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Francisco Macías Nguema Biyogo's eleven-year reign of terror and economic devastation ravaged Equatorial Guinea more than five centuries of Iberian colonial domination. Upon its independence from Spain in 1968, Equatorial Guinea's economy had a good foundation and its intelligentsia (although small) was well-trained. Macías Nguema's regime, however, caused the systematic destruction of Equatorial Guinea's economy and the execution, incarceration, or exile of about half the population. An analysis of Macías Nguema's regime reveals the fallacy of historian Walter Rodney's thesis that Africa's current state of economic underdevelopment is primarily a result of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism.1 An examination of Equatorial Guinea's colonial legacy, along with a close scrutiny of the country's immediate post-independence economic and political performance, reveals that internal, rather than external, factors are primarily to blame for Equatorial Guinea's woes.
Keywords: Africa, Cocoa, Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macías Nguema Biyogo.
Introduction
Few African states are as little known abroad as Equatorial Guinea. Nestled between Cameroon to the north and Gabon to the east and south, tiny Equatorial Guinea has a colonial history unique to sub-Saharan Africa: it is the only Hispanophone country in sub-Saharan Africa. With a total area of 28,110 square kilometers [about the size of Haiti or Maryland], the nation is composed of Río Muni, an enclave on the African mainland, and five small islands: Annobón, Bioko, Corsico, Great Elobey, and Small Elobey.2 At the time of independence, about 300,000 people lived in Equatorial Guinea. Although the population included a large expatriate community (mostly Spaniards and Nigerians), the two principal ethnic groups native to the area were the Bubi (native to Fernando Pó) and the Fang (native to Río Muni). The Bubi were economically superior to the Fang [who accounted for over 80 percent of the population]. Macías Nguema (a Fang) caused the exodus of the Spanish and Nigerian expatriate communities, decimated a sizeable percentage of the Bubi population, and virtually enslaved a large portion of the Fang. Historian René Pélissier has branded Macías Nguema a "diminutive despot who single-handedly managed to turn a prosperous country into a moribund pariah among nations."3
The Colonial Experience
Fernando Pó was discovered by Portuguese explorer Fernão do Pó in 1472. Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of El Pardo (1778), an...