Annobón

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Annobón
Map of Annobón
Map of Annobón
Waters Gulf of Guinea
Geographical location 1 ° 26 '7 "  S , 5 ° 37' 51"  E Coordinates: 1 ° 26 '7 "  S , 5 ° 37' 51"  E
Annobón (Equatorial Guinea)
Annobón
length 6.4 km
width 3.2 km
surface 17 km²
Highest elevation Macizo Santa Mina
613  m
Residents 3400 (2012)
200 inhabitants / km²
main place San Antonio de Palé
Location of Annobón in the Gulf of Guinea
Location of Annobón in the Gulf of Guinea
Annobón

Annobón ( Portuguese Ano Bom , renamed Pagalu from 1973 to 1979 ) is an island in the Gulf of Guinea and at the same time one of the seven provinces of Equatorial Guinea with the capital San Antonio de Palé .

geography

The island is 189 km southwest of São Tomé and 503 km from Mbini (formerly Río Muni ) ( 587 km from Annobón Island to the city of Bata ), the mainland part of Equatorial Guinea. The Gabonese coast, however, is only 352 km away.

The island is 6.4 km long, up to 3.2 km wide and 17.0 km² in size. Around 3400 inhabitants are distributed among the villages of San Antonio de Palé, Anganchi, Aual and Mábana. They descended from slaves brought to the island by the Spanish and Portuguese.

Annobón is of volcanic origin . The summit of Macizo Santa Mina reaches a height of 613 m, Pico Quioveo 598 m, and Pico Lago 525 m above sea level. In the north of the island is the crater lake Lago Mazafim .

language

In Annobón, Fá d'Ambô is spoken (also Annobonense or Annobonés), a Creole language based on Portuguese that is more similar to Creole in São Tomé and Príncipe than with Creole of the mainland or of Bioko . It is spoken by around 3500 people across the country (except on Annobón, also in a barrio in Malabo ).

history

The then uninhabited island was discovered for Europe on January 1st, 1472 by the Portuguese sailors Pedro Escobar and João de Santarém and named after the Portuguese New Year greeting "Ano bom" (Good Year). From 1474 the Portuguese colonized the island with Angolan slaves, who they brought here via São Tomé. The Portuguese left Annobón in 1778 in the Treaty of El Pardo Spain and received territories in South America in return . Annobón was later merged with the mainland Río Muni and the island of Bioko into a single colony, from which the independent state of Equatorial Guinea emerged on October 12, 1968.

From the 1820s to the 1880s, whalers from the United States made frequent and regular visits to the otherwise little-frequented island in order to stock up on sperm whales and humpback whales in the surrounding sea areas. For the population, bartering with the teams developed into an important source of supply for iron tools and other things that could not be produced on Annobón. Sometimes Annobonese hired as seasonal workers on the ships; some migrated to the United States that way. Observing the American whalers, the population began to hunt whales themselves in the second half of the 19th century. At least until the 1970s, Annobonese ran out in canoes to hunt humpback whale calves and used their meat for self-sufficiency .

Francisco Macías Nguema ordered the island to be renamed Pagalu in 1973 , which means "big rooster". The rooster (symbol of vigilance and virility) was the dictator's personal symbol, which also appeared in the national coat of arms and on banknotes. In 1979 it was renamed again.

environmental issues

In 1988, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo , President of Equatorial Guinea, gave the British Buckinghamshire corporation permission to dispose of around ten million tons of toxic waste on the island.

In the same year, the American Axim Consortium Group received a license to bury around seven million tons of nuclear waste. To date, around two million tons of waste are added every year. Obiang takes this year about 200 million US dollars a. The population sees nothing of this money and lives in abject poverty. The island is on the verge of ecological collapse - the plants can not cope with the concentration of toxins in the groundwater and are dying. Every second child born on the island suffers from malnutrition , anemia or other diseases.

literature

  • Felix Schürmann: The gray undercurrent: whalers and coastal societies on the deep beaches of Africa, 1770–1920. Frankfurt a. M./New York 2017.
  • Felix Schürmann: The whales, their hunters and the beach of Annobón. In: Winfried Speitkamp & Stephanie Zehnle (ed.): African animal spaces: historical locations. Cologne: Köppe, 2014. pp. 43–75

Web links

Commons : Annobón  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ UNEP Islands Directory (English)
  2. ↑ entry in geonames.org
  3. ↑ Felix Schürmann: The gray undercurrent: whalers and coastal societies on the deep beaches of Africa, 1770-1920. Frankfurt a. M./New York 2017, pp. 485-536.
  4. ↑ August 28, 2006 Re: SPIEGEL book . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 2006 ( online ).