In 1999, two dogs crossing the border. One Algerian, thin, faint, lame and eaten by fleas, is to enter Tunisia, the other Tunisian sleek, well fed, clean, healthy, try on your part to enter Algeria. The Tunisian is perplexed: "Why do you want to enter my country," he asks. Camus says, "because I want to eat." He immediately adds even more perplexed than his companion: "I do not understand is why you want to go in Algeria." The Tunisian then answers: "because I want ... barking. "
In 1999, when he told this joke in intellectual circles, Tunisia was gagged, but instead enjoyed, "he repeated, in an economic situation incomparably better than the rest of the Arab world. With an average growth of 5% over the past decade, the IMF put the country as an example of the advantages of an economy freed from protectionist barriers and in 2007 the World Economic Forum for Africa declared him "the most competitive 'in the continent, over South Africa. "Kulu shai BEHI" all goes well, repeating the regime's propaganda on billboards, newspaper editorials and choreographed debates on television. While the government was selling up to 204 public sector companies robust set by Habib Bourguiba, the enlightened, socialist dictator, multiplied the number of 4x4 in the streets, were built entire neighborhoods in the capital for business and will loisir and up to 7 million tourists came every year to enjoy the increasingly sophisticated and robust country's hotel infrastructure. In 2001, when Carrefour opened the first symbol and ad revenue in civilization, some may be under the illusion that Tunisia had become a province of France. It was a wonderful country: the more clean and beautiful light of the world's best beaches, the desert Hollywoodesque, the nicest people. No one could speak or write, it is true, but in return people get fat and Islam stepped back. The EU and the U.S., but travel agents and media, helped to feed the image of a European country in Arabic, more Western than Muslim, richer than poor, transition to the happiness of the capitalist market. You could not talk or write is true, and it is also true that ranked second in the world ranking computing censorship, but the Government's efforts deserved a reward, Tunisia hosted the African Cup, World Cup and Handball in 2005 an unusual summit during which information is concealed from the world a hunger strike of judges and lawyers and journalists and bloggers arrested ...
A little that anyone had bothered to scratch beneath the surface polished, have discovered a very different reality. Nobody or almost nobody did. From January to June this year, for example, "The Pais 618 published news related to Cuba, where nothing was happening, and 199 for Tunisia, all on tourism and the World Handball, "The World" on those dates, recorded 5162 entries on Cuba, a country where nothing was happening and only 658 on Tunisia, almost all of the Handball World, and "ABC" look 400 times tended toward Cuba, a country where nothing happened, while mentioned only in Tunisia 99 times, 55 of them in connection with the World Handball. On 10 March the same year, a quick Google search gave 750 blogs on the distribution of the Cuban Government the famous rice cookers and only three (two of Amnesty International) on the hunger strike and torture of prisoners in Tunisia.
But the truth is that Carrefour and the humvee, and nightlife in Gammarth, hiding not only the normal repression by Ben Ali since 1987, the palace coup or the Great Change, but also the disappearance of a middle class had begun to form in the 60's and had survived the crisis of the late 80's. A few entered the Carrefour and many left the country: up to one million young Tunisians, on a population of 10 million, living abroad, especially in France, Italy and Germany. While a minority left the English and French despised of course, the Tunisian dialect, the educational structure inherited from the previous regime, relatively solvent, thereby degrading the latest PISA Tunisia relegated to one of the last ten points of the OECD list. While twenty families enjoying the entertainment in the Alps or Paris, unemployment increased to reach 18%, 36% among the young: among graduates and graduates went from 0.7% in 1984 to 4% in 1997 to soar to 20% in 2010. In the mirror of the Carrefour-in through advertising, inviting atmosphere inaccessible consumption, "the youth of the banlieues of the capital and central and southern regions of the country seemed to settle enjoy this reflection.
Who benefited from this growth blessed by the IMF and the European institutions? Basically a single family, large and sprawling, to which the offices of the U.S. embassy leaked by Wikileaks describes as a "mafia clan." This is the family of Leyla Trabelsi, the second wife of the dictator, so much of the country owns many referred to Tunisia (the Tunisie) as the Trabelsi. Ben Ali and her family had taken through opaque privatization of all economic activity in the nation, making the state the instrument of a mafioso and primitive capitalism, or rather a parasite of international capitalism feudalism. The list of sectors looted by the clan is hardly credible: banking, industry, automobile distribution, media, mobile telephony, transport, airlines, construction, supermarket chains, private education , fisheries, alcoholic beverages and to the used clothing market. No wonder that during the riots of these days, have been assaulted so many shops, businesses and banks, there has been talk of "hooliganism", but it was also an accurate or vandalism, in any case of vandalism that even when triggered Random inevitably was right: to hit where they hit, hit certainly a property of Trabelsi.
In this picture of repression and appropriation, had to build the ear to hear the noise of the incoming tide. Few did, even when in January 2008, Redeyef near Gafsa in the phosphate mines, another minor incident, a protest by an act of nepotism, put on a war footing the entire population. For months the strike lasted, there were four dead, two hundred prisoners, with sentences chilling summary trials. While Redeyef remained besieged by police, only journalists and members tried to break the Tunisian police blockade and informative. In Europe, Trabelsi was still beautiful, quiet, secure business and geopolitics. Only an Italian journalist, Gabriele Del Grande dared to sneak in the heart of the protests and get information before being stopped by police and deported. His story begins: "Trade unionists arrested and tortured. Protesters killed by police. Imprisoned journalists and a powerful machine of censorship to prevent the protest from spreading. There is a history lesson on fascism, but the chronicle of the last ten months in Tunisia. A story that leaves no doubt about the nature of the regime Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in power since 1987 -. A chronicle that reveals the dark side of a country that receives millions of tourists every year and thousands of migrants fleeing every year also. In a later book, "Il mare di mezzo ', describes in detail the machinery of Tunisian terror with secret prisons in which opponents disappeared not only national but also of Algerian immigrants, kidnapped at sea by the local-police patrol Europe-to be cast later in the abyss. Nobody said anything. It was much more important to support the dictator, Ben Ali and the Western powers shared not only economic and political interests but also the same radical contempt for the Tunisian people and their sufferings.
But on December 17, lit a spark soon found the monster and also explains the sociologist Sadri Khiari, "there is no voluntary servitude but only patient waiting time of hatching." The gesture of despair Mohamed Bouazizi reduced young computer salesman, launched a village where no one expected anything other Arabs who despise and Europe considered docile, cowardly and sleepy for football and Carrefour. A lunar cycle later, on 14 January, after a hundred dead and dozens of rebels in all metastases the territory, the wave broke in the center of Tunis and reached its goal. And was neither bread nor work or youtube: "Ben Ali murderer", "Ben Ali out." The Charge of police, belying the promises he had made the day before the dictator, still caused many deaths and injuries. But it was very beautiful, very beautiful to see these young people for a month before becoming one expected anything in the street and keep people fleeing to encourage her to return to battle with the vibrant stanzas of the national anthem, "namutu namutu wa Yahi el-watan "(die die to live the fatherland). Late in the afternoon, supported by France until the end, the dictator fled Saudi Arabia, leaving behind instructions armed militias to wreak havoc.
The danger has not passed, the struggle continues. But now there are a people who fight the battles. "January 14 is our July 14," repeated the Tunisians. Perhaps the entire Arab world. The people had never overthrown a dictator, and this town unexpected intruder in the logic of revolutions, this Tunisian jasmine and light honey, dignity and struggle now is the mirror in which we look at the neighbors, Morocco Yemen, Algeria to Egypt, brothers of frustration, unhappiness and anger. No need to find the causes, always given, but a minute. And that minute is now.
Santiago Alba Rico, Philosopher
Taken Gara
