Young Equatorial Guineans yearn for the American dream

Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) (AFP) – Tiny but oil-rich Equatorial Guinea long escaped the youth exodus plaguing other African nations, but a decade of economic decline and rising unemployment has left many eager to leave.


Issued on: 17/09/2024
Equatorial Guinea's economy has been badly hit since oil prices slumped in 2014 © STR / AFP/File
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The discovery of off-shore oil in the mid-1990s turned the country into Africa's third richest in terms of per capita income.

But the economy has been badly hit since oil prices slumped in 2014, putting a dent in government revenues, and slipped into recession last year.

Despite its natural oil wealth, many of the 1.6 million inhabitants live in poverty. The jobless rate has hit 8.5 percent, according to African Development Bank figures.

"I'm going to the United States, regardless of the job, it's not hard to find work," Paciencia Mangue, 32, vowed.

Her economics degree is not enough, she said, and she is fed up with wasting her time.

"To get a good job here, you have to know someone in the government or be related to those who run the country."

Laura Ntogono, a 27-year-old working at a nail salon, said the idea of starting a new life in Los Angeles was never far from her thoughts.

"What you don't find in your country, you can find elsewhere," she said.

The trend is not discussed in the press -- there is no buzz on social media, or official statistics.

However, everyday conversation is full of the subject in the authoritarian, closed West African country, run by 82-year-old President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the world's longest-serving sitting president.

In recent years, not a day goes by without news of another young Equatorial Guinean leaving for the United States, an AFP reporter said.
'Make ends meet'

A 44-year-old married father of four who asked to be identified only as Manulo, a pseudonym, has lived in Jacksonville, Florida, for about a year after losing his job at the National Institute of Social Security.

"After three years of unemployment, I could not make ends meet anymore... I sold my car and I got a visa," Manulo told AFP from the United States.

Many of Equatorial Guinea's 1.6 million inhabitants live in poverty despite its natural oil wealth © STR / AFP/File

He declined to reveal how much he earns, indicating it was on another level to back home.

The minimum wage in Equatorial Guinea is 128,000 CFA francs ($210) a month, according to data from the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa.

But his dog-sitting job allows him to send $500 (450 euros) home to his family a month.
Border 'ordeal'

Some disenchanted Equatorial Guineans manage to go directly to the United States after getting a visa; others fly to Brazil or Nicaragua, sometimes via Spain, to enter illegally from Mexico.

Based on testimonies heard by AFP, few opt for the Sahel route in order to cross the Mediterranean.

Exile comes with a steep price tag -- 1.6 million CFA francs ($2,620) for a plane ticket from the capital Malabo to San Paulo and a Brazilian visa.

But that still leaves the toughest part -- paying traffickers to get across the US border.

Some can come close to paying with their lives.

Geraldina Adang, 33, said she spent two months on dangerous, illegal routes to travel from Brazil to Mexico early last year.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 82, is the world's longest-serving sitting president © STR / AFP/File

She then waited three months to cross the Mexican-US border.

"We suffered," said Adang, who now washes dishes in California. "To get into the United States, death is not far."

Celestine Fouenfin, a 36-year-old cleaner from Cameroon who set off from Malabo to reach Las Vegas through Mexico, called her perilous journey an "ordeal" and an "obstacle course".
'Lost hope'

The dream of leaving for a better life is one shared by many in the continent, a recent poll indicated.

Equatorial Guinea © STAFF / AFP

Nearly six out of 10 young Africans are considering leaving their countries within three years to find a job, with the United States their top destination, according to the Ichikowitz Family Foundation survey in 16 countries in Africa.

"With or without a visa, I will reach the United States," said taxi driver Angel Ondo, 25.

"Many of our friends who were taxi drivers like us have already left" via Brazil or Nicaragua, then Mexico, he said, in front of his car.

While Equatorial Guinea saw a wave of political exiles flee to Spain after independence in 1968, the reasons to leave today are wide ranging.

"A lack of individual and collective freedom, a lack of robust, independent institutions, systematic corruption, poor management of public affairs, and a lack of respect for human rights are behind the exodus," said rights activist Joaquin Elo Ayeto from the Somos NGO.

Sociology teacher Elias Mba Engonga blamed "disappointment, lost hope for political changes, social policies and the lack of equitable distribution of state revenue".

© 2024 AFP

Meta bans Russian state media outlets for social media 'interference' campaigns

US tech giant Meta said late Monday that it was banning Russian state media outlets from its apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, following US prosecutors' allegations that RT had covertly funded influence campaigns through social media.


Issued on: 17/09/2024 -

Meta threat reports indicate Russia has been the leading source of covert influence campaigns disrupted at the social networking giant's platform 

© Kirill Kudryavtsev, AFP


Meta late Monday said it is banning Russian state media outlets from its apps around the world due to "foreign interference activity."

The ban comes after the United States accused RT and employees of the state-run outlet of funneling $10 million through shell entities to covertly fund influence campaigns on social media channels including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube, according to an unsealed indictment.

"After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets," Meta said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," said Meta, whose apps include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.

RT was forced to cease formal operations in Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States due to sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to the indictment unsealed in New York,

US prosecutors quoted an RT editor-in-chief as saying it created an "entire empire of covert projects" designed to shape public opinion in "Western audiences."
Secret content backing

One of the covert projects involved funding and direction of an online content creation company in Tennessee, according to the indictment.

Since launching in late 2023, the US content creation operation supported by Russia has posted nearly 2,000 videos that have logged more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, according to the indictment.

Read moreWhat fake news is being shared about US presidential candidate Kamala Harris?

Prosecutors cited a content producer as grousing about being pressed by the company to post a video early this year of a "well known US political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia," complaining it felt like "overt shilling" but agreeing to put the video out.

The company never disclosed to viewers it was funded by RT, US prosecutors said.

"RT has pursued malign influence campaigns in countries opposed to its policies, including the United States, in an effort to sow domestic divisions and thereby weaken opposition to Government of Russia objectives," prosecutors argued in the indictment.
Proxies and mercenaries

Russia is the biggest source of covert influence operations disrupted by Meta at its platform since 2017, and such efforts at deceptive online influence ramped up after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to threat reports released routinely by the social media giant.

Meta had previously banned the Federal News Agency in Russia to thwart foreign interference activities by the Russian Internet Research Agency.


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RT capabilities were expanded early last year, with the Russian government enhancing it with "cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence," the US State Department said in a recent release.

Cyber capabilities were focused primarily on influence and intelligence operations around the world, according to the State Department.

Information gathered by covert RT operations flows to Russia's intelligence services, Russian media outlets, Russian mercenary groups, and other "proxy arms" of the Russian government, the United States maintained.

The State Departement said it was engaged in diplomatic efforts to inform governments around the world about Russia's use of RT to conduct covert activities and encourage them to take action to limit "Russia's ability to interfere in foreign elections and procure weapons for its war against Ukraine."

(AFP)

Lebanon… Netanyahu is More Dangerous than Sharon


Opinion
Ghassan Charbel
Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Al-Awsat news
Monday - 16 September 2024

On Sunday, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over the Wazzani area in South Lebanon, demanding residents leave immediately under the pretext that Hezbollah was firing from the area. The most alarming part of the message was a phrase warning the population not to return “to this area until the end of the war.”

The Israeli army’s quick claim that the leaflets were distributed by an officer acting on his own initiative does not diminish the seriousness of what is going on in the minds of Israeli security officials. Chief among their concerns is the view that Hezbollah’s Iranian arsenal poses an existential threat.

This is not the first time Israel has resorted to dropping threatening and warning flyers over Lebanon. The Lebanese have long, bitter experiences with this. In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army surrounded Beirut, and its planes dropped leaflets designating “safe routes” for residents to leave the capital. They did the same in South Lebanon as Israeli tanks advanced rapidly toward the capital.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the current situation is far more dangerous than it was during the Israeli invasion that summer. At that time, Israeli pressure aimed to force the Palestine Liberation Organization fighters to leave Lebanon, which was achieved after a ceasefire.

Back then, Israel saw the threat as coming from Yasser Arafat’s forces and his keffiyeh-wrapped appearances from a Lebanese balcony. At that time, Lebanon did not host any force that Israel considered an existential threat, one that needed to be eliminated. From that summer of invasion and flyers, Hezbollah would later be born, after Iran viewed Lebanon as an opportunity to implement its constitutional mandate of “exporting the revolution.”

This time, the dropping of leaflets over Lebanon is quite different from what occurred in the early 1980s. Israel is different from what it was a year ago. The region today does not resemble what it was four decades ago. Lebanon has changed, so did Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

We can also talk about a different Iran, with its arsenal, regional presence, nuclear ambitions, and the imprints left by General Qassem Soleimani on four Arab maps, not to mention his involvement in Gaza’s armament, training programs, and war tunnel manufacturing.

Israel’s defense minister and some of its generals do not hide their desire to repeat Gaza’s scenes on Lebanese soil. They see war with Hezbollah as an alternative to war with Iran itself. They view it as a war with Iran, but on Lebanese soil. Within this context lie dreams of restoring deterrence, imposing a long-term ceasefire, and making Lebanon pay a heavy price for Hezbollah’s “war of attrition” strategy, which the group chose to wage at a calculated pace following the outbreak of the war on October 7.

In previous calculations, observers would dismiss the likelihood of Israel waging a full-scale war against Lebanon. Hezbollah is not encircled like Hamas is in Gaza. Its arsenal is advanced, and its supply routes remain open through Syria, with connections to Iran via Iraq. Moreover, Iran, which can afford to provide limited support to Hamas in its confrontation with Israel’s military machine, cannot exercise such restraint if Hezbollah were to face a crippling blow. In the 2006 war, Qassem Soleimani was present in Beirut, actively participating. Today’s calculations appear to be different.

In assessing the imminent danger facing Lebanon, attention must be paid to the changes occurring in Israel. In recent months, Israel’s most dangerous prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has succeeded in turning the conflict in Gaza into an existential war, not merely a war of discipline or revenge. It is likely that even Yahya Sinwar did not anticipate this. The prevailing view was that Israel could not endure the deaths of hundreds of soldiers and the strain of a prolonged war that would exhaust its population and economy.

This issue is not just about Netanyahu’s personal concerns and his fear of the “day after” the war, with investigative committees and courts awaiting. It also involves the military and security establishment’s reading of the scale of the threats, priorities, and the required costs to confront them. The Israeli public’s belief that the current war is an existential one leads them to tolerate the burdens of a costly conflict in terms of human lives and the economy.

Netanyahu has also succeeded in prolonging the war until America enters its election season coma, particularly after confirming that its fleets have no choice but to support him in the event of a wide regional confrontation.

In recent months, Netanyahu has shown an ability to defy American advice and warnings, as if he is attempting to turn the current war into a decisive one that would spare Israel from renewed fighting in the coming decades. Recent Western accusations against Iran, for providing missiles and drones to Russia and concealing its nuclear ambitions, could further push him toward a major war on Lebanese soil. His combat won’t be easy, of course, and destruction won’t be limited to the Lebanese side, but the prolonged war in Gaza reveals that a shift has occurred in Israel regarding its capacity to wage a lengthy battle.

Hamas’ leadership likely did not expect the war to last long enough to nearly mark its first anniversary. Similarly, Hezbollah’s leadership probably did not expect the “war of attrition” to continue to this extent or at its current cost. Hezbollah ties the halt of its “war of attrition” to the cessation of hostilities in Gaza, but what if Israel decides that the second phase of the “existential war” should unfold on Lebanese territory and unleashes its advanced killing machine on an already fractured country?

It is clear that Lebanon is slipping further into the danger zone. The country is exhausted, and the majority of its people oppose involvement in a full-scale, open-ended war, but it lacks the means to stave off the threat of conflict. Only the US can avert the looming danger, but Lebanon is not prepared to pay the price for America’s role. Netanyahu’s Israel is more dangerous than Sharon’s Israel.

An olive oil war rages between Italy and Spain

Thanks to a clever marketing campaign, Italy has convinced the world that it is the king of liquid gold – hiding the fact that a significant proportion of "Made in Italy" olive oil comes from Spain.

Published on 16 September 2024

VOXEUROPA
Álvaro Merino Márquez - El Orden Mundial (Madrid)
Translated by Albie Mills

Osama Hajjaj | Cartoon movement

“It would have been more logical for a Spaniard to go to Italy to sell and not for an Italian to come here”.

Wearing a flowered shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, Leonardo D'Errico, an Italian who has lived in Spain since the 1990s, looks back over his career surrounded by oil samples and hunting trophies that decorate the walls of his office in Torredonjimeno (Jaén, Andalusia). His story is also the story of the olive oil trade. It is the story of a powerful Italian industry that built an empire based on mass production in Spain, a neighbour that has now overtaken it in global export markets.

He is an oil broker, an intermediary who puts traders in contact with mills. Italy has always needed oil to export, and Spain, which normally produces about half of the world's olive oil, has a surplus. This imbalance has caused a dependency whereby Italy buys, bottles under its own brands and sells back, at a higher price, large quantities of Spanish oil. And it is not exactly small fry (if you pardon the pun). Italy has been the destination of nearly half of Spanish exports, the vast majority of which it resells, at least since the 1990s.

But it is a business model that is becoming obsolete: "Our work has started to diminish because the big Spanish groups have direct relations with the producers," says D'Errico. In 2023, Italy accounted for only 22% of Spain's olive oil sales, a figure that was unthinkable a decade ago, when it still accounted for 47%. The commercial chain has shortened and cheap bulk sales via Italy are giving way to packaged oil of good quality and value.

Yet despite this, the Spanish oil sector continues to speak Italian. Andalusia's liquid gold is flooding international markets, yes, but with names such as Pompeian, Carapelli or Bertolli. “Made in Italy is untouchable", warns Leonardo D'Errico.

40% of worldwide production

With 283 million olive trees, Spain dominates the global olive oil market: in the 2021/22 season, the last one before drought destroyed its harvest, it produced 44% of the world's oil and accounted for 59% of international sales, according to the International Olive Oil Council. Italy, meanwhile, produced barely 10% and exported 20%, although with a nuance: its sales, despite being overwhelmingly of Spanish oil, were 41% more expensive, according to Eurostat. The Spanish brand is struggling to compete with the Italian one.

More : Who should speak for Europe’s farmers?

Carbonell came up against this reality in the early 2000s: the brand landed in the United States with the Deoleo group - then called SOS, based in Córdoba - and set out to conquer a market that was clearly on the rise but, at the time, monopolised by Italy. It did not work. For Americans, as for many Europeans, olive oil is an Italian product.

The reasons for this association are historical. In the words of Teresa Pérez, Director of the Spanish Olive Oil Trading Association, "Spain was very well positioned before the Second World War and the dictatorship, but it was closed as a market and Italian immigration acted as an ambassador for olive oil". Spain's isolation also coincided with the creation of the European Economic Community, which in 1957 liberalised trade between its members and subsidised agricultural production, including Italian olive groves. Spain meanwhile had to pay tariffs to export to the rest of Europe.
0il produced in Córdoba is marketed worldwide under names such as Bertolli, Carapelli and Sasso, without even passing through Italy

"He who strikes first strikes twice", remarks Rafael Pico, Director General of the Spanish Olive Oil & Pomace Olive Oil Exporters’ Association (ASOLIVA), a phrase recognisable across the sector. Italy arrived first and conquered the international markets.

But its production has stagnated since the 1990s and barely covers its domestic demand, so it was forced to turn to the Mediterranean basin to supply its export industry, which has tripled its sales in the last three decades. And in this search, Spain is the source of up to 90% of its imports, along with other markets in Greece, Tunisia, Portugal, Turkey and Syria.

In contrast to Italy's stagnation, Spanish production has tripled since the 1990s. Entry into the European Economic Community in 1986 boosted the modernisation and competitiveness of its olive groves thanks to aid from the Common Agricultural Policy, but also its commitment to intensive and irrigated cultivation. As a result, whereas previously less than 100,000 hectares of olive groves were irrigated in Spain, by 2023 there were almost 900,000, and production in the province of Jaén alone has exceeded that of the whole of Italy.

"Spain has done a great job in agronomy and Italy has done a great job in marketing. We have dedicated ourselves to producing cheaply, to mechanising large areas and to irrigation," says Rafael Gutiérrez, Director of Bulk Operations at the Dcoop cooperative, the world's leading olive oil producer. Based in Antequera (Málaga), his company exports around half of what it produces, mainly in bulk to Italy. But Gutiérrez warns: "There are Italian names but not Italian brands".

More : Europe’s desert mirage: how olive-oil fever is drying out Spain’s ancient aquifers

Dcoop itself has gone from being just a supplier of bulk oil to competing for its marketing abroad. To do so, it has Italianised its sales with the Pompeian brand, founded by Italian emigrants in 1906 in Baltimore: Dcoop partnered with Pompeian’s owners in 2015 to sell Andalusian oil in the United States under their seal and has ended up becoming the leading brand with a market share of 20%. "Pompeian realised that it needed solid production and now boasts 75,000 farmers in Andalusia behind it. It is not an Italian middleman who buys from all over the world, and this has caught on in America", explains its bulk sales manager.

Something similar was done by Deoleo, the world's largest olive oil bottler, which, although owned by the British investment fund CVC Capital Partners since 2014, maintains its headquarters in Spain. After the Carbonell fiasco, they changed their strategy and pulled in large-scale liquidity to buy the Italian brands Minerva (2005), Friol (2006) and Bertolli (2008). As a result of these acquisitions, oil produced in Córdoba is marketed worldwide under names such as Bertolli, Carapelli and Sasso, without even passing through Italy.

For Rafael Pérez, Deoleo's Quality Director, his group has "turned the tables". "We buy between 70-90% of our oil in Spain, we use Italian brands and distribute them to the rest of the world". Through this, Spain has come to control the marketing world, and has taken advantage of its commercial pull to sell more, albeit at the expense of the Spanish brands themselves.

Thanks to these changes, Spain has become the undisputed leader in trade outside Europe since 2014 and in imports to the United States since 2016, which is already the second largest importer in the world and will soon become the leading consumer. In Mexico and Asia, emerging markets in which it has competed on equal terms with Italy, Spain practically monopolises sales, while Deoleo (Córdoba), Dcoop (Málaga), Sovena (Seville), Migasa (Seville) and Acesur (Jaén) are the major players in Spanish oil exports.
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"This has not been achieved overnight: profits from the Spanish industry has been invested in growing olive plantations, better industries and greater distribution in the markets. We have been able to invest, which the Italian sector has not," argues Rafael Pico, Director of ASOLIVA.

Despite this, Italy is still the destination for a quarter of Spanish exports, something for which Pico blames farmers and cooperatives: "The philosophy of the industry is focused on the margins and the brand of the future to create a value chain for the whole sector, but the farmers and cooperatives don't care, they only think about today".

Cristóbal Cano, Head of Olive Oil at the Small Farmers’ and Ranchers’ Union, defends the agricultural sector, saying that the farmers "don't actually sell the oil", but that it is the Italians who come to buy from the mills and use their "position of power" to fix the price. And, he counters: "It is those higher up in the industry that focus on the short term, taking advantage of Italian brands without seeking a change that would benefit our country more".

Quantity and quality

With 1,842 mills and around 400,000 olive growers, the atomisation of the sector has been one of the major stumbling blocks for the Spanish industry. At the other end of the chain, however, large Spanish supermarkets like Mercadona account for three quarters of sales and have a great capacity to influence price setting at source.

The production chain is built upon strong cooperatives, which account for around 70% of production, but the chain loses density when it comes to the marketing sector, the opposite problem to Italy. For this reason, in order to sell produce in numbers usually three times higher than national consumption, Spain is forced to resort to bulk sales, which account for around two thirds of exports.

"When you see the business from the production side you can see we have a problem, because we often have so much oil that we don’t know what to do with it, so we end up practically giving it away," says Rafael Pérez of Deoleo. Nevertheless, others, such as the Managing Director of the Seville cooperative Oleoestepa, Álvaro Olavarría, laud "the luck of having a deficit market" such as the Italian one that covers Spain's sales needs, although he prefers to diversify his business: "Bulk is a commodity and to depend exclusively on it is to put yourself in the lap of the gods".

Oleoestepa, which has 7,000 members and only works with extra virgin olive oil, has prioritised its bottling business this year - which is more profitable - over its bulk business due to the lack of olives, so sales to Italy have been insignificant. But its Managing Director makes it clear: "If the weather is good, we tend to go to international bulk markets such as Italy".

More : Fighting fires with fires – and pasture, in Spain

The commitment to quality and own brand is replicated by Aires de Jaén, which exports between 60% and 70% of its harvest from Jabalquinto, only in packaged formats. For Ichun Lin, Export Manager for the Jaén company, "your business is only worth as much as your brand is worth", so it is important to "give reasons for them to choose you and tell a story behind the product". "If you only sell in bulk, strategically you don't add value. You have to go for the packaged product just like Italy did fifty years ago," says Lin.

But the battle for quality is not being won by the Spanish, as shown by the difference in prices and the number of designations of origin; Italy has twelve more than Spain. The picual variety of olive is the most common in Spain and also the most celebrated and awarded in the world, but if it is harvested after October it acquires a flavour that is not usually appreciated abroad. Yet in Spain, many farmers leave the olives to ripen on the tree in search of a higher yield.

"Spanish oil has to be corrected with other sweeter oils. In Italy it is often said that it tastes like cat piss and they prefer to buy it in Greece", says the intermediary Leonardo D'Errico, who accuses Spanish producers of putting "kilos" before quality. Deoleo takes the same line: "The average quality of Argentina and Chile is superior to that of Spain, and - of course - so is Italy’s. We are one step behind in terms of quality and we cannot afford to miss the boat here".

Towards “Made in Spain”

Since 1990, olive oil consumption has doubled worldwide. Despite this, the liquid gold still accounts for just 1% of global vegetable oil consumption, which is dominated by palm, soybean, rapeseed and sunflower oil. The scope for growth is therefore enormous.

The concern now is supply, according to Jaime Lillo, executive director of the International Olive Council. The olive tree needs less water than most crops, but "the big question is how the Mediterranean basin is going to adapt to climate change". With increasingly scarce and erratic rainfall, access to water will be a key issue for the competitiveness of olive groves, especially in Spain, which is the European country with the highest percentage of its territory at risk of desertification, at 74%. Meanwhile, 31% of its farms are already irrigated and olive groves continue to spread along the banks of the Guadalquivir.

More : Europe’s food giants turn a blind eye to deforestation in Argentina

The potential for olive oil production in Spain is 2.2 million tonnes, when taking into account the increase in plantations since the production peak of the 2018/19 season, when 1.8 million tonnes were harvested. Despite this, not everyone looks favourably on this scenario. For Dcoop, in fact, "the lean season will come when it rains". A record harvest would knock down sales prices and force them to resort to bulk sales and Italian re-exports.

Meanwhile, Italian farmers are crying out against the "iberisation" of their olive production, railing against Spain's "super-intensive, single-variety" model. The battle for numbers has long since been lost, but Italy remains top dog in marketing and has clung to the quality of its limited harvest.

The oil wars, far from being history, are intensifying as the business grows and the challenges increase. For now, the Spanish brand continues to follow the Made in Italy’s lead.

👉 Original article on El Orden Mundial

ECOWAS was a Pan-African non-aligned organisation. That has all changed.

ECOWAS was built on the principles of Pan-Africanism and non-alignment, but geopolitics and coups have challenged both of those pillars of the organisation, writes Abubakar Usman.


Abubakar Usman
September 16th, 2024

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is currently facing an existential crisis. Military coups in the member states of Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger have sparked division within the bloc. In response to these coups, ECOWAS imposed stringent sanctions and suspended the affected countries from the organisation. These military-led governments retaliated by withdrawing from ECOWAS and forming a rival organisation known as the Sahel Alliance.

As ECOWAS approaches its 50th anniversary, why are these divisions appearing now and why weren’t they sparked by earlier military coups in the region?

The answers lie in two key factors. First, the region’s drift away from Pan-Africanism has weakened the ideological foundation that previously unified the region. Second, shifting global political dynamics and the alignment of ECOWAS members with major world powers has introduced new external influences, exacerbating divisions within the organisation.

Pan-African multilateralism


The wave of African independence that began in the 1950s was largely driven by the Pan-African movement. This was a collection of beliefs, actions, and movements aimed at promoting the liberation and unity of people of African descent. Prominent figures such as Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, W.E.B. Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah, and Jomo Kenyatta were at the forefront of advocating for Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah, a founding father of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), emphasised the importance of African unity, famously stating:

“I can see no security for African states unless African leaders, like ourselves, have realised beyond all doubt that salvation for Africa lies in unity…for in unity lies strength, and as I see it, African states must unite or sell themselves out to imperialist and colonialist exploiters for a mess of pottage, or disintegrate individually.”

This commitment to Pan-African ideals inspired the formation of regional blocs aimed at accelerating African development, enhancing security, and resisting foreign interference. These efforts led to the establishment of regional organisations such as the OAU (later the African Union), ECOWAS, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Kwame Nkrumah, a towering figure in the promotion of Pan-Africanism, was also a key advocate for non-alignment. He called for balanced superpower influences, seeking aid for Africa’s development without political conditions, and promoting peace and cooperation. The twin principles of Pan-Africanism and non-alignment were instrumental in the formation of African regional blocs, including ECOWAS.

Nkrumah, along with other notable African leaders, envisioned a united Africa where nations could achieve prosperity together. Nkrumah went beyond rhetoric, insisting that Ghana’s Constitution include a provision for surrendering national sovereignty in favour of regional integration. It was this vision and aspiration, championed by leaders like Nkrumah, that ultimately led to the establishment of ECOWAS.

Togo’s President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, alongside Nigeria’s President Yakubu Gowon, toured West Africa to garner support for the formation of ECOWAS, echoing Kwame Nkrumah’s sentiments on African unity. Emphasising the importance of regional cooperation, President Eyadéma warned:

“In this world where the rich countries are not yet prepared to lend an attentive ear to the legitimate demands of our states, African countries must become conscious of the fact that their development can be assured only by themselves and that each of our economies considered individually is not capable of achieving this ideal. We are therefore destined to live together if we really want to prosper.”

Alignment


Established in 1975 during the height of the Cold War, ECOWAS emerged as a unifying force for West African nations striving for economic and political solidarity. Despite the polarised global landscape dominated by the US-led West and the Soviet-led communist bloc, ECOWAS member states remained committed to the principles of Pan-Africanism and non-alignment. All ECOWAS members became signatories to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), underscoring their collective desire to steer clear of superpower influences and focus on regional self-determination and cooperation.

The conclusion of the Cold War at the end of the 20th century caused a significant evolution within ECOWAS, expanding its mandate beyond economic integration to encompass security and political governance. This transformation was formalised through the ECOWAS Revised Treaty ratified in 1993, likely influenced by the West’s triumph and the US’s emergence as the sole superpower. The revised treaty introduced the promotion and consolidation of democracy within member states as a fundamental principle of the organisation.

In 2001, ECOWAS further solidified its commitment to democratic governance by adopting the Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance. This protocol established a zero-tolerance policy for any power obtained or maintained through unconstitutional means, emphasising the organisation’s dedication to upholding democratic standards and ensuring political stability across West Africa.

However, the organisation’s increasing alignment with Western-liberal values has come under scrutiny with the recent resurgence of global power politics. Russia, intent on rekindling its Cold War rivalry with the US, along with China’s growing economic influence, has brought the politics of alignment back to West Africa. Through the Wagner Group, Russia has aided military coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—three ECOWAS member states—and helped establish a rival regional bloc known as the Sahel Alliance. This development has introduced alignment politics to a region that avoided such dynamics during the height of the Cold War.

Unsurprisingly, the US and Western powers have aligned with ECOWAS in its conflict with the military-led member states. Russia has openly supported these regimes, effectively dividing the region along the lines of US-Russia rivalry. Both superpowers have been actively working to secure African allegiances, with the US hosting the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit in December 2022, attended by 49 African nations, including all ECOWAS members. Meanwhile, Russia held its first Africa Summit in 2019, drawing 43 heads of state, including 10 from West Africa. However, as the rivalry escalated, particularly in the wake of ongoing military coups with alleged Russian backing, the second Russia-Africa Summit in July 2023 saw significantly lower participation, with only 15 African heads of state in attendance, and just four from West Africa.

ECOWAS now faces an existential threat from ongoing military coups and the emergence of the Sahel Alliance, formed by military-led states. The organisation’s current crisis can be traced back to its departure from the Pan-African values and non-alignment principles championed by its founding fathers—a departure that seems to fulfil Nkrumah’s prophecy that without unity, African states would disintegrate individually.

To ensure its survival, ECOWAS may need to reassess its strict stance on military coups, refocus on economic cooperation, security, and other forms of regional integration, and avoid entanglement in alignment politics. By improving governance and performance in democratic regimes, the organisation can strengthen the appeal of democracy.

Photo credit: Africa Renewal used with permission CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

About the author

Abubakar Usman


Abubakar Abubakar Usman is a lecturer in the Department of International and Strategic Studies at Universiti Malaya. He serves as the coordinator of the African Studies Circle at the Asia Middle East Centre for Research and Dialogue where he is a Senior Research Fellow. He can be reached at abubakar.usman@um.edu.my or ummsad@gmail.com.

Shogun’s Hiroyuki Sanada delivers Emmy acceptance speech in Japanese.

#Shogun #Emmys #BBCNews    

Anna Sawai became the first actor of Asian descent to win an Emmy for best actress. 

Emmy ratings pick up with historic 'Shogun' wins

Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Television's Emmy Awards enjoyed a sizeable audience boost, with viewership rising by more than half from the previous edition's all-time low, network ABC said Monday.


Issued on: 17/09/2024 - 

'Shogun,' a show about warring rivals in feudal Japan, became the first non-English-language show to claim the highly coveted Emmy for best drama series

 © Apu GOMES / AFP

Some 6.87 million tuned in on Sunday night to watch Japan-set historical epic "Shogun" smash the record for most Emmy wins in a single season, picking up 18 awards at the small-screen version of the Oscars.

The show about warring rivals in feudal Japan also became the first non-English-language show to claim the highly coveted best drama series prize.

The audience jump is a welcome boost for a show that -- like many award ceremonies -- has struggled to retain viewers in recent years.

"The '76th Emmy Awards' telecast on ABC posted the award show's largest overall audience in 3 years, since the show's airing on CBS (in 2021), which enjoyed an NFL football game lead-in," said an ABC statement.

Father-and-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy were broadly praised for their co-hosting of Sunday night's event, which channeled nostalgia with multiple segments honoring television's past, including a "West Wing" cast reunion.

Still, the ratings are historically low. As recently as 2018, the Emmys telecast regularly topped 10 million.

Since then the Emmys have had to contend with the Covid-19 pandemic, which required a socially distanced ceremony.

And last summer's Hollywood strikes meant pushing back the 2023 edition into the following January for a ceremony watched by only 4.46 million -- meaning this year enjoyed a 54 percent rise.

Awards shows generally have struggled to attract viewers over the past decade or so, as audiences fragment and younger demographics skip linear television in favor of streaming and social media.

But several shows including the Oscars have enjoyed a small uptick in their most recent editions.

In Sunday night's biggest surprise, "Hacks" was named best comedy, besting previous winner "The Bear."

"Baby Reindeer" triumphed in the limited series section.

In addition to winning best drama, "Shogun" earned best actor and best actress awards for Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai.

© 2024 AFP

Saving humans is not enough. Humanitarian purpose needs to change

‘There can be no human life without other life. This resets the core humanitarian challenge.’

Composite image using Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

Hugo Slim

Senior Research Fellow at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice at Blackfriars Hall at the University of Oxford. His new book is Humanitarianism 2.0 – New Ethics for the Climate Emergency



Humanitarian action is not just for humans.

The world will soon be swerving full speed toward a universal climate emergency. Better described as an Earth emergency, the potential devastation of humans and nature makes it blindingly obvious that there can be no human life without other life. This resets the core humanitarian challenge: How do we find life-saving harmony between humanity and nature?

Simply put, saving humans is not enough; humanitarian purpose needs to change. This calls for major top-line changes in humanitarian principles and purpose to get our moral compass pointing in the right direction for an Earth systems crisis that will last for decades. We also need radical changes to humanitarian practice and the rapid merger of humanitarian and ecological agencies.

Updating humanitarianism’s ethics, operations, and institutions requires four big changes to our purpose and practice, to create a Humanitarianism 2.0 that is fit for the long Earth emergency of the 21st century.
Renewing humanitarianism: The core principles

First, we need a new doctrine of humanity that recognises humans as part of a wider Earth community.

In this all-life emergency, it will not do to work with humanitarian principles devised in 1965, largely for war, and just bolt on extra environmental principles as subsidiary policies.

A great achievement of the last 250 years has been to recognise humanity as a single moral community across the world in which every human matters. However, this single-species focus has ethically detached humanity from other life, and imagined that our particular superspecies floats free from nature.

But humanity does not exist in isolation, as every humanitarian worker struggling to connect suffering people to life-giving aspects of nature – water, food, shelter, cooling, and good health – knows. We are earthlings, and it is self-defeating to prioritise humanity alone. We can only live as humans because of other life and the environment that sustains it.

Survival is a joint project between humanity and nature. Each helps the other in forms of interspecies mutual aid. The principle of humanity must be revised to reflect this truth.

A new version might read: “To alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found in the Earth emergency by protecting and adapting human life in harmony with nature.” This signals a deepening of our humanitarian purpose to respect all life and protect the life-giving mutualism between humanity and nature.

The principle of impartiality should also be revised to take nature’s needs seriously and fairly alongside human needs in the allocation of humanitarian aid.
Caring for the future: Precautionary ethics

As a long emergency, the Earth emergency demands that humanitarians take more account of the future in our work. Focusing only on saving life in the present is not enough, when we know that conditions will worsen over time. This knowledge means the future becomes part of the emergency of the present.


Planning from the future, rather than the past, needs to become the norm in humanitarian action if aid is to be timely and relevant to communities struggling to cope and adapt.

This temporal shift in humanitarian perspective is well underway in humanitarian aid’s new emphasis on precautionary ethics. New progress in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Anticipatory Action sees humanitarians spending money forward to protect people and nature from things that have not yet happened.

Anticipatory aid, informed by early warning and impact forecasting, operates days, weeks, and months ahead. Much DRR is focused on longer-term adaptation. This sees humanitarians rightly investing in new infrastructure, ecosystem protection, and nature-based solutions that may take years to build, and which target the protection of life in the next generation that is not yet born.

Planning from the future, rather than the past, needs to become the norm in humanitarian action if aid is to be timely and relevant to communities struggling to cope and adapt. This will see humanitarians more involved in people’s spontaneous adaptation, like cooling and livelihood changes, and formal government adaptation, like energy transition and planned relocation.
A landscape approach: Beyond people in need

Operationally, this new humanitarian purpose – which includes humans, nature, and the future – demands significant changes in humanitarian assessment and response. Instead of focusing solely on human lives and assessing humanitarian need by counting millions of individual people in need, humanitarians need to assess the needs of nature, and anticipate future needs as well.

This means shifting the humanitarian unit of analysis from the individual human to a landscape approach. The humanitarian gaze must look at the integrated needs and capability of humans and nature together across a geography at risk of drought or floods, or suffering in the wake of wildfire, storm, or war. The needs of animals, plants, and ecosystems must be seen alongside the needs of humans, and drive a landscape-based response.

In the drought-affected Horn of Africa, for example, this might mean single humanitarian appeals for all life and ecosystems with estimates of the suffering, need, and necessary response for oceans, rivers, lakes, vegetation, animal life, and human life.

“But this is massive!” I hear humanitarians say as they feel their institutions already at breaking point with human needs alone. They are right, which is why we need the fourth big change.
Change the system: New mandates and new agencies

Humanitarian agencies need to break open their institutions and merge with ecological organisations. Together, these new combined human-and-nature agencies need to scrap their siloed mandates that work in parallel on humans and nature, and commit to new integrated human-and-nature mandates that match the challenge of the Earth emergency.


Like today’s humanitarian principles, our institutions were designed for earlier problems.

We urgently need this shake-up of international mandates and institutions to create a new set of agencies for the Earth emergency.

Like today’s humanitarian principles, our institutions were designed for earlier problems. In his important analysis, Long Problems, Thomas Hale talks about “institutional lag”, when society faces new challenges with institutions bogged down in old practices. We must avoid this, and build new international organisations with 21st century mandates.

For example, if an organisation like Médecins Sans Frontières really wants to work beyond borders, they should work beyond human health and adopt a “one health” approach to the Earth emergency. MSF could merge with animal and plant health agencies to care for all life in a landscape. A key part of this would be to reduce the climate-related spread of diseases like dengue fever, and to stop zoonotic diseases crossing from animals to humans and vice versa.

Such integrated human-and-nature agencies will offer much better value for money for the governments and individuals who pay for them. More rationalised and streamlined agencies would score the win-win of ecological and human goals that is so hard to find in parallel programming, which also duplicates so much bureaucracy in the process.

New integrated ecological and humanitarian agencies also fit the geopolitical moment. The rigorously individualistic humanitarian ethics of the West have never chimed convincingly with the more collective development policies championed by China, India, and other BRICS powers. These major powers may find common cause in updating multilateral institutions towards a Humanitarianism 2.0 focused on finding harmony between humanity and nature.

If we want to live through the Earth emergency, we must show humanity to other life around us.

We must build new ethics, operations, and international institutions that emphasise the mutualism between humans and nature.

We must build toward a new humanitarian purpose: to protect the life of humans and nature simultaneously.

Hundreds killed in flooding disasters around the globe

A spate of flooding disasters in Asia, Europe, and Africa has led to hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and mass displacement events across three continents, underlining the global scale and humanitarian impact of extreme weather events.

In Myanmar, Typhoon Yagi has claimed at least 113 lives and displaced more than 320,000 people, with unconfirmed reports indicating that hundreds more may have been killed in more rural areas, some of which were cut off by floodwaters.

The aid response in Myanmar, where the military rulers are under heavy international sanctions as they face down several armed opposition and separatist groups, is likely to be hampered by insecurity and access restrictions.

Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, China, and the Philippines also all felt the deadly effects of Yagi, the strongest typhoon of the year so far, as it swept across East Asia over the last week. At least 292 people were killed in Vietnam, with dozens still missing. More than 230,000 homes were damaged, and the economic cost was put at $1.6 billion, according to state media.

Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia bore the immediate brunt of Storm Boris in Europe, with the death toll from flooding and landslides standing at 16 by Monday, and hundreds of thousands of people having been evacuated from their homes.

After declaring a national emergency on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced $260 million in aid for people affected by Storm Boris.

In Hungary, 12,000 soldiers were placed on standby amid fears that the River Danube could burst its banks. The Mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karacsony, warned the capital’s residents that the nation is expected to experience the largest floods in decades in the coming days.

In Austria, the province surrounding the capital, Vienna, has been declared a disaster area, with leaders calling it "unprecedented”, and parts of the Czech Republic experienced three months’ worth of rain in just three days.

In Nigeria, meanwhile, aid agencies and the government are still scrambling to respond to a major disaster in Maiduguri, where at least 30 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced when a regional dam burst and flooded half the city.

The climate crisis is blamed for the prevalence of extreme weather events, prompting leading humanitarian ethicist Hugo Slim to suggest that this “Earth emergency” demands a radical overhaul of humanitarian action. For more, read his recent opinion:

Saving humans is not enough. Humanitarian purpose needs to change
New principles, new ethics, new mandates: Hugo Slim’s radical call to reinvent humanitarianism for the climate emergency.

US sanctions entities associated with Intellexa Commercial for role in spyware tech

Spyware attacks provide operators access to sensitive information on victim’s device -- photos, geolocation data, personal messages, microphone

Ovunc Kutlu |16.09.2024 - TRT

The US Treasury Department said Monday it imposed sanctions on five individuals and one entity associated with the Intellexa Consortium, a spyware firm, for their alleged role in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology.

The technology presents a significant threat to the national security of the US, it said in a statement.

The Treasury Department said the Intellexa Consortium is a complex international web of decentralized companies, which built and commercialized highly invasive spyware products, primarily marketed under the brand-name “Predator.”

Predator spyware is used to gain access to data stored and transmitted from the target’s device, such as a cellphone, through one-click and zero-click attacks that require no user interaction for the spyware to infect the device, it said.

Successful spyware attacks by Predator can provide the spyware’s operators with access to sensitive information on the victim’s device, including photos, geolocation data, personal messages, and microphone records, it added.

"The United States will not tolerate the reckless propagation of disruptive technologies that threatens our national security and undermines the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens," Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith said in the statement.

"We will continue to hold accountable those that seek to enable the proliferation of exploitative technologies, while also encouraging the responsible development of technologies that align with international standards," he added.

US imposes sanctions on a spyware firm behind a tool used to spy on dissidents and journalists

The United States is placing new sanctions on a spyware firm and its executives after its tools were used to spy on journalists, dissidents and public officials around the world

David Klepper
The Independent. 

The United States announced new sanctions Monday against a commercial spyware company headed by a former Israeli military officer whose program allowed easy access to almost any information stored on a smartphone.

U.S. officials and private researchers say Intellexa Consortium's products have been used for mass surveillance campaigns around the world, allowing unscrupulous users to track and obtain sensitive information from dissidents, journalists, political candidates and opposition figures.

The penalties target five people and one organization connected to Intellexa, a Greece-based network of companies with subsidiaries in North Macedonia, Hungary, Ireland and the British Virgin Islands. The company developed and sold a suite of spyware tools known as Predator that allowed entry into a target's device without requiring them to click on a link or attachment.

The program would then grant access to the camera and microphone as well as any data or files stored on the compromised phone.

“The United States will not tolerate the reckless propagation of disruptive technologies that threatens our national security and undermines the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens,” said Bradley T. Smith, acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Several subsidiaries of Intellexa and two employees, including its founder, were sanctioned earlier this year by the Biden administration. Last year, the Commerce Department blacklisted Intellexa and one of its subsidiaries, denying them access to U.S. technology.

The five people subject to the new penalties each held senior positions at Intellexa or one of its subsidiaries, U.S. officials say. The Aliada Group, another subsidiary based in the British Virgin Islands, also was sanctioned over allegations of enabling financial transactions for Intellexa that totaled tens of millions of dollars, officials said.

Messages left with Intellexa and its executives were not immediately returned Monday.

Intellexa was created in 2019 by former Israeli military officer Tal Dilian. Dilian and Sara Hamou, a corporate offshoring specialist who has provided managerial services to Intellexa, were penalized earlier this year in what Biden administration officials said was the first time sanctions were issued over the misuse of spyware.

Individuals and organizations under sanctions are prohibited from engaging in business or financial transactions within the U.S. or with U.S. entities.

Amnesty International’s Security Lab published a report last year that found Predator had been used to target but not necessarily infect devices connected to the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-Wen, as well as Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.

Europe also has faced a number of spyware incidents. Predator spyware was reportedly used in Greece, a revelation that helped precipitate the resignation in 2022 of two top government officials, including the national intelligence director.

How Olmec elite helped legitimize their political power through art

 SEPTEMBER 16, 2024 

Monument 19 from La Venta (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City). Credit: Marco M. Vigato in Uncharted Ruins

In an article recently published in Latin American Antiquity, Dr. Jill Mollenhauer argues that the Gulf Lowland Olmec, one of Mesoamerica's earliest major civilizations, sometimes incorporated aesthetic and ritual practices associated with their rock art into their sculptures. She argues that this allowed Olmec elites to harness the spiritual and natural potency of the wild and sacred landscape and bring it into the domestic and urban centers, where it legitimized their political power.

The Olmec were an early Mesoamerican civilization that existed during the Formative period (1800BCE–300CE). While they are often associated with producing colossal heads, they also engaged in creating rock art.

Dr. Mollenhauer recalls how surprised she was at the sheer abundance of rock art when she first started her research. "I was surprised to find an incredible amount of rock art in and around the Gulf Olmec region (particularly in the Tuxtlas) that is known locally but rarely reported. It showed me how much work needs to be done to better document and understand its production and use (although I also came to understand the challenges that come with its study, including the problems of dating and chronology for many rock art sites). I'm incredibly grateful to the many archaeologists and local experts that shared their knowledge of regional rock art sites with me."

Rock art and sculpture are distinct forms of art. While rock art is made in situ (original position), sculptures were quarried and brought in from different areas. In fact, because very few suitable stones exist within the local environment, large volcanic blocks had to be imported from far away.

Olmec rock art is inherently linked to the landscape in which it was made, demarcating the inherent sacredness of the landscape. Often found along travel routes, caves, and rocky hillsides, it was linked to the wild and the dangerous, often demarcating the sacred homes of spiritual forces.

Meanwhile, sculptures were often part of the built environment and thus associated with domestic spaces, morality, government, and cosmic order, making them, in some ways, an antithesis to the rock art associated with the wild, dangerous, and sacred.

Yet many Olmec sculptures share aesthetic and ritual practices with rock art. For example, many of the La Venta sculptures preserve the natural irregular surfaces and outlines of the stone from which they are carved. Instead of shaping the rock to their needs, the sculptors adapted their images to the natural contours, just as they would for rock art.

This same preservation of the natural contours of the rock can be found in boulder sculptures. These not only preserve the rock's natural outline but also its mass. Such boulders were placed in areas associated with the gods and ancestors, such as cave entrances.

Some contemporary Maya groups still make pilgrimages to such sites, which they perceive as entrances to the home of the earth lord.

Dr. Mollenhauer elaborates on this, saying, "There are several works that document both ancient and contemporary Maya rituals at rock art sites. I was told that there is still ritual activity carried out at the Cobata petroglyphic field (where the Cobata colossal head was recovered), and there is documentation of pilgrimage to the Olmec sculpture originally located at the San Martin Pajapan volcanic peak before it was moved to the state anthropological museum in Xalapa.

"So there is evidence of continued pilgrimage and ritual activities around both Olmec-style rock art and Olmec sculptures, although it's hard to trace a direct line from the Formative period ritual practices to these more modern iterations."

Additionally, some rock art contains pits and grooves, frequently associated with ritual activity in the vicinity of rock art. These same grooves and pits are found on many of the sculptures. While initially believed to have been the result of later cultures resharpening their tools, it has also been suggested they, too, like rock art, were linked to ritual practices. Finding such grooves and pits on Olmec stone monuments may indicate that people started treating freestanding sculptures conceptually similar to rock art.

Although not entirely clear, there are some indications for the significance of these pits and grooves, says Dr. Mollenhauer. "There are some interesting ethnographic trends in the production of cupules and grooves that often relate them to rain and fertility. That is a possibility, but another is the collection of potent substances (i.e. pulverized rock dust) from the sculpture as a part of pilgrimage practices, as Joel Palka suggests, although these aren't mutually exclusive."

"There is also documentation in the mid-20th century of local Popoluca hunters striking one of the sculptures from Estero Rabon with machetes before searching for game before it was again removed to the state museum."

One of the questions Dr. Mollenhauer wanted to answer was why rock art aesthetics and ritual practices were adapted into sculpture. She argues that in adapting rock art aesthetics and ritual practices, the lines between the wild periphery and the domestic center were deliberately blurred.

One way Mesoamerican elites established power and legitimacy was by establishing ancestral ties to the landscape. By co-opting rock art aesthetics and rituals inherently linked to the landscape into the sculptures on the borders of their territories and within their urban centers, they were positioning themselves within that symbolic landscape. The landscape's ideological and spiritual potency would be brought into the civic center and directly associated with the Mesoamerican leaders and elite.

Just as pilgrimages to rock art sites demarcated humans as subordinates to the deities, pilgrimages to the sculptures were linked to humans being subordinates to their political rulers.

By creating sculptures that referenced these locations, the Olmec weren't merely producing art; they were constructing tangible spaces for spiritual and social engagement within their cities.

While later Mesoamerican societies continued this practice, it was to a lesser degree, says Dr. Mollenhauer. "Rock art and sculpture continue to coexist in later Mesoamerican societies, but there does seem to be less intentional appropriation of rock art aesthetics as free-standing sculptures start to incorporate text, calendrical information, and elements like celestial and basal registers to create a bounded narrative field that frames the imagery."

Dr. Mollenhauer hopes her work does two things: "1) allow us to recognize the intentional choices of Olmec sculptors, in this case to connect their works to the ritually-charged spaces of rock art and its associations of sacred landscape and pilgrimage and 2) highlight the importance of rock art as a distinct and impactful form of art in its own right, one that continued to be produced and used by later Mesoamerican cultures alongside other forms of art-making."

More information: Jillian Mollenhauer, Implications of Rock Art Aesthetics in Olmec Sculpture, Latin American Antiquity (2024). DOI: 10.1017/laq.2024.11.

© 2024 Science X Network

Germany returns 3,000-year-old wooden Olmec busts to Mexico