal colonization of Spanish Guinea. One interesting characteristic is that they lived between Africa and Europe from the last quarter of 19th century until today (Aixelà-Cabré 2022).

For Spanish travelers and historians the Fernandino were asimilados (Ramos y Navarro 1912:348; Campos 2016:84). As detailed the missionary Ruiaz (1928:84), the Fernandino “had no more moreno than their color”. The notion “asimilado” wanted to transfer to Spanish Guinea the rhetoric of the Hispanic race implemented in Latin America, according to which skin color would have no effect on status and consideration of "indigenous people", something that due to racist and segregationist practices in the colony was false. But it is interesting to face these interpretations with African voices. On one hand, there were Equatorial Guineans that catalogued them as “black colonizers” (Iyanga Pendi 2021:42) given that their success was strongly linked to colonialism and the exploitation of African workers. On the other hand, Fernandino descents described their ancestors as powerful, educated, and well dressed Africans. In fact, their details about how they were and live approach this African people not as asimilados or “black colonizers” but as multisited, transcontinental, transnational and afropolitan people, understanding Afropolitism as a way of being in the world (Mbembe 2007).

The final aim is to propose that it is needed to promote a strong collaboration between Europe and Africa sources and researchers given that some stories need both to offer a shared history.