Near the village of Taoujout, a road of packed dirt leads up a steep hill toward the settlement of stone houses perched at its top. In the low spots below the road, palms sprout among green gardens. While only six miles from the regional administration center and tourist sights, Taoujout appears totally disconnected from the outside world.

Beside the road, a small outbuilding decorated with traditional ornamentation serves as the cultural center and language school for the Amazigh, the name North Africa’s indigenous pre-Arab inhabitants use to refer to themselves. At a desk in the building, Ahmed Gwirah, president of the Taoujout Association for the Preservation of the Amazigh Villages, discussed the history of the Amazigh community’s marginalization and underdevelopment with Al-Monitor.

“The situation for us in Taoujout was better under the French. They built a lot for us, including two wells. They also built the roads connecting us [to the outside]. That’s development.”

Gwirah said that after Tunisia’s independence, the mountain villages like his — many of them Amazigh-speaking — were seen as supporters of Salah Ben Yousef, former President Habib Bouguiba’s arch political rival who was assassinated. They were also home to the Fellagha, pro-independence fighters who attacked outposts of the French colonizers, with whom Bourguiba had a warm relationship even after independence.