Article ID: CBB365291662

Mikomeseng: Leprosy, Legitimacy and Francoist Repression in Spanish Guinea (2018)

unapi

The Mikomeseng leprosy settlement in Spanish Guinea (present-day Equatorial Guinea) was widely promoted during the 1940s and 1950s as the embodiment of the Francoist ‘civilizing mission’ in Africa. Its prominence reflected the important role which colonial health and social policy played in establishing the legitimacy of the Franco regime, and particularly in helping to overcome its international isolation in the immediate post-war era. But a major protest by leprosy sufferers in 1946 revealed the everyday violence underpinning life in Mikomeseng, showing how the language of welfare and social justice which pervaded Francoist propaganda masked the reality of a coercive colonial system. The image of Mikomeseng as the embodiment of benevolent colonial rule was constructed by Francoist experts and officials around a brutally repressive institution, one which encapsulated the violence of Spanish colonial rule in West Africa and of the Franco regime as a whole.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB365291662/

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Authors & Contributors
Azevedo, Mario J.
Steve Howard
Sebastian Beese
Mika, Marissa Anne
Diana S. Wylie
Mokake, Flavius M.
Journals
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Social History of Medicine
Science as Culture
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
History in Africa
Publishers
Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh
Ohio University
University of North Carolina Press
Princeton University Press
Palgrave Macmillan
Ohio University Press
Concepts
Colonialism
Health
Controversies and disputes
Public health
Leprosy (Hansen's disease)
Disease and diseases
People
Moreira, Juliano
Gore, Albert
Capanema, Gustavo
Callendar, Guy Stewart
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
Modern
Renaissance
20th century, late
Places
Africa
Guinea
United States
Portugal
Germany
Cameroon (Country)
Institutions
Royal Society of London
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