Former French Officer Recruited 80,000 Moroccan Miners for French Coal Industry

Nearly 27 years after his death, his name still resonates in the Rif region of Morocco. It is mentioned in Berber song lyrics, an integral part of the oral tradition of the women of the Aït Atta tribes. Born on August 28, 1926 in Croix-Wasquehal, Félix Mora is a former French soldier in the Goulimine garrison. Assigned to Agadir around 1946, he takes the opportunity to learn Arabic. After Morocco’s independence, he became a recruiter of miners for the Houillères du Nord and Pas-de-Calais. This, following a small ad from the Charbonnages de France looking for an "officer of native affairs", whose mission was to recruit strong but not too picky arms to come and extract coal in the mines in northern France, reports La Voix du Nord.

Félix Mora quickly implements his recruitment strategy. Accompanied by Houillères agents and Moroccan officials, he criss-crosses the souks in the far reaches of the Atlas and the oases, announcing his arrival in a place several days in advance. Thousands of Moroccans show up at the recruitment site. "I looked into the eyes of at least a million Moroccan candidates, sometimes even the father and son," the recruiter boasted in 1989. He examines the candidates half-naked. Those who are selected are stamped green on the chest. The rejected ones receive an indelible red stamp. The strategy worked, and Félix Mora managed to hire, for nearly 20 years, nearly 80,000 men. Up to 120,000 men, some estimate.

The promise made to Moroccan miners, that of guaranteeing them a better life in France, will not be kept. They find themselves on the straw with great difficulty in asserting their rights after the closure of the mines in the North and Pas-de-Calais.