Memory as Strategy: Reclaiming Explorer Estevanico de Dorantes in Morocco's Royal Atlantic Initiative

Morocco World

02-05-2025

As the quincentennial of Estevanico de Dorante s ' remarkable transatlantic journey approaches, the world is finally reckoning with a story long relegated to the footnotes of Atlantic history. In 1527, this Moroccan—enslaved, renamed, yet unforgettable—joined the ill-fated Narváez expedition to Florida, becoming one of the first Africans to set foot in and survive North America. Twelve years later, in mid-May 1539—likely on May 19—he vanished under mysterious circumstances in the Zuni pueblos of present-day New Mexico, his fate still shrouded in ambiguity and legend.
The recent Estevanico conference, The Journey of Mustapha Azemmouri , held in Houston, Texas, on April 25–26, 2025, provided an opportunity to revive Morocco's deep-rooted ties to the Atlantic world, as part of Arab American Heritage Month. Organized by the Moroccan Society of Houston , Arab American Cultural and Community Center , and the Arab-American Educational Foundation Center for Arab Studies at the University of Houston, the conference reignited discussions about Morocco's long-standing engagement with the Atlantic and its evolving strategic vision.
Estevanico , a 16th-century Moroccan whose journey bridged Africa, Europe, and the Americas, emerged as a powerful symbol of Morocco's enduring Atlantic identity. His legacy and the lessons it carries are central to understanding Morocco's ongoing reimagination of its role in the Atlantic through diplomacy, economic cooperation, and cultural memory.
In today's rapidly changing geopolitical landscape of Africa and the Atlantic , Morocco's Royal Atlantic Initiative (RAI) emerges as a bold strategic framework—one that envisions the Atlantic not as a boundary, but as a corridor of sustainable economic growth, commerce, solidarity, and cultural exchange linking Africa, the Americas, and Europe. At the heart of this vision lies Estevanico de Dorantes, whose life story could serve both as metaphor and catalyst for the future Morocco seeks to shape.
A 16th-century Moroccan from the port city of Azemmour, Estevanico is far more than a historical footnote; he is a living metaphor for the ethos behind Morocco's Atlantic engagement. His journey—marked by enslavement and freedom, survival and adaptation, cultural translation and spiritual reinvention—captures the layered complexity of early Atlantic crossings. In this light, Estevanico stands as the prototype of what I call Homo Atlanticus : a figure shaped by the fluid, entangled histories, geographies, and cultures of the Atlantic world and a lasting emblem of its capacity for transformation and renewal.
The Atlantic as Laboratory
Born around 1500 in Azemmour—then under Portuguese contro l —Estevanico's early life bore the imprint of Atlantic contestation. Following the Portuguese occupation of Moroccan coastal cities such as Safi (1508) and Azemmour (1513), the region became an experimental site for Iberian maritime expansion. These cities were not mere outposts—they were laboratories of empire, where Spain and Portugal refined techniques of conquest, religious conversion, racialization, and commercial extraction later deployed across the Atlantic. The conquest of Azemmour in 1513 brought its residents—including Estevanico—into direct contact with imperial rivalry, Christianization, and the nascent transatlantic slave trade.
Enslaved and sold in Spain to Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, Estevanico was swept into the doomed 1527 expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez to Florida. As the expedition unraveled amid shipwreck, disease, and conflict, Estevanico emerged not simply as a survivor but as a vital figure—one of only four men to traverse the Gulf Coast and northern territories of Mexico over an eight-year ordeal. His linguistic skill, cultural fluency, and physical endurance made him indispensable. More than a guide or translator, he became a cultural interlocutor, a negotiator with Indigenous groups, a broker of survival. Through his actions, Estevanico helped sustain his companions, including the chronicler Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca . He was not merely a subject of empire—he was a human hinge between civilizations.
In 1539, Estevanico was chosen to lead the advance party of Fray Marcos de Niza's expedition into the North American interior. Tasked with locating the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola, he traveled with Indigenous guides through New Spain and into present-day Arizona and New Mexico. His reputation as an emissary and healer preceded him: he carried rattles, gourds, and feathers, sending messages ahead and entering villages with performative flair. While his theatrical diplomacy earned audiences, it also stirred suspicion—particularly among the Zuni. At Hawikuh, one of their pueblos, Estevanico was ultimately killed—or perhaps vanished and became part of the Zuni or Hopi communities.
Yet his story did not end there. Among the Zuni and later the Hopi, his legacy was reimagined. He returned as a katsina spirit— Chakwaina —a masked being invoked in ceremonial dances, embodying distant power, healing, and mediation. Through ritual, Estevanico became part of the spiritual world he once approached. He was not merely remembered—he was embodied. His transformation into a spirit figure marks a rare and powerful moment of cross-cultural integration and Indigenous reinterpretation of the foreign.
Estevanico and the Royal Atlantic Initiative
Estevanico's metamorphosis—from enslaved Moroccan to explorer, intermediary, and spiritual entity—resonates deeply with the ethos of Morocco's Royal Atlantic Initiative, launched by King Mohammed VI in 2023. The initiative reframes the Atlantic not as a corridor of conquest and extraction, but as a basin of shared prosperity, cooperation, stability, and peace. In this light, Estevanico's journey becomes more than a historical anecdote—it becomes allegory. The RAI is a modern enactment of the principles Estevanico embodied: movement, negotiation, hybridity, and relationality.
Organized around the pillars of connectivity, cooperation, and stability, the RAI envisions Morocco as a linchpin in a southern Atlantic configuration. Efforts to extend maritime access to landlocked African nations, modernize ports from Tangier to Dakhla, build the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline, promote sustainable trade corridors, and deepen ties with Latin America and the Caribbean all echo Estevanico's path. His was a journey of connection—not domination. In this way, Estevanico does not merely anticipate the RAI—he animates it.
Estevanico as Homo Atlanticus
Estevanico's legacy also exemplifies my anthropological concept of homo Atlanticus —a figure who inhabits the Atlantic not as a line dividing fixed identities, but as a fluid space where identities are constantly formed and transformed. Estevanico was not merely Moroccan, African, American, or European; he was all of these—and more. He embodied the essence of the 'Atlantic creole': diasporic, multilingual, mobile, resourceful and resilient. His life reminds us that movement can be destiny and hybridity a source of strength. By elevating Estevanico, Morocco asserts not only its place in Atlantic history, but also a pluralistic vision of Atlantic creativity and innovation rooted in shared struggle and creative reinvention.
Morocco's Atlantic vocation has deep historical roots—from early diplomatic exchanges with the United States , as the first country to officially recognize its independence in 1777, to centuries of trade and cultural ties with West Africa and Europe. But even earlier, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Moroccan coastal regions bore the weight of Iberian imperial experimentation. These were frontier zones where the technologies of maritime domination—cannon, corsair, catechism—were refined. These early encounters shaped the geopolitical imagination of the Atlantic and set the conditions for the commodification of lives like Estevanico's. In this sense, Morocco was not peripheral to Atlantic history—it was foundational.
A Strategic Reinterpretation of Atlantic Memory
The Royal Atlantic Initiative builds on this legacy, grounding it in contemporary frameworks of infrastructure development, economic innovation, educational exchange, and the soft power of African-Atlantic identities. As the Atlantic South faces intersecting challenges of climate change, poverty, and security gaps, Morocco offers an alternative cartography—one Estevanico himself might have recognized: multiscalar, fluid, and relational.
Looking ahead, the upcoming quincentennial of Estevanico's Atlantic crossing in 2027 presents a generative opportunity to bring this vision into sharper focus. Through exhibitions, academic conferences, and cultural diplomacy, Morocco could elevate Estevanico as its 'First Atlantic Ambassador'—a figure whose life and legacy reflect the ambitions of the RAI. As Morocco prepares to co-host the 2030 FIFA World Cup with Spain and Portugal, it can advance a model of Atlanticism rooted not in nostalgia or conflict, but in resilience, exchange, creativity, and innovation.
By invoking Estevanico, Morocco offers a counter-memory to dominant Atlantic narratives that often sideline African contributions. His transformation into a spirit being exemplifies how African presences were absorbed, contested, and preserved in the Americas—not only in labor but in symbols, rituals, and cosmologies. He inhabits what might be called the 'deep Atlantic,' a space of layered identities, historical entanglements, and embodied remembrance.
Memory as Strategy
For the Royal Atlantic Initiative to fulfill its transformative potential, it must embrace the work of historical recovery, foregrounding figures like Estevanico who challenge conventional narratives and deepen our understanding of the Atlantic world. Doing so will not only legitimize Morocco's Atlantic aspirations but foster a shared historical consciousness among Atlantic nations. The Atlantic's future lies not in novelty, but in the recovery and reactivation of its entangled pasts.
Estevanico—the Moroccan who became a Pueblo spirit being—was among the first to cross the Atlantic not merely as a subject of empire, but as a transcultural mediator. In his wake, the Royal Atlantic Initiative must navigate not only trade routes but memory routes, charting a future that honors the plural origins of the Atlantic world. As the 500th anniversary of Estevanico's 1527 expedition approaches, Morocco would do well to seize this moment with a global commemoration or fiesta—one that not only honors Estevanico's legacy but also reaffirms the kingdom's place in Atlantic and world history.
Estevanico's journey was more than a passage through time and space—it was a transformation of meaning. His story is one of becoming: becoming free, becoming essential, becoming spirit. By invoking his legacy as Homo Atlanticus , Morocco's Royal Atlantic Initiative roots itself in the creative force of encounter, the strategic power of inclusion, and the generative energy of shared memory, heritage, and storytelling. The Atlantic's future will not be shaped by states alone, but by those who, like Estevanico, cross borders, bridge continents and cultures, and make the foreign familiar. Through his legacy, Morocco affirms that the Atlantic is not merely a relic of the past—it is a living space where we become, and where we imagine and forge inclusive and desirable futures for all. Tags: atlantic cooperationAtlantic initiative