WESTERN SAHARA
Oblivion in the Desert

November 1975. Three hundred and fifty thousand Moroccans occupy the Spanish Sahara in the so-called Green March. After the Paris three-parties agreement, this Spanish colony was ceded by Franco’s regime to Morocco and Mauritania, and its population was abandoned to an uncertain destiny. While the Mauritanian occupancy was rather short, Morocco started a war of attrition against Saharan activists gathered in the Frente Polisario who reclaimed the independency of this territory.

As a consequence of the massacre of civilians carried out by the Moroccan Army, the majority of people of Western Sahara living in the main cities had no choice but move into the Sahara desert, close to the Algerian town of Tindouf. In that huge refugee camp, where summer temperatures reach 50 ºC, more than 180.000 people try to survive with the help of a few governmental and non-governmental organizations. Caravans plenty of food advance slowly across the sands towards the city of tents where thousands of refugees wait for the opportunity to go back home. They all want to forget 28 years of exile in the desert’s harshness. They all dream with a free nation internationally recognised. They all hope to see the day of the referendum promised by the ONU since 1991 that would allow them to decide the status of this amazingly beautiful piece of land.