Gonzalo Abaha Nguema Mikue (Teguete-Bekueñ, Evinayong, 1996), Equatoguinean writer and researcherjust finished his second visit to Tenerife in just a couple of months to explain his activism for the LGTBIQ cause. In his perfect Spanish, Abaha – Graduate in International Cooperation and Sustainable Development – assures that he loves here, above all, the way people are, very open. After giving talks in educational centers or town halls last March, he was now invited to the Human Rights conferences in the ULL. He accompanies three lesbian women from the organized collective of which he is deputy national coordinator, we are part of the world. They are all included in the project of the Pedro Zerolo Foundation, supported by the Cabildo, to turn Tenerife into a protective island for human rights defenders. Gonzalo demonstrates a vast knowledge of the geography and history of Equatorial Guinea –He insists on the Equatorial thing, because in Africa there are several guineas–. He lives in Bata, the main city on the mainland, although the capital, Malabo, is located on the island of Bioko, formerly Fernando Poo and, later, Santa Isabel. He recounts the adventures of the successive Portuguese, English (brief) and Spanish dominations with the slave trade, the geostrategic situation and the rich raw materials of Africa as a framework. From the Spanish colonial era, during the Franco dictatorship, he recalls the years when control of Equatorial Guinea belonged de facto to Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco’s dauphin, killed in an attack on ETA in 1973.
“Treated as sick and persecuted by the Law of Vagrants and Crooks.” Gonzalo summarizes how homosexual people are today in Equatorial Guinea. Disowned by their families and by society. If they do not repent after undergoing therapies of all kinds – including exclusion from the classroom, beatings in police stations or the brutal internal cleansing of the healers – they are expelled from the normal dynamics. Like Gonzalo, who has focused his life on fighting against it and helping others like him. Not only of the LGTBIQ collective, but in general, because in Equatorial Guinea the violation belongs to everyone, “even though we suffer twice as much.” He points out that “I have come to talk specifically about LGTBIQ rights and girls and women subjected to sexual exploitation.” He summarizes: “If there is an injustice, I denounce it.”
He did so in his first book –the second is about to be published–, with a suggestive title: rats fall in love too. Women in the protagonist’s culture “are like girls, rats, they never listen.” Some consider them as girls, incapable of making coherent decisions. Starting from the condition of a rat, Minerva tells this story in the first person and assumes her condition to overcome it as a human being who fights for freedom. She doesn’t fit the idea of what a woman is supposed to be and because she is rebellious and doesn’t listen, she is considered a rat.
Gonzalo relates: «I am not normal for the Guinean population, because homosexuality is considered a disease that ethnic traditions condemn». He belongs to the Fang ethnic group, one of the seven in Equatorial Guinea. The discourse is that “the Westerners brought that.” He recalls that “with the support of the US embassy, we were able to prepare an anthropological research paper to verify and demonstrate that homosexuality already existed in pre-colonial times. Even with the derogatory names with which they identified them or the conversion therapies they used.
In Equatorial Guinea, he explains, “homosexuality is a family matter and if you are, it is a shame on all of it, because it has brought you up badly. You suffer from homophobia from the community and from your family, too».
Possession of spirits, hanging out with white people, bad influences… The point is to find the cause and cure it. They believe that it can be changed and they do it through a protocol, within families “with reproaches, beatings or leaving you without food.” Then, he adds, “they control you at the center, because the tutors are empowered to correct you in the way they understand. There is bullying from the students and from the teachers themselves.” At another point in the process, he assesses, “they take you to the police station and you spend a week in jail or they give you 50 blows.” In addition, he emphasizes, “a kind of espionage or follow-up network is established in which the relatives themselves betray these people.”
The second protocol, “when you are considered sick because you have not changed”, is that of the healers or churches. There, he relates, “the necessary time to heal is admitted to you: a week, a month or a year. The healers do rituals to take away the bad spirits. For example, cutting yourself with razor blades or getting covered in the blood of slaughtered animals.” The third protocol is the street, because «your family repudiates you as the cause of their shame. There the law begins to act against you, because you represent a public disorder.
Gonzalo emphasizes relations with Spain and the Canary Islands. From the members of the Catalan bourgeoisie who financed the agricultural projects to the military who came from this Archipelago. He mentions the Guineans who were formed in the Canaries. He also refers to the Cubans transferred to Equatorial Guinea from the Caribbean, part of the population still today. He considers the relationship of Spain and the Canary Islands with “the forgotten Guinea” to be key, because “there is a historical commitment” with this country of enormous natural resources, but with “great corruption and where everything is under control.” He does not forget to refer to the importance of projects like the one he has brought to Tenerife, because “it protects us since all human rights defenders are in danger.”
The activist comments on the added difficulty of this island of Spanish surrounded by French-speaking countries. A place where the population is inflated, established at 1.2 million when it does not reach one million, or it is announced that “homosexuality does not exist, we are men or women.” Gonzalo considers that “without a real democratic process, there will be no progress in human rights.” They collected all the data they collected and sent it to the United Nations Shadow Report. The balance of the Country Report is the official one, which establishes that there are no homosexuals in Equatorial Guinea. Gonzalo values: “You cannot work alone, you need internal and external support.” The collective We are part of the world was born in 2016 thanks to the Spanish ambassador Luis Melgar and the week on diversity that he organized. A starting point. The witness was picked up until 2021 by the writer and political scientist Trifonia Melibea Obono. She collected in a book, I did not want to be a motherthe testimony of 30 lesbian women.
Abaha reflects: «The organization works with a population excluded by society. In our midst there are a lot of people who have been abandoned by their own family and also many examples of trafficking.
«Franco died, but his Law of Vagrants and Crooks is still in force in Equatorial Guinea. It’s as if time had stopped.” Gonzalo Abaha’s phrase summarizes the talk. This regulation dates from 1954 and was repealed in Spain with democracy. That it is maintained is the only thing that is not normal+ in this report.
