Reflections on El Negros Return By Miranda Pyne Last October saw the dignified end to the saga of El Negro. A mummified man, dead for almost two hundred years, was finally removed from the Francisco Darder Natural History museum in the city of Banyoles, near Barcelona, Spain, and flown to Gaborone, Botswana for an historic reburial. Once upon a time, El Negro lived and died somewhere in Southern Africa. He is believed to have been a member of the Khoisan ethnic group. His corpse was exhumed by a notorious European grave digger; stolen and stuffed in France by the famous taxidermist, Eduard Verraux; exhibited in Europe during the 1830s; and in 1916 was purchased by Spanish naturalist and curator Francisco Darder. Over time the local residents gave him the nickname El Negro or The Black Man. By virtue of that generic label — even though his display case included a few authentic accoutrements like a fishing harpoon — he gradually came to represent a timeless black oddity instead of a real man who had had a name and identity, a life. Yet for years nobody seemed very bothered by a stuffed man with a crudely retouched black-painted face and crumbling stretched skin. Not until Alphonse Arcelin, a Spanish doctor of Haitian background, began to complain that the display of El Negro was an affront to humanity and to black people in general. The fight to get El Negro removed and then buried in Africa began in earnest in 1992, but not without resistance. El Negro was a beloved local fixture in Banyoles. When Arcelin led a campaign for El Negros return, threatening to ask all African athletes to boycott the upcoming Barcelona Olympics, local Banyoles residents wore T-shirts with slogans such as Keep El Negro and Banyoles loves you, El Negro. At Easter children were treated to miniature chocolate reproductions of him. Some attempted to explain the exhibition of a stuffed human being by invoking the tradition of relics (the display of bodies or body parts) of saints, a Catholic tradition that is especially strong in Southern Europe. But El Negro was never considered a saint. He had just always been around. He had been used as part of the local school curriculum for years, Carlos Abella, councilor and curator of the Darder museum, explained in press reports at the time. Mayor Juan Solana supported him. We have mummies and skulls and even human skins in the museum, said Solana. What is the difference between those things and a stuffed African? Abella agreed: El Negro is our property. Its our business and nobody elses. Human rights only apply to living people, not to the dead. This is a museum that shows different races and cultures with adequate respect. It is a racial exhibit, and racism or morbidity may be a personal attitude from visitors which the museum does not foment.... [So] the talk of racism is absurd. It took seven years to arrange his return but El Negro did finally come home. He arrived in a coffin adorned by Botswanas national blue and white flag in a chartered plane, in a gesture of reconciliation by Spain that was supported by the OAU, most western European countries and ordinary folk on the ground. It was incredible that at the end of the 20th century, someone still dared to show a stuffed human being in a show case, as if it were an exotic animal, Alphonse Arcelin said. Kitso Lemo, a junior at Harvard University and president of the Harvard African Students Association, is from Botswana ; he wasnt there when El Negro was returned, but he followed the story avidly. It was interesting to see the whole fight to get an African back to his place of origin, it brought back echoes of the barbarism of European imperialism, this attitude of weve caught this beast from Africa, said Lemo. When the body got back to Botswana, they didnt take it to the local museum, they didnt say, This is our property, lets display it. In Africa, you could do that for animals and pieces of art, not for people. We wouldnt allow one of our people to be displayed. We probably wouldnt allow any person to be displayed. Its a different take on the sanctity of a human being and death. web.mit.edu/racescience/in_media/baartman/elnegro_africana.htm
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 08:59:04 +0000
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