The Casablanca Uprisings of 1952 (Arabic: انتفاضة الدار البيضاء 1952) were a violently repressed anti-colonial popular movement that took place on the 7th and 8th of December 1952 in Casablanca, Morocco in response to the French assassination of the Tunisian labor unionist Farhat Hached in Tunis on 5 December.[1][2][3][4] The Union Générale des Syndicats Confédéres au Maroc (UGSCM)[5] labor union and the Istiqlal Party organized two days of strike and protests.[6] Over 3,500 workers assembled in demonstrations that were violently dispersed by the French police.[2] Hundreds of Europeans rampaged into Moroccan neighborhoods leading to hundreds protestors killed or wounded.[2]

Street children and dock workers also participated in the Casablanca protests of December 1952.[7]

Context

The Tunisian labor unionist and anti-colonial activist Farhat Hached was assassinated by La Main Rouge, operated by the French Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage, in Tunis on 5 December 1952.[8][9]

Carrières Centrales

The protests were centered in the working class neighborhood Carrières Centrales (now Hay Mohammadi)—then on the outskirts of Casablanca—a neighborhood populated partially by migrants from rural areas seeking employment in the city and partially by Moroccans displaced from the city center in 1938 when the French authorities used a typhoid epidemic as justification to destroy shantytowns near the European ville nouvelle.[1] Up until the early 1950s, Carrières Centrales was a massive shantytown; the French authorities considered it a den of nationalist fervor and popular resistance and therefore a threat to the colonial order.[1]

Michel Écochard, director of urban planning in Morocco under the French Protectorate from 1946-1952 and leader of the Groupe des Architectes Modernes Marocains (GAMMA), worked on housing for laborers and migrants from the countryside.[10][11][12][13] The slums at Carrières Centrales became the first collective housing project made with Ecochard's 8x8 meter model, designed to address Casablanca's issues with overpopulation and rural exodus.[14][15][11] It was also the first time the French Protectorate built housing in Casablanca for the colonized rather than the colonizers; the objective was to suppress the Moroccan Nationalist Movement.[16]

Aftermath

Leaders of the Istiqlal party were arrested.[6] The Judeo-Moroccan human rights activist and intellectual Abraham Serfaty was expelled from Morocco by the French regime for his involvement in the protests.[17] In the aftermath of the riots, French authorities arrested Abbas Messaadi, who eventually escaped, he also found the Moroccan Liberation Army, and joined the armed resistance in the Rif.[18]

British-Pathé referred to the events as "communist riots."[19]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Casablanca 1952: Architecture For the Anti-Colonial Struggle or the Counter-Revolution". THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE. 9 August 2018. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 Miller, Susan Gilson (2013). A history of modern Morocco. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-62469-5. OCLC 855022840.
  3. ↑ "الذكرى ال63 لانتفاضة سابع وثامن دجنبر 1952 بالدار البيضاء". Maroc.ma (in Arabic). 8 December 2015. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  4. ↑ House, Jim (2012). "L'impossible contrôle d'une ville coloniale ?". Genèses. 86 (1): 78–103. doi:10.3917/gen.086.0078. ISSN 1155-3219.
  5. ↑ Forst, Robert D. (1976). "The Origins and Early Development of the Union Marocaine Du Travail". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 7 (2): 271–287. doi:10.1017/S0020743800023205. ISSN 0020-7438. JSTOR 162603. S2CID 162684911.
  6. 1 2 "حزب الاستقلال". www.aljazeera.net (in Arabic). Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  7. ↑ Rotalier, Bruno de (15 November 2002). "Les yaouleds (enfants des rues) de Casablanca et leur participation aux émeutes de décembre 1952". Revue d'histoire de l'enfance " irrégulière ". Le Temps de l'histoire (in French) (4): 207–222. doi:10.4000/rhei.61. ISSN 1287-2431.
  8. ↑ Rob Prince (5 December 2012). "Tunisia: Siliana and the heritage of Farhat Hached sixty years after his assassination". openDemocracy. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  9. ↑ Youssef (8 July 2013). "Les archives sur l'assassinat de Farhat Hached écartent toute implication tunisienne". Webdo. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  10. ↑ P., N.; Ecochard, Michel (April 1956). "Casablanca: le roman d'une ville". Population (French Edition). 11 (2): 374. doi:10.2307/1524699. ISSN 0032-4663. JSTOR 1524699.
  11. 1 2 "Adaptations of Vernacular Modernism in Casablanca". Retrieved 15 April 2020.
  12. ↑ Dahmani, Iman; El moumni, Lahbib; Meslil, El mahdi (2019). Modern Casablanca Map. Translated by Borim, Ian. Casablanca: MAMMA Group. ISBN 978-9920-9339-0-2.
  13. ↑ "Casablanca 1952: Architecture For the Anti-Colonial Struggle or the Counter-Revolution". The Funambulist Magazine. 9 August 2018. Retrieved 17 April 2020.
  14. ↑ "Habitat collectif méditerranéen et dynamique des espaces ouverts". resohab.univ-paris1.fr. Archived from the original on 11 July 2021. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
  15. ↑ Fabrizi, Mariabruna (7 December 2016). "Understanding the Grid /1: Michel Ecochard's Planning and Building..." Socks. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
  16. ↑ "Casablanca 1952: Architecture For the Anti-Colonial Struggle or the Counter-Revolution". The Funambulist Magazine. 9 August 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
  17. ↑ "Decidedly Marxist: An Interview with Abraham Serfaty (1992)". Viewpoint Magazine. 5 March 2019. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
  18. ↑ "L'assassinat de Messaâdi". Zamane (in French). 12 November 2012. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
  19. ↑ British Pathé. "Selected Originals - Casablanca - Communist Riots Grow". www.britishpathe.com. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
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