Afro-Mauritanians in Ohio organize to help their homeland and their adopted one

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“When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I want to know is what is happening in Mauritania. I love this country, but I also miss home.” For Houleye Thiam, 44, life in the U.S. began in the 2000s, when she and her family came to Ohio as political refugees. “People leave Mauritania because their home is ‘like a shark's mouth.’“

Houleye Thiam is general secretary of the Mauritanian Network for Human Rights in the US, an Ohio nonprofit that assists Afro-Mauritanians with the bureaucratic and legal processes of obtaining political asylum and informs the home country about their status. She also runs the Mauritanian Community Center, which provides English classes, and Youth and Hope, an organization she founded in 2011 that supports rural Mauritanian schools by providing school supplies. She works as a social worker at the Ohio Department of Administrative Services in Columbus.

From her office, Thiam tells us the story of the migration of Mauritanians to the U.S. “The phenomenon gathered pace starting in the 1990s, when some Afro-Mauritanians settled in the cities of New York, Memphis, Columbus, and Cincinnati.” This happened in reaction to the so-called Passif Humanitaire, a period of terror between 1989 and 1991, when the regime of Colonel Maaouya Ould Sid' Ahmed Taya had some 3,000 Afro-Mauritanian soldiers arbitrarily arrested on charges of orchestrating a coup in '87, subjected more than 500 of them to extreme torture and summary executions, and expelled 60,000 Afro-Mauritanians – primarily ethnic Fulani – to Mali and Senegal, under the pretext of a cross-border conflict.

The repression reached its nadir with the hanging of 28 Afromauritanian soldiers on Nov. 28, 1990, on the day celebrating 30 years of independence from French colonial rule, which was achieved in 1960. Thiam recalls that “ever since then, the power has been in the hands of the Beydan,” which has created deep rifts in Mauritanian society.

The Beydan or “white Moors,” an Arab-Berber population who are descendants of slave owners, are the minority ethnic group that dominates the political, economic and social life of the country, from which they exclude the Haratin or “black Moors,” Arabic speakers who are descended from enslaved people; the Afro-Mauritanian ethnic Fulani, Soninke, Wolof and Bambara; and the Abid, who are still enslaved.

“Racial discrimination blew up in the 1960s, leading to the publication of The Manifesto of 19 in 1966,” Thiam recalls. Signed by 19 Afro-Mauritanian officials, the text spoke out against the Beydan system and its attempts at the Arabization of the population. The spark that set it off was a strike by high school students in Nouakchott, Kaédi, Boghé, and Rosso against the decision to make the teaching of Arabic language compulsory in schools.

Later on, the Manifeste du Négro mauritanien opprimé (“Manifesto of the Oppressed Mauritanian Blacks”) would come out, drafted in 1986 by Afro-Mauritanian intellectuals who had joined together with the Forces de Libération Africaines de Mauritanie (FLAM). The manifesto denounced the “state apartheid” system and called for “a true national dialogue.” Samba Thiam, Houleye's father, took part in its drafting, and was arrested and imprisoned in the dreaded Oualata prison as a result: “My father told about the atrocious conditions in which he and his comrades were imprisoned: in a cell that was much like a rack, chained hand and foot. He needed to get his own water to drink from the top of a mountain, and they only gave him white rice with sand in it to eat. He lived in these conditions for five years. Fortunately, he came out alive. And after he regained his freedom, he decided to leave the country.”

Today, Samba Thiam is president of the Forces Progressistes du Changement (FPC) and was a founding member of the Mouvement populaire africain de Mauritanie (MPAM) as well as FLAM. A survivor of one of Mauritania's darkest periods and a symbol of Afro-Mauritanian resistance, in 1990 he went into exile to Senegal with his family. After ten years, he left for the U.S. as a political refugee, settling in Ohio, which would thus become a place of reunion for families and friends.

During the 2000s, more and more Afro-Mauritanians came to reside in Cincinnati, Ohio City and Columbus. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, arrivals peaked in 2023, with at least 15,500 Mauritanians reportedly crossing the southern border after traveling on a route with multiple flights, arriving in Nicaragua and crossing through neighboring countries into Mexico. Between March and June of this year, more than 8,500 came in, up from just over 1,000 in the previous four months.

While Trump's racist and “migrantophobic” propaganda, coupled with growing economic-social malaise, are bolstering violent white supremacist groups native to the Buckeye State, Houleye Thiam says that overall, Ohioans close to the community are treating them like “brothers and sisters.” In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, Thiam is volunteering with Kamala Harris' campaign. “I can't speak for everyone, but most of us Afro-Mauritanians [with U.S. citizenship] will vote for her. Personally, I try to explain that Harris and her program are the best choice for us.”

In Mauritania, the only choice people have is often that of leaving. “Afro-Mauritanians don't have jobs, and half of them still don't have IDs. If you go out at night and run into the police, you are dragged to the police station. You are basically considered a second-class citizen. When you're not enslaved, that is,” Thiam explains.

The Global Slavery Index 2023 estimated that in Mauritania, 149,000 people, or 3.2%, were living under forms of modern slavery in 2021, employed in forced labor. Out of a population of around 4.9 million, 70 percent are Haratin and Afro-Mauritanian, and according to local NGOs the GSI estimates for people living in slavery are undercounting the phenomenon, since the Mauritanian government doesn’t allow a census of the enslaved people, mainly concentrated in rural areas.

Mauritania formally abolished slavery as part of its Constitution in 1981, making it the last officially abolitionist state in the world, and did not adopt a law criminalizing it until 2007, followed by another in 2015 that defined slavery as a “crime against humanity.” However, according to Houleye, these measures are just “a way to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.” 

“In the end, if you can't change things from the inside, you will try to leave,” she concludes.

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Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/gli-afromauritani-mai-piu-schiavi on 2024-10-24