A book a day: Philippe Sands: The last colony

Original Language: English
Títutulu Original: The Last Colony
Translation: Francisco J. Ramos Mena.
Year of publication: 2023
Valoración: advisable

A small preliminary issue about The last colony that can be clarified to the reader. Philippe Sands is a lawyer and law teacher, obviously, what writer and author of this book. It would be a curious integration of two professional performances that converge in texts such as this, and that, it is possible to warn the reader, they can to some extent be confused, since there is a kind of narrative tension parallel to the development of a matter of legal index.

So the plot, or the case, focuses on an archipelago, Chagos, belonging to Mauricio, an African island state located in the Indian ocean, famous for its beaches, for its relative proximity to Seychelles, for its usually venerated process of process of decolonization, which made it one of the most prosperous African countries. It turns out that Chagos was chosen as ideal location for an American military base. And that this election entered into conflict both with the Constitution and the State of Mauricio and with the presence of the native population that lived there. The solution was a fudge: to be able to accommodate the military installation, the inhabitants were coerced in bad ways to accept the offers to leave their homes. Measures such as cutting communications and supplies were taken to understand that exercising their right to continue residing in their homes would not bring them anything good. Finally, they were ordered to leave their homes carrying with a few belongings.

Philippe Sands recounts here the process initiated by the inhabitants, focusing the narrative the case of Lis way elysé, victim with his family of that undercover deportation and testimony in the trial, through several sessions in which he explained his experience. Sands Extrapola the case not only to the community resident in Chagos, but to the entire decolonization process that has ended (but this will be subject to another reading and another review) with a huge continent and a huge mass of displaced population of the epicenter of the epicenter of Global decisions, with the repercussions of the economies of extractive cut and the design of borders and nations that the decolonizers took care of them very well to leave well orchestrated to minimize future adjustments. Sands leads the narration with some ups and downs: we enjoy more of personal experiences (such as that return to what were their homes, that visit to the places evoking their memories) that of the inevitable litany of legal obstacles (decrees, commissions, bureaucratic procedures designed , above all, to avoid both the reversibility of the operation and a high economic impact of compensation) that leave the British government in their efforts to please the voracious hunger of American imperialism. What time to comment, by the way.