Diplomatic Stew: Morocco Challenges US Ambassador Over Tajine Cultural Appropriation

The Moroccan Bar Association is shocked by the dissemination on social media through the certified personal account of the US Ambassador in Algeria of a publication promoting a cookbook entitled "Taste of Algeria", with a Moroccan tajine featured on the cover and presented as an element of Algerian heritage. It has written to Elizabeth Moore Aubin to express its concerns about what it considers to be a symbolically heavy error, reports Hespress. "The tajine is not a generic dish of the Maghreb, but a strong cultural marker of Morocco, with recognized and protected heritage value," says the association chaired by lawyer Mourad Elajouti, thus evoking a form of cultural appropriation that is part of a regional climate marked by repeated attempts at identity rewriting.

The Bar Association also recalled that the Moroccan tajine is registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, under the collective brand "Moroccan Heritage Moroccan Tajine / Moroccan Heritage Moroccan Tajine" and that it is legally framed in the fields of utensils, cultural products and their economic development. To support its statements, the association cites academic references, in particular the work of Gil Marks, author of the book "Encyclopedia of Jewish Food". The American historian attributes the origin of the tajine to the Amazigh populations of Morocco. Without failing to underline its transmission through the generations, particularly within the Moroccan Jewish communities.

Diplomatic figures are required to be exemplary in their communications, particularly when it comes to cultural symbols, the club further recalls, invoking in this regard the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which imposes a duty of restraint and respect in the representation of foreign cultures. In the eyes of Moroccan lawyers, associating, even indirectly, such an emblematic element as the tajine with a country other than Morocco constitutes an attack on the authenticity of Moroccan heritage.