CRR. Poéticas Circumcaribeñas Número Completo
CRR. Poéticas Circumcaribeñas Número Completo
CRR. Poéticas Circumcaribeñas Número Completo
Circum-Caribbean Poetics
Poéticas Circum-Caribeñas
Editorial Board:
Abraham Acosta, University of Arizona
Daniel Adelstein, Stanford University
Beatriz de Alba-Koch, University of Victoria
Palmar Álvarez, Carleton College
Sergio Arlandis, Hispanic Studies Program, University of Virginia (Valencia, Spain)
Mark Bates, Simpson College
Carmen Benito-Vessels, University of Maryland
Javier Blasco, Universidad de Valladolid
Ari Jason Blatt, University of Virginia
Carla Calargé, Florida Atlantic University
Roberto E. Campo, University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Elsy Cardona, Saint Louis University
José Luis Castillo, University of California, Santa Barbara
Armelle Crouzières-Ingenthron, Middlebury College
Anne Duggan, Wayne University
Luis Duno-Gottberg, Rice University
Maria Galli Stampino, University of Miami at Coral Gables
Carlos Javier García-Fernández, Arizona State University
Rangira Gallimore, University of Missouri-Columbia
Randal Garza, University of Tennessee at Martin
Miguel Gomes, University of Connecticut at Storrs
Cristina González, University of California-Davis
Vincent Grégoire, Berry College
Alexandra Gueydan-Turek, Swarthmore College
Germán Gullón, Universiteit van Amsterdam
Julie Hayes, University of Massachusetts
Jason Herbeck, Boise State University
Polly Hodge, Chapman University
Raúl Ianes, Miami University, Ohio
Sharon Keefe Ugalde, Texas State University
David Knutson, Xavier University
Cheryl Krueger, University of Virginia
Katherine Kurk, Northern Kentucky University
Jeanne Sarah de Larquier, Central Michigan University
Michael Lastinger, West Virginia University
Gisèle Loriot-Raymer, Northern Kentucky University
Carlos Mamani, Gannon University
José María Mantero, Xavier University
Manuel Martínez, Ohio Dominican University
Philippe Met, University of Pennsylvania
Luis Millones Figueroa, Colby College
Kirsten Nigro, University of Texas at El Paso
Buford Norman, University of South Carolina
Valerie Orlando, Illinois Wesleyan University
Vicente Pérez de León, Oberlin College
Suzanne Pucci, University of Kentucky
Carol L. Sherman, University of North Carolina
Vincent Simédoh, Dalhousie University
Seth Whidden, Villanova University
Laura Wittman, Stanford University
Clarisse Zimra, Southern Illinois University
Cincinnati Romance Review
Volume 40 (Spring 2016)
Circum-Caribbean Poetics
Poéticas Circum-Caribeñas
Introductions
Articles
Interview with the Nicaraguan director María José Álvarez about her Movie Lubaraun
Shelly Bromberg 215
Creative Writing
Four Poems
Jacqueline Bishop 257
Poemas
Rito Ramón Aroche 268
Selección de poemas
Caridad Atencio 272
Selección de poemas
Fernando Valerio-Holguín 278
La cripta del tesoro
Alejandro Bravo 281
Selección de poemas
Reynaldo García Blanco 290
Tres poemas
Rei Berroa 305
Poems
Chauvet Bishop 309
Book Reviews
Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe, eds., Blacks and Blackness in Central America
Salvador Mercado Rodríguez 313
Nicasio Urbina
University of Cincinnati
F
ollowing the brutal assassination and violent dismemberment in 1806 of Jean-
Jacques Dessalines, himself considered a brute and violent revolutionary
against Napoleon’s French colonial forces in Saint Domingue, historically
slated to become Ayiti at the end of the Haitian Revolution (1790-1804),1 the
new “black Republic” lamentably waged internal, civil warfare and military rivalries vied
for presidential or royal power: Alexandre Pétion was elected president of the southern
1 On the legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Americas, see all of the following: David Geggus,
The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press,
2002); David Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds., The World of the Haitian Revolution (Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 2009); Geggus, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (New York: Hackett
Publishing, 2014); Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French
Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Laurent Dubois and John D.
Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2006); Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott, eds. Origins of the Black Atlantic (New York and London:
Routledge, 2009); Dubois, Avengers of the New World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009);
Jeremy D. Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Revolution (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2008); Popkin, You are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010); Popkin, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution (London and New
York: Wiley/Blackwell Publishers, 2011); and Gerald Horne, Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian
Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015). Despite the
obvious import of the Haitian Revolution in the Americas and in the larger Atlantic world, its history was
until the postcolonial turn undervalued and silenced within historical studies, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot
persuasively argues in Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2005,
2015). See chapter three, “An Unthinkable History” (70-107). As Trouillot writes, the Haitian Revolution
“entered history with the peculiar characteristic of being unthinkable even as it happened” (73); and he
further reasons that “neither a single great book nor even a substantial increase in slave resistance studies
will fully uncover the silence that surrounds the Haitian Revolution. For the silencing of that revolution
has less to do with Haiti or slavery than it has to do with the West” (106). In the final paragraph of this
chapter, Trouillot thus concludes that the “silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a
narrative of global domination” (107).
2 JANA BRAZIEL AND NICASIO URBINA
République d’Haïti in 1806, yet he was opposed in the north by none other than
revolutionary hero and “hasta la muerte” rival Henri Christophe, later known to posterity
as Roi Christophe, who presided over the north in a very divided République d’Haïti.
Although Pétion died of yellow fever in 1818 and Christophe met his own demise in a
death by suicide, considered historically suspect by many, in 1820, the nevertheless
divided République d’Haïti became (in 1815) the island sanctuary, safe harbor, and
hemispheric haven for another revolutionary Américan—the young Simón Bolívar.
Seven years after the Enlightenment-inspired military leader waged war against the
Spanish colonialists in 1808 in the northern highlands and coastal terrains of what is now
the continent of South America, Bolívar first seized military and political advantage in
1814 during the chaos wrought by the Peninsular War (1807-14), itself a spillover of the
Napoleonic Wars (1803-15) ravaging Europe and its settler colonies in the Americas, and
eventually, thirteen bloody years later, won and declared independence in the Republic of
Gran Colombia (modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, northern Peru, Ecuador, Panama,
western Guyana, and northwest Brazil).2 Inspired by the Haitian Revolution and the
Bolívar Revolution, armed in his own struggle for a Revolución Cubana in the 1880s and
1890s, and dying on the battlefield in 1895, the insurrectionist, revolutionary poet, and
public intellectual José Martí turned his own pen and sword toward a free and
independent ¡Cuba!3
In 1891, four years before his death in battle, Martí issued a rallying intellectual
battle cry to “¡Estos hijos de nuestra América” (these sons of Our America) to oppose
those “estos desertores que piden fusil en los ejércitos de la América del Norte, que ahoga
en sangre a sus indios” (deserters who take up arms in the army of a North America that
drowns its Indians in blood) to themselves take up arms, including “las armas del juicio,
que vencen a las otras” (weapons of the mind, which conquer all others) and form
fortresses or “trincheras de ideas” (barricades of ideas), which are more valuable than
“trincheras de piedra” (barricades of stones).4 During the same year, 1891, Martí
2 On Simón Bolívar and the Bolívar Revolution of Gran Colombia, see all of the following: John
Lynch, Simón Bolívar: A Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006); Jeremy Adelman,
Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, 2009); Wim
Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History (New York: NYU Press, 2009); and Marie
Arana, Bolivar: American Liberator (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). For the full texts of the 1827
Proclamations by Francisco José de Paula Santander y Omaña and Simón José Antonio de la Santísima
Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, known to posterity as Simón Bolivar, see Political Conflict in Gran Colombia: 1827
Proclamations of Santander and Bolivar (Amazon Digital Services, 2015).
3 See Lillian Guerra’s The Myth of José Martí: Conflicting Nationalisms in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005) and Alfred J. López’s José Martí: A Revolutionary Life
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014). See also José Martí, Inside the Monster: Writings on the United States
and American Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press Classic Titles, 1975) and Jeffrey Belnap and
Raúl Fernandez, eds. José Martí's Our America: From National to Hemispheric Cultural Studies (Durham and
London: Duke University Press, New Americanists Series, 1998).
4 José Martí, Nuestra América (Barcelona: Linkgua ediciones, S.L., 2007). First published in La
Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York - 10 de enero de l891 and published later in January 1891 in El partido liberal
published Versos sencillos, his last volume of poetry to appear in print, and the poem “Yo
soy un hombre sincero” (A Sincere Man), championed the simple slave who would inherit
Cuban terra y sol (land and soil), the former slave who becomes the armed revolutionary.5
The poetic protagonist declares:
I am a sincere man
Who comes from where palms grow
And before I die I want to
Send forth the verses of my soul.
And these versos del alma are indelibly inscribed into his heart and his psyche:
Martí’s signature line, “Yo soy un hombre sincero” (penned in 1891) ultimately became
the third line in Cuba’s signature song “Guantanamera,” following the opening refrain
“Guantanamera, guajira, guantanamera.” Yet following the conclusion of the Spanish
American War in 1898, the Spanish colonialists had been sorely defeated by U.S.
hemispheric imperialists, armed and shrouded with the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, one
master exchanged for another, and ¡Cuba!, no liberada, remained under external rule: in
1903, following the signing and ratification of the Platt Amendment in 1901, the United
- México - 30 de enero de 1891. Full Spanish text also archived online at Cuidad Seva: Casa digital del escritor
Luis López Nieves <http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/otros/nuestra_america.htm>.
5 José Martí, Versos sencillos, edited by Miguel Ángel García-Sánchez (CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform, 2012). See also the bilingual edition: Versos sencillos: A Dual Language Edition, edited
and translated by Pete Seeger and Ann Fountain (McFarland Publishers, 2005).
States (El Norte) seized control of Guantánamo Bay as a U.S. Naval Base and remains
there to nefarious historical ends today.
Guantanamera, guajira, guantanamera.
Guantanamera, guajira guantanamera
Guantanamera, guajira, guantanamera
(If you had listened carefully, Uncle Sam, or El Yanqui del Norte, you
perhaps would have heard the subterranean sounds of stifled revolution
simmering just beneath the melodic surface of sun, sea, salsa, merengue,
Cuban cigars, Havana rum, United Fruit, and almost five and a half
decades of U.S. tourists’ buying and selling of the island…from one
Revolución to a second that ultimately succeeded in 1959 in the Oriente
region, home to Guantánamo, the music played on…the music plays
on…)
With music composed by José Fernández (as early as the 1920s), lyrics adapted from
Martí’s poem by Julián Orbón, and famously recorded (on the album Brava) by Célia Cruz
in 1967, the iconic song “Guantanamera,” championing the young peasant girl from
Guantánamo, became the definitive battle-hymn of the republic for an entire generation
of patriotic Cubano exiles. In Cuba, for Cubanos, Martí was, as much as Castro and
adopted son Che, Patron and Patria. But beyond the borders of Cuba, and even beyond
the myriad scattered diasporic sites of Cubanos in diaspora, José Martí also redefined the
Américas—Nuestra América—at precisely the moment when the U.S. was flexing its
imperial muscles in the hemisphere; and Martí’s influence is vast, broad, and wide not
only throughout the Antilles and Caribbean, but also throughout Central and South
America.6
Historians of the transatlantic slave trade and slave revolts have long noted the
salient patterns of continuity and yet also discontinuity in the Americas: where the
transatlantic slave trade delivered uprooted Africans, creating the monumental African
diaspora, there took tangled, gnarled root from transatlantic routes the myriad languages,
religions, cultures, customs, and foods of Africa: from Port-of-Spain, San Juan, Santo
Domingo, and Santiago-de-Cuba to Belize City, Bluefields, Puerto Limón, Colón, and
6 Esther Allen, ed. José Martí: Selected Writings (New York: Penguin Classics, 2002).
Cartagena, the African diaspora defined the Américas. What Paul Gilroy defined as the
“Black Atlantic”7 and what Joseph Roach redefined as the “Circum-Atlantic”8 were the
multiple traditions created by Africa in América. The Américas from the late 16th through
the late 19th centuries were defined by European colonies, African slaves, plantation
economies of sugar cane, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, spices, and other slave commodities,
and deep social, political, and economic divisions that divided the American populations
into free citizens and chattel slaves, human and independent or inhuman and bound.
Armed insurrection, slave revolts, and anticolonial and anti-imperial revolutionary
struggles—from Gonaïves and Port-au-Prince, Haiti in the 18th century to Santo
Domingo, Caracas and Bogotá, Colombia in the 19th century and on to Santiago and
Havana, Cuba and Managua, Nicaragua in the 20th century—have also been a hallmark of
the Américas as slaves sought to be free men and later free women.9 Scattered sites of
the African diaspora in the Américas have (because of this rich cross-fertilization of
European, African, indigenous American, and post-abolition Asian influences as
indentured servants from China and the Indian subcontinent were brought to the region)
consequently created shared cultural similarities between, for example, Shango in Port-
of-Spain, Trinidad, Obeah in Kingston, Jamaica, Vodou in Cap-Haïtien, Haïti, Santería in
Santiago-de-Cuba, Cuba, and Candomblé in Salvador and Bahia, in Brazil; the same is
true for art, music, dance, performance, and ritualized performances throughout the
Américas that have been indelibly defined by African diaspora presences.10 As Joseph
Roach writes in “Circum-Atlantic Memory,” part of the introductory chapter of Cities of
7 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
1993).
8 Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia UP, 1996).
9 In addition to the scholarly titles on the Haitian Revolution and the Bolívar Revolution,
referenced above, see also the following: Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central
America (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1993); Matilde Zimmermann, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the
Nicaraguan Revolution (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001); Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers:
Life and War in Nicaragua (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race,
Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999);
Ferrer, Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Marifeli
Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2011; 3rd Edition);
Gilbert M. Joseph and Greg Grandin, eds. A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during
Latin America’s Long Cold War (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010); Lillian Guerra, Visions
of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971 (Chapel Hill and London: University of
North Carolina Press, 2014); and Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution (London and New York:
Wiley/Blackwell Publishers, 2015).
10 Read, for example, Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo’s Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and
Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005). See
also Ifeoma C.K. Nwankwo and Mamadou Diouf’s edited collection Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World:
Rituals and Remembrances (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2010). Finally, see also Ifeoma C.K.
Nwankwo’s brilliant intellectual archive Voices from Our America, Vanderbilt University
<http://www.voicesamerica.org/>.
the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996): “As it emerged from the revolutionized
economies of the late seventeenth century, this world resembled a vortex in which
commodities and cultural practices changed hands many times. The most revolutionary
commodity in this economy was human flesh, and not only because slave labor produced
huge quantities of the addictive substances (sugar, coffee, tobacco, and—most
insidiously—sugar and chocolate in combination) that transformed the world economy
and financed the industrial revolution,” citing directly Sidney Mintz from Sweetness and
Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985)11. For Roach, “the concept of a circum-
Atlantic world (as opposed to a transatlantic one) insists on the centrality of the diasporic
and genocidal histories of Africa and the Americas, North and South, in the creation of
the culture of modernity. In this sense, a New World was not discovered in the Caribbean
but one was truly invented there.” (Roach, 4). We would go further, because the New
World was in fact discovered in the Caribbean, and it was invented there.
Shared or common histories of slavery, colonialism, revolution, and anticolonial
struggle from the late 16th through late 19th centuries became further pronounced in 20th
century circum-Caribbean migration as economic migrants and laborers moved from island
to island, from islands to isthmus12: Haitian cane laborers moved into and worked in cane
fields in the Dominican Republic and in Cuba, and islanders from across the Antilles
migrated to Panamá in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to build first the railroad and
later the great Canal de Panamá. Almost 15% of the Panamanian population, in fact, are
Afro-Panamanians, some the descendants of slaves brought into the isthmus region but
a significant proportion the direct descendants of Antillean migrants from the Caribbean
islands (prominently from Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Barbados, and
Jamaica) who now live throughout the country. Caribbean economic migrants first
traveled to Panamá in the 1840s as a consequence of the Gold Rush, the largest number
arriving in 1844, later working on the construction of the Panamanian railroad in 1850;
later waves of West Indian economic migrants (from many islands across the archipelago)
traveled to Panamá in order to build the Panamá Canal (first for the French, a failed
effort, and later for the Americans and Uncle Sam from 1904-1914). The Sociedad de
Amigos del Museo Afroantillano de Panamá (SAMAAP), popularly known as the Afro-
Caribbean Museum of Panamá, documents these Antillean presences in Panamá, as does
the Panama Interoceanic Canal Museum, in the zona of the Canal de Panamá. Historical
legacies also leave discernible literary traces: the Antillean migratory presences in Panamá
have left palpable literary traces as well documented in Sonja Watson’s The Politics of Race
11 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking Press,
1985).
12 Popular histories include David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama
Canal, 1870-1914 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) and Matthew Parker’s Panama Fever: The Epic Story
of the Building of the Panama Canal (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).
in Panama: Afro-Hispanic and West Indian Literary Discourses of Contention (2014)13 and in Luis
Wong Vega’s edited collection Rapsodia Antillana: Selección Bilingüe de Poesía Afro-Antillana
de Panamá (2013), which anthologizes forty Afro-Panamanian poets.14 Still, I wondered
[shouldn’t it be “we” here? you use “we” a few pages after], what were the discernible
literary and poetic traces throughout Central America? Would we find a chartable and
circumnavigable Circum-Caribbean? And one defined by a Circum-Caribbean poetics?
Other poetic and political questions persisted, particularly along the lines of
Martí’s legacies in the Caribbean and in the Américas: Martí’s legacy—poetic,
philosophical, revolutionary—has incontrovertibly defined the Américas since the late
19th century and forcefully into the 21st century. Martí inspired generations of poets,
writers, and revolutionaries from Haiti and Cuba to Nicaragua, Panama, and Colombia,
just as he himself was inspired by Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe, Pétion, and Bolívar.
But where exactly were the hemispheric and American legacies left by Martí the
revolutionary fighter, the prose essayist, the exiled journalist, the battlefield orator, the
armed soldier, and the lyrical poet most indelibly mapped? For the average man or
woman, and not just the intellectual, scholar, statesperson, and poet: Have the legacies of
Martí—and through him, the earlier and deeply intertwined Américan legacies of
Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe, Pétion, and Bolivar—marked as indelibly in the
collective conscience and collective unconscious? and are they thus legible and
discernable to the general public in Central America and South America as in the Antilles
or the Caribbean? Who would know the legacies of Martí and beyond him other
Caribbean and Central American writers and intellectuals?
The circum-Caribbean poetics we are attempting to illustrate in this issue come
from a rich literature with a wide range of influences and created by a variety of individuals
of different races, languages and cultural traditions. This makes the culture of the
Caribbean one of the most varied, vital and unique in the world. The circum-Caribbean
literatures have been created by artists of white Hispanic origin, African descent, by
people of French, Dutch, or English origin, and by descendants of Asians, mainly
Chinese. The literary work has been conducted in Spanish and English but also in French
and Creole, Dutch and Papiamento, Miskito and many other indigenous languages of the
Central Caribbean basin. It is therefore very difficult to speak and write of the circum-
Caribbean literature in unitary terms, but in the following pages we will try to offer an
overview of these literatures to contextualize the articles and texts presented in this issue.
While it is true that since the sixteenth century various types of texts were
published in the Caribbean, I think we can take the late 18th through mid-19th century as
the origin for circum-Caribbean literatures: The earliest Anglophone Caribbean literary
texts were natural histories like Griffith Hughes’ Natural History of Barbadoes (1750),
13 Sonja S. Watson, The Politics of Race in Panama: Afro-Hispanic and West Indian Literary Discourses of
William Earles’ novel Obi; or, the History of Three-Fingered Jack (1800), and slave narratives
like The History of Mary Prince (1831). In 1839, in Cuba, Juan Francisco Manzano wrote
Autobiography of a slave, the first text that highlights the life of a slave and the first text
where that person witnesses himself through writing. Although the book was not
published until 1937, we propose Autobiography of a Slave as the seminal text of the circum-
Caribbean literature because it marks the awareness of African descent in the Caribbean,
and the installation as the author of a text. Four years later we see the publication in Cuba
of the novel Sab (1841) of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. In the context of literary
romanticism, when the countries of the continent were already independent from Spain,
and in the midst of great debate against the enslavement of African descent, this novel
presents love between a slave and a white daughter of the master. The social problems
that this novel showcases, as well as the intensity of the events and feelings narrated, make
Sab also the starting point of the circum-Caribbean literature. In the Dominican Republic
it is important to note the publication of the novel Enriquillo (1882) by Manuel de Jesus
Galván, which tells the love story between an indian and a mestizo. These novels of love
which Doris Sommer has called “foundational romances” serve as metaphors of the
identity and development of the nation, through the fact that love unites people whose
union was not tolerated by society due to social prejudice. In Puerto Rico the drama La
Cuarterona (The Quadroon, 1867) by Alejandro Tapia y Rivera presents the situation of the
sexualized mulatta, victim of social prejudices of the time which initiates a long dialogue
in circum-Caribbean literature.
As it was implied before, the work of José Martí is, in the late nineteenth century
is the greatest monument of circum-Caribbean literature. Not only his poetry and
narrative, but his extensive prose work, serve as a cornerstone of Latin American identity
and independence of Cuba. The seminal essay “Our America” (1891) is a statement of
political and cultural independence for the continent and one of the most important texts
of American literature. According to Julio Ramos, in his book Divergent Modernitie, “Marti's
speech, again, stands before fragmentation and attempts to condense the dispersed. His
authority - linked, as we shall see, to [?] compensatory devices in a reuniting gesture - and
look is also based on a projection of the future, in a teleology which postulates the final
overcoming of fragmentation: the ultimate redemption of an organic America, purified
stains that overshadowed its original fullness” (232).
In the francophone Caribbean, nineteenth-century cultural life was quite rich, but
it largely was a Francophile literature, looking more to France than to Haiti. Exile was and
still is one of the main issues in Haitian literature. In 1804 debuts a major drama of
literature in Haiti, L'Haïtiene expatrié by P. Fligneau. In 1829 the magazine Abeille haïtienne
is published, and in the second half of the nineteenth century writers such as Antoine
Dupré, Juste Chanlatte, and François-Romain Lhérisson arise. We have to wait until the
1940s to find writers really committed to the reality of Haiti and concerned with Haitian
identity, writers like Jacques Roumain, René Depestre, Marie Chauvet, and Stephen
Alexis. Today Haitian writers remain divided between the diaspora and the desperate
political and economic situation of the country. A writer like Edwidge Danticat, arguably
the most famous writer of Haitian origin, returns again and again to these unavoidable
issues of Haitian literature. Other contemporary Haitian authors—Dany Laferrière,
Lyonel Trouillot, Evelyne Trouillot, Frankétienne, Gary Victor, Yannick Lahens, Joel Des
Rosiers, Louis Philippe Dalembert, Marie Célie Agnant, and Kettly Mars have all
significantly contributed to the rich literary tradition of the country and its diaspora. The
most important author in Martinique is Aimé Césaire, who in his Cahier d'un retour au pays
natal (1939), makes a wonderful argument for authentic Caribbean identity, blackness, and
the cultural independence of the francophone Caribbean; and other important Martinican
writers include Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau. Important
francophone literatures also include Simone Schwarz-Bart, Maryse Condé, and Gisèle
Pineau from Guadeloupe.
In the Anglophone Caribbean we can say that the literary development began a
little later. It was in the early twentieth century when writers of Jamaica began to define
the identity of authors of the West Indies, and Thomas H. MacDermont was perhaps one
of the first to settle as a writer and worry about the identity of the Jamaican literature. His
novels Becka's buckra Baby (1903) and One Brown Girl and ¼ (1909) are the basis of a future
and rich literature of Jamaica including writers like Andrew Salkey, Una Marson, Roger
Mais, Peter Abrahams, J.A. Rogers, and Louise Bennett, and a wide and diverse range of
contemporary writers— Olive Senior, Sylvia Winter, Michelle Cliff, Patricia Powell, Erna
Brodber, Margaret Cezair-Thompson, Jean D-Costa, Lorna Goodison, Jean Binta Breeze,
Makeda Silvera, Nalo Hopkinson, Staceyann Chin, Kwame Dawes, Colin Channer, Oku
Onuora, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Marlon James among many others. As proof of this
rich tradition we include in this issue a story and five poems by Jacqueline Bishop, author
of Jamaican origin and professor at New York University. In this issue we also include a
story of Lisa Allen-Agostini, originally from Trinidad and Tobago, who contributes to a
rich Trinidadian literary tradition that includes C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon,
Eric Williams, Earl Lovelace and a prolific generation of diaspora writers like Lakshmi
Persaud, Shani Mootoo, Rosa Guy, Austin Clarke and Dionne Brand. Other important
anglo-Antillean writers include E.A. Markham from Montserrat; Robert Antoni from the
Bahamas; Jamaica Kincaid, Althea Romeo-Mark, and Marie-Elena John from Antigua;
Caryl Phillips from Saint Kitts and Nevis; Kamau Brathwaite, Paule Marshall, and Austin
Clarke from Barbados; Merle Collins from Grenada; Wilson Harris, Beryl Gilroy, Jan
Carew, David Dabydeen, Cyril Dabydeen, Sasenarine Peraud, and Fred D’Aguiar from
Guyana.
Venezuela is a country with a large presence in the Caribbean and a high
percentage of black population, yet its literature has largely avoided treating racial issues.
Arturo Uslar Pietri published in 1931 The red lances, and Romulo Gallegos published in
1937 Poor Black Man, but it was always about the vision of a white writer on the life of
Afro-descendants in Venezuela. Steven Bermudez Antunez offers a study of black
representation in the Venezuelan story in issue number 30 of the Cincinnati Romance Review
(CRR). While Venezuela’s first major authors were Andrés Bello and Eduardo Blanco.
Other important Venezuelan writers, heavily influenced by the Caribbean, include
Romulo Gallegos, Salvador Garmendia, and Arturo Uslar Pietri.
In Colombia the presence of Afro-descendants has been recognized more than in
other countries, but has also been silenced both in history and in literature. The vitality of
the literary production of the Colombian Caribbean coast makes it impossible not to see
the multiple contributions, from the work of Manuel Zapata Olivella to Gabriel García
Márquez. Alain Lawo-Sukam historicizes the concept of negritude in the Afro-Colombian
literature in his article contained in volume 30 of this journal. Contributions to the circum-
Caribbean poetry of writers like Arnoldo Palacios or Alfredo Vanin Romero, as well as
that of many writers like Germán Espinoza, Oscar Collazos or Regulus Ahumada
Zurbaran, is of vital importance for Colombian literature and for that of all the continent.
In the early twentieth century Modernism marks the literature of the Latin
American countries and authors of great importance as the Cuban Julián del Casal appear,
although the vision of the Caribbean was not his main concern. The Nicaraguan Ruben
Dario felt firsthand the defeat of the war between the US and Spain and made it a subject
of great importance in his articles. While in Cuba he wrote his poem “The Black
Dominga” one of the earliest examples of black poetry, but the Caribbean is not at the
center of his cultural imaginary. We have to wait until poets like Luis Pales Matos (Puerto
Rico from 1898-1959) for the Antillean poetry to be fully developed in poems like Tuntún
de pasa y grifería (1937). By that time, the Puerto Rican Julia de Burgos, born in 1914,
highlights the importance of the political status of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican
nationalism becomes subject of her literature. For more information on this topic see the
article by Sonja Stephenson Watson in issue 30 of the CRR.
By 1940 the group Orígenes, with writers like Jose Lezama Lima, Gastón
Baquero, Cintio Vitier, Fina García and Eliseo Diego Murraz arises in Cuba. The poetics
of these writers shows another dimension of the circum-Caribbean aesthetic, revealed by
an extreme baroque style, large and variegated metaphors, and deep reflections on life in
Havana and the Cuban identity. In the Dominican Republic “Sorprendible Poetry“ with
poets like Rafael Antonio Henriquez, Flankin Menesses Birgos, and Freddy Arce emerges
at this time. In Puerto Rico we have a poet like Francisco Matos Paoli, who writes between
secrecy and introspection, criollismo and the world around him.
Nicaraguan literature has largely ignored the culture of the Caribbean or the
Atlantic Coast, as it is called in Nicaragua. There is little contact between the two worlds
and still today there is not a road that directly communicate both sectors. Maria Roof’s
article in this issue, is a big step to disseminate the rich literature that has occurred in the
Nicaraguan Caribbean. Among the few texts that have previously explored this world we
must mention the novel by Alberto Ordonez Arguello, Ebano. Novel about the Nicaraguan
Atlantic Coast (1954). But really, we had to wait until the appearance of Lizandro Chavez
Alfaro, born in Bluefields in 1929, and his novel Columpio al aire (1999) to have a story
that allows us to see life in Bluefields and in the Nicaraguan Caribbean. In this issue we
include a story by Nicaraguan writer Alejandro Bravo and a selection of poems from the
coast by the Nicaraguan poet and critic Carlos Castro Jo.
The literature of Costa Rica, like that of Nicaragua, has been developed without
giving much importance to the Caribbean coast. Most mentions of that part of the
country were accidental and almost no writer had bothered to explore the roots and
culture of Costa Ricans of African descent. Quince Duncan, born in 1940, is perhaps the
first Costa Rican black writer who writes about the life and culture of Limón. From his
short story “A song at dawn” (1970) Duncan has developed an extensive body of work,
which tells the life and the difficult conditions of the Caribbean population in Costa Rica.
Duncan has not only written novels such as Hombres curtidos (1971), Los cuatro espejos (1973),
La paz del pueblo (1978), y Final de calle (1980), but has also theorized about the condition
of Afro-descendants in essays like “The black in Costa Rica“ (1972) written in
collaboration with Carlos Melendez, and “The black in the Costa Rican literature” (1975).
In this issue we include an article by Silvia E. Solano on Quince Duncan’s The Four Mirrors.
Recently, the most active writer of African descent in Costa Rica is Shirley Campbell Bar.
In this issue we include three poems by her, including her famous “Absolutely black”
poem, in addition to an extensive article on her work written by Silvia E. Solano and Jorge
Ramirez Caro. Anacristina Rossi is the Costa Rican novelist who has been most
concerned in recent years to rescue the life and culture of Limón, especially in his novels
Limón Blues (2002) and Limón Reggae (2007).
In Panama the situation has been similar. The most famous writers of Panama
just have not dealt with the situation of people of African descent, although because of
the existence of the canal, and the proximity between the two coasts, the Caribbean
presence in the country is almost inescapable. 50% of the population in Panama has
African ancestry, although 80% of the population declare themselves to be mestizo. As
quoted before, this situation has recently been studied by Sonja Stephenson Watson in
The Politics of Race in Panama (2014). However, it was not until 1950 that a generation of
writers write about the life and condition of the Panamanian Caribbean. Consuelo Tomás
is a poet, novelist, and radio and TV host who has developed a voice based on
Panamanian culture oriented to the Caribbean and to social justice, and Carlos “Cubena”
William Wilson has developed a valuable work both in verse and prose. The diversity of
influences in Panama is very large and there is a very important Asian population. Carlos
Francisco Changmarín is the best example of a writer of Chinese descent, whose work
we find a critique of discrimination and invisibility of the poor Chinese in Panama.
In Honduras the Caribbean has more presence than in the other Central American
countries, partly due to the fact that Honduras has a Caribbean coast populated with
major cities such as San Pedro de Sula, Puerto Cortes, La Ceiba and Trujillo. A writer as
Ramón Amaya Amador in 1950 published the novel Green Prison, which recounts the
difficulties of banana workers in Honduras, contributing greatly to the formation of the
circum-Caribbean poetry we study in this issue. Amaya also left unpublished a novel titled
With the same horseshoe on the raid in the Mosquitia in the seventeenth century, and the
drama Black Death. Roberto Sosa is the most important poet of the second half of the
twentieth century. His work, of great social content, shows an enormous poetic sensibility
although we do not necessarily identify his work with a circum-Caribbean poetic. His
book of poems The Poors House won the Casa de las Americas Award in 1969. Julio
Escoto is perhaps the most important contemporary narrator of Honduras. His work
draws on indigenous myths, social problems and also makes use of postmodernist games.
Madrugada, King of dawn (1993) is a good example.
In Belize, the situation is different for several reasons. Belize is a country newly
independent (1981), with an English tradition for having belonged to the British Empire
for many years, and with a great mix of languages since besides English, Spanish, Creole,
Maya and Garifuna are spoken. One of its first writers was James Sullivan Martinez who
published in the 1920 a collection of poems titled Caribbean Jingles. John Alexander Walter
is another writer of the mid-twentieth century who published novels such as Boss of
Dandriga and Cry Among The Rainclouds. Leo Bradley is the most prolific authors of that
era, best known for his book Belize Flavor. Among contemporary writers we can mention
Zee Edgell who has published the novels Beka Lamb (1982) and Festival of San Joaquin
(2007). Glen Godfrey with his novel The Sinner's Bossanova (1987), and Felicia Hernandez
who writes in English and has published three novels and a book of short stories. Some
writers who write in Spanish in Belize are Amado Chan and David Ruiz Puga, author of
the novel Got Saif de Cuin (1995).
In Mexico there has also been an effort to deny the presence of Afro-Caribbean
poetry and silence it in their culture. Galadriel Mehera Gerardo has demonstrated this
attitude in three Mexican intellectuals in his article in volume 30 of this journal. The
Yucatan peninsula offers an important window for Mexico to the Caribbean, and Merida
has historically been a port of entry of products, people, and cultural elements. It is
therefore unthinkable that Mexico does not have a strong Caribbean influence or made
contributions to the circum-Caribbean poetry. The anthology of A. Torres Diaz and Israel
Reyes Larrea, Alma cimarrona (1999) collects anonymous and popular poems by afro-
Mexicans as well as poems by Francisco J. Zarate Arango, Alvaro Carrillo, Joaquin
Alvarez Añorve and Fidencio Escamilla, but Mexican intellectuals are hard pressed to
come up with the name of a single black Mexican writer.
Cuba has been in the second half of the twentieth century one of the main sources
of the great writers of the Caribbean and has been at the forefront of the circum-
Caribbean poetry. The imprint left by the work of Alejo Carpentier and Severo Sarduy,
was then transformed into authentic and wonderful poetry by Nicolas Guillen and Nancy
Morejón. In this issue we include poems by Cuban writers Caridad Atencio, Rito Ramón
Aroche, Reynaldo Garcia Blanco, and the Cuban-American Achy Obejas.
Towards the end of the twentieth century Caribbean writers production increases
exponentially and the quality of the works reaches stellar levels. We will not make a catalog
of authors or writers since that is unnecessary. There are many anthologies and specialized
studies that offer that. In Puerto Rico the work of Mayra Santos-Febres and Yolanda
Arroyo Pizarro are examples of this quality and importance (see the article by Casella
Zaira Rivera in number 30 of the CRR). The complexity of circum-Caribbean culture
today combines the work of Derek Walcott with Guillermo Cabrera Infante, V.S. Naipaul
and Gabriel García Márquez, Jamaica Kincaid and Ana Lydia Vega. The mobility of
circum-Caribbean writers makes chronicling the literature statically, by countries,
ineffectual, since this does not account for the complexity of the diasporic phenomenon
that exists. The Dominican Republic has produced writers of the stature of Juan Bosh,
one of the best storytellers of the continent, or Marcio Veloz Maggiolo, prolific and
versatile writer, author of over 30 books. However the best known writers of Dominican
origin at this time are those who have emigrated to the United States and have excelled
mostly writing in English. Julia Alvarez became famous with her novel How the Garcia
Girls Lost Their Accent (1991) whose theme is the adaptation of a Dominican to American
culture. Alvarez then returned to Dominican themes and In the Time of the Butterflies (1994).
The other paradigmatic case is Junot Diaz, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). Fernando Valerio-Holguín writes a lucid article in this
issue about Junot Díaz in this issue of the CRR. Loida Maritza Perez also addresses the
issue in her novel Geographies of Home (1999). To demonstrate the intellectual breadth of
the Dominican Fernando Valerio-Holguín, teacher, critic, poet and storyteller, we include
three of his poems. Finally we also include a story of Sophie Mariñez, born in France,
raised in the Dominican Republic, and currently residing in New York.
The transnational character, transgender and postmodern of the Caribbean can
be seen in the articles by Kathleen Gysselle and Dawn Duke, both included in this
number. The vitality, diversity and richness of the circum-Caribbean poetry as expressed
in their literature is impossible to grasp in one volume. We hope that this selection will
serve as an example.
la Poesía, a spare, minimalist, modernist, and beautiful, even haunting outdoor garden
museum to Poesía with monuments erected to individual poets and poems. Jana and her
husband passed between steel monuments engraved with poetic lines from “Soneto para
Morir,” “Los Nahoas en Nicaragua,” “Canto de guerra de los cosas,” “Perfil,” “El Paraiso
Recobrado,” “No Puede,” “Ventana,” and other poems. They walked between
bougainvillea and hibiscus bushes through framed steel busts of poets—Claribel Alegría,
Enrique Fernández Morales, Francisco Pérez Estrada, Joaquín Pasos, Ernesto Cardenal,
Carlos Martinez Rivas, and Manolo Cuadra—a labyrinthine and aesthetic map of Spanish-
language poetry in the Americas.
In mirrored side-by-side monuments, Jana read Claribel Alegría’s poetic line “No puede
conmigo la tristeza la arrastro hacia la vida y se evapora,” (“No, I cannot go with sadness, I
drag it into life and it evaporates”), and pass the spare beautiful face (cast in steel) of the still-
living 91 year-old poetess (born of Nicaraguan and Salvadoran parents from Estelí,
Nicaragua) who delivered this poetic line into being.
And Jana was suffused with a joy that banished all sadness with two words: “No puede”
(“No it cannot”).
Alongside Alegría, other Nica poets stood in monumental relief: Morales, Estrada, Pasos,
Cardenal, Rivas, and Cuadra. Among these Nicaraguan poets were not to be found a José
Martí or a C.L.R. James or a V.S. Naipaul or Derek Walcott or a Patrick Chamoiseau or
a Édouard Glissant or a Maryse Condé or a Jamaica Kincaid or a Kamau Brathwaite. Jana
wandered to the edge of Malecon de Granada, where land gives way to the waters of Lake
Nicaragua, and there I [she?] found the Great Patron of Nicaraguan national poetry, none
other than Rubén Darío.
While in Granada, Jana also interviewed poet and scholar Alvaro José Rivas Gomez, who
teaches at Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University (BICU) in Bluefields, Nicaragua on
the eastern Antillean side and who researches African Nicaraguan literatures and cultures,
and Afro-Nica poet Fernandez López Gutiérrez, whose family immigrated from Jamaica,
and historian and independent scholar Rolando Ernesto Tellez. During this vibrant
conversation, we exchanged ideas about the African diasporic presences, including poetic
ones, in the Americas, in our América, from the southeastern United States, particularly
the Gulf of México states that border on the Caribbean Sea, throughout the Caribbean
archipelago, to the Atlantic and Caribbean coasts of Central America and northern South
America, especially Venezuela and Colombia. What was the relationship between José
Martí and Rubén Darío? Did you read Louise Bennett, Aimé Césaire, or Nicolás Guillén
as part of your poetic or literary education? Have Caribbean poets like Kamau Brathwaite,
Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean “Binta” Breeze, Beryl Gilroy, Derek Walcott, or Édouard
Glissant ever attended the Granada Poetry Festival? What we all discovered, slowly,
lamentably, was that this vibrant poetic lineage from the Caribbean archipelago to Central
America seemed to have died (or at least have been prematurely aborted) with Martí and
Darío and their generation. This special issue on Circum-Caribeean Poetics is, then, an
audacious effort to revive and revitalize that poetic lines and circuits of literary exchange,
which is simultaneously both poetic and political.
Jana Braziel
Miami University
T
as el brutal asesinato y desmembramiento violento en 1806 de Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, quien era considera un bruto y revolucionario violento contra las
fuerzas coloniales francesas de Napoleón en Saint Domingue,
históricamente destinada a convertirse en Ayiti al final de la revolución
haitiana (1790-1804)1, la nueva "República negra" lamentablemente libró una guerra
1 Sobre los legados de la Revolución Haitiana en las Américas, ver todas las referencias siguientes:
David Geggus, El impacto de la revolución de Haití en el Mundo Atlántico (Columbia, Carolina del Sur:
Universidad de Carolina del Sur Press, 2002); David Geggus y Norman Fiering, editores, El mundo de la
revolución de Haití. (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009); Geggus, La revolución de Haití: Una
historia documental (Nueva York: Hackett Publishing, 2014); Laurent Dubois, una colonia de ciudadanos:
Revolución y el Esclavo Emancipación en el Caribe francés, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill: Universidad de
Carolina del Norte Press, 2004); Laurent Dubois y John D. Garrigus, revolución de los esclavos en el Caribe,
1789-1804: Una breve historia de Documentos (Nueva York:. Bedford / St Martin de 2006); Laurent
Dubois y Julius S. Scott, eds. Orígenes del Atlántico Negro (Nueva York y Londres: Routledge, 2009);
Dubois, vengadores del Nuevo Mundo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Jeremy D.
Popkin, Orientación revolución racial: testimonios de la revolución de Haití (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2008); Popkin, que todos ustedes son libres: La revolución haitiana y la abolición de la
esclavitud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Popkin, una historia sucinta de la revolución de
Haití (Londres y Nueva York: Wiley / Blackwell Publishers, 2011); y Gerald Horne, Enfrentamiento Negro
jacobinos: La EE.UU., la revolución de Haití, y los orígenes de la República Dominicana (Nueva York:
Monthly Review Press, 2015). A pesar de la importación evidente de la revolución de Haití en las Américas
y en el mundo atlántico más grande, su historia fue hasta la vuelta poscolonial infravalorado y silenciado
dentro de los estudios históricos, como Michel-Rolph Trouillot argumenta persuasivamente en el
silenciamiento del pasado: la energía y la producción de la historia (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2005, 2015).
Véase el capítulo tres, "Una Historia Unthinkable" (70-107). Como escribe Trouillot, la revolución de Haití
"entró en la historia con la peculiar característica de ser impensable incluso como sucedió" (73); y otras
razones que "ni un solo gran libro, ni siquiera un aumento sustancial en los estudios de resistencia esclava
va a descubrir plenamente el silencio que rodea a la revolución de Haití. Para el silenciamiento de que la
24 NICASIO URBINA AND JANA BRAZIEL
interna, la guerra civil, y rivalidades militares competían por el poder presidencial o real:
Alexandre Pétion fue elegido presidente de la República de Haití sur en 1806, sin
embargo, se le opuso en el norte nada menos que el revolucionario y tival "hasta la
muerte" Henri Christophe, conocido más tarde a la posteridad como Roi Christophe, que
presidió el norte en un tiempo muy dividido República de Haití. Aunque Pétion murió de
fiebre amarilla en 1818 y Christophe encontró su propia muerte por suicidio, considerado
históricamente sospechoso por muchos, en 1820, sin embargo, la dividida República de
Haití se convirtió (en 1815) en el isla santuario, puerto seguro, y refugio hemisférico para
otro revolucionario americano, el joven Simón Bolívar. Siete años después de que el líder
militar inspirado en la Ilustración hizo la guerra contra los colonialistas españoles en 1808,
en la sierra norte y terrenos costeros de lo que hoy es el continente de América del Sur,
Bolívar logró ventaja militar y política en 1814 durante el caos producido por la guerra
peninsular (1807-1814), en sí misma un efecto secundario de las guerras napoleónicas
(1803-1815) que asolaban Europa y sus colonias en las Américas, y, finalmente, trece años
más tarde, ganada con sangre, declaró la independencia de la República de la Gran
Colombia (hoy en día Colombia, Venezuela, el norte de Perú, Ecuador, Panamá, el oeste
de Guyana, y el noroeste de Brasil).2 Inspirado por la Revolución de Haití y la Revolución
de Bolívar, armado en su lucha por una Revolución Cubana en los años 1880 y 1890, y
muriendo en el campo de batalla en 1895, el insurrecto, poeta revolucionario, e intelectual
público José Martí enfiló su propia pluma y su espada ¡hacia una Cuba libre e
independiente!3
En 1891, cuatro años antes de su muerte en el campo de batalla, Martí lanzó un
grito intelectual de batalla a "¡Estos Hijos de Nuestra América!" para oponerse a los "estos
desertores que piden fusil en los Ejércitos de la América del Norte, que ahoga en sangre
revolución tiene menos que ver con Haití o la esclavitud de lo que tiene que ver con el Oeste "(106). En el
párrafo final de este capítulo, Trouillot tanto, concluye que el "silenciamiento de la revolución de Haití es
solamente un capítulo dentro de una narrativa de dominación global" (107).
2 En Simón Bolívar y la revolución de la Gran Colombia de Bolívar, ver todas las características
siguientes: John Lynch, Simón Bolívar: A Life (New Haven y Londres: Yale University Press, 2006); Jeremy
Adelman, la soberanía y la revolución en el Atlántico ibérico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007,
2009); Wim Klooster, Las revoluciones en el mundo atlántico: Historia Comparada (Nueva York: New
York University Press, 2009); y Marie Arana, Bolívar: Americana Libertador (Nueva York: Simon &
Schuster, 2013). Para los textos completos de los 1827 Proclamas de Francisco José de Paula Santander y
Omaña y Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, conocido por la posteridad como
Simón Bolívar, véase el conflicto político en la Gran Colombia: 1827 Proclamas de Santander y Bolívar
(Amazon Digital Services, 2015).
3 Ver Lillian Guerra de El mito de José Martí: conflicto Nacionalismos en principios del siglo XX
Cuba (Chapel Hill: Universidad de Carolina del Norte Press, 2005) y de Alfred J. López José Martí: Una
vida revolucionaria (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014) . Véase también José Martí, en el monstruo:
Las escrituras en los Estados Unidos de América y el imperialismo (Nueva York: Monthly Review Press
Títulos Classic, 1975) y Jeffrey Belnap y Raúl Fernández, eds. (Durham y Londres: Duke University Press
Nueva Serie Americanistas, 1998) Desde Nacional de Estudios Hemisféricos culturales: de José Martí
Nuestra América.
una sus indios" para ellos mismos tomar las armas, incluyendo "las armas del juicio, que
vencen a las otras "( las armas de la mente, que vencen a todas las demás) y fortalezas de
formas o "trincheras de ideas" (barricadas de ideas), que son más valiosas que las
"trincheras de piedra" (barricadas de piedras).4 Durante el mismo año de 1891, Martí
publicó sus Versos sencillos, su último libro de poemas que aparecería en prensa, y el poema
"Yo soy un hombre sincero" defendió la simple esclavo que heredaría la tierra y el suelo
cubano, el ex esclavo que se convierte en la armada revolucionaria.5 El protagonista
poético declara:
Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma,
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma.
El verso clave de Martí, "Yo soy un hombre sincero" (escrito en 1891) en última instancia
se convirtió en la tercera línea en la canción estelar de Cuba "Guantanamera", siguiendo
el estribillo de apertura "Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera". Sin embargo, tras la
conclusión de la guerra entre Estados Unidos y España en 1898, los colonialistas
españoles habían sido duramente derrotado por los imperialistas de EEUU, armados y
protegidos con la Doctrina Monroe de 1823, un amo cambiaba por otro, y ¡Cuba ! no
liberada, permaneció bajo el dominio externo en 1903, tras la firma y la ratificación de la
Enmienda Platt en 1901. Los Estados Unidos tomaron el control de la bahía de
Guantánamo como una base naval de Estados Unidos y permanece allí para fines
históricos nefastos en la actualidad. Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera.
4 José Martí, Nuestra América (Barcelona: Linkgua ediciones, S.L., 2007). First published in La
Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York - 10 de enero de l891 and published later in January 1891 in El partido liberal
- México - 30 de enero de 1891. Full Spanish text also archived online at Cuidad Seva: Casa digital del escritor
Luis López Nieves <http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/otros/nuestra_america.htm>.
5 José Martí, Versos sencillos, edited by Miguel Ángel García-Sánchez (CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform, 2012). See also the bilingual edition: Versos sencillos: A Dual Language Edition, edited
and translated by Pete Seeger and Ann Fountain (McFarland Publishers, 2005).
(Si hubieras escuchado con atención, Tío Sam, Yanqui del Norte, quizá
habrías oído los sonidos subterráneos de la revolución sofocada a fuego
lento bajo la superficie melódica del sol, el mar, la salsa, el merengue, los
puros cubanos, el ron de La Habana, la United Fruit, décadas y casi cinco
años y medio de compra y venta de turista estadounidense de la isla ... de
una Revolución que en última instancia tuvo éxito en 1959 en la región de
Oriente, el hogar de Guantánamo, la música reproducida en ... la música
suena en ...)
Con música compuesta por José Fernández (ya en la década de 1920), letras adaptadas del
poema de Martí por Julián Orbón, y la famosa grabación (en el álbum Brava) de Celia
Cruz en 1967, la canción icónica "Guantanamera", la defensa de la joven campesina de
Guantánamo, se convirtió en el himno de batalla definitivo para toda una generación de
exiliados Cubano patrióticos. En Cuba, por Cubanos, Martí era, tanto como Castro y el
Che, hijo adoptado, Patrón y Patria. Pero más allá de las fronteras de Cuba, e incluso más
allá de los innumerables sitios dispersos de Cubanos en la diáspora, José Martí también
redefinió las Américas -Nuestra América-precisamente en el momento en que los EE.UU.
estaba flexionando sus músculos imperiales en el hemisferio. Por eso la influencia de Martí
es vasta, extensa y amplia, no sólo a través de las Antillas y del Caribe, sino también en
toda América Latina.6
Los historiadores de las revueltas de la trata de esclavos han señalado desde hace
tiempo los patrones sobresalientes de continuidad y discontinuidad en las Américas:
donde el comercio trasatlántico de esclavos desarraigados de África, y la creación de la
monumental diáspora africana, tuvo enredada en la raíz nudosa de las rutas transatlánticas
los innumerables idiomas, religiones, culturas, costumbres y alimentos de África: en
Puerto España, San Juan, Santo Domingo y Santiago de Cuba, Belice City, Bluefields,
Puerto Limón, Colón y Cartagena, la diáspora africana define las Américas. Lo que Paul
Gilroy define como el "Negro del Atlántico" 7y lo que Joseph Roach redefinió como el
"circum-Atlántico",8 fueron las múltiples tradiciones creadas por África en América. Las
6 Esther Allen, ed. José Martí: Selected Writings (New York: Penguin Classics, 2002).
7 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
1993).
8 Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia UP, 1996).
Américas desde finales del XXI hasta finales del siglo XIX se define por las colonias
europeas, los esclavos africanos, las economías de plantación de caña de azúcar, tabaco,
café, chocolate, especias y otros productos de esclavos, y las profundas divisiones sociales,
políticas y económicas que dividían a las poblaciones americanas en ciudadanos libres y
esclavos en propiedad, humanos e independientes o inhumanas y consolidados. La
insurrección armada, las revueltas de esclavos, y las luchas de anticoloniales y anti-
imperiales revolucionarios Gonaïves y Port-au-Prince, Haití en el siglo XVIII para Santo
Domingo, Caracas y Bogotá, en el siglo XIX y en Santiago y La Habana, Cuba, y Managua,
Nicaragua en el siglo XX, también han sido un sello distintivo de las Américas, como
esclavos que trataron de ser hombres y mujeres libres.9 Sitios dispersos de la diáspora
africana en las Américas tienen (a causa de esta rica fertilización cruzada de Europa,
África, América indígena, y las influencias posteriores a la abolición de Asia como
sirvientes de China y el subcontinente indio, fueron llevados a la región). Como
consecuencia, estas zonas compartían similitudes culturales entre, por ejemplo, Shangó
en Puerto España, Trinidad, obeah en Kingston, Jamaica, el vudú en Cap-Haitien, Haití,
la santería en Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, y el Candomblé en Salvador y Bahía, en Brasil. Lo
mismo es cierto para el arte, la música, la danza, el rendimiento y actuaciones rituales a lo
largo de las Américas que se han definido de forma indeleble por la presencia de la
diáspora africana.10 Como Joseph Roach escribe en " memoria circum-Atlántica", parte
del capítulo introductorio de las Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996): "A
medida que emergió de las economías revolucionadas de finales del siglo XVII, este
mundo se parecía a un vórtice en la que los productos básicos y las prácticas culturales
cambian de manos muchas veces. El producto más revolucionario en esta economía era
9 Además de los títulos académicos sobre la Revolución haitiana y la Revolución Bolívar, ha hecho
referencia anteriormente, consulta la siguiente: Walter LaFeber, inevitables revoluciones: los Estados
Unidos en América Central (Nueva York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1993); Matilde Zimmermann, sandinista:
Carlos Fonseca y la Revolución de Nicaragua (Durham y Londres: Duke University Press, 2001); Stephen
Kinzer, Sangre de Hermanos: La vida y la guerra en Nicaragua (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2007); Ada Ferrer, Insurgente Cuba: Raza, Nación y Revolución, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill y Londres:
Universidad de Carolina del Norte Press, 1999); Ferrer, de Libertad Espejo: Cuba y Haití en la era de la
revolución (Cambridge University Press, 2014); Marifeli Pérez-Stable, La Revolución Cubana: Origins, golf,
y Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2011; 3ª edición); Gilbert M. Joseph y Greg Grandin, eds. Un siglo de
Revolución: insurgente y contrainsurgente la violencia durante la Guerra Fría largo de América Latina
(Durham y Londres: Duke University Press, 2010); Lillian Guerra, Visiones del poder en Cuba: Revolución,
la redención y la Resistencia, 1959-1971 (Chapel Hill y Londres: Universidad de Carolina del Norte Press,
2014); y Aviva Chomsky, Una historia de la Revolución Cubana (Londres y Nueva York: Wiley / Blackwell
Publishers, 2015).
10 Leer, por ejemplo, de Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo Negro cosmopolitismo: conciencia racial y la
identidad de la delincuencia en las Américas del siglo diecinueve (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania,
2005). Ver también Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo y recogida de Mamadou Diouf editado Ritmos del Mundo
Afro-Atlántico: Los rituales y recuerdos (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2010). Por último, consulta
Ifeoma C. K. Archivo de Voces brillantes intelectuales de Nwankwo de Nuestra América, Universidad de
Vanderbilt <http://www.voicesamerica.org/>.
la carne humana, y no sólo por el trabajo esclavo que produce enormes cantidades de las
sustancias adictivas (azúcar, café, tabaco, y, las más insidiosas, azúcar y chocolate en
combinación) que transformaron la economía mundial y financiaron la revolución
industrial", citando directamente a Sidney Mintz en Dulzura y energía: El lugar del azúcar en
Historia moderna (1985).11 Para Roach, "el concepto de un mundo circum-Atlántico (a
diferencia de un transatlántico) insiste en la importancia de las historias de la diáspora y
el genocidio de África y las Américas, del Norte y del Sur, en la creación de la cultura de
la modernidad. En este sentido, el Nuevo Mundo no fue descubierto en el Caribe, pero
uno se inventó realmente allí". Nosotros diríamos más. El Nuevo Mundo fue descubierto
en el Caribe y se inventó allí.
Las historias compartidas o comunes de la esclavitud, el colonialismo, la
revolución y la lucha anticolonial de finales del XVI a finales del siglo XIX, se volvieron
más pronunciados en la migración circum-Caribe del siglo XX, como migrantes
económicos y trabajadores trasladados de isla en isla, desde las islas al istmo. 12
Trabajadores de la caña de Haití se trasladaron a trabajabar en los campos de caña en la
República Dominicana y en Cuba, y de las islas de las Antillas emigraron a Panamá a
finales de los siglos XIX y XX para construir el primer ferrocarril trans-ístmico, y más
tarde el gran Canal de Panamá. Casi el 15% de la población panameña, de hecho, son
afro-panameños, algunos descendientes de esclavos traídos a la región del istmo, pero una
proporción significativa descendientes directos de los inmigrantes antillanos de las islas
del Caribe (especialmente de Trinidad y Tobago, Martinica, Guadalupe , Barbados y
Jamaica) que ahora viven en todo el país. Migrantes económicos Caribes que viajaron por
primera vez a Panamá en la década de 1840 como consecuencia de la fiebre del oro, un
número más grande que llega en 1844, después de trabajar en la construcción del
ferrocarril de Panamá en 1850; olas posteriores de inmigrantes económicos de las Indias
Occidentales (de muchas islas a través del archipiélago) viajó a Panamá con el fin de
construir el Canal de Panamá (primero por los franceses, un esfuerzo fallido, y más tarde
para los americanos y el tío Sam de 1904-1914). La Sociedad de Amigos del Museo
afroantillano de Panamá (SAMAAP), popularmente conocido como el Museo Afro-
caribeño de Panamá, documenta estas presencias de antillanos en Panamá, al igual que el
Museo del Canal Interoceánico de Panamá, en la Zona del Canal de Panamá. Legados
históricos también dejan huellas literarias discernibles: las presencias migratorias de
antillanos en Panamá han dejado huellas literarias palpables como bien documenta Sonja
Watson en The Politics of Race in Panama: Afro-Hispanic and West Indian Literary Discourses of
11 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking Press,
1985).
12 Popular histories include David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama
Canal, 1870-1914 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) and Matthew Parker’s Panama Fever: The Epic Story
of the Building of the Panama Canal (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).
Contention (2014)13 y en la colección editada por Luis Wong Vega, Rapsodia Antillana:
Selección de Poesía Bilingüe Afro-Antillana de Panamá (2013),14 que antologiza cuarenta poetas
afro-panameños. Aún así, nos preguntábamos, ¿cuáles fueron las huellas literarias y
poéticas discernibles en toda América Central? Tendríamos que encontrar un circuncaribe
circum-navegable y maprable? Y uno definible por una poética circuncaribe?
Otras cuestiones poéticas y políticas persistieron, particularmente a lo largo de las
líneas de legados de Martí en el Caribe y en las Américas: el legado poético, filosófico,
revolucionario de Martí ha definido de manera incontrovertible las Américas desde finales
del siglo XIX y con fuerza en el siglo XXI. Martí inspiró a generaciones de poetas,
escritores y revolucionarios de Haití y Cuba, Nicaragua, Panamá y Colombia, al igual que
él mismo fue inspirado por Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe, Pétion y Bolívar. Pero,
¿dónde exactamente fueron los legados hemisféricos y americanos que deja Martí el
luchador revolucionario, el ensayista en prosa, el periodista exiliado, el orador en el campo
de batalla, el soldado armado, y el poeta lírico? Para el hombre común o la mujer, y no
sólo el intelectual, académico, estadista y poeta, tener el legado de Martí, y por medio de
él, los legados de América anterior y profundamente entrelazados de Toussaint,
Dessalines, Christophe, Pétion y Bolívar marcado en forma tan indeleble en la conciencia
colectiva e inconsciente colectivo? Y que por lo tanto son legibles y discernibles para el
público en general en América Central y América del Sur, como en las Antillas o el Caribe?
¿Quién iba a saber el legado de Martí y más allá de él otros escritores e intelectuales del
Caribe y Centroamérica?
La literatura del circum-Caribe que estamos tratando de ilustrar en este número,
es una literatura muy rica, con una gran diversidad de influencias y creada por una gran
variedad de individuos de diferentes razas, lenguas y tradiciones culturales. Esto hace a la
cultura del Caribe una de las más variadas, vitales y únicas del mundo. Las literaturas del
circum-Caribe han sido creadas por blancos de origen hispánico, por afro-descendientes,
por personas de origen francés, holandés, inglés, y por descendientes de orientales
principalmente chinos. La labor literaria se ha llevado a cabo en español e inglés, pero
también en francés y creole, en holandés y papiamento, en miskito y otras lenguas
indígenas de la cuenca Caribe centroamericana. Es por tanto muy difícil hablar y escribir
de la literatura del circum-Caribe en términos unitarios, pero en las siguientes páginas
trataremos de hacer un panorama de estas literaturas para contextualizar los artículos y
textos que a continuación presentamos.
Si bien es cierto que desde el siglo XVI se publica diversos tipos de textos en el
Caribe, creemos que podemos usar finales del siglo XVIII y mediados del XIX como
origen de las literaturaqs del circum-Caribe. Los textos literarios más tempranos del
13 Sonja S. Watson, The Politics of Race in Panama: Afro-Hispanic and West Indian Literary Discourses of
Caribe anglófono son historias naturales, como las de Griffith Hughes, Natural History of
Barbadoes (1750), la novela de William Earles Obi; o the History of Three-Fingered Jack (1800),
o narrativas de esclavos como The History of Mary Prince (1831). En 1839 en Cuba, Juan
Francisco Manzano escribe en Cuba, Autobiografía de un esclavo, texto que por primera vez
pone de relieve la vida de un esclavo y da testimonio de sí por medio de la escritura.
Aunque el libro no llegó a publicarse hasta 1937, proponemos Autobiografía de un esclavo
como el texto seminal de la literatura circum-caribeña porque marca la toma de conciencia
del afro-descendiente en el Caribe y su instalación como autor de un texto. Cuatro años
más tarde se da con la publicación de la novela Sab (1841) de Gertrudis Gómez de
Avellaneda. En el contexto de romanticismo literario, cuando los países del continente ya
eran independientes de España, y en medio del gran debate contra la esclavitud de los
afro-descendientes, esta novela plantea el amor entre un esclavo y una mujer blanca hija
del amo. Los problemas sociales que ventila esta novela, así como la intensidad con que
se narran los eventos y sentimientos, hacen de Sab también punto de partida de las
literaturas circum-caribeñas. En República Dominicana es importante señalar la
publicación de la novela Enriquillo (1882) de Manuel de Jesús Galván, que narra la historia
de amor entre un indígena y una mestiza. Estas novelas de amor que Doris Sommer ha
llamada “foundational romances” metaforizan el desarrollo identitario de la nación en la
unión de personas que por prejuicios racistas, su unión no era tolerada por la sociedad.
En Puerto Rico el drama La Cuarterona (1867) de Alejandro Tapia y Rivera presenta la
situación de la mulata sexualizada y víctima de los prejuicios sociales de la época e inicia
el diálogo de las literaturas circum-caribeñas.
Como ya se dijo antes, la obra de José Martí es, a finales del siglo XIX, el
monumento mayor de la literatura circum-caribeña. No solamente su poesía y su
narrativa, sino su amplia obra en prosa, sirven como piedra angular de la identidad
hispanoamericana y la independencia de Cuba. Un ensayo como “Nuestra América”
(1891) es una declaración de independencia política y cultural para todo el continente y
uno de los ensayos más importantes de la literatura hispanoamericana. Según Julio Ramos,
en su libro Desencuentros de la modernidad, “El discurso martiano, nuevamente, se sitúa ante
la fragmentación e intenta condensar lo disperso. Su autoridad –ligada, según veremos, a
los dispositivos compensatorios de una mirada reintegradora- se basa también en una
proyección del porvenir, en una teleología que postula la superación definitiva de la
fragmentación: la redención última de una América orgánica, purificada de las manchas
que opacaban su plenitud originaria” (232).
En el caribe francófono la vida cultural del siglo XIX fue bastante rica, pero en
gran medida era una literatura francófila, que miraba más hacia Francia que hacia Haití.
El exilio era -y sigue siendo- uno de los principales temas en la literatura haitiana. En 1804
se estrena uno de los principales dramas de la literatura de Haití, L´Haïtiene expatrié de P.
Fligneau. Para 1829 se funda la revista L´Abeille haïtienne, y en la segunda mitad del siglo
XIX surgen escritores como Antoine Dupré, Juste Chanlatte, and François-Romain
Lhérisson. Hay que esperar hasta la década de 1940 para encontrar escritores de verdad
Eduardo Blanco, otros importantes escritores venezolanos con fuerte influencia del
Caribe son Rómulo Gallegos, Salvador Garmendia, y el ya mencionado Arturo Uslar
Pietri.
En Colombia la presencia de los afro-descendientes ha sido más reconocida que
en otros países, pero también ha sido silenciada tanto en la historia como en la literatura.
La vitalidad de la producción literaria de la costa Caribe colombiana hace imposible no
ver las múltiples contribuciones, desde la obra de Manuel Zapata Olivella hasta Gabriel
García Márquez. Alain Lawo-Sukam historia el concepto de negritud en la literatura afro-
colombiana en su artículo contenido en el número 30 de esta revista. Las contribuciones
a la poética circum-caribeña de escritores como Arnoldo Palacios o Alfredo Vanin
Romero, así como la de muchísimos escritores como Germán Espinoza, Oscar Collazos
o Régulo Ahumada Zurbarán, es de vital importancia tanto para la literatura colombiana
como para la de todo el continente.
A principios del siglo XX el Modernismo marca la literatura de los países
hispanoamericanos y aparecen autores de gran importancia como el cubano Julián del
Casal, aunque la visión del Caribe no era su principal preocupación. El nicaragüense
Rubén Darío sintió en carne propia la derrota de la guerra entre Estados Unidos y España
e hizo de ella un tema de gran importancia en sus artículos. También escribió en Cuba el
poema “La negra Dominga” que preconiza la poesía negra del Caribe, pero el Caribe no
está en el centro de su imaginario cultural. Hay que esperar hasta poetas como Luis Palés
Matos (Puerto Rico 1898-1959) para que la poética antillana se desarrolle plenamente en
poemas como los de Tuntún de pasa y grifería (1937). Por esa época, la puertorriqueña Julia
de Burgos, nacida en 1914, pone de relieve la importancia de la condición política de
Puerto Rico y el nacionalismo puertorriqueño se convierte en tema de su literatura. Para
más información sobre este tema véase el artículo de Sonja Stephenson Watson en el
número 30 de la CRR.
Hacia 1940 surge en Cuba el grupo Orígenes, con escritores como José Lezama
Lima, Gastón Baquero, Cintio Vitier, Fina García Murraz y Eliseo Diego. La poética de
estos escritores muestra otra dimensión de la estética circum-caribeña, que se revela por
medio de un barroquismo extremo, de grandes y abigarradas metáfora, de profundas
reflexiones sobre la vida en La Habana y la cubanidad. En República Dominicana surge
en esta época la “Poesía sorprendible” con poetas como Rafael Antonio Henríquez,
Flankin Menesses Birgos y Freddy Gatón Arce. En Puerto Rico tenemos a un poeta como
Francisco Matos Paoli, quien oscila entre el hermetismo y la introspección, y el criollismo
y el mundo que le rodea.
La literatura nicaragüense ha ignorado en gran medida la cultura del Caribe o la
Costa Atlántica –como se le llama en Nicaragua-. Hay poco contacto entre los dos mundo
y todavía hoy en día no hay una carretera que comunique directamente ambos sectores
del país. El artículo de Maria Roof, en este número, es un gran paso para dar a conocer la
rica literatura que se ha producido en el Caribe nicaragüense. Entre los pocos textos que
han explorado con anterioridad ese mundo debemos mencionar la novela de Alberto
Ordóñez Argüello, Ébano. Novela sobre el Atlántico nicaragüense (1954). Pero en realidad hay
que esperar hasta la aparición de Lizandro Chávez Alfaro, nacido en Bluefields en 1929,
y su novela Columpio al aire (1999) para tener una narración que nos permita ver la vida en
Bluefields y en el Caribe nicaragüense. En este número incluimos un cuento del escritor
nicaragüense Alejandro Bravo y una selección de poemas de la costa realizada por el
poeta y crítico nicaragüense Carlos Castro Jo.
La literatura de Costa Rica, al igual que la de Nicaragua, se ha desarrollado sin
prestar mayor importancia a la costa Caribe. La mayoría de las menciones sobre esa parte
del país eran accidentales y casi ningún escritor se había preocupado por explorar las raíces
y la cultura de los afro-descendientes costarricenses. Hasta Quince Duncan, nacido en
1940, Costa Rica no tiene un escritor negro que escriba sobre la vida y la cultura de Limón.
Desde su cuento “Una canción en la madrugada” (1970) Duncan ha desarrollado una
obra extensa, de calidad, que narra la vida y las condiciones difíciles de la población del
Caribe en Costa Rica. Duncan no sólo ha escrito novelas como Hombres curtidos (1971),
Los cuatro espejos (1973), La paz del pueblo (1978), y Final de calle (1980), sino que también ha
teorizado sobre la condición de los afro-descendientes en ensayos como “El negro en
Costa Rica” (1972) escrito en colaboración con Carlos Meléndez, y “El negro en la
literatura costarricense” (1975). En este número incluimos un artículo de Silvia E. Solano
sobre Los cuatro espejos de Quince Duncan. Recientemente, la escritora afro-descendiente
más activa en Costa Rica es Shirley Campbell Bar. En este número incluimos tres poemas
de ella, incluyendo su famoso poema “Rotundamente negra”, además de un extenso
artículo sobre su obra escrito por Silvia E. Solano y Jorge Ramírez Caro. Anacristina Rossi
es la novelista costarricense que más se ha preocupado en los últimos años por rescatar la
vida y la cultura de Limón, especialmente en sus novelas Limón Blues (2002) y Limón Reggae
(2007).
En Panamá la situación ha sido similar. Los escritores más famosos de Panamá
apenas se han ocupado de la situación de los afro-descendientes, aunque por la existencia
del canal interoceánico, y por la cercanía entre las dos costas, la presencia del Caribe en el
país es casi ineludible. El 50% de la población en Panamá tiene ascendencia africana,
aunque el 80% de la población se declare mestiza. Esta situación ha sido estudiada
recientemente por Sonja Stephenson Watson en The Politics of Race in Panama (2014). Sin
embargo no es hasta la generación de 1950 que encontramos escritores que escriben sobre
la vida y la condición del Caribe panameño. Consuelo Tomás es una poeta, novelista, y
locutora de radio y Tv que ha desarrollado una voz basada en la cultura panameña
inclinada al Caribe y a la justicia social, y Carlos “Cubena” Guillermo Wilson ha
desarrollado una obra valiosa tanto en verso como en prosa. La diversidad de influencias
en Panamá es muy grande y hay una población asiática muy importante. Carlos Francisco
Changmarín es el mejor ejemplo de un escritor de descendencia china, en cuya obra
encontramos una crítica a la discriminación y la invisibilidad de los chinos pobres en
Panamá.
En Honduras el Caribe tiene más presencia que en los otros países del istmo
centroamericano, en parte debido al hecho que Honduras tiene una costa muy amplia y
poblada con ciudades importantes como San Pedro de Sula, Puerto Cortés, La Ceiba y
Trujillo. Un escritor como Ramón Amaya Amador en 1950 publicó la novela Prisión verde,
donde relata las dificultades de los trabajadores de las bananeras en Honduras,
contribuyendo grandemente a la conformación de la poética circum-caribeña que
estudiamos en este número. Amaya también dejó inédita una novela titulada Con la misma
herradura, sobre la incursión en la Mosquitia en el siglo XVII, y el drama Peste negra.
Roberto Sosa es el poeta más importante de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Su obra, de
gran contenido social, demuestra una enorme sensibilidad poética aunque no se
identifique en su obra necesariamente una poética circum-caribeña. Su libro de poemas
Los pobres ganó el Premio Casa las Américas en 1969. Julio Escoto es quizás el narrador
contemporáneo más importante de Honduras. Su obra se nutre de mitos indígenas,
problemas sociales y echa mano también de juegos posmodernos en Madrugada, Rey del
albor (1993).
En Belice la situación es diferente por varias razones. Belice es un país de reciente
independencia (1981), con tradición inglesa por haber pertenecido al Imperio Británico
por muchos años, y con gran mezcla de lenguas ya que además de inglés se habla mucho
español, creole, maya y garífuna. Uno de sus primeros escritores fue James Sullivan
Martinez quien publicó en 1920 una colección de poemas titulada Caribbean Jingles. John
Alexander Walter es otro escritor de mediados de siglo XX que publicó novelas como
Boss of Dandriga y Cry Among Rainclouds. Leo Bradley es el más prolífico de los autores de
esa época, mejor conocido por su libro Belize Flavor. Entre los escritores contemporáneos
que podemos mencionar se encuentra Zee Edgell quien ha publicado las novelas Beka
Lamb (1982), y Festival of San Joaquín (2007). Glen Godfrey con su novela The Sinner´s
Bossanova (1987), y Felicia Hernández quien escribe en inglés y ha publicado tres novelas
y un libro de cuentos. Algunos escritores de Belice que escriben en español son Amado
Chan y David Ruiz Puga, autor de la novela Got saif de Cuin (1995).
En México también ha existido un afán por negar la presencia de afro-
descendientes y silenciar la poética caribeña en su cultura. Galadriel Mehera Gerardo ha
demostrado esta actitud en tres grandes intelectuales mexicanos en su artículo en el
volumen 30 de esta revista. La península de Yucatán ofrece una ventana importante de
México hacia el Caribe, y Mérida ha sido históricamente un puerto de entrada de
productos, personas y elementos culturales. Es por tanto impensable que México no tenga
una alta influencia caribeña y que no haya hecho contribuciones a la poética circum-
caribeña. La antología de A. Torres Díaz e Israel Reyes Larrea, Alma cimarrona (1999)
recoge poemas anónimos y populares, así como poemas de Francisco J. Zarate Arango,
Alvaro Carrillo, Joaquín Alvarez Añorve y Fidencio Escamilla.
Cuba ha sido durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX una de las principales fuentes
de los grandes escritores del Caribe y ha estado a la vanguardia de la poética circum-
caribeña. La impronta que dejó la obra de Alejo Carpentier y Severo Sarduy se transforma
Buscando precisamente esas formas poéticas palpables, trans-americanas, y los rastros del
entorno caribeño, Jana Braziel viajó primero a Panamá en 2014 para y luego ir a Nicaragua
en 2015. Jana estaba buscando intercambios interregionales, históricos, literarios,
culturales y políticos entre el archipiélago del Caribe y los países de América Central que
limitan con el Mar Caribe y el Océano Atlántico. Como amigo y colega, Nicasio Urbina,
oriundo de Nicaragua y Jana Braziel, comprometidos el uno con el otro en un diálogo
vibrante, realizan consultas sobre los contornos de una poética circum-Caribeña. En
Panamá, Jana visitó la Sociedad de Amigos del Museo Afroantillano de Panamá
(SAMAAP), o el Museo Afro-caribeño de Panamá, para documentar estas presencias
antillanas en Panamá, y el Museo Interoceánico del Canal de Panamá en febrero de 2014.
Jana buscó señales del tráfico de esclavos y rastros de los mensajes y vestigios culturales,
históricos y políticos de una poética circum-Caribe en Panamá. En marzo de 2015, Jana
peregrinó a Granada, Nicaragua, ciudad de poetas y anfitriona anual del Festival
Internacional de Poesía de Granada. Jana estaba siguiendo, por supuesto, a Nicasio
Urbina, un amigo cercano y colega, así como miembro fundador del Festival Internacional
de Poesía de Granada, en la búsqueda de una poética circum-caribeña, el tema de este
número especial. Mientras estaba en Granada, Jana caminaba con asombro a través del
Parque de la Poesía, un espacio minimalista, modernista, y hermoso, incluso inquietante,
un museo jardín al aire libre de poesía con monumentos erigidos a los poetas y poemas
individuales. Jana y su marido pasaron entre los monumentos de acero grabado con líneas
poéticas como "Soneto para morir", "Los nahuas en Nicaragua", "Canto de guerra de los
Cosas", "Perfil", "El Paraíso Recobrado", "No Puede", "Ventana" y otros poemas.
Caminaron entre buganvilias e hibiscos, arbustos través de arbustos de acero enmarcando
a los poetas Salomón de la Selva, Joaquín Pasos, Claribel Alegría, Enrique Fernández
Morales, Ernesto Cardenal, Carlos Martínez Rivas, Alfonso Cortés, un mapa laberíntico
y estético de la poesía en español en las Nicaragua.
En monumentos que se reflejan lado a lado, Jana lee el verso de Claribel Alegría "No
puede conmigo la tristeza / la arrastro hacia la vida y se evapora", y ve la cara hermosa de
la poeta de 91 años de edad (nacida de padres nicaragüenses y salvadoreños en Estelí,
Nicaragua) que entregó este verso a la vida.
Y Jana estaba impregnada con una alegría que desterró toda la tristeza con dos palabras:
"no puede".
Junto a Alegría, otros poetas nicas estaban en relieve monumental: Morales, Estrada,
Pasos, Cardenal, Rivas y Cuadra. Entre estos poetas nicaragüenses no se encuentra un
José Martí o un C.L.R. James o un V.S. Naipaul o Derek Walcott o un Patrick Chamoiseau
o un Glissant Édouard o una Condé Maryse o una Kincaid Jamaica o un Brathwaite
Kamau. Jana se acercó hasta el borde del malecón de Granada, donde la tierra da paso a
las aguas del Lago de Nicaragua, y allí encontró al gran patrón de la poesía nacional de
Nicaragua, no es otro que Rubén Darío.
Mientras estaba en Granada, Jana también entrevistó al poeta y académico Álvaro José
Rivas Gómez, que enseña en la Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University (BICU) en
Bluefields, Nicaragua, en el lado antillano oriental y que investiga sobre las literaturas
africanas de Nicaragua y las culturas, y el poeta afro-nica Fernández López Gutiérrez,
cuya familia emigró de Jamaica, y el historiador y académico independiente Rolando
Ernesto Téllez. Durante esta vibrante conversación, intercambiamos ideas acerca de la
presencia de la diáspora africana, incluidas las poéticas, en las Américas, en nuestra
América, desde el sureste de los Estados Unidos, en particular el Golfo de México que
lindan con el Mar Caribe, a lo largo del archipiélago del Caribe, a las costas del Atlántico
y del Caribe de América Central y el Norte de Sudamérica, especialmente Venezuela y
Colombia. ¿Cuál era la relación entre José Martí y Rubén Darío? ¿Han leído a Louise
Bennett, Aimé Césaire, o Nicolás Guillén como parte de su educación poética o literaria?
Han poetas caribeños como Kamau Brathwaite, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean "Binta"
Breeze, Beryl Gilroy, Derek Walcott, o Édouard Glissant alguna vez asistido el Festival
de Poesía de Granada? Lo que todos descubrimos, poco a poco, lamentablemente, fue
que este vibrante linaje poético del archipiélago del Caribe en Centroamérica parecía haber
muerto (o por lo menos haber sido prematuramente abortado) con Martí y Darío y su
generación. Este número especial sobre poética circum-Caribe es, entonces, un esfuerzo
audaz para reactivar y revitalizar las líneas poéticas y circuitos de intercambio literario, que
es a la vez poética y política.
Abstract: Nicaragua’s eastern coast experienced many of the forces that conditioned the history of the
broader continental and island Caribbean: European colonialization, incorporation into the contemporary
international economic system, African presence, neocolonialism. However, its development
differentiated the area from the rest of the country as well as from the Caribbean. Home to Black
Creoles, who studied and prayed in English, and to indigenous peoples, and isolated – physically and
culturally — from the Hispanic, Catholic Pacific area, the Atlantic Coast was long considered the “other”
Nicaragua, unacknowledged in the dominant myth of Mestizo nationality. After the 1950s, imperfect
efforts to incorporate the Coast eventually resulted in the 1980s in the creation of two unique
autonomous Atlantic regions within the nation-state. Poetry as a cultural product and contribution to self-
identity is analyzed here in its evolution from Negrista poetry using Black or coastal tropes, to Black pride
and the proclaiming of difference, praise and defense of Autonomy, and the celebration of multiethnicity
and pluriculturalism as the essence of the Caribbean Coast. Poetry by Nicaribbean, or Mestigro, writers
emphasizes the region’s self-definition as Nicaraguan but different, distinct but not an “Other” to be
excluded, a land of promise, given to the pooling of cultural resources of many ethnicities, including the
now-predominant Mestizos.
S
lavery, migration, resistance and ethnic pride have marked the history and
existence of the African-descended 9% of the population of Nicaragua,
whose Caribbean coastline is home to half a million “Kriols” or
“Creoles.”1 Historical forces have created similarities and distinctions
between the Nicaraguans’ experience and those of other Caribbean peoples, especially
1 “Creole,” meaning African-descended of Caribbean origin, not to be confused with the
Spanish concept of “criollo,” often translated “creole,” a person of Spanish heritage born in the
Americas. Cf. Shalini Puri’s comparison of Creole identity formulations by Kamau Brathwaite and by
Derek Walcott (61-66).
46 MARÍA ROOF
on the islands. Many of the Caribbean Coast Africans arrived fleeing from enslavement,
not being dragged into it, and relatively recently. They spoke English and an English-
based Creole, established British-style schools and Anglican churches, later accepting
Moravian schools and worship, became a professional class sandwiched between
business owners and indigenous workers, ate rundown and rice & beans, celebrated the
May Pole, and generally disparaged nationals and nationalism that would subjugate them
to outsiders –meddlesome, ignorant, uneducated “Spaniards” from the other coast. Not
surprisingly, the national social imaginary homogenized, marginalized and invisibilized
Blacks and other “Others.”
History is also slightly different in Nicaragua as compared to other Central
American Hispanic nations with significant African-descended populations along their
Caribbean coasts. Unlike the situation in Panama, Afro-Nicaraguans did not descend
principally from colonial Africans and Antillean workers imported to build a canal
(although plans existed in the 19th century to build the canal across Nicaragua). Unlike
Honduras, only a small percentage of Nicaraguan blacks are Garífunas, descended from
escapees and shipwrecked enslaved Africans deported from St. Vincent. Costa Rica
imported West Indian workers to build its transisthmus railroad, but no such efforts
obtained in Nicaragua and even today no road or railroad runs from coast to coast.
And, according to some scholars, Nicaragua lacks the essentially homogeneous trait of
Anglophone “West Indianness” in its cultural and literary expressions (Smart, Central
American Writers of West Indian Origin 109).
Abrupt changes began to occur in the 1950s, with new developmentalist
strategies designed under the Somoza regimes (1935-1979) that sparked waves of
migration into Creole areas of dominance and spheres of economic power, which
created upheavals, resistance and adjustments that continue today. The Sandinistas
(1979-1990) interfered, trying to impose ill-informed plans and nationalistic concepts.
Movements for regional autonomy in the 1980s pitted ancestral-land-based indigenous
communities against the landless Kriols, and multiculturalism, as a reality and political
goal, diluted any sort of heritage-based claim to privilege. The evolution of these
changes is a fascinating story apparent in the literary production about and by Afro-
Nicaraguans, which this essay will analyze. Actors and writers resistant to erroneous,
projected definitions (re)claimed their presence and right to self-define in terms of
identity as ethnic group, race, and regional actors in a process that reflected and
contributed to the evolving national dialogue.
Like the other Central American republics (except El Salvador) and Mexico,
Nicaragua’s coastlines are washed by the waters of two seas. Until recently this duality
was reflected in the concept of “the two Nicaraguas,” separated by geography,
economic base and ethnicity: the populated Pacific coast inhabited by Whites and
Mestizos (mixed European and Indian) and the sparsely inhabited Atlantic or Caribbean
coast that was part of the national territory but not of the imagined nation. Populated
by Miskito, Mayagna2 and Rama Indians, African-descended Garifunas and English-
speaking “foreigners,” this 50% of the national territory with 15% of the population
was excluded from the ethnocentric formulation of Nicaraguan national identity,
defined as Hispanic-indigenous, that is, mestizo. Historians Jeffrey L. Gould and Miguel
Angel Herrera C. define the origins of this “myth of a Nicaragua mestiza,” or of a
mestizo Nicaragua, as emerging from the defeat of the Indian rebellion of 1881—defeat
of the actual indigenous highland communities, but incorporation of a mystified,
historical, ideal, heroic Indian. Therefore, Nicaragua had nothing in common with the
Caribbean, seen as an outpost to which criminals were exiled, and no common history,
because there were no large plantations dependent on the massive importation of
enslaved Africans, no common culture, since social practices and religious celebrations
derived from the Spanish Catholic calendar and not from indigenous “folklore” or
British culture.
Certain identity explorations, however, have extended Caribbean-based identity
to Central and South America, and even to the southern coast of the United States, as
examined by Costa Rican writer Quince Duncan, who defined the Grand Caribbean as
inclusive of the islands and continental areas of the Mexican Atlantic coast, the entire
Caribbean coast of Central America, all of Belize, the isthmus of Panama, San Andrés,
and the Atlantic northern coasts of Colombia and Venezuela (Contra el silencio 1-2).3
Duncan defines as the most characteristic aspect of the Grand Caribbean its impressive
cultural diversity, with its specific forms of participation in international capitalism from
the 18th century forward, and the constant element of the African ethnic presence (2).
Cultural traits distinguish this area from, for example, the non-coastal areas of the
continent and the Pacific coast of each of those countries (3).
For some theorists, the islands and coastlines of the Caribbean “basin” also
constitute an area united by geography and experience, in its history of “sugar and
slavery,” as C.L.R. James called it, its constant communication throughout five centuries
of colonial and neocolonial existence. Even without large sugar plantations common in
the rest of the Caribbean, Nicaragua was implicated in the “plantation machine” in the
sense in which Antonio Benítez-Rojo interprets slave-based societies and all the related
systems that supported the machine and were an essential part of it (The Repeating Island).
Euroindoethnocentrism
In Nicaragua the Spanish Crown configured two extensive, distinct and distant,
sociocultural and economic regions: the Atlantic area of indigenous peoples, and the
2 Mayagna: Formerly called Sumo and Sumus; also spelled Mayangna.
3 Translations and summaries from sources in Spanish are mine unless otherwise noted.
Pacific, where colonial authority would reside. With independence in the 19th century,
the Pacific region defined its nationalist project with pretensions of homogeneity in
language (Spanish), religion (Catholicism) and culture (mestizo) (Torres-Rivas, “Los
avatares del Estado nacional en Nicaragua” xiv). The construction of regional and
national identity by 19th-century elites promoted the idea of European and indigenous
mixing that produced a rather homogeneous group united by Spanish language and
culture through marginalization and inferiorization of “Others”: the Indians as
subnational, the Creoles as nonnational.4
In the 20th century the imposition of the myth of mestizo Nicaragua, ethnically
homogeneous since the 19th century, was accompanied by a celebration of indigenous
heritage by renowned intellectuals such as Pablo Antonio Cuadra. Atlantic Coast
Indians and Creoles not incorporated into the national economy were invisibilized in
this process, despite the supposed “reincorporation” of the old Atlantic coast Mosquito
Coast region in 1894. Cuadra, in defining Nicaraguan identity, omitted the cultural and
genetic African influences. As sociologist and poet Carlos Castro Jo observes in his
essay on race, color consciousness and Black militancy in Nicaraguan literature, in a
country where the marimba (a name that already sounds African) is the national
instrument, Cuadra not only omitted the Black cultural influence, he denied it, even
though, paradoxically, he penned a poem called exactly “The Black Man” (“El negro”),
but this must have been one who was assimilated by mestizo culture (Castro Jo 29). The
Indian is present as a romanticization of the past—the dead Indian, while the African
past is ignored.
Africans in Nicaragua
marginal and inferior are different. The racialization of Creoles as ‘African’ and their simultaneous
association with internationally prestigious ‘Anglo’ cultures make them ‘non-national’ and therefore more
alien and threatening than the ‘subnational,’ ‘Indian’ Miskitu. On the other hand, the distinct character of
each elite’s political struggles and the specific sociopolitical conjunctures within which each operates have
produced a series of qualitatively different racist discourses about Creoles and about Miskitu” (Gordon,
Disparate Diasporas 121).
broad sector of the population. He does not stand out as a mulatto, but rather melds
into mestizo society and overcomes the prior ethnic distinction (34). Deconstructing the
nationalist mestizo myth, in 2008 cultural historian Jorge Eduardo Arellano documented
the African presence in the Pacific region and concludes that by independence in 1821,
sambos, mulattoes, and quadroons and other combinations made up 84% of the
population: “there were more inhabitants with Black blood in the Pacific side than in
the Mosquito Kingdom [on the Atlantic Coast]. There, the escaped slaves coming from
Jamaica numbered some 4,500 in 1768 (Arellano, “Afronegrismos”).
The “unattended” Atlantic coast was occupied by the English from the 17th
century, in part to isolate Spain from the region, and proclaimed in 1687 a sort of
protectorate, the Mosquito Kingdom with a native king, that continued until 1860. The
British used enslaved Africans on their sugar and indigo plantations, and the number of
Blacks increased with slave shipwrecks and mutinied slaves who touched land, in
addition to free Black immigrants from the Anglophone Caribbean islands, who
congregated around the town of Bluefields as urban, English-speaking Creoles. Until
the beginning of the 20th century, the Creoles continued to identify with Anglophone
people, and among the coastal population who were in close alliance with the United
States, General Augusto César Sandino was “just another Spanish strongman,” and the
Creoles, like the Miskitu, considered themselves a separate people (Frühling et al. 32-
34).
As a result of the abandonment by the national State until the 1950s, Afro-
Caribbeans achieved an advanced level of educational development, with the support of
protestant churches, and zealously maintained their (mainly Jamaican) social and cultural
institutions and good relations with indigenous communities (Duncan 182). As historian
Miguel Ángel Herrera C. observes, possessing a higher level of education than the
Mestizos, the Creoles occupied a prominent place in the new social plane of Bluefield
that emerged with the annexation of the Caribbean coast in 1894. In the 1950s, a
number of strategies and policies to promote socioeconomic transformation were
imposed in accordance with modernizing, developmentalist designs by the Somoza
government (Urtecho, “Reseña” 100).5
At the beginning of the 1970s, the Atlantic coast population had the highest
level of literacy and health in the country and a high-school and college educated elite,
with cultural institutions tolerated and even promoted by the Somoza family (Duncan
182). The Atlantic area participated little in the battle against the Somoza dictatorship,
which reflected and augmented the historical distrust between the two Nicaraguas
(Frühling et al. 9ss y 351ss). The 1979 triumph of the Sandinista revolution brought in
“outsiders,” mestizo officials who attempted to impose a new national discourse on the
region. Following the Cuban model, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega declared that there
5 Economist Carlos M. Vilas has studied these measures as an aspect of the unequal
development of capitalism in Nicaragua between 1950 and 1979.
were no longer any indigenous peoples in Nicaragua, as the revolution had put an end
to all ethnic and racial discrimination. However, neither real Indians nor African-
descended people entered into the Sandinistas’ preconceived, mestizo mentality of the
Atlantic coast inhabitants as backwards, primitive, in need of being integrated into
civilization (Urtecho 100). The coast was an area attractive for large scale
agroexportation and state investment projects in African palm, a new deep port,
lumbering projects, fishing industries –plans that could not be carried out due to the
counterrevolutionary war (Frühling et al. 89). The Sandinista revolution led to the first
“real encounter” between the two Nicaraguas as, tragically, the Atlantic Coast became
the site of a brutal war between 1981 and 1987 (Frühling et al., 344). In the 1980s, the
United States ended maintenance of infrastructure services in the area –electricity,
roads, ports– and the war changed the face of the Coast by eliminating traditional
agriculture and subsistence fishing (Frühling et al. 91). It forced migration from unsafe
rural areas into the cities, debilitated industrial fishing and paralyzed mining. In October
of 1988, Hurricane Joan destroyed 70% of the houses and processing plants in the area.
Intergenerational Dialogue.
Darío (1867-1916), influenced by racist ideologies in Europe and the U.S., are examined in detail by Erick
Aguirre and Carlos Castro Jo. Darío’s works circulated in the Pacific area and forms part of the
intellectual inheritance of contemporary and future writers in Nicaragua.
rhythms, the picturesque part of Black life in superficial, distorted images. They were
unable to go beyond exterior impressions to express profundity and rage and the great
theme of Black poetry: affirmation of Black identity (Richard L. Jackson, Black Writers
127, 174).
José Santos Cermeño, however, is considered the first Mestizo poet who shows
respect for the Black “Other” as he tries to incorporate Caribbean rhythms in his
poetry, following Nicolás Guillén in Cuba, using the cadences of the May Pole songs in
his “Blanquinegra canción de las neninas,” “Palo de Mayo en Bluefields” and “Jardín en
Beholden” (Castro Jo 28). Critic Julio Valle-Castillo considers Santos Cermeño the first
poet to assume a modern Afro-Caribbean thematics and expression and systematically
explore the other history and other side of the country: a poet unifying the Pacific and
the Atlantic, who uses onomatopoeias, Creole bilingualism, rhythm, musicality, and
even social denunciation, like other Negritude poetry in the Americas. After Santos
Cermeño, the river and sea coast of the Atlantic will be a constant in Nicaragua poetry,
according to Valle-Castillo (“Los cien años de Santos Cermeño y de Bluefields”). In
their introduction to the poet in the anthology, Bluefields en la sangre, the editors cite him
as the creator of the new Atlantic poetry, or of a certain poetry of the Atlantic—that of
Bluefields, stylistically within the Caribbean Negrista movement of the 1930s (13).
Santos Centeño is little known outside Nicaragua, and his poetry has not been translated
into English, however these samples show elements of May Pole songs and rhythms:
Santos Cermeño repeats this poetic incorporation of sounds and rhythms in his “May
Pole in Bluefields,” which includes a Creole song from the Atlantic:
(…)
(Mayaya lost the ky
Mayayaón).
Comienza a moverte
sin temor.
(Mayaya lost the ky
Mayayaón).
Se incendian tus dos
latas de carbón
(Mayaya lost the ky
Mayayaón).
La llave estás perdiendo,
y se perdió.
(Mayaya lost the ky
Mayayaón). […]
(Bluefields en la sangre 20-21)
The origins of the May Pole songs and celebrations and other Creole expressions have
been a point of controversy among scholars. Some relate them to the African goddess
Maya, invoked in fertility rituals, but little is known about her origins, though Thomas
Wayne Edison speculates that it would be logical to consider her a version of the
African Orisha known as Yemayá and venerated in other parts of the Caribbean,
Central America, Cuba and Brazil (Edison, “La cultura afro-caribeña vista en la
poesía…” 24). However, the May Pole is also considered a homage to tree spirits, a
tradition brought by the British that became a celebration and reflects the cosmovision
of the Atlantic Coast (Edison 26).
One of the most prominent historians of the Atlantic Coast, Donovan
Brautigam Beer, argued in the 1970s in favor of the European origin of the May Pole, as
the spokesperson for a culturalist movement attempting to establish the cultural
difference of the Creole coast that should be included in the national identity on equal
footing with others, thereby countering the ethnocentrism of the Pacific by generating a
Creole counterhegemonic discourse (Gordon 173). The May Pole would reflect the
confluence of cultures that created a new celebration in the Atlantic Coast, where
British customs prevailed more than African ones (Gordon 170ff). The tradition would
be considered similar to other syncretic cultural practices, such as the candomblé in Brazil,
voodoo in Haiti, and santería in Cuba, “social-religious practices that emphasize the
powerful presence of African heritage in resisting apparatuses of discrimination” (Falola
and Roberts, The Atlantic World 122). Santos Cermeño, then, offers an example of using
Caribbean traditions in resistance to hegemonic of mestizo ethnocentrism.
Literary scholars Julio Valle-Castillo and Carlos Castro Jo cite two Pacific Coast
poets who celebrate dark skin and African ancestors, Luis Alberto Cabrales and
Alejandro Bravo. Cabrales wrote his song to dark ancestors, “Canto a los sombríos
ancestros” (1932), that claims pride in African heritage and in its continuation in the
New World through the poetic voice:
In its praise of African heritage, this song of protest and reclamation coincides with
works by Caribbean Negritude poets, such as Aimé Césaire (Martinique) and Léon
Damas (French Guiana).8
The 1970s saw the awakening of ethnic consciousness in Latin America, which
implied new forms of political and artistic organization (Duncan 183). Among the first
voices considered authentic expressions of the African Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua
were those of David McField (Rama, 1936) and Carlos Rigby (Laguna de Perlas, 1945),
whose works have been included in all anthologies and studies of the region’s literature.
However, neither of these writers began by exploring a Black identity on the Atlantic
Coast. In his first books, McField constructs an Atlantic Coast imaginary composed of
British and West Indian elements, yet the majority of his poems are not concerned with
questions of identity, but rather political, social and romantic topics. Early scholars of
Afro-Hispanic literature, Ian Smart and Richard L. Jackson, coincided in their opinion
that poetry by McField and Rigby did not reveal their African heritage.9 Jackson reads a
8 We can also hear resonances of Pablo Neruda’s attempt to speak for indigenous ancestors in
certain pride of African origins in McField’s poem in his third book (1970) about a
Black baseball star, “Cuando el equipo de León,”10 but agrees that there is little Afro-
Caribbean flavor in his poetry. Jackson also observes in Rigby and McField a lack of
knowledge of Blacks outside Nicaragua, in contrast, for example, to Nicolás Guillén and
Nancy Morejón in Cuba (“Escritores afro-centroamericanos contemporáneos” 30).
Edmund T. Gordon sees McField and Rigby as representatives of the autochthonous
“high” culture of Creoles who demonstrated the relatedness (equality) of Atlantic Coast
culture in language, genres and styles to (Pacific) Nicaraguan cultural traditions (Gordon
137).
McField’s poetry reflects two main concerns: (1) unity with the lower classes, the
people, workers, citizens of every race and ethnicity, in the political struggle against the
Somoza dictatorship; and (2) Pan-Africanism, identification of the Black diaspora with
Africa, established from an early poem, “Black is Black” to his more recent
“Tangañika,” an expression of his experiences as Sandinista ambassador to Angola,
Congo, and Mozambique. As a university professor in Managua, and in contrast to most
Atlantic Coast Creoles who avoided participation in the antidictatorship struggle,
McField unifies his double concern in his first “multiracial and insurgent” book, Dios es
negro: “God is Black, like Nkrumah / like Lumumba,” which established a new direction
in Caribbean Coast poetry with its rhythmic cadence and social realism (Agüero “‘Dios
es negro’”). He made his poetry a weapon in the struggle against the dictatorship and
incorporated marginalized Blacks into the fight, accompanied by a Black God (Salvador
Espinoza Moncada “David McField”).
In 2008, as a Sandinista government official McField continued to support the
unification of the marginalized poor in a racial melting pot that included Blacks and
Indians… “We are all there” (quoted in Espinoza Moncada). This is McField’s message
in many poems published before and after the triumph of the Sandinista revolution. In
his Note to the Reader in his early En la calle de enmedio (On the street in between, 1968),
he states that the most important identity among people rests on their commonalities, to
such an extent that it is difficult to say who is who (15). His Poemas para el año del elefante
(Poems for the year of the elephant, 1970) and Poemas populares (Popular poems, 1972)
announce the unification of all voices to strike the final blow against the dictatorship –
“UNIOS —UNITE!” Some of his songs from Las veinticuatro (poemas y canciones)
(Twenty-four, poems and songs, 1975) were incorporated into political protest songs by
the Mejía Godoys and others and became popular songs heard by millions of
Nicaraguans (Agüero). Although one critic opines in 2000 that McField’s poetry from
this period suffers from pseudo-revolutionary Sandinista contamination, after 25 years,
10 This is the only poem in McField’s Poemas para el año del elefante (1970) that mentions race at all
and actually seems to emphasize the (typically Caribbean) multiethnicity of the Nicaraguan baseball player
with a West Indian/European name, Duncan Campbell, who is the pride of all Blacks but also of the
entire country –he of the slanted Chinese eyes. Rigby likewise creates a Coast imaginary in non-racialized
terms.
they are still fresh and emblemize the incorporation of Nicaraguan Black culture into
the national discourse, in repudiation of the Catholic, bourgeois, capitalist icon of
nationalism (Edwin Yllescas Salinas, “Afro-caribeños en Managua”).
Mc Field’s “Black is Black” (1972) introduces Pan-Africanism first as a
transnational identification among members of the Black diaspora:
With the allusion to Caupolicán, hero among the indigenous Mapuche of Chile and to
the modern Mandrake, McField links the struggle of Blacks to that of all oppressed
peoples. In this sense, he elaborates a transcultural cosmovision that includes Africans,
Indians and Europeans (Edison 22).
“Oyendo unos tambores en Tangañica,” (Hearing drums in Tanganika), written
while McField was Sandinista ambassador in Africa in the 1980s, reinforces linkages
between the diaspora and the continent:
en el corazón de ZAMBIA
que es el mismo de Bluefields
es Ramakí
es Atlántico
es Pacífico.
¡Qué bruto! ¡Bruto! ¡Bruto!
es mi Nicaragua aquí
reventando sus cadenas
construyendo el porvenir
revolviendo el pasado
hasta el infinito ¡Al fin!
(Bluefields en la sangre 44-45)
Carlos Rigby, one of the best Caribbean Coast poets (Bluefields en la sangre 73),
incorporates themes from the Atlantic, center and Pacific in a colloquial version of
Creole language that translates and mixes Creole English with popular Spanish,
generating neologisms, bilingualisms and unusual word play that sensualize his poetry
(Valle-Castillo, Neovanguardia 347). Like the social and political denunciation in
McField’s poetry, Rigby’s May Pole poems go beyond the celebration to present a reality
of poverty and marginalization; with his ludic, bilingual verbalism, Rigby theorizes about
Nicaribbean identity (347), for which he creates the metonym, “Nicaribe soy”: “Yo soy
de Nicaribia—/ nicaribe soy…” (I’m from Nicaribbia–/ I am Nicaribbean) (poem in
Bluefields en la sangre 78).11 Rigby weaves the rhythms and natural, social and cultural
manifestations of the Coast into his literary creations —May Pole, “sim-sáima-sima-ló,”
ron-down patties, Tropical Reggae, “máyaya lasiqui máyaya-ooo,” Corn Island—not as
exotic or decorative elements, but as political denunciation or praise that covers the
whole country:12
Several critics have commented on African elements in Rigby’s poems and the
deconstruction of traditional Spanish verse forms in his musicality and ideophonic
formulations. African scholar J. Bekunuru Kubayanda “went beyond ‘literary blackness’
to seek the African source of this blackness manifest in African principles such as
ancestrality, drum communication, ideophonic expression, plant symbolism, and heroic
codes” (Jackson, Black Writers 170). Kubayanda’s observations are quite pertinent:
“Briefly stated, ideophones are communicative monosyllabic, disyllabic, or trisyllabic
words with identical or near-identical sounds that can further be reduplicated or
multiplied by the speaker at his own discretion. Ideophones have both phonological and
grammatical functions, and are dependent upon subject matter, audience, and the
intentions of the speaking subject” (“The Linguistic Core of Afro-Hispanic Poetry”).13
Ideophones are absent in the standard speech of Western Europeans and, therefore, not
noticed by them. “Some high quality African-consciousness poetry, not only in Spanish
but also in French and English, is constructed on the ideophonic principle: for instance,
Guillén, Antonio Portuondo, Carlos Rigby, among several other poets in Spanish;
Césaire, Damas, and others in French; Brathwaite, Okai [Ghana] and others in English.”
Ideophonic expressions were attempted by the Negrista writers, though without what
Kubayanda calls “imaginative originality.” In Rigby’s “Si yo fuera mayo” (If I Were
May) Kubayanda sees Blackness in conflict with the Nicaraguan status quo, energized
by ideophonic sounds like “sinsaima-sinma-lo”, “shiqui shaque,” a rhythmic
harmonization of maracas,14 and “mayaya lasiqui mayaya-ooo ....”
The ideophonic lines remit to Caribbean culture and cultural rituals practiced by the
Afro-descended community (introduced into the rest of Nicaragua by Rigby himself),
not only as a manifestation of culture, but also political and social solidarity against
capitalist exploitation and as a ritualistic return to the life source: “the voice of the
people which is the voice of God.”
Rigby, like McField, expresses political support for the Sandinista Revolution
and government of the 1980s and embraces the Sandinista Marxian class-based, not
race-based, perspectives for political solutions: “Everything is classial / nothing racial,”
he suggests, as he reviews historical connotations linked to races and dismisses them:
These last poems, besides their political content, reflect the Rigby who is considered “a
very distinguished poet who introduced a new rhythm to poetry, a new way of writing
poetry, new word play of poetry as drum sound, trumpet sound, contrabasso sound,
musical sound, the word as music, verse conserving music within itself. That is, going
back to the roots, recovering music as an instrument of poetry. (…) Carlos Rigby, one
of the strongest poetic personalities of the country, not just the Coast, but the country”
(Carlos Alemán Ocampo, “The Culture of Power”).
In his analysis of race and color consciousness in Nicaraguan literature, Carlos
Castro Jo characterizes Rigby as “our great unpublished poet”,15 who had always fought
for the inclusion of Caribbean culture as part of national culture. And this Caribbean
culture is Black but also indigenous. He explains the need to transcend racial divisions
and unite in a popular class struggle that simultaneously combats racism (30-31).
Nicaragua as a space of ethnic unity was projected by Creole painter and poet, June
Beer (Bluefields, 1935-1986), who served as a Bluefields library director under the
Sandinistas in the 1980s and, in terms of nationality, as a Nicaraguan, embraces all races
in a love poem to Blacks, Miskitos, Sumus, Ramas and Mestizos as worthy children of
Sandino:
“Poema de amor”
15 “Unpublished” because Rigby refuses to put his poems in book form.
(…)
Mi patria se llama Nicaragua
a mi puedo entero los amo
Negros, Miskitus, Sumus, Ramas y Mestizos (…)
Dignos, libre y soberanos
hijos de Sandino.
McField, Rigby and Beer demand the inclusion of the Atlantic Coast in the national
imaginary and utilize cultural elements derived from Caribbean races and cultures to
found the construction of a more just and equal, multiethnic Nicaragua. By 2008 Sergio
Ramírez had reconceptualized the national imaginary to include the Atlantic Coast as
the forgotten drum-root of Nicaragua in Tambor olvidado.
New Directions
With the creation of the North and South Autonomous Regions and the
definition of Nicaragua as a multiethnic and plurilanguage country, new poetry from the
Caribbean Coast continues the work of previous writers but in response to new realities.
Several poetry anthologies have been key in publicizing old and new works: Antología
poética de la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua, edited by Víctor Obando Sancho, Ronald Brooks
Saldaña and Eddy Alemán Porras, published by the URACCAN university press in
1998, with 33 poets and 70 poems; and Bluefields en la sangre: poesía del Caribe Sur
Nicaragüense, compiled by Eddy Alemán Porras and Franklin Brooks Vargas in 2011,
with 38 authors and 169 poems. Both are inclusive in terms of gender, ethnic diversity,
geography and themes. An anthology of 12 African-descended poets with 58 poems was
published by the Bluefields Indian and Caribbean University (BICU) in 2011, Antología
poética “Afrocarinica.” Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur, as part of an initiative to visibilize
and give new dimension to the potentialities of African- descended people in the
development of the Caribbean Coast.
Editor Víctor Obando Sancho links the new directions in poetry to changes in
cultural, political, economic and gender aspirations brought about by autonomy, as
writers seek to avoid losing their identity by exploring their cultural roots (introduction
to Antología poética 5). Other anthologies, such as Neovanguardia compiled by Julio Valle-
Castillo, and Héctor Avellán’s Nicaragua: el más alto canto, reinforce the conceptualization
of the Atlantic Coast writers as non-other, as national poets, identified by their
geographical and ethnic origins but not placed into separate categories. Contemporary
poetry expresses many traditional topics and themes, such as philosophical subjects of
time and forgetting, life and death, homage to Atlantic Coast landscapes, the luxuriant
flora, advice to children, gender relations, love, dreams. In the most recent poetry, the
following characteristics of Caribbean Coast poetry seem most prominent.
(…)
Permitan que nuestra Autonomía
sea un símbolo reconocido por el mundo entero,
pero no como un emblema de corrupción y vergüenza. (…)
Recordemos que Autonomía es darnos las manos
los mestizos, indígenas, ramas, garífunas y,
por supuesto, los creoles.
La Autonomía es abrazar al débil y al fuerte
y a los que por siempre han sido oprimidos. (…)
y unámonos voluntariamente
para defender nuestra tierra y nuestra Autonomía.
(Bluefields en la sangre 63)
Other poets coincide in reading autonomy as synonymous with ethnic unity as project
and goal on the Caribbean Coast. Creole poet Lovette Martínez (Bilwi/Puerto Cabezas,
1952) writes in English and Spanish and proposes this definition of the new reality:
“It Is Autonomy”
Autonomy is Ramas power
autonomy is Sumus power
autonomy is Garifunas power
and why not? Miskitos, mestizos and creoles power.
en permanente espera
con el porro en una mano y el trago en la otra. (…)
consigo moldear cualquier situación en dependencia del grupo
presente
con más o menos droga, (…)
coca, ron, monte, sexo, risa, idioma, amor, todo.
Culture is language
Language is culture.
Why brothers! We can’t start?
Language es the key.
Autonomy es free,
join hands together,
work for each other. (…)
Someday Autonomy will shine
soon culture be mine
Autonomy es free,
language is the key,
someday dark be bright.
(Antología poética de la Costa Caribe 45)
2. Black Pride
Creoles on the Atlantic Coast until the 1960s denied or discounted their African
roots, preferring the construction of a transnational historical identity that was
predominantly British (Gordon, 18, 97, 126). McField and Rigby, enunciators and actors
in the awakening of ethnic consciousness in Latin America in the 1970s, brought about
a revision of this ethnic imaginary, with Black themes and African rhythms as structural
elements of poetry. While the rest of Nicaragua identified its Spanish and indigenous
roots, omitting African cultural and genetic contributions to the national heritage, the
Atlantic Coast proclaimed its Blackness.16 Brenda Green (Bluefields, 1954) continues the
tendency that proclaims African heritage and racial pride in “Identity”:
Isabel Estrada Colindres (La Fe, Laguna de Perlas, 1953), bilingual nurse who writer in
Spanish and English, utilizes colloquial Creole English to define her Garífuna enthnicity
in traditional, phenotypical terms, as a permanent component in the continuation of
culture, in her “Yesterday”:
Isabel Estrada Colindres is one of the few Atlantic Coast poets who denounce not just
racial discrimination against the Garífuna in the traditionally Creole city of Bluefields
(according to her biography for the next poem), but also racial profiling in a way that
could resonate with contemporary readers in the U.S. in “One Day on My Way,” where
her leisurely trip treats her to sights of a little bird, a tiny little rabbit, healthy and happy
children, some old friends, then suddenly:17
16 Although, as in other regions, not without internal divisions and distinctions between old
residents and newcomers, similar to the debate in Panama between colonial Africans and West Indian
19th- and 20th-century immigrants, or in Honduras, between the Spanish-speaking colonial and the
English-speaking Garífunas).
17 Times & Life of Bluefields registers complaints by Mestizos and Chinese of discrimination
Owyn Fernando Hodgson Blandford (Rama, 1954), Creole lawyer, farm manager and
rector of the Bluefields Indian & Caribbean University (BICU), writes in English and
Spanish and addresses a non-Black as interlocutor to rail against racial discrimination
and proclaim that he is beautiful, free, good, great, and Black, and if he were reborn, he
would wish to come back Black in “Proclamas del negro”:
Regardless of their ethnic origins, current Atlantic Coast dwellers seem to have
embraced Creole customs as their own and tend to reject the Spanish root of identity
that represents exploitation. Creole chemical engineer Noel Campbell Hooker cites the
advice of an elder that everyone learn Spanish: “you cannot fight your enemy if you
don’t know their language” (“Learn Spanish”). Poems by Orlando Cuadra Tablada
(Bluefields, 1960), who considers himself biologically mestizo, damns the arrival of
Columbus on American shores (“¡Pluguiera Dios las aguas antes intactas / no reflejaran
nunca las blancas velas”), that launched the beginning of a brutal history, full of bloody
slavery, of treachery (“el inicio de una historia funesta / llena de esclavitud sanguinaria,
de engaños.” On October 12th, then, there is NOTHING to celebrate (“no hay NADA
que celebrar!” (“¿Celebrando Qué?”, Bluefields en la sangre 169-170). Africa, however, has
provided one of his “metaphysical roots”:
(…)
Tum, tum, tum burum
se oye el retumbar de los tambores
catalizando la ebullición en mis venas.
Con cada golpe de tambor
la resonancia en la oscuridad
hacer vibrar mis fibras ancestrales
y entre ellas emerge la más fuerte,
ruda, ensortijada y sensiblemente negra. (…)
Examples abound of a new, or renewed, sense of pride in Blackness and African roots.
Franklin Brooks Vargas (Bluefields, 1960) calls himself a “mestigro” descended from a
Black grandfather and Mestizo grandmother. His poem to Black men and women of the
Coast, “Canción al negro/negra costeño/a,” perhaps idealizes his surroundings in the
paradise of the prodigious bay, the beautiful scene of Black fishermen cast against a
unique background that no painter could capture, as he expresses his happiness in this
very own Black smile (“propia sonrisa de negro”) (Bluefields en la sangre 178-180). Lovette
Martínez signifies the transition from racial inferiorization to superiority in her “Black
on Top”:
There is a saying:
So by we are black
We are on top
We must ask
We must attract
To counteract
The racial discrimination act.
(Antología poética “Afrocarinica” 89)
Brenda Green perceives optimism as part of the geographical and racial essence of the
Atlantic Coast in her “Soy costeña” (I am a woman from the coast):
In speaking to the “other” who evidences sadness, the poetic voice of a “very Black
coastal woman” presents herself as the embodiment of Caribbean joy and lively energy
to sweeten their time together.
Andira Watson (Bilwi/Puerto Cabezas, 1977) replies to McField’s “”Dios es
negro” (God is Black) with the poem, “Diosa negra” (Black goddess), but also replicates
the stereotypical association of Black women with sexuality:
Watson illustrates the potential of dialogue among Afro-Hispanic poets in her response
to Costa Rican Shirley Campbell Barr’s famous poem, “Rotundamente negra” (A
resoundingly Black woman). She describes her identification with Shirley, and, like her,
is a tree snatched from Africa and transplanted:
La gente me ve blanca
pero yo me siento negra
Negra como mi padre
como mis primas
Andira Watson says her light skin makes people see in her a White woman, but she feels
Black, like her father, cousins, brother, grandfather.18 She further develops her African
identity in “Reclamo de Negritud” (Reclaiming negritude) –“África /-Aquí estuvo mi
estirpe- / En esta tierra ajena de sí/ que alguna vez fue nuestra casa”– but in her journal
of a trip to the continent as representative of a south-south cooperation program
sponsored by the international development organization Hivos, “Zimbabwe en la
memoria” (Zimbabwe remembered), she describes an incident when an African man
scoffed at her claim to African heritage in “Rotundamente negra” because of her light
18 As far as I know, Andira Watson has yet to explore any sense of White privilege she might
have experienced because of this.
skin. It was of no use to explain that she comes from the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua,
that her father’s family is African-descended, supposedly coming from Jamaica, and
Nigeria before that. Now, she feels, is the time to throw off the shame of African blood
imposed historically through silencing and invisibilization, “even though Africa may not
remember us”: “Por mucho tiempo sentimos vergüenza de tener el estigma de la
africanidad en nuestras venas. Se trata de una experiencia histórica de silenciamiento, de
invisibilidad que hoy ponemos de manifiesto como afro descendientes. Aunque África,
tal vez ya no nos recuerde” (“Zimbabwe en la memoria”).
One of the most direct expressions of Africa as paradise lost for the diaspora is
the poem “Some time, Somewhere” by Sidney Francis Martin (Bluefields), president of
ONECA/CABO, Central American Black Organization, who writes in standard
English, Creole English and Spanish:
For historical reasons, contemporary Atlantic Coast writers were raised primarily
in the Anglican and Moravian churches and schools and seem much more prone to
include religious images in their poetry. Pacific Coast writers who include faith-based
images (such as mystic poets Michèle Najlis and Conny Palacios and, of course, Father
Ernesto Cardenal) tend to include Roman Catholic markers. The appeal to religion
among the Caribbeans is often coupled with moralistic, pious statements that
paternalize others to give advice and admonishments, offer corrective suggestions and
lessons, and attempt to enforce certain community standards derived from Godly
practices, in an essentially ahistorical analysis of current realities.
Erna Narciso sees herself and others as embodiments of God in “A Portrait of
God’s Extended Love,” which provides “a hand to help the feeble / and swift feet to
run, to rescue the poor, the halt, the needy”; ”keen ears to hear cries of sympathy, and
sorrows for / others even your worst enemies, so much more your brothers”; “a
sympathetic heart for the desolate and lonely / as you share their deepest pain, of grief
and agony.” (Antología poética “Afrocarinica” 39). Her poems are sprinkled with good
advice: In times of personal loss, “Weep not… Trust Him… Ask for strength” (40);
“Don’t be among those who need therapy to smile / be like a happy, energetic child. /
Smile! you aren’t too poor you cannot give it, / neither too rich that you do not need it”
(43). In a process of poetic self-examination, Annette Fenton advises us: “Look at the
pain / Stare it in the face, and make it bow its head; / Look at the anxiety, and make it
flee from our stare; / Look at sorrow and really laugh at its face. (…) Let’s delve, think,
thrive.- / Don’t let others do your thinking!” (“Poem XIII”).
Joan Yamilith Sinclair (Corn Island, 1975), educator, administrator and
Bluefields Creole Community representative, considers herself “Black by the grace of
God” (Antología poética “Afrocarinica” 94). Like many Atlantic Coast poets, she proclaims
Christianity, invokes her God in poetry and is a member of a protestant congregation,
the Church of the Tabernacle. She presents a marvelous example of the postulation of
religious corrections to counter negative social practices. Her analysis of today’s lost
youth in “La juventud de hoy” (The youth of today) cites their lack of religion and no
one’s ability to convince them that damnation awaits them for using drugs, drinking,
“adulterating,” aborting, joining gangs; they lack a fear of their creator, love for their
mothers and respect for their elders. She asks, “Do they have no other options?” But
they can choose to change, and she urges them to sin no more! And they will find true
Love in their creator (“¡Juventud de hoy, basta, / ya no peques más! / Os espera su
creador / quien les brindará / su verdadero Amor.” Antología poética “Afrocarinica” 102).19
Much more often than in poems from other areas of Nicaragua, religion appears
linked to questions of personal decisions to impose self-control. This suggests that
interpretations of empirical reality on the Atlantic Coast are more in line with moralistic,
ahistorical interpretations.
Garífunas, Miskitus, Mestizos and Creoles says Lovette Martínez (“It Is Autonomy”). In
Brenda Green’s version in “Maying Tide in Bluefields,” May festivities create a
community with input from different cultures:20
(…)
This slender and magnificent May pole tree,
symbol of fertility, sensuality and delight (…)
The colors and gloom and music pounds
with sounds of banjo, maracas, mule jawbone,
deer skin drums and acoustic guitars,
tuning out all May pole songs
such as Mayaya Lost the key, oh Rido Rido,
Launch Turn Over, Tululu and many others.
Dancers go round and around the tree,
wiggling hips, bellies and butts off balance (…)
During these jolly festivities of May,
where effusing joys to all abound,
all ethnic groups perform,
breaking bitter furies of complexity
and promoting unity in diversity. (…)
(Antología poética “Afrocarinica” 74-75)
20 Bluefields mayor Ray Hodgson described it as follows: “We have a Caribe movement. It’s
Nicaribe, where there’s drum music, dance, it’s a festival in Bluefields among the blacks. And we invite
the Miskito Indians from the north, and the Sumo and Rama Indians from the south, and the Garifonas
from Orinoco, and so these people come together in a mass movement the whole month of May in
Bluefields. It’s called Mayo-ya! which means Maypole, or Mayday, but in May, Mayday lasts 30 days”
(Hodgson interview in Congress 73). He must contrast this to his disdain for May Pole festivities: “May
Pole has never, ever been part of our culture more than some old ladies in all my youth going to dance
may Pole” (Times & Life of Bluefields 322). As May Pole celebrations have taken on more characteristics of
a touristic carnival, Times & Life of Bluefields calls it “May or Money Pole?” (319) and criticizes its
contemporary form as an attraction promoted by the Sandinistas. By 1993, it was termed “a dirty display
of dirty dancing” by “couples performing erotic contortions in all conceivable positions,” by John Otis in
The Washington Times (cited in Times & Life of Bluefields 321).
The warm embrace among brothers and sisters of six ethnicities sculpting their history
is the essence of the Atlantic Coast says mestizo poet Julio Monterrey (Bluefields, 1962)
in “Un burilado crisol” (An engraved melting pot). In this land of burning suns, the
ancestors never lowered their brows before (Spanish) helmets, proud Africans came,
and people of all sorts of skins joined their nostalgias and embraced:
Atlantic Coast poets, much more than those of the Pacific, construct an imaginary in
which ethnic considerations are paramount. Cultural sociologist and poet, Yolanda
Rossman Tejada (Mina Rosita, 1961), typifies this ethnic consciousness in claiming her
heritage as Creole, indigenous, European, pagan, Christian and Jewish. She proposes
this multiethnicity as essentially Caribbean in her poem “Raíces” (Roots):
Mi abuela paterna
Ardiente mujer KRIOL,
Con un toque de NAGA
Mágica, poderosa,
Hizo sucumbir
Con su inquietante aroma a flores,
Al ojiazul emigrante alemán,
Venido del viejo continente.
Soy crisol,
Soy amalgama,
Sangre, lengua, piel.
Karl Tinkam (Laguna de Perlas, 1967), BICU mathematics professor and RAAS
technical advisor, is a bilingual writer in Spanish and English who claims Creole, Miskito
and Garífuna ancestry. He assumes as part of his cultural heritage the transnational
discourse of the African diaspora in his “I Have A Dream”: “Soon we’ll return to Africa
/ Land of our fathers, ours too / Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa / So good to meet our
big brada’s.” His Garveyesque return to Africa reflects a “paradise lost” image of an
idealized continent, with children playing, lions roaring and palm trees waving their
leaves as a sign of peace. But, like other poets, he celebrates his African heritage as one
of several roots in his heritage, because he is who he is, as he proclaims in “Soy quien
soy”:
Soy Garífuna
porque mi abuela Garífuna era (…)
Soy miskito
porque mi abuelo miskito era (…)
Soy creole
porque dice mi querida abuela
que su padre creole era (…)
Soy negro porque negro fui desde el día en que yo nací. (…)
soy un negro bello
simplemente así lo creo
soy un negro loco
lo que tú dices a mí me vale poco.
This combining of cultures, mixing while retaining diversity, reflects the project
of regional autonomy as synonymous with unity in diversity, unity of ethnicities. Noel
Campbell Hooker, the chemical engineer who cited a suggestion to learn Spanish,
educated in universities in Nicaragua, Poland and the United States, production manage
at a pharmaceutical laboratory in Managua, explains that surroundings trump ethnicities.
A Mestizo from Masaya, he says, arrives in Bluefields and doesn’t eat the local food,
doesn’t like the music. But his children and grandchildren identify with the Coast. They
want to be heard and to participate, that’s why they work to preserve Autonomy. He
explains this support for Autonomy in historical terms, as a characteristic of the Atlantic
Coast as the result of a mixture of peoples and histories:
La forma en que los habitantes de Bluefields ven el mundo (…) es resultado de
la dinámica participación de piratas holandeses y franceses, de los domados moravo-
germanos del centro de la antigua Checoslovaquia -y digo domados porque su férrea
disciplina germana tuvo que acomodarse al trópico-, de los implantados descendientes
de africanos no esclavizados, y de los taciturnos indios ramas. Por esa mezcla, que está
ahí, es por lo que creo que todos los que vivan en el Caribe se seguirán sintiendo
diferentes a los del resto del país y por lo tanto, seguirán sintiendo como una necesidad
propia la Autonomía. Y es por esa mezcla que yo digo que, aunque étnicamente seamos
minoría, nuestra forma de ver el mundo seguirá siendo moldeada por las formas
originales que nos trajeron estos pueblos. (cited in Grigsby)
The migration of large numbers of Mestizos from north and central Nicaragua
to the autonomous areas has led some researchers to predict that separate ethnicities
will cease to exist in the Atlantic Coast, as blended physical and genetic factors yield to
regional identities (see Elmer Alfaro McField for details). While whitening of the Black
population has never been official policy, as it was in the Dominican Republic and
Venezuela, economic migration after the 1950s of Mestizos into coastal areas has had
this effect. Perhaps “hyper-Creole” international administrator Norman Russle Howard
Taylor Chin (Laguna de Perlas, 1967) is a model for future Caribbean Coast identity; he
claims as his ancestry Miskito, Rama, African, Mestizo, Náhuatl, Chinese and Anglo
Saxon (Antología poética “Afrocarinica” 121).
5. Language as Metonym
Creole poets write in Spanish, standard English and Creole English. J. Bekunuru
Kubayanda, in his African reading of Afro-Hispanic poetry, defines as key to some
major texts an acute sensitivity to language, to the structures and functions of spoken
and written language (21). In addition to the creative reappropriation of African
phonological and ideophonics systems, lexical loan, riddling and proverbial structures
and magical nomination, Afro-Hispanic poets are involved in the pidginization and
creolization in writing of official European languages advocated by Guillén and later
supported by Fanon, Césaire, Senghor, Brathwaite, Walcott, Fernández Retamar, and
June Beer as a “populist” Creole poet (in contrast to Carlos Rigby, with “academic
style”) who employs basilect forms when the content protests oppression, as in
“Ressarrection a’ da wud”:
Much of Nicaraguan Creole English appears to reflect the phonics of Jamaican orality,
on a differentiation continuum that ranges from slight spelling and grammatical
variations to poems that are barely decipherable to the Anglophone reader, though
probably easily understood in oral performance.23 In the few poems published by Joan
Yamilith Sinclair a basilect Creole English seems preferred even in non-political
contexts for delivery of evangelizing or testimonial messages, such as “JIIZOS IZ MI
SIEVYA”:
Jiizos, iz mi Sievya
Huu a chuuz fa falo,
Kaaz Ih tek mi outa
Di daarkes shado.
Jesus is my Savior,
Whom I choose to follow
Because He has rescued me
out of the darkest shadow.
23 When translations into Spanish are provided in anthologies such as Antología poética de la Costa
Caribe de Nicaragua and Bluefields en la sangre: poesía del Caribe Sur Nicaragüense, we notice that standard
Spanish is used. No attempt is made to creolize the Spanish.
Chribyulieshan mek
Yu schranga
Kaal di “Lord”
An im gwain ansa. (…)24
(Antología poética “Afrocarinica” 103)
Little evidence is found in Atlantic Coast poetry of a creolized form of Spanish that
participates in the sort of creolité movement proposed by Francophone Caribbean writers
(Glissant, Constant, Chamoiseau), with the exception of some of Carlos Rigby’s work.
Historical and demographic factors undoubtedly influence the predominance of
standard Nicaraguan Spanish. The one distinction that currently stands out is actually
the use of more standard Spanish in the Atlantic, in that poets give consistent
preference to the pronoun “tú” as the “you, singular, non-formal” pronoun, in contrast
to the Pacific poets who, during Sandinista prominence, began to use the more
colloquial “vos.” When I first noticed the shift from “tú” to “vos” in poetry by Pacific
mestizo author Vidaluz Meneses, which coincided chronologically with the Sandinista
triumph in 1979, author and historian Isolda Rodríguez Rosales explained: “As
witnessed in Meneses’s texts, the use of ‘vos’ corresponds to evolving cultural changes
reflected in language: prior to the Revolutionary period ‘vos’ was considered
inappropriate and improper in poetry, whereas it later became an indicator of social
egalitarianism, and ‘tú’ is now considered an affectation” (Rodríguez Rosales cited in
Roof, Preface 22). “Vos” appears less frequently in Atlantic Coast texts and could mark
resistance to mestizo Sandinista culture and modalities.
Recent poetry by African-descended Nicaraguans reflects demographic changes
and the Caribbean imaginary that proposes identity as a community unified by values,
life experiences grounded in geography, social practices, histories that are assumed and
shared, and hopes for the fulfillment of the aspiration of the Atlantic Coast for cultural
and economic welfare through self-governing Autonomy. Recent poetry continues the
long tradition of contestatory reactions to exclusionary national projects and proposes
the possibility of coexistence and/or tolerance, to create a new order based on unity in
diversity which, utopian or not, contributes to the Caribbean Coast imaginary of the
best possibilities for the whole community.
In summary, poetry by African-descended Nicaraguans, or Nicaribbeans, or
Mestigros, or Garífo-Miki-Creoles, or Africarinicaraguans, expresses the geographical,
economic, racial and social conditions of the Atlantic Coast region, correctly
characterized by Edmund T. Gordon as: a potential source of great wealth, nationally
ambivalent, physically isolated, unintegrated economically, whose sovereignty was
24 The final three stanzas are: “Chribyulieshan kom, / Mai sistaz an mai bradaz / Biin a kristian
/ Yuu gwain aalwiez / bii fala. // Anada seyin kristian dem / aalwiez seyin / Houl yu piis / An mek di
“Lord” / fait yu bakl. / Naar di flesh, / naar di blod / wi gwain rasl. // Wel das di chruut / Noh kier hou
yuu tek it. / Aal wii haftu nuo iz / dat wid di “Lord” / Wii wil aalwiez mek it.”
WORKS CITED
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suplementos/prensaliteraria/entrevista/entrevista-20080411-1.shtml> (21 Dec.
2013).
Aguirre, Erick. “Segregacionismo dariano.” El Nuevo Diario 20 abril 2002.
<http://archivo.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2002/abril/20-abril-2002/opinion/
opinion6.html> (01 June 2013).
Alemán Ocampo, Carlos. “The Culture of Power: Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean
Literature in Nicaragua.” URACCAN Update. <http://www.yorku.ca
/cerlac/uraccan/ URACCAN_update_November2000.htm>. (04 April 2008).
Translation of: “Cultura de poder, literatura indígena y afrocaribeña en
Nicaragua.” Revista Universitaria del Caribe 2 (julio 2000). Inaugural address,
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Abstract: Martiatu’s “Follow Me” and Rolando’s “My Footsteps in Baraguá” are more positive
illustrations of West Indian presence within Cuban national space. Descriptions of such Afro-Descendant
residuals in places like Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, and Ciego de Ávila seem to re-write this legacy
from a painful colonial and post-colonial past. The effects of Caribbean migrations become literary
themes, expand and reconfigure Afro-Cubanness, and speak to such lesser known influences often
overlooked because they are not associated with the capital, Havana.
Keywords: Inés María Martiatu, Gloria Rolando, West Indian, Afro-Cuban, women writers
Introduction
T
his article focuses on descriptions of West Indian peoples in Inés María
Martiatu’s “Follow Me” originally published in 1993, now available in Over
the Waves and Other Stories / Sobre las olas y otros cuentos (2008a), and Gloria
Rolando’s documentary, My Footsteps in Baraguá (Los hijos de Baragúa 1996),
as manifestations of an additional influential and potentially challenging Afro-
Descendant legacy within Cuban national space. This paper works to confirm how
Martiatu’s short story and Rolando’s documentary navigate their controversial
presentation of the West Indian legacy as an integrated diasporic identity that is claiming
its rightful place within Afro-Cubanness, this, even as historical studies have confirmed
the trauma and rejection West Indian migrants faced upon arrival in Cuba, as well as the
ensuing tensions. My discussion works on Martiatu’s short story and Rolando’s film in
order to understand how their main objective of promoting ethno-cultural appreciation
may not always have facilitated direct exposure of the differences between being Afro-
Cuban and being West Indian, indeed, messages of cultural integration subsumed the
productions’ ability to go into detail about social issues of divisiveness. Both
88 DAWN DUKE
productions base their narrations on the period spanning the 1920s to the 1940s,
bringing to life those aspects which they find crucial for a deeper comprehension of
contemporary Afro-Cuban racial and cultural identity.
In what ways is West Indian identity another branch of afrocubanidad or, as
Rolando prefers, cubanidad? This essay argues that these two works develop strategies
that permit in-depth attention to the Afro-Descendant experience, revealing the
different historical layers and underlying heterogeneous experiences that serve to add a
more dynamic tone to debates about identity on the island. Driving these productions
within the cultural sphere are the residuals of Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean
cultural influences in the eastern part of the island, in towns such as Santiago de Cuba,
Guantánamo, and Ciego de Ávila where, at best, these manifestations are associated
with a deeper, separate, colonial and post-colonial past and are not a part of the national
consciousness as a recognized feature of their identity.
The internal effects of Caribbean migrations appear as themes within Martiatu’s
writing and Rolando’s film, the latter insisting on their value toward greater
acknowledgement of Caribbean influences within Cuban history and identity. Their
examination of the Anglo-Caribbean influences brings another perspective to Cuba’s
heritage as a nation while it confirms the continuing existence of cultural references of a
different order that are often overlooked, largely because they are not normally viewed
as locally as a phenomenon associated with the entire island or the capital Havana,
rather are relegated to the eastern provinces and, significantly, the city of Santiago de
Cuba.
How do Cuban writers reflect this West Indianness in their literature? “Follow
Me” is part of a small collection of works by twentieth-century Cuban writers that
describe West Indians in Cuba and seem to move against the historical and literary
tradition of associating the Afro-Cuban historical legacy exclusively with those peoples
who traversed enslavement. Alejo Carpentier’s Ecue-Yamba-Ó! (1933) appears to be the
first novel to view the migrants, through the eyes of a Cuban character. Translating the
title “Praise be the Lord!” it draws its backdrop and cultural support from the various
black Caribbean populations that provided cheap labor within Cuba’s early sugar
industry during the early post-slavery era, while focusing on ethno-cultural differences,
even tensions, especially between Afro-Cubans and Haitians. With regard to the idea of
West Indianness in Cuba, it is important to mention Nicolás Guillén’s poem, “West
Indies Ltd.” (West Indies Ltd. 1934). Guillén’s poetry is universal in its approach to the
topic as it makes Cuba part of the West Indies in order to support argumentation of the
Caribbean as victim of a shared political exploitative legacy of neo-colonialism and
North American imperialism.
More recent is Marta Rojas’s El columpio de rey Spencer (1993) that, with “Follow
Me,” supports the cause as literary productions by Afro-Cuban women that do work to
further the agenda of including the Afro-Caribbean female subject. They include the
theme of the settlement of Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean peoples in Cuba
during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In the narratives, the portrayals
appear as backdrop or have a central role in the text. Rojas’s novel alludes to the in-
coming West Indians as that other presence, albeit unwanted, that arrived, worked in
the sugar cane fields, and settled in to claim its space. The novel talks about their lives
and those of their descendants.1 Worth mentioning also is Daisy Rubiera Castillo’s Reyita
sencillamente. Testimonio de una cubana nonagenaria (1997) that retraces the life of Reyita,
Rubiera Castillo’s mother, and briefly recognizes the contributions that the presence of
Jamaicans and the Marcus Garvey movement made to the development of a black
consciousness and African pride movement in the eastern region during the 1920s and
1930s. (Rubiera Castillo 24-26, Guridy 117).
The images and descriptions in the film and story coincide with studies by
historians such as Conway (17) and Lipman (26) with regard to the view that migration
is crucial to understanding the history of the Caribbean. It is an ongoing phenomenon
that is useful for the way it allows us to identify crucial transforming moments,
especially in terms of its decisive impact on the receiving territory. Lipman (26)
envisions the early twentieth century as an opportunity to observe how working-class
Jamaicans engaged with early North American capitalism and interacted with the
receiving cultures in Panama, Costa Rica, and Cuba. A confluence of economic and
political reasons explains why West Indians chose Cuba. By 1914, the landscape of
sugar production had totally changed in the Republic, with American bosses at the
helm. North American ownership of the sugar mills across the island ensured their
control of that market as well as their power over issues of land ownership and the
production of sugar cane. Two major owners of industrial size mills were the National
Sugar Refining Company and the United Fruit Company.2 De la Fuente (34) refers to a
presidential decree allowing the United Fruit Company to import one thousand West
Indian workers in 1913. Using Cuban records, he indicates that between 1917 and 1931
about three hundred thousand British West Indians arrived to work in the sugar
industry.3 They came from Jamaica, Haiti, and parts of the eastern Caribbean such as
Legitimación del Amor, y el Otro, la novela EL COLUMPIO DE REY SPENCER, de Marta Rojas.”
<http://afrocubaweb.com/martarojas/columpio.htm>.
2 Ayala 97, 99, 103, 107.
3 Different sources offer different figures. Hoernel (234) indicates that between 1910 and 1927,
estimated totals surpassed one hundred and fifty thousand West Indians coming into the Oriente region
Montserrat, St. Kitts, and Dominica. Records confirm that they were majority male with
very few women and children. While repatriation was the official intention, in the end,
many remained.
The vision of these incoming migrants as problematic in the areas of health,
crime, morality, and witchcraft attests to the general view of them as outsiders and a
very serious threat to national and cultural hegemony. Both film and story refer
indirectly to their status as less fortunate Black migrants and even as they focus on their
cultural specificities there are only a few indirect references to the challenges they faced.
Literature and film do not really tell the story of the deep antagonisms that emerged
over time, rather, seem to leave this as a sub-plot, beneath the specific focus on their
lives and those of their families. We can attribute Lola’s wanderings, emotional
instability, and vivacious personality as compensation, even defensive in light of public
reaction to her as being essentially non-Cuban, while the interviewees in Rolando’s
documentary seem to cluster together, living in the same place, a mechanism of defense
perhaps. The documentary, while never directly revealing tensions with locals, mentions
the few options available to them in the system for jobs, social mobility, and
enrichment. It displays their very simple rustic homes, however, through pleasantries,
skirting the idea of the precarious living conditions of the migrant workers. Both film
and story are less direct in terms of revealing the unpleasant nature of their experiences
in Cuba than, for example, Carpentier’s novel Ecue-Yamba-O! or the earthy, rustic, direct
tones visible in Marta Rojas’s El columpio de Rey Spencer. History, rather differently,
describes the social interaction as problematic for they were envisioned as unclean,
bearing diseases such as malaria and intestinal parasites that were sure to spread locally.4
They were ostracized as violent criminals, practitioners of brujería or witchcraft; to quote
McLeod, “Afro-Caribbean immigrants constituted a “double threat” – moral a as well as
physical – to the health of the Cuban nation.” (57).5 The de-emphasis of pain and
suffering in the story and the film allows for focus on cultural implantations i.e. what
they brought and left in Cuba, as well as the idea of social integration between Cubans
and West Indians over time. The film will cheerfully route into scenes of alegría (joy) and
festivity – drumming, song, and dance – that include West Indians, their Cuban children
and grandchildren, and neighbors.
legally. De La Fuente (47) confirms that by the 1920s, the large majority were employed in Camagüey and
Oriente. Carr (84) found records to confirm that by the early 1930s there were upwards of one hundred
and fifty thousand Antilleans in Cuba.
4 McLeod (58-59), Carr (86). Carr (87) goes on to mention the writings of the influential
ethnographer, Fernando Ortiz whose initial studies on Afro-Cuban identity (afrocubanidad) during that
period presented European driven concepts about “racial hierarchy in which blacks were constructed as
“morally primitive,” sensuous, closer to nature, and prey to irrational fears and taboos.” (Carr 87).
5 McLeod (1998, 601) adds to this by pointing out that there was real fear of the black migrant as
My Footsteps in Baraguá
6 Lipman (26-27) and Carr (96-102) discuss the overlaps between West Indian identities and
labor organizing on the one hand, and national entities such as the local unions and the Communist Party
on the other.
7 Tumba francesa is drumming, song, and dance of the eastern Cuba that originally belongs to the
Haitian slaves who settled, fleeing their home island during the revolutionary turmoil of 1790s.
8 Quesada (187, 192-194); Negra cubana tenía que ser. “Gloria Rolando.” Web. 1 February 2015
<http://negracubanateniaqueser.com/diccionariodeafrocubanas-2/gloria-rolando/>; Valrey, J.R. “Meet
Gloria Rolando, on tour with her new film ‘Reembarque’ on Haitian farmworkers in Cuba before the
Revolution. BayView: National Black Newspaper. Web. 1 February 2015. <http://sfbayview.com
/2014/11/meet-gloria-rolando-on-tour-with-her-new-film-reembarque-on-haitian-farmworkers-in-cuba-
before-the-revolution/>; Duarte, Amelia. “Reembarque hacia los orígenes.” Granma. Web. 2 February
2015 <http://www.granma.cu/cultura/2014-09-11/reembarque-hacia-los-origenes>.
9 The idea “independent filming group” has to be taken with some caution since they were
allowed to work on projects even as, given the revolutionary structure of the time, ICAIC still retained its
authority over the entire process and its release to the public.
10 Rolando. “Los hijos de Baraguá – My Footsteps in Baraguá.” Web January 26, 2015.
<http://www.afrocubaweb.com/gloriarolando/Baragua.htm>.
She also credits her life as a university student in Havana, in contact with students from
Africa and the Caribbean. (Craig and Rolando 96-97, Quesada 192). Rolando confirms
that her visits to Jamaica and Barbados were influential in creating the idea for this
documentary. She perceived commonalities and realized that these West Indians and
their descendants were in Cuba and clearly identifiable by their language and their
names. She also realizes that most people today would not be aware of this
phenomenon as Cubans speak Spanish and their stories of migration are different. She
talks about pockets of West Indian resistance as they try to hold on to their culture, this
view existing alongside her argument that they are also Cubans and this is a part of
Cuban history. She rejects the notion of an isolated minority and moves aggressively to
display their story as part of Cuba’s historical complexity. (Rolando and McCluskey 4,
11).
Her approach is emotional and historical for she is working on a very important
legacy that also has very personal implications for these are the roots of her own family.
Her decision was to produce documentaries using as inspiration they knowledge she
gained about her own origins and family history, as well as aspects of the past that mark
her as a Cuban. (Rolando and McCluskey 3). She confirms that the experiences of the
black family are central to her work, noting that the pre-revolutionary society in which
she grew up had a clear racial divide, its own system of segregation, making it very
difficult for a poor family such as hers. She is very specific in the way she works, seeking
to present these parts of history that are often left untold. “I want to see this kind of
history and the struggle in which black people have engaged.” (Rolando and McCluskey
3). For her, the insistence on self-defining as “Cuban” and not necessarily “Afro-
Cuban,” which has always been one of the marked differences between Cuba and the
United States, does not negate the fact of their African-originated identity, nor does it
mean that their stories receive due recognition. “Africans arrived in the condition of
slaves and African culture was never considered part of the official culture.” (Rolando
and McCluskey 3). Rolando’s approach is diasporic and unifying. She insists that
geographical dispersion of Afro-Descendants through migration does not preclude
cultural approximations. She is ready to demonstrate just how much proximity there is
among blacks regionally and among the continents. (Quesada 194). She credits the
Cuban Revolution with reversing the tide of silence and lack of information by
supporting and disseminating productions about blacks in the Revolution and in history.
(Rolando and McCluskey 4). Even as she has never hidden the fact that there are
financial and infrastructural challenges to being an independent filmmaker in Cuba,
Rolando’s films continue to find favor in a system known for its censorship of any
material deemed anti-revolutionary or too politically critical. Her focus on aspects of
origins, roots, and legacies have allowed her to bypass problematic illustrations; she
tends not to work with the present, preferring instead to fill historical gaps and recreate
crucial moments in the history of blacks and resistance. Her desire for mutual cultural
understanding explains the avoidance of historical tensions and conflicts, even as she
confirms her deep awareness of just how important are recognition and reversal of
those fissures.
Rolando’s focus on migration is particularly crucial for confirming that in Cuba
there are other legacies associated with blacks beyond that of the original forced
migration into enslavement. She describes in her interview just how an important and
emotional a topic migration is in the Caribbean and the United States, as confirmed by
the reaction of audiences everywhere to this film.
Migration has been and is a constant theme in the life of the people of the
Caribbean. In the municipality of Baragua, in the present province of Ciego de Avila,
Cuba, the stories and customs of the English speaking West Indians and their
descendants still remain alive. Today, they are a part of Cuba. (Rolando and McCluskey
11).
She goes on to reiterate the broad spectrum of emotional reactions to the
experience that ranges from ongoing nostalgia for that island home which they never
see again, to expression of love and attachment for the place they now call home. As a
people, they have worked hard to ensure that their children’s children and future
generations remember their stories and understand the legacy behind the non-Cuban
surnames they bear. Rolando works on the theme of migration using memory. She
zooms in on individuals who tell their stories of travel, dislocation, and migration
among the islands, into and out of Panama and Costa Rica during the first two decades
of the twentieth century when this phenomenon was at its peak, in large part driven by
the sugar boom that provoked the need for a large labor force. Her tone in the
production is decidedly romantic as she captures the delightful simplicity and peaceful
agedness of the place and the older generations. The documentary is a work of art (i.e.
imagination) and concrete reality for this is a story that also has to be imagined if it is to
be told. The old houses and sugar mills, the West Indian folk songs and dances, the
Maypole, the old family photographs are framed side by side as images of the past and
re-enactments today, the latter especially serving as direct reminders of this culture’s
evolution and survival. Their phenomenon is the way they were able to replicate the life
they left behind in their original island spaces. Rolando strives to present these subjects
from their perspective, in the way they see themselves and how they would like to be
understood. They are products of British colonization in the Caribbean even as they
bear all the traits of their African ancestry. In the film, Rolando best illustrates this
through their music and dance. They have come from many different islands, however,
in Baraguá, they are one community, bonded by the sugar rush, the traditions of dishes
and folksongs, the rhythms of the drums, and their religious practices as Anglicans.11
The film insists on a message of their cultural specificity; it seems interested in
bypassing the idea of nationalism or argumentation of Cuban national identity,
preferring instead to promote the idea of the construction of a diasporic phenomenon
11 Ibid.
that has emerged independent of loyalty to country. Even as the film bypasses the
notion of nation, it seems to promote the notion of cultural absorption, fusion, a
merging, demonstrated most effectively in the way the old West Indians gather with
their subsequent generations and descendants, blacks, mestizos, Hispanic, Cubans of all
shades and tones to dance and sing together in the streets in a kind of carnivalesque
comparsa display, perhaps Rolando’s message of influences, blends, and fusion, a process
of cultural integration that is Afro-Cuban, however, in a way that is forever dynamic.
Giovannetti (129) has identified four stages in the production. Religion,
language, food, music are the primary focus of the first part in an attempt to depict the
main aspects of their lives. They are manifestations of day to day practices back home.
A historical overview comprises part two that clarifies how and why they came to Cuba;
many family stories connect to the Panama Canal, which was their first stop, before
transitioning to Cuba. The historical description continues in the third section, this time
with a focus on their experiences living and working in Cuba with depictions of their
meagre dwellings and difficult working conditions as migrant laborers. The final
segment of the documentary describes how and why they ended up establishing roots in
Baraguá. Even as parts of the video do touch on precarious living and working
conditions, Giovannetti (129) is of the opinion that the documentary does not touch on
the influence of the Marcus Garvey Movement and the way UNIA was central in
organizing the West Indian migrant labor sector. Rolando did subsequently reveal in an
interview her deep awareness of the hardships they faced, especially as blacks. She
never denies that racism and discrimination existed and exists in Cuba. She also points
out that the eastern part of the island is different in part as a result of this particular
legacy and her plan is to reflect on such phenomena, creating a more dynamic approach
to the legacy of blacks in her country. (Rolando and McCluskey 11). The filmmaker
pictures her mission in life to reaffirm Caribbean interconnectedness using key
moments in Cuban history, as she puts it, “Conocernos (énfasis), para ver todos los puntos
que tenemos en común.” (Quesada 195). She continues to focus on the larger purpose
of her mission i.e. a clearer picture of what constitutes Cuban identity.
Rolando’s words give voice to her own investigations about shared identities and they
line up with other available scholarship that, for example, does point to early forms of
collaboration among Afro-Cubans and West Indians. Historians have uncovered and
described these communities’ widespread involvement in Marcus Garvey’s UNIA
movement during the 1920s. McLeod found that while Afro-Cubans and West Indians
had separate UNIA groups in Santiago, in Havana they were part of the same
association. (McLeod 2003, 84). De La Fuente (40) describes instances of conflicting
labor interests between West Indians and locals, the result of the very divisive labor
structure put in place by the dominate United Fruit Company that would have affected
relationships between West Indians laborers and all local workers. Rolando’s cultural
rendition of the experience is working toward another objective which is to reveal
interconnections between Cuba and the Caribbean, ultimately creating a more dynamic
portrait of Afro-Cubanness, especially in terms of its history.
One key aspect is the way the documentary, by design, works against the
popular trend of identifying the West Indian subject using the term jamaiquino creating
the illusion that they all were from Jamaica, a reductive, potentially excluding, and
pejorative expression that identified who was not Cuban. While the documentary
reveals their conscious identification as British subjects, in the end, the moments when
they identify specific islanders, naming their island of origin – Jamaica, Grenada,
Montserrat, Barbados – take precedence, a way of expressing pride in their various
homelands and counteracting the popular trend of identifying them all as coming from
a single unifying space of origin. (Giovannetti 129-130). The interviews present
individual stories and the way in which the camera zooms in and focuses on one person
at a time and the story each one has to tell creates deeper appreciation of their
individual national legacies along with the way they now see themselves also as Cuban.
This, even as their language, their love of cricket, and their religious identity as
Anglicans are clear representations of their non-Hispanic colonizing influences.
(Giovannetti 130). This filming strategy is very effective for easing the very specific lines
of divide that Cuba has developed around itself ideologically, result of Cold War
international relations. The documentary works to trace the unceasing intra-regional
familial alliances and migrations that impacted Afro-Caribbean peoples, the effects of
which continue to date, all this taking place, in spite of regional geopolitics.
The criticism that the film faces is its nostalgia which does work against a more
forceful portrayal of the negative aspects and many difficulties they faced that are clearly
recorded in history. The racism, ostracism, maltreatment, quarantines, and deportations
of the 1920s and 1930s in Panama and Cuba do not appear here. The film touches very
lightly on the Baraguá sugar company and labor conditions at the mill, which was their
reason for migrating to Cuba in the first place. It does not go into issues such as the
segregationist behavior and rules implemented by the North Americans, nor does it
describe the discriminatory and hierarchical divisions between whites and blacks, local
Hispanic Cuban workers and black West Indian workers, white employees and black
immigrants, local and West Indian blacks and so on. Yet, there are moments about the
environment of the sugar mill and the clear separatist culture imposed by the
Americans; there are flashes of their substandard living conditions, explanation of the
way West Indian women worked as servants for the white elite, and the ensuing contrast
with how white prosperity. There is mention of the idea that their claim of being
subjects of the British Crown may have provided some sort of protection against the
usual forms of cultural hostility that immigrants face. Rolando seems to have
deliberately avoided this path for her film, focusing instead on landscape, lifestyle,
religious expression, family life, dishes, folklore and those aspects that clearly
demonstrated Cuba’s claim to West Indianness. Giovannetti (130) values the film for
the way it brings greater understanding of West Indian trajectory between the Panama
Canal and eastern Cuba. In the documentary, one of the migrants named Holdey
describes how he left Monsterrat with his brother and father to work in the Canal Zone.
As that project soon ended they subsequently decided join the family in Cuba instead of
returning home to Monsterrat. (Quesada 196). Rolando goes on to identify the Panama
Canal as the reason for the second big separation of Caribbean families (the first was
slavery), especially the men, many of whom never returned to the islands. The images of
the Canal Zone stress the fact that this was a labor force of West Indian men who
submitted to terrible environmental, labor, housing, and health conditions.
Discrimination came in the form of the American system of segregation established in
the Canal Zone and in the very low wages. The migration into Cuba was also an
experience of trauma as by the mid-1920s they faced open hostility and deportations en
masse, a testimony that is today an important part of the history of Santiago de Cuba.
(Quesada 196-197).
Follow Me
Martiatu also wrote critical essays primarily on her main area of interest, theatre. Consult
12
Afro-Cuban universe – racism, marginalization, santería, and the black female emotional
experience. Her words reveal her intention behind “Follow Me,” the focus of this essay:
Martiatu’s “Follow Me” is a short story, originally published in Spanish with an English
title. It shares with Rolando’s film the display of migrant experiences, for it opens with
references to photographs, letters, and postcards from Jamaican-born Lola to her
Cuban-born daughter, Virginia, who continues to reside there. Lola is the twentieth-
century Caribbean migrant par excellence, a traveling performer constantly on the go,
from New York and Chicago to St. Kitts and her island of origin, Jamaica. Virginia’s
letters and photographs are usually returned to sender for, by the time they get to the
last address, Lola has already moved on. Lola, baptized Wendolyn, changed her name,
perceiving it as more in keeping with her career plans; her passion is music and she
dreams of becoming a singer and performer. She is very different from her mother, a
Jamaican-born, controlling, conservative, God-fearing Anglican churchgoer, proudly
named after Queen Victoria, who decisively does not approve of her daughter’s evil
ways. Victoria seems to belong to that generation (mostly men) that, at the turn of the
twentieth century, had made its way into Cuba, in search of betterment. Lola emerges as
a transgressive personality who resists her mother’s disapproval and abandons home to
seek her fortune. She will embrace the identity of the migrant, the idea of travel, and in
the story, seems to be the character that, to escape her domineering mother, transitions
away from Jamaican identity, drifts toward Cubanness displayed as more fun-loving, to
ultimately become an international worker and wanderer. Martiatu seems to aim at
creating a Cuban version of West Indian experience that Cuban readers can understand.
One notable feature is that Lola and Victoria are mixed-race, which historically was not
a common feature among the Jamaicans who migrated to Cuba. Lola has a “light
complexion and the eyes of Bessie Smith” (Martiatu 3) while her mother is a
“dominating Anglican mulata.” (Martiatu 3). Anglicized references merge with Cuban
ones for while individual identities are English Caribbean, they find themselves within a
Cuban influencing space.
Lola is flavorful. She is vivacious, bent on a performer’s career and abandons
Camagüey for Havana where she will work in unsavory bars as a waitress and
performer. She finds danzón stimulating and rhythmic, a liberating sensation from the
more stoic Anglo-Saxon beat. Lola becomes enamored with Armando, a handsome
mulatto heart breaker who will sweep her off her feet, give her the fascinating lively
vivacious life she craves and then leave her in pregnancy. Lola’s daughter Virginia
speaks her first words in Spanish in contrast with her mother who speaks English to her
until she is seven. After love comes disaccord and prejudice, for Cuban Armando rejects
Jamaican Lola and uses the systemic national mistrust of those migrants to take custody
of Virginia in Ciego de Ávila. Lola retreats to her roots, moving into the Jamaican
community, attending Jamaican dances, with a new and violent lover called Gilbert,
born in the Canal Zone in Panama of a Jamaican mother and Barbadian father. Under
Gilbert’s influences, Lola collaborates in the Marcus Garvey movement and seems to
rediscover herself as black, Caribbean, part of the world movement of peoples of
African origin. They both migrate to the Canal Zone in Panama confirming the intra-
Caribbean legacy of connectedness that is also Rolando’s message. The connection is
cultural (calypso, rum, dishes, hard labor, silver roll, gold roll, carnival, and so on) but
also political; in the story the struggles for workers’ rights especially for fair wages and
better living and working conditions will take Gilbert’s life. His burial ceremony
reinforces the idea of their African origins seen in the ritualistic act of bathing in the
water used to clean the dead man’s body, as a way of attracting good luck. In Cuba,
however, the Garvey legacy lingers on. Lola’s singing “Let’s fight! Follow me!” (Martiatu
7) will be the single element that she leaves with her daughter, unknowingly. Her child,
expressively confused, will repeatedly pronounce an expression about which she has no
understanding, only a sensing that it has to do with her mother. “Leta fai, folla mi” (8)
will be totally incomprehensible to her Cuban father and relatives have no idea what it
means. Years will pass before Lola returns to Cuba and she must bear linguistic anguish
for she can no longer speak Spanish as her mother’s condemnation is unwavering. The
narrator enters the narrative by recounting this story as a summary of the interview she
had with Lola. Lola is the same woman, unapologetic of her past, full of stories of her
adventures, proud, and alone. She is reflective of what we all share i.e. the eternal very
human search for prosperity and happiness.
The narrator seems to be proposing the idea of a hybrid identity, a confusing
Cuban Caribbeanness that becomes lost in language and in other irreconcilable
differences. While Martiatu’s text processes West Indianness differently from Rolando’s
film, they both share the intention of identifying a legacy of Afro-Descendant difference
in Cuba. In the end, this is the narrator’s story about three generations of women –
Victoria, Lola, and Virginia. Their legacy of migrations, sacrifice, separations, and
resistance is summed up in the victory song that Lola and Gilbert taught Virginia, a
song in homage to Marcus Garvey. The marks of an Anglo-Caribbean identity in this
story are clear. Her status as a West Indian migrant, the Anglican Church her mother
will never leave, the British names, and the use of Jamaican Creole English are that part
of Lola that she seems to want to erase even as she simply cannot since they represent
My Footsteps in Baraguá and “Follow Me” dwell on the West Indian legacy during
the first decades of the twentieth century, however, Rolando’s film gazes backward
from today, while Martiatu’s story is set at that time. They both employ multiple
characters: My Footsteps will interview the older generations who are migrants and
children of migrants while “Follow Me” is based on a family of three generations of
Jamaican women in Cuba. They coincide in the way West Indianness is painted as a
distant and dying legacy. This message is sustained by the way, in both cases, the
younger generations, even as they bear the names, traits, Creole Caribbean languages,
and legacies of their older family relatives who hail from the islands, are clearly
associating with the idea of being West Indian in a distant way for they are now very
Cuban. This detail feeds the intention of the producers who are recognizing the West
Indian legacy in Cuba as another kind of Afro-Cuban cultural experience, one
constructed on migration. In both works, there are no alliances between this legacy and
revolutionary ideals. The protagonists are not painted as subjects inserted into the
national ideological cause, rather, they seem to exist in isolation, with relevancy given
only to their lives, their sacrifices, their challenges, and their achievements. Yet, in the
end, they emerge as Cuban, by virtue of dislocation and new settlement. The
productions seem to be seeking the same objective i.e. to widen local appreciation of
this group of non-Hispanic Afro-Descendants.
Equally important is the way these recent productions force contemplation of
West Indian difficulty in Cuba. They break the silence on this matter in a very tangible
way, referring to the racial, social, and economic challenges the incoming migrants faced
during those early decades. There are differences, however, for while “Follow Me”
sustains an underlying discourse of conflicting identities, migratory restlessness, and
self-searching displayed by the main character, Lola, My Footsteps is somewhat idyllic as it
works with wonderful memories and a kind of nostalgic bitter sweet re-enactment of
life in this village, helping us to imagine what it must have been like to labor under
North American control, in a segregated social structure that naturally relegated this
community to the very bottom of the social scale. Rolando’s film does not dwell on the
topic at length although the interviewees’ stories and images speak to the challenges
related to working at the Baraguá Sugar Company. “Follow Me” on the other hand
displays Lola as directly involved in the labor movement struggle inspired by Marcus
Garvey. The narratives seem preoccupied with identifying the residuals of West
Indianness and explaining how inter-cultural relationships between Cubans and West
Indians unfold through time. They aim less at the instances of friction but rather, in
ethnographic style, emphasize the singularity of these peoples as British subjects, as
English-speaking blacks, and ultimately as Cuban citizens and Afro-Descendants, the
plurality of identities into which they eventually settle.
Both text and film rely on similar strategies of historical reenactment. They are
framed within a pre-revolutionary time and the narrating voice fully assumes this
historical perspective. Initially, there was a period of heavy migration of Jamaicans as
they and thousands of other island peoples left their homelands heading to Panama and
Costa Rica initially, then later into Cuba, driven away by failing economies, joblessness,
and a shortage of land. It was a migration following news of available work and the
dream of being able to sustain families back home. Their plan was to work, raise enough
money and, as the film indicates, they always thought that they would return home.
Passing time, distance, and separation are the pillars of these tales of migration for the
main protagonist in “Follow Me” seems caught up in an unending cycle of movement
to the detriment of her relationships; Lola’s daughter, Virginia, writes her mother but
the mail is always sent back for by the time it arrives at its destination, Lola has already
moved on. In Rolando’s film, feeling the effects of isolation, the interviewees talk of
their dreams of returning home but those in the film never did.
A clear mark of identity is in their names. In the film Baraguá dwellers proudly
declare their English (British) names, as do their descendants. Martiatu’s story self-
identifies by way of its title as an Anglophone space and experience and brings into
focus Victoria the first migrant in a story about three generations of women. Victoria is
Jamaican, a very strict churchgoer and a single mother who is raising her daughter very
conservatively and who cannot forgive her when she abandons the straight and narrow
path and leaves home in search of her dream to be a singer and performer. Not only
does she leave home but she also rejects her original name, Wendolyn, replacing it with
the more festive and provocative Lola, a transformation that seems intended to facilitate
her transition into the world of entertainment. Yet, their legacy as Jamaicans does not
end rather her mother’s legacy as first generation migrant will live on through her
granddaughter, Virginia, interesting choice for a name for the way it intersects at both
Anglophone and Hispanic culture. Naming, photographs, and letters serve to construct
a sense of loss and recovery, distance and longing as here is a people constantly
struggling to hold on to memories of their home spaces, sensing perhaps that those
memories are all they really have left. In My Footsteps, the old black and white
photographs and still shots are of days past. The photographs of calm yet serious West
Indians in their best church attire gazing straight into the camera are clear
configurations of their Anglophone legacy. In the story, Lola’s photographs arrive in the
mail, and in them she is always in a different location, mostly English-speaking
countries, and always appears to be happy.
The protestant Church (Anglican, Methodist, Episcopal, and Presbyterian lines),
the formal rather conservative style of dress typical of the English-speaking Caribbean
countries under British colonization, and the use of West Indian English provide the
backdrop both for Rolando’s recuperative approach as well as for Martiatu’s message of
cultural non-confirmity and failed assimilation to Cuban culture. In the film, the
manifestations of West Indianness are over-emphasized with great pride. This is a
different route from the one presented in “Follow Me” where the image of Lola is that
of a migrating subject who seems to be fleeing from this legacy even as she really cannot
deny it as her identity and that of her daughter. The adoption of the name Lola serves as
an identity of entertainment for her style is very similar to the North American rhythm
and blues divas that she is trying to emulate. The ethnic and racial components of being
West Indian intrude, making the ideal of local acceptance and integration an ongoing
quest, ultimately attainable two generations forward, even as Lola’s daughter Virginia,
will regurgitate Garvey rhetoric, thereby confirming the inevitable continuity of a legacy
that many perceive as fading away.
There is room to argue that these works are reflective of Afro-Cuban female
perspectives. For Rolando, it seems to be love of the art of filmmaking and a question
of a community’s legacy. Her journey is both one of both professional creativity and
private desire to be able to reconstruct, moving backwards in time, the ancestral path of
her people. As the Afro-Cuban professional independent filmmaker on the island, she
brings such a positioning into her productions even as this is only one aspect that
defines her pieces. Triana (123) will insert Rolando into the genre of black women
writers and performers in Cuba today whose artistry focuses on black female
subjectivity and the many dimensions of her often debilitating experiences through time.
Rolando shares with Martiatu the strategies of invoking memory and elaborating on
black female lives in a way that make them representative of a broader historical Afro-
Cuban experience. By doing so, they break through the blinds of cultural descriptions to
reveal such experience and perspective in a very uplifting way. Rolando’s approach to
the topic is to tell their story, even if it means revealing the internal dynamics of gender
relations. In the Baraguá of days past the roles are clear. The family unit is intact. The
woman is domesticated, taking care of the house, the garden, the family, the neighbors,
the cooking, and the cleaning. If they do work outside the home they take in washing or
are domestic servants. The men go out to work at trades or at the sugar mill. There are
no further expectations, no room for advancement. Activism against conditions of labor
did not extend to the female realm. The village seems small and the options are very
few.
Martiatu’s narrative, while similar in content, is feminist in spirit, for it envisions
another kind of experience that counteracts the expected norm for women of color in
those days. Lola is a free spirited protagonist who, in her quest to escape life’s drudgery,
runs the risk of being branded as immoral for the way she simply has no desire to fulfill
society’s ’s vision of her expected role as a properly raised young woman, or be like her
mother i.e. self-righteous and God-fearing. Instead, she follows her heart, has several
love affairs, and finally has a child who she then abandons, leaving her with the relatives
in Cuba while she takes off to become a globe trotter and entertainer, touching down in
major cities in the USA. The very mechanisms used to describe the West Indian
predominantly male migratory legacy is transferred to her, allowing for the creation of
an ambitious and worldly figure who is single-minded, ambitious, earns her way, enjoys
some degree of prosperity, and is indeed very representative of what it means to be a
West Indian today.
In conclusion, the productions were both very well received partly because there
are so few literary and film representations of this ancestral line on the island; even
though all three Hispanic islands have this legacy, it is not very visible, indeed, even
repressed within the national spaces, for it does go against the grain in terms of those
specific cultural markers that are normally used to determine what is acknowledged as
Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican. The favorable tones adopted in the productions
facilitate highlighting this migrant tale without directing heavier tones of condemnation
or culpability towards locals. The use of the West Indian family unit as the base
confirms the establishment of deep roots and clearly illustrates West Indian integration
into the Cuban island space.
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Abstract: A triple trauma haunts Léon Damas’ poetry from Pigments until the now finally releashed Mine
de riens (which he left unpublished when he died suddenly in Washington, D.C., in 1978). Born at the
beginning from the XXth century, a year before Aimé Césaire, the Cayennese poet was in fact born from
twins: his little sister Gabrielle only lived some days. This sister is a female double that continuously
haunts him like his “black doll” that should be rendered to him. A year old, Damas loses his mother, and
finally another year later his grandmother. Women are the “fantoms” that surround him (Black-Label,
1956) which orient a poetry that is made of recollections and dreamlike visions, acid protestations against
racism and exclusion because of skin colour and even sexual orientation. But most of all, the cry to give
him back his “black dolls” in the poem “Limbé” brings us to another major dimension: Damas as
“dangerous orphan” (in the words of his fellow writer Jayne Cortez) begs for fe/male company in the
cold city of Paris, and goes even to search for tenderness and love on the boulevards of France’s capital.
It is here that I capture a wish to return to a precolonial and pre-gendered identity, not yet determined by
“race”, “class”, “gender” and other “labels” which pin you down. In this article, I suggest a totally new
reading of his vivid claim to give him back his “black dolls” which has been interpreted as a nostalgic cry
to return to African, Damas being enlisted in the négritude movement and its utopian return to the native
land.
Keywords: gender in colonial societies, colonialism and homosexuality, post-négritude and the
vindication of a new gender politics, equality beyond the racial and gender division in the post-slavery
Circum-Caribbean
Knot/ Not's
2
012 was the centennial year of Léon-Gontran Damas's birth, a year that
broadly spoken, went unnoticed in Caribbean circles except for an April
conference I organized in Cayenne, and several poems regularly posted on
France-Guyane newspaper and the website E-karbe.com1. Overseas and across
1 www.e-karbe.com/
MAPPING THE TRANS-CARIBBEAN 107
the Channel, the same ignorance of Damas has been witnessed, despite the “Third
Man” of Négritude's contacts with Caribbean authors and critics, such as Andrew Salkey2,
John La Rose3 and many others4. Reclaiming three rivers running through his veins5,
Damas remained in the shadow of Césaire6 and Senghor7? In this paper, I try to do
justice to the poet who rebelled against the establishment. As Keith Walker states in
Countermodernism8, Damas explored the significations of his last name9. Damas favours a
sinister image in Black-Label, namely that of a lynched “Negro” for “having wanted to
cross the line”. In his poetry he stages a fictional double10 entangled in existential knots.
A city dweller and bohemian, a jazz lover and anthropologist11, the censured poet12 and
2 Salkey, Andrew, Breaklight. Poets of the Caribbean, Anchor Books, 1973; An Island Post. Stories from
C.L.R. James' play, asking if Damas had received Wilson Harris's Palace of the Peacock. LaRose also
announces that he has begun translating Pigments and will have to see Damas to discuss this. He ends his
letter by wishing him "Bonne Année" (in French).
4 Tshitenge Lubabu M.K., translated by Olivier Milland, "The Third Man of Négritude", Africa
"la Tigresse des Hauts Plateaux", his ancestors living on the borders of the Orénoque-river in the
Amazonian forest (BL 63), les “Roucouyennes” (BL 21), playing the "bone flute" (“flûte en tibia” BL 31),
both a fetish and a ritual instrument. Elsewhere in Black-Label the “flûte de bamboo” (BL 45) is an
instrument which brings back to live Amerindian ancestors: “une Galibi matinée de sang Congo".
6 Discourse on Colonialism and Notebook of a Return to the Native Land are two of Césaire's works in
which he vehemently shows the dehumanization of French colonialism: "and movement is negro / for
laughter is negro / for joy is negro / for peace is negro / for life is negro."
7 In 2006, for instance, the centennial year of Senghor's birth in Joal, Senegal, was widely
celebrated, including here in Liège with international forums and conferences, where the name of Damas
has never been pronounced.
8 Keith Walker, Countermodernism and Francophone Literary Cultures: the Game of Slipknot, Dunham,
Duke UP, 1999, p. 14: "The slipknot is also a recurring image in the writing of the Césaire-Damas
generation. Like the lifelines metaphor, the slipknot has much to do with the sea and survival. It is
polyvalent in its signifying power and multilayered in its richness and aptness to the history and
experience of New World Blacks, evoking a string of verbal associations that plot the legacy of the Middle
Passage, colonial domination, plantation experience and post-colonialism: capture, bound hands, nautical
voyage, bondage, suicide, lynching, strangulation, triangulation, struggle, tics, knots prestidigitation,
escape, freedom and survival." Damas also corrects the number of victims of the Middle Passage, which
Jacques Roumain has estimated at 25,000 in his Bois-d'Ebène (1947). Instead of thousands, Damas figures
it would have been millions: "DEUX CENTS CINQUANTE MILLIONS DES LEURS" (BL 17).
9 The noun "damas" refers to an iron to forge weapons, as well as to sea knots, and textile
(damassé, fibré).
10 The image of the "corbillard" (dead weagon) appears in Movement One (BL 27). The
recurrent image of the “hanged Negro”, a clear reference to lynching, is particularly signifying in this
respect.
11 As an “indigenous observer and collector of remnants of African culture in French Guyana,
Damas finally published a report, Retour de Guyane (1938), which would be destroyed by French
authorities: it did not at all correspond to their expectations of bringing a positive "balance" of what
“députe dépité”, was ahead of his time by moving beyond the antagonisms of
Négritude. Not only did he claim African heritage alongside Amerindian13 as well as
European, he also moved away from binaries between class and gender.
An ethnographer and pupil of Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet, Damas moves
beyond a third Line, the enduring "différend avec l'Afrique" that authors of the next
generation from the French Caribbean, I maintain, continue to struggle with. First of all
the "antillanité"-movement by Glissant, and second the "créolité"-movement by
Confiant and Chamoiseau. The Martiniquan theoreticians have in spite of appearances
maintained a distance between the literarure of the continent and the Antilles (more
precisely their island). Moreover, they have established a strong Line between an elitist
culture in the Départements d'Outre-Mer and what they consider a more popular culture
(Gyssels 2010). Much closer to Senghor, Glissant's vindication to write in hermetic style
would further diminish Damas’ contribution. Senghor’s statement (“Damas’ poetry is
not sophisticated”14) has been repeated by many later critics and authors from the
African diaspora, including Glissant15: he places Damas alongside Haitian Jacques
Roumain16 (the Indigénist-movement) and Cuban Nicolas Guillén.17 While labelling
French colonization has meant in these countries. Moreover, Damas got sick of the "prénotions / notions
/ présomptions" and theorizing about the "Other", himself, in the French intellectual circles. Michel
Leiris' Afrique fantôme or Contacts de Civilisation à la Martinique et à la Guadeloupe would be much more
"valuable". Hence the total absence of Damas in Claude Lévi-Strauss' writings. See Sally Price on Leiris'
anthropological works. The same omission goes for works on Robert Desnos and Langston Hughes.
12 In Amerindian cultures the knot often serves to measure time, as in the Aztec and Mayan
calendars. The knot comes close to the other famous "metaphor" for mixed cultures in the New World,
the "branchement" (see Amselle, Branchements, Anthropologie de l'universalité des cultures, Flammarion, 2001,
and of course Glissant's rhizome, which Amselle, author of Logiques métisses. Anthropologie de l'identité
Afrique et ailleurs (Payot 1990, rééd 1999) in fact criticizes for risking a slide into a new "essentialism".
13 Gyssels, Kathleen, « Léon-Gontran Damas et le mythe de l’Amérindien », Dalhousie French
sophisticated than his own. This statement was so extensively repeated by many later French critics and
authors (though less so in the French-speaking Caribbean) that Damas disappeared from the "picture".
"Mine de rien", Damas hinted at the long-lasting aftershocks of colonial rule, of the collision between two
cultures in which the oppressed one would be considered without value and their évolués betraying their
people. Senghor failed to grasp the multilayered ambivalence embedded in the images of knots, of lines,
of his poetry (a new word formed by poésie and métrie)?
15 "The imposition of lived rhythms. That is orality finally recognized as a forceful presence to the
extent that it became the nerve center of Damas's and Guillén's writing, thereby giving birth to the
movement that would support the great thrust in Creole writing" (Caribbean Discourse, 154). Ironically
these words by Glissant have apparently been unheard by Chamoiseau and Confiant who forget Damas in
Lettres créoles (Chamoiseau and Confiant, 1991index) and struggle with his acerb condemnation of colonial
mimicry (see Gyssels, forthcoming, Ibis Rouge, 2013).
16 Gyssels Kathleen, « Damas et McKay: les démons blancs”, Riveneuve Continents (automne-hiver
2008-2009), Hors Série, Harlem Heritage: 219-227. Gyssels, Kathleen, « Correspondances et consonances:
Bois-d’Ebène et Black-Label”, in Révolte, subversion et développement chez Jacques Roumain, Acacia, Michel, ed.,
Port-au-Prince, Editions de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti, 2009 : 231-244.
Damas’ poetry “less sophisticated”, Senghor had a hand in reducing Damas’ work, a
judgment picked up by Glissant and his followers, much to the disadvantage of Damas’
posthumous fame. But other reasons have to be taken into account for the oblivion of
the militant’s work. Protesting fiercely against the départementalisation he might have
found Aimé Césaire and Cayenese intellectuals such as Gaston Monnerville too loyal to
the colonial rule. People like the governor of Tchad, Félix Eboué were betraying in his
eyes the ideals of decolonisation and together with Guyanese politicians of his own
generation, like Bertène Juminer, Damas was always a strong defender of
independentism, sharing Fanon’s views on the crisis of assimilation and alienation.
Rejecting the status of “D.O.M.” for his own country and the neighbouring French
islands, Damas was convinced this in-between status (autonomy vs dependence) would
enhance a neo-colonial régime holding the populations in a dreadful double bind. In line
with Fanon, Damas believed that citizens of France, they would always remain out-laws,
under-dogs because of their origin and skin colour. Another explanation for the
omission is Damas’ bad luck with French authorities who censured both Retour de
Guyane (1938) and Pigments (1937) for being too overtly anticolonial.
Finally, his withdrawal from politics and his distancing from the Négritude-
movement contributed to his isolation. Quite in the margins of the French Caribbean
canon, omitted in manifestos written by Glissant and Chamoiseau, Damas deserves a
second opinion. Indeed, his work is very valid in the actual debate on migration, on
helping the integration of colonized and oppressed populations of any pigmentation,
origin, and even sexual orientation.
His first collection, Pigments (1937), was seized by French authorities for its
outright anti-colonial discourse. In the first poem, Damas portrays the invasion of the
European colonizer as a moment that forever stops the drumbeat of the many African
worshippers and dancers. The arrival of the white barbarians destroyed forever African
ritual ceremonies of dances, songs, and drums:
17 Kutzinski rightly shows that Guillén’s poetry also has been labelled as easy and thereby
simplified. There is a whole undercurrent that has not been dealt with in this apparently "easy" poetry.
18 Video recording of Senghor reciting this poem available at http://www.assemblee-
nationale.fr/histoire/aime-cesaire/damas-photo.asp
la frénésie
des pieds de statues
DEPUIS
combien de MOI MOI MOI
sont morts
depuis qu’ils sont venus ce soir où le
tamtam roulait de
rythme en
rythme
la frénésie
des yeux
la frénésie
des mains
la frénésie
des pieds de statues19
of eyes
the frenzy of hands
the frenzy
of statues’ feet
SINCE
how many of ME ME ME
have died20
19 Léon-Gontran Damas, Pigments, Présence Africaine, 1962. We refer to the 1972 edition. Pigments
Névralgies collection, re-issued by Présence Africaine. While the original edition of Pigments has this first
poem without the dedication to Senghor, the admiration expressed by his fellow Senghor made Damas
add "To Senghor" in the new edition of the collection of poetry at Présence Africaine in 1962.
For Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor this poem demonstrated the typical African
rhythm,22 and therefore it was his favourite. The poem would be dedicated to Senghor
in the subsequent reedition. Also, Senghor dedicated his own first poem of his first
collection of poetry, Hosties Noires (1948), to Damas. This rhythm and jazz beat was also
appreciated by his second new “prefacer”, the Belgian novelist and poet from Liège,
Robert Goffin.23 Complimenting Damas on the African beat, Senghor glossed over the
actual event portrayed in “They came that night / Ils sont venus ce soir”: men
slaughtering and ransacking, genocidal violence and the poet’s incapacity of counting
the victims who fell and continue to fall under the assault of these invaders. Long after
the colonizer first came to this country, violence strikes the “indigenous populations”.
Nor did Senghor understand at that time the multi-layered knots in a poetry (poétry24)
that is much more ambivalent than one would first expect: by leaving out who the
"they" actually are, Damas leaves the interpretation open. First, he denounces the
French, but second, those very Africans who sold their own brothers and sisters into
slavery and who knew when to strike best for their incursions and razzias. Also, by
leaving the gap25 on the identity of the "Ils" (They) and the use of the passé composé verb
20 We lose the "moisson" at which Damas alluded to: proof to that is the title La moisson des trois
domaines (nouveaux contes), one of the many unfinished manuscripts he left at Washington D.C. apart
from a biography of Langston Hughes Damas was working on a third anthology: L'écot de la race, Plusieurs vie
en une, an essay and Mines de rien.
21 Alexandra Lillehei, Wesleyan college, Pigments Translation, online.
22 Les écrivains noirs et le surréalisme, Jean-Claude Michel, Ed. Naaman, 1982, p. 117.
23 The Belgian befriended Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and many other jazz icons. After the
original edition of Pigments was seized and with it the original “Preface” by Robert Desnos, Goffin wrote a
short yet convincing Preface in which he argued that Damas with his poetry could without doubt be
seated next to these singers and musicians. Goffin emphasized in the second and definite Pigments edition
with Présence Africaine in 1962, that Damas earned serious attention, given the musical impact and strong
anti-colonial messages of his militant poetry. Daniel Droixhe, « Variations autour de Jazz-Band (1922) de
Robert Goffin », Bruxelles, Académie Royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique:
<http://www.arllfb.be/ebibliotheque/communications/droixhe100307.pdf>
24 Glissant uses this word to designate a poetry that is foremost meant to be read aloud: “poésie”
Doris, « Resistant Texts, Incompetent Readers », Poetics Today, 15.4 (Winter 1994). Reprinted in Proceed with
tense, Damas seems to evoke a singular evening while in fact the brutality of the
conquest, the violent incursion of the White colonizer, keeps going on.
Favouring peasantry, orality, and a writing that was comprehensible to all, those
poems were finally dismissed as less literar than the next generation’s, which claimed
opacity as a means to resist the “piège folklorique” (Glissant), it is representing the
Caribbean as a simply producer and consumer of folklorist ceremonies, a superficial
culture aimed at pleasing the European visitor who comes to these places only to
project a colonial gaze of exoticism on the reality in the Tropics. Yet Damas’s
transparent poetry, often generously dedicated to a network of the modernist avant-
garde (surrealism and dadaïsm), gives rise to the same neglect by the generation of
créolité.
In a second famous poem, "EtCaetera" Damas indirectly condemns the
enrollment of colored troops and specifically Senegalese soldiers in the French army.
Among the "tirailleurs sénégalais", there was also the future president of Senegal, L.S.
Senghor.
The yesterday-ghosts are mingling with the today-ghosts; Damas predicts Senegal will
keep "making" soldiers for the French empire as long as the African man is not standing
up and kicking out the real invader, France:
ET CAETERA
Devant la menace allemande, les Anciens Combattants Sénégalais
adressent un câblogramme d'indéfectible attachement. (Les Journaux)
Aux Anciens Combattants Sénégalais
Aux Futurs Combattants Sénégalais
A tout ce que le Sénégal peut accoucher
De combattants sénégalais futurs anciens
De quoi-je-me-mêle futurs anciens (P 79)
Caution when Engaged with Minority Literature. (Harvard UP, 1999). Vera Kutzinski makes the same argument
in her essays on Guillén (the Afro-Cuban poet translated by Langston Hughes).
Damas blames the French occupier in Senegal, the European in Africa, for having
ransacked the black continent and its populations. While Senghor writes Hosties noires,
Elégies, paying tribute to the many Black soldiers who were killed in the Somme and
elsewhere on the battlefield, Damas indirectly criticizes Senghor, who was imprisoned
by Nazis yet continued to defend French values and the “civilization de l’universel”27.
Damas portrays the consent of the governed, the agreement of the subaltern to partake
26 Identified the white settler and the French colonialist as a fascist who would one day "eat" all
of him and pushing him to ransack the borders of the Rhine river : "De piller / De voler / De violer /
De souiller à nouveau les bords antiques du Rhin” (P 80) (Italics mine).
27 Senghor, Liberté 3, Seuil, 1977.
in the disastrous decisions of their (ex-) colonizing powers, rather like Ishmael Reed in
The Freelance Pallbearers.28
In contradistinction to his peers Césaire and Senghor29, Damas fiercely rebelled
in simple, frank, and sarcastic poetry against the neo-colonial "Françafrique" (an
invention or convention to agree upon the intervention in African affairs by France).
For Damas, one of the most urgent needs was to bring to light atrocities even more
horrific than the material damage and ransacking of Africa. Lingering in the back of his
head, Damas thinks of how many Black men and women were humiliated in their
bodies. Invisible and mute, unheard utterings and spectral presences keep the poet from
sleeping.
Blanchi
(Pour Christiane et Alioune Diop)
"Robbed" is not a strong enough translation for "cambrioler". In French Négritude Poets,
Conroy-Kennedy30 translated with Belgian Lilyan Kesteloot the verb "cambrioler" as
"ransacking". For Kesteloot, the first poems had an incisive character31. The verb “to
robb” does not have the stringent corporeal meaning of "fouiller" (nor of "cambrioler"
it is: “camber” being close to “chamber”, the intimate space where atrocities are going
on between white master and black slave):
Le sauront-ils jamais cette rancune de mon coeur
A l'oeil de la méfiance ouvert trop tard
Most likely the poet hints at his "own space", the tiny roof-room he occupied in Paris.
At the same time, he refers to his own body, his private space as a place where the
violent oppression has been felt most clearly. The fact that Europeans dispossessed the
Africans of their material wealth was a first wrong, however beating, harassing, and
violating women and men was another which on a long-term basis inspired in Africa’s
children intense shame and a mistrust of themselves. Many would accept that abject
condition of denying their blackness and masculinity, a result of the trauma of lynching:
"S.O.S."
Them
Coldly beating up
knocking down
laying out
the blacks
cutting off their genitals
to make candles for their churches32
Nowhere has such a striking, sad image been used by Senghor or Césaire. Damas
audaciously denounces the complicity of the Church and of school system, together
with the officials in power. Moreover, he will not fear to attack friends who witnessed
the violence and murders of their fellow brothers in a racist America, and would remain
indifferent. He accuses the bystanders for their “inaction” as he realizes that sequels of
this massive human traffic, still persist. His brethren are victims of racism. Yet they
30 Conroy-Kennedy, Elizabeth, The Negritude Poets: An Anthology of Translations from the French, NY,
we the villains
we the littl'uns
we the slurs
we the curs
we the beggars
we the Niggers (...) (translation Pagnoulle, Ojo-Ade, Gyssels, BL )
Grown up men have become toys in the hands of White manipulators and adults of
both sexes have been “Cambriolés”, in their private spaces, including their private parts33
(while they, on return, are forbidden to "penetrate" the White plantations and gardens,
squares), and this "défense de pénétrer" is to be taken literally in several of his poems
dealing with interracial love (like "Contre notre amour qui ne voulait rien d'autre" N
105-6, from which he will recycle the "défense de pénétrer" in a much later poem (in
Dernière escale): "Je le confesse mon Révérend").
A transgressor of Lines, Damas would ultimately address the last Line to cross,
the one separating masculinity and femaleness, which are “constructions”, forged in a
specific cultural and religious context. Coming from a society where sexual initiation
was not taboo and in which young partners experienced their first “liaisons” with
several partners, the poet-ethnographer might well hint in a nostalgic manner at those
tribal “customs” forever buried and remote in “le nombril du Monde”, Paris.34
The final line of his famous poem “Hiccup” is the neutral pronoun “ça”: What
is the "ça", what is the "that" which "mulattos" don't do? “Hoquet” makes a strong
condemnation of the hierarchy of colour installed upon the colonized mind. The
mother forbids the "mulatto" to hang out with the “Negro”; the mother forbids him to
speak Creole and to play the banjo. On each level of the cultural authenticity, the
Gyssels, Kathleen, Passes et impasses dans le comparatisme caribéen postcolonial. Cinq traverses, Paris, Champion,
2010.
individual must “repress” his desires and his beliefs. Most of all, the light skinned one is
made to believe that s/he is better than the dark/er skinned, the individual of mixed
descent grows up with disdain for the darker men or women around him. Not only is
there racial and sexual inequality in the Caribbean, but colour prejudice and
miscegenation can be seen as direct consequences of Africa having been ransacked by
Europe. By insisting recurrently on "ransacking" and "robbing of" (the French
"fouiller"), Damas hints at sexual connotations; gender inequalities are rampant as by-
products of racial discrimination. Damas pleads for a recognition of the "ultimate"
Africanized Other, the queer and the homosexual. This message has been understood by
Christiane Taubira, who in her function as French Minister of Justice, quoted Damas's
poem before February’s 2013 National Assembly vote for gay marriage! In Damas's
work, (Mother) Africa is a raped continent, its children systematically dispossessed,
deprived of dignity and proud, its men infantilized and emasculated. Reversal and
inversion become the burden of African Diaspora's children: women are forced to act
like men, and men feel obliged to compensate for their lack of masculinity by
performing acts of machismo to avoid the label of "macoumè" (homosexual).
In her speech for the Assembly in January this year35, Christiane Taubira the
minister of Justice in France and heir of Damas' poetry, quotes from "GRAND
COMME UN BESOIN DE CHANGER D'AIR" to conclude her defence of queerness
(“Mariage pour tous”) in the French Republic. By doing so, she clearly makes
understood two things: not that Damas was gay (as a reviewer of my comparison
between Giovanni's Room and Black-Label has pretended36), but that he was with his
fellow men and women striving for the tolerance for their queerness (passing and
queering are analogous as Butler made clear in Bodies that Matter, reads Passing by Nella
Larsen). To conclude, the son of three rivers, reuniting Amerindia, Africa and Europe,
was far ahead of his time and that both Césaire and Senghor were gender-blind. Go-
between for the African American Diaspora and the Francophone Diaspora, close
friend of Langston Hughes and protected by André Gide, Damas was aware of this
other by-product of centuries of repression, disgust of the black body, racism: more
than the material deprivation, and the long-lasting effects of discrimination, there was
the hesitation about sexual/gender performance, and the fear of white women. This
taboo is clearly hinted at when Damas addresses the last taboo, the «vérité terminus,
terminale, terminée » (Névralgies 133).
If “Limbé”, claims to recuperate his “black dolls”, the “wish to change air”
announces a strong manifestation for equality and a triumph after a long battle for a last
Line of divide in the French Republic which finally has to be eradicated: the African
35 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx5f7j_discours-d-ouverture-du-debat-sur-le-mariage-
pour-
tous_news?fb_action_ids=10151348089644064&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.URG1EYT2sNQ.lik
e&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582#.URN9O6XWgeO
36 Michael Dash, RAL, 43.3 (Fall 2012): 119-120.
heritage along with the true loyal lover of the “other” colour, might he or she be of the
same sex. The poet laments the non-encounter between black male and white female,
and crosses a last Line of solidarity. Befriending Langston Hughes, MacKay and Alain
Locke, the third man of Negritude perfectly knew about their homoeroticism and
bisexual liaisons.
The poem’s ambiguity is already at work in the poem, given that the “black doll”
is in the first place a girl’s toy, and if it’s an in-animated toy, serves as a substitute to
deliver feelings of protection and of tenderness…The “black” might clearly refer to
ethnicity, but where critics see this line as nostalgic cry to Africa, the poet might very
well translate his frustration to be reduced to the rank of a child by the “catins blêmes”,
the white hookers in Paris. White girls receive the “white doll” and black girls as well, as
Toni Morrison aptly showed in her first novel The Bluest Eye (1977). In a similar vein,
Damas reclaims black dolls to address the issue of alienation through toys, school
books, readers and “history of France” anthologies and manuals which are circulating in
Africa, Asia, the Americas: his aim is to rise at least awareness of the long-lasting impact
of this kind of material when it is projected upon the “colonized masses”.
Of course, there is also, next to the colour Line by DuBois, next to the class
problem the Line between male/female and this is where the Black doll truly acquires
transatlantic meaning: from Africa to America, the colonized male has learned to remain
quite as a doll, gentile and obedient as an inanimate tool to please the Master. Lining up
Chinese and coolies indentured labourers, the poet addresses in Mines de rien the
servitude and solitude of at least three populations: the native American, the deported
African, the clandestine Chinese or Asian immigrant. The strong sex has been devoid of
its “grandeur”, taking satisfaction with remaining small to the point of becoming a doll
or somebody who covers his face behind a mask:
To play upon the construction of gendered identity the poet inverses the xx: to learn
mothering or at least female “behavior”, the doll is a typical Western “invention” to
learn women their subaltern place from a young age. (Morrison’s protagonist Peccola in
the Bluest Eye).
A third and intriguing sense props up when we consider the black dolls as stolen
object from museums. “Maroon” and trained as ethnographer at the Musée de
l’Homme in Paris with Henri-Georges (?) Rivière, Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet, Damas
left the “Institution37”” because he felt uncomfortable with the fact that European
37 Gyssels, Kathleen, « Damas mis au ban[c] de l’ethnologie française : faire ‘ratiociner’ les
ethnographers and more precisely French ethnographers went to Black Africa to steal
entire collections of art and other important “patrimoine”. Think of the Djibouti
expedition in that context. Black dolls functions as a strong metaphor of that systematic
loss of value and wealth: next to the human catastrophe, there is the material
dispossession. In this regard, his spleen poem as a request to reconquer or retrieve his
“African playmates”38. But the ethnographer’s cry reverberates too in the call for the
stolen dolls and masks, the many African fetishes and totems.
To understand how “to give back to Damas back his black dolls” could disperse
the image of African tangible cultural heritage as “wenches”, we would have to turn
back to the Négritude ideology created by Damas himself with Aimé Césaire and
Léopold Sédar Senghor. Whereas ethnographic museums appropriated African artefacts
in order to assimilate them in a play of otherness and sameness so that they speak to us
as our contemporary history, the museum assigns them a single aesthetic quality, where
they speak to us as art. Yet Négritude attributes them an alterity which refuses to be
reduced to a western gaze. In their conception of “art”, art figures were not separated
from the world but belong to a cosmology of unity. This is quite distinct from the
Western conception of art, in which art has its place outside daily life and whose
detachment is enhanced by a spatial distinction of the museum. Damas identifies with
the artefacts he sees in the museum and sees the imprisonment of African cultural
heritage as an act of alienation in which collectors and art galleries, museums and art
lovers took actively part.
to recover my courage
my boldness
to feel myself myself
a new self
from the one I was yesterday
yesterday
without complications
yesterday
when the hour of uprooting came.
Uprooting the masks from their cultural context and “stealing the space that was mine”
functioned within the logics of cultural colonisation and alienation: this was the “policy”
applied by the French authorities everywhere in the French empire, from AEF to AOF
and in the Caribbean especially. This politics of assimilation was needed to succeed
economic colonialism.
Consequently the poet recovers and recuperates the loss because he is
convinced, like Walter Benjamin in his famous 1936 essay on art that artefacts change
from the modality of ritual-value to the modality of exposition-value in a matter of days:
the Black statues and masks, the African cult objects have all become single goods in a
new global trade. Black dolls are part of a shameful trade between the capitalist West
and the ex-colonized East, African and Asia. When the poet describes himself as an
uprooted subject:
He calls for a company and a presence of substitute lovers, mothers, female partners:
my black dolls
black dolls
dolls
Giving him back his black dolls” would not only supposedly free the artefacts from the
museum and possibly alter their meaning away from exhibition and prostitution, but
bridges symbolically the Trans-Atlantic dissemination caused by centuries of slavery.
Born in French Guiana, from African, Amerindian and European descent, Damas’
mocks “lineage” and gives himself “Chinese” features!
Conclusion
Reading one of Damas’ poems from Pigments, “Limbé”, I have shed light on a
particular metaphor used by the poet to denounce first and foremost the “chosification”
(Aimé Césaire) and dehumanization of the Black colonial fe/male. Second, the image of
the Black dolls might also refer to the many artistic “objects” stolen by French
ethnographers and explorers, visitors and art collectors, in the colonies. Third, the
“black doll” image transgresses the different Lines the Guayanese poet wanted to
abolish: between “ages” and sexes, “races” and classes. The reading of this poem, by
inspiring a short film, illustrates how much Damas’ poetry, while often reduced as
“simple”, can be amplified by readings from various horizons, such as cultural studies
and visual poetics.
WORKS CITED
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Temple Press, 1974.
---. Conroy-Kennedy, "Senghor, Negritude and Francophonie on the Threshold of the
Twenty-First Century", Research in African Literatures, 21.3 (autumn 1990), pp. 51-
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Press, 1974.
Le Bris, Michel, "Le jazz, une musique psychanalytique", Magazine Littéraire, 12 (1967),
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siècle to négritude, U of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry.
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nègre et malgache, ed. Léopold Sédar Senghor, PUF, 1948.
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Warner, Keith Q, ed. Critical Perspectives on Léon-Gontran Damas. Washington, Three
Continents Press, 1988.
---. Critical Perspectives on Léon Damas, Three Continents Press, 1988.
Abstract: This essay discusses, on the one hand, Díaz’s search for cultural identity in his story cycles. The
repetition of characters, especially that of Yunior, breaks with the ‘aura’ of singularity and uniqueness in
order for the author to immerse himself in New York’s Dominican community as the storyteller who tries
to recover a lost but fragmentary cultural tradition. On the other hand, there is an exploration of the
concepts of cosmopolitanism, transnationalism and ‘glocality,’ that is, the local in the global, as well as the
(in)hospitality of which Oscar Wao, the protagonist of the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is a
victim in both the Dominican Republic and the United States, as a result of his cultural hybridity.
I
mmigrants from the Dominican Republic make up the fourth largest group in
the United States after Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. In New York
City, Dominicans are the second largest Latino group after Puerto Ricans.
Yet Dominican migration is relatively recent compared to that of other
Caribbean countries. In New York City, according to a new study by CUNY’s Center
for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies (CLALCS), Dominicans have
become the largest Latino group in the city, surpassing the Puerto Rican population,
which has historically been the city’s largest Hispanic group. “According to the Census
data analyzed for the report, there were about 747,473 Dominicans in the five boroughs
in 2013, compared to the 719,444 Puerto Ricans” (Fox News Latinos) 1. Ninety-seven
percent of the Dominican population in New York City lives below the poverty line
(Dodds 160).
Dominican immigration is relatively recent if compared with that of Puerto
Ricans and Cubans. This immigration increased during the 1980s and the 1990s as a
consequence of the dire economic crisis that befell the country. The importance of
Dominican immigration to New York City has been showcased mainly in literature,
which reflects the Dominican-American cultural identity in the context of
cosmopolitanism and transnationalism. Contemporary Dominican-American writers
were either born or raised in the United States. These writers make up a more recent
group, one that can be described as “the hyphenated literature group” because, in
almost all their novels, cultural identity seems to straddle the fence between identifying
as Dominicans or Americans. In the 1990s, a group of Dominican-American writers
emerged: Julia Álvarez, Angie Cruz, Loida Maritza Pérez, Nelly Rosario, Josefina Báez,
Ana-Maurine Lara, and Junot Díaz.
Junot Díaz, among others, is the most renowned Dominican-American writer.
This may be the result of his having been awarded the Pulitzer Prize (2008), the
MacArthur Fellowship (known as the Genius Grant) with carries a $500,000 prize and,
perhaps more important, because his novel have been widely sold.2 When Junot Díaz
won the Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, readers were already
familiar with Yunior, the character-narrator in the novel. Díaz introduces as well a new
character, the protagonist Oscar Wao. The plot unfolds in Washington Heights, New
York, and in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where immigrant families from various Latin
American countries share their lives. Among these newcomers, we find Oscar Wao, his
mother, Belicia, and his sister Lola. Also, we come across Yunior, Lola’s former
boyfriend and Oscar’s friend. The novel’s first chapter, “Ghetto Nerd . . .” presents us
with a non-encompassing multiculturalism. However, not all characters negotiate their
cultural identities in like manner. If Yunior is a typical example of integrated
multiculturalism, Oscar, is a victim of two cultures: the Dominican and the American.
Whereas Yunior limits his citizenship to the United States, Oscar strives to be
transnational.
Yunior has been included, as a unifying element, in most of Diaz’s books: Drown
(1996), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), and This Is How you Lose Her (2012).
Rafa is another character who reappears throughout Diaz’s story cycles. Others like
Oscar Wao and Lola are created to give rise to other tales. In Diaz’s books, story cycles
are linked not only by characters, but also by themes, countries, regions, events,
symbols, syntactical structures, and tonality. Such a literary genre has a long-standing
2 Other awards conferred to Junot Díaz are: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Fellowship (2003), US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship/the National Endowment for the Arts,
Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, John Sargent Sr. First
Novel Prize, and The Massachusetts Book Awards Fiction Award, all in 2007. That year, he was also
included among the thirty- nine best Latin American Young writers.
tradition among ethnic groups in the United States. Díaz takes advantage of this
narrative structure to tell the story of a family within the context of Dominican
immigration to New York City (Jennifer J. Smith 1). In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
Wao, there are also characters that share local and cosmopolitan spaces simultaneously.
The purpose of this study is an examination of Díaz’s search for cultural identity in his
story cycles. The reappearance of characters, especially that of Yunior, breaks with the
“aura” of singularity and uniqueness so that the author is enabled to immerse himself in
New York’s Dominican community as the storyteller who tries to recover a lost but
fragmentary cultural tradition. Moreover, I discuss the cosmopolitanism, the
transnationalism and the “glocality,” that is, the local in the global, as well as the
(in)hospitality of which Oscar Wao is a victim in both the Dominican Republic and the
United States, as a consequence of his cultural hybridity.
Unlike chapters in a novel, in the short story cycle—also known as a short story
sequence, composite novel, or a short story novel—each narration is introduced as an
independent unit, though together they create a certain tension among each other with
regard to perspective and character development. According to Jennifer J. Smith, “the
cycle uncannily acts out these central tensions of modern American experience and
articulates the sense that the identities that arise from them, whether personal, ethnic, or
national, resist stasis” (3). In Diaz’s story cycles, characters undergo not only the stress
associated with modern American life, but that of the Dominican Republic as well.
These characters move from one era to another, from space to space and, as further
detailed, from one text to another. These movements seriously impact on character
transformation. Jennifer Smith provides a link between hybridity and the search for
identity in short story cycles. The repetition of characters and themes breaks with the
works’ uniqueness. Characters and themes are repeated as well as language structures.
For example, the slang of a particular cultural community and she observes that “one
such common element, noted by both Nagel and Davis, is the genre´s affinity to oral
storytelling. In the case of individual cycles, the case is often made for the volumes´
indebtedness to authors´ ethnic backgrounds and the storytelling traditions of that
group” (Smith 16). Having grown up in the New Jersey Latino community, Díaz, as a
Dominican-American storyteller, employs those oral resources employed to retell from
memory the barrio’s cultural experiences. Yunior, his alter ego, takes on the role of
storyteller by means of the different story cycles.
In his noted essay “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin observes that the
storyteller had disappeared after the Second World War, partly because of the artists’
inability to convey experiences along with the ethical transformation the world had
undergone (112). Another characteristic of “the storyteller” is to take into account the
“practical” usefulness of information. The storyteller gives advice regarding daily life’s
practical problems. Thus, Yunior embodies the Dominican community’s problems in
the United States. As a storyteller, he narrates in barrio English slang, exhibiting his
community's capacity for analysis and interpretation. Yunior, who has also the ability to
navigate through Dominican and the American cultures, comes across as a postmodern
storyteller who connects with his people by means of a type of writing that comes close
to orality. Junot Díaz and his alter ego, Yunior—they share a similarly sounding name
(yunó-yunio)—exchange the “experiences” of Dominicans residing in New York with
the English-reading public, through the author’s published story cycles. The marketing
success of his books may be attributed to the invention of this new storyteller. If the
novel, according to Benjamin, is the end result of a solitary and vain act, Díaz’s stories
generally come much closer to the “wisdom” of the storyteller, especially in The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, as a composite novel.
The narration cycle that makes up the three books, a sort of large composite
novel with Yunior as the main narrator, is a project close to its author’s heart, a
Künstlerroman (“artist novel”), or a “Bildungsroman composite novel.” To become a
storyteller, Junot-Yunior must undergo a double rite of passage: transitioning between
childhood and adulthood, and by having emigrated from the Dominican Republic to the
United States. But, what defines Yunior’s wisdom as a storyteller? He portrays himself
as someone who understands, who interprets masculinity issues, the family, cultural
hybridity, bilingualism, the mystery of being here and there, of the now and then of the
Dominican community in America. Yunior talks about the community and to the
community in a colloquial language frequently sprinkled with “fucks”, “ass,” and
“pussies,” that is, the “hood’s” slang. His narratees are Oscar, his friends (the boys), the
“niggers,” the “Negro,” and his family.
Díaz found in Yunior an earlier version of himself, the narrative voice that
would allow him to bring together his later story cycles. We find Yunior in three of the
short story collections that make up Drown (1996): “Israel,” “Fiesta, 1980,” and
“Aguantando” “Israel,” the collection’s opening story, is the author’s foundational text
of the short story cycles. It includes, for the first time, Yunior’s narrative voice, at the
age of nine, along with that of his interlocutor, twelve-year-old Rafa. That summer, the
boys were sent to the countryside in the Dominican province of San José de Ocoa,
while their parents remained in New York City. This story also reveals the dichotomy of
“here and there” caused by the double migration of countryside/city and Dominican
Republic/United States.
Surrounded by abject poverty in the countryside, Yunior and Rafa, Yunior’s
older brother, torment Israel, a boy who hides his deformed face behind a mask. Rafa
derives pleasure from kicking Israel, hitting him over the head with a bottle, and tearing
his mask off to view the true facial appearance of this Dominican boy. It is in this story
that the first lessons of “masculinity” are thus included: “Rafa spit. You have to get
tougher. Crying all the time. Do you think our papi’s crying? Do you think this is what
he's been doing the last six years?” (Drown 14). The spit/cry dichotomy is enthymematic.
Rafa resorts to the missing father’s image. Since the father does not cry, he is a man. By
contrast, because of his apparent cowardice, Yunior is called a “pussy” by his brother.
Masculinity building, both within Dominican and American cultures, is a constant in
Díaz´s story cycles. In Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature,
Maja Horn examines sexual relations, stressing Dominican masculinity as defined in
literary texts, during and after the Trujillo dictatorship. The dictatorship and its
discourse create a masculinity matrix . According to Horn, “today´s hegemonic notions
of masculinity were consolidated during the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo”
(1). She moreover argues that Trujillo’s masculinity discourse is a response to the
racialized notions of said discourse and to the psychological emasculation of
Dominicans during their country’s military occupation by the United States (1916-1924).
In the story “The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars,” Yunior travels to the
Dominican Republic and visits a cave, the “Cave of the Jaguar,” considered by another
character to be the “birthplace of the nation” (71). In his descent to the cave, Yunior
experiences fear and begins to shout for help, making others pull him out. For his
apparent cowardice, Yunior is called a “pussy” by the other characters. For Jacqueline
Loss, cowardice and the epithet “pussy” constitute proof that this story “ridicules the
universal search for truth and originality and the construction of national foundations
on the basis of an obscure descent” (812). Besides denoting cowardice, mention of a
vagina by a character during the descent reflects a fear of a return to the maternal womb
and to nation creation, a return to the known that is also unknown, the unheimlich, the
return to “. . . the hole [that] is blacker than any of us” (“The Sun…,” 71). In later
stories, Yunior will have to learn lessons of masculinity so as not to be called a “pussy.”
Reference to a vagina links cowardice with the female organ while it figuratively
emasculates the character.3
In another story from Drown, “Fiesta, 1980,” Yunior’s character undergoes
several changes. He is living in New York City with his parents. He, perhaps three years
older than in the first story, discovers that his father is cheating on his mother with a
Puerto Rican woman. Not only is there a geographical change (city/countryside), but
also one of age. In addition, the identity issue between Dominicans and Puerto Ricans is
introduced by this allegorical romance: Dominican wife, Puerto Rican lover. In these
initial tales, in lieu of the absent father, the older brother, Rafa, becomes a father figure
and eventually turns into a model of masculinity for Yunior. The latter vicariously learns
Rafa’s strengths and weaknesses when dealing with women and in adapting to various
social and cultural circumstances, both in the Dominican countryside and in an
3 Through a methonym, women are reduced to their sex organ. The female sex organ, therefore,
is synonomous with lack of courage and masculinity.
American city. Yunior’s identity is consequently shaped by Rafa’s. In the end, Yunior
becomes “the bright one” who likes books. If, in Rafa’s view, Yunior was a nine-year-
old “pussy,” he later becomes a “dick,” like their father Ramón (Drown 38). In the
beginning, Yunior dislikes that which he lacks and his father has: phallus, power,
authority. His relationship with his father is one of ambiguity (odiettamo): “I still
wanted him to love me” (Drown 27). The absence of the father figure produces the
emotional ambiguity that characterizes Yunior’s relationship with his father and the
insistence on masculinity awareness.
Moving on to the novel, in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), Yunior
reappears in the role of character-narrator, a friend of protagonist Oscar Wao and lover
of Lola, Wao’s sister. As storyteller, Yunior is the repository of Oscar’s documents as
well as the collective and familiar memory of his neighborhood. Oscar replaces Rafa
after his death as Yunior’s interlocutor. Of the two, Yunior has the upper hand because
he is the model that Oscar must follow when it comes to learning what it is to be a man.
As roommates at Rutgers University, Yunior and Oscar develop a friendship. Yunior
learns of Oscar’s life and eventually becomes his mentor, confidant, and advisor when it
comes to women. Yunior is simultaneously agent and witness. He is able to relate Oscar
Wao’s problems of adaptation because he himself has had to ‘overcome’ some of these
issues. The relationship between the short stories cause tensions on account of the
changes that Yunior underwent throughout the three books. Oscar’s monstrosity, as he
sees it, is an allegory of the Other’s teratology; the immigrant monstrosity that Yunior
wants to project out of himself.
In This is How You Lose Her (2012), Yunior is the character-narrator in eight of
the nine stories that make up the collection. His appearances are not chronological. If in
the novel we find a Yunior who is attending the university (his brother Rafa already
dead), in these narrations we find him in different phases and situations: still a boy, an
adolescent, a young student and, later, a university professor in a triangulation of desire
with Rafa and Nilda; in short, with multiple girlfriends. Perhaps one of the events that
had a great impact for Yunior was Rafa’s death. Inevitably, Yunior becomes Rafa or,
even worse, what he hated most, their father. He turns irreversibly into a “dick”: an
unfaithful womanizer, a drunk, the stereotypical Dominican male in the “hood.” For
this reason, the narrator, referring to Yunior, avers: “You claim you're a sex addict and
start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame
the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo” (176). As a direct object of the verb “to
blame,” Dominican culture, patriarchy and family become related.
In the stories, Yunior’s family is composed of the father (absent from most
stories), the mother who takes on the father’s role, Rafa, and Yunior himself, the
storyteller. In addition, there are Anglo, Puerto Rican, Cuban neighbors as well as a
group of friends: Melvin, Oscar, and his sister Lola. There is also a narratee whom the
narrator always refers to as “the Nigger” and “Negro.” In several of the stories and in
the novel, Yunior goes to college and later becomes a professor. He thus overcomes the
abjection of the spaces of social marginalization. Then he becomes witness and narrator
of Wao’s vicissitudes. If the latter could not cope with the monstrosity that is cultural
hybridity, Yunior, as storyteller, manages to assimilate himself into mainstream
American culture.
The success of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is due in part to the fact that
Junot Díaz composes a cosmopolitan novel informed by global cultural forms, such as
video games, science fiction, and TV shows that appeal to many American citizens. The
protagonist´s conflict is caused by the fact that he is a “global” citizen whose ethics
come from a local pre-capitalist society. In the novel, there is a clash between local and
global forms of cultural expression in the Dominican-American community. The Brief
Wondrous life of Oscar Wao is a composite novel—some of its chapters were published as
short stories that could be read independent of each other.4 In this novel, Yunior
continues as a central character who will undergo several changes throughout the plot.
Oscar Wao, the new character, becomes a celebrity. Yunior discovers in his friend
Oscar the replacement voice for the late Rafa. Given Wao’s importance as a character, I
would now like to focus on him in regard to cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, and
glocalism.5
I frame my discussion of cosmopolitanism on the following premises: 1. Being a
world citizen is a privilege of social elites. The poor immigrants are reduced to their
community’s ghetto and live the local part of their culture in the context of the global; 2.
Oscar’s strangeness is perceived as a monstrosity. There is another teratology: Oscar
Wao is an overweight Dominican-American hybrid that is rejected both in American
and Dominican societies. He was denied hospitality in both countries; 3. as a hybrid,
Oscar Wao is neither one nor the other and both at the same time, but the third space
that Homi Bhabha proposes, rather than a privilege, is a disadvantage. As a poor
immigrant, Oscar Wao is unable to access “world citizenship.” On the contrary, he
becomes stateless. As a result, video games and science fiction are the only spaces he
can inhabit without fear.
I would now like to reflect on some of the ideas of the stoic philosophers to
frame my discussion. Immanuel Kant was one of the most important in terms of the
dissemination of the stoic philosophers’ ideas about “universal community” and “world
citizenship” (Nussbaum 4). The famous “world citizen” adage is owed to Diogenes the
Cynic who, when asked the question “where are you from?” answered, “I am a citizen
of the world” (Quoted in Nussbaum 5). To this maxim, Nussbaum argues that “class,
rank, status, national origin and location, and even gender are treated by the Cynics as
4 Among independently published stories in the New Yorker feature “The Sun, the Moon, and
the Stars” and “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”
secondary and morally irrelevant attributes”5. Race, religion, sexual orientation and
ethnicity, which are not necessarily integrated into national origin, should have also been
included.
According to Nussbaum, the stoics argued regarding world citizenship: “Each
of us dwells, in effect, in two communities-the local community of our birth, and the
community of human argument and aspiration that is, in Seneca's words, ‘truly
common, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the
boundaries of our nation by the sun’”6. I disagree with this position in general, and
Seneca’s, in particular. This may be true for the upper class, white European and
American men. For many individuals, poverty, hunger and illiteracy reduce them to the
ghetto. They can only “look to this corner.” For them, there is no such thing as
“community of human argument and aspiration.” Meanwhile, Hierocles proposes a
series of concentric rings or centrifugal forces, which somehow define the relationship
with society before reaching world citizenship status. From the center out, these rings
consist of family, neighborhood, city, region, country, continent and eventually the
world. We should also take into account factors such as class, race, religion, and sexual
orientation, mentioned before. Many individuals do not achieve world citizenship due to
obstacles and forces that pull them in one determined direction.
Life for Yunior and Oscar in a city like New York has been altered when it
comes to cultural relations, especially if we keep in mind that their trips to the
Dominican Republic make them members of a multinational community. The concept
of “transnationalism” proposed by Elisabeth Maria Mermann-Jozwiak could be used to
challenge the idea of the concentric circles. In her article, the critic states that Junot
Díaz's novel is “a response to uncritical celebrations of difference and multiculturalism's
narrative of the integration of ethnic subjects” (1). According to the author, the concept
of transnationalism is a tool used to analyze the break in thinking from the country of
origin and reflect on the domestic and international (17). Mermann-Jozwiak talks about
Díaz's novel, in general, as a response to the integrated multiculturalism in the United
States.6 By contrast, I see several positions within the novel. The position of Yunior, the
narrator, is very different from that of Oscar Wao. As Yunior is a typical case of
integrated multiculturalism, Oscar, is a victim of two cultures: the Dominican and
American ones.
5 On the one hand, transnationalism refers to people across borders and is connected to
cosmopolitanism; on the other, glocalism or the glocal refers to living locally in a global society. My
argument is that a person can live in a global society and travel across borders and that such travel alone
does not make him or her a cosmopolitan or transnational. Poverty, racism and discrimination persist in
societies that seclude individuals in socio-economic ghettos.
6 Contrary to critical multiculturalism that includes a critique of racism and discrimination in a
multicultural society, integrated multiculturalism celebrates cultural diversity while white men retain the
power.
While transnationalism leads the reader to think about the two cultures, as a
hybrid, Oscar is “neither ... nor,” he does not feel “at home” in either society and thus
ends up being a victim of both. Instead of the hospitality with which, according to
Derrida, an immigrant should be treated, Oscar finds both societies to be inhospitable.
Actually, Oscar is “glocal,” meaning he lives the local aspects of Dominican culture in a
community in New Jersey, in the context of a globalized society like the United States.
In Brunswick, New Jersey, while attending Rutgers University, Oscar has to
face the uncertainty of his hybridity:
The white kids looked at his black skin and his afro and treated him with
inhuman cheeriness. The kids of color, upon hearing him speak and seeing him move his
body, shook their heads. You´re not Dominican. And he said over and over again, but I
am. “Soy dominicano. Dominicano soy”. After a spate of parties that led to nothing but
being threatened by some white boys, and dozens of classes where not a single girl
looked at him, he felt the optimism wane.” (The Brief…, 49; emphasis mine).
Neither Dominican nor American Oscar will have to face the “fragmented and
schizophrenic experience where ‘the truth of the (lived) experience no longer coincides
with the place in which takes place’” (Jameson quoted in Mitchell 268). Years later, after
graduating from Rutgers, Oscar gets a job as a teacher at Don Bosco High School, in
the United States. This time, black students make fun of him: “In the old days it had
been the white kids who had been the Chief tormentors, but now it was kids of color
who performed the necessaries” (The Brief…, 264). Like the character Jean Veneuse in
the novel Un home pareil aux autres de René Maran, “the white race would not accept him
as one of his own and the black virtually repudiated him” (Quoted by Fanon 67). As
students make fun of him because of his obesity, Oscar is also called Haitian several
times, the worst possible insult for a Dominican. Paradoxically, two Haitians end up
saving him after the beating he received from a character named The Captain in the
Dominican Republic. In the story “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” published
previously to the novel, Yunior observes the following to his friend: “What is it with us
niggers and our bodies? Not even Fanon can explain it to me” (106). It is precisely
Fanon who makes the same observation in Black Skin, White Masks with regards to a
character, Jean Veneuse: “He does not understand his own race and the whites do not
understand him” (64). Likewise Oscar finds himself entrapped by the lack of racial and
cultural understanding.
Rejected in the two countries because of his racial and cultural lack of definition,
Oscar can only inhabit the monstrosity of a third space made up by video games and
science-fiction novels. There is a teratology of the Hybrid-Other that resists to be
defined. As the cannibals and men with one eye on their foreheads and dog muzzles
purportedly seen by Spanish conquistadors at their arrival in the Caribbean, Oscar is
seen and sees himself as a monster: “and there was Oscar, keeping me up at night
talking about the Green Lantern. Wondering aloud, if we were orcs, would not we, at a
racial level, imagine ourselves to look like elves?” (The Brief… 178. Emphasis in the
original).7 Oscar is also seen as a nerd, which represents another type of monster: the
intellectual (in Benjamin's sense). For this reason, he cannot find a girlfriend and then
tries to commit suicide: “[B]ut Jenni must have had brain damage or been really into fat
loser nerds [...]” (183). Neither American nor Dominican, and immersed in the world of
fantasy novels, Oscar decides to become an English writer. Incidentally, his nickname
“Wao” refers to the Anglo-Irish writer Oscar Wilde: “I’m going to be the Dominican
Tolkien, he said” (192).8 Through mimicry, Oscar expresses his double articulation of
hybridity, as well as his ambivalence toward taking in the English language and
American culture. But Oscar is neither gay, like Oscar Wilde, nor is he Dominican or
American, let alone English. Like a Dominican Tolkien, Oscar sets out in an impossible
return journey where he attempts a reading of the Dominican Republic as though it
were a work of fiction.
Oscar’s inner conflicts worsen: if, on the one hand he struggles to belong to
both American and Dominican cultures; on the other hand, he strains to assert his
masculinity. I once again quote Horn for whom, in the Dominican Republic, “today´s
hegemonic notions of masculinity were consolidated during the dictatorship of Rafael
Leonidas Trujillo” (1). The Dominican dictator was well known for his insatiable sexual
apetite. Moreover Horn argues that Trujillo’s masculinity discourse is an attempt to
address the racists notions that arose during the U.S. occupation of the Dominican
Republican (1916-1924). Being obese, black and nerdy, Oscar has no success when it
comes to women. After a few failed attempts at attracting girls, he returns to the
Dominican Republic and falls for Ybón, a “strange girl” who is having sexual relations
with an army officer, a “Capitán”.
On his return to the Dominican Republic, Oscar meets a girl, Ybón, with whom
he manages to have sex after a long courtship. The obstacle between his desire and the
girl is her boyfriend, an Army captain who rose during the U.S. invasion of the
Dominican Republic (1965) and worked in the repressive force “La Banda Colorá”
during dictator Joaquín Balaguer’s twelve-year government (1966-1978). The
triangulation of the Ybón affair is essentially a pretext for competition, a test of
masculinity between Oscar and a Dominican military stud, Capitán—it is hard to
compete in masculinity with a military man. Oscar’s masculinity construct seeks to
adhere to a Dominican cultural identity.
7 Orcs are greenish-brown monsters; they are villains serving the “powers of darkness.” Elves,
on the contrary, are white, endowed with great beauty and supernatural powers. Oscar thinks of himself
as a Latino orc who turns into an American elf.
8 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) is an English writer best known for The Lord of the
Rings, a fantasy book. As a Dominican Tolkien, Oscar returns to the Dominican Republic and read its
society and culture as it were a science fiction book. The novel is full of references to science-fiction and
fantasy books. Díaz confessed his passion for science fiction and has been working on several other
novels. New Yorker published an excerpt entitled “Monstro” in one of its 2012 issues.
In a conversation with Ybón, she asks him to go back to his country (USA), but
Oscar replies “This is my home,” meaning the Dominican Republic. “Your true home,
my love is United States,” she replies, to which he claims, “A person cannot have two
homes” (318). Finally, Oscar dies as a result of the second beating he received by The
Captain. Horn explains that “Oscar’s death was neither wondrous nor mysterious (no
fukú here) but rather he is killed as a result of his overstepping the scripts of hegemonic
masculinity in the Dominican Republic” (128). Oscar’s sister Lola mourns his death,
stating that “She would never return to that awful country (RD).” She then declares,
“Ten million Trujillos is all we are,” (324) referring to the cruelty and authoritarianism
of the Dominican dictator. This statement can also be read as the machoism embedded
in the Dominican culture and the emasculation of Oscar’s masculinity that this entails.
Conclusion
are recognized as equals. Bhabha’s “neither nor and both” becomes “more one than the
other,” that is, the hegemonic self that rejects the other.
As an antagonist of Yunior, Oscar fails to become a cosmopolitan or a
transnational citizen. His hybridity does not “shift the dual logic Self/ Other of the
identities of difference” (Bhabha. “The Commitment…”, 3). As a hybrid, he is “neither
one nor the other” (Bhabha. “The Commitment…”, 10). The privileged status
conferred by Bhabha to the concept of “third space” with respect to the hybrid
becomes a disadvantage as Oscar lives in a status of double marginality. What happens
to Oscar is a “double” tragic flaw: his incapacity to develop his masculinity in
accordance with cultural models runs parallel to the impossibility of belonging to either
American or Dominican culture.
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Eduardo Galeano
LA CONSTRUCCIÓN DE LAS MUJERES 139
E
n este artículo analizo la construcción de las mujeres que aparecen en la
novela Los cuatro espejos (1973),1 del escritor afrocostarricense Quince
Duncan.2 Esta novela narra la historia de Charles McForbes. Charles es un
afrodescendiente que después de asistir a una conferencia sobre minorías
raciales en Costa Rica se ve reflejado en los datos de dicha conferencia; pero, el
descubrirse como discriminado e inserto en una sociedad discriminante quiebra
totalmente su realidad; al punto de que al día siguiente de la conferencia despierta sin
poder mirar su rostro en el espejo. En la búsqueda de una solución a su problema de
“visión” Charles emprende un viaje a su natal Estrada y posteriormente a Limón, viaje
físico que se conjunta con un viaje psicológico que lo lleva a recordar cómo fue que
llegó a San José y se casó con Ester Centeno, mujer blanca y de familia acomodada. Es
en medio de este viaje que Charles empieza a preguntarse por su identidad y descubre
con horror que es negro. Sin embargo, pese a los cuestionamientos que el viaje le
suscita, Charles regresa rápidamente a San José y al ver a su esposa deja de lado todo lo
que el viaje le ha suscitado y se somete a las cadenas de su esposa Ester, al lado de la
cual puede volver a ver su rostro sonriente en el espejo.
Si bien en torno a dicha novela se han realizado varios estudios; 3 ninguno de
ellos parte de una perspectiva de género ni mucho menos se centran en las mujeres. A
pesar de esto, juzgo conveniente referirme a uno de ellos, pues aunque no parte desde
este enfoque, sí hace hincapié en algunas de las mujeres que figuran en la novela. Me
1 Novela que concursó en el Certamen Editorial Costa Rica 1972 bajo el título Las cadenas de Dios
y que ganó Mención honorífica en el mismo, sin embargo el autor “luego decidió cambiarle el título”
(Hurtado citado en Acosta10). El título Las cadenas de Dios, acentúa el carácter sumiso de Charles, quien
desde el inicio es “incapaz de romper las cadenas, limitado por designios externos” (Duncan 8) y a pesar
de su viaje y su aprendizaje a través de él, concluye de igual manera, sometido a las cadenas de su esposa,
representante de la cultura de la élite josefina autoconfigurada blanca, quien le niega el divorcio: “todos
estamos encadenados. Son cadenas de Dios” (Duncan 163) y es también esclava de su condición de mujer
y su estatus social
2 Autor de los siguientes textos literarios: El pozo y una carta (1969), Bronce (1970), Una canción en la
madrugada (1970), Hombres curtidos (1971), Los cuatro espejos (1973), Los cuentos del hermano Araña (1975), La
rebelión de Pocomía (1976), La paz del pueblo (1978), Final de calle (1979), El trepasolo y Walker el filibustero
(1983), Los cuentos de Jack Mantorra (1988), Kimbo (1989), Un señor de Chocolate (1996), Un mensaje para rosa
(2007) y La audacia final de la inmigrante (2012).
3 En el ámbito costarricense se encuentran los trabajos de Nuria Cordero y Rocío Álvarez Los
cuatro espejos como relato de identidad (Tesis. 1978), de María Acosta Lo estructural y lo psicológico en Los cuatro
espejos y El negro antillano: inmigración y presencia (Tesis. 1984), de Edwin Salas “Identidad cultural del negro
en las novelas de Quince Duncan. Aspectos temáticos y técnicos” (1987), de Elena Valverde “Los cuatro
espejos de Quince Duncan y la representación del sujeto subalterno afrocaribeño” (2007) y de Jorge
Ramírez “Mujer blanca y mujer negra: fascinación, exotismo y discriminación étnico-cultural en las letras
costarricenses” (2014). Asimismo, en el ámbito estadounidense se hallan los siguientes trabajos:
“Invisibility, Double Consciousness, and the Crisis of Identity in Los cuatro espejos” (1987), de Dellita
Martin, “Quince Duncan’s Los cuatro espejos: Time, History and New Novel” (1991), de Alan Persico, de
Anita Gallers, el cuarto capítulo de su tesis Eslavementan Masculinity in Afro-Hispanic Narrative (2000): “‘Un
ser que una vez quiso ser hombre’: Sexuality and Racial Identity in Quince Duncan’s Los cuatro espejos”.
El texto nos ubica entre los dos extremos posibles del mundo racial: el
negro y el blanco, siendo considerado negativo el mundo negro y
positivo el mundo blanco. En medio de esos dos mundos están los
mulatos, quienes en ningún momento deben mirar hacia atrás (casarse
con una negra), sino en el lugar que están (casarse con otra mulata) o
hacia adelante (casarse con una blanca). De este modo queda invocado el
sistema de castas y el proceso de blanqueamiento impuesto por la lógica
racista del colonialismo español. En este proceso de blanqueamiento la
mujer, mulata o blanca, cumplirá una función particular: servirá de
puente o de escalera de ascenso social, económico y racial a los
McForbes. Dicho ascenso será más acentuado o progresivo cuanto más
blanca sea la mujer con que se case.4
De igual modo, el estudioso apunta que Charles realiza una escalada de mujeres
que podemos dividir en tres grupos, según su condición étnica, geográfica y
socioeconómica. El primer grupo lo constituyen las mulatas Lorena, Mills, Victoria y
Ruth, oriundas de Estrada y de una condición socioeconómica baja. En el segundo
grupo está Engracia, mujer blanca, oriunda de Grecia y de una condición
socioeconómica media. Y el tercer grupo lo conforman Magdalena y Ester, de San José,
blancas y pertenecientes a una condición económica alta.
E indica además las razones por las cuales Charles terminará con Engracia: es la
encarnación de la bella mala y es más vieja que él. Pese a todo, Charles admira la
blancura y la luz que irradia. Además, Engracia sirve para que Charles recuerde que su
madre es mulata y que él va camino al blanqueamiento. Engracia lo aproxima racial,
económica y geográficamente a su meta: casarse con una blanca acomodada de San José.
Estamos ante un Charles interesado y arribista, que instrumentaliza las relaciones
amorosas en función del beneficio material y racial.
4 Se trata de un artículo en prensa facilitado por el profesor Ramírez, razón por la cual no se
pueden señalar aún los números de página correspondientes. En él, Ramírez aborda cuatro muestras de la
literatura costarricense del siglo XX “para poner de relieve el sesgo étnico-cultural de los autores
vallecentristas”. La muestra está constituida por “La negra y la rubia” (1920), de Carmen Lyra, Cocorí
(1947), de Joaquín Gutiérrez, Los cuatro espejos (1973), de Quince Duncan, y Limón blues (2002), de
Anacristina Rossi.
Mujeres diversas
Como deja claro el artículo de Ramírez, las mujeres que aparecen en la novela
no son de un único lugar geográfico, cultural, intelectual o socioeconómico, ni de una
misma edad ni etnia. Por el contrario, la novela nos presenta un amplio abanico de
mujeres, incluso mucho más amplio que el abordado por Ramírez, de ahí que este
ensayo las agrupe de modo distinto.
las manos, pero en todo caso se trataba de un retrato-busto, lo cual obedecía a una
idealización total de la amada.5
En contraste, la mujer que trabaja como empleada doméstica con la familia
Pineres es descrita por Charles precisamente como el “opuesto” de la señora Pineres:
“gruesa, de cabellos cortos negrísimos, labios anchos y piel oscura” (Duncan 21). Al
decirlo de esa manera, se evita que el personaje diga explícitamente que la empleada es
fea. Sin embargo, a los lectores nos queda claro que la mujer blanca y de clase alta es,
para Charles, una mujer bella, digno objeto de contemplación. Mientras que la mujer
negra y de clase baja no califica como objeto estético, solamente como obrera.
Del mismo modo, mientras Charles camina hacia la casa del doctor Díaz
observa a dos grupos de mujeres: “las mayores, luciendo sus piernas blancas en la luz
matinal y a las puertas las empleadas, con su tela barata, delantal, su escoba y sus piernas
dispares” (Duncan 22). Es decir, por un lado las señoras del “aristocrático barrio”
(Duncan 22) y por otro las empleadas domésticas: las primeras blancas y las últimas
dispares y menospreciadas por su extracto socioeconómico, lo que apunta a que la
belleza femenina se construye en la novela no solo en dependencia de la blancura sino
también de la posición socioeconómica.
En concordancia con el discurso dicotómico que Charles expresa con respecto a
las mujeres anteriores, se encuentra el del doctor Díaz. Mientras Charles y Díaz van en
automóvil al consultorio, observan a dos mujeres distintas. La primera es descrita por
Charles como “una joven guapa, casi desnuda, vestía colores sicodélicos apenas”
(Duncan 24) y en palabras de Díaz como una “copita de helados” (Duncan 24). La
segunda mujer que observan es, según Charles, “una negra en minifalda […]. Sus
piernas gruesas, bien formadas, sus pechos rellenos, frescos” (Duncan 24) y de acuerdo
con Díaz, se trata de una “negra descarada” que se viste “a lo relajo como si estuviera en
Limón” (Duncan 24).
De este pasaje me interesa resaltar dos aspectos: 1) la belleza inherente a la
blancura: la joven guapa es blanca, aunque no se nos diga, pues de acuerdo con los
criterios del personaje a lo largo de la novela, la belleza es una cualidad inherente a la
blancura. Además, la cualidad de ser blanco comúnmente es elidida, ya que no se
considera necesario señalar que una persona sea blanca, se da por sentado que las personas
son blancas,6 mientras que los otros son indios, negros, chinos, etc. y es preciso ver más
5 Como señala Manero, el canon corto petrarquista “elige en su descriptio las partes del rostro que
estéticamente, le interesa destacar: cabellos, ojos, frente, mejillas y boca y renuncia, precisamente para
potenciar esta visión selectiva, del resto de posibilidades anatómicas”, aunque “mantiene la parte desde
siempre privilegiada junto al rostro: el busto; el cuello y seno”. Y “no sólo conserva sino enfatiza la
presencia de la mano, la mayoría de las veces anatómicamente desarticulada”. Este tipo de retratos llenan
la lírica española del siglo XVI, la cual centra “la descriptio en las partes del rostro consideradas
estéticamente nobles” (259).
6 Sabemos que “no es necesario constatar el adjetivo Blanco al hablar de un sujeto determinado,
resulta reiterativo puesto que su omisión connota en sí misma la Blanquitud del individuo aludido”
(Manzanares 86).
abajo de sus pieles para verlos como personas. 2) descripción y trato diferenciado: la
descripción que se hace de la mujer blanca, en este pasaje, es la de un todo; a pesar de
que como indica Charles estaba casi desnuda. Por el contrario, la descripción que se
hace de la mujer negra es fragmentada: piernas y pechos, centrada en zonas sexualizadas
ante los ojos masculinos blancos, haciéndose evidente un sesgo no solo patriarcal que ve
a las mujeres como objetos, sino también un sesgo racista al ver a la mujer negra como
hipersexual y provocadora de la lujuria, pues esta no debe mostrarse, mientras que si la
blanca lo hace no hay ningún problema. Lo que comparten estas dos mujeres que
cruzan la calle es su poca ropa, la primera va casi desnuda y la segunda en minifalda;
pero, para Díaz la primera es una copita de helados y la segunda, una descarada. La
mujer blanca es un objeto ya no solo de contemplación, ahora además es comestible,
mientras que la mujer negra es descarada y vulgar como las mujeres de Limón. Ante esta
situación Charles recuerda la conferencia y toma consciencia del trato distinto que Díaz
acaba de dar a las mujeres, mas no nota que él ya ha tenido ese mismo trato diferenciado
para con la señora Pineres y la empleada, así como para con estas mujeres, pues él
también las ha descrito de manera sesgada.
Otra pareja de mujeres aparece en el bar El esqueleto mojado, al que Charles
llega. Ambas son prostitutas: una más blanca, nicaragüense, que considera tener
prioridad sobre la negra y que quiere estar con Charles porque lo puede besuquear todo
sin que a él se le note y además cree que “los negros son ardientes y bailan mucho”
(Duncan 119). Para Charles esta es una “nica hermosa” (Duncan 120). La otra mujer,
menos blanca, se queda con el sujeto que las trajo a ambas a la mesa. Mientras “una
hermosa negrita empezó a bailar conga”, con “movimientos rítmicos” (Duncan 116)
que despertaron la expectación del público.
En este pasaje, el contraste se da entre la mujer nicaragüense, que también baila
posteriormente, y la mujer negra que baila primero. De la blanca se pone de relieve su
preferencia por Charles y su visión estereotipada de los hombres negros como
hipersexuados y balarines. Y de la mujer negra se destaca su cuerpo y su baile
extremadamente sensual. Asimismo, resulta significativo que solamente se le otorgue,
momentáneamente, voz a la mujer nicaragüense para que exprese sus prejuicios étnico-
culturales.
Aunadas a estas mujeres, aparecen otras en solitario. Por ejemplo, la mujer negra
de la Casa Amarilla, la cual Charles trae a colación para tratar de desmentir lo que ha
escuchado en la conferencia: negros e indígenas son víctimas de alienación,
marginalización y explotación en el país. Charles describe a esta mujer como “una negra
de ojos encendidos, pelo alisado, labios pintados de rojo, cejas marcadas, párpados
verdes, escote largo que enloquecía a los más apasionados” (Duncan 12) y además hace
hincapié en “sus pechos bien perfilados, su cintura… Las negras, cuando jóvenes,
suelen tener una cintura increíble” (Duncan 13). Como se puede ver, en un primer
momento Charles la describe de acuerdo con el esquema del busto señalado
anteriormente en relación con la señora Pineres; pero, no puede contenerse y termina
describiéndola de igual modo que a la mujer negra que cruza la calle: de manera
fragmentada y centrada en los pechos y la cintura, característicos del estereotipo de la
negra o mulata hipersexual o sensual. Incluso, Charles rematará diciendo: “lo que quiero
decir es que la negra era linda a pesar de su color” (Duncan 13), dejando claro que la
belleza no es una cualidad propia de las mujeres negras, sino de las blancas. Esta mujer
sufre un proceso de cosificación tal, que es hasta el final del pasaje que Charles nos dice
“Ivonne. Así se llamaba la negra” (13).7
De rápida aparición se encuentran también una mujer blanca a la que atienden
primero que a Charles en la farmacia. La función de esta mujer radica en establecer un
contraste en el trato, pues Charles se pregunta si la atienden primero por ser mujer o
por ser blanca. Asimismo, se hacen presentes “una hermosa rubiecita” (Duncan 23) que
Charles ve mientras camina hacia la casa del doctor Díaz, Manuela empleada doméstica
en casa de Ester y Charles y, la Pelirroja, presunta prostituta mencionada cuando el
Puma y Charles comenzaron a frecuentarla junto con “cantinas de mala fama” como
parte del “descenso del pastorado a la nada” (Duncan 154) de Charles. De igual manera
se encuentran las “muchachas de Castillo” (Duncan 18), las cuales visten “pantaloncitos
calientes, blusita tallada y botas” (Duncan 18), pues trabajan en el prostíbulo de Castillo,
un exiliado cubano.
Este primer apartado permite construir un modelo físico-estético de mujer que
Charles aspira poseer: una mujer blanca, joven, de clase alta y bella. Es decir una mujer
aristocrática que le otorgue a él igual condición étnico-cultural e igual estatus
socioeconómico. Y por otro lado, se construye también un modelo de mujer negra
como una mujer en función del placer sexual que le brinde al varón.
En relación con las figuras maternas que tienen lugar en la novela, podemos
destacar a Aminga Vidaurre, madre de Ester, a María, la madre de Lorena Sam, a la
abuela y la hermana de Cristian y a la madre de Charles. Todas estas figuras comparten
el hecho de aparecer configuradas como portadoras de un mal, sea su linaje impuro o su
rechazo abiertamente racista hacia sus hijos o hacia los negros en general.
En el primer caso, Aminga Vidaurre, madre de Ester y esposa del doctor
Centeno, carga con ambos males: es, según Charles nos relata, “guanacasteca”, con
“sangre de negro. Sangre de una Castilla mulata” (Duncan 75). Y además, rechaza a
Charles: “Te casaste con un pelagatos y de feria negro” (Duncan 100). Es decir, se trata
de una mujer que desdeña su origen y que además se nos deja entrever que ha llegado al
punto culmen de un proceso de blanqueamiento, evidencias que procura borrar de su
pelo y del de su hija: “Todas las mañanas de lunes a viernes pasaba a la casa de Ester,
7 Ubico a Ivonne junto con estas otras mujeres sin nombre porque al igual que ellas tiene una
aparición fugaz y se nos muestra apenas un esbozo suyo. Además de que su descripción concuerda con la
de algunas otras incluidas en este apartado.
para desayunar y ayudarla con su pelo. (Charles insistía en que ella conservase el pelo
largo). Y se iba a media mañana al salón de belleza” (Duncan 110). En relación con esta
preocupación por el cabello, conviene recordar que para la mujer mulata o mestiza el
cabello constituye un elemento diferenciador, pues como indica Del Valle “es el pelo lo
que marca una frontera entre ser blanca y parecer blanca” (90). Razón por la cual, estas
mujeres tienden a invertir mucho tiempo y dinero en tratamientos que transformen el
cabello rizado en lacio y poder así encajar en el modelo de belleza occidental.
Por su parte, María, la madre de Lorena Sam, es presentada como una mala
madre que en avanzado estado de embarazo decide que “no quería tener el hijo de un
brujo negro” (Duncan 96), porque recordemos que Lorena es hija de un obeahman.
María es mostrada como el antimodelo de madre, subvirtiendo su nombre bíblico y el
modelo de mujer que representa: madre ante todo, una madre pura, virginal y dedicada
en absoluto a su hijo.
La abuela y la hermana de Cristian Bowman siguen una misma línea: la abuela es
descrita como feroz capataz de los esclavistas: “El chilillo mordiente en las manos de su
abuela, su severidad, su castigo por no haber hecho lo que otro tuvo la osadía de hacer.
Nunca látigo alguno ardió tanta carne” (Duncan 59). La hermana de Cristian se suma al
rechazo de su padre y su madrastra hacia Cristian, pues estos la ven “mucho más clara”
(Duncan 61), mientras que Cristian es “más negro que un condenado salvaje africano”
(Duncan 61).
Y finalmente, la madre de Charles es apenas mencionada en el texto por algunos
recuerdos de Charles que nos permiten observar una continuidad con el proceder de la
abuela y la hermana de Cristian.
Dentro de la novela se encuentran tres niñas: una niña con la que Charles se
cruza en la calle, una niña compañera de escuela de Charles y Ester en su infancia.
Todas estas niñas se caracterizan por ser blancas, en términos fenotípicos o culturales.
Veamos. Charles acaba de entrar en crisis, pues acaba de verse en el espejo y ha visto su
rostro negro, luego de un altercado sale corriendo y escucha: “Una niña gritó con rabia,
‘negro desgraciado’” (Duncan 31). Si bien no se nos da ninguna descripción de esta
niña, sabemos que en ese momento Charles se encuentra aún en San José y el discurso
de la niña corresponde al del centro cultural hegemónico.
Del mismo modo que el discurso de la Ester niña, la cual “no quiso a los
negros” (Duncan 101), gracias a la desdeñable educación que le dieron su prima
Magdalena y la empleada doméstica, quienes le azuzaron un gran temor hacia
Abrahams, “el negro jardinero” (Duncan 102), diciéndole que él le iba a comer y que
además era sucio. Ya en el colegio, el odio de Ester hacia los negros se agudizó al tener
de compañero a uno.
De modo distinto, la niña que compartió el aula escolar con Charles no es
portadora de este discurso abiertamente racista sino que es la que instaura la diferencia.
Esta niña es “hermosa de ojos celestes y cabellos rubios” (Duncan 114) y lanza una
pregunta a la maestra: “Niña, ¿por qué él es tan negro?” (Duncan 114), recayendo sobre
la mujer el papel de diferenciadora y distanciadora, mismo que se complementa con la
tardía y poco convincente respuesta de la maestra:
La maestra por su parte fue incapaz de actuar en forma natural. Cuando habló,
ya era demasiado tarde para que no comprendiéramos que algo estaba terriblemente mal
en el mundo, desde que una diferencia que ninguno de nosotros había provocado, nos
dividía, superando los vínculos de cariño que nos habían ligado durante todos estos
años.
Era evidente que la maestra tampoco se atrevía a definir a Walker. Y dijo con un
agudo tono de disculpa: todos somos iguales ante Dios. Y descubrimos a ciencia cierta
que ante los hombres sí éramos diferentes (Duncan 114).
A parte de la feminización del racismo, que al ponerse en boca de niñas obtiene
un carácter original, es decir, inicial: desde la más tierna infancia las niñas son racistas.
Resulta alarmante el hecho de que las personas más jóvenes dentro de la novela tengan
el mismo discurso racista de las personas de mayor edad, lo cual da cuenta de la
gravedad del racismo en nuestro país. Por otra parte, el discurso de estas niñas-hijas, es
congruente con el señalado en el apartado anterior con respecto a las mujeres madres,
dando como resultado que la mujer tenga el papel de generadora, difusora y
continuadora del racismo. No se evidencia la doble opresión de la mujer envuelta en el
sexismo y el racismo, sino que se le responsabiliza de este último, pues en última
instancia si Charles es un mulato que reniega de su origen negro y Ester una blanca que
se encaprichó con un mulato ardiente, la crianza que han recibido, patriarcal y racista, a
cargo de sus madres ha sido un factor fundamental.
Mujeres dichas: Mill, Nabe, Ruth, Clarita de Duke, Victoria, Engracia, Dora
París y Magdalena
8 Es preciso recordar aquí que de acuerdo con Manero, en el canon corto petrarquista de la lírica
española del siglo XVI, “la belleza corporal es signo visible de la perfección moral de la dama, traduce y
anticipa su virtud” (258).
prestigio, pues tiene “ojos achinados”, “azabache” y “labios ardientes” (Duncan 26) y
además, aunque sea josefina, Charles la ve como una mujer encadenada a su religión
evangélica que le prohíbe bailar y beber. Aunque, más allá de las prohibiciones
evangélicas, el factor religioso en sí se convierte en otra característica del modelo de
mujer anhelado por Charles, pues para cumplir con los requisitos del centro
hegemónico cultural es necesario que se trate de una mujer católica como lo será Ester.
Tal y como señala Ramírez hay en esta escalada de mujeres que hace Charles un claro
propósito de ascenso racial y económico, además de un proceso de introducción al
centro hegemónico cultural josefino. Es interesante observar la importancia que se le
otorga al factor socioeconómico, pues las mujeres blancas no aristocráticas son
construidas en el texto de la misma manera que las mujeres negras: como objeto sexual
de placer para el hombre. Mientras que Clarita, única mujer hasta el momento, ligada a
la racionalidad no es cosificada, no tenemos de ella ningún atributo físico, negándosele a
la mujer la posibilidad de poder ser inteligente y bella.
Como se señaló anteriormente, Ester fue una niña racista. Sin embargo, en su
proceso de madurez, va dejando ese discurso de lado o al menos ocultándolo, al punto
de que al conocer a Charles dice haber descubierto en él una profunda humanidad. A
pesar de ser una mujer con educación, el narrador en tercera persona la hace ver como
una persona sesgada, pues aunque ha leído sobre la historia de la esclavitud y sobre el
doctor King, prefiere quedarse con la idea de que “el negro desciende del mono” y es
un ser “permanentemente inferior” (Duncan 107). Lo cual queda bastante claro cuando
ella emprende ante su padre la defensa de Charles: “Charles es como el fuego”, “es una
persona extraña; no es ni negro, ni blanco. Está más allá de esas definiciones. Tal vez
sea satánico: una mezcla extraña en todo caso” (Duncan 111), primero lo liga al
estereotipo del negro ardiente e hipersexual y termina tachándolo de satánico por ser
Lorena Sam es vista por Cristian Bowman como un mero objeto sexual para su
uso, pues este teje un ardid para violarla. Sin embargo la visión que Charles tiene de ella
es bastante similar, en tanto que al ser ella violada y quedar embarazada se convierte en
9Pisonero señala que la monstruosidad “es producto del peor de los pecados: la mezcla, la unión
sexual con el otro inferior, o bien con lo superior maléfico (los demonios)” (75). Y Bello apunta que la
demonización constituye una de las formas de deshumanizar al otro (Cf. 17).
objeto de deshonra para él y le propina una paliza (Duncan 83). Por otra parte, Charles
la describe como “figura clara de mulata y pelo crespo” (Duncan 124), y sobre todo
como una mujer de “espíritu indomable” y “voluntad de acero” (Duncan 123), aspectos
estos últimos que la acercan más a la libertad nunca vislumbrada por Ester.
Asimismo, cuando Lorena tiene la palabra expresa a su padre lo siguiente
respecto al matrimonio: “es que, papá… si me caso va a creer que es dueño mío y va a
hacer lo que le dé la gana conmigo. Yo no quiero sentirme amarrada a nadie y de todos
modos ya soy su mujer” (Duncan 82). Como se puede observar el concepto de
matrimonio que maneja Lorena es negativo porque le restringe su libertad como
persona y además, expresa también una libertad sexual que Ester no tuvo, pues la
cultura y la sociedad en que vivía le exigían conservar su virginidad. De este modo,
Lorena se configura como una mujer de pensamiento mucho más abierto y avanzado
que Ester. Mientras que en términos físicos, resulta interesante que su descripción se
ajuste más a la ya mencionada del busto del Renacimiento español, con la salvedad de
que incluye sus pies y que siendo una mujer negra, no se muestra en ningún caso una
visión estereotipada de su cuerpo hipersexuado a través de los pechos y la cintura, como
sí es recurrente en las descripciones de otras mujeres negras-mulatas.
Otro aspecto importante del pensamiento de Lorena es el hecho de que ella sí
tiene la capacidad de relacionar el proceder de un negro que odia a su misma gente,
como Cristian, con el blanco esclavista (Duncan 88-89), cosa que Charles al concluir la
novela no ha sido capaz de ver en sí mismo. En este sentido Lorena aparece como una
mujer de pensamiento más profundo que Ester y con mucha más claridad para
comprender las situaciones que el mismo Charles.
Conclusiones
Como se pudo ver, prima en Los cuatro espejos una visión negativa de la mujer, ya
que si se trata de mujeres negras-mulatas o blancas de clase baja estas son construidas
discursivamente como objetos de uso pasajero para el hombre, mientras que las mujeres
blancas, de clase alta y buenas son construidas también como objetos, pero ya no tanto
de placer, sino de exhibición.
Al parecer, la mujer blanca de clase alta, cuyo retrato coincide con el busto
femenino elaborado por el Renacimiento español en su idealización de la amada, se
acerca a la figura de la mujer ángel, pues se trata de una mujer pura, virginal y bella.
Mientras que por el contrario, la mujer negra-mulata o la mujer blanca de clase baja es
representada por una mujer demonio o mujer fatal, ya que su característica principal es
encender el fuego de la lujuria en los hombres, por tanto ella misma carga con la culpa
de provocar al sexo masculino, a quien deben exculpársele todas las infidelidades, ya que
no es su responsabilidad, sino de estas malas mujeres.
Ahora bien, siendo que al final de cuentas se trata a todas las mujeres como
objetos, diferentes, pero objetos al fin, resulta fundamental señalar el hecho de que la
mujer siempre es descrita en términos de su apariencia y muy rara vez considerando sus
sentimientos y sus pensamientos.
En conclusión, dado que se tiene a la mujer por objeto, no resulta extraño que
Charles las utilice como instrumentos de ascenso étnico-cultural y socioeconómico.
Pero, pese a que la figura de Ester se configure hacia el final de la novela como superior
a Charles y encarne la figura del conquistador al encadenarlo con cadenas religiosas,
ciertamente su función de encadenante le viene dada por una sociedad racista y
patriarcal que ya la ha condenado por casarse con un mulato y probablemente la lapide
si este la deja, lo que la hace aceptar su papel de instrumento de legitimación de Charles.
Por esta razón, en términos de libertad, el que Ester encadene a Charles no la hace más
libre que él, ambos están sujetos a dos sistemas de dominación: sexismo y racismo.
Sin embargo, conviene tener presente que como bien destaca Grosfoguel, que el
racismo es “una jerarquía global de superioridad e inferioridad sobre la línea de lo
humano que ha sido políticamente producida y reproducida como estructura de
dominación durante siglos por el ‘sistema imperialista / occidentalocéntrico /
cristianocéntrico / capitalista / patriarcal /moderno / colonial’” (93). Y que
De manera tal que, la opresión que vive Ester en el sistema patriarcal que habita, dentro
de la zona del ser, no es equiparable de ningún modo con la opresión que Charles
experimenta en la zona del no-ser.
Por su parte, Lorena, quien tiene un concepto claro del matrimonio como
institución que le coarta su libertad, aunque finalmente termine casada con Charles,
pareciera ser una mujer con mucha más libertad que Ester, sobre todo por el alcance de
sus pensamientos: puede ver en Cristian al esclavista, puede reconocer en su gente que
el mal viene del conquistador que los azotó por tantos años, cosa que no ocupa a
ninguna otra mujer de la novela. Las figuras maternas son reproductoras del discurso
racista y formadoras de hijos e hijas racistas y disconformes con sus orígenes, nunca se
detienen a cuestionar el sistema, del mismo modo que Charles nunca vislumbra que se
ha transformado culturalmente en un blanco racista.
WORKS CITED
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Bello Reguera, Gabriel. “De la demonización al racismo (sobre la deshumanización del
otro)”. Criterio Jurídico 2 (2008): 9-24.
Cordero Solís, Nuria María y Álvarez Velázquez, Rocío. Los cuatro espejos como un relato de
identidad. Tesis. San José: Universidad de Costa Rica, 1978.
Del Valle, Sandra. “Pasar por blanca”. En: Cotidiano Mujer y AFM. eds. Desafíos
feministas en América Latina: la mirada de las jóvenes. Montevideo, 2009: 87-96.
Duncan Moodie, Quince. Los cuatro espejos. San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1973.
Gallers, Anita. “‘Un ser que una vez quiso ser hombre’: Sexuality and Racial Identity in
Quince Duncan’s Los cuatro espejos”. En: Gallers, Anita. Eslavement and masculinity
in Afro-Hispanic Narrative.Tesis. Yale University, 2000: 164-217.
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¿teorizar desde la zona del ser o desde la zona del no ser?”. Tabula Rasa 16
(enero-junio 2012): 79-102.
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Filología Italiana (2005): 247-260.
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ABC-CLIO, 2014. 582-91. Print
No es fácil para una persona negra promedio decir y gritar a los cuatro vientos que es rotundamente
negra. Eso implica decirse a una misma soy hermosa, me amo tal cual soy, amo mi piel, mi pelo, mi
historia… Eso es lo que quiero decir, SOY. Eso es lo importante. Me amo porque soy. Cuando yo me
acepto y me amo, estoy lista para luchar y unirme a otras que luchan.
Me cansé de ser lo que otros querían que yo fuera. Me cansé de ser llamada, catalogada, enumerada y
nombrada.
Shirley Campbell
156 JORGE RAMÍREZ & SILVIA SOLANO
L
a literatura costarricense empieza siendo la literatura del Valle Central,
escrita por literatos de la oligarquía liberal blanca, reunidos bajo la
Generación del Olimpo. Ese vallecentrismo literario es legitimado por la
primera Historia de la literatura costarricense (1957) y perpetuado en Para una
nueva interpretación de la literatura costarricense (1978), La casa paterna (1993), Cien años de
literatura costarricense (1995), Breve historia de la literatura costarricense (2008) e Identidades
literarias (2014). Estos trabajos de distinguidos investigadores y catedráticos de la Meseta
Central solo mencionan la literatura costarricense escrita en español y dejan por fuera la
literatura afrocaribeña escrita en inglés y bilingüe. El único autor digno de unas cuantas
líneas en Cien años, Breve historia e Identidades literarias es Quince Duncan, a razón de los
premios nacionales que lo han visibilizado y por ser docente en una universidad estatal.
Mientras la poesía negrista abunda en América Latina y el Caribe, en Costa Rica son
muy pocos los escritores consagrados que dedican un poema a los negros: Max Jiménez,
Francisco Amighetti, Joaquín Gutiérrez y Abel Pacheco. La representación de los
afrodescendientes por estos escritores del Valle Central autoconcebidos blancos no dista
en nada de la imagen que encontramos en los escritores homólogos del resto del
continente. Es por esta razón que conviene que volvamos la mirada hacia las poetas
afrocostarricenses para poner de relieve la autorrepresentación, contestación y
subversión del imaginario estético que los escritores negristas han hecho de los
afrodescendientes. Para tal efecto, hemos escogido la poesía de Shirley Campbell Barr.
Mientras en los textos de los escritores del Valle Central los negros son objetos del
discurso blanco, en los poemas de Campbell aparecen como sujetos de su propio
discurso, contestando y desenmascarando el discurso blanco. No estamos ya ante los
negros tenidos como extranjeros (“chumecas”), sino ante afrocostarricenses que se
asumen como tales.
Para quienes sabemos cómo han sido representados los negros en la poesía
negrista, el abordaje de la poesía de Campbell nos permitirá contrastar la visión que
tienen los vallecentristas “blancos” con la que tienen los afrodescendientes sobre sí
mismos y sobre los vallecentristas, en particular, y el mundo euroccidental, en general.
En consecuencia, con este cambio de foco deseamos saber: 1) Cómo se conciben y se
representan a sí mismos los sujetos afrocostarricenses; 2) cuál es la posición de
Campbell frente a la construcción identitaria asignada por el imaginario de los escritores
vallecentristas “blancos” y del euroccidentalismo, y 3) qué respuestas da sobre la
concepción de la historia, de los valores y de sí misma. Para responder estos
interrogantes nos fijaremos en sus poemarios Naciendo (1988), Rotundamente negra (1994),
Palabras indelebles (2011) y Rotundamente negra y otros poemas (2013).
racismo en Cocorí. Quienes se adjudican el derecho de definir, entender, leer e interpretar el racismo en
los textos literarios son los intelectuales blancos del Valle Central. En cambio, cuando son los
afrodescendientes quienes lo señalan y lo denuncian, terminan siendo acusados de acomplejados,
subjetivos, incapaces de leer, comprender y superar un problema que solo existe en sus mentes.
Palabras indelebles de poetas negras (2011) que publica junto con McDonald,2 y Rotundamente
negra y otros poemas (2013). En “Nuevos nómadas”, Dorothy Mosby señala que en
Rotundamente negra Campbell “forma enlaces implícitos con los pueblos
afrodescendientes de las Américas y la Diáspora a través de temas locales que son
también temas globales”, lo cual es otro modo de nombrar y afirmar “la diferencia
étnica y cultural dentro de las fronteras nacionales” (Mosby, Nuevos).
En Place, Language, and Identity in Afro-Costa Rican Literature (2003) y “Writing
Home: Afro-Costa Rican Women Poets Negotiating Limón and San José” (2007),
Mosby se ocupa de Naciendo y Rotundamente negra. Destaca que estos poemarios revelan
un feminismo consciente, preocupado por la paridad de género y por la equidad étnico-
racial. Este feminismo se manifiesta a través de una equidad sexual en el uso de lo
erótico como fuente de poder y a través del empoderamiento de las mujeres en varios
roles sociales, como transmisoras de cultura y de un compromiso con un linaje histórico
femenino. Además, añade Mosby, la voz poética se localiza a sí misma en un largo linaje
de generaciones de mujeres negras que, a partir de ahí, inician su empoderamiento. Para
entender su feminidad y su negritud, Campbell lleva su compromiso a la intersección de
la historia, el género y la etnicidad (Mosby Writing 208-209).
Para Mosby, Naciendo es un poemario que aborda el retorno a los orígenes,
retorno propiciado por el color de la piel, que como marca de identidad establece un
vínculo con la historia de los afrocaribeños en Costa Rica. Según ella, el poemario
estaría dividido en tres partes: la primera centrada en un retorno a los orígenes más
abstractos, caracterizados por tres epígrafes de tres figuras literarias canónicas, de las
tres lenguas del Caribe: Claude McKay (Jamaica), Nicolás Guillén (Cuba) y Aime Cesaire
(Martinica), quienes tienen en común el reclamo por la reivindicación de la historia; la
segunda parte se acerca más a una identidad concreta y afrocostarricense, posee un
epígrafe de Duncan y remite a imágenes de tierras costeras y al carnaval de Limón; la
tercera parte aborda hombres y mujeres, la intimidad, la maternidad y la
heterosexualidad… (Mosby, Place 174).
Rotundamente negra contiene reflexiones íntimas y subjetivas sobre etnicidad,
historia, sexualidad, amor y maternidad.3 A juicio de Mosby, este poemario se divide en
tres partes: la primera, “La tierra prometida”, la conforman diez poemas dedicados a la
maternidad, los niños y su creatividad; la segunda, “Ahora puedo gritarlos”, constituida
por once poemas que presentan la agonía y el éxtasis de la sexualidad entre los amantes,
y la tercera, “Rotundamente negra”, integrada por trece poemas “que son afirmaciones
de la diferencia étnica con una preocupación maternal por la continuación de la herencia
2 Los poemarios de Dlia McDonald Woolery son: El séptimo círculo del obelisco (1993), Sangre de
madera (1994), La lluvia es una piel (2002), Pregoneros de la memoria (2004), Instinto tribal (2006), Palabras
indelebles de poetas negras (2011, junto con Campbell) y Todas las voces que canta el mar (2012).
3 La misma Campbell ha señalado que su poesía gira en torno a cuatro temas capitales: la
negritud, las mujeres, la maternidad y el amor. “Estos temas aparecen ya sea independientemente o
entremezclados unos con otros” (en Ramsay 64).
sobre las modalidades de escrituras del yo: “Cuando empezaba a escribir, al finalizar los años setenta,
recuerdo el desdén con que algunos escritores hechos y derechos hablaban del escaso valor de ciertos
títulos literarios publicados entonces, por su componente autobiográfico, con observaciones como las
Específicamente sobre el poema XIII, Meza anota que “expresa la belleza y el orgullo
de sus rasgos en una sociedad en la que la blancura de la piel es exaltada y que en el afán
de pertenecer obliga a olvidarse de su historia, lengua y tradiciones” (Meza 5-6).
Para concluir este breve recorrido por la crítica literaria en torno a la poesía de
Campbell, subrayamos algunos aspectos: a) la escasa preocupación de la crítica literaria
siguientes: ‘parecen demasiado autobiográficos’, ‘se le sale ahí la vida’, son ‘limitados a lo autobiográfico’.
Y esos eran pecados mayores, remitían a la falta de imaginación y de… pudor. Se le trataba, en fin, como
‘literatura exhibicionista’ (por cierto, alguien calificó de ese modo en una página de Áncora, uno de mis
cuentos, no hace mucho)” (en Fallas xi-xii). ¿Acaso se apropia del desdén patriarcal de los años setenta,
que descalificaba la subjetividad femenina blanca, mestiza o indígena, para descalificar y desacreditar
desde esa misma lógica la subjetividad de las afrocostarricenses? ¿Por qué lo que es alabado en unas es
denostado en otras? ¿Se erige como sujeto blanco-patriarcal para juzgar los pecados de las negras? Zavala
materializa la posición de los intelectuales vallecentristas que rivalizan con sus similares caribeños.
Para llegar a nuestro poema tenemos que pasar por el poemario Rotundamente
negra, el segundo en la producción textual de Campbell. Este poemario arranca con la
búsqueda de la tierra prometida y desemboca en la aceptación de sí misma en su
condición de mujer, madre y negra, pero además libre y hermosa. Esa travesía está llena
de represiones, censuras, dudas, vacilaciones, miedos, deseos de renuncias y de satisfacer
su cuerpo, pero siempre con la convicción de que “juntos vamos a construir otra vez la
historia / la nuestra”.6 En un principio pareciera que esa “nuestra historia” se
circunscribiera solo al ámbito familiar, a la intimidad entre madre e hija (“me encuentro
contándote de pronto / que somos negras / y esa es la tarea encomendada / el fin de
nuestro camino”, 23), pero poco a poco el yo se va abriendo y agrandando (“yo ya no
soy una / sino que soy tres”, 29), hasta identificarse con “las madres con los sexos rotos
/ con la piel a cuestas / y los hijos suyos pase lo que pase” (36-37) y descubrir que su
sueño empata con el sueño de otros (“yo también tengo un sueño / y tiene que ver con
Martin Luther King / porque también es negro”, 123) y confraternizar con todas las
madres negras que descubren en su sangre la negritud: “descubrí en mi sangre / de
pronto una abuela / a una hembra / y una hilera larga / de madres cantando” (129).
Descubrirse y aceptarse negra la lleva a identificarse con la historia del pueblo africano,
la de sus líderes y las aspiraciones de sus pueblos. Merecen su atención África, Haití y el
Sur de Estados Unidos. De los líderes negros recuerda a Mandela, Martin Luther King y
Nicolás Guillén. De ellos recupera su piel, su sueño y su lucha.
El proceso de entendimiento y asunción como mujer negra implica una ruptura
con el imaginario colonial reinante. Esa ruptura la podemos apreciar en los siguientes
versos: “Aclaro que hoy / vengo con pocas palabras / a despojarme de mí misma / a
6Shirley Campbell Barr. Rotundamente negra. San José: El Arado, 1994: 17. Todas las citas serán
tomadas de esta edición. De ahora en adelante indicaremos entre paréntesis el número de página
inmediatamente después del fragmento citado.
declararme madre y negra” y “vengo con todas las palabras / a entenderme negra /
mujer” (114). La estrecha relación entre ser mujer, madre y ser negra de hoy supone que el
foco de autoconocimiento, su modelo de referencia anterior era exógeno, blanco, no
negro. El yo lírico plantea una ruptura frente a dicho modelo en el presente y se asume
desde una perspectiva endógena en su triple condición de mujer, madre y negra. Esta
relación tan entrañable solo resulta comprensible a la luz de los feminismos africanos,
que a pesar de tener diferencias entre sí, coinciden en resaltar la importancia de la
maternidad para la cultura africana, que le otorga a la mujer equidad respecto al hombre.
La maternidad no es simplemente importante, sino la faceta más importante de la mujer
en esta poética de Campbell: “Hoy acepto el reto/ y me declaro/ irrevocablemente/ la
madre/ hija/ esposa/ amante/ trabajadora incansable/ y más negra/ de este mundo”
(115).7
Ese proceso de asunción y aceptación se desprende de una búsqueda en los
rostros de otras mujeres en la calle, en las cuales no se encuentra. Solo supera el vacío
identitario cuando consigue mirarse a sí misma y halla en su piel su historia, su origen y
la razón de su existencia y de su lucha: “me miré la piel con marcas y estrellas / y un
color distinto / me miré la piel / con tono oscuro / con un tono inmenso / descubrí en
mi sangre / de pronto una abuela / a una hembra / y una hilera larga / de madres
cantando / y una tierra negra / sembrada por ellas” (128-129). Este proceso de
objetivación posibilita que el sujeto se conozca y reconozca, se asuma y se aprehenda:
“me entendí mujer/ una mujer negra” (129). Nótese que es la piel oscura la que
posibilita el descubrimiento de la sangre oscura, es decir, la herencia negra que viene vía
matrilineal: lo que es negro en la superficie, es negro también bajo ella. No encontramos
en la poesía de Campbell esa aceptación a medias de la piel negra como se da en
muchos textos latinoamericanos, en los que se admite la piel oscura porque más abajo
de ella la persona posee un alma blanca.8 En Campbell el yo lírico no necesita tener un
alma blanca porque su alma negra es buena y libre. Campbell, al igual que Guillén,
rompe con la dicotomía arquetípica eurocéntrica y etnofóbica: blanco-bueno / negro-
malo.9
7 Otro aspecto fundamental de observar en este poema es que como señalaba Larraín Ibáñez
(2003), el yo lírico se construye a sí, creando una narrativa sobre sí mismo, narrativa que lo define en
relación con otras personas significativas. La narrativa sobre sí, se hace patente con los verbos aclarar y
declarar, siempre en primera persona, pues es el yo quien se define y se afirma con sus propias palabras.
8 Así lo encontramos en la novela de Alberto Insúa, El negro que tenía el alma blanca (1922). Abel
Pacheco escribe: “A mi provincia, mi canto y mi esperanza por un mundo que ame más abajo de la piel”
(Pacheco: 11. El destacado es nuestro). No hallamos en Campbell una piel como frontera entre el interior
y el exterior de las personas, sino como encuentro. Tampoco estamos ante la caracterización tan propia de
los textos negristas del negro feo, trompudo, bembón, cabezón, con manotas y dedazos, como en Manuel
Argüello Mora, Carlos Luis Fallas, Joaquín Gutiérrez y Yolanda Oreamuno.
9 A propósito del asesinato de Martin Luther King, Evtuchenko había escrito que “su piel era
negra, pero con el alma purísima como la nieve blanca”. Nicolás Guillén reacciona ante estas palabras y
escribe el poema “¿Qué color?” (incluido en La rueda dentada, de 1972) en el que supera esa visión
Me niego rotundamente
a negar mi voz
mi sangre y mi piel
y me niego rotundamente
a dejar de ser yo
a dejar de sentirme bien
cuando miro mi rostro en el espejo
con mi boca
rotundamente grande
y mi nariz
rotundamente hermosa
y mis dientes
rotundamente blancos
y mi piel
valientemente negra
y me niego categóricamente
a dejar de hablar
mi lengua, mi acento y mi historia
y me niego absolutamente
a ser parte de los que callan
de los que temen
de los que lloran
porque
me acepto
rotundamente libre
rotundamente negra
rotundamente hermosa (pp. 143-144).
racializada: “podría decirse de otro modo: / Qué alma tan poderosa negra / la del dulcísimo pastor. /
Qué alta pasión negra / ardía en su ancho corazón. / Qué pensamientos puros negros / su grávido
cerebro alimentó. / Qué negro amor, / tan repartido / sin color. / ¿Por qué no, / por qué no iba a tener
el alma negra / aquel heroico pastor? / Negra como el carbón” (Guillén: 223-224). Ver el análisis de este
tópico en Brewer, 2012.
10 Con este poemario Campbell se distancia de la visión estética de Cocorí, niño negro que se
asombra-asusta al verse reflejado negro en el agua, y de Charles, personaje principal de Los cuatro espejos,
quien no puede ver su rostro en el espejo, porque teme descubrirse negro. Dicho temor se debe al
proyecto de blanqueamiento impuesto por la visión eurocentrada de Gutiérrez en el primer caso y de la
asimilación del negrismo de Duncan en el segundo. Resistirse a ser negro o a aceptar la negritud es signo
de alienación identitaria, de estar cobijado por el halo de la blanquitud como modelo.
11 Son abundantes en textos literarios y no literarios las referencias a negros “bembones”, “nariz
aplastada” y “macanudos”. Ya Guillén lo señalaba en “Negro bembón”. Celia Cruz también ha ayudado a
perpetuar estos rasgos del negro y de la negra en sus canciones: “Pa mí tú no eres na / tú tiene la bemba
colorá / Canta tu rumba, baila tu son, / tu guarachita y tu danzón ay! / Pa mi tu eres na' / tu tiene la
bemba colora” (“Bemba colorá”).
12 Asimismo, se vislumbra en los poemas algunos rasgos de los feminismos africanos como: la
construcción de una identidad, el no intentar tratar a las mujeres como una masa homogénea, la ausencia
de una dicotomía mujer/hombre, la autonomía de la mujer, la importancia fundamental de la maternidad,
incluso cabría decir que en los textos de Campbell se priorizan los asuntos raciales por sobre los de
género, lo cual comulga con el Africana Womanism (1998), de Clenora Hudson.
13 Por el ambiente pedagógico tanto familiar como escolar en que se desenvuelven niños y niñas,
debe aclararse que la condena recae contra los rostros blancos, contra quienes han direccionado el modo
de ver, pensar, sentir y actuar de los no occidentales. En ningún momento se autocensura la acción de
padres y docentes en el proceso de enseñanza de los hijos. Se condena la imposición cultural, la
colonización.
14 Existe también un contexto global expresado en los siguientes versos: “el tiempo este / que
nos tocó vivir / tiene que ver con soledad, dictadores, / computadoras y guerras” (21).
15 Shirley Campbell ha declarado lo duro que ha sido para la mujer negra llegar a aceptarse,
asumirse negra: “La historia nos ha obligado a avergonzarnos de ser lo que somos, a escondernos detrás
de diferentes calificativos y a tratar de pasar desapercibidas para no ser notadas. Se requiere de un largo
proceso de interiorización y de autoconocimiento para reconocernos y afirmarnos como personas negras
en sociedades como las nuestras. 500 años de historia no pasan en vano” (Ramsay 67).
dejar de ser yo / a dejar de sentirme bien / cuando miro mi rostro en el espejo / con mi
boca rotundamente grande / y mi nariz / rotundamente hermosa / y mis dientes / y mi
piel valientemente negra” (143). Esta radical afirmación del cuerpo y la piel negros
asemejan el planteamiento de Campbell con el de Frantz Fanon cuando este exclama:
“¡Oh, cuerpo mío, haz de mí, siempre, un hombre que interrogue!” (Fanon, Piel 192). A
partir del cuerpo, Campbell cuestiona y desarticula el imaginario eurocéntrico sobre el
cuerpo de la mujer negra.
Esta poética de una mujer liberada por la aceptación y asunción de su cuerpo, su
color y su cultura la encontramos también en los poemas recopilados en la antología
Palabras indelebles de poetas negras (2011). Muy directamente relacionado con lo planteado
anteriormente, aquí veremos cómo la asunción de la maternidad y del cuerpo, conduce
no solo a una asunción de la cultura propia, en general, sino también a la búsqueda
particular de la historia. La necesidad de dar con la historia pretende sostener a las
generaciones futuras, puesto que ya el yo posee una razón de ser fundada en su piel, su
color y su cultura: “debo confesar que no era ni por mí / era más bien por los niños”,
“era por ellos / después de todo les pertenecía / desde siempre / desde el principio / y
solo habían ido conociéndola en porciones / en retazos / en breves bocados de
angustia”.16 Este proyecto de recuperar la historia pretende superar la fragmentación, la
usurpación, la invisibilización y el silencio a que ha sido sometida la historia de los
negros por parte de la historia de los blancos, elevada al rango de universal.17
Esa historia negra será sacada del mismo vientre blanco que se la ha devorado y,
para ello, el yo actuará como un inquisidor que recurre a la violencia para hacer confesar
a su víctima, de la cual demanda la verdad de los hechos y llamar a los hechos por sus
nombres (40-41). Es así como toma a la historia, le amarra los brazos, la mira a los ojos,
le patea el vientre y le pega en la cara para que escupa toda la verdad (43). Más adelante
dice: “le arranqué a pedazos trozos de cabello / le rompí el vestido / le mordí la cara /
le arranqué los dientes / y escupió con sangre toda la verdad” (44). Al final obtiene lo
que buscaba: la historia confiesa que la civilización negra fue la primera en la tierra y que
de ella se originó todo, pero que “unos cuantos se la apropiaron / y la reescribieron / y
la reinventaron / y la rebuscaron / y se la quedaron / … / la reconstruyeron / con sus
propias voces / sus propias palabras / sus propios colores / sus mismas miradas / pero
16 Dlia McDonald y Shirley Campbell. Palabras indelebles de poetas negras. Heredia: Programa de
Publicaciones e Impresiones de la UNA, 2011: 38. De ahora en adelante reportaremos la página entre
paréntesis inmediatamente después de los versos citados.
17 El poema “Nuestra historia” plantea el estado en que occidente ha difundido la historia de los
negros: “La nuestra no nos llegó en capítulos / ni de menor a mayor / como suele suceder / no nos llegó
desde el principio… desde la cuna / desde los primeros días de la escuela / no nos apareció en los libros
/ o en las sorpresas de los cereales o / esas cosas […] Ella nos llegó en lenguajes desconocidos /
fragmentada / nos llegó interpretada por los enemigos / con sus rostros y sus verdades / se nos entregó
sucia… vacía / hecha pedazos / nos llegó en harapos / descalza / acribillada / la recogimos humillada”
(50). La historia negra no solo llega fragmentada, sino que no es objeto de difusión por la escuela, los
medios y el comercio.
era nuestra / fuimos los primeros en poblar la tierra” (47-48). Estamos ante una ruptura
con el eurocentrismo. Esa recuperación de la historia lleva al yo lírico a expresar: “a
partir de entonces / ya no somos los mismos / ahora podemos amarnos / sonreír / y
vivir / con voces mucho más ciertas / con mucha más certeza” (39). Y más adelante
señala: “es que no se puede vivir sin historia / no se pueden criar hijos sin historia” (46).
Reaparece la figura de la madre y sus hijos como motivo generador de la búsqueda de la
verdad histórica y la figura femenina retoma el papel de transmisora cultural, forjadora
de identidades, pero identidades basadas sobre el discurso de sus propios otros
significativos, sus ancestros.
Se infiere que la historia eurocéntrica no sirve como discurso para construir la
identidad porque excluye al yo lírico y a sus niños, porque niega e invisibiliza el mundo
negro, su cultura, su civilización. Para forjar una identidad requieren de la historia que
consideran cierta, la que parte de sus otros significativos, sus iguales y no la edificada
por la mirada y el modelo blanco, totalmente deshumanizada. Después de ser enjuiciada
por el yo, esa misma historia cuenta entre lágrimas “que la humanidad con certeza /
empezó en África” (43), verso medular que nos ubica frente a la historia de la
humanidad, no la historia africana u occidental, sino la historia universal: África es el
origen del ser humano, África que había sido excluida de la historia no solo merece estar
incluida, sino que por derecho debe estar en ella.18 Asistimos así al asesinato de la
historia tal como la ha contado Occidente (“yo la sentí muriendo”, 46), porque como ha
sido contada no contempla la historia africana. La historia occidental es asesinada
porque solo así emergerá la nueva historia. La construcción identitaria no admite
verdades a medias, ni falsedades; únicamente la verdad, y en la verdad del yo lírico
África es el comienzo de todo.
Si todo empezó en África no hay razón por la cual los blancos sean superiores,
no es válido un sistema de castas ni la ideología racista porque los argumentos en los
que se cimentó tal superioridad han sido desmantelados: científicamente la historia del
ser humano inició en el continente africano y en cuanto a la religión, el poema destaca:
“me habló del pasado / de un crucificado llamado Jesús / me dijo entre súplicas / que buscara en
África / toda la verdad / que me remitiera a libros enterrados / a hombres temerosos de ser
descubiertos / a falsos testigos / que juraron estar / sin estar” (45. El destacado es del original).
Esto se trae abajo el discurso instaurado por el arzobispo Isidoro de Sevilla, quien en el
siglo VIII se refiere a Chus como hijo de Cam (hijo de Noé) rey de los etíopes
entrelazando así “la esclavitud de los cananeos con su color de piel negra como
somatización del pecado” (Hering 21; cf. Brewer, 2012).
El yo denuncia el hecho de que occidente se apropió de una historia, la
desdibujó y la reeditó excluyendo a los negros. Eso queda claro en el poema “Desde
siempre” en el que la propia historia le ha sido arrebatada: “La tenía / siempre la tuve /
18Recordemos aquí que el STIWANISM de Molara Ogundipe Leslie señala como primera carga
obstaculizadora del desarrollo de las africanas, el colonialismo y las relaciones desiguales que existen entre
África y Europa.
pero ellos llegaron y se la quedaron / la reconstruyeron / con sus propias voces / sus
propias palabras / sus propios colores / sus mismas miradas / pero no era nuestra” (47-
48). Nótese que no solo señala el proceso de apropiación, sino también el proceso de
blanqueamiento y el cambio de perspectiva que occidente le imprime a la historia: ya no
era la historia negra, sino la historia blanca invisibilizando la historia negra. Esto nos
ayuda a entender por qué el yo funge como inquisidor en el poema “El encuentro”: se
trata de un desquite para invertir los papeles. De ese modo la mujer formadora de
identidad cultural aparece rescatando su historia: “Fue necesario que saliéramos / como
valientes guerreras a recuperarla / limpiarle las lágrimas / las manos / vestirla de nuevo
/ llenarla de orgullo / lavar sus rodillas / … y cuando estuvo lista / la sacamos al sol / y
nuestra historia entonces luce hermosa” (50-51).
Encontramos aquí la intersección entre historia y mujer: la historia que se nos
ofrece es la rescatada y reconstruida por las mujeres, autoconfiguradas como heroínas y
como madres. Esta idea de que la historia es como una madre queda claro en los
siguientes versos: “La tenía / siempre la tuve / y crecí sin ella / igual que sin madre / a
la intemperie / sola” (48). Esta homología entre madre e historia se da por el papel que,
dentro del contexto africano, desempeña la mujer: responsable de la formación cultural
y por tanto forjadora de la identidad. Crecer sin historia es igual que crecer sin esa
formación sobre la cultura propia que engendra el aprecio por el endogrupo.19 La
orfandad histórica que se sufre provoca un desconocimiento sobre lo propio y una
vulnerabilidad hacia la aceptación de falsas historias. En síntesis, la historia-madre ocupa
un papel primordial en la construcción de esta identidad femenina negra, ya que una
madre brinda conocimiento cultural del endogrupo, lo cual favorece el
autorreconocimiento y la autovaloración.
Con esta ubicación en la poética de Campbell nos podemos adentrar en el
análisis del poema “Liberada”, incluido en la antología Palabras indelebles de poetas negras
(2011) y en Rotundamente negra y otros poemas (2013). “Liberada” es, a nuestro juicio, el
mejor poema de Shirley, aunque se haya popularizado más “Rotundamente negra”.
“Liberada” plantea la asunción del cuerpo, de sí misma, el color, la historia y la cultura
negras para violentar y hacer estallar los prejuicios y estereotipos étnico-patriarcales que
la sociedad y la cultura occidentales han inventado alrededor del cuerpo negro de la
mujer negra.
la forja de la identidad negra: “Mi padre fue siempre una figura fuerte y muy estricto, y nos inculcó mucha
seguridad en nosotros mismos, cualidad muy importante creciendo como minoría negra en un país
predominantemente latino, que se considera blanco. Mi padre y mi madre hicieron grandes esfuerzos por
darnos una buena educación y hacernos personas seguras y orgullosas de nuestra herencia africana”
(Ramsay 60).
3. Análisis de “Liberada”
Liberada
1. Yo ya no busco razones
2. para mi piel
3. no busco más excusas ni explicaciones
4. para la redondez de mis nalgas
5. o la natural cadencia
6. en mi andar.
7. No justifico ya mi natural agrado
8. por los tambores
9. o la necesidad de mi cuerpo
10. de danzar al ritmo que le toquen.
57. Ya no,
58. no preciso razones
59. hoy soy yo
60. liberada (pp. 16-18).20
Para el análisis del cuerpo del poema, centraremos nuestra atención en cinco
aspectos fundamentales que nos ayuden a poner de manifiesto las estructuras textuales:
la estructura del texto, el mundo representado, la retórica, el estilo y las estrategias
discursivas.
Estructura. Los 60 versos del poema, externamente divididos en seis estrofas,
desde el punto de vista temático los podemos organizar en tres partes: a) la primera
comprende los versos 1-25 y se refiere a la ruptura del yo frente al pasado y su negación
a dar razones y explicaciones sobre su ser y su cuerpo negros; b) la segunda abarca los
versos 26-48 y tiene que ver con el descubrimiento, asunción y aceptación de sí que
tiene el yo: está orgullosa de su cuerpo y de su negrura; y c) la tercera va de los versos
49-60 y expone las consecuencias morales derivadas de la aceptación de su cuerpo y de
su negritud: descubrirse plena de valores, razón por la que no tiene que dar
explicaciones de su ser. Desde el punto de vista estructural, puede decirse que el poema
posee una estructura circular: abre con un enunciado titular idéntico al enunciado final
con que cierra. La única diferencia entre ambos enunciados es que, mientras el primero
solo nos sugiere una serie de hipótesis, el final sirve para confirmar algunas y descartar
otras, a la vez que nos ofrece un sentido más completo del término, debido a la travesía
que tenemos que hacer por el cuerpo del poema.
Mundo representado. En este poema no hay un tú ni un ello al que se dirija el yo.
Esto quiere decir que el circuito comunicativo involucra a un yo que habla de sí a sí
misma: el objeto sobre el que habla es su propio cuerpo, su ser; el estado en el que se
encuentra es posesionada, segura y cierta de sí misma; manifiesta ruptura frente al qué
dirán o las sanciones sociales, ya que se ha descubierto, asumido y aceptado a sí misma
tal cual es. Estamos ante un yo sin modelo estético externo (dicha exterioridad ha sido
negada por conformar el modelo estético blanco, racializador), que deja de ser lo que
otros han dictado para convertirse en sí misma, para ser ella misma (vv. 23-25). En tal
caso, el mundo representado está constituido por el mundo del yo y de los suyos,
mientras el resto del mundo está anulado en relación con lo que pueda afectar al ser del
yo: “no necesito autorización para ser. / No pido ya permisos / para vivir” (vv. 28-30).
Este mundo representado está construido a partir del contraste temporal antes /
ahora. En el antes, la relación consigo misma no existía o estaba mediada o posibilitada
por el discurso ajeno que interfería con una verdadera relación consigo misma, dado que
dicho discurso generaba una distancia estética, antropológica y existencial
(colonialidades del saber y del ser) que la imposibilitaba a amarse tal cual era, motivo por
el cual tenía que buscar razones para justificar, explicar y exponer su modo de ser negra,
con boca, nariz, pelo, nalgas, sonrisa, dientes y movimientos no propios del modelo
estético blanco. En el ahora, el yo se ha liberado de los discursos que controlaban su
cuerpo, sus movimientos y su ser. Se pone de relieve todo lo que antes la impidió ser y
los calificativos inscritos en su cuerpo: sucia, oscura, derrotada, manchada, maldita,
vencida, blanqueada, sin ser, cautiva. En cambio ahora aparece limpia, brillante,
victoriosa, incólume, probada, bendecida, batallada, negra, es ella misma, liberada (vv.
51-60).
El mundo resultante de toda esta ruptura y desprendimiento de las redes
discursivas, estereotipos y prejuicios étnico-culturales es un mundo utópico en dos
sentidos: a) estamos ante un ser humano indeterminado por las relaciones discursivas y
sociales impuestas por la sociedad y la cultura occidentales; b) el yo lírico negro
totalmente liberado de los remanentes representativos del imaginario occidental, vaciado
de la voz ajena y posicionado en una voz propia que autoconstituye su ser. Esta visión
utópica encaja dentro de la poética que reina en el poemario Rotundamente negra donde se
procura una tierra prometida y se ajusta a los poemas del 2011, donde plantea que “aún
se puede empezar todo de nuevo” (“Umbral”, 54), particularmente el poema “Un
mundo sin miedo” en el que señala:
21 Esa utopía comprende la hermandad y la igualdad de todos los seres humanos, sin distinción
de ninguna naturaleza. Así lo dejaba ver en su poemario Naciendo (1988): “un día habrá pueblos / oscuros
como este / llenos de hombres sonrientes / y sin lágrimas” (33); “intentemos de nuevo ser hermanos / es
que los hermanos / lloran juntos las plegarias / mueren juntos en los sueños / gritan fuerte la esperanza /
tienen pechos duros / negros, blancos / y llenos de abrazos” (52); “quiero decirte / que a pesar de
nuestra / leyenda distinta / a pesar de nuestras lágrimas otras / que a pesar de tu sangre / con otras
miradas / que a pesar de todo / somos al fin / los mismos” (54). Expresiones como “restaurarte”,
“reconstruirte”, “armarte” y “erguir de nuevo” (50; cf. 61) forman parte también de esta utopía de un yo
que quiere nuevas todas las cosas, es decir, “nacer de nuevo” (54).
22 Prevalece en la poética de Campbell un doble proceso de renuncia-ruptura frente a las
elementos que no siempre son analizados cuando se presenta el retrato de los personajes. Los estudiosos
su corporeidad: “mi piel”, “mis nalgas”, “mi cuerpo”, “mis labios”, “mi extraordinaria
nariz”, “mi cabello” y “mi tez”. Mientras que la descripción moral incluye: “mi natural
agrado”, “mis pasiones”, “mi sensualidad”, “mi negrura” y la acumulación de valores
enlistados uno tras otro al final del poema: “limpia / brillante / victoriosa / incólume /
probada / bendita / batallada / negra […] liberada” (vv. 51-56 y 60). Por su parte, la
descripción genealógica tiene que ver con las particularidades étnicas y culturales del yo:
la negritud, el color de la piel, los rasgos físicos que describen el pelo, la boca, los
dientes, las caderas y el andar, el bailar, los tambores. Contrario a lo que sucede en el
retrato de “La negra y la rubia”, acá no se trata de la confrontación étnico-cultural de la
negra contra las blancas, sino contra toda una matriz ideológica colonialista, patriarcal y
racista: estamos ante un yo femenino y negro que asume su voz y su cuerpo, su cultura y
su historia para destejer, deshacer y desmentir las prácticas sociales, discursivas e
ideológicas que la cultura dominante blanca ha inscrito en el corazón de la cultura y la
historia negras.24
Con el retrato físico el yo rescata su cuerpo del circuito de la mirada colonialista en
el que el cuerpo negro femenino solo tenía tres funciones básicas: dar placer, alimentar
al blanco y reproducir la mano de obra para beneficio del blanco. Fuera de ese circuito,
el cuerpo negro femenino era descalificado y saturado de prejuicios y estereotipos que lo
negaban. Estas descalificaciones aparecen implícitas en el poema: sucio, oscuro o
pecaminoso o manchado, maldito y cautivo. Estos estereotipos también dibujan al
posible salvador, limpiador o liberador de esa situación degradada en la que era ubicado
el cuerpo negro femenino: el hombre blanco, que no solo podía realzar el valor exterior
de la negrura, sino también depositar en su vientre el camino hacia la blanquitud.
Otro recurso retórico dominante es la reiteración. Veamos primero la reiteración
del posesivo mi junto con la enumeración de las diferentes partes del cuerpo: con este
recurso el yo lleva a cabo cuatro procesos simultáneos: a) primero le arrebata su cuerpo
a la mirada colonialista y se lo apropia; b) luego lo limpia y lo despoja de los estereotipos
y prejuicios que la cultura blanca inscribió en él; c) en un tercer momento lo resemantiza
y lo resignifica, y d) por último lo disfruta, lo pasea y lo expone con orgullo “por
parques, / mercados y plazas / por escenarios y anfiteatros / simples coloquios / y
grandes conferencias” (vv. 35-39). Es por eso que la repetición del “ya no” (vv. 1, 21,
24, 28 y 38) es significativa, porque en su condición de cuerpo y mente libres, ya no
tiene que buscar razones, excusas ni justificaciones; ya no necesita autorizaciones ni
permisos; ya no intenta disimular nada que tenga que ver con su cuerpo: “Me convertí
no pasan de la constatación literal de los elementos descritos, sin tomar en cuenta las huellas de
racialización, estigmatización y señalamientos que los personajes étnico-culturales marginados reciben en
los textos.
24 Otros recursos a los que echa mano la evidentia son: la descripción pormenorizada; la
enumeración; la translatio temporum o cambio de perspectiva temporal, esto es, utilizar un presente
histórico para hacer la acción más cercana al receptor; el apóstrofe; la sermocinatio; la similitudo; la
subiectio (http://www.retoricas.com/2011/12/ejemplos-de-evidentia.html).
en mí misma” (v. 23). Eso quiere decir: ha dejado de ser aquel cuerpo y aquella mente
cautivos por las prácticas sociales, discursivas e ideológicas del colonialismo patriarcal y
racista. El yo ha pasado del no ser persona a ser persona, de un objeto cautivo por las
reglas del juego de una sociedad y de una cultura racistas y sexistas, a un sujeto libre-
liberado de dichas programaciones. Para ello no ha necesitado que nadie se lo dicte, diga
o imponga: ella misma lo ha asumido, se lo ha apropiado, de ahí la importancia del “me
aprendí / soy yo” (v. 24-25) y “me descubrí” (v. 51), por eso “hoy soy yo” (v. 59).
Para cerrar con los recursos retóricos podemos señalar la acumulación: sirve para
abordar las series enumerativas de las partes del cuerpo: piel, nalgas, labios, nariz, cabello y
tez, como a las series enumerativas de las cualidades morales: limpia, brillante, victoriosa,
incólume, probada, bendecida, batallada, negra y liberada. Pero también sirve para
destacar los espacios abiertos y cerrados por donde el yo pasea y luce su cuerpo: parques,
mercados, plazas, escenarios, anfiteatros, coloquios y conferencias. El recorrido de esta
mostración va de lo exterior hacia el interior: desde las partes externas y visibles del
cuerpo, pasando por los espacios donde dicho cuerpo se visibiliza, se luce y presentifica,
hasta desembocar en la constitución moral y ética del yo. A la recuperación-posesión del
cuerpo como espacio cautivo por la mirada imperial, le sigue una recuperación de los
espacios donde ese cuerpo fue objetualizado, exhibido y subastado por las prácticas
sociales, políticas y económicas de los blancos coloniales y colonialistas.25 Estamos ante
una revisitación y reedición de los espacios corporales y de la historia para llenarlos de
un nuevo sentido, otorgarles una nueva lógica y dejar atrás viejos cautiverios. Esta
enumeración de las partes del cuerpo, de los espacios donde se luce y de los valores
concuerda con las tres partes en las que hemos dividido el poema.
Estilo. Examinemos el uso del posesivo mi (también podrían verse las
construcciones en mí y de mí misma) para reforzar la imagen de un yo que se apropia de
su cuerpo, su espacio y se concibe plena de cualidades en una sociedad sexista y racista
que antes le ha negado su cuerpo, su espacio y sus valores. Al anteponer el posesivo mi a
cada una de las partes de su cuerpo, el yo lleva una labor de reapropiación de aquello
que había sido asaltado, cautivado, saqueado y estigmatizado por el discurso y las
prácticas sociales colonialistas: sin cuerpo no es posible la liberación, porque en él es
donde se afinca la opresión. El procedimiento no solo consiste en recuperar el cuerpo y
el espacio, sino también limpiarlo de los viejos estigmas, resignificarlo, revalorarlo y
exhibirlo limpio y libre. El cuerpo ya no es una propiedad de la cultura y la sociedad
ajenas, sino del yo. El cuerpo ya no ocupa ser presentado según las etiquetas y valores
que la sociedad y la cultura le impusieron en el pasado, sino según la nueva edición que
el yo le ha dado. En tal sentido, poseer no es solo nombrar, sino también asumir,
significar y valorar. Con ese cuerpo apropiado el yo define su ser: “Me convertí en mí
misma / me aprendí / soy yo” (vv. 23-25). De esa manera el yo termina siendo dueña
de su cuerpo, su historia, su identidad, su destino.
Otros posesivos no tienen que ver con el espacio-cuerpo, sino con una serie de
valores y actitudes culturales que el yo asume como propios o definidores de su ser y de
su identidad: “mi andar / … mi natural agrado / por los tambores” (vv. 6-8); “mis
sincretismos / mis pasiones o mi sensualidad” (vv. 19-20), “mi negrura” (v. 32) y “mis
distinguidas alocuciones” (v. 44). Esto quiere decir que no estamos ante un cuerpo
vacío, inerte y receptáculo de lo que la cultura y la sociedad sexista y racista quieran
depositar en él, sino que nos encontramos con un cuerpo con historia, memoria y alma
(cf. vv. 45-48). Pero ya no se trata de una historia, una memoria y un alma ajenas, como
ha denunciado en otros poemas, sino unas elaboradas y construidas desde el centro del
alma, desde el propio corazón de la historia negra. Por eso es que el yo interviene,
intersecta y reescribe la historia del cuerpo y de su identidad desde una perspectiva
totalmente distanciadora y conflictiva frente a la historia y la mirada colonialista, racista
y sexista de occidente. El Cuadro 1 sintetiza lo que hemos tratado en estos dos últimos
párrafos.
CUERPO ACTITUDES
-v. 2: mi piel -v.6: mi andar
-v.4: mis nalgas -vv. 7-8: mi natural agrado por los
-v. 9: mi cuerpo tambores
-v. 13: mis labios -v. 19: mis sincretismos
-v. 14: mi -v. 20: mis pasiones o mi
extraordinaria nariz sensualidad
-v. 42: mi cabello -v. 22: mi ser
-v. 43: mi tez -v. 32: mi negrura
-v. 44: mis distinguidas
alocuciones
Cuadro 1: Posesión del cuerpo y de las actitudes en “Liberada”. JRC,
2015.
no lamento”, “Yo también tengo un sueño”, “Me abrazo con fuerza” y “Me niego
rotundamente”) y en los poemas del 2011 y 2013 encontramos una poesía autorreflexiva
y autointerpelativa: de la relación de un yo dirigiéndose a un tú exterior, se pasa a la
relación de un yo dirigiéndose a un yo interior. Ya no estamos ante un yo que quiere
mover o conmover a un tú externo ni a un Dios, sino ante un yo que reafirma su certeza
de ser, destacando que habla con la nueva mujer que se ha forjado por dentro, muy
distinta de la que en el pasado se comportaba según las reglas, los dictámenes y los
valores estético-ideológicos de la cultura blanca. En un primer momento podríamos
decir que se trata de un soliloquio, de una capacidad de comunicarse dialógicamente
consigo misma, para descubrir su yo interior de mujer negra. Parafraseando a Bajtín
(169), podríamos decir que con este enfoque dialógico de la propia persona, el yo rompe
con las capas externas de su imagen, creadas por la cultura y la sociedad coloniales,
racistas y sexistas, y que enturbian la pureza de su autoconciencia de mujer negra. De ahí
su insistente “yo ya no” (vv. 1, 21 y 50) y su “hoy soy yo” (vv. 25 y 59).
Pero si nos preguntamos sobre la posición del yo frente a la voz ajena, el poema
resulta ser una parodia (cf. Bajtín 270) a los discursos que sobre la mujer negra y su
cuerpo se han producido en el occidente colonialista, patriarcal y racista. El yo habla
mediante la palabra ajena, pero introduce en ella una orientación de sentido totalmente
opuesta a la que posee en la mentalidad colonialista. El yo, al introducir su voz en la
ajena, inserta en ella el conflicto, la hostilidad, de manera que la voz ajena termina
sirviendo a los nuevos propósitos que el hablante lírico se asigna: ya no es para vivir
según los parámetros de una ideología colonialista y racista, sino para vivir según la
nueva condición de sujeto negro liberado de las redes simbólicas alienantes en las que
vivía en el pasado. La palabra ajena no solo recibe una nueva orientación semántica en el
nuevo texto, sino también una nueva función estética, ética y política en el nuevo
proyecto de escritura: el cuerpo rebajado, objetualizado y despreciado por los cánones
estéticos occidentales es descubierto, asumido y lucido con orgullo por el yo, como
signo inequívoco de haberlo limpiado de los lastres de la mirada imperial.
El poema no solo materializa la intención ideológica y política del colonialismo
que cautiva el cuerpo de la mujer negra, sino también la explícita y declarada intención
del yo de prescindir de ese imaginario y liberarse de sus ataduras simbólicas
estigmatizadoras. Para llevar a cabo esa reversión, el yo trabaja desde el interior de la
cultura blanca y desde el interior de sí. De la cultura colonialista aprovecha todo el
arsenal lingüístico elaborado por el imaginario racista sobre el cuerpo de la mujer negra
y empieza a desemantizarlo para integrarlo a una nueva estructura discursiva
contestataria, al servicio de un nuevo proyecto. Desde su nueva autoconciencia, el yo
convoca o invoca los prejuicios y estereotipos que la cultura occidental ha creado sobre
el cuerpo de la mujer negra y vacía ese discurso colonialista de los estigmas
prevalecientes en el imaginario: aquella tenida por fea, sucia, deforme, carente de fineza
o delicadeza no se termina creyendo lo que la cultura dominante señala y enseña, sino
que se descubre hermosa, limpia, incólume, liberada. El mismo cuerpo cautivo por el
discurso y las prácticas sociales del colonialismo se levanta para declarar su liberación.
El discurso del poder es utilizado para decir lo contrario, para darle cabida al proyecto
liberador del yo.
Quien estaba en el margen de la representación simbólica termina
empoderándose y ubicándose en el centro de la nueva práctica discursiva, y quien
ostentaba el privilegio de las representaciones simbólicas termina desautorizado. Ese
proceso de rebajamiento termina siendo un proceso de deslegitimación: la dominación y
el cautiverio ejercidos por el discurso dominante quedan invalidados y sin ningún efecto,
no son reconocidos ni aceptados por el yo lírico. En tal sentido, el yo ejecuta una
especie de limpieza ideológica en el discurso dominante: lo despoja de los efectos
negativos para poder apropiarse del arsenal léxico y elaborar con él una nueva imagen
de la mujer negra, contraria a la que engendraba el discurso colonialista previo a ese
proceso de limpieza y de autoconciencia. Este proceso de limpieza del lenguaje y del
cuerpo de la mujer negra es análogo al llevado a cabo por el yo con la historia. En el
poema “Nuestra historia”, el yo lírico señala: “Ella nos llegó en lenguajes
desconocidos… / nos llegó interpretada por los enemigos / con sus rostros y sus
verdades / se nos entregó sucia… vacía / … Fue necesario... / vestirla de nuevo /
llenarla de orgullo” (Palabras indelebles 50-51).26
En consecuencia, “Liberada” expresa la autoconciencia que el yo tiene de sí y de
su cuerpo, la distancia y la ruptura frente a los dictámenes y exigencias de una cultura y
una sociedad sexistas y racistas. Toda esta nueva posición y actitud ha sido un proceso
consciente y deliberado, guiado y protagonizado por el mismo yo. Este yo se muestra
enfático desde el primer verso y no ceja en afirmar que es gestora de su propia
liberación: “Me convertí en mí misma / me aprendí / soy yo” (vv. 23-25). Es por esta
razón que podemos destacar las funciones de las hipótesis que formulamos sobre el
título en 6.3.1. Con excepción de la tercera, las demás hipótesis se cumplen: el poema
confronta un antes y un ahora en la situación del yo lírico (primera hipótesis), también
construye un estado psicológico positivo en la situación actual (segunda hipótesis) y
señala el fin del dominio como acto realizado y como proyecto utópico (cuarta
hipótesis). En cuanto a la tercera, no estamos ante un yo pasivo, receptáculo de la
liberación que otro le hubiera otorgado, como supusimos, sino ante un yo protagonista
de su propia liberación. Ese proceso posee tres pasos fundamentales: descubrirse a sí
misma, aceptarse y rechazar los reclamos de la sociedad y la cultura sexistas y racistas en
cuanto a su ser e identidad negra: “Ya no, / no preciso razones / hoy soy yo / liberada”
(vv. 57-60).
26 Estamos claros de que la voz ajena no aparece verbalizada en el poema, pero sí inscrita en el
cuerpo del yo, en donde y desde donde la combate. En ese cuerpo se concitan y polemizan las voces ajena
y propia. Se lleva a cabo una polémica implícita o indirecta, según la conceptualización de Bajtín (273-
274).
Veamos ahora cuáles son las estructuras que median entre el texto y el contexto.
Nos referiremos a los intertextos, a los interdiscursos y a las cogniciones sociales e
ideológicas.
3.1. Intertextos
27 Las referencias las tomaremos de Poesía afroantillana y negrista, selección e introducción de Jorge
Luis Morales (1976). Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2000.
28 Ejemplos de lo dicho: “Culipandeando la Reina avanza, / y de su inmensa grupa resbalan /
meneos cachondos que el gongo cuaja / en ríos de azúcar y de melaza. / Prieto trapiche de sensual zafra,
/ el caderamen, masa con masa, / exprime ritmos, suda que sangra, / y la molienda culmina en danza”
(Luis Palés Matos, “Majestad negra” 83-84). “Baila la negra Chimbá, / y sus senos… esbeltos, duros, /
vibran llevando el compás / casi en completo desnudo (Antonio Frías Gálvez “Cocolos de Cocolandia”
276). “Ella mueve una nalga, ella mueve la otra /… Las ancas potentes de niña Tomasa / en torno de un
eje invisible / como un reguilete rotan con furor, / desafiando con rítmico, lúbrico disloque / el salaz
ataque de Che Encarnación… / La negra Tomasa con lascivo gesto / hurta la cadera, alza la cabeza; / y
en alto los brazos, enlaza las manos, / en ellas reposa la ebánica nuca / y procaz ofrece sus senos
rotundos / que oscilando de diestra a siniestra / encandilan a Chepe Chacón” (José Zacarías Tallet “La
rumba” 329-330).
varón negro: “Los blancos inventaron un mito / con tu pene, / ¡pene maldito! / y sus mujeres blancas, /
¡ay blanquito! / sueñan con ese nene. / Alta temperatura sexual / dictaminó del negro una doctora. / Alta
temperatura sexual. / Sin termómetro lo puso / en famosísimo ensayo. / Alguien dijo: ¡Es un caballo! /
No, ripostaron los chuscos. / Es una inmensa piqueta” (José Manuel Torres Santiago “¿Abolición?” 178).
30 Puede leerse una versión más ampliada de esta genealogía vergonzosa en el poema “¿Y tu agüela,
a’onde ejtá?”, del puertorriqueño Fortunato Vizcarrondo, de Dinga y mandinga (1942). Ya en 1892, José
Martí fustigaba a los hijos de América que renegaban de su madre indígena: “¡Estos nacidos en América,
que se avergüenzan, porque llevan delantal indio, de la madre que los crió, y reniegan, ¡bribones!, de la
madre enferma, y la dejan sola en el lecho de las enfermedades!” (Nuestra América 32).
31 Por ejemplo, en “La rumba de la negra Pancha” leemos: “¡Negra Pancha, / qué lujuria…! /
32 En esta misma línea se expresan también Mary Grueso Romero, Solmery Cásseres Estrada y
Yesenia María Escobar. En su poema “Negra soy”, Grueso Romero plantea: “¿Por qué me dicen morena?
/ Si moreno no es color, / yo tengo una raza que es negra / y negra me hizo Dios. / Y otros arreglan el
cuento / diciéndome de color / dizque pa’ endúlzame la cosa / y que no me ofenda yo… / Así que no
disimulen / llamándome de color, / diciéndome morena, / porque negra es que soy yo” (en Cuesta y
Ocampo 157-158). En “Soy negra”, Cásseres señala: “Ahora me llaman morena / cuando negra soy yo, /
negro es Jesucristo / y negra mi generación” (en Cuesta y Ocampo 437). Escobar señala en su poema
“Llámame negra”: “¡No me llames morena, / que mi color no me apena! / Negra soy / porque así es mi
raza, / negra es la sangre / que corre por mis venas… / Soy negra, / ¡a mucho honor! / Café tostado, /
rama de canela. / ¡Llámame negra! / Sin más pudor” (en Cuesta y Ocampo 546-547).
étnica que no le es propia. Su categórico “soy negra punto final” no deja lugar a más
consideraciones ni valoraciones étnicas: la única identidad aceptable y sentida por el yo
es la de ser mujer negra, cualquier otro registro que diga otra cosa no forma parte de su
autodesignación identitaria. Esta demanda interpela directamente a las instituciones del
Estado encargadas de registrar la vida social de las personas, pero que al mismo tiempo
han servido para ocultar orígenes, borrar memorias y limpiar “genealogías vergonzosas”
de los rostros más visibles de la sociedad y de la cultura dominantes. El yo poético está
dispuesto a destejer las redes textuales, discursivas y sociales que el colonialismo ha
tejido sobre la mujer negra. Asume con orgullo su genealogía, su color, su negritud.
3.3.2. Interdiscursos
En “Liberada” se dan cita una serie de voces de dos universos y lógicas distintas:
por un lado están las voces del colonialismo a través del sexismo, el racismo y el
eurocentrismo, y por otro aparecen las voces de la negritud y del feminismo negro.
Mientras las primeras buscan negar el ser de la mujer negra y convertir su cuerpo en un
objeto de deseo, controlado por un imaginario racializado, las segundas pretenden
afirmar el ser de la mujer negra y liberar su cuerpo de los prejuicios y estereotipos
sexistas y racistas. Hagamos un pequeño perfil de cada uno de estos discursos para
luego conjugar la visión global que con ellos elabora el poema.
Sexismo y racismo trabajan conjuntamente en la configuración del cuerpo de la
mujer negra como espacio signado por la sensualidad, las pasiones, el contoneo y el
señalamiento de las partes atractivas y las partes despectivas. Estamos ante un cuerpo
asediado, sitiado y poseído por la mirada imperial, los deseos y los gustos ajenos, los del
varón blanco occidental, quien centra la atención en un cuerpo irracional, ubicado fuera
del canon de belleza eurocéntrico. Es frente a este canon que el yo debía rendir razones,
excusas, explicaciones y justificaciones por poseer un cuerpo otro. Su voz no era una
voz propia sino demandada y exigida por quienes veían en la piel, las nalgas, los labios,
la nariz, la tez y el cabello del yo las marcas ineludibles de la no pertenencia y del no ser
un sujeto blanco, sino negro. Por construir esa voz que satisficiera las demandas del
observador, el yo no era yo, ni su voz era su voz, sino un yo colonizado y una voz
inscrita dentro del discurso del colonizador. Esa necesidad de justificarse frente al
solicitante de justificaciones hace que el yo no sea, no tenga certeza de sí y sienta
desprecio de sí. Es decir, la demanda de un cuerpo bello, limpio y refinado, que se ajuste
a los criterios estéticos y culturales de la cultura y la sociedad blancas, enajenan la
identidad del yo en beneficio de los patrones y modales eurocéntricos.
Pero el yo lírico no se queda en esa etapa enajenada, sino que emprende un
proceso inverso para descubrirse, asumirse y aceptarse. Mientras el sexismo y el racismo
le impusieron aprender su negrura desde afuera, el yo asume un proceso inverso frente a
ella: “la aprendí de memoria / desde adentro / con historia / desde el centro del alma” (vv. 45-
48. El destacado es nuestro). Estamos ante una epistemología del cuerpo totalmente a la
inversa de la impuesta por el ojo del varón blanco occidental que se fija primero en los
contornos e inscribe en ellos su deseo o su desprecio, hasta convertir al otro o a la otra
en un no ser.33 Pero el yo destaca: “Me convertí en mí misma / me aprendí / soy yo”
(vv. 23-25). De este modo desarticula, desactiva y anula la lógica de dominación y
negación impuesta por el colonialismo sexista y racista. Aquella mujer insegura e incierta
construida por la cultura y la sociedad dominantes (cf. Campbell en Ramsay 67) termina
diciendo: “Tengo certeza de mí misma / y de los míos / no necesito autorizaciones para
ser. / No pido ya permisos para vivir” (vv. 26-30). El proyecto liberador no es solo
personal. No se trata de una autorredención, sino de liberar también a los de su misma
condición étnico-cultural.
La dinámica seguida por el yo lírico de este poema es llevar a cabo un doble
descubrimiento: primero se descubre un no ser, alguien hecho y actuado según los
dictámenes de la cultura y de la sociedad colonialistas, es decir, se descubre cautiva por
el imaginario que occidente ha tejido sobre el ser negro y, en particular, sobre el ser
mujer negra. Ese proceso epistemológico no está explícito en el poema, sino que
llegamos a él por medio del contraste temporal enfático con que empieza: “Yo ya no
busco razones”. Esto quiere decir que hubo un tiempo en que ese yo no era, no vivía
por y para sí, sino que se desvelaba por dar gusto a las exigencias del entorno.
En un segundo momento descubre que hospeda en sí una voz, un sentir y un
hacer totalmente ajenos, se da cuenta de su ser y su identidad, asume su propia
conciencia y rompe con las ataduras mentales que el opresor ha incubado en su ser. Este
momento es de suma importancia porque pone de manifiesto que para llegar a ser ella
misma, el yo tiene que entrar en relación consigo misma y en contra de lo que creía ser
ella. Parafraseando a Fanon (Piel 189), podríamos señalar que el yo llega a un estado de
autoconciencia que le permite decir: “no soy la esclava de la esclavitud que deshumanizó
a mis ancestros, ahora soy yo, liberada”. El poema presenta a un yo con capacidad de
tomar conciencia, asumir una posición y llevar a cabo su ruptura con el orden vigente.
Desde su propia subjetividad propone cómo reconocerse, asumirse y liberarse. No
estamos solo ante un proyecto estético de representarse como cuerpo hermoso, sino
también ante un proyecto ético y político de valorarse por encima de todas las
exclusiones y sacudirse las ataduras impuestas por las prácticas colonialistas de
dominación.
El yo aprovecha las voces ajenas inscritas en su cuerpo por la historia, la cultura
y la sociedad occidentales para darles un giro no solo semántico, sino también estético,
ético y político: aquello que ayer fue motivo de burla, desprecio, posesión y campo de
dominio, hoy es espacio de lucha, de desenganche y de liberación. El cuerpo del yo
lírico ya no circula según las demandas de la mirada imperial, según la lógica del placer y
un cuerpo colonizado y que para descolonizarlo debe superar los anclajes impuestos por el discurso
colonial para no seguir aprehendiendo y produciendo un cuerpo asediado, sometido y callado, sino un
cuerpo libre y con voz propia.
34Campbell ha superado el vaciamiento del ser impuesto por el colonialismo en el colonizado, tal
como lo denunciaba Fanon: la colonialidad del ser tenía que ver con la “negación sistemática de la otra
persona” y con “negarle al otro todos los atributos de humanidad”. En virtud de eso, “el colonialismo
empuja al pueblo colonizado a plantearse constantemente la pregunta: “‘¿Quién soy yo en realidad?’”. En
otra parte Fanon apunta: “El colonialismo no ha hecho sino despersonalizar al colonizado. Esta
despersonalización es resentida igualmente en el plano colectivo al nivel de las estructuras sociales. El
pueblo colonizado se ve reducido entonces a un conjunto de individuos que no se fundan, sino en la
presencia del colonizador” (Fanon, Piel 228 y 272).
35 Frantz Fanon anotaba que el colonizado se hallaba acorralado por dos opciones aniquiladoras:
“entre una retracción de su ser y una tentativa arrebatada de identificación con el colonizador” (Fanon,
Condenados 120). Eso es lo que encontramos en el antes del poema “Liberada”: una mujer negra que había
negado su ser por someterse a los dictámenes y exigencias del sistema blanco-patriarcal. Pero Fanon
también apunta: “Cuando el negro se comprende a sí mismo y concibe al mundo de una manera distinta,
hace nacer la esperanza e impone un retroceso al universo racista” (Fanon, Piel 223). “Liberada”
materializa esta idea: señala que la liberación empieza con descubrirse, aceptarse y asumirse como negra,
para ver el mundo de forma distinta de como lo ha concebido el colonialismo patriarcal y racista. Con ese
principio básico ya no habrá autodesprecio ni tampoco harán meya los insultos y exigencias que el mundo
“blanco” imponga al mundo negro.
36 Esa visión negativa del negro y de la negra en el negrismo se debe a que este es un
movimiento importado: “un discurso plástico producido por una élite artística blanca y europea que incorpora la
temática negra para divulgarla ante un público también blanco, en general, perteneciente al mismo grupo
de élite cultural. Por eso, las manifestaciones artísticas europeas inspiradas en el Negrismo, aunque hayan
revolucionado el arte moderno, no son una tendencia ideológica de fondo liberacionista. De ningún modo tienden a
preservar la identidad del negro a través de su historia, o siquiera a representar un movimiento de concientización, como
ocurriría más tarde con la negritud, de carácter acentuadamente político” (Schwartz 660-661. El destacado es
nuestro). Schwartz define la Negritud como “las manifestaciones ideológicas que tratan la identidad del
negro, así como de las reivindicaciones políticas de las décadas del veinte y el treinta, especialmente en
Cuba y Brasil”. Según el mismo Schwartz, este movimiento se caracteriza por un rechazo a la idea de raza
y una difusión del concepto de cultura, así como una clara postura en contra de los prejuicios raciales
(Schwartz 669).
37 Para Montelongo, tanto el Harlem Renaissance, el Negrismo, el Modernismo brasileño, como la
negras y empiezan a ser reconocidas como grupo con su propia herencia cultural, social,
política y económica. Bajo el concepto de feminismo negro se pretendía establecer un
movimiento de todas las mujeres negras, aunque muchas feministas afroamericanas de
finales de los 70 y comienzo de los 80 utilizarán el término como sinónimo de
afroamericanas, marginando así a mujeres negras de otras partes del mundo. Por otro
lado también encontramos algunas feministas afroamericanas que lejos de excluir a las
africanas, se van al extremo opuesto y pretenden hablar por ellas aunque en ocasiones
no están realmente informadas al respecto. En 1985 se lleva a cabo la Conferencia de la
ONU sobre las mujeres, en Nairobi. Allí surge “un grupo de activistas, escritoras y
críticas africanas [que inauguran] el Movimiento de Mujeres Africano, en el que los
modelos euro-americanos se presentaban como el ejemplo a seguir para la lucha
feminista africana” (Pérez 89).38
En la década de 1990 van a surgir las voces de las escritoras
afrohispanoamericanas y afrocaribeñas junto con la “mujer como crítica literaria
consumada, que activamente se interesa en el estudio y publicación de la obra de
escritoras afrohispanoamericanas” (Montelongo 80) y el feminismo descolonial, asuntos bien
presentes en la visión de mundo y en los proyectos estético-ideológicos de Campbell,
quien además de reconocerse feminista negra: “Yo soy una feminista negra” (en Ramsay
63) y “me adhiero al feminismo negro porque es necesario reivindicar la diferencia y
defender las particularidades de la lucha de las mujeres negras” (en Solano), también se
apunta dentro del feminismo descolonial, al considerar que la lucha de las mujeres
blancas está atravesada por la colonialidad, ya que discriminan a las mujeres negras e
indígenas: “aun dentro del movimiento feminista mi posición está condicionada por el
color de mi piel y mi condición histórica y cultural como mujer negra” (en Ramsay 63).
Esto se debe a que la raza cruza el control sobre las vidas de las mujeres con historia
racializada, niega la humanidad de las mujeres no-blancas, indígenas y afrodiaspóricas.
La violencia que se ejerce contra estas mujeres es aceptada y naturalizada porque “está
perpetrada contra seres concebidos como sin valor”. Para los feminismos blancos
(liberal, socialista, radical, lésbico feminista, autónomo e institucional) las únicas mujeres
que cuentan como oprimidas, humanas y cuyas vidas son de valor son las mujeres
blancas y blanco-mestizas pobres. Las mujeres no-blancas no son visualizadas como
víctimas: las indígenas, las afrodescendientes y las mestizas pobres reciben un trato
colonial (Espinosa, Gomes, Lugones y Ochoa 404-405). Al respecto aclaran estas
mismas autoras:
38 No hay que olvidar que la ONU había declarado 1975 como año Internacional de la Mujer.
39 A propósito, Campbell ha declarado: “Yo creo en cambiar la forma como las personas negras
nos vemos hacia adentro. Quiero contribuir a cambiar la forma como las mujeres negras se ven a sí
mismas. Yo puedo hacerlo como mujer negra que he pasado por procesos de ese tipo [extra-
sexualización]. Somos personas hermosas, seres humanas completas y dignas de respeto. Cada uno de los
elementos que componen nuestra fisonomía es maravilloso. Nuestro cabello es extraordinario, versátil y
único. Nuestro cuerpo y nuestra piel son hermosos” (en Solano 2015).
A nuestro juicio, todo ese deseo del yo lírico de “Liberada” por asumir su cuerpo,
aceptar con orgullo su condición de negra y desengancharse de la lógica del poder, del
saber y del ser coloniales, representa un giro epistémico, una ruptura estética, ética y
política que lo ubica dentro de la línea de lectura e interpretación de la colonialidad de la
mujer propuesta por el feminismo descolonial. Como adelantamos en 6.2., existe un
tono de autoconfianza y de autonomía frente a las estructuras sociales, políticas y
culturas constructoras de un imaginario sesgado, sexista y racista: el yo asume la tarea de
educar a los suyos de una manera alternativa a la educación impuesta por la cultura
vigente; con esta educación busca combatir las representaciones negativas sobre la
colectividad afrodescendiente, sobre los suyos y sobre sí como mujer negra. Esa
educación alternativa tiene como finalidad recuperar su historia y formar una conciencia
crítica sobre cómo fue que dicha historia fue raptada, vaciada y distorsionada en sus
contenidos y cómo fueron las mujeres las que la rescataron, reescribieron y conservaron
como legado para las futuras generaciones.
En la poesía de Campbell, el núcleo familiar se convierte en lugar de afirmación
y de resistencia al racismo. En esto es clara la huella de los feminismos africano y negro:
“la crianza de hijos e hijas, más allá del proceso de socialización ligados a los roles de
género es un proceso político, pues las mujeres desarrollan hacia hijos e hijas procesos
de concientización que les den herramientas para enfrentar el racismo” (Curiel, Crítica
16). Nada más para que el lector no olvide la actitud de la madre frente a su propósito
de educar a sus hijos en un contexto racista, le recordamos estos versos del volumen
Rotundamente negra: “Hoy estamos aquí / enseñando a nuestros niños / a caminar sin
caerse / a sonreír con certeza. / Ellos / saben como nosotras / lo difícil que a veces
resulta / ser minoría ante los demás” (121-122). Esta centralidad de las madres-mujeres
en el proceso educativo también queda latente en “Liberada”, en los veros 11-17: los
antepasados no están para ser traídos a colación para que justifiquen lo negativo que el
sistema imperial-colonial ha impuesto sobre las nuevas generaciones, sino para que
40 Aunque el feminismo latinoamericano nació con perspectiva de clase y con sesgo clasista y
racista, desde 1983, en el II Encuentro Feminista de América latina y el Caribe, asume el problema del racismo.
Desde entonces, afrodescendientes e indígenas empiezan a debatir al respecto, a ennegrecer el feminismo
y a feminizar la lucha antirracista (Curiel, Crítica 20-22).
podamos sentir orgullo de tenerlos como nuestros modelos estéticos, éticos y políticos
frente y contra cualquier sistema de dominación colonial que quiera anular nuestro ser y
nuestro saber.
Además de esos movimientos sociales, culturales e ideológicos internacionales
heredados y en que le ha tocado vivir y moverse a Campbell, también existen prácticas
sociales, discursivas e ideológicas a nivel local. Por ejemplo, en 1992 se crea el Centro de
Mujeres Afrocostarricenses en Limón con el propósito de trabajar temas específicos
relacionados con su condición de género y raza, a nivel local, nacional y regional. Dicho
Centro fue sede del II Encuentro de mujeres Afrocaribeñas y Afrolatinoamericanas en diciembre
de 1996, en el cual participaron 125 líderes, representantes de 25 países. Fue electo
como sede de la Red de Mujeres Afrocaribeñas y Afrolatinoamericanas. Realizó el
primer diagnóstico participativo de las mujeres afrocostarricenses para poder señalar sus
prioridades y necesidades. El Centro se preocupa en particular por la discriminación
racial y orienta sus proyectos a una convivencia sana y libre de discriminación
(http://mujeresafrocostarricenses.blogspot.com).
En el 2005, en el III Encuentro de Parlamentarios de las Américas y el Caribe,
celebrado en Limón, se funda el Parlamento Negro de las Américas
(http://hoy.com.do/inauguran-en-costa-rica-parlamento-negro-2/) con el objetivo de
“crear un foro de propuesta, discusión, deliberación, articulación e incidencia política,
que represente e integre las luchas de las y los afrodescendientes de América Latina y del
Caribe”. El Parlamento buscará “reivindicar el pleno disfrute de los derechos humanos,
las reivindicaciones históricas de los pueblos y comunidades afrodescendientes, así
como el reconocimiento de la interculturalidad, las diferencias, las desigualdades y las
inequidades que viven todos los países de las Américas y el Caribe”.41 Ya en el 2003,
Campbell había expresado: “No se puede aislar el problema de las mujeres negras de los
problemas del pueblo negro. La comunidad negra debe empezar por reconocer la
situación de subordinación de las mujeres dentro del movimiento. Las mujeres también
tienen que exigir los espacios de responsabilidades y cuotas de poder en igualdad de
condiciones” (en Ramsay 63).
Como activista de los derechos humanos y en contra del racismo, Campbell sabe
que la realidad de la mujer negra costarricense está atravesada por la colonialidad de
género de la que habla Lugones (Feminismo). Como señala el Parlamento Negro: los y las
afrocostarricenses sufren marginalidad social, racismo, pobreza, invisibilidad y exclusión
“de los espacios de decisión, representación y participación política, lo que evidencia la
historia de diferentes formas de exclusión, dominación y violencia estructural contra las
comunidades y pueblos afrodescendientes”. “El racismo, la discriminación y la
exclusión que se manifiestan en discursos y acciones, en contra de las y los
afrodescendientes. Pese a nuestros esfuerzos históricos, la cultura dominante no
41En el 2011, el Centro escribe su Carta por el poder y la participación política de las mujeres
afrodescendientes (http://mujeresafrocostarricenses.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-
01T00:00:00-06:00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00:00:00-06:00&max-results=5).
42 En una entrevista que le hiciera Carlos Moreira, Campbell planteó la necesidad de ser un
referente para otras mujeres negras: “Las mujeres y las niñas negras de América Latina, por ejemplo,
quieren ver más caras como las suyas en todas las esferas de su vida e identificarse con ellas. Necesitan
referentes. Necesitan mujeres negras como ellas que les miren a los ojos en poesía o en cualquier idioma y
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les cuenten su historia y las inviten a continuar con esta lucha. Mi poesía quiere contribuir a devolverles
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2015). En una entrevista que le hicimos, esto fue lo que indicó: “Yo represento una comunidad
históricamente en desventaja que está ávida de referentes y de voces que les cuenten su propia historia y
les hable en su mismo lenguaje (con lenguaje me refiero al lenguaje de la negritud, el lenguaje de la
conciencia)” (Solano).
___. “La lucha política desde las mujeres ante las nuevas formas de racismo.
Aproximación al análisis de estrategias”. 2003.
http://www.rebelion.org/hemeroteca/mujer/030408curiel.htm
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Abstract: Contemporary black female Hispanic Caribbean writers deal with race and gender differently
from their literary predecessors. Born in 1972 in Panama City, Panama, Melanie Taylor Herrera is a black
female Caribbean writer who is conscious of her racial identity yet is neither defined nor limited by it.
Unlike the black female Cuban poet Nancy Morejón who declared both her race and gender in her 1975
seminal poem “Mujer negra” or “Black Woman,” Taylor Herrera’s short stories distance themselves from
an exclusively racialized discourse but continue being informed by it. While Morejón identifies as both
female and black, Taylor Herrera identifies as an urban woman defined by contemporary issues that affect
women of African and non-African descent. Thus, the characters who populate her fiction display
concerns of modern women such as motherhood, divorce, isolation, solitude, and suicide. In the second
decade of the 21st century, Taylor Herrera’s racial and gender identification underscore the multifaceted
identity of the Caribbean woman in her quest to distinguish herself in an urban, cosmopolitan, and
globalized society. The following analysis proposes to assay Taylor Herrera’s short story collections
Camino a Mariato [Walk to Mariato, 2009], Amables predicciones [Friendly Predictions, 2005] and Tiempos
acuáticos (Aquatic Times, 2000) with the aim to conceptualize the redefinition of the Afra-Panamanian
woman in the current century.
Keywords: Afra-Panamanian, isolation, solitude, suicide, black, identity, race, Hispanic Caribbean women
I
n Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers, Miriam DeCosta-Willis noted
that, “One of the most important social and political questions that
Caribbean and Latin American writers of African descent raise is that of race:
“What does it mean to be a negra or mestiza or mulata in a country that
defends and validates European colonization and acculturation?” (xxii). Although this
may define the consciousness of the generation of Afra-Hispanic writers born during
the thirties and forties of the previous century such as Nancy Morejón (Cuba 1944),
Georgina Herrera (1936), Excilia Saldaña (1946-1999), and Eulalia Bernard (Costa Rica
1935), it does not necessarily define the literature of contemporary Afra-Latin American
writers born after 1970 such as Melanie Taylor Herrera. In a 2013 interview, Afra-
Panamanian short story writer and poet Melanie Taylor Herrera revealed:
202 SONIA STEPHENSON WATSON
“Soy una mujer urbana, hija de los logros del feminismo del siglo XX,
afro y consciente de serlo pero no circunscribo mi escritura a temas
afros ni a temas de denuncia social ni siquiera a temas exclusivamente
panameños”
important to note that her fiction not only treats themes that deals with race and/or gender. Her poetry
and essays span the gamut and deal with a plethora of issues such as motherhood, sexuality, national
identity, etc.
It is worth mentioning that Taylor Herrera’s choice not to write about race or
ethnicity in her works is nothing new in Latin American and Hispanic Caribbean
literature. In fact, in the past many writers of color avoided the topic of race all together
essentially writing themselves out of blackness. This erasure, denial, or negation dates
back to the 16th century. In “Literary Whiteness and the Afro-Hispanic Difference,”
José Piedra noted that Spanish-speaking writers of African descent, such as Spain's Juan
Latino (1518-1596), constantly equivocated between “writing white” to avoid racial
identification and writing for their country of origin. Expressing racial awareness in
their writings was extremely problematic because "[n]onwhites could write as long as
they did not address the issue of difference" (312). Thus, many Afro-Hispanic writers
chose a national affiliation by avoiding racial identification in their writings. However,
while many avoided issues of racial identity or prejudice, others indirectly contested the
system of rhetorical whiteness by employing parody or satire to exhibit their frustration
with the dominant culture. Literary whiteness spread to the New World where Afro-
Hispanic writers repressed a black consciousness in favor of a homogeneous
nationalistic one. Piedra notes that Afro-Peruvian writer José Manuel Valdés (1767-
1843), for example, “wrote himself out of blackness by assuming an invisible self even
when he addressed issues of marginality” (315). In Panama, early twentieth-century
national poet Gaspar Octavio Hernández (1893-1918) wrote about race ambiguously
and denied his blackness by elevating whiteness through a modernista aesthetic. For
example, in his personal homage “Ego Sum” [I am], Hernández describes his blackness
by utilizing terms in opposition to whiteness:
Hernández describes himself not only as black, but it is a fatal blackness. He establishes
the white/black, pure/unpure, and light/dark dichotomy with the contrast between the
“pearly skin/dark skin” [tez de nácar /piel tostada] and “celestial eyes/black eyes” [ojos
celestiales/ojos negros]. Although he identifies as black in this poem, it is with
reluctance and in relation to not being white. This black denial and desire for whiteness
is also evidenced in the works of early twentieth-century female writers from the
Caribbean. Puerto Rican poet Carmen Colón Pellot (1911-2001) exclaimed in the 1938
poem, “Ay, señor que yo quiero ser blanca!,” [Oh, Lord I want to be White] a desire to
be “rubia y blanca/como la espuma/como la charca/como las flores/de los naranjos/
de mis montañas"[blond and white/like the pond, like the flowers/of the orange
trees/of my mountains] (45). In “Ay, señor”, the white woman and by extension
whiteness, is associated with virginity, beauty, and purity. The imagery of nature and the
white cloud aesthetic express the poet-speaker’s desire to be white and most importantly
the liberty that whiteness advantages. Colón Pellot expressed ambivalence and
ambiguity about her blackness and simultaneously embraced and rejected it while
professing a mulata identity. This can be understood given the national climate of Puerto
Rico during the 1930s. This was a time when the nation wanted to express its Hispanic
identity in light of U.S. imperialism after the United States’ acquisition of the country in
1898. Thus, Colón Pellot felt the need to downplay her mulata identity in favor of a
homogeneous white Hispanic Puerto Rican one2.
Unlike these writers who professed denial, racial ambivalence, or flat out
negation of blackness, Taylor Herrera is comfortable with her black identity. She
openly acknowledges and embraces it. Above all, as she once noted, “I consider myself
to be a human being.” (Watson, “Entrevista a Melanie Taylor” 2003). Indeed, she
identifies as a modern urban woman which is reflected in her short story collections
analyzed below.
For the most part, until Taylor Herrera3 began publishing in 2000, Black
women’s writing in Panama has been limited to works by writers of West Indian
ancestry who profess their blackness above their gender and Panamanian national
2 During the 1930s, Puerto Rico experienced a period of late nationalism based on the recreation
of a Hispanicized identity after the United States acquired the nation in 1898 due to the Spanish American
War (1898). Several intellectuals during this period promoted a Puerto Rican national identity based on
the nation’s jíbaro or indigenous roots while excluding the black population in a reconceptualization of its
national identity. For example, Antonio Pedreira’s widely read racist text Insularismo (1934) excluded the
black Puerto Rican population and advocated for a homogeneous one that did not take into account the
nation’s black population.
3 Taylor Herrera has both West Indian and Afro-Colonial ancestry.
identity. One of the most well-known female writers of African descent in Panama is
Melva Lowe de Goodin, a Panamanian of West Indian ancestry. As one of Panama's
few published West-Indian female writers, Melva Lowe de Goodin not only fills a void
in the field of Afro-Panamanian literature but also one in the field of literature written
by Afra-Panamanians. In Afrodescendientes en el Istmo de Panamá 1501-2012 [Afro-
descendants in the Isthmus of Panamá 1501-2012], a biographical and historical
compilation of Afro-descendants in Panama, Lowe de Goodin notes the dearth of
information on the historical contributions of women of African descent in the
Panamanian Isthmus (67). However, Lowe de Goodin is not merely concerned with
representing women of color in Panama; she explores the lives of all Panamanian West
Indians in her writings. She entered the literary sphere with the publication of, De/From
Barbados a/to Panamá [From Barbados to Panama 1999], a historical drama that
reconstructs the migration of West-Indian immigrants in 1909 to the Isthmus during the
construction of the Panama Canal. In De/From Barbados, Lowe de Goodin resurrects the
forgotten story of West-Indian Canal workers that is absent from Panamanian national
history. This play promotes ethnic awareness and pride of a population (West Indians)
once denigrated for its “incompatibility” with the Hispanic nation.4 Although the play
possesses female characters who are central to unraveling the narrative, the drama is
primarily concerned with telling the forgotten story of Panamanian West Indians whose
narratives have been erased from Panamanian national archives. The play’s central
protagonist is a young West Indian girl, Manuelita, who fights to tell the story of her
immigrant ancestors for a school assignment. Manuelita learns much of this story from
her mother Verónica and her paternal great- grandparents, Abuela Leah and Abuelo
Samuel, who subsequently relate their own personal narrative of emigrating from
Barbados to Panama to work on the Panama Canal. The narrative is retold to
Manuelita’s classmates from her perspective relating the importance of memory and
remembering. However, the sole purpose of the narrative is to relate the collective
discrimination and mistreatment of Panamanian West Indians and how they have been
demeaned, denigrated, and disenfranchised by the Panamanian nation-state. In De/From
Barbados, these immigrants are primarily males, the protagonists George, James, and
Samuel, who serve to reconstruct a masculine narrative of Panamanian West Indian
history. This is understood given that Lowe de Goodin and members of her literary
generation such as Gerardo Maloney, Carlos “Cubena” Wilson, and Carlos Russell, all
born between 1940 and 1945, are primarily concerned with resurrecting and inserting
4 In Panama, West Indians who emigrated primarily from the English-speaking Caribbean in the
late 19th and early 20th century to work on the Railroad (1850-55) and Canal (1904-1914) were considered
to be “incompatible” with the Panamanian nation-state because of linguistic, cultural, and racial
differences. West Indians were visibly black and professed a racialized consciousness that defied
Panamanian and by extension Latin American racial identity politics where nationalism supersedes racial
identity.
West Indian history into Panamanian national archives through literature, culture, and
memory5.
5 Contemporary Panamanian writers of West Indian ancestry are bilingual speakers of Spanish
and English and navigate culturally and linguistically between Panama, Africa, the Caribbean, and the
United States. Born between 1934 and 1945, Anglophone Caribbean authors such as Melva Lowe de
Goodin (1945), Gerardo Maloney (1945), Carlos “Cubena” Wilson (1941) and Carlos Russell (1934 ),
represent the first generation of writers in Panama to discuss the “duality” of being both Panamanian and
Caribbean. They react to this duality in a myriad of ways from appropriating an integrationist perspective
that defines them exclusively as Spanish-speaking Panamanians or by simultaneously embracing their
black Anglophone Caribbean roots along with their “panameñidad” or Panamanian heritage. However,
being Panamanian and Caribbean represents more than a dual heritage; their plural lineage connects these
writers to Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Melva Lowe de Goodin, Gerardo
Maloney, Carlos Russell, and Carlos Wilson represent members of this generation and their works
illustrate the complexities of being both Caribbean and Panamanian in the twenty-first century.
6 In Panama there are two groups of black descendants, Afro-Colonials whose ancestors arrived
as a result of slavery and West Indians, an immigrant group primarily from Barbados and Jamaica that
came to work on the Railroad (1850-55) and Canal (1904-1914). Many Afro-Colonials align themselves
with the Panamanian nation-state and have been reluctant to profess a black racialized identity while West
Indians profess a racialized black identity similar to African Americans in the United States.
struggle with contemporary themes that plague the 21st century: identity, suicide,
silence, and solitude. Although Melanie Taylor Herrera’s fiction does not coincide with
the race conscious works of her literary predecessors, it dovetails with their feminist
consciousness as women writers. As DeCosta-Willis further acknowledges,
In spite of such disclaimers, there is a decided feminist consciousness in the
works of many contemporary Afra-Hispanic writers, who create strong and independent
female characters; rewrite national history through their portraits of revolutionary
women; describe grandmothers, othermothers, and literary foremothers who have
shaped their work; support a female culture of artists and workers; examine women’s
inner worlds (their psychology and spirituality); underscore in their lives and works the
importance of female deities such as Yemayá, Ochún, and the female body; question
femininity and women’s traditional roles in patriarchal societies; examine the effect that
silence, isolation, and invisibility have on female agency and creativity; and expose both
private and public acts of violence and discrimination against women” (xxv).
Taylor Herrera conveys these contemporary women issues in her new
millennium fiction.
Taylor Herrera’s first published short story collection Tiempos acuáticos (2000)
deals with a range of new millennium topics including infidelity, silence, suicide and
urbanity, to name a few. The short story that shares the title of the collection is author
Taylor Herrera’s favorite and grapples with issues of loneliness, silence, and suicide. In
“Tiempos acuáticos”, the central female protagonist Tokio confronts life-long issues
relating to silence, solitude, and suicide that stem from her own mother’s apparent
suicide when she was merely two years old. Spiraling into a deep depression and
despair, Tokio confesses early on through interior monologue that not even death
desires her. This prepares the reader for the subsequent interior monologue that
chronicles Tokio’s quest to terminate her existence. Tokio attempts to commit suicide
by igniting the gas oven and placing her head inside, only to be discouraged by the fact
that her head is too big for the task. Tokio’s grandmother enters the kitchen during the
precise moment when she attempts to end her life. Her grandmother handles this event
the same way she grappled with her daughter’s (Tokio’s mother) own apparent suicide:
by avoidance and denial. The grandmother feigns ignorance and rewrites the narrative
by incorrectly surmising that the smell of gas stemmed from Tokio’s unsuccessful
attempt to bake a cake.
Upset that she cannot even complete the apparent simple task of suicide, Tokio
continues her quest by cutting her left wrist with a razor blade. Once again, her suicide
efforts are thwarted when a stranger, Lucas Passat, comes to the door looking for her
older brother who has just left the country to pursue studies in Mexico. Like her
grandmother, the stranger reacts with apparent indifference but saves Tokio by
bandaging her wrists. Tokio is immediately attracted to the dark character and agrees to
meet Lucas at his apartment and loses her virginity. After engaging in uneventful sex,
she requests that Lucas take her to the beach. To his surprise, she does not want him to
stay and urges him to leave signifying that she no longer needs him. In a clear role
reversal, Tokio manipulates Lucas for her own needs to free herself from depression,
loneliness, and solitude. Clearly, she has manipulated him for her own self-gratification.
The narrative culminates with the female protagonist’s mental liberation through
the metaphor of water which references the title and symbolizes her liberation from her
own depression. As she informs the reader, “[c]on cada brazada mi deseo de vivir
aumenta” [with every stroke my desire to live increases] (Taylor, Tiempos acuáticos 43).
Every stroke signifies Tokio’s struggle to become liberated from a cycle of depression
and silence that has prevented her from realizing her true complete self. Water is both
liberating and liberator and signifies the birth of her new existence and active
participation in life.
Published five years after her first body of work, Amables predicciones (2005)
evidences that Taylor Herrera has evolved as a cuentista in the way that she manipulates
language which results in a manifold of interpretations and readings. In the prologue,
the author notes that the “personajes y situaciones que bien mirados no resultan tan
dulces e inocentes como aparentan en un principio. Al igual que el cuento que da título
al libro Amables predicciones, los desenlaces tienden a desmentir las primeras expectativas
del lector” [the characters and situations that appear pleasant are not as sweet and
innocent as they seem in the beginning. Similar to the short story that shares the title of
the collection, Friendly Predictions, the outcomes tend to disprove the reader's initial
expectations] (Taylor Herrera Amables predicciones 9). Amables predicciones is divided into
three sections: “Cuentos con la letra A” [Short Stories with the Letter A], “Tiempos
acuáticos ”[Aquatic Times] and “Cuentos y poemas misceláneos”[Miscellaneous Poems
and Short Stories]. “Agenesia” [Agenesis], a short story beginning with the letter A,
manipulates and deceives the reader from the onset of the narrative through the
simultaneous omission and inclusion of details surrounding the central protagonist
Marta. It incorporates Marta’s life–long struggles as she sits on a plane preparing for
take-off. Marta is characterized as a woman “de ojos verdes, ojos de mujer, de gata, de
muñeca” (green womanly cat-like, doll-like eyes) (Taylor Herrera, Amables predicciones 19).
At first glance, it appears that the protagonist is principally preoccupied with flying.
However, Taylor Herrera appropriates the metaphor of the “viaje” or “trip”to present
Marta’s complicated life. Taylor Herrera weaves Marta’s troubled past into the female
protagonist’s current life with her boyfriend Ernesto. Taylor Herrera intermingles the
protagonist’s thoughts of the present with those of the past utilizing a focalized
omniscient narrator who reveals that Marta suffered from an abusive and overly critical
father and an incomprehensible mother.
[She sat down in the bathroom. Something hot streamed from between
her legs and she felt relieved. When she was fifteen, her father had
opened the bathroom door without knocking and found her sitting like
that with her skirt on. Her green eyes met the man’s furious gaze. He
had grabbed her by the shoulder and had thrown her against the wall.
She had never felt so much fear in her life. You…you…said her father
who almost could not speak.]
Abuse and lack of understanding from her parents led Marta to attempt suicide and flee
home at the age of fifteen. To deal with her troubled childhood, she undergoes
treatment from a psychiatrist. Taylor Herrera leaves footprints of Marta’s troubled
throughout the narrative that the reader must weave together: a suicide attempt, the
inability to conceive, an abusive childhood, and familial abandonment. Marta has lived a
life of passivity but finally opens up by fleeing a troubled childhood. Throughout the
narrative, it appears that Marta has suffered from an abusive childhood as a young
woman at the hands of her father. However, at the conclusion of the narrative it
becomes clear that her father’s rage stems from something else: Marta’s gender identity.
Marta’s gender identity is revealed to the reader through Marta’s boyfriend,
Eduardo, who discovers her childhood photographs while she is traveling.
[On any day Eduardo would arrive to water the plants. He would arrive
laughing and looking good as usual. Safely he would leave a card
affectionately hidden under a pillow on the sofa. He would see the box
on the kitchen table and become curious. He would open each photo
album slowly and see her childhood photos. There would be a large
man with a serious face, a woman with a sad face, and a boy with the
same eyes. Looking at the photos he would see the boy getting older
and transforming into a man. And then he would only see the pictures
of her and tie up loose ends. Because those green eyes, female eyes, cat-
like eyes, doll like eyes could only be Marta’s eyes.]
The young boy who populates these photos is clearly Marta. The final paragraph of the
short story reveals to the reader and to Eduardo Marta’s gender identity as a woman.
Thus, the last paragraph of the narrative requires the reader to reevaluate the entire
story and reinterpret Marta’s identity as transsexual or transgender. As a young boy,
Marta dressed and behaved as a girl which infuriated her father as evidenced in the
above passage. Marta’s struggle with her gender identity as a young child clearly created
problems that led her to attempt suicide and flee home at age 15. Now with Eduardo,
Marta is living the life of a woman and never revealed to him her difficult childhood or
her previous identity as a boy. The final paragraph also provides meaning to the title of
the piece, “Agenesis” or the absence or incomplete development of an organ or body
part. Although the narrative does not delve into the specifics of Marta’s genitalia, the
title can be read as a metaphor of the protagonist’s lack of development and/or
identification with her prescribed gender identity: male. Furthermore, Taylor Herrera’s
choice to hide this from the reader until the conclusion of the narrative not only permits
multiple readings but also mirrors how these individuals must hide their gender identity
and their desire for transformation from their families, love ones, and ultimately the
world.
Issues of transgender identity, transsexual identity, and homosexuality are even
more complex in Latin America due to a culture of machismo or patriarchy. The
behavior of Marta’s father sheds light on the culture of machismo in Latin America.
Similar to Hispanic Caribbean writer Mayra Santos Febres (1966) who treats taboo
issues of the transvestite through her controversial character Sirena Selena of the same
titled novel (Sirena Selena, vestida de pena, 2000) Taylor Herrera brings to the forefront
these issues in Latin America through fictionalized characters who echo those in the real
world who are silenced, marginalized, and invisibilized.
Like “Agenesia”, “Pescador” deals with the social taboos of homosexuality,
bisexuality and masculinity. The central protagonist Ernesto is attracted to both women
and men. He is indeed two Ernestos and must hide part of his sexuality from the world
because it is not accepted. As a young man, this haunted him and his sexual
ambivalence towards women caused problems with other male companions. Ernesto’s
two identities can be interpreted in a variety of ways. On the one hand, his public
identity is the one where he openly celebrates women. On the other, his behavior could
be interpreted as that of a closeted homosexual who must hide his sexuality because of
the lack of acceptance of homosexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean. However,
it is unclear whether Ernesto is a closeted homosexual or bisexual. At the conclusion of
the narrative, he appears to have an unrealized desire for a beautiful woman named
7 Mariato or Mariato Point is situated in the southern part of the Veraguas Province in central
Panama.
pursue wild unplanned sex but leaves her friend behind illustrating that the life that
Verónica has, although it may appear to be ideal, does not represent Marcia’s core
existence or values. At thirty years old, Marcia experiences the universal problematic
that affects many single educated women who yearn for more but find themselves in a
society that values women for aesthetics instead of intellect. Marcia no longer utilizes
Verónica to define her existence. By fleeing the taxi, she demonstrates her
independence and her total separation from Verónica. She is no longer a remora who
must depend on others for survival, happiness, or a meaningful existence.
“Piel” [Skin] is a narrative that deals with the identity of a female protagonist
who leads two lives: one as a homely schoolteacher and the other as a sultry, seductive
scam artist. The title is a metaphor for the changing identity of the female protagonist
known by the initials, M.S., who leads a double life as a preschool teacher and scam
artist. Currently a fugitive scam artist, the female protagonist is determined to tell her
story. She relates her life as a teacher, who wore glasses and arrived to work habitually at
7:00 in the morning. However, it is clear from her methodical self-portrait that she has
taken extreme measures to hide her true identity or “skin” from others. She
acknowledges that she revealed little of herself to her colleagues, that is, whether she
was happy or sad, married or single or simply if she liked cats or dogs. She describes
her fictional life by utilizing the metaphor of tattoos. Fake tattoos demarcate her
fictionalized identity marked by glasses and a schoolteacher hairstyle, which become
symbols of a fictionalized self she fashions to construct an alternate identity. She reveals
the fictitious tattoos in the following passage:
[At night I look at my tattoos, the fictitious and real ones, in order to
sleep. It is my way of getting off the carousel and hunt the monster of
my insomnia. A rose on one of my ankles, a word on one of my
buttocks. Those are the real tattoos. The fake ones are the plastic
glasses, my serene face, my professional suits, [and] pulled back hairstyle.
These were even more painful because I had to put them on daily with
the fear that they would be erased. They were the tattoos that the world,
they, would see. For me the pain was so intense that sometimes I did
not feel anything anymore.]
The fake tattoos are juxtaposed with the real ones symbolized by a rose on her ankle
and a word on her buttocks. The tattoos are also symbols of a reconstructed life:
glasses, serene face, ladylike suits, and pulled back hairstyle. Unlike her real ones, these
tattoos are only visible to the world. Thus, transforming into M.S. is a calculated
methodical process. In turn, skin becomes a metaphor for revealing one’s true identity.
The reader leaves wondering if s/he truly knows who the protagonist is. The female
protagonist concludes her revelation with the following words, “Yo solo he dejado
retazos de piel aquí y allá con los que he confeccionado un edredón de vida para cubrir
este cuerpo lívido mientras me narro historias antes de dormir” (I have only left patches
of skin here and there with which I have made a quilt of life to cover this pale body
while I tell myself stories before bedtime) (Taylor Herrera, Camino a Mariato 18). Both
the reader and the protagonist have doubts about the protagonist’s identity; it becomes
more and more difficult to decipher between fiction and reality and to navigate the
tattoos that mark her real or perhaps reconstructed identity. Moreover, it is clear that
the scam artist is playing with the art of narration and is utilizing memory, words, and
narration to scam the reader in the same way that she scams those around her. The
reader is also a victim of the scam artist and must ultimately determine what is reality
and fiction.
At first glance, it appears that “Remora” and “Piel” possess disparate themes.
However, they unite thematically in that they center on female protagonists who are
unhappy with their existence and uncomfortable with their skin. Similar to the other
narratives analyzed here from Taylor Herrera’s short story collections, the protagonists
struggle with universal issues that women throughout the diaspora confront in an urban,
modern, technological yet isolating society. Taylor Herrera’s characters are emblematic
of female and to some extent male experiences of modernity and allow us to fashion
new definitions of diasporic women and new readings of contemporary Afra-Latin
American fiction. Moreover, her literary works aid in expanding notions of female
Caribbean identity in the new millennium and beyond that permit readings analogous
with other female writers of the diaspora.
WORKS CITED
Colón Pellot, Carmen. Ámbar mulato. Arecibo, Puerto Rico, 1938. Print.
DeCosta-Willis, Miriam. “Introduction”. Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers.
Ed. Miriam DeCosta-Willis. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle P, 2005, xvi-xli.
Print.
Miró, Rodrigo. Cien años de poesía en Panamá (1858-1952). Panamá, 1966. Print.
Piedra, José. “Literary Whiteness and the Afro-Hispanic Difference.” New Literary
History 18(1987): 303-332. Print.
“Remora”. http://www.britannica.com/animal/remora. 2/10/16. Online.
Snorton, Riley. Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Online.
Taylor Herrera, Melanie. Amables predicciones. República de Panamá: Universidad
Tecnológica de Panamá, 2005.
----.Camino a Mariato. Managua, Nicaragua: Editorial Amerrisque, 2009.
----. “Pescador”. The Barcelona Review: Review of Contemporary Fiction.
http://www.barcelonareview.com/73/s_mth.html. 2/10/2016 Online.
------. Tiempos acuáticos. Panamá: Universidad Tecnológica de á y Cuadernos Marginales,
2000. Print.
Watson, Sonja Stephenson. “Entrevista a Melanie Taylor.” Unpublished Interview.
August 1, 2003. Panama City, Panama.
------. “Entrevista a Melanie Taylor.” Unpublished Interview. June 24, 2013. Email.
I
n the opening moments of “Lubaraun,” (“Encountering”), a Garifuna Eelder
walks along the Caribbean shore in Honduras. The calm waters of the
Caribbean that gently roll toward him, the sound of drumming in the
background and the two “rugumas”1 that he carries, establish the principle
motifs of this documentary about tradition, memory, and the return to origins. First
arriving to the shores of the Central American Caribbean in the late 1800’s, the
Garfiuna, originally from St. Vincent, were forced to rebuild their lives in a new territory
in a new age. As they continued to settle along the coastline of Central America, they
established long-term communities, eventually arriving in Nicaragua at the beginning of
the 20th century in places like Corn Island, Bluefields, and the Laguna of Pearls.
“Lubaraun,” is the first film to focus solely upon the Nicaraguan Garifuna and,
thus, completes a series of documentaries and a feature-length film on the Garifuna
experience throughout the modern world. Written and directed by María José Alvarez
and Martha Clarrissa Hernández, “Lubaraun” is the companion film to their earlier
documentary, “The Black Creoles: Memories and Identities” (2011).
As María José explains in the interview below, this second documentary follows
the journey of a Nicaraguan Garifuna elder, “Dady,” (Absalón Velásquez) and his desire
to return to his birthplace in Tocomacho, Honduras. Along the way, Alvarez and
Hernández and their film crew, capture the beauty and humanity of one of Nicaragua’s
and the Caribbean’s most unique cultures.
SJB: María José, thanks again for agreeing to talk with me today. In a
November 2015 interview with Céline Agnes for AVA Luxembourg, you began to talk
about why you and your colleague, Martha Clarissa Hernández, made two films about
the Afro-Nicaraguan communities instead of one. Unfortunately, time ran out and you
were not able to complete your thought. So, I would like to begin with that question:
why two films?
1 Hand woven baskets used to extract water from grated cassava to produce flour. They also are
called “culebras” in Spanish because of their long tubular shape.
216 SHELLY BROMBERG
MJA: Yes, well, in 1983, I went to live on the Southern Caribbean coast of
Nicaragua. I am a photographer by training, a documentary photographer, so I
photographed a lot of Bluefields, the Laguna de Perlas and the Cruz del Rio Grande in
the Suma communities. It was there that I realized something; I realized that the history
of Nicaragua that we had learned on the Pacific side was completely wrong; incomplete.
When I went to the Caribbean, I realized there was another story entirely. I always had
this feeling that the people with whom I interacted and talked had a different history,
one that was not written in books. Thus, I had always wanted to tell a bit of their
history; the history of Nicaraguans who are descendants of Africans.
But, when I completed my research some ten years later, after I no longer lived
on the coast, when I was living in Managua, I realized that there were, in fact, two
histories. The Black Creoles are people originally from Jamaica, Belize and Rio Dulce
who had mixed with the Miskito Indians who lived here in Nicaragua. These Black
Creoles were also descendants of slaves, the owners had left, and they remained. The
Garifuna are another story, in another time, and their formation centered on the fact
that they were never slaves; they were the Africans intent on escaping slavery. So, they
joined with South American Indians, the Arawak, and then these groups joined the
“Caribes” on the Island of St. Vincent. In turn, these people joined with the French
against the English. And so, being very strong and brave, the Garifuna resisted the
British even when St. Vincent was given over to the British and so the British expelled
the Garifuna to the Atlantic coast of Central America.2
Eventually, at the beginning of the 20th century, they arrived in Nicaragua. In
general most people believe that the Garifuna were Black Creoles, but they are different.
This myth, this misrepresentation of the Garifuna, was stronger when I first arrived in
the 1980’s. People would tell me that the Garifuna were descendants of slaves that had
come from St. Vincent. But, when I returned, to finish my research in the 2010’s the
people were embracing their culture, visiting back and forth between Belize, Orinoco,
and here. They were speaking and singing in Garifuna, thus, it was clear this was
another expression, distinct from that of the Creoles. Obviously, we could not make
only one film about the history of Afro-Nicaraguans.
It was really difficult to decide to do two films: one that is called “The Black
Creoles: Memory and Identity,” centers on the Afro-descendants of the Atlantic
Nicaraguan coast, which is a long history; long enough that we needed a second film to
tell the history of the Garifuna . So, we knew we needed two histories, which we
originally proposed at the first screening of “The Black Creoles” in Costa Rica.
Traditionally, the Creoles of Costa Rica have a relationship with the Creoles of
2 The most definitive work on the history of the Garifuna has been written by Christopher
Taylor. The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival and the Making of the Garifuna. Jackson: UP of Mississippi,
2012. Likewise, there is also a 50 minute documentary by Andrea Leland, “Yurumein: Homeland” that
recreates the traumatic journey from St. Vincent to Central America.
http://www.andrealeland.com/film/yurumein.html
Nicaragua. For these groups, the Central American Caribbean is, in fact, just one
community. This is also true regarding the Garifuna communities of Nicaragua and
Honduras; people of the same family, who live up and down the coast. They are
transnational, living and traveling within and between their communities.
By separating the two themes, we were able to better highlight the multi-ethnic
character of Nicaragua. This is a Garifuna nation, a Nicaraguan nation, and a Black,
Creole nation, a Miskito nation, a Rama nation, thus, we believed it was better to tell the
Garifuna history separately. The Garifuna from different areas come together here, but
each branch of the Garifuna has family in Honduras, Belize, even Guatemala and two
families came here and became a large group. Thus, we had to conduct research in
Honduras, look for more financing for the project, figure out how much more time we
would need. It was really a difficult decision, but it was worth the effort.
SJB: There are scenes in “Luburaun” that are unique, such as the cassava bread
making ritual, correct?
MJA: Yes, this is an indigenous practice of the Garifuna and several other
Amerindian peoples. This way of making cassava is unique to the Garifuna. It is a very
magical process, very important to the culture. Only the Garifuna in Nicaragua eat
cassava bread.
SJB: Is the soup that Anacely makes for Dady (the elder of the film) in
Tocomacho, Honduras, another Garifuna tradition?
MJA: Yes, this is machuca, it’s a soup of corn dough and crab and other things
including mashed plantain. And that village, that place is a very isolated place, even for
someone from Honduras, it is at the end of the world.
Dady, yes, well, this is something very special about this film. At the beginning,
I always thought we were going to make only one film. But, when we interviewed
Dady, he told us that he wanted to go to Honduras. And what did we think? And that
is when we realized we needed to go to Honduras. This was not in our original
screenplay. This decision came after spending several weeks talking with him, listening
to him play the drums with such heart. I had photographed him long ago when he was
much younger and he played the corazón drum. He was the principal drummer in the
Walla Gallo (Dogú). 3 Of course, the story of the Walla Gallo would be yet another film
I need to make.
Dady, is the only surviving Garifuna that speaks the language and is trying to
maintain it by teaching it and speaking with the young people who are learning it. Thus,
it is very important. The person who speaks the language of your community, the
language, your identity, that you want to preserve, makes this person very important.
And he is so down to earth, so tranquil with everyone. He only wanted to go to
3 The ‘Walla Gallo,” described as the “Ancestor Party, in English is a postmortem ritual that is
central to Garifuna tradition. For an excellent first-person account of the practice see Marylin McKillop
Wells. Among the Garifuna: Family Tales and Ethnography from the Caribbean Coast. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama
Press, 2015.
Honduras, to Tocomacho, to have some machuca and look for his relatives. And really,
he was unaware that we were making a documentary about him. And of course, we
went bit by bit because we knew little about Honduras. We looked for any mention of
the Walla Gallo, or the person who sings the Walla Gallo in Garifuna, these are very
important people.
SJB: With Dady at the center of the documentary, the idea of a return to one’s
origins becomes very clear. His journey then, is an allegory of the community in search
of their identity.
MJA: Yes, well, that is what Lubaraun means in Garifuna, in Spanish it means
“al encuentro de” (Encountering). And this is why we titled it” Lubaraun” because we
believed that it expressed the philosophy of the film. We had to look for this word in a
dictionary because in Nicaragua the Garifuna speak Creole English, so it was not easy to
get to know them because the Garifuna do not speak any Spanish in Nicaragua. Some
could speak some Garifuna, but none of us could speak any Garifuna so we were a bit
stuck. I believe we found translators who spoke Spanish among the vendors who sold
local arts and crafts.
Afterwards, when we were in post-production, we brought a Garifuna professor
to translate. It was a pretty elemental translation, a first translation. But later, when we
put this together, we worried about confusing these subtitles. This was a learning
process for me because I did not understand the language unless someone repeated it
various times and we did not have a program for subtitles, it took five months. It
would take us four attempts each time because we had to try to be as close as possible
to the original text and image. So, the subtitles were a real experience because it was a
new language for me and we did it with Garifuna and everyone says that what we did
turned out well.
SJB: The film, meanwhile, depends on its own visual language, built around
nature and the people, yes?
MJA: Yes, it is a beautiful place. Regarding the imagery, we were looking for a
language, an aesthetic to tell the story. This is their reality. So, as the director of
photography I wrote thinking about how to best tell this story. I interviewed them
before beginning the film to best understand how we were going to proceed; what
questions were we going to ask, how could we do our work quietly in the community, it
was a process of various visits. I only went to Honduras once, but in Nicaragua, there
were various trips. And everyone in the community wanted to participate.
SJB: There was the one young woman in Tochomacho that seemed
uncomfortable.
MJA: Yes, she did not want to be filmed. We did not have such problems in
Nicaragua, but in Honduras they were much more careful. Except for Anacely, she was
fine. It was the first time we met her and they (Anacely and Dady) kept talking and
talking and talking in Garifuna. The scene with Anacely and Dady is very long, but we
did not want to interrupt the story. But in the end, what Dady really wanted was his
machuca and she prepared it.
In October I was in Belgium, invited by the Secretariat of the ACP (Africa,
Caribbean and Pacific Group of States), I was so happy to see that at the film’s
screening, the Africans in the audience identified with this meeting. The respect toward
Dady Anacely’s willingness to attend to him, to speak so softly and clearly to him, they
really identified with that because in Africa, that is how you demonstrate respect in
front of others, they take care of them; of an elder like Dady. It was incredible for me to
show the film in that location because the majority of the audience was African and
Caribbean.
Then, I remembered that when we were in Jamaica, they knew nothing about us.
Meanwhile, here, they dream about going to Jamaica because it is the home of the
Creoles. But, really, in Jamaica, they do not have an interest in the Central American
Caribbean. There was a woman who was absolutely surprised and she was a diplomat.
But with the Africans in Belgium, they were genuinely interested in what we were doing.
I was very touched by their reception of the film.
I also went to St. Vincent and the Grenadines in celebration of the Garifuna and
it was incredible to show the film there in front of young and old alike because they
have lost so much of their culture. The entire part about food, about the drumming,
they were captivated watching it. They no longer speak Garifuna, they speak English.
They lost the language when their ancestors were expelled from the island. I also
showed it in Providencia and San Andres (Colombia) and there was also a sense of
identification for the audience, especially in Providencia.
SJB: What about Nicaraguans who do not have an Afro-Descendant past?
How did they react to the film?
MJA: I believe, and I don’t want to sound odd, here, but I believe these two
works are like a home now for those who want to know about their history. No one
has recognized them the way we have. And we were not interested in royalties as much
as making a gift of these films to the people, to share this information with as many as
possible. And it was interesting, I went to visit the School of Journalism here in
Managua and they did not know a thing about the Garifuna. And this is their people.
When we premiered the film in Managua people were very excited because it wasn’t a
documentary about the war, it wasn’t a documentary that was criticizing the world, so
the people were really happy to learn that there were Garifuna living in Nicaragua.
Dady enchanted them, I believe that in many places, there was a lot of compassion for
Dady. He was so calm and patient but he really wanted to go to Honduras. The journey
to Tocomacho was really hard but once he arrived, it was beautiful.
For me, a lot of this film was about observation. Watching how people cooked
for their families, It is in Nicaragua where they gather under the tree, where they are
working with the cassava, grating it, putting it in the ruguma (a woven sieve). They call
the ruguma “the snake,” and this scene under the tree takes place in Orinoco, in
Nicaragua. The woman in the kitchen, grating the cassava, meanwhile, is in Honduras.
But the two scenes show how they work together as a family to make the cassava, to
hang it from the tree. There is a tendency now, although I have not seen it, to
mechanize the process. But I believe, at least in these small communities, the making of
cassava will be preserved because it is something they do communally.
SJB: It is such a beautiful process in the film.
MJA: Yes, and in May, I will be in Los Angeles to show the film at the
International Garifuna Festival.
SJB: Wonderful. María José, thanks so much for spending time with me today
to talk about this beautiful film. I look forward to talking with you again in the future.
MJA: My pleasure.
T
o write about the literature produced by the Afro-descendants of
Nicaragua is a difficult task, in part because it is not known what
percentage of the Nicaraguan population descends from the African
diaspora.
The researcher then has to decide who should be included as Afro-descendant.
Should Rubén Darío, Nicaragua’s greatest poet and one of the most important poets of
the Spanish language, qualify? In his prologue to his book Prosas profanas y otros poemas,
he said that it was very likely that he had what he called “African blood.“ And how
about Luis Alberto Cabrales, Carlos Bravo, and Alejandro Bravo? This group perhaps
provides us with the criteria that can be used to say who the Afro-descendants of
Nicaragua are: the descendants of the African diaspora who dentify themselves as Afro-
descendants.
Here I will present a selection of poetry written by the largest Afro-descendant
community in Nicaragua - the Creoles.1 Although they are racially mixed, the Creoles
recognize themselves, and are recognized by others, as Afro-descendants.2
A history of the Creole population of Nicaragua is beyond the scope of this
introduction, but to understand why their poetry is not well known nationally and
internationally is necessary to provide a brief historical background.3 The origin of the
Creole population dates back to the eighteenth century - or, at least, the origin of a
Creole identity. Edmund T. Gordon argues that a distinct Creole identity and politics
emerged during this period.
In the eighteenth century the British established some settlements on the
Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. With the 1783 Treaty of Versailles and the 1786
Convention of London, the British government agreed to give this territory to Spain
and to dismantle these settlements. When England left, some of the English remained,
1 For this reason they will be known here as the Creole poets.
2 See Edmund T. Gordon’s Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African-Nicaraguan
Community.
3 Edmund T. Gordon’s book mentioned above is the best available on this subject.
222 CARLOS CASTRO JO
especially a settler named Robert Hodgson, Jr., who stayed with his slaves and offered
his services to the Spanish crown. Once in control of the territory, the Spanish tried to
subordinate the population of the Caribbean Coast but the people resisted and
eventually defeated the Spanish. Although Robert Hodgson, Jr., who became the
Spanish governor, left Nicaragua for Guatemala, some of his slaves remained and they
became the nucleus from which the Creole population grew.
With the Spanish gone, many years of self-government ensued. Trading
tortoiseshells, lumber, and other products with the rest of the Caribbean, the group that
is known as the Creoles today became relatively prosperous, and grew as a result of
both natural growth and immigration. The community developed its own culture: crafts,
painting, sculpture, dance, music, food, and storytelling. Influenced by the English and
independent from the Nicaraguan Mestizo culture, they developed into a large and
distinct ethnic community.
English, or a dialect of it named Creole English, became their native language.
Creole English remained as a living, functioning language not only because the Creoles
originated when the English settled this part of Nicaragua, but also because England
practically only abandoned this region in 1894, when the Caribbean Coast was annexed
to Nicaragua. Later, the churches and some American companies that invested in
banana, lumber, and mining helped to keep the language alive. It was the language of
church, business, and everyday life.
And this fact, language, has been one of the most important obstacles that the
Creole poets have had to face. A nationalistic leader, the liberal José Santos Zelaya, who
tried to build a nation-state under one government, one market, and one language,
carried out the annexation of the Caribbean Coast to Nicaragua. His government
banned the use of English in the schools, which had to be closed temporarily because
there were not enough teachers fluent in Spanish in the region. Since the annexation to
Nicaragua, the language of government and education on the Caribbean Coast has been
Spanish. Even today, no national magazine or newspaper would publish texts in
English, which is another obstacle that the Creole poets have had to face. This policy of
assimilation to the Mestizo majority marginalized, and marginalizes, the Creole
population.
In addition, the Creole poets have had to face other obstacles such as which
dialect of English to use: Creole or Standard English. Creole English, of course, has a
limited audience and has no standard spelling.
It is not surprising then that the first Creole poets who achieved national
recognition wrote in Spanish. David McField and Carlos Rigby, whose native language
is Creole English, achieved national recognition in the late 1960s. As we will see in the
selection included here, they wrote in Spanish but sprinkled their poems with some
verses in English, both Creole and Standard. Promoted by Pablo Antonio Cuadra, the
most important mentor and publisher of Nicaraguan literature in the twentieth century,
they published in the most important literary magazines in the country, La Prensa
Literaria and El Pez y la Serpiente.
McField and Rigby wrote in the 1960s, during the period known in Nicaraguan
history as the Somoza dictatorship, and their poetry was known as a poetry of protest.
The poems included here are representative of their poetry, in the sense that they are,
like most of their poems, about social injustice and racial identity.
In the 1980s, as a result of the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution, which
unleashed a debate about racial and ethnic identities and promoted poetry as an art that
could be produced by the masses, a new group of poets achieved national and local
recognition. Two of them, June Beer and Ronald Brooks Saldaña, are included in the
poetry selection below. June Beer had been wiriting poetry since the 1960s but she
wrote in Creole English and was not known as a poet in Nicaragua. Like McField and
Rigby, who belonged to her generation, she also wrote about life under the Somoza
dictatorship and the Sandinista Revolution. Ronald Brooks, on the other hand, even
though he was actively involved in the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship, wrote
more about love, art, and domestic life. He wrote in Spanish and in Standard English,
and the poems included here are a good example of the topics he covered in his poetry.
At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, a new
group of Creole poets has appeared on the scene. This new generation is best
exemplified by Yolanda Rossman, Deborah Robb, Annette Fenton, and Andira Watson.
Freed from the Somoza dictatorship and the conflicts of the 1980s, this generation’s
topics are more diverse. As can be seen in this selection, they write about issues of racial
and ethnic identity, but also about love, death, and dreams.
WORKS CITED
Alemán Porras, Eddy and Franklin Brooks Vargas. Bluefields en la sangre: Poesía del caribe
Sur nicaragüense. Managua: 400 Elefantes, 2011.
Anglesey, Zoë. Ixok Amar Go: Central American Women’s Poetry for Peace. Maine: Granite
Press, 1987.
Brown, Angelica. Afrocarinica: Antología poética. Bluefields: Bluefields Indian & Caribbean
University, 2011.
Corriols, Marianela and Yolanda Rossman. Hermanas de tinta: Muestra de poesía multiétnica
de mujeres nicaragüenses. Managua: Asociación Nicaragüense de Escritoras
(ANIDE), 2014.
Darío, Rubén. Poesías Completas. Madrid: Aguilar, 1961.
Gordon, Edmund T. Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African-Nicaraguan
Community. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.
Huturbise, Josef. Poesía en inglés criollo nicaragüense. Managua: Wani 16, Enero-Marzo 1995:
43-56.
MdField, David. Dios es negro. Managua: Editora Mundial, 1967.
---. En la calle de enmedio. Managua: Editora Nicaragüense, 1968.
---. Poemas para el año del elefante. Managua: Artes Gráficas,1970.
---. Poemas populares. Managua: Editorial El Carmen,1972.
---. Las veinticuatro. Managua: Ediciones Libromundo, 1975.
Rob, Deborah. The Times and Life of Bluefields. Managua: Academia de Historia y
Geografía, 2005.
Romero Vargas, Germán. Historia de la Costa Atlántica. Managua: Centro de Información
y Documentación de la Costa Atlántica (CIDCA), 1996.
Rossman, Yolanda. Lágrimas sobre el musgo. Managua; Centro Nicaragüense de Escritores,
2008.
---. Nocturnidad del trópico. Managua; Centro Nicaragüense de Escritores, 2010.
Valle Castillo, Julio. El siglo de la poesía en Nicaragua (V. 3). Managua: Colección Cultural
de Centroamérica, 2005.
Watson, Andira. Más excelsa que Eva. Managua: Fondo Editorial CIRA, 2002.
---. En casa de Ana los árboles no tienen culpa. Managua: Colección ANIDE, 2009.
White, Steven. Nicaragua, Poetry of. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012: 945-948.
June Beer (1935-1986) was the director of the public library in Bluefields, Nicaragua.
She was an accomplished painter and a poet who wrote in Creole English. Her poetry
has appeared in several anthologies and magazines.
CHUNKA FAAM
LOVE POEM
David Mcfield (1936) is the author of the following books: Dios es negro (1967), En la
calle de enmedio (1968), Poemas para el año del elefante (1970), Poemas populares (1972), and Las
veinticuatro (1975). He is the current Nicaraguan ambassador in Jamaica.
BLACK IS BLACK
Black is Black.
Ser negro da lo mismo,
en cualquier latitud
black is black.
Si no que lo digan,
las magníficas actuaciones de Sidney Poitier,
los formidables músculos de Jim Brown,
Caupolicán moderno,
o Lotario, fiel como el golpe que asesta a los enemigos
de Mandrake.
No es cuestión de alma blanca.
Porque negro es negro,
black is black,
full time:
por dentro y por fuera.
Negro en los muelles de New York,
en Old Bank,
en los algodonales de Atlanta,
en Vietnam, Laos y Camboya,
en el Madison Square Garden.
Negros, sudando de ambición,
en las olimpiadas mundiales
"dándole colorido al espectáculo"
Pelé, Pelé, Pelé
y "el negrito del batey"
"y los demás en tantos climas son"
negros simplemente.
Black is black
Pero
"give me a chance
make a raise a rass".
"Give me a chance".
Ronald Brooks Saldaña (1943-2001) was the director of the Bilingual Program at the
Ministry of Education in Bluefields and wrote textbooks in English and Spanish for
elementary and secondary schools. His poetry has been published in several anthologies
and magazines.
IT HAD TO HAPPEN
Well,
it had to happen some day
that’s all.
For,
in a world of dreams and reality,
who dreams forever?
SINCOPADO
Una gota
un chorro
una fuente
un arroyo
un río
una bahía
un mar
un océano.
Carlos Rigby (1935) is a charismatic poet who has dedicated his life to performing his
poems in public. He has published in many magazines and has been included in many
anthologies of Nicaraguan poetry.
NICARIBE SOY
Yo soy de Nicaribia—
Nicaribe soy…
yo soy de Nicaribia
nicaribe soy
saladita la rojona
en mis ojos la cargo
a veces se me derrama.
SI YO FUERA MAYO
en todo el mundo:
con desfiles
carteles
portadores de carteles
manifestantes
las palabras manifestadas
las palabras piedrafectadas
pero desoídas desamadas descachimbadas
dentro del orgullo
de tantos trabajadores
que aunque siendo tales
no todos comen pan
ni sudan de la frente
ni tendrán un aumento de sueldo
ni mucho menos nuevas promociones
hacia el antiguo oficio de hacer dinero
dentro de las marchas y protestas
por máyaya lasique má-yaya-o
con los pies de los policías
bailando sin querer: sin-sáima-sima-ló
entonces yo bailaría
contento
en el centro de la rueda de mayo
con mi danza haciéndose agua
y mi soledad
una con las lluvias de la primavera
ya por fin entendido en lo verde
comprendiendo la voz del pueblo
-que es la voz de Dios-
gritando desde lo alto de un palodemayo:
máyaya lasique máyaya-ooo
Yolanda Rossman (1961) has published the following books: Lágrimas sobre el musgo (
2008) and Nocturnidad del trópico (2010).
RAÍCES
Mi abuela materna
Dulce mujer RAMA de hipnótica cabellera,
El retumbar de tambores ancestrales
Aún en su pecho,
Se juntó enamorada
A robusto mestizo chontaleño
Donde los ríos son de leche
Y las piedras cuajadas.
Mi abuela paterna
Ardiente mujer KRIOL,
Con un toque de NAGA
Mágica, poderosa,
Hizo sucumbir
Con su inquietante aroma a flores,
Al ojiazul emigrante alemán,
Venido del viejo continente.
Soy crisol,
Soy amalgama,
Sangre, lengua, piel
MAIRIN
Deborah Robb (1965) writes in English and has published poetry in magazines and has
been included in several anthologies. She published a book of non-fiction entitled The
Times and Life of Bluefields (2005).
KILLING TIME
PIÑATA DE AGUA
En esta hora
octava del día
una duna
de nubes negras
dora su espalda al sol
y la brisa temprana
sosiega por esta barrera
que no es ni
casi tan intangible
mientras la luz
abierta se curva dócil,
dócil
hacia el océano
afuera del mundo
y cada flor,
cada hoja,
suspira temblorosa
expectativa.
Sin prisa
llueve
y
llueve
un día
como
nueve
hasta que
escampa
y
el jardín amanece
con más de alguna
hoja,
flor,
o semilla
de goma o
todavía
de fiesta.
El sacuanjoche
pide perdón
por sus huesos
grises y descarnados.
El tronco
de un crotón
de antaño podado
sangra ahora
frescos
tornasoles.
Las musas
tul
cuelgan
velludas,
hinchadas,
y sinvergüenzas.
Los lirios
coloridos
se confunden
en su propio
lánguido
delirio.
Las rosas
sin pudor
igualitas
trepan,
se enredan,
al toque mas leve
se deshacen y
conmueven.
Los postes
del cercado
revientan
como bananos
requete
maduros
en un exagerado
floreado
de chillos, chichas
púrpuras,
liláceas y hot pinks
mientras
dos gigantes
de la orilla vigilia
se incendian
naranjas
sólo
un poquito
less gay.
Los hibiscos
en huipil
despliegan bragas arrugadas y ondean nerviosos pistilos.
Una
heliconia, infloresciente
al amparo de palmas,
allamandas y
morning glories,
parece ella
sola
totalmente
sobria.
Ni parpadea.
Sus pétalos,
pendientes plásticos,
insensibles
cuentan
gotas.
Annette Fenton (1973) writes in English, and is very active in the local poetry scene in
Bluefields, Nicaragua. Her poetry has been included in several anthologies.
POEM XII
With hands over crinkled brows mid the grey and darkness
I peer into the unseen with the hope of light
amid the gloom to aid my failing sight.
POEM XXII
Andira Watson (1977) won the Mariana Sansón Argüello Poetry Prize in 2009. Her
books include Más excelsa que Eva (2002) and En la Casa de Ana los Árboles no Tienen culpa
(2009). She writes the blog www.andirawatson.blogspot.com
HIJO
COMO DUENDE
Presencia
Te dejaré la música en mi ausencia,
para que aprehenda a los silencios
la melodía;
dejaré el armónico reloj acompasado
para que te colmen de mí.
Porque siempre inundaré de susurros lo que oigas
para que la palabra sea en verdad
lo último de mí que pierdas,
Éste será mi poder frente a la muerte.
1.
W
hat is your name?
You already know my name.
What is your name?
You already know my name.
They went on like this, one with his line, the other with hers.
What ...
You already know ...
...
... name, they coincided, not exactly in harmony: One voice was a little reedy,
though steady, the other flat.
The room was black and moist. Things may have been slithering about, small
harmless things. The faint cataphonics of carpentry whispered from the solitary
window.
What is your name?
This time, silence.
What is your name?
His chair bumped along on the sandy floor. When he stretched, his body
distracted the lightest breeze from her face. The wooden beat from outside continued,
still dim.
A door opened, shut. In between, a vague rustle.
2.
In truth, there's only speculation about the formation of the island, carved by
lava and tides, how the tips of peaks became mountains, and islet after islet merged,
thousands of them, until they became an archipelago shaped like a curved cicatrix.
THE TOWER OF THE ANTILLES 245
The island's natives did not know how to cultivate land or use tools. They
picked fruit, chased crabs out of their sandy wells. They grew root vegetables, usually in
mounds of soil designed to retard erosion and lengthen storage, and knew how to make
bread from an otherwise poisonous tuber. They fished, hunted rats and iguanas, and ate
both turtles and dogs.
The men went naked for the most part, the women frequently wore short skirts
but breasts were generally bared. They flattened their foreheads by binding them with a
hard plate before they were fully formed. This way their heads slanted, reflecting light
back to the heavens.
They were terrible, unambitious mariners, with no sense at all for navigation.
For a while, in fact, many believed the island was no island at all, but a monstrous raft
made of packed dirt and clay, impossible to pilot.
They had two supreme gods, each with a particular allegiance to water: a lord of
the sea and a goddess of rivers and abundance. As reverence, these accepted prayer and
platefuls of food: plump marlin filets, papayas bursting with pockets of gooey black
seeds, buckets of coconut milk.
Before making offerings, devotees had to cleanse themselves through
absolution, fasting and ritualized vomiting. Hungrily, they put wooden spades down
their throats, liturgical implements they lazily let slide from their lips.
Afterwards, they used a long, straw-like tube to sniff the pulverized bark of a
local tree, which caused extreme hallucinations.
3.
4.
One day, a very large brown woman with slanted eyes set a tiny boat on the
island's shore. It was made from the languid leaves of a local flower, folded over this
way and that until the triangle in the middle signaled completion. Only a few of the
natives noticed, or cared, and when the tiny boat was found missing among the usual
debris at dawn, everyone presumed the tide's eager tendrils were to blame.
That afternoon, the large brown woman with slanted eyes returned, this time
with a boat of balsa wood. Its skin was as smooth as a baby's, pink and sweet. Again, it
vanished over night.
During that week, boats began to appear - canoes and kayaks, floats made of
driftwood, hollowed tree trunks, discarded refrigerators made buoyant with inflated
tubes, car chassis with water wings. They piled one on top of the other, each decreasing
in size as the structure ascended, so that they began to form separate stories. Each level
had its own peculiar color, usually a variation of whitewashed blue, or a smear of dense
aquamarine.
Later, the boats began to pivot, each one a little, so that soon there were prows
of a sort directed to the four points of the compass. There was nothing between the
vessels, each one perfectly balanced on top of the other, so that they swayed with the
trade winds, waved to the waters but did not fall.
5.
Eventually, he stopped asking her name. He would just come in and sit across
from her for a while in the darkness. She'd grown accustomed to the visits. Her thighs
were covered with ghostly designs for boats. After a time, he'd scrape the chair
backwards, get up and disappear.
Then her lips would soundlessly form the words that followed him: You already
know my name.
6.
On the island's coast, a few mangy dogs, bats and a tempest or two of wild bees
came to rest on the column of boats. It swelled with frogs in its crevices, snails crawled
the walls. Birds with feathers frazzled like uncombed hair perched and called. There
were clear days and days of fog, nights when the stars flashed across the sky and others
when they refused to shine.
That was usually when the boats would moan from the weight of the natives
scaling the tower.
T
hat night, Jimmy had just come out of Carib Theatre, where he had gone
to watch a Western named Gun Sling or Gunshot or something like that.
He would say later that it was that Western, the men dodging and rolling
from bullets, that saved his life. The truth is, for the rest of his long
unhappy life Jimmy would wonder why he was alive and five of his other friends were
dead. Survivor’s guilt, some man in a white jacket at the University Hospital, where his
girlfriend Paulette had taken him to try and quiet the voices that he kept hearing year
after year --- the loud yet dull thud of bullets entering skulls --- survivor’s guilt was what
the man in the white jacket told him that he was suffering with.
These days even the sound of a truck back-firing was enough to get him startled.
But that all happened a long time ago. More than forty years now. And people
who heard his story, kept saying Jimmy should have gotten over this a long time ago.
The festering wound inside of himself that would not heal. The festering wound inside
of the psyche of the island. The uptown brown-skinned woman who had been killed in
her own home. She was an asset to the community. Yes, that was the word that everyone
was now using. Asset. Someone who had done so much for her country. Who were the
heartless thugs --- and even he agreed that they were heartless --- that would rape and
then beat a defenseless eighty-nine year old woman to death? What is happening in our
country? people were saying on the radio. What was happening to our nation? Nation.
Another of the new words being used on the radio.
As if where he lived, on Laws Street, in what people now took to calling a
garrison community, people were not being killed all the time. Everyday in fact. And
there was no outcry about the killings that took place in the garrison.
Jimmy got up from the roadside where he was sitting and spit out the wad of
tobacco he had inside of his mouth. He looked around him. There was not a house
around where some woman was not forced to band her belly and bawl over a dead son.
There was not a house where a man in a black shirt with a black bandana on his head
had not gone to a nine-night ceremony for a young friend killed senselessly. In the yard
across him alone, over eight boys from one family, all of whom he had known as young
men, had died. Violently. Senselessly. And if the nation truly wanted to heal its wounds,
they would start talking about what had happened to him and nine of his other friends
some forty years before in the self-same garrison community.
248 JACQUELINE BISHOP
Jimmy continued looking around him. An election was coming soon and the
ruling People’s Party for Development was fearful that they would loose the elections.
This was what he and Bug-Eyes were talking about the other day. That the PPD’s days
were numbered and the JDP’s days were soon in coming. With the JDP there would be
more work for people like him, Bug Eyes was saying, but Jimmy was not so sure about
this. That was what each party promised, that there would be jobs for people like them,
and it was a similar promise that caused Santos and Chubby Dread, and three more of
his friends, to loose their lives forty years before. The political party leaders in Jamaica
were nothing but liars. Though, if Santos were alive, he would have said that with the
exception of Cuba, which he had visited as a star football player, political leaders tended
to be liars just about everywhere else he had been to in the world, and he, Santos, had
been to many countries around the world representing Jamaica.
Jimmy remembered telling all of this to Paulette that long ago day when he had
been rescued and made his way back to the zinc-fenced home he shared with her and
their five children. That there was no posse like the government kept saying and was
being reported in one newspaper article after another and was being talked about over
the radio. They were just a group of men who would get together in a youth club, all
those years ago, to talk about how they could make things better for their community.
Paulette, he smiled at her name. She had left him years before, had moved with
their children to America, but she still called from time to time, to check up on him,
even though she had a new man in her life. When he would ask her, “Paulette, why you
left me?” The line would go silent and Jimmy believed he could hear her softly crying.
It was either that or she would get loud on him and say, “So what you wanted
me to do? Stay there with you on that God forsaken island, Jimmy? Stay there in that
dump on Laws Street? Gunshot flying in every which direction? Nobody not caring if
we live or die, our life of no value to those in authority? Look what happen to you
Jimmy!” She would be shouting by now. ”Is only the grace of God why you still alive! Is
only the grace of God alone why you did not end up like Chubby Dread or Santos!
From the moment I see what happened to you, I knew I had to get myself out of that
blasted country!”
“But with him?” He would be pleading now. “You couldn’t find no other else
man to leave me for than the Chiney-man you used to work for?”
“Think of your children,” Paulette would say to him. “They growing up here in
America. Have made good lives for themselves. They now have American passports
and they have American children. Its that Chiney-man, as you call my husband, that
made it all so.”
The children. His children. His now-American children. They came from time
to time to see him. Was always sending him things. And once or twice they had tried to
get him to come and live with them in America. But he wasn’t much interested in going
to live in America. That country was for the young at heart, who didn’t mind starting
their lives over in a whole new country. It was here, right in the house on Laws Street
where he was born, and it was here, right in the house on Laws Street, where he was
going to die. All he wanted was for Paulette to come back home to him. But he knew
that was not ever going to happen. Not after what had happened some forty years
before.
Laws Street. Again Jimmy kept looking around him, before he started laughing
aloud at the irony of it all. He could not believe that in all the years he had lived there it
had never occurred to him. On this self-same Laws Street, some of the worst laws on
the island had been broken. Yes, he said to himself, nodding and still laughing a sad
bitter little laugh, if Jamaica wanted to know what had happened to the country, the
crime and violence that was raging like an out of control wildfire all over the island, here
is where they should look. Here is where they should start asking their questions. Here
is where it all began so many years before.
That long ago night, after he had come out of the theater, Jimmy had run into
two of his friends, Mahfood-the-Indian and Buck-teeth-Bucky who talked with a lisp so
bad you could barely understand what he was saying. It took Jimmy a full five minutes
and the intervention of Mahfood to understand what Bucky was saying to him. That
jobs were being given out to the men in the community. That anyone who signed up
that night would be given a significant amount of money. And, Bucky had said in a low
terrible hiss that Mahfood again had to translate to Jimmy, guns were being given out as
well, to the men who signed up, so they could defend their community.
Later, as he walked away from the men, Jimmy did not like so much the idea of
the guns, but he was not going to tell Mahfood or Bucky that. News had a way of
spreading so quickly and he did not want it getting out that he was not prepared to
defend his community. The PDP supporters needed to arm themselves against the
better-equipped JDP supporters.
Guns meant police and police meant trouble, he had said to the two men, who
had laughed and said, “Who you think giving us the guns in the first place Jimmy if not
members of the Special Forces? The police cannot manage all the work of protecting
this island by themselves. Those guns, they coming straight from America. High
powered weapons to wipe out the JDP supporters.”
Something about it all made him so uneasy, but Jimmy just shook his head as if
he understood and said nothing.
The talk of work. Now that was something he could sign onto. It was the
beginning of a new year, and before you knew it, the Easter holidays would be up on
him. New church clothes for Paulette and the children. Big spiced Easter buns and
cheese. He did not want it said that jobs were being given out and he Jimmy Paul
Blackwood had turned his back on work.
By the time he got home, the children were all fast asleep, and Paulette was
laying down in their bed. She had left his dinner of boiled banana and tin mackerel
covered under a clean soft white cloth on the table. The lemonade was in the icebox,
because at that time they could not even afford a refrigerator. After he had eaten his
dinner, Jimmy changed into his night-clothes and went to lay down beside her. It was
dark and she said nothing to him.
“You sleeping?” He finally asked her, when he did not hear her gently snoring.
“You know I not sleeping, so why you asking?” She gently shoved him.
“Just checking,” he said to her, smiling. “I didn’t want to wake you up if you
was sleeping.”
He could hear her laughing. There were days he still could not believe his luck,
that Paulette was his woman. Those who did not believe in love at first sight were
kidding themselves, because from the first time he saw Paulette on the school yard
playing ground, jet-black skin and eyes that burned as bright as a night star, he knew he
would marry her and that they would have the most beautiful children together. It took
him nine long years to get her to understand this, that they would be together, that they
would always be together, but finally she did and soon after she moved in with him they
started having children together.
“Did Chin pay you today?” He wanted to know, because he had no lunch
money for the children tomorrow morning.
Paulette tensed up. “Yes,” she answered after a while, “ Mr. Chin paid me a
day’s work today.”
“Good,” he grunted more to himself than to her.
He knew that she was hoping, Paulette was, that he would not start in on Mr.
Chin again and how her employer was in love with his-Paulette. He was a man and he
knew when another man was after his woman. Men had instincts like that. All he was
hoping for now, was to get a good job so that Paulette could stop selling in Mr. Chin’s
shop on Harbour Street and, instead, stay home and take care of him and their children.
“The men are taking about a government work,” Jimmy offered to the slim dark
shadow in the lightless room. “They talking about good money. I thinking of going with
the men to try and get some of the money.”
Paulette rose up onto one elbow. “Government job?” She sounded skeptical.
“But is not our party in power.”
“I know,” he said, “I ask the man-them that tell me about the job the same
thing. They say is aid from some foreign country, either England or America, to get the
unemployed young men in the community working.”
She laid back down, without saying anything, but he could tell that she was
uneasy.
“If I get the job,” he tried reassuring her, “that will mean you can stay home
with the children. That will mean you can stop working in the Chiney-man shop.”
Despite herself, Paulette laughed. “I will never know, or understand,” she said,
shaking her head in the dark, “what about me working with the Chin brothers bothers
you so much.”
He pulled her close then, snuggled into the back of her neck, and kissed her.
“The men are meeting at midnight to go over the job requirements and things. Wake
me up then darling.”
She did wake him up at 11:20 pm and watched him get dressed, but he did not
like the way her eyes followed him around the room. As if she had a sense something
bad was going to happen. She could not understand why a group of men would be
meeting so late at night to talk about a job. There was something oh-so-fishy about it
all. Why couldn’t they do it in the morning?
He did not tell her about the guns. He did not tell her about the Special Forces.
He did not tell her that the meeting would be held at the Green Bay Firing Range in St.
Catherine. And he did not tell her about the huge sign-on bonus. He would just buy her
something nice tomorrow.
As Jimmy stood in the living room looking at their five children sprawled out all
over the place, Paulette came back out of their room with some sweet-smelling holy
water and she tipped the bottle with a hole in the cap over his head and some landed on
his face. She then stood up on tip-toe and kissed him. It was then that he saw her tears.
“Don’t cry,” he tried soothing her, “nothing not going happen. Nothing not
going happen. Even Santos going for the job too, and who would let anything happen
to Santos? He is Jamaica’s best football player!”
“I don’t sleep at night with Santos,” she was holding on to him, “but I sleep at
night with you.”
He pulled her closer to him and squeezed her so tight, he could feel her bones
rattle.
“I going get a good job is what I going do, and take care of you and the
children. Then you can stop working in that blasted Chiney-man shop! Nothing at all
not going happen. You going see. We just going to meet with some government people
is all. I will be back in a few hours.”
Her eyes were on him for a long time when he walked out the door and was
swallowed up by the dark night.
…
A group of ten men met that night. Bug-Eyes seemed a little sleepy. Santos as
usual was kicking a ball, and Mahfood was lighting a spliff. You could tell that most of
the men had been sleeping and had just woken up. In fact, Mahfood joked, more men
should have been there, four more men in fact for a total of fourteen people, but the
other men were still sleeping.
“Too bad,” Santos kept saying, keeping the ball steadily rolling on the tip of his
shoes, “any man that don’t come wont get any money. Easter round the corner and
man need money.”
He was in the newspapers often, Santos was, and had travelled to represent
Jamaica abroad many times, playing football. He really did not need to be there.
“A man can’t have enough money,” Santos was saying now, as if he knew that
the rest of the men were wondering what he was doing there. “Money like the air you
breath, you cant have enough of it.”
The men weren’t there long when two vehicles pulled up. A green army
ambulance and a dark blue van. Half of the men went in the green army ambulance and
the other half in the dark blue van. Then they started making there way on the outskirts
of the city to St. Catherine. Because it was so late most of the men fell asleep, and it was
only him and Santos awake in the blue van.
“How your woman Jimmy?” Santos asked laughing. “How the one Paulette
doing?’
Jimmy smiled. “She good. She little worried ‘bout where I going this hours of
the night, but when I tell her I going with you, she calm down.”
“That Paulette,” Santos kept smiling, “always worrying-worrying herself over
her man, Jimmy.”
“So who else she should worry-worry herself over?” He asked Santos, smiling.
“I want a woman like Paulette.” Santos was saying now. “ I want a woman who
want me just because of me. I don’t want a woman who want me because of anything
she think I might have.”
Jimmy thought about it for a long time before he answered. “It hard to find in
truth, what I have with Paulette. And maybe it is the fault of man more than it is the
fault of woman, why more man and woman not seem to get along together.”
By now, they were crossing over the Causeway Bridge and nearing the housing
schemes in St. Catherine.
“No, no, no!” Santos was laughing and saying, “It is the fault of woman more
than it is of man, why woman and man cannot get along together! Is Eve start all the
problem between man and woman! Eve listening to that serpent! It seem woman always
have some snake she listening to and making man’s life miserable! You think if my
name was not Santos and I was not Jamaica’s number one football player any woman
would want me? Woman worst than man, I tell you!”
“Don’t forget that the snake was a man,” Jimmy said, chuckling, “is man make
woman wicked!”
Now Santos was really laughing hard. “What you saying Jimmy man! You siding
with woman over man! I cant believe you! Nobody in the world wicked like woman,
and if there wasn’t a snake in that garden, trust me, woman would still be up to some
other kind of trouble!”
The two men doubled over in the van laughing.
“I tell you one thing,” Jimmy said, after their laughter had died down a little bit,
“I love Paulette long long time. I love Paulette from we children growing up. And she
never been wicked to me, not even one time.”
“Well then you lucky Jimmy! I jealous of you! And when you find a woman like
that, you have to hold on tight and keep her. If I ever-ever find a woman like Paulette I
going do everything in my power not to loose her!”
The van turned off the main road into a lane that had high walls surrounded by
thick heavy barbed wire fence. A sign outside a high metal fence said, “Green Bay
Firing Range.” A thicket of macca bushes ran along a path that led to a ragged drop
down into the ocean. You could hear the sounds of the waves crashing up to the shores.
After the ten men had gotten out of the two vehicles a man in army fatigues
came out to greet them. He told them that someone would come out soon to talk to
them about the work that they would be getting, especially the sign-on bonuses. And
there would be talk of that “other thing” which the grinning men knew was a reference
to guns and ammunition.
Left alone on the firing range the men started talking about what they would be
doing with their money. Mahfood wanted to give some to his mother so she could
finally get her eyes tested and get the eye-glasses that she badly needed, so she could
stop bumping into things around the house. Silver Shadow wanted to get a new pair of
sneakers.
Suddenly powerful floodlights came on blinding the ten men, and Jimmy would
always have the hardest time telling people exactly what happened after that. How
snipers materialized out of the dark bushes. The rapid gunfire that started. He and his
friends running in every which direction, but always, it seemed to him, running into
gunfire. Five men would be killed on the Green Bay Firing Range that night, including
the star football player Santos.
Jimmy would run towards a thicket of macca bushes the gigantic thorns digging
deep into and ripping off his flesh. Yet he kept using his bare and bloodied hands to
dig through the gigantic thorns. He was going so fast, Jimmy was, that he could hear the
sound of his own heart beating. Paulette, Lord Jesus, he had to save himself so he
would see Paulette again. And his children, his five precious children, they needed their
father. The man around where he lived would often tease him, calling him man-parlor
behind his back, because when Paulette was running late, Jimmy would be the one who
would get the children ready and walk them to school. Everyone would know when that
had happened because of the big, uneven plaits he had made in his daughters hair.
For a moment Jimmy thought he had gotten away before he ran right into a
soldier, who immediately took aim and started firing at him. He had to run right back
into the thorns that he had just gotten out of. He was bleeding from every part of his
body, blood even coming down into his eyes. Why were the army officers trying to kill
him and all the others? In the confusion of trying to escape and the heavy loud
pounding of his own heart, the movie he had watched that night at Carib Theatre
started playing over and over again in his head. Soon he heard the characters in the
movies telling him, run zig zag Jimmy, stop and roll over Jimmy, whatever you do
Jimmy don’t run in a straight line.
He came to the edge of a steep and rocky embankment leading down to the
ocean and crawled down between two large black stones and hid in the shadows.
Gunshots. He never heard so many gunshots in his life. And all the time he kept
wondering what had happened? What had they done? Why were the police and soldiers
shooting at them?
Towards morning he heard two men that he took to be soldiers taking. “The
government wanted them gone. Nothing but trouble makers and gang members, they
are. Talking ‘bout they coming to get guns to protect their community! Nothing but a
bunch of scoundrels!”
The men continued talking and Jimmy came to understand that they had gotten
their orders from the highest levels.
Soon, a third more official voice joined the conversation, and he could not
believe what he was hearing. “We have to get the story straight. We have to say they
came armed and fired at the soldiers. One or two got away … but, at least Santos, the
ringleader, is dead. Talking ‘bout he some youth kind of group leader. He nothing but a
communist sympathizer! The official word is: No angels died at the Green Bay Firing
Range.”
Jimmy waited until the voices stopped talking and the heavy boots walked away
before he could even begin to get his jumbled thoughts together. All he ever wanted
was a job to take care of his woman and his children. He shook his head disbelievingly
at all the lies that the government would immediately start telling. He knew now why
they had been singled out for extermination: They had formed a youth group of young
men from their area and in their “reasoning sessions” they had started asking questions.
Questions about what was happening not only in their community but also in their
country. They wanted to know how they could make things better for the people
around them. Santos had travelled to other parts of the world and he would come back
and tell them things he had seen and how those things had forced him to start
questioning everything around him. He especially told them about a group of black men
he had secretly met with in America, calling themselves the Black Panthers. Maybe they
could start calling themselves The Black Panthers too, Santos had suggested. The tears
started falling then for Santos and all the others. They were not gang members, he
wanted to shout out aloud. They were not part of any posse. It was the Special Forces
that had suggested that they get guns and ammunition. Most of the men were just there
to get a job. The tears were now falling into the rips and tears in his face, and they were
burning terribly. He could taste the salty tears mixed with blood in his mouth.
In the distance the ocean was now blood red with sun the rising. After a while
Jimmy saw what looked like a boat. He waited for a while to make sure that indeed it
was a small fisherman’s boat before he slowly started to wave his hands over his head,
signaling for help. He prayed to see Paulette again. He prayed to see his children again.
He was praying even when the fishermen let him onto their boat and covered him up
under a black tarpaulin and headed back out to sea for the Kingston Harbour.
government. It got so bad that they could not let him out of their sight, even when he
was sleeping, because Santos had such sticky fingers. No angels died at the Green Bay
Firing Range that early January morning, was the official word from the government
and the island’s armed forces. No angels died at the Green Bay Firing Range in St.
Catherine, Jamaica.
TITUBA SPEAKS
T
he magic I brought wrapped up tight in the bosom
of my chest to Salem, Massachusetts,
FIRE BUILDER
We must unpack
The book of symbols.
Call me ill-tempered;
Call me bad-tempered;
Call me all-for-myself;
Call me all-for-my-people;
Call me mythmaker;
Call me Firebuilder;
Call me One-Tete-Lokay.
Ah-you-a-it Ah-you-a-it
Ah-your-turn-to-be-it You-not-playing-fair
Ah-you-a-it.
Never put your trust one-hundred percent in other people, don’t care
Who they be. There are many wolves in sheeps clothing!
I-want-you-to-pull-you-all-self-together.
Stop-all-this-cow-bawling,
Finally I understood what all along they had been trying to tell me,
my living dead, those ones who did not like faasting into other people’s business,
the ones who kept insisting that the dead were to stay dead, and not
butt up into the life of the living ---
M
e ha dado con soñar con desterrados,
hombres y mujeres robados de su tierra
un 23 de septiembre del 2013,
a puros machetazos de pluma y papel
y un fatídico sello,168 guión 13.
Se me ha llenado la cabeza
de nuevos esclavizados,
aprisionados,
amordazados y apaleados,
que ni pueden correr,
rodeados de mar,
ahogados
en vorágines de historia y leyes.
Deep chains and shackles
que parecían borrados.
A Alanna Lockward
Desperté
y no recordé nada,
pero a la noche siguiente
soñé que le hablaba a mi vecino
haitiano,
y le decía,
¡Viene la guerra!
¡La vi anoche!
¡Nos invaden de nuevo!
Ven, vecino mío,
Dame la mano,
así no podrán con nosotros.
y cuando salimos,
encontré la cámara
tirada en una piedra.
Miré por el agujero
y vi todas las tropas,
algunas inertes en el suelo,
otras vencidas por la sed,
convertidas en hormigas,
locas y sin rumbo.
Miré a mi Marassá
y me reí.
Sophie Maríñez
Ciudad de Nueva York, 23 de julio del 2015.
M
i sistema esta inverso madre, o la luna es ciudad. O el puente
es hilo.
Que pasan. Que pasean. ¿Fui de cerca un fanal, madre? O el
puente es hilo.
Una noche gí-
rame.
Una noche.
¿Ha ocurrido ya el alba? ¿Ocurre el miedo?
Hebra el agua estación y un frío, y parte. ¿Fui de cerca y no
más?
Gí-
rame.
El Viejo
Q
ué hacer con una herida a lo lejos.
En el cristal de tu ojo pasa una imagen invisible.
Del árbol las ramas por nacer son presionadas contra el techo,
y las raíces aparentan que vuelan
atadas a unas sogas sobre un fondo de piedra.
Tus raíces se enredan en ti mismo,
se alimentan de ti y te devastan
como caballos
viviendo su galope en su propio latido
[De una estancia en el norte
Con una cuchilla raspan tu identidad. La idea se mueve como hierro desaceitado.
Descubres una voz a tu nombre, ‘en medio del más delicado baño de sangre’ un
secreto dentro de un secreto. Ahora soy un peso, un árbol trasplantado. De un
golpe acaricio mi cráneo. Del espíritu las puertas de metal cerraron bruscamente,
tragando vibración, cada segundo.
Cada uno de nosotros proyectaba la imagen del país en límites pendientes. Un extremo
nos marca. La ignorancia también nos hunde la imaginación. A dónde vamos,
sosteniendo ridículamente el rastro de una punta. La magnitud raída ascenderá.
Cómo adentrar el diente en la otra carne cuando aprietas tus labios con horror.
Lisa Allen-Agostini
“Y
ou came into my life like a force of nature: you were the tsunami to my
Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina to my levees.” Of course, by the time
the earthquake was over and Port Royal was under the
Caribbean Sea a legend was born. But you can’t live in a
legend. You might look back on it with awe at the destruction and maybe regret
for what once had been; you might moralise about why so much had to be lost.
But you can’t hold it and marry it and make babies with it. That’s not what
happens after a force of nature hits you. Basically, you sweep up the water when
the floods subside, bury your dead and move the hell on.
*
His head tilted to the side, he looked with puzzlement at Abraham
Entertaining the Angels. His fair hair stood on end in artful spikes; he looked
like he’d been dipped head first into a vat of gel and left to dry hanging by his
ankles. Young. The pen crosshatching an angel’s wing hesitated, stuttering in
midair while he mapped Rembrandt’s work with his eyes. A white T-shirt, not
branded with Nike or Oakley or Von Dutch or whatever it was kids were in that
season; his shirt was an empty canvas. He wore shorts over vintage Chuck
Taylors, frayed black ones with white soles that looked authentically scuffed, not
bought that way. From his army green satchel a spiral bound drawing pad stuck
out where he’d closed the bag’s flap carelessly as it hung from his shoulder. He
was the kind of thin you’d call rangy, if you knew the word. He was too young
for me.
I didn’t bump into him on purpose. It really was an accident that I had
swung my arms just a little too wide as I stretched, trying to work out the kink I
had in my neck from looking up at all those paintings for hours on end. He
apologized to me, that slow Southern drawl melting me from the very start. Oh,
it’s not your fault, I told him, I hit you; I’m sorry. But I had an accent too.
There was no distance at all from the angels to the ice cream truck on the
Smithsonian’s pavement, or so it seemed because there we were in a blink with
stunned expressions and cones in our hands. It was hot, the kind of hot only
DC does, humid and still, and the air was like steam rising slowly off a bowl of
rice. Rivulets of vanilla ran down his wrist. I wanted to lick them off. I didn’t
even know his name yet.
THE MAGICAL NEGRO SPEAKS 275
my mother’s glaucoma, and pass their days in reading, gardening and keeping
house. I live nearby in a flat inconveniently far from my job but close enough to
my parents that I could be on their porch in five minutes if there were an
emergency. I have a few friends, the same ones I’ve had since I was a student
here myself. We have movie night on Fridays and drink wine on Saturday nights.
We’re all single and nobody minds when somebody gets drunk and wakes up on
the couch Sunday morning. It’s the life we’ve chosen. It’s the life I chose.
*
“Do you remember that Sunday when we saw a voodoo doll in the folk art stall? It
was such a ridiculously black thing, with those mismatched glass beads for eyes and that
sackcloth dress. When I bought it, I wanted to show it to you, to tell you what the vendor had
told me: that if I tied a strand of your hair to it and buried it in my back yard, it would bring
you back to me. It was a joke and I didn’t understand why you didn’t find it funny. It was
just a joke. But you got so mad you didn’t say a word to me again until I kissed the back of
your neck at your door that night. I threw the doll in the trash and we didn’t talk about it
again. But I didn’t know why you felt the way you did. I didn’t even understand exactly what
you felt. You never told me and I guess I couldn’t ask until now.”
This letter has taken me by surprise. We email once in a blue moon, and
before this message never got beyond the superficial patter of two ex-lovers
who have nothing really to say. He told me when he went back for his MBA,
and when he started his own magazine; I told him when I bought my flat, and
when I got tenure. But now, so long after our affair, he has written a letter—in
pen and ink on paper—to ask me to marry him. He has never got over me, he
said; no one made him feel the way he felt with me. He said I was the reason he
started the magazine, because being with me had made him want to make
something of himself.
I wonder how I should reply.
I’m in the verandah of my parents’ house, the house in which I grew up.
A wild Orange-winged Amazon Parrot, Amazona amazonica tobagensis, squawks in
the garden and I pause to consider its ancestors’ path from the South American
jungle to this island where it eats fruit from my parents’ trees and becomes a
nuisance to my father, who dislikes its long, white droppings and the half-eaten
fruit it leaves behind even more than my mother dislikes its constant raw
screeching. Though parrots are naturally gregarious, this one is always alone. I’ve
never seen it fly with others whose pairs of bright green wings spread wide
soaring into the blue sky. Do I imagine desolation in its cries?
Behind the tree in which it is perched eating my parents’ ripe mangoes,
the hills lounge in hazy splendor. I’ve known these hills all my life. They are like
comforting old friends. This is what I should tell him, I think: I always knew I
would come back to these hills. They are home and I couldn’t leave them. I loved you but I
loved the hills more. As deep and sudden as it was, our love alone could never be as big as
these hills. In the tree the parrot, so far from South America, nibbles a mango for
its solitary dinner.
*
The leaves on the Mall were turning gold when he drove me to the
airport. We didn’t talk much on the way. He parked his car and helped me with
my bags at curbside check-in, and we walked around holding hands until they
called my flight.
Do you think, he started to say, but stopped when we spotted the
Smithsonian store. He dragged me inside, laughing because even though we’d
spent nearly every weekend at a Smithsonian building we’d never bought any
souvenirs. He bought me a soapstone heart. Take it, he said. You’ll have it
forever. When his back was turned I picked up a Kewpie doll and wrapped a
strand of my hair around it. I wanted to thrust it into his hand. For the other
one, I wanted to say. But I put it back on the shelf and steeled myself to walk to
the gate.
*
I have decided how to reply. This is what I will write: Love has its own
geometry. No one can predict or program where the heart will go when it loves, what paths it
will describe in its trajectory. Love makes the heart willful and capricious and blind, and the
heart will go where it will go. My heart had to come home.
And isn’t it only partly a lie, o my willful heart?
D
e Elogio de las salamandras. Santo Domingo: Editora Búho, 2010.
Oyiyolo
Le gustaban los cojines, los sillones mullidos, las mantas, los libros abiertos.
Exploraba, en su perenne soledad, los rincones de la casa, los cuartos vacíos.
Olisqueaba, siguiendo rastros invisibles, las plantas en los maceteros. Auscultaba con
sus ojos de cristal la noche y su misterio. Los pájaros y las ardillas en las ramas lo ponían
frenético. Buscaba ronroneando la caricia presta en el cuello, en el lomo eléctrico.
Buscaba refugio en mis senos y en mi pubis desnudo.
Oyiyolo ha muerto. Hoy culpo a la tristeza y, en señal de duelo, me he rasurado
las cejas para no verme frente al espejo con mi rostro de ayer.
................................................................................................................................................
A diferencia del animal fantástico de Etgar Keret, tengo un gato que se come
mis recuerdos. Cada tarde, Romino —así se llama mi gato— espera pacientemente a
que me arrellane en el sillón a recordar y, entonces, se me abalanza encima y devora mis
recuerdos. Yo trato de defenderme, cierro los ojos y defiendo palmo a palmo los
rastrojos de recuerdos, pero mi gato juega con ellos: se hace que no los ve, los deja
escapar y después se les tira encima, los martiriza un poco, hasta que finalmente, los
engulle con fruición. Ya casi no me quedan recuerdos y esto alguna ventaja tiene: ya no
necesito beber tanto para olvidar. Y así, Romino se ha comido mis mañanas de
infancia, devorado las tardes frente al mar en Santo Domingo. Ya no sufro por la mujer
que un día dijo amarme —ni siquiera recuerdo su nombre. Se lo habrá comido Romino
en algún rincón de la casa—.
Ahora, al igual que Romino, estoy condenado al presente.
SELECCIÓN DE POEMAS 279
............................................................................................................................................
Ésta es la historia de una mujer bajo un cono de luz verde en la mesa de un bar,
una inminente despedida con lágrimas y promesas —como suele ocurrir en estos
casos— y la aparición de un gato zen.
Estábamos tomándonos unas copas de vino en un bar muy cercano a la estación
de tren de Irún. Angelu insistía en que me quedara, pero yo tenía que tomar el próximo
tren a París esa noche.
—Dame una buena razón para perder el tren—creo que le dije, sin mucha
convicción.
—Porque mirar a tus ojos le insufla a mi alma la levedad de una pluma que flota
desde la cocina al dormitorio de una casa que jamás he visto, pero aún así, creo
recordar—me contestó ella. La besé en el cuello y aspiré su dulce fragancia de azucenas
muertas.
Demás está decir que no tomé el tren esa noche. Caminamos por la calle de la
Ermita y llegamos a una casa que tenía un amplio jardín enfrente. Entramos y me invitó
a tomar un trago en la cocina. Miré hacía la habitación y sentí un escalofrío que me
recorrió la espalda.
A la mañana siguiente, cuando desperté, Angelu había desaparecido. En cambio,
un gato zen con perfume de mujer ronroneaba recostado en mi pecho.
................................................................................................................................................
Hoy
Hoy
que culpo a la tristeza
me he afeitado las cejas
para no verme frente al espejo
con mi rostro de ayer.
Mi gato ha muerto.
................................................................................................................................................
En mi casa tengo
un gato razonable
una mujer paseándose por todos mis libros
y, a veces, amigos,
sin los cuales podría vivir.
Apalka
Ernesto Cardenal
M
e llamo Alejandro Bravo Serrano y me he ocultado durante algún tiempo
es este barrio de Managua tratando de escapar de una cita inaplazable.
Los otros hace tiempo que cumplieron con su destino.
Fui un joven apocado. La lectura constituía toda mi diversión.
Novelas de caballería, relatos de cowboys, baratas novelas pornográficas, las aventuras
de Pinpinella Escarlata y las peripecias de Sandokan llenaban mis noches. En una tienda
de libros de segunda mano conocí a los otros. Uno de ellos era forzudo, no muy alto,
cabellos oscuro y mentón firme, como los héroes de las novelas que constituían mis
desvelos. El otro era alto y desgarbado, cabello castaño claro, aunque de una fortaleza
física fuera de lo común, adquirida gracias a los ejercicios de tensión dinámica del
famoso forzudo Charles Atlas, cuyos folletos eran distribuidos en el país por el escritor
Sergio Ramírez. Eduardo Miranda se llamaba el forzudo, Claudio Wheelock el otro.
Iniciamos una fructífera amistad. Soñamos con aventuras comunes, compartimos
héroes y villanos, romances y batalles.
Una tarde Claudio llegó como loco a mi casa agitando un viejo papel
amarillento. Era un manuscrito muy antiguo redactado en un inglés elegante y desusado,
como el que usó Shakespeare para los parlamentos de sus obras. Limpiando la bodega
de su casa se encontró con un viejo baúl. Su imaginación se desbordó. Recordó que en
nuestros locos sueños le habíamos hecho descendiente de un pirata escocés, por su tez
blanca y su apellido sajón. Forzó la cerradura del viejo baúl y se encontró con una
cantidad de trapos viejos, daguerrotipos desvaídos de sus ancestros y una pequeña arca
de latón, cuya cerradura de tan oxidada fue imposible abrir. Claudio se armó de un
fuerte destornillador y rompió la arqueta. Premiando sus sueños estaba el viejo
282 ALEJANDRO BRAVO
pergamino amarillento que agitaba ante mis ojos. Llamamos por teléfono a Miranda y
nos pusimos a estudiar el pergamino. Con la ayuda de un diccionario y los
conocimientos rudimentarios que todos teníamos de la lengua inglesa, pudimos
descifrarlo parcialmente.
El papel daba la localización de un cementerio donde la hermandad de piratas
que gobernó la Isla de Tortuga, enterraba a sus muertos. En un incierto lugar de la costa
atlántica de Nicaragua quedaba el enterradero. Imaginamos, como en las páginas de La
Isla del Tesoro, a nosotros tres encontrando la tumba de un viejo pirata colmada de
relucientes doblones, un par de pistolones y un sable fiel con el nombre del dueño de la
sepultura grabado en su hoja. Nada más le pudimos sacar al documento.
Aquel papel era el hallazgo más importante de nuestras vidas, el seguro
pasaporte a la fama y la riqueza. No podíamos arriesgarnos a compartirlo con nadie.
Con sólo el brillo de nuestros ojos, sin hablarlo, estábamos estableciendo un pacto. El
documento había cambiado nuestras vidas. Nos unía más profundamente que cualquier
otro vínculo convencional. Convenimos en que teníamos tiempo de sobra. Por causa de
nuestra juventud, los padres respectivos no nos permitirían tomar los azarosos caminos
que llevaban a la costa atlántica. Era además una soberana locura buscar una tumba en
un territorio de trece mil kilómetros cuadrados. Repartimos el trabajo para cabalmente
descifrar el documento y encontrar la sepultura. Nos concentramos en terminar los
estudios de secundaria. Desde entonces nos especializamos en determinadas áreas del
conocimiento. Yo me dediqué con ahínco a perfeccionar el conocimiento de la lengua
inglesa. Claudio a leer mapas, a manejar el sextante y la brújula como si fuese un
experimentado navegante del siglo XVII y Miranda se especializó en la geografía y las
costumbres de las gentes de la costa atlántica. Así, cuando terminamos los estudios
preparatorios, yo ingresé en la escuela de traducción que regentaban los jesuitas en la
capital; Claudio, quién era el custodio del documento, a estudiar el papel a la luz de los
conocimientos recién adquiridos.
Atrás había quedado la adolescencia. Éramos jóvenes impetuosos, seguros de
que teníamos un destino muy superior a la manada de petulantes que compartían con
cada uno las aulas universitarias, y para quienes un seguro empleo, el regazo
cuasimaternal de una esposa, el crédito en ciertos almacenes comerciales y una casa
comprada a plazos eran los ideales de la vida. Nada queríamos con esa gentuza
conformista. El tesoro y la fama serían nuestros. Comprendimos en que debíamos de
permanecer célibes. La dulce esposa tarde o temprano secaría de nuestros labios el
secreto y el temor natural la llevaría a obligar al esposo hablador a desistir de nuestro
magno proyecto, o si era ambiciosa, involucraría a un familiar suyo en la aventura, lo
que daría al traste con nuestra logia e introduciría el desastre en nuestro proyecto. Y nos
veíamos lidiando con un Long John Silver en versión criolla. Hicimos entonces un
terrible juramento secreto que nos ataba más fuertemente. Nada de boda, nada de
amantes permanentes, abandonar casa y familia el día que el tesoro lo demandase o una
muerte dolorosa a manos de los otros miembros de nuestra secta.
marineros del yate. El vocinglerío de los que pedían trabajo, jalándonos el creole
musicalmente como si fuera un calipso en las bocas de los bluefileños. Declinamos
cortésmente las ofertas, contestándoles en inglés.
Nuestro antropólogo nos había advertido de las diferencias culturales entre
Atlántico y Pacífico y de lo ofensivo que resultaba hablar castellano por aquella zona.
Claudio había inspeccionado muy bien el lugar. Se había hecho de buenos
mapas, así que sin problema algunos remontamos el río Escondido y en un punto
tomamos el canal intercostal. El camarote del yate estaba bastante cómodo. Tenía
cuatro literas, una pequeña cocina, un refrigerador y un minúsculo cuarto de baño, de
manera que los tres días de navegación entre Bluefields y nuestro destino lo pasamos
muy bien. Desfiló ante nuestros ojos la maravilla de Laguna de Perlas, el caudal sonoro
del río Grande, la jungla bulliciosa que crece en las márgenes del Prinzapolka, laberintos
de caños y lagunas, lagunas que desembocan en otras lagunas, bandadas de aves que
alzaban vuelo al oír el motor del yate, manadas de monos curiosos que brincaban en las
copas de los árboles siguiendo nuestro rumbo, venados en la lejanía, loras refulgentes
como esmeraldas con alas. De noche cuando fondeábamos en algún lugar para
descansar eran otros los animales: rugían a lo lejos pumas en la oscuridad, atrevidos los
pocoyos volaban casi sobre nuestras cabezas y los mosquitos invadían el ambiente. Al
cuarto día de navegación llegamos al poblado de Karatá. Atracamos en un pequeño
muelle. Eduardo desembarcó solo. Fue muy bien recibido. En los seis meses que pasó
en la zona aprendió a hablar miskito. Habló con los ancianos y les entregó obsequios
que había llevado. Luego nos llamó para que desembarcáramos. Pasamos ese día en el
poblado. Apreciamos la paz con que viven los miskitos, su integración con la naturaleza,
su sabiduría elemental. Comimos mejor que en cualquier banquete principesco: langosta
fresca cocinada con aceite de coco, un arroz muy bien sazonado y fruta de pan.
Eduardo dijo que habíamos venido en excursión de caza y pesca. Gentilmente declinó
decenas de ofertas de lugareños para servirnos como guías. Al día siguiente partimos en
busca del cementerio pirata.
Bordeamos la costa Sur de la extensa laguna, revisando la zona pulgada a
pulgada con los poderosos prismáticos que llevábamos. Dos días gastamos en ese
recorrido. Cuando se acercaban algunos picantes de pescadores, fingíamos pescar,
saludábamos alegremente y les obsequiábamos algo para que se alejaran. Al tercer día el
antropólogo nos dijo que creía tener localizado el sitio del embarcadero de que habla el
documento de Roach. Eran como las tres de la tarde cuando desembarcamos. Nos
internamos en la jungla tupida. Rápidamente perdimos el sentido de la orientación.
Recordé la descripción que Roach hacía del lugar. Claudio me hizo ver que de poco
servía recordar al pirata, en ciento cincuenta años la jungla debía haber cambiado la
fisonomía del lugar y a lo mejor se había tragado la cripta del tesoro. Seguimos
lentamente buscando alguna orientación para dar con el cementerio. Serían como las
cinco de la tarde cuando escuchamos un grito triunfal de Claudio: “¡Muchachos,
encontré una de la cruces célticas!”. Corrimos hacia el sitio y vimos a Claudio con rostro
sonriente mostrando entre las raíces de un gigantesco palo de hule, la parte superior de
una cruz. Estaba tan deteriorada que era imposible leer la inscripción. Pero el hallazgo
de la cruz era una señal alentadora de que estábamos sobre la pista. La luz del día era
muy tenue para continuar la búsqueda. Hicimos marcas con machete en los árboles para
señalar el camino y regresamos al yate. Esa noche tuvimos una pequeña celebración.
Desayunamos copiosamente la mañana siguiente. En una mochila llevamos
comida enlatada. Piocha, pala y pico en mano, machete al cinto, nos trasladamos al lugar
donde encontramos la cruz. A partir de ella empezamos a limpiar de maleza el terreno a
punta de machete. A las dos horas de estar rozando, las manos se nos habían llenado de
ampollas, el contacto con el machete era una tortura. Claudio dio con otra cruz. Estaba
caída y su inscripción era legible: “Robert Ferguson. * Bristol, June 12, 1761, + Roatán,
January, 28, 1778”. Ese descubrimiento nos dio nuevos bríos y trabajamos con ahínco,
pese al terrible dolor que sentíamos en las manos llagadas. Por la tarde teníamos limpia
una extensión como de una hectárea. Nos dimos un descanso para comer. Devoramos
varias latas de atún, una barra de pan y tomamos muchas gaseosas. Continuamos con el
trabajo como a eso de las cuatro. De nuevo Claudio fue el afortunado y dio con
elevación en el terreno. Gritamos de alegría. Emprendimos la labor de macheteros con
una energía sin límites. Serían como las cinco de la tarde cuando dimos con la entrada
de la cripta. La luz solar se había atenuado. Discutimos brevemente si valía la pena
esperar hasta el día siguiente para penetrar o si lo hacíamos inmediatamente. Los tres
convinimos en que era preferible buscar cómo penetrar de inmediato y si era necesario
trabajaríamos de noche en el interior, alumbrados por las potentes lámparas Coleman
que llevábamos en el yate. A Claudio le correspondió el honor de dar los primeros
golpes de pica en la entrada de la cripta.
La puerta de hierro que daba acceso estaba enmohecida por el paso del tiempo.
Los tres golpeábamos furiosamente atacando los goznes sobre los que estaba montada.
Al cabo de media hora cayó con gran estruendo, levantando una nube de polvo que casi
nos ahogó. Desde dentro, se vino después del polvo una vaharada de tufo insoportable.
Era el hedor de mil muertos, un aire malsano que denotaba perversidad, un aviso que
los que allí estaban enterrados no debían de ser perturbados, pues una maldad no –
humana podía levantarse y caminar sobre la tierra amenazando nuestra especie. Pasada
la impresión, nos reímos de nuestros temores. La Hermandad de Tortuga había
mandado a realizar un magnífico trabajo de mampostería. La cripta estaba excavada en
la colina, sólo la puerta de hierro era el indicio que allí el ser humano había
transformado la naturaleza. Después de la puerta una escalera inauguraba el descenso a
las profundidades de la tierra. Hábilmente diseñados, unos respiraderos traían aire
fresco al abismo. Luego de descender unos cinco minutos llegamos a un pasillo, donde,
excavadas en los lados, como en las antiguas catacumbas, estaban las tumbas de los
piratas. De ese pasillo salían otros, donde también había tumbas. El descenso lo
habíamos realizado en competo silencio y cuando alcanzamos el pasillo solamente
nuestros pasos resonaban en la oquedad de la cripta.
con frescos que detallaban actos siniestros: matanzas, violaciones, misas negras, pactos
demoníacos, relaciones carnales de piratas con súcubos. En un detalle especialmente
vívido. Barba Negra ofrecía el corazón de un niño, que yacía a sus pies abierto en canal,
a un demonio y a cambio recibía la bandera negra con el emblema de la calavera al
centro y las dos tibias cruzadas. En la pared, frente al fresco estaban grabadas las
palabras NON OMNIS MORIAR (No moriré del todo). Unos pasos nos sacaron de
nuestro estupor. No nos detuvimos a averiguar qué o quiénes deambulaban por la
cripta. Yo encabezaba la marcha aferrando una de las mochilas que contenían alhajas.
Los otros iban detrás. No supe cuánto corrí, no cuántas veces pasé por el mismo pasillo
o por pasillos idénticos de ese infernal laberinto. El terror que invadía mi espíritu era tal
que no atinaba a otra cosa que acorrer alocadamente buscando la salida. Los pasos de
mis amigos resonaban detrás de mí. Detrás de ellos resonaban los otros pasos. Pasos de
seres cuyo andar no era e este mundo, pasos que rezumaban maldad, pasos que
buscaban venganza, pasos de una crueldad infinita. Gané la escalera que apareció ante
mis ojos providencialmente. Subí con desesperación. Entonces escuché detrás a mis
amigos gritar aterradoramente. No volví la vista. Supe que no los volvería a ver jamás.
Logré salir de la cripta y busqué el camino al yate para escapar de ese horrendo lugar lo
más rápido que pudiera.
Cuando llegué a orillas de la laguna un nuevo horror me esperaba que superaba
en mucho las horas de espanto vividas en el interior de la cripta del tesoro. En medio de
la laguna, chorreando agua por todos lados, lleno de un limo verdoso, fosforescente y
maligno, emergía de las profundidades un viejo bergantín. Desde el castillo de popa
hasta el mascarón de proa, desde lo alto del trinquete hasta las profundidades de la
sentina, el buque reunía en su maderamen podrido y en los jirones de sus velas, una
maldad ultraterrena. Su sola existencia era una profanación a la vida, un insulto a la
serena luz de las estrellas. Aferrados a las jarcias, agarrados de las barandillas del
espantoso barco aullaba una pandilla de piratas. A la luz de una luna gibosa pude ver sus
rostros descarnados, sus carnes putrefactas y comprendí el sentido de la macabra
sentencia que estaba escrita en el pasillo del fresco. Ese no moriré del todo tenía un
sentido literal.
Corrí como enloquecido hacia la selva, espesa. No me importó que las espinas
rompieran mis ropas y laceraran mis carnes. No tenía rumbo fijo. Sólo la idea de escapar
de ese lugar monstruoso. No supe cuántos días vagué por la selva, ni dónde fue que me
encontraron desmayado unos compasivos miskitos que me llevaron hasta su comunidad
y me cuidaron. Luego me dijeron que tenía una fiebre altísima y que deliraba hablando
de fantasmas.
Regresé a Managua. La mochila con alhajas la conservo intacta. Vivo
pobremente en un barrio donde trato de ocultar mi existencia. Sé que los piratas me
buscarán para recuperar el oro maldito, que les pertenecerá para toda la eternidad.
1 de julio de 1994
ALFONSINA Y EL BAR
N
o es posible que te llames así
y que vengas a este sitio
¿Lágrimas
o escorpiones?
Esto he de contarlo
por ahora lo escribo
Dilecto Roque Dalton infierno o paraíso donde te encuentres hace un rato hablábamos
de ti. Llovía en Medellín y la temperatura era de diez cervezas bajo cero .Yo estaba muy
triste porque mi ventana daba al barrio de las putas y nosotros hablando de Gramsci y
Benny Moré como si no hubiera otro cielo otra migaja otra Mater Dolorosa .Allá abajo
los pendejos de la historia ponen banderillas, se van diciendo que no hay Marx que dure
cien años ni Engels que lo resista .Vuelven las cervezas y se confunden con el oro de la
espuma, con el humo de las amapolas y ya no hay muro de Berlín ni de las
lamentaciones . Como si todo fuera tan fácil y no hay una vitrola con Silvio Rodríguez
o Alí Primera. Ahora resulta que el brócoli es anticancerígeno. Viejo Roque del cielo cae
nostalgia y unos muchachos del setenta cantan a todo galope con David Bowie Space
Oddity y Medellín bien vale una visa. Dilecto Roque dentro de tres días estaré en La
Habana de puro malecón y cuatro trenes después en Santiago de Cuba la ciudad para
héroes. Vuelve otra ronda de cervezas del país pues como dice el slogan cervezas claras
conservan amistades. Alguien pregunta por Fabricio Ojeda y Rudi Dutshke se cambia
de asiento. Guillermo Lobatón enciende un cigarro y dilecto poeta si vieras a Stokely
Carmichael haciendo de ciudadano Kane. Yo dije de repente: la patria es un tornasol.
Del barrio de las putas llega un vago olor a bandeja paisa. Ahora cantan a coro la
guantanamera Cohn-Bendit, Guillermo Lobatón y estoy borracho hasta los huesos
Roque y viva la revolución. .Eldridge Cleaver y Sei Fonós hablan de teosofía. Esto es la
taberna U-Flekus Babel. El de la guitarra es Turcios Lima y ahorita vienen los guardias y
a joder. Estoy loco porque pase algo y me palpo el costado y no siento el fragor de la
pistola. Good Bye Camilo Torres quiere acostarse y nosotros que no que la noche es
joven y los noticieros son una mierda y llega Eldridge Cleaver y Frei Betto canta con
saudade y viejo y dilecto Roque yo no pude conocerte pero te escribo desde este
Medellín abarrotado de taxis y amapola y estoy borracho al lado de esta ventana que da
al barrio de las putas.
A Israel Domínguez
CELOS JAPONESES
BODYART
No te miro
te contemplo
Contemplar es simplemente
dejar que los ojos descansen fijamente
sobre algún objeto escogido
y sentirlo,
o como dicen los budistas
llegar a serlo.
¿Me entiendes?
ANIMAL DE DISCOTECA
Dispersas están por las costas del país. Hay dos humos que suben y rebotan en el cielo
de platino. La cerveza orada con su amarillo alemán la brevedad de los cuerpos que ayer
hacían las lecciones como obedientes escolares. Comienza el asedio. Entran los
forasteros con colleras de hilo como el perro san bernardo que quiere salvar a la
humanidad. Soy el que mueve los discos. Agazapado bebo y mastico de lo sagrado.
Ahora entran los animales de discotecas. Sus vestidos de flores revientan en esta otra
primavera. Primavera de neón. Primavera de semen. Primavera que en los dos litorales
quitan los deseos de atacar un cuartel o dar los buenos días. No puedo distraerme con
estos cuerpos que se me enciman. Los soporto. Me los llevo de manera lenta. Animales
que se irán al filo de las cuatro aeme. Mañana han de volver. Sonoros. Perfumados.
Sensuales.
HOY
Subí a la colina
unos hombres talaban un árbol
Decían palabrotas
nombres de mujeres
Pensé en la muerte
la anunciación de la sangre
el rigor de lo vivido
PRIMERA CARTA
P
rimero vino una abuela de hace años
y tomó su asiento en la primera fila
después vivieron los días difíciles
y los muchos hijos
y en una de esas de que si quiero
de que si no…
de que los hijos solo vienen y ya
en una de esas
vino mi padre
y nació bendito
con la certeza de la esperanza
con el sol en la mano
y mi abuela sonrió…
como sonreía siempre
con la bendición de cada hijo
con la misma sonrisa que nos heredo al marcharse
con esa sonrisa del color de las mas fuertes
con la misma sonrisa de las que no se detienen nunca
a pesar de las montañas a su paso.
Luego siguieron los días difíciles
y mi abuela que busca
y trata de entender
la mejor forma de ser feliz
y un día que parece que es
y muchos días que no es feliz
y revisa los recuerdos
y recuenta los hombres a su paso
y vienen más hijos y más sonrisas
y la misma hambre de antes.
Luego murió mi abuela
CARTA A MIS ABUELAS 301
SEGUNDA CARTA
Yo nunca la vi
Yo nunca la vi
pero seguramente cantaba en el coro de la iglesia
y era líder de algún grupo de jóvenes
la imagino sonriendo en la puerta de su casa
escapando por las noche a través de la ventana
regresando de mañana con los ojos llenos de luz.
ROTUNDAMENTE NEGRA
Me niego rotundamente
a negar mi voz mi sangre y mi piel
y me niego rotundamente
a dejar de ser yo
a dejar de sentirme bien
cuando miro mi rostro en el espejo
con mi boca rotundamente grande
y mi nariz
rotundamente hermosa
y mis dientes
rotundamente blancos
y mi piel
valientemente negra
y me niego categóricamente a
dejar de hablar mi lengua; mi acento y mi historia
y me niego absolutamente
a ser de los que se callan
de los que temen de los que lloran
porque me acepto
rotundamente libre
rotundamente negra
rotundamente hermosa.
N
os dieron la risa con sus blancos
dientes chorreando contenturas día y día.
A pesar de vivir las blancas
horas de la luz en negras
noches afiladas, caía su sudor
sobre el campo fértil haciendo de la caña, azúcar;
del azúcar, ventana para emancipar el mundo;
del mundo, dentaduras, jazz, merengue,
música que libera
todas las raíces de la tierra.
306 REI BERROA
EN BLANCO Y NEGRO
Afortunada o desafortunadamente
ya no aparece en la tele y sus colores
y anda desorientada su figura
paseándose por las ondas de la radio,
por los bosques o en los polos,
buscando la compaña inevitable
de la hormiga o de la oveja,
de la foca o las termitas,
del zorrillo, de la cebra, del pingüino,
en cuyas formas de ébano y marfil
se encuentra Dios en su asamblea,
pues ahora sólo existe en blanco y negro
y es una masa inmaterial de ficción descolorida.
Study of Now
R
ight now
It happened then
Where were you looking?
Said
Find your way back
Follow the crowns
Not the money
Not dead
Not in praise of poison
We all pick one
For the love of
Now
He classifies it creole
All of history needing to survive at once
The need to know your history to survive
This is the first time they could fit two islands on a plane wrapped in a city
So convenient
They say look how happy he is!
How he dances
Sings
Must be his paradise
They always think a once broken singin black body dancin in is in paradise
No, it is in praise
Mourning is praise too
We been praising since time was nameless
Why stop now?
Gracias al ascenso social que habían alcanzado y a sus vínculos con familias
españolas prominentes, una generación de afrodescedientes llegó a tener prominencia
en el liderato político de Nicaragua en las décadas que siguieron a la independencia,
siendo el grupo más notable el que se localiza en el barrio San Felipe, hoy en León.
Desde el liderato del Partido Liberal, este grupo promovió una visión de la república
que desafió a la oligarquía conservadora. Justin Wolfe argumenta que la raza está en la
base de los conflictos políticos de las décadas de 1840-1860, aunque más
frecuentemente estos se presentan como conflictos de interés entre grupos de diferentes
localidades, cuestiones de lugar más que de raza. Este acercamiento arroja nueva luz
sobre una narrativa historiográfica que ordinariamente se organiza sobre la
contradicción entre liberales y conservadores, y la aparente coherencia entre esa división
de partidos y la rivalidad regional entre León y Granada. Wolf explica que los liberales
demandaban completa igualdad, pero su visión cosmopolita los llevó a eludir el lenguaje
directo sobre la cuestión racial. Habiendo mejorado su estatus social mediante tácticas
de blanqueamiento, parecen negar o sublimar una identidad racial y prefieren reclamar
un lugar en el mundo de la civilización liberal, lo cual podría contribuir a explicar la
popularidad del término “ladino” en este periodo. Los liberales de San Felipe nunca
tuvieron los recursos financieros de sus rivales conservadores de Granada, la fuerza
política que tuvieron se basó en reclamos populares, una política en buena medida
derivada de la lucha contra el racismo institucional y cultural, y de las redes de apoyo
local. Sin un proyecto radical, fueron perdiendo fuerza y San Felipe fue reincorporado a
León, y las jerarquías coloniales de raza volvieron a dominar el ambiente político.
En Nicaragua y El Salvador resulta particularmente irónica la borradura de la
negritud en la imagen de la nación, siendo estos los países de América Central que más
se identifican con la costa del Pacífico y la región montañosa como el hogar del sujeto
nacional prototípico. Y es en esas áreas donde durante la colonia y los primeros años
tras la independencia estuvieron las poblaciones que trabajaban en la crianza de ganado
y la producción de azúcar, poblaciones que eran vistas generalmente en la época como
predominantemente mezcladas y afrodescendientes. Entre 1871 y 1893, los regímenes
liberales centroamericanos promovieron una reclasificación étnica que tuvo enormes e
irónicas consecuencias. Los censos de la época documentan una caída dramática en el
porcentaje de la población identificada como india junto con un crecimiento
proporcional de la población ladina. En esos mismos años, la población rural se veía
sometida a un renovado sistema de trabajo compulsorio, precisamente por pertenecer a
la etnia que los censos borraban. Lowell Gudmundson estudia los archivos
demográficos de algunos de los llamados “pueblos blancos” en el oeste de Nicaragua,
para arrojar luz sobre las dinámicas raciales de la época. Las tendencias en la selección
de pareja son un claro ejemplo de una paradoja que se observa en otras partes de
Latinoamérica: la mezcla racial generalizada junto a la exclusión de los indios, en algunas
circunstancias, produce una razón muy alta de preferencia racial en la selección de pareja
en todos los grupos, y un alto índice de parejas exogámicas para todos excepto para la
mayoría india. A partir de 1883, los oficiales del censo usaban seis categorías de
clasificación racial y determinaban la clasificación en base a una impresión visual. Tenían
que improvisar cuando encontraban combinaciones inesperadas y a menudo, ante la
duda, clasificaban a los niños como mestizos, sobre todo cuando los padres tenían
riqueza o prestigio. Factores de status social como el nivel de educación y la riqueza
estaban codificados por color e impactaban la clasificación. Al otro extremo, la categoría
de negro era más un insulto que un descriptivo, de modo que los indios y los pobres
eran susceptibles de recibir esa clasificación.
Juliet Hooker analiza momentos clave en la formación de la nación nicaragüense
durante el siglo XIX y comienzos del XX para mostrar los mecanismos racistas que se
usaron para excluir de los procesos políticos a los grupos subalternos racializados de la
Mosquitia. Argumenta que la racialización del espacio contribuyó a dar forma a una
noción del ciudadano en un contexto en que el racismo condujo a una suerte de
cartografía de la diferenciación racial sobre el contorno del territorio nacional (mapping
of racial difference onto región and territory) y a la espacialización de la raza. La disputa
por el control de la región costeña de Mosquitia tuvo un rol importante en la evolución
de la imagen que la clase dirigente tenía de sí misma durante el periodo posterior a la
independencia. Condujo a que las élites intelectuales y políticas construyeran una visión
de la nación predicada sobre la oposición entre una Nicaragua civilizada y un Reino
Misquito concebido como “salvaje”. La situación paradójica así creada con relación a la
raza y el espacio del ciudadano en Nicaragua todavía está por resolver. Hoy la población
afrodescendiente e indígena de la costa sigue estando al mismo tiempo dentro y fuera de
la nación: habitan un territorio nacional, pero no se les ve como miembros de la nación
ni se les trata como iguales.
A finales del XIX y principios del XX los trabajadores caribeños se movían con
frecuencia entre las islas y varios lugares de la costa del Caribe Occidental, formando
patrones de migración circular y repetida iban de un lugar a otro siguiendo las
oportunidades de empleo que surgían, sin encontrar mayores obstáculos a su movilidad.
Pero hacia finales de los años veinte, muchos países de la región comenzaron a prohibir
la migración de personas negras, por motivos explícitamente raciales. Aunque las crisis
económicas de la época provocaron caídas de precios que afectaron las exportaciones de
los países de la región lo que a su vez produjo una caída en la oferta de empleo, esto no
explica la reacción xenofóbica racista. Lara Putnam argumenta que la explicación se
encuentra en un cambio internacional de la definición, objetivos y tecnologías de la
soberanía de los estados. El acta Johnson-Reed de 1924 había adoptado criterios
eugenésicos y de asimilabilidad cultural como principios rectores de la política
migratoria de Estados Unidos. En años subsiguientes, los países de América Latina
reescriben sus leyes de migración procurando posicionarse como colaboradores, más
que como blancos, en el proyecto de exclusión eugenésica encabezado por los
estadounidenses.
In his many years as a scholar in the field of culture and literature, Daniel
Albright (1945-2015) wrote extensively about Modernism. Interested in studying the
movement as a whole, his analyses convene the diverse genres that constitute it, from
poetry and painting to narrative, music, essay, and film. In his last book, entitled Putting
Modernism Together (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015), Albright offers an encompassing, fresh,
and ingenious approach to this movement, seeing connections between artistic
expressions and individual works that go well beyond 1920—the year that is considered
to mark its end. His exploration is traversed by a line of inquiry that revisits the notion
of value. For Albright, the importance of Modernism resides in its ability to reset and
redefine what the West used to identify as the core of artistic beauty, that is, an exercise
of compliance with aesthetic codes that consecrated proportion, balance, adherence to
truth and to natural landscapes, and rhyme. Albright’s new book is successful at
maintaining a tension between a diachronic exposition of the different movements that
comprise Modernism and a theoretical thread that never veers off the particular
reshaping of the value of beauty.
In his first chapter Albright recounts the contributions of two names associated
with the devising of Modernism—Charles Baudelaire and Friedrich Nietzsche—in
terms of aesthetic pursuits and philosophical ramifications. Focusing on Baudelaire’s
artistic ambitions, Albright recounts the decisive break in what was defined as beauty up
to that point. He calls this shift on aesthetic parameters a “Modernist Transvaluation.”
Albright tells readers how Baudelaire brought his attention to a growing, polluted,
inhuman, and chaotic city. With Baudelaire, dissonance and disordered arrangements of
artistic elements conquered proportion and decorum. Albright also details how
Nietzsche’s Dionysian impulses counterbalanced an Apollonian organization of life and
art. The desert and a mankind in dissonance threatened to conquer the civilized.
Albright’s most remarkable contribution to the studies of Modernism in his new
book is his ability to find—but also to create and invent—connections between works
of art that reveal the “Transvaluation” that for him defines the movement. His
introduction opens with a rewriting of a poem by Alexander Pope in one of Ezra
Pound’s Cantos: “plumes […] is she a bird or an angel?” More than amiably inviting his
320 REVIEWED BY JULIO QUINTERO
predecessor to share the space of the page, what Pound performs is blunt interrogation.
The core of the second section of Albright’s book is devoted to these rewritings, not
only in poetry and narrative, but also in painting, music, and cinema. Some chapters,
those in which a real shift is developed, are accompanied by an aphorism in which
Albright summarizes the essence of each one of these ramifications of Modernism.
Many of them mirror vital elements of the movement in question, like this one, written
about Expressionism: “Value: Cut to the interior—human truth lies in the
electroencephalogram.” Albright calls this second section the “Isms” and includes
sixteen of its variants, beginning with those loosely defined (Impressionism and
Expressionism), and concluding with the more programmatic ones (Futurism and
Surrealism). Albright’s book finishes with a discussion about the end of Modernism and
leaves readers with the idea that in our age the premodern, the modern, and
postmodern linger and juxtapose. But after all, did Modernism really end? Aren’t those
avatars that we build in social media still a ramification of Oscar Wilde’s call which
compels us to “make ourselves into a work of art”?
The decision to include reproductions of the paintings Albright comments on
allows the reader to witness firsthand the luminosity with which he sees
“Transvaluation.” As Albright repeats throughout his book, “Modernism is about
cities.” The reader can therefore appreciate Pissarro’s attempt to represent the
Boulevard Montmartre in Paris and contrast it with the blade-looking shapes of the
women who stand at Postdamer Platz in Ludwig Kirscher’s painting. In his section on
Futurism, Albright supplements Marinetti’s attempts to portray a world in rapid and
constant movement with the depiction of Marcel Duchamp’s staircase and Umberto
Boccioni’s The Street Enters the House. Albright also includes cinema, making connections
with the machine as a typical Modernist leitmotiv, so central in Charles Chaplin’s Modern
Times and the films of the Marx Brothers.
Music serves Albright as a concrete reference to “[test] the limits of aesthetic
construction.” Albright examines Nietzsche’s defense of dissonance as a central element
of art by offering Richard Wagner’s arias as a point of comparison. The same occurs
with Monet and Debussy, connections that Albright admits are more difficult to be
seen. Albright is interested in defining Modernism in terms of values that are
counterintuitive, like in Debussy's Nocturnes—that Albright qualifies as “a ghostly
procession”—or in Charles Ives’s Fourth of July, in which the audience realizes that they
are in the “midst of cacophony.”
Albright’s prose in Putting Modernism Together is enjoyable and entertaining. His
words chase Modernism in a quest to define it in new ways. It would be worth reading
the volume and counting how many times he succeeds at redefining a movement so
often named and characterized. He refers to Modernism as “a strong assertion of the
author’s authority” or as “a set of what we might call transvalues.” One definition that
called my attention is that of Modernism as “an age in which poetry performs all sorts
of sorts of violence on the poems of the past.” Writing and quoting as an exercise of
El libro de Zaira Rivera Casellas, Bajo la sombra del texto: la crítica y el silencio en el
discurso racial puertorriqueño, publicado recientemente por Terranova editores, es una
búsqueda y una invitación. Una invitación al riesgo. A cruzar el umbral de lo aceptado y
definido por el discurso racial de las letras nacionales puertorriqueñas. A escuchar los
silencios. A leer bajo la sombra.
El primero de los cuatro capítulos del libro, titulado “Entre genealogías del
discurso racial: el Tuntún de pasa y grifería y Narciso descubre su trasero”, contiene un epígrafe
de Michel Foucault. El mismo lee como sigue: “[L]a contrahistoria que nace con el
relato de la lucha de razas hablará justamente de parte de la sombra, a partir de esta
sombra. Será el discurso de los que no poseen la gloria o –habiéndola perdido– se
encuentran ahora en la oscuridad y en el silencio. Todo esto hará que, a diferencia del
canto ininterrumpido a través del cual el poder se perpetuaba y reforzaba mostrando su
antigüedad y genealogía, el nuevo discurso sea una irrupción de la palabra, un llamado,
un desafío”1. Con su libro, Rivera nos incita a la búsqueda y el encuentro de esa
contrahistoria, tanto crítica como literaria, para rastrear y configurar la genealogía de un
nuevo discurso racial alternativo en el cual se reconozca la sombra de la violencia
esclavista y colonial, así como sus resistencias. Su obra es un llamado a explorar las
formas que yacen detrás o en la penumbra de las palabras perpetuadas por el poder, a
vislumbrar lo oculto, aquello que se ha silenciado u oscurecido, paradójicamente, bajo
“la luz” de la crítica o de su lectura. De este modo, textos desafiantes que irrumpen en el
espacio consagrado de las letras puertorriqueñas como el poemario de Luis Palés Matos
de 1937 y la monumental obra de análisis literario y cultural sobre la raza negra en la isla
por Isabelo Zenón Cruz, de 1974, son rápidamente capturados por discursos
integracionistas de la época que terminan por contrarrestar su radicalidad o deslegitimar
su diferencia.
The “permanent crisis” referenced in the title of Ipek A. Celic’s incisive, timely
and thoroughly researched book can be interpreted in (at least two) fundamental ways.
The state of crisis in Europe over both the continuing arrival of migrants and refugees
and the enduring debates and struggles over the place of minorities in European
societies is the primary concern in the films analyzed in the book and indeed central
concerns in an ever-growing list of European cinematic productions. The reference to
(news) “media” in the title underscores the critical eye that Celik, and the filmmakers in
question, place on the media’s role in covering the aforementioned crisis. The second
crisis implicit in Celik’s study concerns cinema itself, specifically the pitfalls inherent in
the cinematic representation of the lives and images of minorities, migrants, and
refugees. The author argues convincingly that while the “politically well-meaning
directors” whose films are considered in her text “do point to the limits of minority
visibility” in European societies, they nonetheless reproduce “in many different ways
but repeatedly, the trope of inescapable victimhood for refugees, migrants, and
minorities in Europe” (131). The “permanent crisis” therefore both a socio-political
crisis and an accompanying, ongoing artistic one: how does one use cinema in a fashion
that adds to social understanding of these issues and calls into question the
oversimplified and alarmist coverage of identity and migration in European media?
Celik’s adroit close reading s of four films from as many different generic categories and
nations reveals how the each director attempts –ultimately without success, the she
argues – to do this in “so many complex ways” (126). The list of films includes a
disaster movie, Children of Men(Alfonso Cuarón, 2006, USA/UK) ; a thriller,
Caché/Hidden (Michael Haneke, 2005, France/Austria/Germany/Italy); a documentary
drama that is also a road film, Omiros/Hostage (Constantine Giannaris, 2005,
Greece/Turley/Austria); and Gegen die Wand/Head-On (Fatih Akin, 2004,
Germany/Turkey), which Celik reads as a melodrama.
Each film focuses on a “sensational minority-related event” (4) or European
insecurity related to migration – riots, population decline, honor killings – and attempts
IN PERMANENT CRISIS 329
to use its respective generic conventions to intervene in complex ways in social debates
over the historical and geographic implications of those events and their “affective
residues” (4). While each film and director can clearly be situated within transnational
cinematic categories of production and reception, Celik’s study aims to push past this
category to consider the “historicity and eventfulness” (7) explored in each film. Herein
lies the uniqueness of this work, for as Celik rightly points out, the cinematic production
and cinematic scholarship of post-Berlin Wall Europe – “Fortress Europe” with
ostensibly sealed external barriers and porous internal ones – has been more attuned to
mobility at the expense of temporality and historicity. In a physically borderless Europe,
lines are drawn internally and symbolically, with “reference to a temporality of
permanent crisis” that relegates the minority events to “non-coevalness and violent
eventfulness” (7). The antidote to this proposed by the four films in question is a
historicity that lies behind or beyond the event as portrayed in the media. In Permanent
Crisis moves adeptly between theoretical analysis and social context to uncover this
historicity, a feat all the more impressive given the diverse linguistic and national
contexts that are covered in the corpus. While transnational in production context and
outlook and dealing with what are wider European issues, the films are firmly rooted in
their respective national and regional contexts (historical, political, social, mediatic ) and
Celik’s readings of the historicity of each hinges on very detailed research of the issues
surrounding and preceding each case study. The analysis also draws on theory,
particularly Badiou’s post-September 11 conception of the “Event,” without being
constrained by theory. Celik makes her argument by following the aforementioned
historical, social, and media background with convincing close readings of key segments
of each film. Particularly notable is an analysis of sound and camera movement in order
to demonstrate the author’s contention that Akin’s Head-On questions the “terms of
visibility” of minority women and minority gender conflicts (114-115). This is but one
example of a convincing technical analysis at the service of the author’s wider argument
about Head-On that “the melodrama undoes both the so-called objective minority reality
and authentic minority fiction” (112). In other words, Celik argues that Akin draws on
melodrama to suggest that neither media representations nor the realist aesthetics so
often privileged in films about refugees, migrants, and minorities can adequately
represent the lives and images of those people as individuals or groups.
The chapter about Head-On incisively begins with an epigraph in the form of an
excerpt from a Der Spiegel interview in which an activist is asked by a journalist who
misquotes an episode from Head-On to interpret the film as an “authentic” ethnographic
artifact. This interwoven nature of media representation with filmic text and filmic
afterlife is consistently and convincingly brought to the fore in each chapter. This
incisive exploration of the imbrication of the media and mediated image that has had
such a central role is public discourses on migrants and refuges since the book was
released in 2015 marks In Permanent Crisis an essential and timely intervention in the
fields of European media studies and cultural studies. Beyond offering a compelling and
atypical reading of four transnational films, the book provides an essential introduction
to the study of the cultural, social, and historical context of contemporary European
refugee, migrant, and minority cinemas. While its covers a relatively small roster of
films, the depth of each reading is sure to enrich readers’ understanding of numerous
other films with similar themes. In this sense it is a welcome and novel addition to an
already significant corpus of books on the topic.
The first woman elected in 1979 to the notoriously chauvinistic Spanish Royal
Academy, Carmen Conde, poet, novelist, dramatist, writer of children’s literature, and
active literary critic, was a creative force to be reckoned with in Spain throughout the
vicissitudes in her life in the years marked by the demise of the monarchy under
Alfonso XIII, the Second Republic and the Civil War, and, finally, in the transition to
democracy. That said, given Conde’s early literary debut in Juan Ramón Jiménez’s little
magazines Ley and Obra en marcha, and how she herself characterized the years from
1939-1979 as “Exilio voluntario, y 40 años de aguante con dignidad y valor y obra”, it is
perhaps small wonder that Conde’s introspective poetry has received far more critical
attention than her novels. Lisa Nalbone deserves credit indeed not only for being the
first to write a full-length study on Conde’s eight novels published between 1945 and
2002, but also for presenting her ideas in a thoroughly researched account of Conde’s
achievement as a novelist at a time when neither women authors nor their female
subjects were given equal consideration with their male counterparts.
Not perhaps surprisingly the optic here is decidedly feminist as Nalbone
concentrates on Conde’s female protagonists’ plural searches for independence,
satisfaction, and fulfillment (or not) in their individual struggles against fierce patriarchal
stereotyping of female behavior concerned, particularly, with desire, domesticity,
motherhood, and achieving personal autonomy. Inevitably, interest centers on the main
character in each of the chosen novels but, far from applying a single thematic
straitjacket, Nalbone’s exegesis does allow for Conde’s own aging process over the
years, both as a woman and as a writer, to take in the inevitable shifts (such as absence
and death) in the particular relationship(s) described. Highly structured, this study is
divided into three parts that concentrate on: “The Lyric Subject” (with reference to
Vidas contra su espejo, En manos del silencio and Las oscuras raíces, which deal with inner
conflict, difficult relations within the family, and violent deaths); “The Subject
332 REVIEWED BY KATHLEEN SIBBALD
Transformed” (taking in La Rambla and Creció espesa la yerba, and particularly interesting
for the vivid accounts of middle-age, memory, and reassessing the past); and, perhaps
the most interesting, “The Self-Manumitted Subject” (dealing with Soy la madre, outlining
one character’s idiosyncratic but total commitment to mothering and her gradual
liberation from selflessness and martyrdom in a clear movement towards self-
realization; and coupled thematically with the complex and enigmatic Virginia o la calle de
balcones, published posthumously in 2002, which uses dream sequences to good effect to
outline a middle-aged woman’s fears about the viability of her relationship with a much
younger man). In each case the critical discussion begins with comments on the
circumstances of the actual writing of the text and adds a useful review of the
contemporary reception of each of the novels. Finally, Nalbone adds a handy vademecum
for the reader composed of plot summaries of all eight novels, a comprehensive list of
works cited, and an index of proper names. The net result is the deciphering of a
complex set of images of modern Spanish women driven by an intense desire to break
out of the molds of enforced gender bias and/or nominative behavior as Spain
simultaneously moves from dictatorship to democracy.
This purely Spanish context is widened by the author’s impressive and
international list of readings in contemporary feminist scholarship as she cites a
“latitudinous range of writings that crosses centuries and continents, [which] include the
advancement or interpretation of feminism in its multiple waves of women” (18). Most
of the authors on her list are well-known to those familiar with compulsory graduate
school readings in North American universities (e.g. Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia
Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Luce Irigaray, Lidia Falcon, Helene Cixous,
Adrienne Rich Elaine Showalter, Julia Kristeva, bell hooks and Toril Moi). However,
the point here worthy of note is not that Nalbone is forcing some hardcore
interpretation on Conde’s work but rather is she citing how her own rich background
serves her in the business of explicating how Conde’s models, both in her literary
friendships with other women writers and her reluctance to embrace a priori concepts,
often produce “models of revised codes of femininity through the negation of what
they are not” (19). The point is well-taken. Nalbone wisely does not try to sell Conde as
a dedicated feminist but rather as a determined narrator of the female condition, fraught,
as she herself experienced it, with obstacles and pitfalls. In doing so she pays worthy
homage to Conde’s dedication to her art.
Nevertheless, the important issue of for whom Conde wrote is not treated in
depth here. Her novels have much in them that may be compared to the violent images,
histrionic wailing, and blood-and-thunder details of the popular press and certain pot-
boilers of their time –in and of itself a detail of interest. While it may be enjoyable to
trace “Lacanian undertones” (46) and “Kristevian echoes” the fact remains that Conde
very cannily wrote to be read. Further investigation of the archives of Conde’s personal
library and letters, diaries, photographs, recordings, and personal papers as well as her
own literary corpus that she generously donated to the treasure trove that is the
Jana Evans Braziel earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University
of Massachusetts-Amherst and later held the Five College Post-Doctoral Fellowship
in the Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas (CISA) and was Visiting
Assistant Professor of Black Studies and English at Amherst College. Before
joining the faculty at Miami University, Braziel was Professor of Africana Studies at
the University of Cincinnati. Braziel’s scholarly and pedagogical interests are
American hemispheric literatures and cultures, Caribbean studies, Haitian studies,
and the intersections of diaspora, transnational activism, and globalization. Braziel
is author of four books: Duvalier’s Ghosts: Race, Diaspora, and U.S. Imperialism in
Haitian Literatures (2010); Caribbean Genesis: Jamaica Kincaid and the Writing of New
Worlds (2009); Artists, Performers, and Black Masculinity in the Haitian Diaspora (2008);
and Diaspora: An Introduction (2008). Braziel’s fifth book “Riding with Death”: Vodou
Art and Urban Ecology in the Streets of Port-au-Prince is currently under review for
publication; and she is also completing a new manuscript entitled All Too Human?
Haiti and Human Rights since Aristide. She has also co-edited five peer-reviewed
volumes and published scores of articles and book chapters.
ACADEMICS
María Roof is author of numerous articles on Latin American cultural issues, with a
focus on contemporary poetry. She edited and translated Flame in the Air (2013), a
550-page Spanish-English presentation of poetry by Vidaluz Meneses (Nicaragua),
containing extensive interviews with the poet on her life and public activism,
especially during the tumultuous 1980s-2000s, along with notes, references, and
translations of her four volumes of poetry. Dr. Roof led a team of 20 translators to
publish in 2015, Women’s Poems of Protest and Resistance: Honduras (2009-2014), poetry
written by over 40 writers to protest the 2009 overthrow of the elected president
and subsequent (and continuing) severe repression. She is also general editor for a
multivolume, bilingual anthology of living women poets in Central America, from
best-selling icons to teenaged bloggers. Her recent research includes Central
American and Afro-Nicaraguan poetry. She is Associate Professor Emerita at
Howard University.
Silvia E. Solano.
Filóloga y Magister Litterarum con énfasis en Literatura Latinoamericana por la
Universidad de Costa Rica con la tesis Identidades étnico-culturales en Los cuatro
espejos, de Quince Duncan (2016). Miembro de la Asociación Latinoamericana de
Estudios del Discurso y de la Red Interdisciplinaria de Estudios del Discurso. Ha
participado en diversos congresos internacionales de literatura, lingüística aplicada y
análisis crítico del discurso con ponencias en torno a la construcción de identidades
y fenómenos como el racismo y el sexismo. Asimismo posee publicaciones sobre
dichos temas y análisis literarios de textos latinoamericanos. En conjunto con Jorge
Ramírez Caro desarrolla desde hace varios años los proyectos de investigación El
racismo en la literatura costarricense, Lectura étnico-cultural y Cocorí en boca de sus lectores. Este
último proyecto centra su atención en las polémicas suscitadas en torno a Cocorí
desde 1983 hasta la fecha y que se han vertido en la prensa, en las redes sociales y en
las revistas académicas.
CREATIVE WRITING
Jacqueline Bishop. The Gymnast & Other Positions is Jacqueline Bishop’s most
recent book. She is also the author of the novel, The River’s Song; and two collections
of poems, Fauna and Snapshots from Istanbul. Her non-fiction books are My Mother
Who Is Me: Life Stories from Jamaican Women in New York and Writers Who Paint/Painters
Who Write: Three Jamaican Artists. An accomplished visual artist with exhibitions in
Belgium, Morocco, USA and Italy, Ms. Bishop was a 2008-2009 Fulbright Fellow to
Morocco; the 2009-2010 UNESCO/Fulbright Fellow; and is a full time Master
Teacher in the Liberal Studies Program at New York University.
Sophie Maríñez is a scholar and a professor of French and Spanish at the Borough
of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York. Born in France
and raised in the Dominican Republic, she has lived in New York City since 1994.
She has worked as an actress, a translator, a journalist, and, from 1997 to 2000, a
diplomat for the Dominican Republic in Mexico. She holds a Ph.D. in French from
The Graduate Center (CUNY), and a M.A. in Liberal Studies with a focus on
Dominican-American Identity and Literature from Empire State College (SUNY).
As a poet, she writes in French, Spanish and English. Her work has appeared in
Mondes Francophones, Small Axe Literary Salon, and the anthology Tough Times in
America. These poems are part of a series titled Sentencia del Infierno/A Sentence from
Hell, concerning the predicament of Haitians and their descendants in the
Dominican Republic.
Lisa Allen-Agostini. Lisa Allen-Agostini is the author of the young adult novel The
Chalice Project (Macmillan Caribbean, 2008), and co-editor of and contributor to the
crime fiction anthology Trinidad Noir (Akashic Books, 2008). Swallowing the Sky (Cane
Arrow Press, 2015) is her first collection of poems since self-publishing her
chapbook Something to Say in 1992. In 2014 she was the inaugural Dame Hilda Bynoe
Writer-in-Residence at St George's University, Grenada. Lisa was awarded a Trading
Tales historical writing residency in Glasgow in 2014. She was shortlisted for the
Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize (Fiction) in 2013. An award-winning
journalist, she has been a reporter and columnist and is now an editor with
the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. Lisa is a recipient of a University of the West Indies
(UWI) Postgraduate Scholarship and is reading for an MPhil in Interdisciplinary
Gender Studies at the Institute of Gender and Development Studies, UWI, St
Augustine.
Reynaldo García Blanco (Sants Spíritus, Cuba, 1962). Coordina el Taller Literario
Aula de Poesía. Escribe para espacios radiales. Ha publicado entre otros: Perros blancos
de la aurora (Editorial Oriente,1994); Abaixar las velas (Editorial Oriente,1994); Adiós
naves de Tarsis(Ediciones Vigía, 1995); Reverso de foto & Dossier (Casa Editora Abril);
Artefactos (Oficina del Conservador de la Ciudad, 2001); Instrucciones para matar a un
colibrí, Ediciones Santiago, 2002 y España, Diputación de Córdoba-Ediciones Unión,
2004); Acotaciones al libro de las horas muertas de Europa (Atlanta, Estados Unidos,
Ediciones Kairós, 2003, con Rubén Fernándo Alonso y Manuel Sosa); País de hojaldre
(Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2004); Campos de belleza armada (Ediciones Unión,2007);
Opus ciudad ( Ediciones Vigía, 2013); Otros campos de belleza armada (Premio Milanéz,
Ediciones Matanzas, 2014.
Shirley Campbell Barr nació en Costa Rica. Estudió Drama, Literatura y creación
literaria en el Conservatorio de Castella en donde se desempeñó durante seis años
como instructora en el Taller de Expresión literaria. Es Antropóloga graduada de la
Universidad de Costa Rica. Tomó cursos de postrado en Feminismo Africano en La
Universidad de Zimbabue en Harare y obtuvo una maestría en Cooperación
Internacional para el Desarrollo de la Universidad Católica de Santa María y la
Fundación Cultural y de Estudios Sociales (CIES). Ccuenta con cinco colecciones
de poesía y decenas de poesías y artículos publicados en revistas, antologías y
periódicos en diversos países. Algunos de sus trabajos han sido traducidos al inglés,
al francés y al portugués.
REVIEWS
Kay Sibbald (B.A., M.A. Cantab. 1970; M.A. Liverpool, 1970; Ph.D. in
Comparative Literature, McGill, 1976) is Professor of Hispanic Studies. Her
publications include María Elena Walsh o "el desafío de la limitación" (1993), as well as
editions of Jorge Guillén's early writings Hacia "Cántico": Escritos de los años
veinte (1980) and El hombre y la obra (1990). She has edited Guillén at McGill: Essays
for A Centenary Celebration (1996), and La mujer y el teatro (2005), and co-edited T.S.
Eliot and Hispanic Modernity (1994); A Fair Shake (1984) and A Fair Shake Revisited
(1996); La cultura española de entre siglos (XIX-XX) (1996);Ángel Ganivet: "Cartas
finlandesas" y un centenario (1898-1998)(1999); Ciudades vivas/ciudades muertas: espacios
urbanos en la literatura y el folklore hispánicos(2000); Las representaciones de la mujer en la
cultura hispánica (2002); andMemorias y olvidos: autos y biografías (reales y ficticias) en la
cultura hispánica(2003). Professor Sibbald contributes regularly to European and
American scholarly journals on the work of the Spanish Generation of 1927 and
contemporary Argentine writers, She has reviewed annually the section "Spanish
Studies: Literature 1898-1936" for The Year's Work in Modern Language
Studies (London) since 1980; and has served as the Canadian correspondent to
the Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas since 1998. She is currently the Associate
Editor of theRevista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, and member of the Editorial
Boards of Hispanic Journal and Hecho Teatral. Professor Sibbald was the recipient
of the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Faculty of Arts
of McGill University in 1999.