T
he earthquake that struck Agadir late at night on February 28, 1960, led to the deaths of twelve thousand to twenty thousand people.The densely populated Kasbah, high on a hill overlooking the south-fac-ing bay and known to the Tashelhit-speaksouth-fac-ing population as Agadir Oufella was almost totally obliterated. The Founti quarter adjacent to the beach below also sustained very heavy damage, as did the Talborj, an ethnically-mixed commer-cial and residential district situated on a plateau to the east of the Kasbah, as well as Ihchach, a village on the northern outskirts of the city. The Anza district to the west and the Ville Nouvelle to the east were damaged to a lesser degree;
farther east, the industrial district and the French aero-naval base were largely unscathed. To many observers, however, there was an impression of almost total destruction. Mohamed Taïba Benhima, who would soon be appointed governor of Agadir, later described the scene: “At first sight, everything in Agadir built of reinforced concrete, buildings, mighty super-structure, was on the ground. I will go further: everything that was on the ground was twisted, tormented; from the pier of the port, however well-anchored, to the road network that the seismic shock had literally twisted.”1
The impact of this seismic event on human history was shaped by the legacy of French imperialism. In February 1960, Agadir, like the rest of Morocco, was still in the midst of decolonization, four years after formal independence. The demographics of the city had been shifting as French colonists “repatriated” to metropolitan France and to Algeria, but the French presence remained unmis-takable. The 1960 earthquake was a cataclysmic environmental intervention in the decolonization process. The disaster precipitated a fresh exodus of the French population and offered a test of the French state’s commitment to its overseas citizens. Simultaneously, the earthquake challenged the Moroccan state’s ability to provide for the needs of the people. The increasingly authoritarian Moroccan monarchy took this opportunity to increase its power and prestige within the
Moroccan political field. The monarchy also made use of American aid to lessen the Moroccan state’s dependence on the French, another example of “disaster di-plomacy” that does not fit the paradigm of hostile states growing closer through disaster response.2 Because of the prominent role of the United States in the disaster response and in planning for the reconstruction of the city, the Agadir disaster seemed to strengthen American relations with Morocco while weak-ening French influence. Consequently, the disaster became a focus of anxiety for French officials and politicians worried about France’s declining role in the former protectorate, the future of French colonists in post-imperial spaces, and the post-disaster reconstruction of those spaces. The political contestation that followed the earthquake did not just concern the future of those who survived, however: the enormous numbers of the dead posed particular problems. After the earthquake, the treatment and disposal of the festering dead was intimately tied to controversies over power and boundaries in the postcolonial city. Even after the immediate disposal of corpses, French attempts to seek the repatriation of remains created new points of friction as the meanings of these burials and exhumations were created and negotiated. In both the disposal of the dead and the reconstruction of a new city for the living, the disaster became connected to the struggle to work out the meaning of decolonization.
In the hours of chaos and grief immediately following the disaster, survivors struggled to free their family members and neighbors from the ruins and to treat the injured as best they could. French and American sources (diplomatic correspondence, memoirs, and journalism) emphasize the role of French and American troops in the disaster response and tended to portray Moroccans as passive and helpless. However, Moroccan memoirs describe survivors engaging in organized rescue efforts. According to Tariq Kabbage, who was twelve years old in 1960, his father, local landowner Abbès Kabbage, organized nearby farm-ers to bring workfarm-ers and tractors to assist in the immediate rescue efforts; in the Kasbah, survivors reportedly organized themselves and began rescue efforts during the night of the disaster.3 As in Orléansville, however, the local authori-ties seem to have been unable to respond effectively. The gendarmerie and police barracks had collapsed in the earthquake, killing many; other would-be first responders had died in their homes with their families or were searching for family members. The Royal Moroccan Army troops in the city had taken heavy losses. The Moroccan governor, Bouamrani, had lost several family members. In contrast, the French aero-naval base on the eastern edge of the city was largely untouched, and the commander immediately initiated operations for the rescue of the living, and the disposal of the dead.4
Soon, however, the Moroccan state took charge. In the morning, King Mo-hammed V and Crown Prince Hassan arrived by plane from Rabat, along with Colonel Mohammed Oufkir. The king put Hassan in command of rescue op-erations as Moroccan troops began to arrive from throughout the kingdom, followed by American, Dutch, and Spanish soldiers and sailors, and French reinforcements. Oufkir was responsible for the refugee camps; he would later, as minister of the Interior, command the Moroccan state’s repressive security apparatus during Hassan’s reign as king.5
In a statement to the nation, the king presented the royal family as leaders of the disaster response:
A great and terrible catastrophe has struck our country. A horrible cata-clysm has destroyed the city of Agadir, made its inhabitants victims, and left it in ruins. Language is incapable of describing this calamity. It is not the hour for words, for those whom God has saved await your acts of solidarity, not your tears and words. We have charged our crown prince Hassan with directing the rescue and emergency operations. Likewise, we have charged Princess Aïcha with organizing a campaign of solidarity throughout the entire kingdom and to collect donations for the victims. We have also allo-cated the funds necessary for the immediate response. Human, religious, and national duty demands of each person to come to the aid of our broth-ers, survivors of the martyred city, and bring them all forms of assistance, cash and otherwise, thus manifesting his solidarity and accomplishing at the same time his obligations, both religious and national.6
Patriotic, moral, and religious duties were thus to be united in service of the king. During the years of the struggle for independence, the monarchy and the nationalist political parties, particularly Istiqlal, had depended on each other.
In contrast, the years of disaster, 1959 to 1960, were pivotal in the development of the authoritarian monarchy, and both the oil poisoning and the earthquake facilitated this development, as Ibrahim’s ministerial government was sidelined.7 Less than three months later, the king would take charge of the government directly, appointing himself prime minister, with Hassan as deputy-premier and minister of defense.8
For three days after the earthquake, under the direction of Hassan, Moroccan soldiers worked alongside foreign troops to rescue the survivors, and the troops commanded by Colonel Oufkir established refugee tent cities for at least fourteen thousand Moroccans outside the of city limits.9 European survivors had different
options: the French military base became a makeshift refugee camp for over three thousand Europeans. The base also provided medical treatment to injured Mo-roccans, but the guards turned away uninjured Moroccan refugees.10 Conditions in the Moroccan camps was less than ideal: despite the distribution of aid by the Red Cross, Ahmed Bouskous, who survived the disaster as a teenager, would recall the “inhumane conditions” of these camps.11 Later, temporary prefabri-cated housing for the displaced Moroccan population was established in the areas around the existing workforce housing of the two industrial zones in Agadir.12
Meanwhile, thousands lay dead, buried in the rubble. In the immediate af-termath of the earthquake, the handling of the dead was inseparable from the rescue of survivors, as bodies were dug out of the ruins. There was an effort to segregate bodies by nationality and religion, but the difficulty of identifying many corpses sometimes made this impossible, with the result that some mass graves included both Muslims and non-Muslims, Moroccans and French. Most bodies identified as French, or of unidentified European origin, were initially brought to the French military base. A tent was erected to shelter hundreds of arriving cadavers, which were then buried in communal graves in what had been the athletic field, wrapped in sheets or placed in crates or armoires scav-enged from ruined homes.13 Moroccan dead were brought primarily to Ihchach, where French marines dug a large mass grave; soon hundreds of Moroccan bod-ies awaited burial there.14 Thousands more were never recovered. Seventy-eight Moroccan Muslims were buried at the French base, most likely after arriving there alive, brought for medical treatment that proved to be in vain.15
Soon, the bodies of the dead began to be seen as a threat to public health.
Crown Prince Hassan feared that the putrefying dead would soon produce ep-idemics of cholera and typhoid, and the authorities cordoned off the disaster area, evacuating survivors from what became known as the “dead city,” which was blanketed with quicklime. (The possibility of dropping napalm on the ruins was reportedly discussed, provoking some alarm, but came to nothing.) The fear of pestilence meant that the treatment of the dead was as great a priority as the rescue of survivors. Hassan ordered a halt to rescue operations after three days, a decision which outraged both Moroccan and foreign residents and observers, and which was soon reversed, allowing for the rescue of a few more victims over the course of the following seven days.16 After that, thoughts turned toward as-sisting the survivors, recovering the remaining bodies of the dead, and rebuild-ing the city. None of these tasks could be accomplished without grapplrebuild-ing with the meaning of decolonization.