Macaca (term) - Uses

Uses

According to Robert Edgerton, in the Belgian Congo, colonial whites called Africans macaques. The term sale macaque (filthy monkey) was occasionally used as an insult. In the ceremony in 1960 in which Congo gained its independence from Belgium, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba gave a speech accusing Belgian King Baudouin of presiding over "a regime of injustice, suppression, and exploitation" before ad-libbing at the end, Nous ne sommes plus vos macaques! (We are no longer your macaques!), as the Congolese in the audience rose to their feet cheering. Lumumba was reportedly still stung by being called a sale macaque by a Belgian woman years earlier.

"Macaca" is a direct translation for "female monkey" in Portuguese language. The translation for "male monkey " (English) is "macaco" (Portuguese). In Portugal and Portuguese speaking countries, racists often call black people "macaco" or "macacos" (plural form) as an insult, because their African origins. "Macaco" is also the Portuguese generic word to designate any kind of ape.

In the Adventures of Tintin written by Belgian writer-artist Hergé, Captain Haddock uses the term macaque as an insult, along with other random terms. In a 1994 essay, literary scholar Patrick Colm Hogan discussed the racist symbolism surrounding the name Makak, the protagonist in Derek Walcott's 1967 play Dream on Monkey Mountain.

English gossip columnist and convicted drug dealer Taki Theodoracopulos referred to Bianca Jagger, who is of Nicaraguan origin, as macaca mulatta in 1996. Theodoracopulos has frequently used racial slurs in his published work. Note that Macaca mulatta is the scientific name for the Rhesus monkey. The photographer Marc Garanger recounts the use of Macaque as a slur against Algerian women in a 1990 issue of Aperture magazine.