Imraguen

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The Banc d'Arguin National Park

The Imraguen , Imrāgen , sing. Amrig; are a social group in Mauritania with 800 to 1500 members. They live as coastal fishermen around the Banc d'Arguin National Park on the Atlantic coast, spread over a few villages. The word " Imhaben" is Berber and means "fisherman", according to other sources, "those who collect life".

Origin and Society

Within the Mauritanian class society, imouses form the lowest social class together with the artisans (Mallemin) , the musicians ( Iggawen, Griots ) and the hunters (Nemadi) . They are despised by the majority of society.

The first Portuguese sailors (Valentim Fernandes) described fishermen on the Mauritanian coast in the 15th century. In the early reports of European travelers, the Imraguen were viewed as an ethnic group whose unclear ancestry was sometimes derived from the Bafour , a presumed indigenous people in the western Sahara before the Berbers arrived . In fact, the Imragues cannot be distinguished from the Moors of the country by their origins, but only by their activities . The Imraguen formed a collecting basin for people from higher social groups who were forced by strokes of fate to leave their previous environment in order to lead a life despised by the nomads. Over time, this became a community defined by the fishing profession.

In the past, many imprints could have been camel nomads who lost their herds through robbery or other economic hardship. Some emblems may have belonged to the group of slaves or servants (Abid) of families of the Moorish upper class. Rarely does more than one extended family live in one place.

Economic form

Their livelihoods were mullets (Mugil cephalus), which were caught using traditional methods and sun-dried to make dried fish ( hassania tishtar ). Mullet fishing was seasonal and was limited to the time of their north-south migration between July and December. While standing in the water, the fishermen throw the nets into the sea. To orbit a school of fish, a collaborative working style is required. In the 1950s, they used this technique to catch around 100 tons of fish annually. Other activities included semi-nomadic cattle ranching or work in the salt mining areas east of the Mauritanian Sahara.

After the country gained independence in 1960, the centuries-old way of life had to adapt to the rapidly changing economic and political framework. With the overfishing of the seashore, which began with the use of a national fishing fleet in the late 1970s, their catch of mullets fell sharply. Mullet roe was in demand in Europe. The immen now fished for sharks and sea ​​turtles with motor boats . From 1987 the hunt for sharks intensified, many only had their fins cut off for the Asian market. For the eminent, the changed fishing methods meant high investments and, through the sale of the raw fish, the loss of the profit that they could previously achieve through processing. The women who had previously been involved in further processing were no longer involved, and even production for self-sufficiency fell to almost zero.

With the establishment of the national park in 1989, the Imraguen suddenly lost their fishing rights and thus their livelihood. After protests, the park administration defused the conflict between ecological and economic interests by granting the imouses exclusive fishing rights to fish with sailing boats and since then have been involved as park rangers and tourist guides. Around the year 2000 there were 900 people living in nine villages in the park.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Oßwald: The trading cities of the West Sahara. The development of the Arab-Moorish culture of Šinqīt, Wādān, Tīšīt and Walāta. Marburg studies on Africa and Asia. Vol. 39. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1986, pp. 134f
  2. ^ Wolfgang Creyaufmüller: Nomad culture in the Western Sahara. The material culture of the Moors, their handicraft techniques and basic ornamental structures. Burgfried-Verlag, Hallein (Austria) 1983, p. 59
  3. ^ Walter Reichhold: Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Kurt Schröder, Bonn 1964, p. 64
  4. ↑ Jean Worms et al. a .: A Concerted Approach towards Managing Living Resources in an Marine Protected Area. In: Leontine E. Visser (Ed.): Challenging Coasts: Transdisciplinary Excursions into Integrated Coastal Zone Development. Center for Maritime Research, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2004, pp. 73-92
  5. ↑ Karina Reinbold, Annette Hildinger: Coastal National Parks in Developing Countries: Social and socio-spatial effects of their designation on the resident population. The case studies of Superagüi, Brazil, and Banc d'Arguin, Mauritania, in comparison. Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, BfN-Scripts 265, 2010, pp. 54–54  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.preisvergleich.de  
  6. ↑ P. Campredon, F. Cuq: Artisanal fishing and coastal conservation in West Africa. Journal of Coastal Conservation, 7, 2001, p. 93 (PDF; 135 kB)