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Critical Perspectives on Afro-Latin American Literature
 9780415896276, 9780203807507

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Critical Perspectives on Afro-Latin American Literature
Copyright Page
Contents
Introduction: Antonio D. Tillis
Part I: Engaging the Transnational, Cosmopolitan and Postcolonial in Afro-Hispanic Texts
Introduction to Part I: Antonio D. Tillis
1. Roots and Routes: Transnational Blackness in Afro-Costa Rican Literature: Dorothy E. Mosby
2. Los nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores) and the Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel: A Postcolonial Reading: Sonja Stephenson Watson
3. Cultural Transnationality and Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón: Antonio D. Tillis
Part II: Africa and African Cosmology and Literary Tradition in Hispanic (Con) Texts
Introduction to Part II: Antonio D. Tillis
4. Yoruba Cosmology as Technique in Malambo by Lucía Charún-Illescas: Aida L. Heredia
5. Myth, Legend & Reality Redesigning the Narrative Style in Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker: Cristina Cabral
6. Nicomedes Santa Cruz and Black Cultural Traditions in Peru: Renovating and Decolonising the National Imaginary: Martha Ojeda
7. Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World: Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural-Political Order: Elisa Rizo
Part III: Defining and Redefining Identities in Latin American Literature
Introduction to Part III: Antonio D. Tillis
8. Black, Woman, Poor: The Many Identities of Conceição Evaristo: Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves
9. The Triumph Within: Carolina Maria de Jesus and Strategies for Black Female Empowerment in Brazil: Dawn Duke
10. Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega: Identity, Gender and the Subversive Portrayal of Mestizaje: Emmanuel Harris, II
11. Dialogically Redefining the Nation: Hip-hop and the Collective Identity: Lesley Feracho
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Critical Perspectives on Afro-Latin American Literature

Routledge Studies on African and Black Diaspora S ERIES EDITORS : FASSIL D EMISSIE , DePaul University; S ANDRA JACKSON , DePaul University; AND A BEBE Z EGEYE , University of South Africa

1 Sex and Race in the Black Atlantic Mulatto Devils and Multiracial Messiahs Daniel McNeil 2 Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art Charmaine A. Nelson 3 Geographies of the Haitian Diaspora Edited by Regine O. Jackson 4 Critical Perspectives on AfroLatin American Literature Edited by Antonio D. Tillis

Critical Perspectives on Afro-Latin American Literature Edited by Antonio D. Tillis

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2012 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Taylor & Francis The right of Antonio D. Tillis to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global. Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper by IBT Global. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Critical perspectives on Afro-Latin American literature / edited by Antonio D. Tillis. p. cm. — (Routledge studies on African and black diaspora) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Latin American literature—African influences. 2. Blacks— Latin America—Ethnic identity. 3. Blacks—Caribbean Area—Ethnic identity. 4. Identity (Psychology) in literature. I. Tillis, Antonio D. PQ7081.C736 2011 860.9'89608—dc23 2011018101 ISBN13: 978-0-415-89627-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-80750-7 (ebk)

Contents

Intoduction

vii

ANTONIO D. TILLIS

PART I Engaging the Transnational, Cosmopolitan and Postcolonial in Afro-Hispanic Texts Introduction to Part I

3

ANTONIO D. TILLIS

1

Roots and Routes: Transnational Blackness in Afro-Costa Rican Literature

5

DOROTHY E. MOSBY

2

Los nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores) and the Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel: A Postcolonial Reading

30

SONJA STEPHENSON WATSON

3

Cultural Transnationality and Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón

51

ANTONIO D. TILLIS

PART II Africa and African Cosmology and Literary Tradition in Hispanic (Con) Texts Introduction to Part II ANTONIO D. TILLIS

73

vi

Contents

4

Yoruba Cosmology as Technique in Malambo by Lucía CharúnIllescas

77

AIDA L. HEREDIA

5

Myth, Legend & Reality: Redesigning the Narrative Style in Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker

99

CRISTINA CABRAL

6

Nicomedes Santa Cruz and Black Cultural Traditions in Peru: Renovating and Deloconising the National Imaginary

120

MARTHA OJEDA

7

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World: Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural-Political Order

142

ELISA RIZO

PART III Defining and Redefining Identities in Latin American Literature Introduction to Part III

165

ANTONIO D. TILLIS

8

Black, Woman, Poor: The Many Identities of Conceição Evaristo

167

ANA BEATRIZ RODRIGUES GONÇALVES

9

The Triumph Within: Carolina Maria de Jesus and Strategies for Black Female Empowerment in Brazil

184

DAWN DUKE

10 Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega: Identity, Gender and the Subversive Portrayal of Mestizaje

206

EMMANUEL HARRIS, II

11 Dialogically Redefining the Nation: Hip-hop and the Collective Identity

228

LESLEY FERACHO

Contributors Index

247 251

Introduction Antonio D. Tillis

In 1977, Miriam DeCosta compiled what is arguably the first collection of scholarly essays devoted to the literary production of Latin Americans of African decent, Afro-Latin Americans. The edited volume, Blacks in Hispanic Literature, is a collection of fourteen critical essays from the considered pioneers in the development of Afro-Hispanic studies. It becomes clear to differentiate between typologies. Afro-Latin American studies is the broad, overarching category used for engaging the cultures and civilizations of Diasporic Africans in Latin America, broadly defined encompassing the totality of the Americas and the Caribbean islands. Linguistically, Afro-Latin America refers to regions where the Latin-based imperial languages of Spanish, French, Portuguese, and their derivations (Creole, Patois, etc.) are the predominant media for communicative discourse. Afro-Hispanic however, is more focused in terms of scope referring to a specific geographic and linguistic modality, Spanish, and landmasses that emerge as former Spanish colonies in the Americas. Thus, the geographic and linguistic representations of Blackness in DeCosta’s compiled work is situated in the commonly referred to area of Spanish-America. DeCosta rightly credits the genesis of Afro-Hispanic studies to the 1930s stating, “Critical appraisals of Afro-Hispanic studies were undertaken in the Thirties with the pioneer studies of Carter G. Woodson, Valaurez B. Spratlin and John F. Matheus” (ix). DeCosta continues to mention the scant, but pivotal, academic journals that served as repositories for this budding scholarship such as the Journal of Negro History and the College Language Association Journal. That which is implicit is the fact that Black scholars in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in the 1930s when Woodson, Spratlin, and Matheus were publishing, had very few venues in which to publish their scholarship, as the discriminatory reign of “Jim Crow America” did not exclude academia. Two major points of importance credited to DeCosta’s work are its comparative appeal regarding the Black Diaspora and its exposing works by Black writers in Spanish America to a wider English-speaking audience. She states in the introduction: It (the collection) is designed to acquaint the English-speaking scholar with a body of literature with which he may be unfamiliar, as well as to serve as a basis of comparison and contrast with other African and

viii Introduction neo-African literatures to determine if there is a Black Aesthetic which transcends linguistic and cultural barriers. (x) Thanks to DeCosta’s seminal collection, in 1979, Richard Jackson published Black Writers in Latin America, thus beginning critical texts engaging the history, culture, and traditions, literary and non-literary, of Blacks in principally the Spanish-speaking world. However, since DeCosta’s 1977 work, there has yet to be a critical edition engaging Afro-Latin American literature. Certainly, there have been historical and literary analyses published on Afro-Latin American literature such as Marvin Lewis’s multiple works that bring to the academic fore works by Black writers in Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, as well as Norman Whitten’s 1974 work Black Frontiersman: Afro-Hispanic Culture of Ecuador and Colombia. However, DeCosta’s is the sole work that serves as a compilation of critical essays by American scholars that renders critical approaches to literary works by Black authors in Spanish America. Arguably, her Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra Hispanic Writers (2003) could be viewed as such a work; however, it functions more as a literary anthology, highlighting the work of twenty female writers of African ancestry in Spanish America accompanied by a short critical piece on each writer showcased. This collection of eleven chapters serves as a compliment to DeCosta’s 1977 edited work. It bridges the over seventy-year gap and serves as the second collection of essays published in the U.S. on the literary works of Afro-Latin Americans. The eleven chapters represent authors from Spanish-America, Brazil, and by extension, Equatorial Guinea, the only former Spanish colony in Africa. Additionally, this collection extends beyond the conventional concept of writings that constitute “literature” by analyzing contemporary musical lyrics of rap and hip-hop as poetic texts. The chapters in this collection represent a variance of contemporary theoretical paradigms from transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, feminism, and nationalism to inquiries of canonicity, and the Latin American historical novel. It is the fi rst to include works by authors from Equatorial Guinea, thus bridging Africa and the Americas. It is the hope that this compilation of critical works will stimulate further discussion on African Diasporic literature and other cultural forms. Additionally, the aim is to provide a critical text that can be used in African Diaspora programs that offer a basis for interrogating comparatively the cultural production of writers of African ancestry in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Africa. In the area of literary studies and the African Diaspora, Afro-Latin American literature represents a booming corpus of intellectual and critical investigation. Suffice it to say, scholars, independent researchers, and enthusiasts throughout the world are beginning to render critical approaches to this “darker” boom in Latin American letters. Virtually rendered invisible by the U.S. academy until the 1970s, writing by Latin Americans of African ancestry represented a vacuous space in critical anthologies and

Introduction ix literary histories. Thus, this volume will augment the existing critical literature. Scholars in the area of African Diaspora Studies, Black Studies, Latin American Studies, and American literature (broadly defi ned) will be able to utilize the eleven chapters in this edition to enhance classroom instruction and further academic research. The chapter on Equatorial Guinean drama, in particular, will allow scholars, students, and enthusiasts to contextually connect Africa to the history of Spanish colonization, thus, forging a historical link between Africa and Spanish America. In essence, the importance of Latin America literature to the discipline of African Diaspora studies is immeasurable. This volume provides, from the standpoint of literary studies, a ripe cultural context for critical comparative analysis among the vast geographies that encompass African and African Diaspora studies. Finally, this volume presents the works of African and African Diaspora writers who have yet to garner the critical attention deserved. Of the writers presented, Cuba’s Nancy Morejón, Puerto Rico’s Ana Lydia Vega, and Colombia’s Manuel Zapata Olivella are the most recognizable, as they have been anthologized in numerous anthologies and literary historical texts on Latin America. An added benefit of this volume is the presentation of lesser known writers from Peru, Equatorial Guinea, Costa Rica, and Panama, to name a few. The inclusion of writers such as Tomás Ávila, Trinidad Morgades (Equatorial Guinea), Lucía Charún-Illescas, Nicomedes Santa Cruz (Peru), Conceição Evaristo (Brazil), Eulalia Bernard (Costa Rica), and Carlos Guillermo Wilson, among others, offers for the readership a more expansive presentation of writers that have been overlooked and or ignored. This volume purposes to present to the reading audience an introduction to their literary worlds and to their perceptions and recalibrations of nation, national culture, and national identity. This critical edition is divided into three thematic parts. Part I, “Engaging the Transnational, Cosmopolitan and Postcolonial in Afro-Hispanic Texts,” presents three critical theoretical paradigms and their appropriation to varied texts. In the lead chapter, “Roots and Routes: Transnational Blackness in Afro-Costa Rican Literature,” author Dorothy E. Mosby suggests that from Belize to Panama, there exists an Afro-Creole (West Indian) cultural continuum with roots in British colonial enterprises and U.S. transnational ventures, which can be attributed to British and American transnational enterprises of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Costa Rica in particular, in spite of current rhetoric of pluriculturalism, Mosby critiques the national image of the country resting on the leyenda blanca, a myth of whiteness that extols the virtues of the founding democratically inclined, white Spanish peasants and denies the existence of colonial slavery. She argues that people of Afro-West Indian descent have had a significant presence since the nineteenth century; however, they are largely absent from official discourse of the nation in which they live in spite of the important contributions Afro-Costa Ricans have made to the social, political, cultural, and economic life of Costa Rica. Through a critical

x

Introduction

examination of selected texts by Quince Duncan, Eulalia Bernard, Shirley Campbell, and Delia McDonald, Mosby explores literary expressions of identity (ethnic, linguistic, cultural, national), citizenship and belonging and the negotiation of identity of successive generations as reflected in oral and written literature produced by Afro-West Indians and their descendants. Mosby analyzes the notion of transnational Blackness considering the “two disparate strands of creole identification” that anthropologist Edmund T. Gordon identifies as “black” and “Anglo,” wherein the “roots (social memory of slavery and the idea of Jamaica, other Caribbean islands, and more distantly Africa as homelands) and routes (an identification with Black Caribbean and North American popular culture) are the basis of the Creoles’ black Diaspora identity.” Sonja Stephenson Watson in Carlos “Cubena” Guillermo Wilson’s Los nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Delores) and the Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel: A Postcolonial Reading,” states that Panamanian scholar/writer Carlos Guillermo Wilson (Cubena) “writes back” to the center and incorporates the contributions of the African Diaspora populations referenced in his work. During the nation-building period (1880–1920), Panamanian nationalists promoted cultural, racial, and political whitening, which forced the Black masses into obscurity and consequently wrote Blacks out of Panamanian national history. This cultural whitening was aimed directly at the English-speaking Black West Indian population who did not coincide with the national imaginary. As a result, Cubena writes back to the center because of the negative national image of Panamanian West Indians who have been discriminated against because they were Black, practiced Protestantism, and spoke English. Cubena’s novel, according to Stephenson, revises Panamanian history by incorporating the Afro-Caribbean experience into the national dialogue on race, ethnicity, and identity. Finally, Antonio D. Tillis renders a critical assessment of selected poetry by Cuban National Poet Nancy Morejón in “Cultural Transnationality and Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón. In this chapter, Tillis borrows from a previously published work, “Cultural Transnationalism and Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Poetry: The Case of Blas Jiménez and Nancy Morejón,” where he placed into poetic dialogue the selected poems by the two Spanish-Caribbean writers/scholars of African ancestry. In this piece, Tillis focuses only on the work of Morejón by expanding the scope of his argument on cultural transnationalism to include a discussion of a cosmopolitanist aesthetic in two select poems, representative of Morejón’s work that engage geographical spaces outside of her native Cuba. Walter Mignolo’s notion of global citizenship and Camille Fojas’s work on Latin American cosmopolitanism frame Tillis’s argument with regard to a poetic cosmopolitan discourse in Morejón’s work. He posits that the critical understandings of cosmopolitanism in terms of its applicability to the experience of transnational African descendants such as Morejón expand

Introduction xi the critical borders of its applicability. He places into inter-theoretical dialogue cultural transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. In Part II, “Africa and African Cosmology and Literary Tradition in Hispanic (Con) Texts,” the authors examine African cultural and political materiality as manifested in the Americas and on the continent of Africa. Aida L. Heredia, in “Yoruba Cosmology as Technique in Malambo by Lucía Charún-Illescas,” charts the connection between African cosmological thought and its transfer onto the soils of colonial Peru. Charún-Illescas emerges as the fi rst Peruvian female novelist of African ancestry. This pivotal work, as described by Heredia, is yet another major contribution to Afro-Hispanic letters, in general, Peruvian letters, in specific. In her chapter, Heredia explores the notion of sixteenth-century cultural collision in terms of religion. Her work charts Charún-Illescas’s fictional positioning of West African Yoruba cosmological thought and its enmeshing with religious hegemony by way of the imposition of European Catholicism upon enslaved Africans and their descendants. For Heredia, this syncretic cultural manifestation in Malambo gives testament to hegemonic resistance and assimilation yielding themes of Black solidarity, visibility, and affi rmation in the text. For Heredia, Charún-Illescas’s work “is a groundbreaking, courageous text, which brings into dialectical perspective the presence of Afro-descended people obscured by the racist practices that inform canonical Peruvian historiography.” In “Myth, Legend & Reality: Redesigning the Narrative Style in Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker,” Cristina Cabral focuses on Zapata Olivella’s return to Africa, the place from where he departed in 1983 after the publication of his master piece Changó el Gran Putas. Cabral analyzes how the combination of myth and reality in Hemingway, el Cazador de la Muete makes possible the existence of an aesthetic space in which both elements contribute to the creation of a post-colonial and afrocentrist narrative style. The mythical components of the novel, as she ascertains, immerse in the African tradition express the conceptual aspects of the culture in Kenya that belongs to the kikuyu tradition. At the same time, and based on the recreation of the historical, geographical and social context as in the development of the main characters, the novel reconstructs the colonial reality of Kenya during the 1950–1960 decade. From the combination of African myth and reality emerges a Latin-American post-colonial narrative whose afrocentric discourse defi nes a literary space and a sui generis narrative style. Martha Ojeda’s chapter “Nicomedes Santa Cruz: A Clarion for Black Cultural Heritage in Peru” is a critical investigation of the life and literary production of this noted decimista and the impact his work had on contesting ideologies of national identity and Peruvianness. Additionally, Ojeda presents a compelling argument regarding the formation of a Peruvian national literary canon and the incorporation of Santa Cruz into it. She situates Santa Cruz’s contributions in poetry, musicology, and expository and

xii

Introduction

journalistic writing in order to give visibility to and to present the important contribution of Santa Cruz in the development of a Black consciousness in Peru. Interestingly, the poet’s manipulation of the classical Spanish poetic form, the décima, to engage the cultural rhythms and realities of Peru’s citizens of African ancestry is the predominant focus. In so doing, Ojeda argues that Santa Cruz’s contributions, literary and otherwise, bring to the national fore the varied manifestations of Black cultural heritage in Peru and its importance in defi ning Peruvian national discourses in literature, music, and journalism. In “Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World: Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural Political Order,” Elisa Rizo posits that from the 1940s through late 1960s, Spanish Guinea was suggested by Francisco Franco’s ethnographers and administrators as a Bantu territory whose inhabitants should endure a “process of Hispanization” in order to become “civilized.” Through a critical analysis of dramatic texts, Rizo seeks to explore the literary representation of the result of such “process” according to Equatorial Guinea’s official and “extra-official” nationalism at the end of the twentieth century. Specifically, she examines the discursive formation of the concept of “African culture” in the playwriting produced after 1990, offering a panoramic view of the cultural and political context in which literary writing is practiced in this Sub-Saharan nation since 1979, a year in which Teodoro Obiang assumes the presidency of Equatorial Guinea. Additionally, Rizo, through literary and socio-political analysis, locates discursive proposals of “African culture” in correlation with the discourse of national identity in Equatorial Guinea. The final part of this collection, “Defining and Redefining Identities in Latin American Literature,” focuses on the critical examination of identities as manifested in multimedia texts: rap lyrics, prose, and poetry. Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves delves into the poetic world of Brazil’s emerging writer, Conceição Evaristo. Her chapter, “Black, Woman, Poor: The Many Identities of Conceição Evaristo,” is a critical analysis of select poems by Evaristo that exemplify the poet’s propagandistic manipulation of the printed word. Gonçalves argues that the Afro-Brazilian writer “constructs her identities: that is, how she rises from invisibility and transforms marginalization into empowerment.” Gonçalves’s chapter centers the powerful poetic voice of probably the fastest rising of contemporary Afro-Brazilian writers. Dawn Duke’s work, “The Triumph Within: Carolina Maria de Jesus and Strategies for Black Female Empowerment in Brazil, “engages the work of Brazil’s fi rst identified Black female writer from the fazelas, or slums, Carolina Maria de Jesus. In her chapter, Duke connects the literary heritage and tradition of Jesus to the Afro-Brazilian women’s non-governmental organizations’ celebration of her life and legacy. Dawn Duke examines the literary production of this Brazilian writer of African ancestry as a way of rendering critical analysis to the development of ethno-racial and gender identity in Brazil. To this end, Duke argues that Jesus’s “vivid descriptions combine

Introduction xiii to have a positive long-term effect on discussions about slum life and the Afro-Brazilian female condition.” In so doing, her work reflects particular circumstances of those who live in impoverished conditions with regard to issues of gender, race, and class. In “Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega: Identity, Gender and the Subversive Portrayal of Mestizaje,” Emmanuel Harris II, analyzes the works of Ana Lydia Vega, a contemporary Puerto Rican writer of vast popular and scholarly notoriety. While Vega pertains to a new generation of writers, she maintains that each generation of Puerto Rican authors is inherently tied to the historic compromise of reaffi rming national identity. Among the distinguishing characteristics of this new generation are the re-examination of national history, a prominent feminine/feminist presence, and the portrayal of African roots in the island’s culture. Harris’s investigation demonstrates how Vega consistently uses the conspicuous depiction of African-ancestored characters propagating with the dominant population in order to subvert Puerto Rican literary traditions wrought with compromise and nationalistic iconography. He argues that the portrayal of mestizaje, often coupled with feminist undertones, serves as a counter-hegemonic discourse. Ultimately Harris shows how such subversive strategies directed toward Puerto Rican literature also permeate more diasporic efforts of the inclusion and celebration of Black voices in other national and international dialogues. The fi nal chapter, “Dialogically Redefi ning the Nation: Hip-hop and the Collective Identity,” argues that the roots of hip-hop are not only found in urban North American communities like the Bronx, New York, but also in its myriad forms, from disco, street, funk, and toasts, signifying the dozens to its African predecessors, the griots of Nigeria and the Gambia. Author Lesley Feracho makes note that, as a form of popular culture, hip-hop as text can be understood as a complex interaction of social, historical, and political discourses that engage past and present, individual and collective, and marginal and mainstream. By chronicling day-to-day lives, struggles, and dreams, hip-hop artists spoke to local concerns and a larger public that crossed the boundaries of specific, individual and regional texts. Focusing on what Roland Robertson describes as the glocal: “combining the global with the local, to emphasize that each is in many ways defi ned by the other and that they frequently intersect, rather than being polarized opposites” (Mitchell 11), Feracho positions hip-hop music and culture as part of this literary articulation of historically and politically silenced voices challenging not just the social structures but also the very concepts of the nation itself. Her study examines how artists of the African Diaspora, in particular Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil, use hip-hop lyrics to redefi ne notions of national inclusiveness and marginality. Feracho aims to show how four artists, Cuba’s Orishas, Brazil’s Daúde and Nega Gizza, and Puerto Rica’s Tego Calderón utilize and rework the musical genre and thematic content to contest and expand national identities of Cubanness (or Cubanidad), Brazilianness, and Puerto Ricanness (Boricua identity) respectively.

xiv

Introduction

It is the hope that the eleven chapters that comprise this edition will shed new insights and foster further study and appreciation of Afro-Latin American literature, broadly defi ned. While focusing on a particular geographical region, each contributor offers a critical perspective that connects to or speaks to the intersections of culture, political struggle, economic circumstance, and socio-psychological challenges of African and African Diasporic subjects connected to the Latin American tradition. By speaking to and toward the intersections, the works in this volume demonstrate the shared common social, political, and cultural realities that connect South American realities to those experiences by Africans in Equatorial Guinea. In so doing, the Americas are bridged to Africa in a way that cements the fluidity of cultural transfer and fight for visibility, power, and a more inclusive understanding of national identity and culture. Through literary studies in an amplified context, these eleven chapters attempt to present critical perspectives on Latin American literature, in general, and AfroLatin American literature in specific.

WORKS CITED DeCosta, Miriam. Blacks in Hispanic Literature. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1977. Gordon, Edmund T. Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African Nicaraguan Community. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. Mitchell, Tony. “Introduction.” Global Noise: Rap and Hip-hop Outside the U.S.A. Ed. Tony Mitchell. Middletown: Weslayan University Press, 2001.

Part I

Engaging the Transnational, Cosmopolitan and Postcolonial in Afro-Hispanic Texts

Introduction to Part I Antonio D. Tillis

Transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and post-colonialism represent a tripartite social movement that has, at its core, human ecological encounters, negotiations, and mediations between peoples and geographical spaces. For the Americas, the contiguous historical trail of encounter with the indigenous populations of region has a fi fteenth-century context as the Western historical account retells the collision of Europeans onto unforeseen territories in nefarious waters. For Latin America, the colonial encounters and subsequent waves of migration form the foundation for social interaction and bartering of cultures, as peoples and their endemic traditions underwent a process of transculturation in the colonial, postcolonial, and transnational space. In as much, the chapters in this section purpose to engage the geo-cultural politics of space using literature as the medium. The three chapters in this section query transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and post-colonialism and their implication(s) for subjects of African ancestry within region through literary analysis. Dorothy Mosby in, “Roots and Routes: Transnational Blackness in Afro-Costa Rican Literature,” argues for an Afro-Creole (West Indian) cultural continuum linking British colonial enterprises and U.S. transnational ventures. Her foray into Central American transnationality interrogates the notion of Blacks within region as transnational subjects who have experienced historical shifting resulting from intra-regional migration. In “Los nietos de Felicidad Delores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores) and the Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel: A Postcolonial Reading,” Sonja Watson presents a repositioning of Panamanian texts by Black Panamanians of Anglophone West Indian heritage. Watson posits that in The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores (1991), Carlos “Cubena” Guillermo Wilson reexamines Panamanian history and incorporates the Panamanian West Indian experience into the national dialogue on race, ethnicity, and identity in a post-colonial setting. In fact, she contends that the writer Cubena, in the post-colonial paradigm, “writes back” in terms of the positionality of Panamanian West Indians within the context of national identity. In the fi nal chapter of section one, Antonio D. Tillis examines the application of cosmopolitanism as a theoretical paradigm for literary analysis.

4

Antonio D. Tillis

In “Cultural Transnationality and Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón,” Tillis examines transnational implications in selected poems of the National Cuban poet relating to transporting African cultural materiality and the integration of such into the historical cultural milieu of Cuba. Additionally, Tillis presents the application of a “Black cosmopolitanist aesthetic” in the work of Morejón, linking her poetry to the global presentation and performance of Blackness within the larger African Diaspora and the continent, South Africa, in particular. In essence, the three chapters that comprise this section focus on postcolonial, transnational, and cosmopolitan implications in the works of writers of African ancestry in Central America and the Spanish Caribbean. They provide for the reader critical perspectives relating to globalization within an Africanized context as Diaspora Africans shift from territory to territory in an attempt to “locate” and “defi ne” themselves. In so doing, these chapters forge an understanding of cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, and post-colonialism from a Black global perspective.

1

Roots and Routes Transnational Blackness in Afro-Costa Rican Literature Dorothy E. Mosby The sterile idea of origin and the assumption that culture is wholly sedentary lose their special glamour as different scales of enquiry point to other beginnings that require new modes of recollection and new conceptions of movement. (Gilroy, “Route Work: The Black Atlantic and the Politics of Exile” 23)

From Belize to Panama, there exists an Afro-West Indian or Afro-Creole cultural continuum with roots in British colonial expansion and transnational commercial ventures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Costa Rica in particular, people of Afro-West Indian descent have had a significant presence since the nineteenth century; however, this ethnocultural group is largely absent from the official discourse of the nation in spite of the important contributions they have made to the social, political, cultural, and economic life of the country. Blacks in Costa Rica formed communities that adapted the cultural practices of the West Indies to reflect their new reality and material conditions. The experience of migration and settlement of earlier immigrants from the Caribbean and the negotiation of identity of successive generations are reflected in oral and written literature produced by Afro-West Indians and their Afro-Costa Rican descendants. Particularly applicable are Wendy Walters observations in At Home in Diaspora: Black International Writing as she states, “literature is a key site where diasporic authors engage or debate concepts of racial identity, diasporic community, and postnational citizenship.”1 Afro-Costa Rican writers express not only the multiple geographic crossings that formethnic, cultural and national identity, but they also articulate belonging to the African Diaspora through transnational literary and cultural linkages, particularly transnational Blackness. The notion of transnational Blackness in Costa Rica will be analyzed considering the “two disparate strands of creole identification” that anthropologist Edmund T. Gordon identifies as “black” and “Anglo,” wherein the “roots (social memory of slavery and the idea of Jamaica, other Caribbean islands, and more distantly Africa as homelands) and routes (an identification with black Caribbean and North American popular culture) are the basis of the

6

Dorothy E. Mosby

Creoles’ black Diaspora identity.”2 This Black Diaspora identity is present in the writings of Afro-Costa Rican writers Quince Duncan, Eulalia Bernard, Shirley Campbell, and Delia McDonald. These writers engage the roots of their collective history and the routes of their cultural experience as descendants of Black Anglophone Caribbean migrants to express their relationship to their nation-state but also to a diasporic community beyond Costa Rica’s borders. Because of the peripheral or marginal status of peoples of African descent, there sometimes emerges in literature and popular culture the desire to articulate belonging to a greater community or a greater body of identification beyond the nation-state, which may officially or unofficially reject Blackness. These “diaspora identifications” according to Walters, “exist within, across, and outside of nationstates, neither evading nor embracing the nation-state as the ultimate horizon of social membership.”3 Expressing transnational Blackness fi nds connectedness in some of the questions and spaces left by white supremacist thinking and racial ideologies in the West. It also presents an alternate understanding of diaspora as “a much more complex ‘chaotic’ model,” which allows for new ways of conceptualizing community, culture, and identity.4 The terms transnationalism and transnational, usually paired with “globalization,” have dominated much of the recent discourse in various disciplines of the social sciences. According to the authors of Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Decentralized Nations States: The term ‘transnational’ is used to signal the fluidity with which ideas, objects, capital, and people now move across borders and boundaries. Scholars of transnational culture speak in the vocabulary of postmodernism and make reference to hybridity, hyperspace, displacement, disjuncture, decentering, and diaspora.5

Basch et al. presented one of the earlier frameworks for discussion of transnationalism through transnational migration, and many scholars have since articulated varying defi nitions and models for conceptualizing transnationalism. However, most agree that transnationalism refers to the global flow of ideas, people, cultural products, and material goods as political and economic borders become more flexible and as technology becomes more widely dispersed and utilized. As a result of these transnational flows, the peoples of the globe become more connected. While diaspora refers to the dispersal or scattering of peoples, transnational contacts and transactions offer means for these peoples to locate one another, communicate, and form new imagined communities without having to return to an actual, physical homeland. Viewing diaspora transnationally enables us to appreciate the complexities

Roots and Routes 7 and heterogeneity of identities and experience. As Stuart Hall observes the multiplicity and multiple articulations of Diaspora: “Diaspora does not refer us to those scattered tribes where identity can only be secured in relation to some sacred homeland to which they must at all costs return. . . . The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defi ned, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity.”6 Much of the focus on transnationalism has been on the “transmigrants” “the individuals and groups who move across national boundaries yet remain tied to their home communities.”7 However in this preliminary analysis, the focus is less on the situation of migrants and global workers and their identities. Here the primary concern with transnationalism is its relationship between and among members of the African Diaspora in Central America. Instead of looking solely towards Africa or the Anglophone islands of the West Indies as a home in any real sense, writers are looking to other people of African descent for cultural exchange and connection— sharing experiences of double-consciousness and national ideologies. Black communities in the Diaspora have long been connected through oral history, the imagination, and the circulation of popular culture, mass media, literature, and the arts. These types of flows and exchanges have always occurred and have only stood to increase with the use of new technologies that foster contact between some members of the Diaspora who were previously isolated. The term transnational heightens awareness of the continuity of these flows from the past to the present. As we look at “blackness” transnationally across the Diaspora, we fi nd that it is an essential identification that is in itself multiple, contestatory, heterogeneous, contradictory, and fragmented. Because it is a socially constructed term, the meanings attached to Blackness are constantly in the process of being examined, re-worked, re-defi ned—it the essential identity that is not. Marie Hélène Laforest observes the strategies of resistance among Afro-descendants and the diversity of Black identity in the Diaspora: People of African descent adopt different survival strategies according to the societies of which they are a part. This is certainly true of day-to-day survival. Perhaps it is also true of more extensive resistance proposals. Within the black diaspora, despite claims to global brotherhood and sisterhood—not that solidarity between blacks conceptually exclude diversity—there is a constellation of blackness, different ways of being black. This was as true in the past as it is today.8 The constellation of Blackness, as articulated by Laforest, is similar to Gilroy’s description of the Black Atlantic as his “provisional attempt to figure a deterritorialized, multiplex and anti-national basis for the affinity or ‘identity

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of passions’ between diverse black populations.”9 We find that across the diaspora there are significant differences and expressions of Blackness; however, there also exist affinities of transnational Blackness rooted in resistance to hegemony, structures of white supremacy, and colonization. When we invoke the term transnational in our discussion of Blackness, we think of the flow of ideas and cultural products that somehow join the multiple sites and experiences of the African Diaspora. A concept of transnational Blackness is not tied to a nation-state per se but rather a cultural process that connects diverse peoples of the African Diaspora through an imagined shared experience of Blackness. Blackness may be seen as an alternative imagined community wherein members are connected by biological and cultural connection to African ancestry and a vision of Diaspora roots—particularly for those who are located within nation-states where African descendants’ racially marked bodies are disparaged or societies still recovering from European colonial domination. In the formation of this imagined diasporic community, as Walters describes, writing offers “a hopeful space where concepts of race and identity can be explained.”10 Writing is used to construct and reconstruct identity at home, but also look beyond the border of the nation-state towards the Diaspora—where Blackness is not an oddity and differences are not racialized. As writers imagine others within the Diaspora, as well as themselves, they convey concern with the construction and reconstruction of space and time, and the identities that inhabit them. In this project, we look at the transnational in terms of the literary expression of Blackness by Costa Rican writers that goes beyond the borders of the nation-state in order to connect with the imagined community of the Diaspora—a collective identity that is heterogeneous, contestatory, fragmented, and multiple. For the purposes of this essay, transnational Blackness will be understood through the literary connections Black writers in the Americas, specifically Costa Rica, make with other parts of the African Diaspora and with a general conceptualization of “blackness.” Imagining Blackness beyond the borders of one’s place or location within a nation-state is an act of resistance and a response to centuries of inequality, discrimination, racial oppression. As Wendy Walters affi rms, “the articulation of diaspora identity in writing is more than literary performance; it is in fact, a political act.”11 For writers of African descent looking towards the Diaspora as they portray a notion of Blackness that transcends political borders, there is often an expression of unity found “in and through (not despite) differences,” as well as in the “social location of blackness as a marker of the bottom of society” in the West. 12 There shared experiences found across geographic borders in repressive hegemonic conditions created by systems of slavery in the Atlantic world along with colonialism. These events have indelibly marked social relations by created hierarchies of color and fostering new systems of exploitation. The marginalization of African

Roots and Routes 9 descendants that grew with European expansion has left an ineffaceable imprint and has provided fodder for cultural producers. Diasporic artists, intellectuals, writers, academics, and visionaries imagine connections with others who also trace their ancestry to Africa—particularly for those in locations where Blackness is a signifier for unbelonging in places where “[b]lackness connot[es] poverty, ignorance, and intemperate persist.13 In the Costa Rican context, the discourse of whiteness is part of the national identity that was consolidated in the nineteenth century—a period in which race and nation were considered homologous terms. This conflation during the modernist nation-building process assimilates some and excludes those who do not belong to the national ideal.14 This process in Costa Rica is fi nalized around the arrival of Afro-West Indian workers in 1872 to construct the transcontinental railroad and later to work for the United Fruit Company after its founding in 1899. Some of the workers were true temporary migrants who came to earn a living as contract laborers and move on to either their country of origin or more profitable locations in the Caribbean basin and beyond. However, other workers and their families remained in Costa Rica—“disrupting” the country’s demographic composition and imagined homogeneity that culminated in the naturalization and enfranchisement of Costa Rican-born Blacks after the 1948 civil war. For the small Central American nation, the construction of its national identity adheres to the image of Costa Rica as a state formed by white, Catholic, Spanish-speaking peasants whose egalitarian attitudes towards one another and an absence of large-scale plantation economy supported by Indian and African labor forged an essentially democratic and peace-loving people. This leyenda blanca, “white legend,” not only minimizes or excludes the contemporary presence of indigenous groups and peoples of African descent but also seeks to project an image of “whiteness” and Spanishness as fundamental to Costa Rican identity. To be tico, or Costa Rican, through this lens of the leyenda blanca, looks upon the racialized other as foreign and “non-Costa Rican.” So while including Afro-Costa Ricans into the fold of the nation as citizens, this group marked by racial difference and multiple migrations are also excluded from the sense of national identity. Ian Smart when talking about the work of Eulalia Bernard in his book Central American Writers of West Indian Origin: A New Hispanic Literature (1983) observes that in the dedicatory of her poetry collection, Ritmohéroe (1982) she states, “To my ancestors and their descendants who have contributed to forging with love our country” is a “confident statement of belonging” which “will contrast . . . with Bernard’s later statements in which the confidence [of] belonging to the new patria is more of a desired goal than an achieved one.”15 Smart’s observation makes about Eulalia Bernard may also be said of other Afro-Costa Rican writers of West Indian descent—a manifestation of a sort of double-consciousness

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wherein they express the incompatibility of being Black and Costa Rican. They express a desire to belong not only to the nation-state as citizens but also to form connections with a sense of Blackness outside of national borders. The transnational and diasporic perspectives are in addition to—not as an alternative for—national and cultural identity. Afro-Costa Rican writers experience double-consciousness; and, as an act of resistance and reaffi rmation, this leads them to the act of “seeking diasporic connections to other black people in the world” through literature.16 People of AfroWest Indian descent in Costa Rica face the classic situation described by W. E. B. DuBois as “double-consciousness where in spite of proclaiming a Costa Rican national identity they experience what Walters describes as “racialized exile” within the nation-state and its dominant culture that privileges whiteness. Eulalia Bernard (1935), Quince Duncan (1940), Shirley Campbell (1965), and Delia McDonald (1965) through their writing form linkages beyond the frontiers of the Costa Rican nation-state by writing the experiences of Blackness in Costa Rica in particular and in the Americas in general, as well as the African and Caribbean diasporas. These writers express their “roots” in the Caribbean and the ancestral memory of Africa and “routes” by addressing that impact Black Caribbean and North American culture but also with the many cultures of the Black diaspora. In accord with Walters, “[w]riting diaspora, then, is part of the construction of an alternate community, part of the ‘search for viable homes for viable selves’ in opposition to the experience of statelessness.”17 In addition to locating subjects in multiple geographic locations and cultures, Afro-Costa Rican writers use two additional strategies to convey the roots and routes of transnational Blackness. In the fi rst strategy they write to the Diaspora, from the local to the global by connecting a specific personal or national event towards a transnational Black community. In the second, they engage in an act of “naming and claiming,” which joins the different locations, historical figures, and events of the cultures of the Diaspora into an imagined community through literature. Afro-Costa Rican writers also make implicit connections with Black communities of the Americas and the Diaspora through global themes. Shirley Campbell´s second published collection of poetry, Rotundamente Negra (Absolutely Black, 1994), as well as the poems contained within it, makes implicit connections with Blacks of the Americas and the Diaspora through local as global themes, which reflects the tendency to articulate transnational Blackness through the local. The volume contains poems unified by the themes of children and Black motherhood, ethnicity, and history. Rotundamente Negra is dedicated “To my brothers and sisters in blood, in skin, and above all, in hope” (A mis hermanos y hermanas en la sangre, en la piel, y sobre todo en la esperanza), which is followed by a powerful epigraph from African-American poet Nikki Giovanni that well defi nes the collection’s themes: “We feed the children with our culture

Roots and Routes 11 that they might understand our travail” (5). In poem XII, from Rotundamente Negra, the poetic voice addresses a comment by Carlos, a nonBlack friend, who claims “that there are no laws that repress life” (que no hay leyes que repriman la vida). In response, the poetic voice connects her ethnic consciousness and difference transnationally in order to refute her compatriot’s comment: [.................] I want you to remember above all that the color of my skin is different from yours I do not want you to forget that my history has large and sad and beautiful and eternal blemishes distinct from yours. I want to say to you and do not forget it that over there and here and in other parts my peoples are bleeding for life my people have more hunger than yours they feel and love and they are dying for hope. That there are no laws that repress life? sometimes I believe it [................] and sometimes I want to believe it when the house becomes filled with voices that leap from the television and the newspaper that shout at me that Mandela is free but his people are dying that they say to me that in Africa and in Haiti

12

Dorothy E. Mosby and in the Southern United States and in the world there is hunger and racism and death. Truly Carlos, sometimes but only when you become a part of my history of our hope you will understand that there are laws and reasons and men that repress life that make you cry when we are alone that make you shout filthy words that makes us find excuses to join together living and struggling only then Carlos will you understand that time is not equal that skins have shades and that the sunrise has a different look from these eyes. [.................] (Quiero que recuerdes ante todo que mi piel es distinta a la tuya quiero que no olvides que mi historia tiene manchas grandes y tristes y bellas y eternas distintas que las tuyas. Quiero decirte y no lo olvides que allá y aquí y en otras partes mis pueblos desangran

Roots and Routes 13 por la vida mis pueblos tienen más hambre que los tuyos sientan y aman y están muriendo por la esperanza. Que no hay leyes que repriman la vida? a veces lo creo [................] y a veces quiero creerlo cuando la casa se me llena de voces que saltan del televisor y del periódico que me gritan que Mandela es libre pero su pueblo muere que me dicen que en Africa y en Haití y en el Sur de los Estados Unidos y en el mundo hay hambre y racismo y muerte. A veces de verdad Carlos pero solo cuando seas parte de mi historia de nuestra esperanza vas a entender que hay leyes y razones y hombres que repriman la vida que hacen llorar cuando estamos solos que hacen gritar palabras sucias que nos hacen a nosotros encontrar excusas para reunirnos amando y luchando solamente entonces Carlos entenderás que el tiempo es desigual que las pieles tienen matices y que al amanecer pinta distinto desde estos ojos. (88)

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The ethnic, historic, and cultural borders are clearly drawn with the use of the possessives mi/my and tuyo/your in this local, intimate, and personal debate between Costa Ricans of different ethno-cultural backgrounds: the Black-identified poetic voice and non-Black Carlos. However, this “dialogue” expands beyond the borders of Costa Rica as the poetic voice summons diasporic consciousness by connecting with transnational Blackness. Through a shared sense of history, social justice, and culture, the poetic voice seeks solidarity with those of the African Diaspora as she links her ethnic and cultural history as an Afro-descendant with those outside of her nation-state. She reminds her companion of the history of marginalization and oppression shared by many in the Diaspora and that his statement “that there are not laws that repress life” is refuted not only by the local experience of Blackness in Costa Rica but also transnationally as she presents South Africa, the African continent, Haiti, and the American South as examples of how the world is viewed through different lenses from different skin colors and cultural experiences. Eulalia Bernard, the Costa Rican-born daughter of Jamaican immigrants, has published several poems that address issues of the local and national such as “Somos el País de Tres” (We Are the Country of Three) about diversity within Costa Rica as well as it’s Third World status and “Deseo” (Desire) about the restoration of Puerto Limón, she makes connections outside of regional and national borders with an eye towards the Diaspora.23 In the English language poem, “My Last Chains” from the collection My Black King (1991), the poetic voice proclaims, “I shall break my last chains/Never more shall I say ‘Fatherland’/My compatriots I shall seek/ Throughout the magnitude of the Universe/From among those, in whose eyes/I am reflected” (n. pag.). She eschews the limits of the nation-state and seeks a compatriotism of social justice with others beyond national borders as they march “[t]owards freedom” (n. pag.). A global and spiritual relationship is formed in “Mi Madre y el Tajamar” (My Mother and the Seawall) from Bernard’s fi rst commercially published Spanish-language collection, Ritmohéroe (Rhythmhero, 1982). “Mi Madre y el Tajamar” offers a gentle portrayal of a mother and daughter but also addresses the local Costa Rican situation in addition to the global. As the mother and daughter pair walk along the seawall, the mother points out towards the horizon and instructs: “There they are,” she said to me “your Coromanti ancestors your Fanti ancestors who know nothing about identity cards, nor crucified Christs nor about the railway to the docks nor of deaf saints nor dark-skinned virgins.”

Roots and Routes 15 The sea resounded (with her words) while she said all of this in a broken language and a look of distant pride. (“Ahí están,” me decía “tus abuelos koromantí tus abuelos fantí, que no saben nada de cédulas de identidad, ni de cristos crucificados sobre los rieles de los muelles, ni de santos sordos, ni de vírgenes pardas.” El mar retumbaba con sus palabras, mientras ella decía todo esto en un lenguaje entrecortado [sic] y una mirada de orgullo lejano. (Ritmohéroe 94)

As they stand near the sea, which appears as a representation of exile and separation, the mother and daughter are separated from their cultural home of Jamaica and are “outsiders” to the various symbols of Costa Rican identity: the national identity card (cédula de identidad) denied to many AfroWest Indians before the 1948 revolution; the Catholicism of the nation’s dominant Hispanic population represented by statuary imagery “crucified Christs” and “deaf saints”; the transcontinental railroad and port at Puerto Limón built largely by Afro-West Indian labor but not owned by them; and the potent black-stone image of the patron saint of the nation, la Virgen De los Angeles, also known as “La Negrita” (The Little Black One). These symbols that seem inaccessible to the mother-daughter pair in Costa Rica are transcended by a spiritual connection to an ancestral history within the Diaspora as she points to her “Coromanti ancestors” and her “Fanti ancestors.” This vision that the mother offers that looks beyond the borders of their location in Costa Rica offers the possibility that “home is elsewhere, even though they are ‘abandoned’ in this land” and lies in their connection to the ancestors and the Diaspora. 24 Although “Mi Madre y el Tajamar” appears to be a very specific, local expression of an Afro-Costa Rican experience, the outward vision of the poetic voice indicates engagement with issues of Blackness that cross national and spiritual borders. Afro-Costa Rican writers also express transnational Blackness through “naming and claiming” by presenting themes that acknowledge Blacks in other lands in the diasporic imaginary. In their work, the authors specifically name diasporic writers, cultural practices, historical figures, or places of significance in the Diaspora and rhetorically claim them by expressing a sense of solidarity, community, connection, or contact. For example, poet

16

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Eulalia Bernard makes explicit references to West Indian cultural practices such as obeah, places like Egypt, Congo, Ethiopia, Jamaica, and New York, as well as to figures such as Louis Armstrong, Martin Luther King Jr., Manu Dibango, Roberta Flack, and Nelson Mandela. Several texts by Afro-Costa Rica novelist Quince Duncan connect with a notion of transnational Blackness through multiple locations in the Diaspora. Duncan’s fi rst novel, Hombres Curtidos (1971) travels between the land of the Ashanti in Africa, the plantations of Jamaica, Panama, and Costa Rica; thus, displaying the multiple migrations and multiple diasporas of Afro-Costa Ricans: Africa to the Insular Caribbean; from the Caribbean to Central America. La Paz del Pueblo (1976), Duncan’s third novel follows a similar flow pattern, however, journeys between Haiti, Jamaica, Costa Rica, and Panama. The novelist’s latest text, A Message for Rosa (2007) is a collection of vignettes of the African Diaspora across space and time that touch the major sites of cultural resistance in the “black Atlantic”—Africa, Western Europe, and points in the Americas such as the U.S., Jamaica, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti. For the second- and third-generation Afro-Costa Rican writers, represented by poet Bernard and novelist Duncan, respectively, one of the ways in which Afro-Costa Rican writers express a transnational vision is through the naming and claiming of Marcus M. Garvey (1887–1940). The historic Garvey worked briefly as a timekeeper for United Fruit Company in Puerto Limón, Costa Rica (1910–1911), and published a radical newspaper that advocated for workers rights. The distribution of the newspaper generated concern at United Fruit, which pressured authorities to expel him from the country. This experience led Garvey to travel to other parts of the United Fruit Company’s empire in Central America and South America where he observed the mistreatment of Black workers before traveling to London. Upon his return to Jamaica, he established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 as a self-reliance organization for Blacks to promote political, social, and economic justice. After the organization was established in Harlem, New York, in 1918, its membership grew among African Americans and AfroWest Indians in the city and beyond through transnational contacts. With its motto “One God, One Aim, One Destiny,” UNIA became a major PanAfricanist organization during the fi rst quarter of the twentieth century with branches throughout the Americas and in Europe. Garvey traveled to Costa Rica twice as the organization’s leader and to garner support for the Black Star Line project (1919–1922), a steamship line that promised to support business and cultural enterprises in the Diaspora by sending ships, goods, and people between the U.S., the Caribbean, and Africa. This venture hoped to stimulate economic prosperity by maintaining earnings within Black-owned businesses and the UNIA organization, as well as offering an opportunity for African descendants in the Americas to make the “return” to Africa. Although the Black Star Line was a business failure that contributed to increased scrutiny by Garvey’s detractors

Roots and Routes 17 and ultimately led to his criminal prosecution for mail fraud, it remains an important and powerful symbol of self-reliance for the marginalized, oppressed, and dispossessed peoples of African descent in the Diaspora. As a literary subject, Garvey represents transnational Blackness and Diaspora by creating hope for a stable home for peoples whom he saw as peoples scattered and dispossessed. In Afro-Costa Rican literature, Garvey is a symbol that represents Jamaican/West Indian origins and a sense of unity of the Black experience and culture that goes beyond national borders—an “imagined community” of Blackness. Bernard makes a subtle reference to Garvey’s Black Star Line project in her poem “Requiem para Mi Primo Jamaicano” (Requiem for My Jamaican Cousin). The poem addresses the citizenship denied to Jamaicans and their descendants in Costa Rica before 1948.18 The poem opens with the somber declaration, “Death protected him from disgrace and the mystery of his fate” (Lo protegió la muerte/contra tanta infamia/Y el misterio de su suerte; Ritmohéroe 29). The poetic voice proceeds to describe the painful denial of the national symbols of the national anthem, the flag, and the cédula de identidad (national identity card) given to citizens juxtaposed with his labor on “a small piece/of this inhospitable and fertile tropical land/that will never be the homeland” (un pedacito de esa tierra/inhóspita y fertile del trópico,/que no será nunca tierra patria; Ritmohéroe 29). In spite of the bureaucratic maze of paperwork that shuffles “white papers from white hands” (blancos papeles de blancas manos), the subject’s only desire is to claim his place and declare: “I am a black man from the country,/from Star Valley./I am a black star/on the resplendent white, blue, and red of our flag” (Soy negro del campo,/del Valle de la Estrella/Soy una estrella negra/ en el flamante blanco, azul, rojo/de nuestra bandera; Ritmohéroe 29). On many levels, the Afro-Costa Rican is presented as an “outsider.” The “Jamaican” cousin is acknowledged for his labor but denied the benefits and protection of citizenship by bureaucratic government administrators whose white hands are the gatekeepers of the nation’s desired homogeneity. Although the subject is referred to as Jamaican, it is an ambiguous description that is applicable to one who was born in Jamaica and was used to label Blacks born in Costa Rica of West Indian descent because they were not included in the nation as citizens. When the subject declares that he is the “black star” on the nation’s tricolor flag, which he clarifies as “our flag,” he inserts himself into the nation in spite of the denial of legitimate citizenship. Additionally, the reference to the black star suggests the inauspicious Black Star Line steamship scheme promoted by Marcus Garvey and the UNIA, which promised to give Blacks in the Americas a “place” and an identity beyond national tendencies, which deny their presence, dignity, and contributions.19 During traveling campaigns to rally fi nancial support of UNIA members, “Garvey used the star image to press for the visibility of Africa and African peoples all over the globe. [ . . . ] Garvey, the UNIA, and the Black Star Line symbolized resistance, Black nationalism in the

18

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Americas, and Africa as homeland.”20 In the case of the subject in Bernard’s poem, there is no explicit call for Africa to become the homeland for the displaced Afro-descendant from the English-speaking West Indies in Spanish-speaking Costa Rica. The subject desires to stake his claim in the nation; however, this opportunity is denied. Through the understated reference to the “black star,” the subject stands as a figure of resistance and struggle for recognition as a veiled connection is made to the Diaspora by way of Garvey’s Pan-Africanist and transnational dream. Similarly, in “Leaders! Emerge!” the poet invokes the symbolic memory of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA for the displaced and dispossessed Afro-descendants as “it presents an urgent call for the cultivation and development of leadership in the tradition of Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist vision.”21 This poem, written in English, is directed at the descendants of Afro-West Indians to look beyond their circumstances towards a greater, loftier goal and connection. The poetic voice urges, “Leaders! Emerge!/Liberate yourselves/Seek thy identity/Follow the philosophy/Of Garvey; . . . evoke his spirit . . . /Day by day . . . in the immortal/UNIA” and calls for leaders to come forward from different geographic sites and social classes to help “to secure a place/For the furture (sic) emancipation/Of our new generation” (My Black King n. pag.). The poetic voice urgently closes with “He! . . . has already led us/A long way . . . through the/UNIA. The UNIA” (My Black King n. pag.). Garvey appears as an important symbol of redemption of Afro-descendants in the Diaspora and as figure of solidarity. With the call to “Follow the philosophy of Garvey,” appears the reference to the School of African Philosophy, a series of lessons and courses Garveyite leaders were expected to complete in order to successfully spread the self-determination message of the New Thought movement to mentally heal the race as they promote the UNIA from key positions. This reference to Garvey implies a vision to improve local conditions but also a vision beyond Costa Rica towards the rest of the Diaspora. Garvey becomes a point of contention and an inspiration among the members of Limón’s Afro-West Indian community in the work of Quince Duncan. In Hombres Curtidos, the novel’s protagonist Clif Duke is a thirdgeneration Afro-Costa Rican caught between the culture of his West Indian heritage and the dominant Hispanic culture of Costa Rica, which causes him to question “Am I Costa Rican?” His memories evoke his Jamaican grandfather’s struggles as a member of the fi rst generation, and he also recalls debates among members of his mother’s generation about whether Costa Rica is an adequate home or should their generation continue to imagine home is elsewhere (Jamaica) although the return seems impossible. The situation of Clif’s third generation is distinct, he struggles to understand the meaning of the Costa Rican citizenship that he possesses, but was denied to his grandfather because he was born in Jamaica. Clif tries to understand the nation that has fi nally recognized Blacks as citizens

Roots and Routes 19 but questions the meaning of this citizenship when he is denied access to employment and basic services and is the object of racial insults in the capital. When he questions his own nationality, “It is not the mechanical and involuntary question of being born in a certain country, but rather the matter of being incorporated or not into national society. The real fact of his marginal situation.” (“No la cuestión mecánica e involuntaria de haber nacido en determinado país, sino el hecho de estar o no incorporado a la sociedad nacional. El hecho real de su situación marginal”; Hombres Curtidos 133). During his reflection on identity, the questions that emerge lead Clif back to a conversation with his grandfather about Marcus Garvey, the Black Star Line, and the “back-to-Africa” movement. Perhaps if Costa Rica cannot accept its Black citizens and a return to Jamaica is impossible for his generation, perhaps there is a possibility of making a home elsewhere in the Diaspora. This conversation reveals three tensions in the AfroWest Indian community: the most ardent of the Garveyites who believe in the redemptive power of a return to Africa; those who feel a return to their island of origin will ensure cultural and economic survival; and the members of community who feel that they have earned the right to remain in the land that they made productive and wealthy. Clif’s grandfather expresses his support of the latter of the three perspectives and questions the backto-Africa movement: [T]hey enslaved us physically and terrorized us ideologically to the point that many of us believed that we were an inferior race, and then, when they could do no more, we accept a seat on a ship and return to our land. Which land Clif? We don’t even know from which area of the continent we come from and we would be strangers in any part of Africa. There is something in common among all of us, but also a black Cuban is more Cuban than African, and more similar to a Latino in his way of thinking than an Ethiopian. Do you think the Africans would let us come back all of sudden in order to impose our ideology over theirs? ([N]os esclavizaron físicamente y nos tiranizaron ideológicamente, hasta el punto de hacer creer a muchos que éramos una raza inferior, y luego, cuando ya no pudieron más, nosotros aceptamos un asiento en un barco y regresamos a nuestra tierra. ¿Cuál tierra Clif? Ni siquiera sabemos de qué lugar del continente provenimos; y seríamos extraños en cualquier parte del Africa. Hay algo en común entre todos nosotros. Pero también un negro cubano es más cubano que africano, y más semejante a un latino en su manera de pensar que a un etíope. ¿Tú crees que los africanos iban a permitirnos regresar de la noche a la mañana para imponer nuestra ideología sobre la de ellos?) (Hombres Curtidos 134) Clif Duke and his grandfather understand the facts of diaspora, the myth of African homogeneity, and the cultural differentiation between and among

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Blacks of the Diaspora. Clif Duke decides as a third-generation Afro-Costa Rican of West Indian descent to negotiate the multiple sites of his identity— Jamaica, Limón, San José, Costa Rica, Africa, and the African Diaspora— but unequivocally remains in Costa Rica to continue to struggle to become part of the nation, although connected with other places and cultures. Although the majority of the action of Duncan’s third novel, La Paz del Pueblo, is centered in Limón, Costa Rica, the transnational connections formed by the characters provide explanations for their presence in Central America but also justifications for their actions. Like Hombres Curtidos, La Paz del Pueblo prominently features journeys and contacts between Haiti, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Panama, and other locations in the insular and continental Caribbean. In particular, Garvey’s Pan-African, transnational movement becomes the centerpiece for resistance and cultural maroonage that form the novel’s main theme. When Pedro Dull arrives to the province, the Jamaican-born man brings with him the hope of Garvey’s vision of liberation and economic justice against exploitation. Pedro gains the support of the workers to organize a strike to clamor for better working conditions on the banana plantations that depend on their labor. However, his activism is not supported by all of the members of the West Indian community. Mr. Brown, a light-skinned Afro-West Indian from Jamaica, owns a banana plantation that supplies United Fruit. As a member of the local Afro-West Indian elite, Brown convinces the Anglican Church, the official church patronized by the elite and the middle class, to dismantle and dismiss the Garveyites. The pastor addresses the congregation of the dangers of this movement: Last night I was listening to a talk by one of those Garveyites. Those crazy fools who believe we should return to Africa, to barbarism, to paganism. They were talking about the strike that as I understand, affects the interests of a prominent member of this church, and I hoped to hear from among them some sort of protest of solidarity, some inclination towards justice. I thought to myself, although they are wrong, they are well-intentioned. But no, everything I heard was of great African empires that only exist in their minds and the right that various people have to resist oppression, and above all the right blacks have to resist oppression by any means necessary. And I ask you, is that Christian? (Anoche estuve oyendo una charla de esos que siguen a Garvey. Esos locos que pretenden que volvamos al Africa, a la barbarie, al paganismo. Estaban hablando de la huelga que tengo entendido, afecta los intereses de un prominente miembro de esta iglesia, y yo esperaba oír de parte de ellos alguna manifestación de solidaridad, alguna inclinación hacia la justicia. Yo me dije que aunque equivocados, tienen buenas intenciones. Pero no: todo lo que oí fue de grandes imperios africanos que solo en la mente de ellos existen, y del derecho que tienen los pueblos a resistir la opresión, y sobre todo, el derecho que tienen

Roots and Routes 21 los negros a resistir la opresión por cualquier medio que consideren adecuado.) (La Paz 149–150) In spite of Brown’s attempts to usurp the strike and accuse their leader of a murder he did not commit, Pedro becomes a savior in the eyes of the workers as he continues to organize them around the flag of Garveyism. Brown complains of the Garveyites, “It seems Jamaica is not enough for them any more” (parece que ya no les basta Jamaica; 159). This assertion appears certain as Pedro brings together West Indians from different nations who are workers in Limón and those who do make the return to their places of origin, as well as those who travel to other places in the Americas and beyond will undoubtedly carry his message. As he debates whether to flee to Panama to avoid prosecution or remain in Limón to sacrifice himself, Pedro hears voices from various locations of the Diaspora: “Voices from Kingston. Voices from Spanish Town. Voices hidden in his veins. Voices from Belize. Voices fleeing. Voices searching.” (Voces de Kingston. Voces de Spanish Town. Voces ocultas en las venas. Voces de Belize. Voces huyendo. Voces buscando; 169). These voices lead him to stand with the working-class people in Limón, which clearly means sacrificing his life while becoming a symbol of resistance and solidarity for those who seek social and economic justice within Costa Rica for Afro-West Indian workers. A new home is not necessarily longed for, but rather a linkage with the experience of others of African descent in the Diaspora is the desired outcome. This strategy may be considered as a way to overcome the limits imposed on Blacks by hegemonic structures in white supremacist societies. This is why, for example, the image of Marcus Garvey appears as a familiar reference in Afro-Costa Rican literature. The references to Garvey figure prominently in the work by Eulalia Bernard, a second-generation AfroCosta Rican and Quince Duncan, a third-generation Afro-Costa Rican due to their proximity to migrants from the West Indies and their personal connection to Limón Province. However, the poets Shirley Campbell and Delia McDonald are shaped by life in the dominant Hispanic culture of San José. While the Afro-West Indian culture that is traditionally associated with Limón figures in the cultural memory of their poetics, they are separated figuratively by time and space. These two writers, both born in 1965 and raised in the Central Valley, demonstrate a general tendency to discuss diaspora themes with a similar global outlook as Bernard and Duncan by “naming and claiming” other writers and figures of the Diaspora. Although Shirley Campbell’s fi rst collection of poetry, Naciendo (1988) is dedicated “in memory of this town that does not lower its face and keeps on smiling” (en la memoria de este pueblo que no baja el rostro y sigue sonriendo) (Naciendo, 5), it goes beyond the local and national towards the transnational vision of the Diaspora. The fi rst section of the collection opens with epigraphs from important works by three Afro-Caribbean poets: Claude McKay (Jamaica, 1889–1948), Nicolás Guillén (Cuba,

22

Dorothy E. Mosby

1902–1989), and Aimé Cesaire (Martinique, 1913–2008). From McKay, Campbell extracts “If we must die, Oh let us nobly die,/So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain” from the Harlem Renaissance writers’ famous sonnet, “If We Must Die” (1919). As a predecessor to négritude, McKay was “among the fi rst to articulate a transnational vision of blackness in the years between World War I and the Great Depression” (Stephens 598).24 The verse “Eh compañeros aquí estamos” is from “Llegada” (Arrival) the opening poem in Guillén’s Songoro Cosongo (1931). “Llegada” is a view from the Other on experience of the arrival of African slaves to the Americas and the culture they and their descendants created. With its echoes that touch upon the racial aspects of history and collective memory, the poem also portrays resistance as the poetic voice declares, “We bring/ our features to the defi nitive profi le of America” (Traemos/nuestro rasgo al perfil defi nitivo de América). From Césaire, one of the key intellectuals of négritude, the well-known words, “Whoever would not understand me would not understand any better the roaring of a tiger” are selected from the book-length poem “Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal” (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, 1939). This text became an influential anthem of negritude by addressing colonialism, resistance, and the meaning of Blackness and Black consciousness. As contemporaries in different geographic locations and from different cultures, these three writers are joined by the common bond of negritude found in their work with its expression of shared histories and resistance. McKay, Guillén, and Césaire have expressed in various ways how Afrodescendants have been excluded from citizenship, nationhood, and selfdetermination, similar social, cultural, and political exclusions that form some of the subject matter in Campbell’s Naciendo. By opening with these representatives of the spirit of négritude from the Anglophone, Hispanophone, and Francophone Caribbean, Campbell delivers a message that does not romanticize but rather relates the different linguistic and cultural groups in the Caribbean Basin (including Central America) and beyond around a notion of Blackness. The appropriation of “transnational imaginaries in order to frame local political demands and strategies” is enacted in Naciendo and other Afro-Costa Rican texts to address the particular local situation of Afro-Costa Ricans and relate it to that “inescapably political language of citizenship, racial justice, and equality” in the Americas and in the Diaspora. 25 Both Shirley Campbell and Delia Mc Donald present poems in homage to Nicolás Guillén who is considered one of the innovators of themes of Black consciousness and social justice in Latin American poetry. In an untitled poem from McDonald’s fi rst published collection El Séptimo Círculo del Obelisco, the poetic voice declares: Black I say the way Guillén said it; because he in his Cuba and I in mine,

Roots and Routes 23 we are similar with our bongo-shaped nose and the lost heritage. But he in his Cuba and I in mine, we are the voices of the shadows that did not cross the sea (Digo negro como lo dijo Guillén; porque él en su Cuba y yo en la mía, nos parecemos en la nariz de bongó, y en la herencia perdida. Pero él en su Cuba y yo en la mía, somos las voces de las sombras que no cruzaron el mar. (11)

Here McDonald expresses a diaspora consciousness as she links the themes of Afro-Cuban life portrayed in Guillén’s poetry with her own Afro-Costa Rican reality. Although the two poets are separated by time and space, she expresses the points of contact in the diaspora experience through the condition of displacement (“he in his Cuba and I in mine”), physical traits (“we are similar with our bongo-shaped nose”), common cultural history (“the lost heritage”), and diasporic literary consciousness in the Americas (“we are the voices of the shadows that did not cross the sea”), a double reference to the incomplete physical and spiritual return to Africa. 26 McDonald’s fi nal two verses also imply that she and Guillén in their separate spaces are unified in the goal of “giving voice to the voiceless [ancestral] spirits who did not cross over, and the poetry of the two New World Afro-Latin American poets serves as a medium for these lost voices.”27 Campbell presents a similar connection with Guillén in her untitled poem as demonstrated by the opening verses “Now that you are dead,/I kneel to your presence/and I feel a little more tranquil” (Ahora cuandos estás muerto/me arrodillo a tu compañia/y me siento un poco más tranquila; 81). She is able to form literary, ethnic, and cultural bonds in the transnational Black imaginary as she mourns the death of the Cuban poet whom she as never met. The poetic voice declares It is now Nicolás Guillén when time misses you from those of us who did not know you from those of us who have your same skin your same painful dream today I read in the newspaper of your death and I felt my body go numb as one who wants to accompany you [..........................] it’s that Nicolás Guillén has died the one who sang in Yoruba

24

Dorothy E. Mosby sóngoro cosongo [........................] the same one who never dressed his words in mourning but rather painted in many colors the blows of our history. (Es ahora Nicolás Guillén cuando te extraña el tiempo de los que no te conocimos de los que tenemos tu misma piel tu mismo sueño adolorido hoy leí en el diario tu muerte y sentí el cuerpo dormirse como quien quiere acompañarte [.............................] es que ha muerto Nicolás Guillén el que cantó en Yoruba sóngoro cosongo [...................] es el mismo el que nunca vistió luto en sus palabras sino que pintó en colores los golpes de nuestra historia.) ( 81–82)

The poem ends with these haunting verses: Awake Nicolás Guillén strike my face and teach me to pray with your words do not die this world still is not prepared to live without you. (Despierta Nicolás Guillén golpéame el rostro y enséñame a rezar con tus palabras no te mueras que aún este mundo

Roots and Routes 25 no está preparado para vivir sin ti.) (82–83)

This poetic expression of transnational Blackness not only “names and claims” Nicolás Guillén but also expresses empathy (“felt my body go numb”), diasporic kinship and solidarity in the imagined community of the Diaspora (“from those of us who did not know you/from those of us who have/your same skin”) and shared historical realities (“your same painful dream”; “the punches of our history”). Campbell addresses Guillén’s impact from her position as an Afro-Costa Rican poet and member of the diasporic community. This poem commemorates and celebrates Guillén’s literary force as figure of the Diaspora and his lasting importance as one who did not write about the situation of Blacks in Cuba and the Americas with mournful pessimism but rather “painted with many colors” the reality, the negative “blows” of history of Afro-descendants in the Americas.

CONCLUSION The authors of Nations Unbound remind us particularly as people and their ideas cross the limits of the nation-state that these ethnic and national identities that are held dear are socially constructed and contradictory: Bounded concepts of culture, whether signaled by the rubric of tribe, ethnic group, race, or nation, are social constructions. They are reflective not of the stable boundaries of cultural difference but of relations of culture and power. Moreover, while at any time, culturally constructed boundaries—be they those of nations, ethnicities, or races—may seem fi xed, timeless, or primordial, dynamic processes of reformation underlie the apparent fi xity. The current confl ations of time and space brought about by global communications and transnational social relations only serve to highlight more deep-seated contradictions in the way in which we think about culture and society. 28 This helps to reveal that transnational Blackness is not a simple, uncomplicated, or unproblematic project. The strategic essentialism of transnational Blackness is not comprised of undifferentiated racial essences. There is no singular rallying point around Black nationalism—although present in some writers, it is not the unifying theme. The concept acknowledges to some degree the “voluntary” migrations, connections to homelands, new homes but also imagined ones in the imagined community of the Diaspora that cross borders, nations, cultures, and languages and aided by the rapidly changing context and access to technology. As Gilroy comments

26

Dorothy E. Mosby Today, there are still significant differences between the ways in which blackness, race, and nationality are understood in the different locations whose complex interactions composed the black Atlantic system. Contrasting black identities remain routed through distinct local histories and projected on to various landscapes. The complex of difference and similarity that gave rise to the consciousness of diaspora interculture has become more extensive in the era of ‘globalisation’ than it was in the high period of imperialism. New communicative technologies dissolve distance and transform time, changing the basis on which spatially separated groups can connect and identify with each other.29

The fi xation on a triumphant return to the motherland to restore and redeem the children of the Diaspora of various Black nationalisms has dissipated and multiple localities of the Diaspora, now more connected through technology, fi nd affi nities of consciousness across cultures and nations. Because of the complex history of peoples of African descent in Costa Rica before and after Independence, particularly the contributions of Afro-West Indians, which are often excluded from official national discourse, Afro-Costa Rican writers express the difficult history belonging and citizenship within the context of the nation-state. However, more broadly and with more acceptance are the literary connections made with a diasporic Black community through the strategies of using the local to talk about the global condition of Blackness and “naming and claiming” people, places, and events of the Diaspora transnationally. As Gordon writes of the tensions between the “black” and “Anglo” in Central American Afro-Creole cultures, there is also the additional tension in Costa Rica to feeling a part of the nation-state and its culture. When faced with this classic double-consciousness, in Afro-Costa Rican writing, there is a sense of belonging that crosses through and over these borders towards a transnational Blackness as an alternative space. Like other writers of African descent in the Diaspora, Black writers in Costa Rica fi nd themselves at a point where although they affi rm their citizenship and national identity, they experience exclusion or “racialized exile.” Also like writers of African descent elsewhere, Afro-Costa Rican writers “[seek] diasporic connections to other black people in the world” ; however, they do so not to “construct alternative homelands” but rather to form bonds with a shared experience through transnational Blackness. 30 Through a transnational imagined community, writers forge a type of resistance that assists members to transcend the power of the limits of the nation-sate in order to form a collective bond based on a general notion of Blackness. As writers express a sense of Blackness that connects with the other parts of the African Diaspora, they participate in the literary construction of transnational Blackness—a project that simultaneously creates and addresses an imagined community as well as addresses an imagined community.

Roots and Routes 27 NOTES 1. Walters, At Home in Diaspora xv. 2. Edmund T. Gordon, Disparate Diasporas xi. Although Gordon’s text examines the complex relations of ethnicity in Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, this notion of “roots” and “routes” has particular relevance to the many AfroWest Indian/Afro-Creole populations in Central America, including Costa Rica. 3. Walters, At Home in Diaspora xviii. 4. Paul Gilroy, “Route Work” 22. 5. Basch et al., Nations Unbound 27. 6. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” 235. 7. Jorge Duany. “‘Los países’: Transnational Migration from the Dominican Republic to the United States.” http://migration.ucdavis.edu/ceme/more. php?id=19_0_6_0 8. Marie Hélène Laforest, “Black Cultures in Difference” 115. 9. Gilroy, “Route Work” 18. 10. Walters, At Home in Diaspora vii. 11. Ibid. 12. Stuart Hall qtd. in Basch et al. 40. 13. Basch et al. 106. 14. Ibid. 15. Eulalia Bernard, Ritmohéroe 17; Ian Smart, Central American Writers 91. 16. Walters, At Home in Diaspora vii. 17. Ibid. 18. The creation of Costa Rica’s Second Republic after the 1948 Civil War ushered in reforms that nationalized and enfranchised Costa Rican-born blacks of West Indian descent. Prior to the reform movements, there were few Blacks who applied for and were granted citizenship. Ronald Harpelle documents this complex history in The West Indians of Costa Rica: Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority. Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press, 2002. 19. For more information on the literary connection between Marcus Garvey and the poetry of Eulalia Bernard, please consult “Costa Rica’s Black Body: The Politics and Poetics of Difference in Eulalia Bernard’s Poetry” by Kitzie McKinney and Place, Language, and Identity in Afro-Costa Rican Literature by Dorothy E. Mosby. 20. Mosby, Place, Language, and Identity 83. 21. Ibid. 22. McKay, Selected Poems of Claude McKay 36. 23. These poems (“Somos el país de tres” and “Deseo”) are published in Ritmohéroe (1982). 24. Stephens observes that “McKay began his literary career with a serious and sustained engagement with internationalism and its role in the identity of the modern black subject”; however, he became disillusioned with the outbreak of World War II (602). According to Stephens, “His imagination stifled by the political realities around him, McKay turned to fiction as a way of [ . . . ] imagining the transnational nation. This is precisely what McKay constructed in his novel Banjo: The Story without a Plot” where he creates a “transnational community of blacks of ‘doubtful nationality’” (602–603). 25. Fernandes, “Fear of a Black Nation: Local Rappers, Transnational Crossings, and the State Power in Contemporary Cuba” 575; Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack 158.

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26. This incomplete return also refers to the many versions of the myth of the “flying Africans” found in various diaspora populations in the Americas. Among some there is the belief that upon death the spirit of the deceased slave in the New World would fly back to Africa. In other versions, such as the one offered by Esteban Montejo in Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, “Some people said that when a Negro died he went back to Africa, but this is a lie. How could a dead man go to Africa? It was living men who flew there, from a tribe the Spanish stopped importing as slaves because so many of them flew away that it was bad for business” (131). 27. Mosby, Place, Language, and Identity 211. 28. Basch et al. 32. 29. Gilroy, “Route Work” 20. 30. Walters, At Home in Diaspora vii.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Basch, Linda et al. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Decentralized Nations States. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. Bernard, Eulalia. My Black King. Eugene, OR: Peace Press, 1991. . Ritmohéroe. 1982. 2nd ed. San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1996. Campbell Barr, Shirley. Naciendo. San José: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 1988. . Rotundamente Negra. 1994. Reprint. San José: Ediciones Perro Azul, 2006. Césaire, Aimé. Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry. Trans. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1983. Duany, Jorge. “‘Los países’: Transnational Migration from the Dominican Republic to the United States.” Paper presented at the seminar on “Migration and Development: Focus on the Dominican Republic.” Sponsored by the Migration Dialogue, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, March 7–9, 2002. http:// migration.ucdavis.edu/ceme/more.php?id=19_0_6_0. Accessed 3 August 2007. DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. New York: Viking Penguin, 1989. Duncan, Quince. Hombres Curtidos. San José: Cuadernos Populares, 1971. . La Paz del Pueblo. San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 1978. Fernandes, Sujatha. “Fear of Black Nation: Local Rappers, Transnational Crossings, and the State Power in Contemporary Cuba.” Anthropological Quarterly 76.4 (2003): 575–608. Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. New York: Routledge, 1987 . “Route Work: The Black Atlantic and the Politics of Exile.” Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons. Ed. Iain Chambers. New York: Routledge, 1996. 17–29. Gordon, Edmund. Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African Nicaraguan Community. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1998. Guillén, Nicolás. Obra poética. Vol. 1: 1922–1958. Compilación por Angel Augier. La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1980. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Identity and Difference. Ed. Kathryn Woodward. London: Sage Publications, 1997. 51–59. Laforest, Marie Hélène. “Black Cultures in Difference.” Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons. Ed. Iain Chambers. New York: Routledge, 1996. 115–120.

Roots and Routes 29 McDonald Woolery, Delia (Dlia). Instinto Tribal: Antología Poética. San José: Editorial Odisea, 2006. McKay, Claude. Selected Poems of Claude McKay. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovish, 1953. McKinney, Kitzie. “Costa Rica’s Black Body: The Politics and Poetics of Difference in Eulalia Bernard’s Poetry.” Afro-Hispanic Review 15 (1996): 11–20. Montejo, Estebán. Autobiography of a Runaway Slave. Ed. Miguel Barnet. Trans. Jocasta Innes. London: The Bodley Head, 1968. Mosby, Dorothy E. Place, Language, and Identity in Afro-Costa Rican Literature. Columbia: MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003. Smart, Ian. Central American Writers of West Indian Origin: A New Hispanic Literature. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1983. Stephens, Michelle. “Black Transnationalisms and the Politics of National Identity: West Indian Intellectuals in Harlem in the Age of War and Revolution.” American Quarterly 50.3 (1988): 592–608. Walters, Wendy W. At Home in Diaspora: Black International Writing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

2

Los nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores) and the Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel A Postcolonial Reading Sonja Stephenson Watson

Nearly a decade ago, noted Panamanian West Indian writer Carlos “Cubena” Guillermo Wilson (1941) stated, “I write to bring to light the contributions of Africans and their Latin American descendants to the histories, cultures, and identities in the Americas because in the official texts they are conspicuously absent”/“Escribo para dejar constancia del aporte de los africanos y sus descendientes latinoamericanos a las historias, las culturas y a las identidades en las Américas, porque en los textos oficiales brillan por su ausencia”1 (Seales Soley 68). It is no surprise then that the second novel of his trilogy, Los Nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores 1991), “writes back” to the center and incorporates the contributions of the African Diaspora populations who Wilson references. During the nation-building period (1880–1920), Panamanian nationalists promoted cultural, racial, and political whitening, which forced the Black masses into obscurity and consequently wrote Blacks out of Panamanian national history. This cultural whitening was aimed directly at the English-speaking Black West Indian population who did not coincide with the national imaginary. As a result, Wilson writes back to the center because Panamanian West Indians have been discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, and language. Wilson’s novel rewrites Panamanian history by incorporating the Afro-Caribbean experience into the national dialogue on race, ethnicity, and identity. The novel’s didacticism, historical revisionism, and quest for a heterogeneous national identity make it a contemporary Afro-Hispanic historical novel, which revises the historical and literary portrayal of Diaspora Spanishspeaking Blacks. As an Afro-Hispanic historical novel, The Grandchildren challenges past assertions of Blacks in Panama and incorporates the Diaspora into the national dialogue. As a postcolonial text, it gives a voice to the Panamanian West Indian who has been silenced since he/she ventured across the Atlantic over a century ago.

Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel

31

PANAMANIAN NATION-BUILDING Panama possesses a unique history of Black migration, which originated in the colonial period and continued with the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914. Blacks in Panama are divided into two cultural groups who migrated to the nation during different time periods: one group during the colonial period (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries) and the other during the constructions of the Trans-Isthmian Railroad (1850–1855) and the French (1880–1890) and North-American Canals (1904–1914). 2 The two groups, identified as Afro-Hispanics and Afro-Caribbeans, respectively, differ both culturally and linguistically because the majority of the latter group speaks English. These migrations have made the concept of Blackness in Panama problematic within the national discourse and have created internal problems within the Black community itself. Furthermore, Afro-Caribbeans are a heterogeneous ethnic group because they are composed of Blacks from the English-speaking Antilles such as Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and the French-speaking Antilles of Martinique and Guadalupe. As a result of (post) colonial migration, language, culture, and identity differentiate the Black community in Panama and have created tensions between “colonial blacks” or Afro-Hispanics and Afro-Caribbeans.3 The tensions between Afro-Hispanics and Afro-Caribbeans are said to be a result of a nineteenth-century nation-building project, which invisibilized the Black masses. Panamanian criollos (European-descended Panamanians) conceived the nation as a homogeneous one (e.g., Hispanic, Catholic, and Spanish speaking) and failed to recognize its racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity. The national discourse of homogeneity promoted assimilation and excluded Blackness from the national paradigm. Therefore, the national imaginary obfuscated racial differences and proclaimed Panama to be a mestizo nation with little African heritage. This national rhetoric has disproportionately affected the Afro-Caribbean population who did not coincide with the national imaginary. The Panamanian oligarchy promoted assimilation and encouraged West Indians to give up their linguistic and cultural ties to their respective Caribbean countries. Although Law 13 (1926) and Law 26 (1941) prevented West Indians from entering the country and made citizenship contingent on speaking Spanish, West Indians fi nally achieved full citizenship in 1946 under the new Constitution (Herzfeld 151). However, as Law 26 had previously mandated in 1941, the 1946 Constitution promoted cultural assimilation, since many feared that the Anglophone West Indian’s Protestant religion and native English language would alter the cultural foundation of the nation. Other groups in Panama, such as the Afro-Hispanics, accepted Blackness as culturally incompatible with a national paradigm that defined panameñidad strictly in terms of Spanish language, Hispanicism, and Catholicism. It is not coincidental that many Afro-Hispanics distanced themselves

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from Afro-Caribbeans because the former were often identified as mulato (“mixed-race”) or moreno (“brown”), categories that carried a weaker racial stigma than negro (“black”). As a result, Afro-Hispanics were able to conceal their Blackness with their cultural compatibility because the “[h] ispanicity of the ‘colonial blacks’ tends to outweigh their Blackness. Only the Blacks of Anglophone Caribbean background are considered ‘niggers’ in the thoroughly negative sense of this term” (Smart, “The West Indian Presence in the Works of Three New Central American Writers” 122). In effect, Panama’s lack of acceptance of West Indians created a fragmented society, which not only divided white and mixed-race Panamanians against West Indians, but also Afro-Hispanics against Afro-Caribbeans. Discrimination of the West Indian in the Canal Zone and throughout Panama gave rise to a literature that protested the unequal treatment of AfroCaribbeans. Literature of the Canal Zone denounced the U.S. for imposing its binary racial hierarchy in the Canal Zone and for discriminating against all Panamanians of color, including West Indians. Contemporary literature has focused primarily on the discriminatory practices of Panamanians against West Indians and relates the unofficial story rarely documented in Panamanian textbooks. Joaquín Beleño Cedeño (1922–1988) was an example of one Panamanian writer who portrayed the U.S. as the enemy, yet failed to view Panamanians as contributors to racial discrimination against West Indians. Instead, he championed the causes of the mestizo, the mulato, and the moreno in opposition to Yankee imperialism. Unlike his predecessors, Beleño attempted to problematize the situation of the West Indian and especially the one of mixed racial heritage, that is, of Anglo-American and Caribbean descent. However, Beleño only possessed an outsider’s perspective and failed to understand the complexities of race as experienced by Afro-Caribbeans who were forced to negotiate an identity shaped by cultural, linguistic, and religious ties to Africa, the Caribbean, and Panama. He viewed West Indians outside of the African and Caribbean discourse and was unable to fully capture their experiences as new citizens in Panama. Unlike Beleño, the Panamanian West Indian writer and critic Carlos Guillermo Wilson portrays the West Indian subculture in Panama from an insider’s perspective, since he has experienced the prejudice as a member of this marginalized group. Consequently, he captures the complexities of race in Panama, and by extension of Latin America, while chronicling the history of discrimination of the Panamanian West Indian population.

CARLOS “CUBENA” GUILLERMO WILSON Born in Panama City in 1941, Carlos Guillermo Wilson is a third-generation Panamanian West Indian who was denied citizenship because three of his grandparents were immigrants of African descent whose native language was not Spanish (Birmingham-Pokorny, “Interview with Dr. Carlos

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Guillermo Wilson” 18–19). Like many Panamanian West Indians who experienced economic exclusion, Wilson migrated to the U.S. during the 1950s. In 1959, he enrolled in a Catholic Seminary, which took him fi rst to Mississippi and then to Massachusetts and earned a degree in the Divine Word College Seminary in 1964. In 1964, he relocated to California where he enrolled in the graduate program in Spanish at the University of California at Los Angeles and obtained a Master of Arts and Doctorate in Hispanic Languages and Literatures in 1970 and 1975, respectively. Wilson wrote his dissertation on Panamanian literature, and in the third chapter he traced the representation of Blacks from the colonial period to the present. As early as the 1970s, then, Wilson demonstrated a concern for the literary representation of Afro-descendants in Panama. Holding academic appointments such as Professor of Spanish at Loyola Marymount University (1971–1991), Adjunct Professor of Spanish at El Camino College (1987–1991), and Visiting Professor of Spanish at University of California, San Diego (1993), Wilson fi nally planted roots at San Diego State University where he has been a professor of Spanish since 1992. Wilson’s interest in his African heritage compelled him to take on the penname Cubena, the Hispanicized version of Kwabena, which is the Twi word for Tuesday in the Asante culture of Ghana. Born on a Tuesday, Wilson assumed the name Cubena because the Ashanti people of the Twi language have the custom of naming the male child according to the name of the day on which they are born. At the beginning of each of his literary works, the shield, Escudo Cubena (“Cubena’s Shield”) appears containing a seven-link chain, seven stars, a bee on top of a turtle, and a book, all followed by an explanation of their significance. Wilson explains that the seven-link chain represents the African cultures that were enslaved in the Americas; the seven stars typify regions where the most Africans were enslaved, including Brazil, Cuba and Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Martinique, Panama, Peru and Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and Venezuela and Colombia; the bee embodies the chains, lashings, injustices, and insults that Afro-descended populations have suffered since 1492; the turtle symbolizes the type of character that Africans have developed during their odyssey throughout the Americas; and the book is a symbol of the principal tool used to combat mental slavery: education. This shield connects the author and his works to other displaced cultures of the African Diaspora. Wilson does not limit his experiences of exile and displacement to the Caribbean or to Panama. Furthermore, his experiences coincide with other Diaspora figures who are victims of dispersion and fragmentation caused by (neo)colonialism. In other words, Wilson demonstrates a Diaspora consciousness that characterizes “displaced peoples [who] feel (maintain, receive, invent) a connection with a prior home” (Clifford 310). Whether real or imaginary, his ties to Africa can be easily interpreted as anti-nationalist. However, although he resides in the U.S., Wilson maintains his multiple allegiances to Africa, the Caribbean, and Panama.

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Wilson’s focus on the Diaspora has contributed to his broad reception as a writer and critic. Currently, he is the most widely studied Afro-Panamanian writer among literary scholars. However, most of these studies are done outside of his native homeland of Panama. To date, he has published seven books, Cuentos del Negro Cubena: Pensamiento Afro-Panameño (Short Stories by Cubena: Afro-Panamanian Thought 1977), Pensamientos del Negro Cubena: Pensamiento Afro-Panameño (Black Cubena’s Thoughts: Afro-Panamanian Thought 1977), Chombo4 (1981), Los Nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores 1991), Los Mosquitos de Orixá Changó (The Mosquitoes of the Orisha Shango 2000), Raíces Africanas (African Roots 2005) and La Misión Secreta (The Secret Mission 2005) as well as numerous articles on the African Diaspora. In addition, several of his works have been translated giving broader readership to English-speaking audiences. They include Black Cubena’s Thoughts (1991) and Short Stories by Cubena (1986) translated by Elba Birmingham-Pokorny and Ian I. Smart, respectively. Although his works are widely read within Afro-Hispanic literary circles in the U.S., in Panama much of his work has been branded as antinationalist for exposing Panamanian racism. As a result, until recently, his work was censored.5 Among the numerous articles, dissertations, and manuscripts that have been written on Cubena, the scholarship of such Afro-Hispanic critics as Elba Birmingham-Pokorny, Richard L. Jackson, Ian I. Smart, and Haakayoo Zoggyie constitutes the most comprehensive analysis of his literary repertoire. Richard L. Jackson analyzed the elements of humanism in Cubena’s works and categorized his poetry and short stories as social protest literature.6 Elba Birmingham-Pokorny examined his works as novels of denouncement noting that Wilson has altered the traditional image of the Afro-Hispanic woman by portraying her as strong instead of lascivious.7 Ian I. Smart described Cubena’s short stories as having elements of tremendismo negrista,8 a coined termed by the Afro-Ecuadorian writer Adalberto Ortiz (1914–2003) to describe the elements of the grotesque in Cubena’s prose. Smart also characterized Cubena’s novels as West Indian comparing them to other Anglophone Caribbean writers of Central America such as Costa Rica’s Quince Duncan (1940) and Panama’s Gerardo Maloney9 (1945). Finally, Haakayoo Zoggyie analyzed the elements of satire, humor, and parody in Cubena’s works.10 Without a doubt, each of these critics has analyzed and/or acknowledged Wilson’s didacticism, focus on Caribbean ancestry in Panama, and concern with historical revisionism from an afrocentric or postcolonial perspective.

CUBENA AND JOAQUÍN BELEÑO Cubena’s efforts to create a positive image of West Indians stem partly from negative representations of the group in Panamanian literature.

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Afro-Hispanic Joaquín Beleño’s Canal Zone trilogy, Luna Verde (Blue Moon), Curundú (Curundú Lane), and Los Forzados de Gamboa (Gamboa Road Gang),11 presents the abuses inflicted upon Panamanians in the Canal Zone during the 1940s and 1950s. A champion of Panama’s anti-imperialism crusade, Beleño vacillated in his characterization of West Indians presenting the marginalized group as both victim and victimizer. It is worth noting that Beleño’s Gamboa Road Gang (1961), known in Panama by the English title, deeply disturbs Wilson since it is required reading in Panamanian schools. In the article, “The Image of the Chombitas in Joaquín Beleño’s Gamboa Road Gang,” Wilson summarizes five stereotypical images of West Indian women found in Gamboa. According to Wilson, women of African descent in Gamboa are portrayed as exotic, spiritually misguided, uncouth, negligent, and too Africanized (“The Image” 77). These negative representations anger Wilson and have inspired many of his works, which highlight positive attributes of West Indians in Panamanian society. The following passage exemplifies Wilson’s perspective on Beleño’s characterizations of the West Indian population: Joaquín Beleño has influenced me very much. Every time I read any of his trilogies, I become so angry because of the way he has portrayed chombos—Afro-Hispanics in his works. I am particularly angered by all the negative images and stereotypes he has presented in his works. As a result, I have tried to write and to present a more balanced and a more fair portrayal of chombos and Afro-Hispanics. (BirminghamPokorny “Interview” 16) Wilson is also angered by Beleño’s treatment of Afro-Hispanics. In the passage cited above, Wilson’s interchangeable use of the terms Afro-Hispanic and chombo is quite evident. This usage illustrates that he considers AfroCaribbeans to be equally Panamanian and West Indian. Moreover, Wilson’s use of both terms indicates that chombos, or Afro-Caribbeans, and Afro-Hispanics are more similar than different, which is one of the writer’s principal messages in his works. Contrary to Beleño, Wilson affi rms a West Indian culture and heritage and aims to educate Panamanians about the contributions that West Indians have made and continue to make in Panama. Instead of his works being anti-imperialistic or anti-West Indian, they are pro-latino, pro-West Indian, and pro-Afro-Panamanian. Furthermore, Wilson recognizes the importance of his African heritage by connecting his works to the African Diaspora. As Thomas Wayne Edison notes: “ . . . of Cubena’s novels without a doubt display Afro-Antillean ‘subcultures’ in a more authentic light and reverse Beleño’s perspective, thus re-defi ning the Antillean black population through his literature” (234). Clearly, Beleño and Wilson expose discrimination from different perspectives. Beleño is concerned primarily with denouncing the U.S. and

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revealing the country’s ill treatment of the Panamanian of non-West Indian descent. However, Wilson argues that the U.S. is not the sole enemy since Panamanians and Afro-Panamanians have equally discriminated against the West Indian population. In effect, Wilson champions this point of view in his prose as he redefi nes the image and perception of the Panamanian West Indian. His texts elevate Blackness above whiteness and, by extension, Afro-Caribbeanness above Panamanianness. By presenting positive images of Black West Indians, he reverses the invisibility of Blackness and the anti-West Indian sentiment prevalent in early twentieth-century Panamanian literature. Because West Indians were denigrated and portrayed negatively in Panamanian literature, Wilson’s primary objective has been to redeem the literary image of the West Indian who was excluded from the Panamanian nationbuilding project. Wilson is committed to telling the untold story, revising history, and changing the perception of the West Indian that has been presented in Panamanian literature. Thus, he challenges national myths propagated during early twentieth-century Panama by presenting the West Indian as the central protagonist. In turn, he re-signifies the national myth of a Hispanic, Catholic, Spanish-speaking Panama. In short, Wilson’s work is a call to recognize the Caribbeanness that now constitutes Panama. Cubena’s texts are a conscious effort to incorporate the Caribbean and the African Diaspora into Panamanian literature and to blend naturally elements of all three regions, that is, Africa, the West Indies, and Panama. Cubena’s goal to dismantle the old authority is best seen in his trilogy, Chombo, The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores, and The Secret Mission, three Diaspora novels that trace the Panamanian West Indian experience from Africa to the Americas. Chombo, The Grandchildren, and The Secret Mission12 become official textbooks of the Panamanian West Indian experience contesting falsehoods (e.g., West Indian anti-nationalism and cultural and linguistic incompatibility) propagated during the nation-building project (1880–1920). The Grandchildren is the second novel in Wilson’s trilogy and is best understood within the context of the series, which commenced with Chombo. With regard to Chombo, the entire action of the novel takes place in the background of the formal signing of the Carter-Torrijos Treaty in 1977. Chombo narrates the history of the arrival of James Duglin (Papá James) and Nenén to Panama from Barbados and Jamaica and is told by an omniscient narrator, the family members, and the ancestors. The story begins with the main character Litó (Nicolás), a descendant of Black West Indians who has recently returned to Panama from the U.S., and who enters a poignant discussion about race with a blind man (Don Justo). The signing of the treaty leads Litó and his mother to recall the history and the struggles of West Indians in Panama. Their narrative focuses on a story about three gold bracelets that they trace to the arrival of West Indians to Panama, which the narrator compares to the Middle Passage. The bracelets appear

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and reappear throughout, and they evoke the history of Papá James and Nenén, Litó’s grandparents who constructed the Panama Canal. Nenén dies at the end of the novel ironically before her voyage back to Jamaica. Finally, the characters discover that the three gold bracelets, which can only be inherited by female descendants of Nenén, have followed these generations of Afro-Panamanians from Africa to the West Indies to Panama. The title of the novel, Chombo, whose origin is unknown, is a term of disrespect used against West Indians in Panama that evokes years of degradation and personal suffering (Birmingham-Pokorny, Proceedings of the Black Image in Latin American Literature 48). Similar to other terms used against West Indians, such as jumeco, derived from Jamaican, the term can also carry positive connotations depending on the message and the messenger. Although the usage of the term by non-West Indian Panamanians is overwhelmingly negative, Wilson re-appropriates the negative image by naming his text Chombo. Chombos are now the center of the action, and as a chombo himself, Wilson takes ownership of the term and utilizes it to illustrate that West Indians in Panama are not ignorant, lazy, promiscuous, or uncouth. Instead, he shows that they are descendants of kings and queens who originated in Africa, survived slavery, and constructed the Trans-Isthmian Railroad (1850–1855) and Panama Canal (1904–1914). Similar to Chombo, The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores centers on West Indian descendants in Panama. The Grandchildren commences in a U.S. airport in 1999 (the future) where West Indian descendants are reunited to return for the signing over of the Canal to Panama. For their pilgrimage, the families board a plane, and the narrator reminisces about Africa and reconstructs the arrival of Blacks to Spain and the New World. Ironically, these Africans in Spain are related to the same West Indian “diggers” who constructed the Panama Canal, and thus, they bring into question the extent to which West Indians are culturally different from Afro-Hispanics in Panama. The action of the novel advances to 1850, the year when the Panama Railroad was constructed and deals with the prejudices of two Panamanian families, that of Juan Moreno and John Brown, who are AfroHispanic and Afro-Caribbean, respectively. The subsequent sections deal with these families’ prejudices toward one another, particularly those of Moreno, which are passed on to their descendants and prevent a romantic relationship between their children. The action advances to 1941, the year when thousands of West Indians were asked to adopt the native language of Panama or leave. Throughout the novel, the characters attempt to discover the meaning of the word sodinu, which is unidos (“united”) in Spanish spelled backwards. Because of the cultural fragmentation of the characters, they are unable to decipher the meaning of the word. Instead, Wilson, the author, inserts himself in the text and explains the meaning of the word in a letter where he relates that Afro-Latin Americans are now “united” and, in fact, have always been since they share a common African origin.

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The Grandchildren begins appropriately in an airport, a symbol of travel, flight, and voyage that represents a microcosm of society. A meeting place where various cultures, ethnicities, and races intersect, the airport is a metaphor for colonialism, which forced the integration of distinct cultures, tribes, and racial groups. The fi rst scene unites the family members in the airport—all descendents of Canal Zone workers in Panama—for a historic flight to Panama as an expression of proud racial and familial heritage. This is a historical flight as well as a reaffirmation of African heritage and identity. As Miriam DeCosta-Willis notes in “Meditations on History: The Middle Passage in the Afro-Hispanic Literary Imagination:” “ . . . flying is strongly associated with myths of the Return: myths about Africans who flew home after dying and slaves who walked back into the ocean after the crossing” (4). Despite these characters’ differences, they share a common origin—their relation to the workers of the Panama Canal. They are West Indian descendants residing in the U.S. who are returning to their Spanish roots. While the plane ride is real, metaphorically it represents a trip of discovery of past origins that have been obfuscated by the national imaginary of exclusion. Form and content complement each other in The Grandchildren. The structure of the novel is cyclical, and it counters European chronological perception of time. There are nine sections in the novel that correspond to important Panamanian national historical events: the 1999 ownership of the Canal, the Middle Passage, the construction of the Panama Railroad, the year (1941) when West Indians were denied citizenship, and the present. The Grandchildren is concerned with restoring Panama’s African heritage and the non-linear timeframe reflects this objective. As Luisa Howell suggests: “the lack of uniformity and/or structure, is a metaphor for slavery and the black experience” (41). Similar to slavery, the organization of the novel is chaotic and moves non-linearly from one era to another. In addition to the main characters previously cited, there are numerous others that color the novel. However, Cubena illustrates that similar to the numerous slaves scattered throughout the Diaspora, these characters are related not only through familial ties but also through Diasporic ones because they share a common African heritage. Thus, despite the chaos present in the novel, Cubena illustrates that there is unity among these Afro-descendants. The title of the novel The Grandchildren points to the origin of Afrodescended populations of this text. In addition, it lends itself to a generational read as the characters represent various phases of a lifespan. All of the characters are descendants of Felicidad Dolores. Throughout the novel, she watches over her ancestors whether she is alive (she dies four times) or dead, and hopes for the unity of her descendants. Her name Felicidad Dolores, or “happiness” and “pain,” symbolizes the hopes and struggles of African Diaspora populations throughout the globe. It is also a reminder that present-day African Diaspora populations remain disunited despite the struggles that their ancestors have endured. The dichotomy inherent in her

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name (“happiness” versus “pain”) is a metaphor for the opposition between Moreno and Brown, which is explored throughout the text. Felicidad Dolores also represents Mother Africa, and she is the thread that connects all of the generations present in the novel. As BirminghamPokorny suggests: Indeed, there is no doubt that Felicidad Dolores is the bridge that connects the entire history of the African race, linking the beginning in Africa to the beginning in America, and that as such, she is the future that holds the key that will ensure the future survival of the people of African descendants. (“The Afro-Hispanic Woman’s Role in the ReWriting of Her History in Carlos Guillermo Wilson’s Los Nietos de Felicidad Dolores” 122) Because the four deaths of Felicidad Dolores do not occur chronologically— she dies in 1968, 1926, 1955, and 1977—they reflect the African perception of death and concept of time. Furthermore, her deaths correspond to pivotal moments in African American history: the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), the signing of Law 13, which prevented West Indians from entering the country (1926); the signing of the Remón-Eisenhower Treaty, which resulted in West Indian expulsion from the Canal Zone (1955), and the signing of the Carter-Torrijos Treaty13 (1977). Each of these events had a profound impact on the West Indian community in Panama and represent common historical occurrences within the African Diaspora. Wilson’s inclusion of Martin Luther King, Jr., symbolizes his awareness of other members of the African Diaspora as well as the influence of the Civil Rights movement on the West Indian community and Wilson’s own experiences in the U.S. during the 1960s. In addition, West Indians feared that the Carter-Torrijos Treaty would contribute to the loss of jobs of many Afro-Caribbeans in the Canal Zone as did the passing of the 1955 Remón-Eisenhower Treaty.14

THE GRANDCHILDREN OF FELICIDAD DOLORES AND THE AFRO-HISPANIC HISTORICAL NOVEL Rooted in afrocentricism, defi ned by Molefi Asante as “[p]lacing African ideals at the center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior,” the Afro-Hispanic historical novel (hereafter AHHN) weaves elements of fiction into history and revises the historical and literary portrayal of Blacks in Panama (6). The AHHN15 subverts established truth claims about the literary, fictional, and historical portrayal of African descendants in the Spanish-speaking Americas. As previously defi ned in “Changó, el Gran Putas (Shango, Great Son of a Bitch): Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel,” the AHHN is “any novel written by a Spanish-speaking writer of African descent that reconstructs the past and incorporates

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historical vestiges with the aim to revise history . . . ” (Watson 72). The five characteristics of the AHHN include orality, slavery/Middle Passage, historical revisionism, the incorporation of historical figures, and afro-realism. Each of these traits characterizes Cubena’s The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores. The AHHN emerged during the last decades of the twentieth century in response to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements and the establishment of Black Studies departments across the U.S. These developments impacted Black writing throughout the Americas and especially that of Black Spanish-speaking writers in the U.S. such as Wilson, who migrated to the U.S. during the 1950s to escape the racism of his homeland. Similar to Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Shango, which was published nearly a decade earlier, The Grandchildren sings the praises of unsung heroes throughout the African Diaspora. However, while Shango centers on Blacks from Africa, Colombia, Haiti, the U.S., and a host of other countries with dispersed Black populations, The Grandchildren is primarily concerned with Panamanians of Caribbean ancestry. A LatinAmerican Roots, Shango is an ambitious endeavor and the AHHN par excellence. However, as noted Afro-Hispanic critic Richard L. Jackson suggests, The Grandchildren “picks up where Changó, el Gran Putas left off” and is just as ambitious as it chronicles the journeys of Diaspora Blacks to the Caribbean and Panama (82). Several critics of Cubena’s novels have focused on the historical aspects of his works. Jackson, Birmingham-Pokorny, Edison, and DeCosta-Willis have all noted that Wilson focuses on the “darker” aspects of Panama’s history by chronicling the Afro-Panamanian experience. Wilson chronicles these journeys from a perspective rooted in afro-realism.

FROM SOCIAL PROTEST TO AFRO-REALISM Carlos Guillermo Wilson’s didacticism and criticism of discrimination align his poetry and prose with the social protest literature of the early twentieth century in Latin America. His works possess elements of social realism which flourished in Latin America during the fi rst four decades of the twentieth century. Spanish American realism gave “the impression of representing, with as little distortion as possible, the realities of human life”(Lindstrom 34). Wilson’s works represent the reality of the West Indian in Panama especially as it pertained to the injustices experienced in the Canal Zone. However, unlike Spanish American realism or the social protest genre of the 1930s and 1940s when many white and mestizo Latin American writers protested the injustices of indigenous peoples, Wilson writes as an Afro-Panamanian and protests against Black injustices. Furthermore, his works are not merely social protests but possess elements of afro-realism, a term coined by the contemporary Afro-Costa Rican writer

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Quince Duncan to describe the realities of Afro-Latin America from an insider’s perspective: Afro-realism has its roots in the African and Caribbean griot of oral tradition. Therefore, it is a sonorous cry. That is, it announces things with intense musicality . . . But it does not announce just anything. Afro-realism is the lived word, which means that it is based on experience. It is a construction and reconstruction of reality, without ceasing to be fiction, without losing the fantasy that makes us take delight in reading . . . On the other hand, Afro-realism carries within itself the ancestral word, everything that happened long ago and that still affects us. Those things that have traveled from mouth to mouth and that form our tradition, that which gives us an identity, that which legitimizes our survival. Through those twice-told stories we know that we are part of a fragmented community. Our culture was broken up by 500 years of oppression. Afro-realism announces and proclaims the tidbits of reality that we are left with, the remains of fi rst covenants. But it is not limited to showing that the African consciousness is broken; instead it is preoccupied with rebuilding it. Therefore, Afro-realism is the dream of the reconstructed world. (Martin-Ogunsola 16) Although Cubena refuses to place his works in any particular literary category, an “afro” perspective is inherent in The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores as he aims to reconstruct Afro-Caribbean communities within the socio-historical context of Panama. Afro-realism is not exemplary of all literature written by Afro-descended populations; only in those literatures that desire a restitution of Black thought, culture, and tradition. This perspective is evidenced from the first pages of The Grandchildren, which bring to light the contributions of African descendants in Panama through oral history. Orality manifests itself in the form of oral stories told by the descendants of Felicidad Dolores, the incorporation of drums, and the Africanized speech that is an amalgam of French, Spanish, and English. One memorable story is that told by Simón Bolívar Brown, a Panamanian West Indian priest. His daughter Naualpilly Guadalupe Brown recalls a story he often told about his experiences as a missionary in Timilpan, México, and the fi rst time he met her mother Guadalupe Olmecas. Unlike in Panama where he was identified as a chombo or in the U.S. where he was called “nigger,” the children identify him as San Martín de Porres, a mulatto friar of Spanish and Afro-Peruvian ancestry known for his endless contributions to the poor. Having never seen a Black before in their town, the children assume he must be this Black priest who has come to save them. While relating his tale, Simón uses words such as recuerdo (”I remember”)and rememoré (”I remembered”), demonstrating that the act of recalling and memory are essential to the transmission of oral stories. He also uses commands such as

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escuchen (“listen”) to summon the attention of his interlocutors. This intercalated story, however, is a pretext for illustrating Simón’s doubts about the Creation, where man is descended from white Adam and Eve. This causes Simón to abandon the seminary after questioning the validity of the Creation that deems Blacks as descendants of whites. Drum language personifies African heritage thereby connecting the characters and readers to the Motherland. For example, in nineteenthcentury Panama, the comical figure Lesbiaquina Petrablance de las Nieves de Monte Monarca Moreno awakens singing to the music of a popular drum song: That Romeo chombo is going to die decapitated today, sang the oldest daughter of the fruit salesman singing along to the music of a popular drum song, because of the chombo’s tainted blood, it will never mix with mine. Oleléola lalalá. (Ese Romeochombo muere decapitado hoy, olelé olá lalalá—cantó la hija mayor del frutero utilizando estentóreamente la música de un popular tamborito.—Olelé olá lalalá. . . . Olelé olá lalalá, porque por el machete sangre chomba nunca se mezclará con la mía. Olelé olá lalalá.) (Los Nietos 141). In between humming and singing, Lesbiaquina spats out racial epithets to West Indians. As the eldest daughter of Afro-Hispanic Juan Moreno, she has appropriated the anti-West Indian sentiment and feels superior to her West Indian brothers and sisters. This passage also emphasizes the role of humor and satire in Cubena’s works, which he uses to make light of the prejudices caused by colonialism amongst the Black population. Humor is present not only in the content but also in the language that Wilson employs, which is an amalgam of Spanish, French Creole, and English Creole. The following scene takes place in the airport. In an amalgam of languages and perhaps false dialects, Nataperro interrumpts Marcelina Westerman and interjects: Yeah man, you know that girl is the organizer of this trip but not yet here at airport he said yapping profusely. Nato Pataperro, interrupting Marcelina Westerman. And like bursts from a machine gun he continued—: Look, man look at the bunch of people here like sardines in a can. (Sí, pero rass man coño tú sae esa gial ej la oganizada de ejte viaje y toavía not yet here at aeropueto—dijo ladrando atropelladamente. Nato Pataperro, interrumpiendo a Marcelina Westerman. Y como ráfagas de una metralleta continuó—: Mira, rass man look el bonchao de gente aquí como sardina enlatao.) (Los Nietos 15)

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This passage not only demonstrates the various types of speech present in the text but also privileges the spoken word over the written one. Similar to others, this passage is almost indecipherable. This is obviously not the official language of Panama. However, Wilson naturally integrates various types of speech into the text demonstrating that it is a legitimate aspect of Panamanian culture. Similar to the previous example with Lesbiaquina, it also evokes humor, which reaches the contemporary reader and widens its national and international readership by producing a generational read. The entire novel is not fi lled with humorous anecdotes. The second portion of the novel takes place in sixteenth-century Spain and retraces the Middle Passage, the tragic route from Africa to the Americas. The transatlantic voyage takes Africans to Santo Domingo, Veracruz, and Portobelo, slave ports, respectively, in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Panama. Wilson reconstructs the human suffering during the Middle Passage and relates the death, destruction, and despair that the route generated: “ . . . where swarms of voracious sharks were accustomed to assault the slave catcher’s ships to feed on the slaves’ cadavers that were daily thrown overboard between the Western coast of Africa and Santo Domingo” ( . . . donde pululaban enjambres de voraces tiburones que tenían por costumbre escoltar a los navíos negreros para alimentarse de la carne de los esclavos muertos que tiraban diariamente por la borda, entre la costa occidental de Africa y Santo Domingo; Los Nietos 103). A harsh consequence of the Middle Passage, this voyage typifies the slave experience in the New World and narrates the atrocities of crossing the Atlantic through the use of tremendismo negrista, a common tenet in Cubena’s works. Wilson does not hold back and describes the unthinkable for the human imagination. Although the previous passages elucidate the crossing of the Atlantic, the majority of the novel does not expose the trials of slavery. The third section of the novel describes three centuries of slavery in one single enunciation. “Several mornings passed filled with bittersweet pain. Caribbean sugar cane seasons, from the start, drenched with the sweat and blood of Africans who, like Bandelé Cebiano, were born far from the tamarind tree in the heart of Buruco” (Pasaron muchas, muchísimas madrugada preñadas de amargo dolor en los dulces. Cañaverales caribeños, desde luego, empapados con el sudor y la sangre de africanos que, como Bandelé Cebiano, nacieron lejos del tamarindo en el corazón de Buruco: Los Nietos 118). Wilson chooses instead to focus on unknown parts of Afro-American history such as the Black presence in Spain and Panama, for example. He centers on the effects of slavery and the Middle Passage on the human psyche. It is evident that Wilson does not want to privilege the slave masters and incorporates one enunciation describing three centuries of torture. Instead, Wilson recognizes the contributions that these African descendants have made to Panamanian society. His article, “The Cultural Contributions of Blacks in Panama” (El Aporte Cultural de la Étnia Negra en Panama) is one example of his work that has shed light on the

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contributions of Blacks to Panama. His novels profess the same mission. For example, in Catholic school, Guacayarima informs his history teacher, a priest, about the contributions of Blacks to society. One myth is that Blacks were born to be slaves, which according to the priest, it is a belief championed by the Bible (Wilson, Los Nietos 181). In disbelief, the priest rejects the equality of African descendants. Therefore, the novel sets out to revise the historical and literary portrayal of Africans in the Diaspora. The Grandchildren reflects the tenets of the AHHN in its quest for historical revisionism. In the second part of The Grandchildren, the reader discovers that West Indians were descendants of Blacks in Spain emphasizing their connection to Afro-Hispanics in Panama. Wilson acknowledges the irrationality of the disintegration between Afro-Hispanics and Afro-Caribbeans because they share a common African heritage. In fact, the novel aims to unite Afro-Hispanics and Afro-Caribbeans and brings to light the absurdity of their hatred toward one another. This is evidenced by the familial feud between Juan Moreno, an Afro-Hispanic and John Brown, a West Indian. Juan Moreno and John Brown are neighbors separated by a room inhabited by Felicidad Dolores. The room that separates the two patriarchs is a metaphor for their disjointedness, disunion, and displacement as African Diaspora figures. Felicidad Dolores resides between the two patriarchs and as her name asserts, she embodies both the joy and pain that these characters necessitate in order to put aside their differences. Felicidad Dolores’ room spatially represents the cultural, racial, and linguistic dichotomies that have historically divided the characters. During the fi rst half of the twentieth century, Panama adopted a national rhetoric of exclusion that divided the two populations according to dichotomous oppositions, which reinforced colonialism. For example, Olmedo Alfaro’s West Indian Danger in Central America (El Peligro Antillano en la América Central, 1924) articulated anti-West Indian sentiment and the difference(s) between AfroHispanics and Afro-Caribbeans. Alfaro wrote It is evident that there is a big difference between the black West Indian and the man of color raised in the Indo-American civilization, not only because of his status in the neighboring English colonies where his economic situation is depressing and his salaries ludicrous, but also because of the respectable environment in which our colored races enjoy, considerations that have been accorded because of their noble character and assimilation to our most moral virtues. (Es evidente que hay gran diferencia entre el negro antillano y el hombre de color desarrollado dentro de la civilización Indo-Americana, no solamente por su status en las vecinas colonias inglés así donde su situación económica es deprimente y sus salarios ridículos, sino también por el ambiente de respeto de que en nuestras sociedades disfrutan

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las razas de color, consideraciones que les han sido acordadas por la nobleza de su carácter y su asimilación a nuestras más altas virtudes morales.) (7) In other words, Afro-Hispanics were Hispanic, Catholic, and Spanish speaking, while Afro-Caribbeans were Black, Protestant, and English-speaking. A symbol of Mother Africa, Felicidad Dolores serves as a reminder of the characters’ similarities despite a national rhetoric that was devised to separate them. For example, their names, which are mere Spanish and English translations of one another, represent their similarities in spite of their own perceived cultural and linguistic differences. Indeed, they are both equally “brown” and descendants of African Kings and Queens who were enslaved throughout the Diaspora. Thus, they are more culturally similar than different. Nevertheless, fruit salesman Juan Moreno attempts to distinguish himself from Afro-Caribbeans based on physical appearance and linguistic differences. The feud forces Salvadora Brown, John Brown’s daughter, to have a clandestine relationship with Aníbal Moreno, Juan Moreno’s son. The feud between Juan Moreno and John Brown is ironic because of their similar physical appearance and almost mirror image of one another. Indeed, their physical likeness astonishes both men despite their mutual hatred. But the day that Juan Moreno met face to face with John Brown, like someone who becomes frightened by their own shadow (other than the similar physical appearance and the same gestures and moves, both wore their pants patched with different color fabric and curiously with the same style of sewing), and in a split second he vanished. (Pero el día que Juan Moreno se encontró, cara a cara, con John Brown, como quien se espanta de su propia sombra [además del parecido físico y los mismos gestos y ademanes, ambos tenían pantalón remendado con parches de tela de diferentes colores y, curiosamente, del mismo estilo de costura], en un abrir y cerrar de ojos abandon’o la.) (Los Nietos 120–121) Upon their encounter, it is evident that not only is there a physical connection between the two but also a cultural one. These characters are obviously bonded by their common racial heritage. However, society has forced them to be rivals because John Brown is supposedly culturally incompatible with the Panamanian nation and does not reflect hispanidad. The dissention among Afro-Hispanics and Afro-Caribbeans stems from the nation’s ignorance of the West Indian population. One of the central figures of the novel, Policarpo Reid notes the lack of recognition in Panama for contributions of the Panamanian West Indian population. Neither the airport, streets nor plazas are named after the West Indian Diggers, Canal Zone workers, or Railroad workers (Wilson, Los Nietos 230). In effect,

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Panama has ignored this portion of her history despite the economic benefits of the Railroad, and most importantly the Canal. As a result, Panamanians of West Indian ancestry strive to remember Caribbean benefaction to Panama. It is no surprise then that many Panamanians of West Indian descent were responsible for spearheading organizations in Panama that aimed to discuss the problems that pertained to the Black community in the late 1970s and 1980s. Although they desired to discuss problems of all Blacks and the possibility of the unification of Afro-descendants in Panama, many of the issues that arose centered on problems that inflicted the West Indian community. Because of Wilson’s quest to revise Panamanian history, the references to historical figures are overwhelming in The Grandchildren. For example, the name Bartolomé Ladrón, resembles that of the sixteenth-century Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas. Although las Casas is known historically as the vindicator of the indigenous peoples, The Grandchildren portrays him as a racist abuser of Black Africans in Granada, Spain. Wilson also focuses on lesser-known historical facts such as the Black population in Mexico, a country that has historically considered herself a nation of mestizos and has denied her Blackness. The African Mexican maroon Yanga, for example, founded the town San Lorenzo de los Negros in Veracruz, a province in Mexico known for its strong African roots (Los Nietos 55). Wilson also points to the “controversial” African heritage of the Mexican Independence leader José María Morelos y Pavón (1765–1815), who achieved national fame for joining Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain. Wilson’s focus on Mexico’s Black heritage is no surprise. Zapata Olivella centers on Morelos y Pavón in Shango, where the historical figure undergoes a spiritual awakening after confronting his Blackness (312, 317). As a text that uncovers the aporte of the Caribbean population in Panama, The Grandchildren centers on the unsung heroes of West Indian ancestry. In 1950, the narrator introduces the reader to Carlos Ambrosio Lewis, the fi rst Black Catholic priest of Caribbean ancestry in Panama (Los Nietos 172). Lewis was the fi rst West Indian descendant consecrated Bishop of the Catholic Church in the Panamanian province of Chiriqui and was consecrated in 1965 by Pope Paulo VI. The negative commentary among Afro-Hispanics echoes the importance of this act and their continued hatred for Afro-Caribbeans. What’s going on with the Catholic church? How is it possible that a chombo became a priest? All chombos are stupid brutes. It is the Pope’s fault. He is far away in the Vatican and does not realize the harm that he causes because by allowing a chombo to be a Catholic priest my niece is now in danger of marrying a chombo’s son. (¿Qué le pasa a la iglesia católica? ¿Cómo es posible que un chombo sea sacerdote? Todos los chombos son brutoestupidos. El Papa tiene

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la culpa. Está allá lejos en el Vaticano y no se da cuenta del daño que causa porque por permitir que un chombo sea sacerdote católico ahora mi sobrina está en peligro de casarse con un hijuechombo . . . ) (Los Nietos 172) Lesbiaquina is so angered that she renounces her christianity and says that she would rather be Jewish than recognize a Black bishop priest (Wilson, Los Nietos 183). It is evident that the Afro-Caribbean population contrasts drastically with the color conscious Afro-Hispanics. Wilson’s unfavorable presentation of Afro-Hispanics has sparked much criticism as his texts most often present them as villains who propagate the national anti-West Indian sentiment and racial oppression. However, he does not seek disintegration but rather integration of these two opposing factions. Thus, the novel ends by rejecting the division among Blacks in Panama and seeks integration within the Black community.

CONCLUSION The reading of The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores as an AHHN recognizes its importance not only in Panamanian history and literature but also in Afro-Hispanic and Hispanic letters. The AHHN incorporates Black Hispanics into the national dialogue on race, ethnicity, and identity. AfroHispanic writers such as Wilson emendate historical omissions of African descendants from pre-colonialism to the present by appropriating an afrocentered perspective. It also provides a way to read Afro-Hispanic texts in conjunction with their literary contemporaries. In The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores, Wilson constructs an African identity through a non-linear structure, which defies European chronological time, the construction of a matrilineal heritage originating in Africa, and the use of tremendismo negrista to relate the horrors of slavery, the Middle Passage, and the exile’s experiences of displacement. The Grandchildren points to the contributions of Panamanian West Indians and strengthens unification among African descendants in Panama, one of Wilson’s principle goals in his works. In turn, Wilson re-signifies the image of the Afro-Caribbean in Panama and bolsters relations between AfroHispanics and Afro-Caribbeans. In effect, Wilson “darkens” Panamanian history by focusing on lesser known historical facts that pertain to those of African ancestry in Panama. NOTES 1 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. 2. Although this study is primarily concerned with West Indians in the Canal Zone, there also exists a group of English-speaking Blacks in Bocas del Toro

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3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

located in the northwestern coast of Panama. Their history dates back to the early nineteenth century. According to Michael Conniff, in the early 1800s, West Indians came as slaves with their British masters who migrated to the region of Bocas del Toro as planters (16). The West Indian migration resumed in the region of Bocas del Toro during the establishment of the United Fruit Company in 1899, which also operated in the coastal city of Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. In Panama, Blacks who were enslaved during the colonial period have been identified as “colonial blacks” to differentiate them from Black West Indians who were enslaved in the British and French West Indies. Throughout this study, however, the term Afro-Hispanic will be used to identify this segment of the Black Panamanian population. The Afro-Hispanic population was absorbed into the general population and is primarily Catholic and Spanish speaking unlike the Black Caribbean population. In contrast, the terms West Indian and Afro-Caribbean will be used to describe the Black West Indian population who migrated to Panama to work on the Railroad and Canal. Chombo is a term of disrespect used against the West Indian population in Panama. In 2002, Wilson received two national awards in his native Panama: the fi rst was the Vasco Núñez de Balboa National Medal (Condecoración Nacional de la Orden Vasco Núñez de Balboa, en el Grado de Caballero), presented by former President Mireya Moscoso in recognition of his national and international merit as an educator, and the second was awarded by the National Committee for the 100th Anniversary (Comité Nacional del Centenario) presented by former Panamanian Minister of Foreign Affairs José Miguel Alemán. These awards and recognition remain important for a writer who for many years was not acknowledged in Panama. Richard L. Jackson, “The Continuing Quest.” Black Literature and Humanism in Latin America. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1988. 70–80. Richard L. Jackson, “Ebe Yiye—‘The Future Will Be Better:’ An Update on Panama from Black Cubena.” Black Writers in Latin America. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1979. 180–190. Elba Birmingham-Pokorny. “The Emergence of the New Afro-Hispanic Woman in Carlos Guillermo Wilson’s “Cuentos del Negro Cubena and Chombo.” Journal of Caribbean Studies 8 (1991–1992): 123–130. Tremendismo is a term used to describe the literature of Spanish writer Camilo José Celo (1916–2002) who utilized the grotesque to illustrate the atmosphere during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) in his novel La Familia de Pascual Duarte (The Family of Pascual Duarte, 1942). Ian I. Smart, “‘Tremendismo Negrista’ in Cuentos del Negro Cubena.” Studies in Afro-Hispanic Literature. 2–3 (1978–1979): 41–52. Ian I. Smart. Central American Writers of West Indian Origin: A New Hispanic Literature. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984. Haakayoo Zoggyie, “Subversive Tales, Transgressive Laughs: Reading Carlos Guillermo Wilson’s Chombo as Satire.” CLA 2 (2003): 193–211. Haakayoo Zoggyie. In Search of the Fathers: The Poetics of Disalienation in theNarrative of Two Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Writers. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2003. Luna verde is the personal diary of Ramón de Roquebert, a Panamanian of French origin (non-West Indian), that transpires between 1942 and 1947. The novel chronicles the migration of Ramón from rural Río Hato to the urban area of Panama to work in the Canal Zone in Milla Cuatro. As a Milla Cuatro worker, he has an accident, returns to his native Río Hato,

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12.

13. 14.

15.

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and then goes back to Panama to work in the Canal Zone. He dies during an anti-imperialist student demonstration in 1947. The second novel in the trilogy, Curundú (1956), fluctuates between the chronicle and the testimonial and documents the moral, spiritual, and physical decline of Rubén Galván. As an anti-bildungsroman novel, it chronicles the trials and tribulations of a youth who searches for the meaning of life. The novel tragically ends with the moral and spiritual decadence of Rubén. Gamboa Road Gang (1961) is based on the real life story of Lester León Greaves, who was accused of raping a white woman and sentenced to fi fty years in prison. Gamboa protests the racial discrimination of the Canal Zone and U.S. imperialism examining the search for identity of a Black West Indian Panamanian. This fi nal novel in the trilogy documents the story of Arthur Ryams, or “Atá,” who is sentenced to fi fty years in prison for the rape of a U.S. Zonian, Annabelle. The fi nal installation of the trilogy, The Secret Mission (2005), continues the cycle of Panamanian migration and history. It tells the story of Papimambí, a black professor in California who longs to return to Panama for the one hundred year anniversary of the completion of the Canal in 2014. The novel combines Papimambí’s dreams about his past African ancestors with events of the present. Papimambí inherits the past through dreams and ethnic memory which incite him to recall the contributions of black slaves and conquistadors such as Estebanico, Juan Valiente, Nuflo de Olana, and Juan Garrido who all inherit the secret mission. Specifically, the mission is passed from African Obadelé (baptized in the New World as Juan Garrido) to future descendants of Felicidad Dolores. Garrido’s secret mission is to protect four children, Bayano, Luis de Mozambique, Antón Mandinga and Felipillo, all Afro-Panamanian maroons. Garrido must destroy and burn the Colonists’ white bags in Santo Domingo to prevent the secret revenge of the Catholic Monarchy: the enslavement of millions of Black Africans. The runaway slaves are essential to the survival of African descendents in the New World. The realization of these missions will allow them to achieve the final one which is to gain Afro-Diasporic unity. The Carter-Torrijos Treaty guaranteed that Panama would gain control of the Panama Canal after 1999, ending the control of the Canal that the U.S. had exercised since 1903. The 1955 Remón-Eisenhower Treaty ended the dual pay system (Gold Roll/ Silver Roll) for workers in the Canal Zone and resulted in the expulsion of many West Indian and Panamanian workers. However, the Remón-Eisenhower Treaty disproportionately affected West Indians, a population whose economic, political, and familial base was tied to the Canal Zone. For more information on the development of the Afro-Hispanic historical novel and how it differs from the new Latin American historical novel as defi ned by Seymour Menton, see Sonja Stephenson Watson’s article, “Changó, el Gran Putas: Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alfaro, Olmedo. El Peligro Antillano en la América Central. Panamá, 1924. Asante, Molefi. The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987. Birmingham-Pokormy, Elba. Proceedings of the Black Image in Latin American Literature. Vol. 2. Pennsylvania: Slippery Rock, 1989.

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“Interview with Dr. Carlos Guillermo Wilson.” Denoucement and Reaffirmation of the Afro-Hispanic Identity in Carlos Guillermo Wilson’s Works. Ed. Elba Birmingham-Pokorny. Miami, Florida: Colección Ébano y Canela, 1993. 15–26. . “The Afro-Hispanic Woman’s Role in the Re-Writing of Her History in Carlos Guillermo Wilson’s Los Nietos de Felicidad Dolores.” Denoucement and Reaffirmation of the Afro-Hispanic Identity in Carlos Guillermo Wilson’s Works, Ed. Elba Birmingham-Pokorny. Miami, Florida: Colección Ébano y Canela, 1993. 119–128. Clifford, James. “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9.3 (1994): 303–338. Conniff, Michael L. Black Labor on a White Canal: 1904–1981. Pittsburgh: Univeristy Press, 1985. DeCosta-Willis, Miriam. “Meditations on History: The Middle Passage in the Afro-Hispanic Literary Imagination.” Afro-Hispanic Review 22.1 (2003): 3–12. Edison, Thomas Wayne. “The Afro-Caribbean Novels of Resistance of Alejo Carpentier, Quince Duncan, Carlos Guillermo Wilson, and Manuel Zapata Olivella.” Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2002. Herzfeld, Anita. “The Creoles of Costa Rica and Panama.” Central American English. Ed. John Holm. Heidelberg: Groos, 1983. 131–155. Howell, Luisa. “Popular Speech and Culture in Los Nietos De Felicidad Dolores.” Diasporas 13 (2004): 40–44. Jackson, Richard. Black Writers and the Hispanic Canon. New York and London: Twayne Publishers; Prentice Hall International, 1997. Lindstrom, Naomi. Twentieth-Century Spanish American Fiction. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994. Martin-Ogunsola, Dellita. The Eve/Hagar Paradigm in the Fiction of Quince Duncan. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Seales Soley, LaVerne Marie. “Entrevista Con Carlos Guillermo Cubena Wilson.” Afro-Hispanic Review 17.2 (1998): 67–69. Smart, Ian I. “The West Indian Presence in the Works of Three New Central American Writers.” Design and Intent in African Literature. Ed. David F. et al. Dorsey. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1982. 119–132. Watson, Sonja Stephenson. “Changó, El Gran Putas: Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel.” Afro-Hispanic Review 25.1 (2006): 67–86. Wilson, Carlos Guillermo. “The Image of the Chombitas in Joaquín Beleno’s Gamboa Road Gang.” Proceedings of the Black Image in Latin American Literature. Ed. Elba Birmingham-Pokorny. Pennsylvania: Slippery Rock, 1989. 75–85. . Los Nietos De Felicidad Dolores. Miami: Universal Editions, 1991. . “El Aporte Cultural de la Étnia Negra en Panamá.” Istmo: Revista Virtual de Estudios Literarios y Culturales Centroamericanos 7(2003). 1–17. Zapata Olivella, Manuel. Changó, El Gran Putas. Colombia: Editorial La Oveja Negra, 1983.

3

Cultural Transnationality and Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón Antonio D. Tillis

In a chapter, “Cultural Transnationalism and Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Poetry: The Case of Blas Jiménez and Nancy Morejón” (Tillis, 2011). I placed into poetic conversation the creative production of two SpanishCaribbean writers/scholars of African ancestry. The argument centered the discourse on cultural transnationalism begging the notion of culture as a transmutable and transferable commodity in the global Black cultural economy. Borrowing from this previously published work, in this chapter, I want to revisit the scope of the critical focus and concentrate principally on the poetic creation of Nancy Morejón, adding a judicious observation to the interpretation of the selected poems for analysis. Upon reflecting the idea of global citizenship and pondering the critical assertions of such presented by Walter Mignolo, the interpretive postulation on cosmopolitanism in terms of its applicability to the experience of transnational African descendants is of particular interest. In as much, this investigation purposes to expand the previously presented thoughts on cultural transnationalism by placing them in dialogue with existing notions of cosmopolitanism. First, I will explore issues of transnationality embedded within Morejón’s work. Postulations on transnationalism as presented by Peter Hitchcock and others will set the paradigmatic parameters for this undertaking. Additionally, Walter Mignolo’s idea of global citizenship will be examined in terms of the view of Black globalization. The use of “black globalization” instead of the essentialized thought “globalization” is to problematize the construct. Often when pondering issues of globalization, the discourse of race is absent from the deconstructed understanding rendering an unconscious “racing” that almost exclusively implies “Western,” or white. Subsequent to revisiting the notion of transnationalism in Morejón’s “Mujer negra” and “Negro,” I will engage in a discussion of cosmopolitanism begging the notion of a cosmopolitanist discourse in two selected works by Morejón: “En el País de Vietnam” (In the Country of Vietnam) and “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos” (Silent Lullaby for South African Children). Indisputable is the fact that the history of “Blacks” in the Americas, and arguably beyond, is an exemplar in terms of the notions of migration, immigration, and transnational citizenship. Trans- and intercontinental shifting

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from localized spaces of “home,” whether imagined or real, and mutable citizenship represents Black globalization, spanning over five centuries of Black mobilization and cultural realignment. The end result of such cosmological shifting in “black” is the creation of subjectivities that defy/contest fi xed-constructive ideologies pursuant to “home-spaces,” citizenships, identities, and world economies. Numerous scholars have noted that for centuries, Africans and subsequently Africa-descended peoples, like countless others, have engaged in cross-cultural and cross-territorial expansion. Their legacies of a contiguous cultural heritage and its etiological ontology have been etched in archeological artifacts “discovered” on the terrain of cartographies that connect continents, cultures, and peoples to Africa. Additionally, this territorial connection and contact gave birth to a milieu of global, mixed-heritage subjects that share Africa as a common denominator. To this end, one of the most significant of these territorial landscapes is the Caribbean islands. In as much, this paper purposes to explore issue relating to cultural transnationalism in the work of a Spanish-American/ Caribbean poet of African ancestry, Nancy Morejón (Cuba). Specifically, the poetics of Morejón will be analyzed in order to interrogate the author’s location of “home” (national and ethnic) and identity (national and racial/ ethnic) using the gaze of cultural transnational discourse as a theoretical paradigm. Cultural capitalism will be discussed with regard to the ways in which this Black-Caribbean author poetically views the notion(s) of culture as an exportable and importable commodity in the economy of cultural exchange and the ramifications of such exchanges on citizenship and identity formation. Specifically, interrogated in this analysis are poetic inquiries into the defi nitions of “home” in terms of Cuba and the effect of ideological transnationalism on citizenship and identity formation. Turning to Imaginary States: Studies in Cultural Transnationalism, Peter Hitchcock addresses the complexities of dislocated, conflated, and compromised identities. He assert that (m) ultiple and disjunctive identities—gendered, raced, located, classed, sexed, etc.—certainly challenge in profound ways many treasured and normative notions of self, but it is not hybridity itself that guarantees this challenge, in the same way that a unified subject cannot ineluctably express perspicacity . . . (t)o this extent, cultural transnationalism is not about hybridity per se, but is fi rst and foremost about the experience of globality. (6–7) Hitchcock’s statement on cultural transnationalism takes into consideration the contestatory and limited nature of viewing “culture” solely within the normative understanding and framework of a hegemomcally defined nation. The implication here is that, in terms of home and identity, they represent decentered, deconstructed, reconstructed, and abstract populisms that are shaped and defined by cultural contact and the importation and exportation

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 53 of ideologies relating to the home-space (nation) and identity (nationality) therein. Noting the connectedness between global contact and transnational discourse, Hitchcock challenges contemporary cultural and transnational scholars to re-think the global in terms of its fluidity, complex configurations, and intersecting histories, venturing ideologically and culturally beyond the ramifications of mere locality vis-à-vis a territorially bound local space. To further his thought, Hitchcock provides a tripartite schematization of cultural transnationalism that addresses its ideological formation: . . . (cultural transnationalism) might be schematized as follow: (1) it represents any array of critical methodologies broadly associated with cultural studies that are attempting to rethink culture as an object of knowledge beyond its strict and restricting national base; (2) it refers to modes of artistic and imaginative expressions that give vent to supranational and transnational yearnings; and (3) it connotes various ways of being transnational that as yet have no viable political, economic, and social framework to sustain adequately the possibilities they might embrace. (2–3) With her multinationally stamped passport and transnational consciousness in tow, Nancy Morejón’s work gives presence and visibility to the worlds she has inhabited, while exposing contradictions, celebrating the essence of family, and challenging essentialist notions of race, class, and gender. She represents a Spanish-speaking contemporary Caribbean poet of African ancestry that uses her lyric voice to challenge defi nitive local, national, and international understandings of culture and race/ethnicity. Born in the 1940s, Morejón is among what Richard Jackson would consider the second wave of Afro-Hispanic writers, the likes of Blas Jiménez (Dominican Republic) and Quince Duncan (Costa Rica) whose fi rst published volumes of poetry reflect ideological inquiries into the questioning of culture in terms of identity, nation, Blackness, and cultural commodity. In so doing, “home” for these writers represents that imagined space replete with its history of forced migration from Africa, slavery in the Americas, disenfranchisement, alienation, contradiction, contestation, and reconciliation. The singular poem that has come to be Morejón’s “signature” poetic piece, “Mujer Negra” (Black woman), poetically displays the colonial and postcolonial pilgrimage of African slave women and their descendants (Tillis, 2003). In addition, “Negro” (Black man), as a gendered response to “Mujer negra” represents the evolutionary development of Black male and female ontological and epistemological understanding and acceptance of “self,” while challenging the geographical borders that manipulatively defi ne home and identity. In so doing, such poems re-create malleable defi nitions used as a collective signifier for cultural difference and commonality in Caribbean nation-islands within the figurative framework of Black body/gender politics.

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The editors of Approaching Transnationalism are mindful of the slippery slope that exists between transnationalism and appropriations of identity with regard to transnational subjects. They assert It is important to see transnational subjects as embodied beings, as bearers of gender, ethnicity, class, race, nationality, and at the same time agents constantly negotiating these self- identities vis-à-vis others in transnational spaces. It should also be noted that transnational identities, while fluid and flexible, are at the same time grounded in particular places at particular times. As transnationality becomes the way of life for many, the maxim of, “no one can have two countries.” (Murphy, 1988: 369) is no longer true. Although identities, whether ethnic, racial, social or national, are traditionally said to be ‘localised’ (Rouse, 1995: 353) and derived in relation to the specific contexts of a particular space, transnational subjects obviously play by a different set of rules since they live in, or connect with, several communities simultaneously. Their identities, behaviors and values are not limited by location; instead, they construct and utilize flexible personal and national identities. (2–3) Morejón as a transnational subject, reflects bartered identities that are influenced by contested ideologies that are challenged in space, time, language, and place. Morejón who has lived, studied, lectured in the U.S., France and the former Soviet Union becomes a tangible representation of an Africa-descended globetrotter whose defi nitions of self, racially, ethnic, and national, have been formalized through contact with sets of normativity within and beyond the limited borders of Cuba. And, her poetry represents immortal testimonies of evolutionary transnationality that links Africa, the Americas, and beyond in cultural contestation, reconfiguration, reconciliation, and bartering. This 2001 recipient of the national prize for literature is one of the most celebrated voices in post-revolutionary Cuban poetry. Nancy Morejón’s work is noted for the richness of interwoven histories that are embedded within manipulated multiple lyric voices that transverse space, place, and time. Mariela Gutiérrez states “Nancy Morejón’s poetry should be seen as the poet’s innermost journey into the roots of Cuba’s African ancestry” (209). Gutierrez’s critical comment echoes Hitchcock’s notion of people as trade, human capital, within the framework of cultural capitalism and transnationality. For it is understood that the forced migration of Africans into the human slave trade created a conduit for transnational cultural capitalism in the Americas, as African were forced into an economic market that became dependent on human trade and cultural skill sets honed and perfected in ancient West African civilizations such as in agriculture, mining, etc. The fi rst stanza of Morejón’s “Mujer Negra” poetically recreates this history as the lyric voice states

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 55 Todovía huelo la espuma del mar que me hicieron atravesar. La noche, no puedo recordarla. Ni el océano podría recordarla. Pero no olvido al primer alcatraz que divisé. (1997, 86) Altas, las nubes, como inocentes testigos presenciales. Acaso no he olvidado ni mi costa perdida, ni mi lengua ancestral. Me dejaron aquí y aquí he vivido. (1997, 86) (I still smell the foam of the sea they made me cross. The night, I can’t remember it. The ocean itself could not remember that. But I cannot forget the first gull I made out in the distance. High, the clouds, like innocent eyewitnesses. Perhaps I haven’t forgotten my lost coast, Nor my ancestral language. They left me here and here I’ve lived.) (1997, 87)

Introduced in the fi rst stanza is the concatenation of geographical spaces for economic gain as Western Europe, in the case of Cuba, Spain, initiates the process of the transfer of people and cultural normativity into the New World. Such alteration of place forged collisions as new cultures and peoples were created via the transatlantic contact. The reference to memory in Morejon’s work can be interpreted within the transnational as the beginning of the process of producing “multiple disjunct identities,” as the concluding lines of the aforementioned stanza allude to contestation in “perhaps I haven’t forgotten my lost coast nor my ancestral language.” Woven in the lines is the space where national, ethnic, and later on gender identities are negotiated. Cognizant of Africa and her African heritage, the poetic voice recreates a sense of “home” in the transnational space as the poem continues: Y porque trabajé como una bestia, Aqui volví a nacer. A cuánta epopeya mandinga intenté recurrir. Me rebelé. (1997, 86) Su Merced me compró en una plaza Bordé la casaca de Su Merced y un hijo macho le parí. Mi hijo no tuvo nombre. (And, because I worked like a beast, here I came to be born. How many Mandinga epics did I turn to for strength. I rebelled. (1997, 86)

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Antonio D. Tillis His Lordship bought me in a public square. I embroidered His Lordship’s coat and bore him a male child. My son had no name.) (1997, 87)

Realizing that the imaginary boarders of Africa, representative of nation, have been broadened as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, there exists an acknowledgement of a shifting identity and national space. The verse “here I came to be born” reconfigures the traditional interpretation of the transnational subject through expounding on the collision of culture and identity producing a new transnational subject whose sense of self and nation are compromised as a result of the forced geographical shift. Later, substantiation of the transnational as a vehicle for cultural commodity and human trade is addressed. The voice states that she was purchased, performed a foreign cultural assignment, was violated, produced a son out of the transcultural attack, and has no identity marker for the “child” she claims as her own, who was presumably sold as human capital. As the epic-like poem continues, it addresses issues related to conflict and resolution in the transnational space as they point to national identity. Within the poem, there is a shift from ambivalence, rejection, and reconfiguration to reconciliation for the transnational subject. The poem concludes with an acceptance of an understanding of nation and Afro-Cuban identity, resulting from the process of cultural transnational negotiation spatially and ideologically. The poetic voice maintains that Esta es la tierra donde padecí bocabajos y azotes . . . En esta misma tierra toqué la sangre hümeda y los huesos podridos de muchos otros, traídos a ella, o no, igual que yo. Ya nunca más imagine el camino a Guinea. (1997, 86) (This is the land where I suffered mouth-in-the-dust and lashes . . . In this same land I touched the fresh blood And decayed bones of many others, Brought to this land or not, just like me. I no longer dreamt of the road to Guinea.) (1997, 87)

Final verses of the poem culminate in the reconciliation of the transnational identity as the poetic voice lays collective, restitute claim to place and identity: Nada nos es ajeno. Nuestra la tierra. Nuestros el mar y el cielo. Nuestra la magia y la quimera. Iguales míos, aquí los veo bailar

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 57 alrededor del árbol que plantamos para el comunismo. Sú pródiga Madera ya resuena. (1997, 88) (Nothing is foreign to us. The land is ours. Ours the sea and the sky, the magic and the vision. Compañeros, here I see you dance around the tree we are planting for communism. Its prodigal wood resounds.) (1997, 89)

As Morejón references the oncoming of communism in Cuba, her poetic voice, representative of a gendered transnational subject, affirms an identity, collective and national, that is born out of cross-national and cross-cultural contact. The result is an articulation of “home” and “identity” that have been challenged and reconfigured by the physical and ideological movement from one “place” to another. And, the interesting read is the role of the metaphysical, yet literal Black woman. The “Black woman” emerges as the metonymical “vessel” in which the process of transnational “incubation” of culture and the self begins, as Africans slaves physically shift from Africa to the New World. Once planted onto the soils of the New World, the cultural bartering process gives way to an amalgam that transforms into an articulation of “Cubanness” for subsequent generations. In essence, the female body becomes the crucible where the metaphysical copulation between peoples, spaces, and cultures gives birth to culturally transnational offspring. Similarly, Morejón’s “Negro” can be read as an exaltation of corporal Blackness, as she centers the historical vilification of Blackness, implicated in the poem through the symbolic use of the Black male, in order to deconstruct the vile characterization of personhood for the purpose of reconstruction in the dislocated home space, or neo-home, outside of Africa. The transnational implication is lodged in the temporal locality referenced in the poem, spanning from the colonial period, progressing through slavery, emancipation, and Cuban independence. In “Negro,” Morejón positions the Black male as a collective transnational subject replete with historic negotiations in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, and nationality in the Cuban national space. The inference is that, although these Black male bodies are inherently “Cuban,” questioned is their “Cubanness” in a national space that privileges skin tones and hues that are at the lighter end of the color spectrum and hair textures that create a privileged phenotypic representation bordering the ideal white, or slightly “off-white.” The poem begins Tu pelo, para algunos, era diablura del infierno; pero el zunzún allí

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Antonio D. Tillis puso su nido, sin reparos, cuando pendías en lo alto del horcón, frene al palacio de los capitanes. (1997, 72) (Some thought your hair the devil’s own hell; but the tiny zunzín built its nest there, heedless, while you hung high on the scaffold before the Palace of the Spanish Captains.) (1997, 73)

In the first stanza, the poetic voice recounts the social positioning of Africans as they are introduced into the transnational space for the purpose of involuntary labor initiating the subsequent (dis) regard of Blackness in discourses on Cuba nationalism. The voice speaks to the juxtaposition of “self” verses “other” as this “body” has been codified in terms of a European concept of beauty. However, an immediate “natural” acceptance/ adaptation to the transnational space is evoked as a semiotic representation of place/nation, the zunzún, embraces, or “locates” this dislocated subject. What is meant is that nature signifies an act of reclamation through the poetic performance of the zunzún, as its “home” is made in the dejected hair of the Black man, in whose repudiation nature finds refuge. Immediately, the poetic voice presents a binary that represents the contestatory trajectory of transnational subjects with regard to nation. Implied is the rejection of the symbolic Black man and his “natural” acceptance within the same space. The broader inference is the question of national identity for many Blacks who migrated to Cuba and now call this nation-island their home. Issues surrounding gender in the poem complicate those of nation. The second stanza presents a poetic questioning of the usefulness of Black male genitalia: Dijeron, sí, que el polvo del camino te hizo infiel y violáceo, como esas fibres invernales del trópico, siempre tan asombrosas y arrogantes. Ya moribundo, sospechan que tu sonrisa era salobre y tu musgo impalpable para el encuentro del amor. (1997, 72) (They said the dust of the road had made you disloyal and purplish like those tropical winter flowers, so stunning and arrogant always. Your agonized smilethey guessed it must have been brackish. and your soft moss never meant for the act of love.) (1997, 73)

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 59 Continued is the poetic manipulation of nature in order to render transnational implications. The physical present of the Black body in the transnational locale is compared to the arrogance of the tropic winter flower, whose radiance is brilliant in a “season” that discourages nature’s display of aromatic blossoms. Yet, the tropical winter flower appears, full of arrogance and pleasing to sight of the gaze in the public sphere, which equates to ownership of place. The smile of this subject is described as “brackish.” Such a descriptor can de related directly to the ideology of cultural transnationalism. The interpretation is that “brackish” typifies the nature of salty waters, as fresh and salt water mix. Thus, the connection lies in the symbolic “mixing” of “waters” as Africa and New World produce a miscegenated subject that encompasses cultural configurations of the both. Yet, somehow this “mixing” implicates the cross-germinated, symbolic “stalk” of this arrogantly stunning winter flower. A Black male genitalia is presented amidst a questioning of its purpose and function. The purpose and function of his “soft moss” is presented impotently, which speaks directly to the disregard of his transnational, transcultural self. The poetic voice in following stanza is reminiscent to that of Morejón’s Dominican contemporary, Blas Jiménez (Tillis, 2003). Otros afirman que tus palos de monte nos trajeron ese daflo sombrio que no nos deja relucir ante Europa y que nos lanza, en la vorágine ritual, a ese ritmo imposible de los tambores innombrables. (1997, 72) (Others say the rugged sticks you cut brought us that black stain that refuses to let us shine before Europe and which hurls us into rival vortex, that furious rite of nameless drums.) (1997, 73)

Like the countless drums that guide the “rhythms” of those presented in Jiménez’s “Ser Negro en el Caribe Es” (Being Black in the Caribbean Is), the conga, bongo, and others surface nameless as they intertwine in the vortex of whirling nameless cultural commodities, centering them for the purpose of recognition. The contestations created in the stanza represent binary oppositionality relating to location/dislocation and national/alien, in an attempt to reconcile the “nameless parts” that are culturally and biologically whirled in the symbolic vortex, or Cuba. Additionally, those Black transnationals are unrecognized by “Europe” as their “black stain” has rendered them visually different. Taking this analogy to next level of interpretation, “black stain” and “invisibility” correlate to the plight of

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many transnationals as their cultural vestiges are marginalized in the discourse of national culture and identity. However, in the concluding stanza, the poetic voice broaches the idea of reclamation and reconciliation of the constituent parts. Nosotros amaremos por siempre Tus huellas y tu ánimo de bronce Porque has traído esa luz viva del pasado Fluyente, Ese dolor de haber entrado limpio a la batalla, Ese afecto sencillo por las campanas y los ríos, Ese rumor de aliento libre en primavera Que corre al mar para volver y volver a partir. (1997, 72) (Forever, we will love your footprints and your bronze spirit, for you have brought that living light of the fluid past, that pain of entering cleanly into battle, your simple affection for bells and rivers, that whisper of the free breath of spring that flows seaward only to return returning only to depart again.) (1997, 73)

In the fi nal poetic analysis, the transnational Black male body, symbolic of a collective whole, reaffi rmed as the use of the fi rst person and second familiar sound the clarion call for reclamation. Additionally, the “living light/of the fluid past” connects people to territorial spaces rendering an articulation of the home space and national identity that is ephemeral, as allusions to further (re) configurations, contestation, struggle are symbolically afloat on the waters that border nation as they “return/returning only to depart again,” and ultimately returning and departing with the ebbs and flows of “others” that transnationally enter into Cuba’s territorial space. As Hitchcock asserts in the conclusion of Imaginary State “ . . . the prospect of cultural transnationalism, a collocation of theoretical tools with which one may broaden yet complicate our approaches to the myths and material realities of cultural integration on a world scale” (187). Hitchcock and other scholars delving into the theoretical domain of the transnational assert that issues unearthed as a result of global, transnational inquiry are not unproblematic and easy resolvable. In transnational spaces such as Cuba, the collocation of binaries such as Black/ white, Cuban/Other, locate/dislocate represents by-products of the transnational encounter. And, as societies try to “sift” for understandings, the contestatory and historical nature of the development of the ideologies and their positioning are addressed. Morejón’s “Negro” concludes with

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 61 a reconciliation, similar to that experienced by transnational subjects as they try to situate “self’ in the midst of competing comodifications in an attempt to locate the dislocated markers for race, nationality, and subjecthood in spaces where these issues have been wrought with historical debate and (mis) understandings. For Nancy Morejón, the transnational becomes a space in which a cosmopolitanist discourse is engaged. I want to be clear to state that this author not only engages transnationally for the sake of travel pleasure but also uses her voice of poetic resistance to affect change by raising the awareness and consciousness of her readership to the plight of the global “other.” And, typically, these “others” are a part of the global Black community, referred to as the African Diaspora, or represent some “othered” or marginalized group. In so doing, Morejón speaks to the downtrodden and victimized in a global dialectic as her poetry gives way to a didactic discourse for poet, reader, and chosen community. The end all is Morejón’s sense of shared common experience and empathy as if she were a member of the oppressed group about which she writes or to whom her poetic voice speaks. Thus, Walter Mignolo underscores the notion of conviviality found in Morejon’s poetic cosmopolitanist space as he purposes to demarcate globalization and cosmopolitanism. In “The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism,” Mignolo states The term cosmopolitanism is, instead, used as a counter to globalization, although not necessarily in the same sense of globalization from below. Globalization from below invokes, rather, the reactions to globalization from those populations and geohistorical areas of the planet that suffer the consequences of the global economy. There are, then, local histories that plan and project global designs and others that have to live with them. Cosmopolitanism is not easily aligned to either side of globalization, although the term implies a global project. How shall we understand cosmopolitanism in relation to these alternatives? Let’s assume that globalization is a set of designs to manage the world while cosmopolitanism is a set of projects toward planetary conviviality. (721) Let us deduce from Mignolo’s postulation that the relationship between cosmopolitanism and globalization borders the notion of global citizenship; a utilitarian idea based on human connectedness, universal civility and responsibility. For Morejón, there is a social and revolutionary critique of certain “local histories that plan and project global designs” as will be discussed in the analysis of the two selected poems “En el Páis de Vietnam” (In the Country of Vietnam) and “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos” (Silent Lullaby for South African Children). In the former, Morejón’s cosmopolitanist poetics responds to the rupture of global conviviality by addressing the Vietnam War, while in the latter she critiques South African Apartheid. My aim is to demonstrate the propagandistic aesthetic of

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what I call Morejón’s cosmopolitanist discourse through these two selected works. However, prior to deconstructing the selected verses, it is important to ground my comments in further critical thoughts regarding cosmopolitanism. Concerning cosmopolitanism and its genesis in a Latin American literary context, Camilla Fojas asserts In Latin America, the cosmopolitan literary movement began with a group of writers loosely bound by a common affi nity to literary modernismo, a movement of cultural and literary renovation and reinvention. . . . Latin American Modernismo was inherently cosmopolitan; it often took elements from international art and thought—from, for example, Decadence, Aestheticism, and Symbolism, Occultism, Romanticism, Greek mythology, and German philosophy. Many critics of modernismo found cosmopolitanism to be an amnesic avoidance of the past, and the difference represented by the cosmopolitans was considered unworthy of integration into American national identity. (3) Shifting to cosmopolitanism and the lyric worlds of Nancy Morejón, I argue that her poetry reflects a cosmopolitanist contact discourse, or poetics, as the poet writes for the purpose of politicizing geographical spaces. In so doing, Morejón creates imageries, real or unreal, regarding the political disruptive order. However, her cosmopolitanist contact discourse differs in that she creates from the vantage point of a deshifting from colonialist discourse, as suggested by Mary Louise Pratt (2008), to a political voyeuristic gaze on global Black and human political circumstance. Seemingly, Morejón’s raision d’etre centers politicizing the “other” in terms of Black and human suffrage from colonial and neo-colonial occupation more so than a hegemonic “writing” of the “other.” It is here that the thoughts presented by Mignolo and Fojas are conjoined. The aforementioned is illustrated in the poems “En el Páis de Vietnam” (In the Country of Vietnam) and “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos” (Silent Lullaby for South African Children). Esta gaviota vuela sobre el eterno cielo de Hanoi, como antes volaba el agresivo B-52. (1997, 56) (This seagull soars in the eternal sky of Hanoi, as the aggressive B-52 flew before.) (1997, 57) ¡Qué clara es la cuidad!

Y el reportaje tan lejano hablando de las fiestas del Tet, de la Victoria popular. Yo estoy aquí, como una mujer simple, como hiciera Cheng Urh, como hiciera Cheng Tseh, para cantar la vida del triunfo

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 63 y para levanter, piedra tras piedra: la escuela y el refugio, la pagoda de Angkor, las casas de bambú, la bella arcada de los puentes. (1997, 56) (How dazzling is the city! And the distant report of the celebrations of Tet, of the popular victory. I am here, a simple woman, like Cheng Urh, like Cheng Tseh, to sing the life of the triumph and, stone by stone, to build: school and bomb shelter, the pagoda of Angkor, the bamboo houses, the beautiful arcade of the bridges.) (1997, 57) Oh, claro Vietnam, si cae la bomba sobre el mar Lleva tu árbol y tu escudo hasta la puerta del país. Ciérrala firme. Y si regresan—no sé, ¿quién sabe?—sobre el muro de oro, Que el invasor perezca, pérfido, junto al río. (1997, 56) (O shining Vietnam, if they bomb your sea, bring your tree and your shield to the door of the country. Slam it shut. And if they return—I don’t know, who knows?—over the golden wall, let the invader perish, perfidiously, by the river.) (1997, 57)

In the first line of the first stanza, the poetic voice communicates the idea of peace and harmony as “This seagull soars in the eternal sky of Hanoi” poetically implicating a sense of normality and the quotidian. Immediately, below, the utopian ideals of peace and normalcy are disrupted by the “project global design” of the Vietnam War “as the aggressive B-52 flew before.” The testimonial gaze of the “gaviota” becomes the eyes of the cosmopolitan poetic voice as it communicates to the reader geohistorical circumstance due to the disruption of the global economy by means of invasion, bombing, and war. As the poem progresses, however, the slant toward the cosmopolitan is noted. In the following stanza, the female poetic voice laud the efforts of the Vietnamese people in their defeat of alien forces and assumes the position of an insider: “Yo estoy aquí, como una mujer simple/como hiciera Gheng Urh, como hiciera Cheng Tseh/para cantar la vida del triunfo” (I am here, a simple woman/like Cheng Urh, like Cheng Tseh/to sing the life of the triumph). In assuming citizenship within, the poetic voice aligns herself with Cheng

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Urh and Cheng Tseh, the two sisters who led rebel forces against Chinese garrisons during the first century, as she takes on the characteristics of the elsewhere engendering a nationalistic notion of belonging in the cosmopoliticized space. This historical reference provides a social and revolutionary mentioning that is a part of Morejón’s cosmopolitanist poetics, one that engages the transnational for the purpose of eliciting a response from other parts of the world regarding the disrupture of “cosmic” conviviality. As a Cuban poet, literary manipulation is employed for propagandistic gain; in that, via the poetic voice, Morejón, from her geographical vantage point, critically engages geopolitics of another region (Southeast Asia) in order to reveal global suffrage and triumph in lands very distant from her Cuba. In so doing, she exemplifies my notion of a cosmopolitanist discourse that informs the reader of global occurrence as well as incites the need of revolution in any given moment when peace and festive co-existence are threatened. And, in “En el País de Vietnam” the focus is definitely Vietnam with references to other nation in the region such as Cambodia through the poetic reference to Angkor. The final stanza speaks to that which was mentioned earlier regarding the revolutionary tone of Morejón’s cosmopolitanist poetics. It is this stanza whereby the affirmation for continued resistance and revolution are addressed with regard to region. The poetic voice insists that if the conviviality of the Vietnam people were disturbed by foreign design, then forceful confrontation would be in order to protect nation, signaled metaphorically by “tree” and “shield”: “Oh, claro Vietnam, si cae la bomba sobre el mar/ Lleva tu árbol y tu escudo hasta la puerta del país” (O shining Vietnam, if they bomb your sea/bring your tree and your shield to the door of the country). Morejón’s sense of cosmopolitanism moves beyond the literal, physical travel to the geographical confines of a visited alien space. And, this space is embraced in order to engage it politically. Her poetic voice in “En el País de Vietnam” fosters a mental sojourn to foreign territory for the purpose of poetic manipulation. In such, the fluid parameters of cosmopolitanism as a discourse are broadened further to accommodate the figurative “travel” and immersion into the transnational space. Once “located,” the transnational encounter converts into a cosmopolitanist one as the process of socio-political engagement begins. And, such figurative play continues in “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos.” The continental shifting from South Asia, Vietnam specifically, to Africa is but mere foreplay regarding Nancy Morejón cartographical dislocations and relocations in the transnational, as evidenced in the fi rst half of this analysis. The poem “En en el País de Vietnam” demonstrates the poet’s use of transnational shifts to foster a cosmopolitanist poetics that beckon the participation of the transnational subject/reader in the particular “visited” space. Her pilgrimages, be they to Europe, Africa, Asia, or to the Americas, fosters critical discussions regarding the parameters of numerous theoretical paradigms used for the critical analysis of literature. My argument in this analysis is situated within the theoretical fronteras

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 65 of cosmopolitanism. As Fojas mentions regarding Latin American cosmopolitanism, “Latin American Modernismo was inherently cosmopolitan; it often took elements from international art and thought.” Stephen Tapscott adds that Modernist poetry is . . . surprisingly willing to celebrate the uniqueness of Latin American landscapes, wildlife, tangled history, and racial diversity; its musicality, shaping through melodic lines of Wagnerian “pleasure landscape” of swans and lilies, Titans and princesses, gold and jewelry and languorous kisses; its eroticism, hedonism, and verbal precision, and apparent frivolity; its cosmopolitan, transhistorical, and mythological references; its simultaneous coldness and “sincerity” (Darío’s term); its aristocratic, occult disdain for “propaganda” and yet its nostalgia, melancholy, and compassion. (8) Through a connection to Latin American modernismo, Fojas seeks to fi nd a literary “space” for the dialogic entrance of cosmopolitanism. Other scholars such as Tapscott echo her postulations. The focus on internationalism through the borrowing of “othered” references in Latin American literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (denoted by literary scholars as the chronological timeframe of Latin American Modernism) demonstrates Latin American authors such as José Asunción Silva, Manuel Gutierrez Nájera, and Rubén Darío engaging foreign, often eroticized cultural materiality as mentioned by Tapscott. Rubén Darío’s revered poem, “El Cisne,” serves as a classic example of Latin American modernist aesthetic about which Fojas speaks. As seen below, the poem is replete with references to classical mythology (Helen of Troy, the conception of Helen via Zeus transforming in to a swan and copulating with Leda, Thor, and Argantir). Additionally, there is even poetic reference to classical music through the adjectival pronouncement of Wagner (“del Cisne wageriano”). Fué en una hora divina para el género humano. El Cisne antes cantaba sólo para morir. Cuando se oyó el acento del Cisne wagneriano Fué en medio de una aurora, fué para revivir. (36) Sobre las tempestades del humano oceano Se oye el canto del Cisne; no se cesa de oir, Dominando el martillo del viejo Thor germano Ó las trompas que cantan la espada de Argantir. (36) ¡Oh Cisne! ¡Oh sacro pájaro! Si antes la blanca Helena Del huevo azul de Leda brotó de gracia llena, Siendo de la Hermosura la princesa inmortal, (36)

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Antonio D. Tillis Bajo tus blancas alas la nueva Poesía Concibe en una gloria de luz y de armonía La Helena eterna y pura que encarna el ideal. (36) (It was a divine hour for the human race. Before, the Swan sang only at its death. But when the Wagnerian Swan began to sing, there was a new dawning, and a new life. (36) The song of the swan is heard above the storms of the human sea; its aria never ceases; it dominates the hammering of old Thor, and the trumpets hailing the sword of Argentir. (36) Oh Swan! O sacred bird! If once white Helen, immortal princess of Beauty’s realms, emerged all grace from Leda’s sky-blue egg, so now, (36) beneath the white of your wings, the new Poetry, here in a splendor of music and light, conceives the pure, eternal Helen who is the Ideal.) (36)

However, my contention with Morejón, as an expansion of Fojas’ postulation on Latin American writers and cosmopolitanism is the fact that in Morejón’s poetry, the engagement of the cosmopolis ventures beyond referentiality into the experimental. In Latin American modernist poetry, the reader is not as readily enmeshed into the socio-political dynamics of the spaces engaged, as evidenced in Darío’s noted poem. It can be argued, however, that Darío’s later poems in Cantos de Vida y Esperanza (1905) such as “A Roosevelt” is an example of cosmopolitanism as defi ned in this analysis. Instead, in “El Cisne,” there is interaction with Fojas’ cosmopolitan through references to high culture, the classics. They become metaphor and metonymy for the new literary current of the time: modernism. However in the cosmopolitanist works of the post-Revolutionary Cuban writer, reader and writer engage in a cultural transfer of history, socio-politics, and the quotidian. In so doing, Morejón allows one to “touch” the inner sanctum of existence as she poetically engages terrains outside of Cuba via poetry forging mediated ontological and epistemological understandings for propagandistic purposes. These “purposes” often raise awareness and a level of consciousness that engender social responsibility and action. Again, the aforementioned is the underlying premise to what I consider her cosmopolitanist poetics. My assertion of cosmopolitanism here is akin to the thoughts of Ifeoma Kwankwo in Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas (2005). She states

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 67 Black cosmopoltanism is born in the interstices and intersections between two mutually constitutive cosmopolitanisms—a hegemonic cosmopolitanism, exemplified by the material and psychological violence of imperalism and slavery (including dehumanization), and acosmopolitanism that is rooted in a common knowledge and memory of that violence. (13) For Morejón the historical connection to hegemonic cosmopolitan oppression in Vietnam and in South Africa is linked to that of Cuba. The intricate weaving of global oppression by the poet facilitates a citizenship or kinship, with the hegemonically subjugated populations of the world, one that ventures beyond biological and imagined cultural barriers. Thus, Kwankwo’s argument lends itself well to an appropriation of space and place defi ned by histories of psychological violence, imperialism, colonization, and slavery, neo-slavery in terms of South African Apartheid. Shifting geographies, Morejón poetically transplants her reader on to the continent of Africa in “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos.” As noted earlier, South African Apartheid becomes the embodiment of place and socio-political circumstance in this poem. The poetic voice notes Mamá no tenía pase y no había pan. Papá no tenía pase y lo habían castigado. Mamá no tenía pase y no había pan. Papá no tenía pase y murío degollado. Mamá no tenía pase y no había pan. (2006, 305) (Mommy didn’t have a pass and there was no bread. Daddy didn’t have a pass And he was punished. Mommy didn’t have a pass And there was no bread. Daddy didn’t have a pass And he died beheaded. Mommy didn’t have a pass And there was no bread.) (English trnaslation my own)

In the poem, the poetic voice addresses the condition of presumably Black South Africans under the fascist regime of Apartheid. Described are the social, political, economic, and psychological conditions under which they

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exist. “Mama” and “Papa” emerge as inclusive references for the social institution of family, as the child poetic voice grapples with trying to forge an understanding of their condition. Sentimental evocation of empathy surrounds the tone as the plight of mommy and daddy under South African Apartheid is espoused. The jolting twist is the linguistic play in the title as the stanzas within are said to constitute a lullaby. In such, Morejón dislocates the connotative and denotative associations of “lullaby” in an attempt to politicize the local. The poet’s cosmopolitanist poetics locate the reader into the emotional and physical space of a South African child. Within this cosmopolitan space, the reader becomes intimately aware of the quotidian of men and women in Apartheid South African. The gender bifurcation speaks to the situation of Black women and men. The powerful refrains converge into leitmotif emitting themes of hunger, poverty, disfranchisement, physical and psychological cruelty, and social immobility. The fact that neither “has a pass” displays social immobility and physical abuse within this cosmopolitan space resulting in female subjugation with regard to access to work and the consequences of a rebellious male’s attempt to “buck the system” (seen as exercising the right of mobility under a prohibited social order). As the poetic voice concludes, such acts lead to death as the poetic voice bring to the consciousness of the reader the perceived reality in one of the most heinous twentieth-century examples of “humankind’s inhumanity toward humankind”: Apartheid in South Africa. In conclusion, this brief analysis into the poetic world of Nancy Morejón has served two purposes. First, it was the objective to render a discussion on cultural transnationalism as a theoretical discourse with implications of redefi ning and challenging nationally accepted identifiers of self and others. As presented in the analysis of “Mujer Negra” and “Negro,” Morejón demonstrates how cultural ideology can be viewed as an importable commodity that codifies transnationality. This is achieved through poetically placing the historical legacies of Africa and the New World in contestation for the bartering of a transformative culture and self. The result, as noted in the two selections, is the contestation and reconciliation of defi ning the self, the nation, and beyond, demonstrating the many complexities of transnational ideology as it is packaged, imported, and sold in national home spaces and beyond. Additionally, poetry for Morejón becomes the creative space where her personal reconciliation of the national and transnational are placed in dialogue in an attempt to understand the impact that one has on the other in terms of defi ning the self and nation, regarding race, ethnicity, gender, and national culture, transnationally. Similarly, this work sought to read two selected poems into the intricately constructed web of cosmopolitanism. It is my assertion that Morejón operates with what I consider a propagandistic cosmopolitanist poetics. As seen in “En el País de Vietnam” and in “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos,” Morejón manipulates cosmopolitan spaces for propagandistic purpose. In so, the reader travels with the poetic voices on a journey of revelation where

Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón 69 the human condition is exposed and presented for critique. During the repose in Vietnam, the reader and poetic voice experience the fragility, yet, sustaining power of a people to resist imperial hegemony. While in South Africa via “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos,” attention is not drawn to the precious diamond excavated from the earth nor to the harmonious ecological workings of her game reservations. Instead, poverty, social immobility, and neo-slavery are the themes encountered during this visit. Morejón’s propagandistic cosmopolitanist poetics provoke a response from the traveling reader that repudiates that which is experienced in this cosmopolitan space. The vehicle of poetry, the written word, speaks to the social, political, economic, and psychological calamities of human suffrage under a neo-imperialist regime. To this end, the four examples extracted from the voluminous poetic works of Cuba’s Nancy Morejón serve as exemplary creative fodder for cultural transnationalist and cosmopolitanist interpretations.

WORKS CITED Gutiérrez, Mariela. “Nancy Morejón’s Avenging Resistance in ‘Black Woman’ and ‘I Love My Master’: Examples of a Black Slave Woman’s Path to Freedom.” Singular Like a Bird. Ed. Miriam DeCosta-Willis. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1999. 209–219. Hitchcock, Peter. Imaginary State: Studies in Cultural Transnationalism. UrbanaChampaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Jiménez, Blas. Caribe Africano en Despertar: Versos del Negro Blas III. Santo Domingo: Editora Nuevas Rutas, 1984. Kwankwo, Ifeoma Kiddoe. Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Mignolo, Walter D. “The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism.” Public Culture 12.3 (2000): 721–748. Morejón, Nancy. Singular Like a Bird: Selected Poetry by Nancy Morejón. Trans. Kathleen Weaver. Yari Yari Conference. New York: Black Scholars Press, 1997. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Tapscott, Stephen. Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. Tillis, Antonio. “Awakening the Caribbean African: The Socio-Political Poetics of Blas Jiménez.” Afro-Hispanic Review 22.2 (2003): 29–38. . “Postcolonial Pilgrimage: Toward an Afro-Cuban Identity in the Poetry of Nancy Morejón.” Mosaic, a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 36.4 (2003): 65–79. . “Cultural Transnationalism and Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Poetry: The Case of Blas Jiménez and Nancy Morejón.” Writing the Afro-Hispanic: Africa and Africans in Spanish Caribbean Culture. Ed. Conrad James and Stewart Brown. Birmingham, UK: Centre for West African Studies, 2011. 12–21. Yeoh, Brenda et al., eds. Approaching Transnationalisms: Studies on Transnational Societies, Multicultural Contacts, and Imaginings of Home. New York: Springer Publishing, 2003.

Part II

Africa and African Cosmology and Literary Tradition in Hispanic (Con) Texts

Introduction to Part II Antonio D. Tillis

The second series of critical works deal with the presentation of Africa and African cosmology within contemporary texts from Peru, Colombia, and Equatorial Guinea. This section establishes a trans-Atlantic cultural connection that links Africa to her Diaspora in the Americas. Similar to the approach of Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic, the four chapters chart the cultural, historical, and political ties to Africa in a reverse route: from Africa across the southern Atlantic to the Americas. The scholars presented here demonstrate the influences of African cosmology on Hispanic literary traditions. Here, “Hispanic literary tradition” is broadly defi ned to include the literature of Spain’s former colony in Africa, Equatorial Guinea. Argued is the influence of African philosophy and metaphysics on literary production by writers in Spanish America and in Africa. In the fi rst article, “Yoruba Cosmology as Technique in Malambo by Lucía Charún-Illescas,” Aida L. Heredia presents the invasion of African cultural traditions within the fi rst Peruvian novel written by a woman of African ancestry. Heredia examines Charín-Illescas’s use of Yoruba cosmology as an aesthetic device in a narrative of unity that seems to undermine the consciousness of political freedom, while contesting the official historical memory of slavery in Peru. For Heredia, Charún-Illescas’s positioning of Yoruba practices within the religious expression of Peruvians of African ancestry serves to demonstrate cultural survival of African religious cosmology in colonial Peru. In “Myth, Legend & Reality: Redesigning the Narrative Style in Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker,” Cristina Cabral asserts that in his last published novel, Colombian Manuel Zapata Olivella fictionally returns to Africa and the mystery of her cultural traditions in the region of Kenya. Cabral critically argues that the publication of Hemingway in 1993 represents the author’s returning to the beginning place of humanity to expose a message of peace and universal harmony based on the cosmological philosophy of the Muntú through the literary manipulation of mythical components found in the kikuyu tradition from Kenya. Cabral examines Zapata Olivella’s recreation of historical, geographical, and social contexts in the novel by reconstructing the colonial reality of

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Kenya from 1950 to 1960. The chapter analyzes how the combination of myth and reality in Hemingway makes possible the existence of an aesthetic space where both elements contribute to the creation of a post-colonial and afrocentrist narrative style. Martha Ojeda in “Nicomedes Santa Cruz and Black Cultural Traditions in Peru: Renovating and Decolonising the National Imaginary,” provides a succinct overview of Santa Cruz’s work as a poet, musicologist, journalist, and essayist who, as a creative writer and cultural performer, catapulted African traditions in Peruvian culture onto the national scene. Ojeda focuses on Santa Cruz’s poetic output, highlighting the themes and techniques present in his most important poetry collections in order to provide a historical account of the poet’s literary reception both in Peru and abroad underscoring the lack of critical attention given to Santa Cruz. In her concluding analysis, Ojeda makes a forceful and compelling argument for the complete inclusion of Santa Cruz’s poetry in the Peruvian literary canon and not merely as an appendix. The author accomplishes this task by demonstrating Santa Cruz’s originality and mastery of the poetic skills, which is demonstrated both in his use of multiple stanzas and poetic forms as well as in his varied thematic and linguistic register. That which distinguishes Santa Cruz from his contemporaries, according to Ojeda, is his critical voice that gives visibility to the presence and cultural contributions of Black Peruvians. Ojeda asserts that Santa Cruz accomplishes the abovementioned by lacing his work with African cosmological utterances in a Black Peruvian tradition. The fi nal chapter in this section, “Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World: Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural-Political Order” reads Spain’s former colony into the Hispanic literary tradition. Elisa Rizo aims to offer a critical approach to contemporary Equatorial Guinean drama as an art that responds to simultaneous national and transnational dynamics. The chapter begins by referring to the political context that surrounds playwrights working inside Equatorial Guinea in order to indicate how approaching this dramatic writing as one produced in a location of friction between local and external forces is pertinent to their site of production. After exploring alternatives of theorizing about the literary resources and political proposals of these dramas, Rizo shifts to the main body of the text presenting a separate analysis of three Equatorial Guinean in terms of the writers writing back to Spain, while engaging the contemporary political situation at home, thus, situating the national literary discourse of Equatorial Guinea within the confi nes of African cultural production in Spanish language. The chapter ends by suggesting parallelisms between Equatorial Guinean and other Hispanic literary traditions, most directly, Afro-Hispanic American writing. The four chapters comprising this second section of the volume provide for the reader critical perspectives from literary traditions in South America (Peru and Colombia) and West Africa (Equatorial Guinea). The authors

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present ways in which African and Afro-Hispanic writers contextualize Africa and her cultural and political heritages within the bound pages of literary texts. In so doing, writers such as Manuel Zapata Olivella, Lucía Charún-Illescas, and Nicomedes Santa Cruz emerge as African Diaspora literary griots in South America as their work tells and retells the intimate connection with African thought and cultural practices in the Spanishspeaking Americas. Likewise, Equatorial Guinean dramatists Juan Tomás Ávila, Trinidad Morgades, and Pancrasio Esono address similar cultural and political influences of Spain and the resistance of such colonial forces through writing/performing Equatorial Guinean (African) cultural history in dramatic texts.

4

Yoruba Cosmology as Technique in Malambo by Lucía Charún-Illescas Aida L. Heredia

Malambo (2001) by Lucía Charún-Illescas, articulates a notion of freedom in late sixteenth-century Peru grounded on the syncretism of Yoruba sacred cosmology and European Catholicism, which, together with Indian religious beliefs, shaped the complex roots of Peruvian society.1 Yoruba cosmology is characterized in the novel by the memory of the ancestors and the socialization among enslaved Africans of ways of apprehending the world through ancient oral tradition, botanical healing rites, the interaction between spirits and humans, and the notion of social space as spheres inhabited by the dead whose connections with the living, far from disappearing, are reaffi rmed in daily life. This complex cosmology appears, on one level, as a life force that vindicates the humanization of Africans and their descendants in Peru at the same time that it subverts the alienation to which they are subjected as enslaved individuals. As an Afro-Peruvian author Charún-Illescas’s focus on Black spirituality as a legitimate way of being in the world is in itself a profoundly meaningful act in the affi rmation of Black people’s humanity. From this point of view, Malambo is a groundbreaking, courageous text, which brings into dialectical perspective the presence of Afro-descended people obscured by the racist practices that inform canonical Peruvian historiography. The novel’s rejection of Eurocentric views conventionally used to explain the African Diaspora leads Costa Rican writer Quince Duncan to consider it illustrative of the new Afro-Latino literature (135–143). Malambo’s omniscient narrative voice captures with scientific rigor the tight machinery of the transatlantic slave trade as well as the racial stratification of late sixteenth-century Peru while looking critically at the attitudes and actions of Black individuals in Peruvian society. The description of the logistics of the trade in Lima that the slave trafficker Manuel De la Piedra offers Chema, a young man from Guijón who is gathering information for a book he is writing on the customs of Lima, illustrates this aspect of the novel: Don’t you want to note in your book how many slaves I have in quarantine? . . . A hundred and eighty-three. All of them entered legally, none are contraband. I have an associate who . . . buys them in the

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De la Piedra concludes: “But the important thing is that the cargo arrives healthy to El Callao . . . That’s why, as soon as they arrive, I send them to Malambo. I look for a doctor to check them over, and I begin to fatten them with a lot of sango and stewed potatoes” (75–76). The economy embedded in the character’s description of the slave traffic articulates the novel’s defamiliarization and indictment of the violence that sustains a structure in which Black lives are made disposable. When one examines the novel from the conception of freedom, however, the understanding of Yoruba cosmology as a source of the spiritual power and sacred knowledge that informed Afro-descended people in Peru as they engaged in resisting, challenging, and affecting colonial relations of power is displaced by the quiet depiction of Catholicism as the preeminent way of making their experience as transatlantic captives and their lives in the New World intelligible to themselves, and as the only sanctioned medium for Blacks to align their enslaved self with the “divine” and social forces that determined their status in society. Catholicism, an instrument of deculturation and oppression, asserts itself in the novel as the epistemological tradition that moves Blacks to “transcend” the machinery of slavery in order to become legitimate members of Spanish Peruvian society. It is precisely in the interstices between the fictional weaving of Yoruba and Catholic epistemologies with its ambiguous notions of freedom ascribed to enslaved, manumitted, and free Blacks under the banner of a Catholic identity where one fi nds the vibrant contradictions, which are the focus of this study. If indeed Yoruba cosmology signifies in Malambo a body of knowledge from which Afro-descended individuals draw power to affect the social order established by the institution of slavery, it also reveals itself, on the one hand, as an embellishing technique that indirectly idealizes the exploitation and subjugation of Blacks and, on the other, as a primary artifact used by Charún-Illescas to frame what in effect is the central narrative of the novel, namely, the unity of all Blacks in Peru through their adoption of the Catholic faith. 2 The representation of Yoruba memory as a cosmic energy that inhabits Lima’s landscape—waters and shacks, the corn and cotton fields of the region, the springs that join the River Rímac underneath the Palace of the Viceroyalty—and that highlights the humanization of Blacks in the midst of racist hegemonic traditions is an innovative literary technique that ultimately renders itself as the enunciation of a double failure since neither Yoruba cosmology nor Catholic Christianity leads Blacks in Peru to a consciousness that understands their condition in terms of political freedom.

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This narrative of unity through the colonial power of Catholicism among Blacks belonging to different West African ethnicities has its roots in a Peruvian sixteenth-century account of an image of Christ known as “Señor de los Milagros,” painted on the wall of a chapel in Pachacamilla and attributed to enslaved Africans. According to Peruvian historiography, in 1640 a group of Africans from Angola who had formed a brotherhood in Pachacamilla painted the image of a Black Christ (Cristo Moreno) on the walls of the chapel where they would meet. In 1655 Lima suffered an earthquake that destroyed churches and homes; in the chapel the only wall left standing was the one adorned with the image of the Cristo Moreno. People from that period interpreted the earthquake as punishment caused by the dissolute life lead by the slaves in their reenactment of African rituals, which they dedicated to the prehispanic Christ of Pachacamilla (Mujica Pinilla 25). Colonial authorities ordered on three different occasions that the image of the Cristo Moreno be erased from the wall, but by the third attempt the image of the Christ “se ponía más bella” (would become more beautiful) (Mujica Pinilla 26). Thus began the devotion to this painted Christ as protector against earthquakes. By 1681 the image was named Cristo de los Milagros, also known as Cristo de las Maravillas. Considered a symbol of unity between indigenous peoples, Blacks, and whites, its devotion constitutes one of the most important Catholic festivities in Peru’s contemporary society (Rostworowski 151–159). It is this spiritual, psychological unity that the reader is called to witness in the final chapter of the novel; a unity whose seeming transcendence of the need for the political and social reconstitution of Afro-Peruvians as free men and women silences the very consciousness that the novel’s critical historiography foregrounds. Charún-Illescas elaborates the story of a new status for Afro-Peruvians united as one people in the body of a syncretistic Black Christ through the central character, Tomasón Ballumbrosio, the enslaved elder from Angola who paints the miraculous Christ Crucified. The painting is impregnated with symbolic references to Yoruba spiritual universe; nevertheless, the cultural reference of the Señor de los Milagros as the novel’s principal metaphor and the employment of Yoruba cosmology as its framing device seem to respond to a desire on the part of Charún-Illescas to create a work of art of such poetic imagination that it has the capacity of dismantling the hegemonic notions of Peruvian cultural identity that reproduce structures of oppression. Yoruba cosmology provides Charún-Illescas with the linguistic and cultural medium to fulfill such a desire, which is a desire greater than the task of redressing the marginalization and erasure of Blacks in Peru’s canonical historical memory.3

ANATOMY OF AN ARTISTIC DESIRE Malambo is a historical novel structured around multiple stories and geographic locations within colonial Peru whose various crossings highlight

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the life, beliefs, and vicissitudes of Peru’s Afro-descended men and women. The term “Malambo” designates the compound built in 1633 in the district of San Lázaro, on the opposite side of the city of Lima, with the expressed purpose of housing incoming enslaved Africans as a measure to prevent diseases from spreading in Lima when slave traders brought their cargo into the city (Bowser 67). In this district unfold the senior years of Tomasón Ballumbrosio who, after residing in Lima as a renowned painter of Catholic iconography, decides to abandon the miserable quarter assigned to him in his master’s house and establish himself in Malambo (15). Identified by the author as the bearer of African ancestral memory, Tomasón’s presence in Malambo ignites the portrayal of the compound as a vital space in which the metaphysical, linguistic, and artistic dimensions of the Black population thrive in spite of the attempts at its ontological obliteration. The novel opens with the crossing of the recollection of the Spanish conquest and the evocation of the Yoruba creation myth in which the natural world is conceived as symbolic of people’s cosmic interconnectedness: The events of this story flow from the tropic of the mangrove and the orchids that are borne in the air, to the cold transparent blue of the Strait of Magellan. Its concentric sides meet in the Ciudad de los Reyes under the coat of arms of a blue shield with three crowns and a flaming star, planted in the dunes of the coast facing the Southern Sea. (3) This way of recalling life experience under colonial rule invokes the African Diaspora as a whole and the historical commonalities of Black people as a way of establishing the centrality of the humanity of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas. Implicated in this transatlantic memory is Yoruba cosmology as an episteme whose powerful dynamic illuminates the life of Black individuals in a world dominated by the ideology of white superiority. Woven with the movement of the river Rímac, which separates Malambo from Lima, the narrative voice– which speaks from various perspectives, including that of the orishas and the waters of the Rímac—travels through the territory mapping the social order of human degradation, meandering “through the cultivated lands,” “the miserable outskirts of San Lázaro,” and “between the cadavers of the sacrificed animals of the slaughterhouse of Malambo, the corner where many Negroes from Lima live: seat and protection of the taitas Minas, the Mandinga and Angola elders and the cofradías of Congos and Mondongos” (4). Two opposing realities cross in this set of images; one is the spatial and social relations of oppression generated by the European colonial transaction; the other is the life that Blacks cultivate for themselves in spite of the material reality that foments their annihilation. According to the Yoruba creation myth, Olodumare, the Supreme Being, infused every element of the earth with his creative and spiritual power and many divinities descended into the world to inhabit special places (Olúpona 95); hence, the significance of

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Malambo as a place where Blacks fi nd protection and fortitude. The tension created by the crossing of these two opposing perspectives of the compound and its surroundings is better appreciated in the original language of the novel, Spanish. The same paragraph reads: “Durante las crecidas del verano, entran arrastrando lodos al pedegral del leprosorio y se escurren confundidas . . . por entre los cadáveres de los animales sacrificados en el matadero de Malambo, el rincón de los negros de Lima: asiento y reparo de los taytas Minas, los ancianos Angolas. . . . ” The words “asiento y reparo” capture the dialectical relation between the domination of colonial authorities (forcefully settling Blacks in marginal areas) and the restoration of the human spirit of Blacks in their resistance to such domination. It is from this meaning of Malambo as sitio de reparo that Yoruba myths affi rm a primordial state of freedom in the lives of these men and women before they were bought and sold as slaves. However, in this very representation of freedom as a primordial state lies a contradiction: freedom for Blacks is reenacted as an expression of a mythic imagination; a form of freedom in the fictional future of the characters becomes imaginable only when Yoruba spiritual memory is fused with and legitimized by the symbolic imperial iconography of Catholic Christianity. The most eloquent expression of this ambiguous construction of freedom resides in Tomasón Ballumbrosio’s role as mediator between the world of the divinities or orishas and the social world of Malambo. Known in Lima as the best restorer of religious European iconography and ecclesiastical murals, Tomasón has spent most of his life restoring and producing many great paintings for the lucrative business of the marquis Valle Umbrosio. An expert on European techniques of religious art learnt since childhood in the Jesuit monastery of the Valle de Chincha (19), he is also credited with the development of innovative non-European artistic techniques, a talent constructed by the narrator as a statement of his autonomy despite having lived his entire life as chattel. Precisely, Tomasón’s masterpiece will be the Christ Crucified commissioned by the cofradía of Negroes from Angola; a Christ transformed by a “miraculous” polvillo prieto (dark dust), which functions as a trope of the West African roots of the original Cristo Moreno of Pachacamilla in 1640. The symbolism of the polvillo prieto makes manifest the novel’s desire to break through the limitations of the history of slavery not so much to redress the silenced, distorted spaces of Blacks lives, but to arrive at a singular, new kind of historical writing. From the perspective of this inferred aspect of the novel, the polvillo prieto is a prominent tool in the depiction of daily life in Malambo; it allows CharúnIllescas to manipulate sacred expressions of Yoruba imagination in order to embellish her fictional writing, while making visible spiritual forms of knowledge that have been silenced by Eurocentric mentalities. The following description of Tomasón centered around the polvillo prieto alludes to this idea: “He fi nished cleaning the brushes while he passed a tired look over the hut . . . He lived crowded by broken frames, purple dyes . . . , and

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junk covered with a fi ne dark dust, that tinged with a splendor of shiny, crumbled velvet, saturated the air and followed him everywhere” (6). The polvillo prieto becomes the trope that in the final chapter seals the utopian state of a syncretistic but very Catholic unity among Blacks and dissolves in their consciousness the need for freedom.

FRAMING UNITY Catholicism among Black individuals in colonial Peru was not simply a means to worship their African deities and pay homage to their ancestors, as conventional historiography tells us in the voices of the slave trafficker Manuel De la Piedra and his associate, Melgarejo (175). The Catholic fervor and communal values practiced by enslaved and free Blacks are meticulously captured throughout the novel by the narrator’s description of the indispensable role played by the brotherhood or cofradía of the Angolans in Malambo. Under the leadership of its corporal, the liberto Jacinto Mina, the cofradía organizes religious processions and provides solemn burial rituals for everyone, including non-members, as it is the case with the Creole slave Guararé, brought from Panamá to be auctioned in Lima (166–167). Religious brotherhoods were founded in the sixteenth century in Lima with the purpose of regulating the actions and shaping the morality of the Black population (Bowser 156). Racially segregated, brotherhoods also became a place where Blacks developed a collective identity as well as certain cognitive abilities that allowed them to occupy meaningful positions within the hierarchy of that institution (Tardieu 851). They sponsored philanthropic activities, including deaths and disabilities benefits for members and their families (Andrews 46). In Malambo the cofradía of the Angolans is granted the distinctive honor of leading the procession of Christ Crucified—a reenactment of Peru’s festivity of the Señor de los Milagros. If indeed the novel’s concern about the unspeakable violence committed against Blacks encompasses a critique of Catholicism and its excessive iconography in Lima—an essential vehicle in the dehumanization of Blacks (Cummins 14)—the important role the author assigns to the cofradía of the Angolans belies the privileged position that Catholicism retains in Charún-Illescas’s literary conception of Malambo as Lima’s Black district. Such position prevails even as the employment of her literary imagination foregrounds Yoruba cosmology as knowledge that orients Black men and women’s interaction with social reality and reconstitutes them in wholeness and challenges the language of mercantilism that conceived them as piezas. Said cosmology is relegated to the function of framing the religious ideology that has marginalized African-based spirituality in Peruvian society. One outcome of this dialectical relation is the treatment of Yoruba cosmology as ornamentation. The tension created by the interaction between the pervasiveness of Catholic ideology and the novel’s desire to inscribe in the

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history of Peru the cosmology of the Yoruba people as a legitimate epistemology can be appreciated in Tomasón Ballumbrosio’s divine calling to break free from the mercantilism of Catholic iconography and become a mediator between Yoruba divinities and the living. Gravely ill, exploited, and facing the fi nal days of his life, Tomasón fi nds himself restoring a mural in one of the churches of the Plaza Mayor of Lima. Having decided to rest for a moment, he steps out to the Plaza Mayor where he gets a glimpse of the spirit of the deceased Juanillo Alarcón, who in life was a freed slave from the guild of the water carriers. Juanillo appears pleading for him to paint “saints from Guinea” and restore the links to their sacred ancestral memory in order to transform their condition as outsiders: For a while now, I’ve been trying to ask you a favor without disrespecting the master painter whose beautiful works please his master and earn him a lot of money. Don’t you think that you’ve already painted enough white gods and saints? Is it that you don’t know anything else? With so many good saints and honest gods in Guinea that we have enough to give away! Ever since they brought us to these strange parts, we Negroes should be united. Don’t you think it would be good to pray to Elegguá so that he gives us courage and patience, with fire for the journey, and that Ogún replenish our strength against so much abuse. (14) He continues “When are you going to paint me a saint that’s not on the opposing side? My guild always wanted to ask you to bring us a Changó that knew how to hear us and that spoke our language. And what about if you begin with a good Yemayá, heavenly, shining, even if only on wood or cardboard?” (15). Latent in Juanillo’s recollection of the forced migration and oppression endured by Blacks is the recognition of Catholic Christianity as both an instrument of alienation and as sublimation of the traumatic experience of slavery. On the surface Juanillo’s clamor and the narrator’s belief of his direct interaction with the world of the living as an organic dimension of Afro-descended people’s daily life suggests the continuation of Yoruba active memory among Blacks in Peruvian slave society. However, a closer look at this episode reveals a fi ner trace on the page: Juanillo’s reference to the principal Yoruba divinities constitutes a series of strategic utterances whose function is to frame the driving force behind Juanillo’s plea, namely, the story of Catholic unity beyond differences of ethnicity, racial categories, and individual experiences within the history of slavery and colonialism. In other words, the invocation of Changó, god of thunder and lightning associated with justice and Ogún, warrior, god of fi re and iron, is ultimately part of Charún-Illescas’s verbal design to set the stage for the compelling narrative of the Señor de los Milagros. Analyzing the passage in its original language illustrates more precisely the underlying fiction that brings together the deceased Juanillo and Tomasón: “Desde

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que nos trajeron a estas extrañezas todos los negros debemos ser uno solo” (italics mine). More than a call to political action, Juanillo’s interpellation is reminiscent of the Christian message of reconciliation through unity in the body of Christ delivered by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians regarding the hostilities and conflictive religious beliefs that existed among the social groups of his time; the apostle speaks of subordinating all the members of the body to the head– Jesus Christ—in order to become one in Spirit “by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations” (Eph. 2:15). Implicit in Juanillo’s interpellation is the notion of Christian conciliation as a way of “solving” the racial and social conflicts generated by the trappings of a slave society; his encounter with Tomasón weaves into the invocation of Yoruba orishas a utopian conceptualization of freedom for Black individuals– they achieve freedom in their soul but not in their material reality as individuals in bondage. The body of Christ may have become through the transaction of European colonization the patrimony of many Afro-descended people; nevertheless, a social distinction remains between the acceptance of a faith endowed with universal value, on the one hand, and on the other, the colonialist construction of Yoruba cosmology as an illegitimate body of knowledge. Charún-Illescas’s development of Tomasón’s character as a painter goes to great length in its suggestion of reclaiming Yoruba religion and culture from the debasing mentalities that reduced Black bodies and lives to a commodity. But the significance of Tomasón’s painting of Christ Crucified as an allegory of unity, as a sign of the transcultural process from which emerged new forms of spirituality in the Americas as well as acts of liberation on the part of Afro-descended individuals does not address the unfulfilled need of Black men and women to regain their dignity and to dismantle the foundations of their natal alienation, a state described by Orlando Patterson in his comparative study of slavery in the Americas as “the loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending generations” (7). So prominent is this kind of alienation in the lives of the malambinos that the only political debate about the meaning of freedom takes place in the form of a brief, distant recollection of a conversation between Tomasón and his Indian friend, Yáwar Inka, about the superior status granted to Indians by the Spanish colonizers and the status of inferiority attributed to Blacks. The episode is constructed as follows: Yáwar Inka finds himself at the storehouses in the San Lázaro district, near Malambo, where Africans and Creole captives are taken to be sold; he is waiting for the merchant Manuel De la Piedra. Encircled by the spatial ignominy of the slave trade, Yáwar Inka remembers the moment when he argued with Tomasón that Indians occupy a higher status in society than Blacks given that the Indians preserve their humanity in spite of colonial oppression, whereas Blacks are reduced to the condition of beasts by their slave masters: “[W]ith us, the Indians, at least they treat us like the people that we are, but with the Negroes, they buy and sell them

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like beasts . . . ” (76–77). Tomasón refutes Yáwar’s differentiation of both social groups by stating that Blacks are subjects of a more genuine freedom, namely, the freedom of the self-determination that comes with the awareness of being treated as commodities in a profit-making market: That’s the disgrace that we suffer, but our situation isn’t equal to the one that beasts suffer. The bull isn’t aware that they have put a price on him . . . The animal isn’t capable of knowing! . . . the bull can’t understand! But we Negroes realize and there are those who rebel or ask the master, “How much do you want for me? How many pesos?” They haggle over the price, they ask that it be lowered, they go to complain to the judge. There’s others—like in my case—that don’t want to pay nothing. . . . [T]he slave should know that there is a price on him and keep that in mind . . . It’s better than having them come and deceive you, saying that you aren’t a slave but then working you to the point of breaking your back . . . What’s that freedom worth? (77) At stake in Tomasón’s response is the assertion of Black individuals’ faculty to reason and, consequently, the affi rmation of their humanity. The subjectivity denied to Black persons by the slave trade is underlined according to Tomasón’s argument by their understanding of the operations of a global market in which they are the most precious commodity; in knowing that there is a price on him or her the enslaved person exercises a self-consciousness which inhabits the possibility of attaining legal freedom through negotiation, through the “purchasing power” of the slave. Although Tomasón’s reasoning accurately points to the act of self-purchase as a form of destabilization of colonial relations of power, the reality is that neither group is in a better position than the other; the “superiority” to which Yáwar Inka lays claim only speaks to the historical fact that in the colonial enterprise Blacks became the standard for ill treatment. The novel’s vision of a revolutionary consciousness embedded in Black people’s awareness of the objectification they endure in a society defined by the interests of human traffickers is truncated inasmuch as freedom and the idea of agency associated with it remains encapsulated in Yáwar Inka’s recollection. Moreover, the abrupt shift from Tomasón’s impassioned argument back to the storehouses and to the description of the practices instituted by the slave trade in Lima renders the possibility of political freedom as rhetorical embellishment. Tomasón’s challenging question to Yáwar regarding his assumption that Indians are not treated as slaves (“What’s that freedom worth?”) applies also to Blacks, exposing the dubious nature of the social integration supposedly achieved by the Black population under the image of Christ Crucified. The rhetorical envisioning of freedom that the conversation between Tomasón and Yáwar Inka puts forth extends to Jacinto Mina as a liberto. In spite of his ascent to a legal personhood made possible by the alleged

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grace of his former master, Jacinto Mina—whose original name is Lucala—lives in anguish returning over and over again to the displaced memory of Dondo, in Angola, his ancestral home. He is in search of wholeness as he attempts to re-constitute his self in a cosmological language that recreates African traditions of human dignity: the king warrior, the circular design of the dwellings in the village affi rming solidarity among its members, the ceremony of circumcision symbolizing rights and social responsibility (141). Jacinto’s mythical return to Angola is linked to the traumatic memory not only of slavery but also of his complicity in the slave trade capturing his brothers and sisters in Dondo before he himself is captured and shipped to South America (148). The novel addresses this trauma by highlighting Jacinto’s moral and spiritual leadership as corporal of the cofradía of the Negroes from Angola and the respectability that such position grants him. Jacinto directs the responsibilities of the brotherhood as provider of solemn funerals and masses with a sense of solidarity that encompasses the entire Black community on both sides of the river Rímac. Despite his legal status as a freed man and the autonomy he exhibits, Jacinto Mina’s character is shaped by the submissive attitude demanded by Catholic imperial politics: absolute obedience and gratitude from freed and enslaved Blacks alike. Even though he has been manumitted, Jacinto behaves as if he were chattel and still subjected to his master’s will. So permeating is this internalized form of oppression that his memories of the rituals of initiation into adulthood, which he underwent in his native Angola are replaced by his actual captivity in Lima as the only way of life possible for him. When Tomasón admonishes him for continuing to work as if he were still a slave, he responds: “It’s because I’m used to it” (141). Jacinto lives according to the notion of willful subordination imposed by the doctrine of ecclesiastical power; his Christian devotion prevents him from discerning between the obligation Blacks have to forge their own freedom and the theological virtue of charity. A vivid example of the traumatized psyche caused by slavery and reinforced by perverse Christian morality, Jacinto gives his savings to his former owner in order to help him fi nancially and to show him gratitude for freeing him after the death of his wife (142). “Ohh Jaci! There’s no cure for your sickness. You’ll never learn to be a free man. Doesn’t it make you feel bad to give away your salary?” (142), declares Tomasón, his reproach emerging as synecdoche of the novel’s own perversion of political freedom in favor of the fantasy of a syncretistic religious unity among Blacks in Peru. Underscoring the servile freedom embodied by Jacinto is his reply to Tomasón: “No, I’m not ungrateful.” This episode of is one of the most poignant moments in Malambo’s reflection of the effect of slavery in the psyche of the individual. In Jacinto’s story we witness the “burdened individuality of freedom,” to put it in Saidiya Hartman’s words. Burdened individuality, she explains in her examination of the “contending articulations of freedom and the forms of subjection they engendered”, “designates the double bind of emancipation . . . the collusion of the disembodied

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equality of liberal individuality with the dominated, regulated disciplined embodiment of blackness . . . ” (121). The affliction produced by Jacinto’s alienating embodiment of Christian oppression disguised as brotherhood will ultimately be assuaged not by the mythical return to the ancestral home, but by embracing the myth of Catholic salvation. Yoruba tradition as a transformative form of knowledge remains subordinated to the paradigm of Catholic doctrine. It is not a coincidence that Jacinto’s account of his complicity in the transatlantic slave trade and remembrance of kinship relations in Angola is followed by the redemptive power attributed to Tomasón’s painting of the Christ Crucified; the opposing forces that cross in Jacinto Mina’s recollection of his life converge and dissolve: A while had passed since Jaci’s tobacco had burned out. Finally, he decided to criticize Tomasón’s painting. He was still offended by what he had said. But as upset as he was with the painter, when he turned to look at the Christ of Tomasón’s painting, he could find nothing to disapprove of. It was his friend’s best work. The Christ moved him. In the Christ there reverberated a splendor of light that was like the light of the hut, but the Christ expressed something of darkness, a broken reflection of the dark dust. (149) Jacinto’s approval of the painting acts as the performative4 that brings about the redemption that grants his person legitimacy. The word “miracle” is repeated several times throughout the novel in anticipation of this moment in which the crime against humanity that was slavery is overcome with the performance of a new syncretistic spiritual identity. If in this contrived epiphany Charún-Illescas maintains the indictment of the enslavement of Blacks through the narrator’s remark about the Christ expressing “a broken reflection of the dark dust” despite its splendor, Tomasón’s exclamation (“It’s about time caraaá! Yes, it seems like a miracle” (149) relegates that critical memory to a secondary plane. Likewise, life in bondage and the sustaining power of Yoruba divinities are veiled away by the smoke coming out of Jacinto’s tobacco, leaving the malambinos shrouded in a rhetorical status of legal personhood as Christians.

FAILING MAROONAGE Malambo’s ambivalent attitude toward the transformative power and actual memory of Yoruba spirituality among Blacks in Peru is not lost in the treatment of the practice of cimarronaje or maroonage. Runaway slaves were a serious problem for the authorities from the beginning of the Viceroyalty (Blanchard 103). In many cases the fl ight of enslaved men and women did not constitute a frontal challenge to the colonial machinery,

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but, as Carlos Aguirre explains, maroons helped to erode its foundation. Key to this phenomenon was the toma de conciencia that maroons had of their flight as a legitimate action (Aguirre 247). The significance of that action becomes more poignant when one examines maroonage from the perspective of what Jacqui Alexander calls in her meditations on the Sacred an attempt to realign the self with the self and with the Divine as a way of counteracting colonial attempts of annihilation (298–299). Ironically, the toma de conciencia and search for realignment of the self emerge as failure in the story of the slave Francisco Parra who escapes with the intention of purchasing his freedom and that of his daughter. His sudden arrival at Tomasón’s dwelling with his eleven-year-old daughter, Pancha, initiates a liminal space in which the portrayal of Yoruba divine protection does not seem to go beyond the notion of cultural retention on the one hand and literary ornamentation, on the other. Francisco escapes with his daughter from a hacienda run by priests in the Sierra. Arriving in Malambo at night, he decides to leave his daughter with Tomasón and continue to Lima where he would collect the money that his aunt Candelaria saved for him. But alas, Francisco—the only enslaved character in the novel who engages in a conscious, dynamic search for legal freedom—dies in Lima under mysterious circumstances at the hand of the coachman Nazario Briche before achieving his goal of becoming a free man. A pathetic irony envelops his self-determination when he says, responding to Tomasón’s advise that he stay overnight because the “Holy Brotherhood troops are out hunting people without owners,” “I know how to take care of myself” (24). The meaning of maroonage and selfpurchase as a failed agency is foreshadowed early in Chapter 2 by the narrator’s allusion to Francisco’s death and to Tomasón’s new responsibility as guardian of Pancha: “Seated face to face they smoked without looking at each other. Tomasón did not remember exactly when the girl took his hand, when she asked what she asked, and much less when he became attached to her forever” (24). Minimizing the narrative of maroonage embodied by Francisco Parra is also the narrator’s digression from Francisco’s journey to Tomasón’s role as repository of African ancestral lore. The elder’s recounting of the myth of the Yoruba god Obatalá when Pancha asks him about the shadows drawn on the walls of the hut acts as a sublimation of Francisco’s failure at exercising his own will: “ . . . I only do my job and trust in the will of Obbatalá. Those that you’re looking at are the saints that are with me when I sleep, pretty girl. I always had them inside me, but I could never dream about them because the master never let me sleep when I wanted” (25). Tomasón’s voice unfolds flying to the beginning of time as he tells, in the manner of a griot, the legend of the unfair imprisonment of Obatalá and his subsequent transgression of getting drunk while he was creating the clay figures from which humanity would originate. Divine justice intervenes in Obatalá’s liberation and Obatalá, in turn, restores harmony on earth (26–27). At stake

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here is the foregrounding of Yoruba cosmology as part of the social history of colonial Peru, a foregrounding, which in its defamiliarized evocation of justice may yield a moving aesthetic. And yet the reader is obliged to ask, given the centrality of maroon agency during slavery, where in such aesthetics is the envisioning of justice for Francisco Parra, for other enslaved Blacks in this (re)calling of Yoruba divinities? This literary manipulation of Yoruba cosmology takes precedence in a way that relegates freedom and justice to the margins of the novel’s critical memory. The skepticism awakened in the reader by the narrator’s digression can be appreciated in Pancha’s attitude before Tomasón’s account of the orishas. She doubts that the orishas truly exist (“When I see them, I’ll believe them”; 26). Her casting doubt on Tomasón’s explanation of the shadows on his wall cannot be interpreted simply as an expression of her innocence. At stake in this sublimation of Francisco’s failed escape is the conception of freedom as an unattainable goal for Blacks; oppression is resolved (dissolved) in Tomasón’s mythical memory, while social justice for enslaved Blacks is placed in a metaphysical realm that overlooks the possibility of revolutionary freedom in maroonage. Charún-Illescas’s metaphysical embellishment of Francisco Parra’s failure in his pursuit of freedom encompasses such aspects of Yoruba spiritual beliefs as the intimate relationship between the world of the living and the world of the dead. After his death Francisco, with his spirit broken and his soul afflicted, visits Tomasón in dreams; since his tongue was cut off, he cannot tell who took his life. Tomasón searches for a sign among the shadows that he draws on the walls of his hut in order to decipher the message contained in those dreams and fi nd out who killed and mutilated Francisco. With this narrative technique, Charún-Illescas re-inscribes in Peruvian historiography a sacred form of knowledge that was discredited and persecuted by the colonial apparatus. The Creole Guararé who, on the point of death, becomes a messenger between the living and the spirits, delivers the answer for which Tomasón is looking. Upon receiving the last rites from Jacinto Mina, Guararé is handed over to the spirit world with several requests from members of the community. Among those making requests is Tomasón, to whom the orishas reveal through Guararé’s spirit in the final chapters the enigma of Francisco’s death. Tomasón acts upon this revelation by confronting Nazario Briche— Francisco Parra’s assassin—and recovering for Pancha her father’s inheritance. Francisco Parra is sure now to rest in peace. Innovative as it is for Peruvian fiction this way of narrating the liberation of a soul and maroon conscience, Francisco’s pursuit of freedom and his attempt to legalize his personhood are projected into the nebulous future life of his daughter and thus restricted to a symbolic gesture with no effect on the character’s material reality. At the end of the novel, Pancha’s condition as chattel is not overcome; moreover, her freedom implied in her father’s inheritance dies narratologically with Tomasón’s fi nal days.

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Tomasón’s own experience as a runaway slave joins Francisco’s in silencing the transformative power envisioned in the phenomenon of maroonage. Recalling his flight from the yoke of the Jesuits to whom he was brought as a child, Tomasón tells how he joined a group of maroon men, women, and children that was passing through the valley of Rímac determined “to leave as far behind as possible the place of the merciless. Trap, whip and torture, nothing more than that” (12). His description of the group as individuals who wandered aimlessly caught in a “trance,” far from capturing their plight, represents them as caricature: I escaped with some cimarrons that weren’t going anywhere. They came. They were more than enough: old, children, women, infants . . . They themselves did not know if they had escaped two nights ago, twenty or maybe hundreds of years ago, but for my luck or greater disgrace I found them in that trance. The destiny of their travels carried them, without plan or thought, directly through the valley of the Rímac. (12) According to Peruvian historiography, escaping was not always carried out as an organized social movement seeking to abolish slavery. However, casting these maroons in such an ambiguous, nebulous state of mind undermines the sacred energies associated with African lore, such as the ability of Black persons to fly, to adopt different organic forms, and to make themselves invisible by chewing on certain herbs. Contributing to this perversion of African lore and to the depiction of maroonage as an escapist phenomenon is the technique of the real maravilloso that Charún-Illescas employs to have her main character narrate this event in his adolescence. In the real maravilloso the commitment of the narrator to a cause-effect historical analysis is maintained over the magical or supernatural qualities that certain cultures attribute to events (Llarena 29). Such is the case with Tomasón’s account of how the maroons he encountered made themselves invisible by putting “underneath their tongue three leaves of a lima bean” (Malambo 12). This apparent credibility of the supernatural as part of the daily life of Afro-descended people is belied by a subtle but revealing detail in Tomasón’s account—the implicit attempt to explain in rational terms the power of that band of maroons to make themselves invisible: And because they were so many, how could they go unnoticed by the dogs and the tracking foremen? Truly, I don’t know. I only saw that they would put underneath their tongue three leaves of a lima bean, the ones that sprout on the head of I don’t know which birds, and this makes invisible the person that knows the trick to using them. (12) The rationalization underlined by the marvelous real point of view brings into sharper focus Charún-Illescas’ desire to inscribe in the center of

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Peruvian Catholic hegemony the African roots of the story of the Señor de los Milagros. She has Tomasón join the maroons not with the assistance of Yoruba knowledge but with the aid of the Catholic ritualistic prayers recited by a woman in the group: “Seeing that I didn’t even have a little leaf of field grass, the lady taught me the Prayer of the Fair Judge, which doesn’t make you invisible but it helps” (12). Furthermore, it is no mere coincidence that Tomasón’s escape from the residence of the marquis takes place on the October 18 (15), the date marking the celebration of the Señor de los Milagros in contemporary Peru.

DABBLING WITH FREEDOM: PANCHA’S JOURNEY A prominent aspect of Yoruba religion is the conception of the material world and its natural phenomena as spheres inhabited by the sacred energy of the Superior Being, Olodumare, and other gods and spirits, which traveled through different geographies in Africa and across the Atlantic settling in vegetation, in hills, in rivers, in the wind: “As the primordial gods and spirits, sixteen in number, descended into the world, they took their abodes in these special places, and, henceforth, miraculous occurrences began to take place there” (Olúpona 95). These gods and spirits also migrated in the memory of millions of Africans transplanted on slave trafficking ships; accompanied by them in their living quarters and workplaces, the lived experience of these Africans exemplifies the interconnectedness of the mythological and the historical that shapes the divine in Yoruba religious imagination (Olúpona 93). Inscribed in this dynamic is Malambo—in its dual identification as a compound emblematic of the ignominy of the transatlantic slave trade and Spanish colonization as well as a place inhabited by Yoruba divinities where Blacks emerge as individuals acting according to their own free will. Also embedded in that dynamic is Tomasón Ballumbrosio’s hut as a cosmic life-affi rming place in spite of the affront to human dignity that it articulates as it stands next to the slaughterhouse, cluttered with old pieces of wood, broken frames, and scraps of meat covered in flies (Malambo 6). The arrival of Francisco Parra and his daughter Pancha to Tomasón’s dwelling broadens the symbolism of the hut as a site where Blacks are able to enact their personhood through the recreation of their own beliefs and traditions. After her father’s death, Pancha becomes the female figure through whom the novel continues to engage Yoruba linguistic codes, celestial metaphors, and botanical knowledge, while incorporating those elements as a framing device for the aesthetic foundation of the mythic unity and illusory freedom among Black Peruvians under the image of Christ Crucified. Bearer of the sacred energy known in Yoruba as ashé, Pancha is characterized by a relationship with the earth that enables the novel to foreground the power of the botanical knowledge cultivated by Africans and their

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descendants in the Americas. During her adolescence she becomes yerbera, herbalist, putting into practice the healing properties of plants and transforming physical illness into spiritual well-being through the healing rituals of her hands and praise songs. Pancha—her name is associated phonologically with the term “pacha,” which in Andean cosmology means time-space, the equilibrium between material and supernatural forces (Mujica 93)—is charged with the responsibility of subverting through her inheritance of ancestral community rituals the division between the family of malambinos identified with Tomasón and other Blacks who interact with him but who live on the other side of Malambo, in Lima proper, the two most important ones being Jacinto Mina and Altagracia Maravillas. Cast in the role of challenging the social and physical spaces of colonial power, Pancha travels to Lima on several occasions to sell herbs but also to act on her will to find out who killed her father the night he went to Lima and why. Her pursuit of the truth about her father’s death is portrayed as a journey of initiation into ancestral sacred knowledge. She temporarily leaves infested, dehumanizing Malambo on a coming-of-age journey that takes her along Peru’s coasts, interacting with indigenous communities and open spaces suffused with fresh winds and aromatic flowers and coming to embody the wondrous dimensions of African and Andean traditions that Charún-Illescas’s artistic desire reclaims for Peruvian national consciousness. By having Pancha travel outside of Malambo and Lima, Charún-Illescas re-inscribes cultural spaces that existed in Peru beyond and before the domination and obliteration practiced by the founders of the enslaving Ciudad de los Reyes. Restituting the social memory of those spaces is Pancha’s dance with men disguised as devils during a festivity that invokes the preHispanic Indian dance from Puno known as danza de la diablada, dancing devils. In such a dance, which is part of the festivities to the Virgin of the Candelaria that developed after the Spanish conquest, the devils try to take possession of the peasants’ soul in a re-enactment of the battle between good and evil. Pancha’s participation in this dance implies a symbolic death that enables her to enter life with a new free, autonomous self. Lamentably, the ancestral social memory of renewal and destitution of evil claimed through Pancha’s journey appears suspended in the dream-like sphere with which Charún-Illescas constructs the various plots of the novel; it is a sphere whose imagery accentuates the illusory, artistic nature of disalienation that the central narrative of syncretistic unity weaves in the novel. How convincingly does the novel envision for itself a social transformation when the novel focuses on Yoruba (and Andean) cosmology as opposed to Catholic Christianity? The story of the Indian fisherman whom Pancha encounters during her travel and the failure of his mythical flight provide an answer. Reminiscent of Yáwar Inka, Tomasón’s Indian friend, the fisherman fi nds himself consumed by the will to set his soul free; Pancha offers him herbs. Later on, when she ponders if he was able to fly, a voice in italics responds: “I don’t know Pancha, I don’t know . . . When you gave me the

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Guinea splinters and showed me how to fly, I thought that finally I could do as so many Mandingos taitas. . . . You have to realize that what those Negroes lacked in wings and feathers, they made up in abilities. They were slaves without ceasing to be free birds or wild trees” (177). The liberation from bondage suggested in the “abilities” that the members of African nations possess is confronted with its own elusive nature. And so is Pancha’s return to ignominious Malambo, which coincides with the miraculous procession of the Christ Crucified led by the cofradía of Negroes from Angola and people’s joyful gathering at Tomasón’s hut. It is intriguing that Pancha does not figure physically with the other individuals in the interior communal space of Tomasón’s hut. When the voices emanating from the incense of holy wood that burns in her room—which comes across as a lyrical modality with which the narrator adorns the moment—ask about Pancha, Venancio, her future husband, replies: “Gathering herbs” (214); she is nearby but not centrally present. She acquires a liminal status: her initiation journey places her in a mythic space outside of the enslaving conditions symbolized by Malambo while keeping her tied to the legal status of a slave. In effect, Pancha’s initiation into sacred knowledge of the natural world suggests itself upon her return as a silencing of the active power associated with self-determination and the pursuit of social justice attributed to her character. The fact that she remains outside of the unity achieved by the multiple ethnic groups under the body of Christ points to the subordinate role assigned to Yoruba spiritual practices as a medium to develop a social consciousness that leads to political freedom.

AGENCY AND DOMESTICITY Scholarship about the transatlantic slave trade has pointed out that a fundamental evil of slavery was the violation of familial relationships. Anne Mellor, for instance, notes in her examination of the role of women in the nineteenth century abolitionist movement in the British colonies of the West Indies that a significant number of women writers condemned slavery “because it violated the domestic affections, separating mothers from their children, husbands from their wives, and subjecting Black women to sexual abuse from their white masters (315). The Peruvian historiographer Carlos Aguirre argues in his extensive study of Black men and women as active historical subjects who crafted their own freedom that on many occasions the goal of enslaved Blacks was not to obtain absolute freedom but to overcome restrictions on the right to be with family members, to defend in court their right to protect their children, to establish labor relationships that would improve their social condition (212). Likewise, Charún-Illescas’s historical fiction underscores familial relationships as a key element in the reclaiming of Black people’s humanity. The night Francisco Parra appears at Tomasón’s hut the narrator didactically calls attention to the

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fact that Francisco ran away from the yoke of his masters with his daughter (“This is the fi rst time that he has seen a male cimarron with a girl. Women, yes, they do escape with their young ones. . . . Those that were Pancha’s age were a bother, thought Tomasón, pleased that Francisco Parra would take such a risk” 23). Another instance is the communal role played by the cofradía of the Angolans, although the conception of Black family there is illuminated by a contradictory light. The agency attributed to freed and enslaved Blacks by the cofradía under the leadership of the manumitted Jacinto Mina is permeated by ambiguity, given Jacinto Mina’s servility and docile self. Under his leadership, the creation of family among Blacks emerges as a supporting unit of slavery, of bondage. Ambiguous and ironic is the vision of Black people’s extended family elaborated by the telling of Altagracia Maravillas’s story. Her miserable life as a domestic slave and sexual object of Manuel De la Piedra in Lima is initially disguised by her connection to the cofradía of the Angolans and, above all, to Tomasón; she is the one who obtains the money to pay for the painting of the Christ Crucified. The mantle of joy under which the narrator introduces her at the beginning of Chapter 3 vividly alludes to the social network that Blacks have created for themselves: “Altagracia Maravillas awoke happy as a lark. . . . She had found an actual treasure in the hollow of the fulling mill. . . . ‘Ten pesos will be enough . . . if not, I myself will have to make another miracle,’ Tomasón said to her when she asked him if, for that amount, he would paint a crucified Christ for the cofradía of the Angolans” (33). But there is more lurking under so much joy, namely, the reiteration of the Catholic dogma as the instrument that enables Afro-descended people to become human, to become a legitimate family, and assume a free self. The idealization of the condition of Blacks in a slave society that can be deduced from said narrative alternates with the indictment of the moral degradation that defines the domestic space inhabited by Altagracia Maravillas: With a bit of malice . . . one could distinguish . . . the half-lit lintel with a hole like the mouth of a mine. To cross this frontier meant entering the alley-way that led to the untiled patio where the world ended and began, beside the stable dungheap and the shanty for the slaves. . . . Compact clouds of flies constantly clashed with two other armies no less frenzied and ravenous: rats and cockroaches. (35) Located in Lima, on the opposite side of Malambo, this description of the interior of the house knits together the history of the insatiable transatlantic and inter-colonial slave trade in Peru, of Malambo’s slave storehouses as an integral part of the logistics of the slave trade, and of Lima’s role in the global economy of slavery. Folded into that history is the narrator’s critique of the Black woman’s life as an object of male sexual gratification represented in the figure of Altagracia, who exhibits a selfish, conformist

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existence, contented in her alienation, “without remorse going to bed” with her master when her husband, Nazario Briche, is away (50). The story of Altagracia and Nazario as husband and wife is a gripping synecdoche of the devastating effect that colonial domination had on the psyche of Black individuals; in this case it castrates Nazario’s intention to create a family of his own when he asks De la Piedra for permission to marry Altagracia. With his dignity trampled, Nazario Briche, a tragic and pathetic character, feels impotent before De la Piedra’s domination over Altagracia’s body. He kills Francisco Parra when he comes to the house searching for his inheritance money on the assumption that Francisco was another man trying to sexually possess his wife. If indeed Charún-Illescas cultivates in this and others moments throughout the novel, a critical historiography, at the same time the central narrative of Malambo—the Señor de los Milagros and the miraculous unity associated with it—betrays that critical historiography in an embrace of a new religious conscience for Blacks, which will transform their oppression. It is precisely the day of the procession that one fi nds out that Altagracia has been redeemed from the vilifying existence of domestic slavery thanks to the purchase of her freedom by her brother, Venancio: “It was Sunday, and Malambo awoke at the crack of dawn. . . . The devout women were the fi rst to visit Tomasón and ponder the Crucified Christ, followed by the cofradías of Angolans, Congos . . . ” (213). The narrator continues: “Jaci went about lighting the oil lamps with a sulphured wick. Venancio . . . filled the incense burner. Then he lit the Malambo wood . . . Its spirals of smoke said softly: ‘Altagracia’s free now. Venancio bought her.’/‘He bought her?’ ‘Ah!’” (214). The passive way in which Altagracia obtains her freedom—and the syncretistic Catholic “civilized” space in which her new status is divulged—is privileged over the maroon consciousness and spirit that guides Francisco Parra’s decision to purchase his freedom. Prior to this exercise of Venancio’s legal rights, Altagracia remained oblivious to the experience of being bought by De la Piedra “on one of those business mornings” in spite of listening to his conversations with his associate Melgarejo about “the days that remained to fulfill the required quarantine for the ‘pieces of Guinea’ that the master had well secured in one of the Malambo slave storehouses” (40). She is hardly the model of resistance suggested by Angélica Salcines in her analysis of the novel (32); Altagracia is aware that there is a price on her—to use Tomasón’s formulation—but she only considers being in control of her own destiny out of fear of being resold by her master as a defective good due to her bad arm. Although at the end of the novel the new luminous social, religious sphere of Malambo, in general, and Tomasón’s hut, in particular, is allegorical of the achievement of Afro-Peruvians freedom and dignity, the future of that narrative remains trapped within the very discourse (fantasy) of autonomy and self-determination written into the cultural referent of the origin and celebration of the Señor de los Milagros. The ancestral Yoruba memory embodied

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by Tomasón is subordinated to the Christian congregational realm into which Malambo is converted during the procession; it is in that “new” social space that Tomasón begins to live above and beyond the legal boundaries of slavery, when his soul and the polvillo prieto appear as one, soon after his body meets its physical death: “He felt his worn old body suddenly begin to float in a halo of pink morning clouds of dawn. . . . There he was now, mixed with dust, present in each breath, free to land wherever he wanted. Free to come and go forever” (215). Some critics have interpreted this passage as a “resolution” of the conflicts and violence generated by Peruvian slave society (Ojeda 18). However, a closer alternative reading shows that far from articulating the collapse of the colonial apparatus and the bright future that supposedly awaits Malambo (Ojeda 18), such final depiction of Malambo sums up the utopia or wishful thinking contained in the narrative of cultural unity that serves as the main metaphor of the novel. It is fitting to remember that the institution of slavery continued after the foundation of the Republic of Peru in 1830—being abolished only in 1854—and that the complex struggle against its legacy continues to this day.

EPILOGUE Even though the cosmology of Yoruba culture cuts across the multiple histories that make up the novel, Tomasón’s death suggests ambiguity as to the continued presence in Malambo of the ancestral memory that he embodies given that the other Black characters in the novel—for example, Jacinto Mina, Altagracia Maravillas, and Venancio—do not enter the novel’s emplotment as active agents of Yoruba memory. It is precisely the use of Yoruba cosmology as a literary framing device that disguises the contradictions contained within the historical and literary epistemological interaction of Yoruba religion and Catholic Christianity throughout the novel. Considered from this perspective, Malambo emerges as the poetic perversion of a religious and cultural syncretistic process in which the restitution of African-based spiritual memory is silenced by the preeminence of Catholicism. The potential of Blacks to reconstitute themselves as genuinely legal free persons would still have to overcome the status of outsider within the material reality of slavery and its tenacious legacy in (colonial) Peru. NOTES 1. I am deeply grateful to Judy Kirmmse for her useful comments on the fi rst draft of this paper. 2. Extending to the idealization of Black people’s lives and to the contradictory narrative of their presumed emancipation via a Catholic unity is the nineteenth-century pencil drawing by Maurice Rugendas of what could be an enslaved young washerwoman in the outskirts of Lima and which adorns the cover of the novel. The woman is drawn not only alone but

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also detached from any human community, washing clothes near a stream, her face looking forlorn and resigned. The drawing, dating from 1843, reflects the romantic gaze within which national and foreign artists framed nineteenth-century daily life in Peru. The novel displays the washerwoman on the cover as a figure centrally inscribed within a large painting also by Rugendas from the same period of Lima’s Plaza Mayor. In this large painting the viewer is seduced by the depiction of Lima’s aristocracy in the midst of the lower classes composed by Black, mestizo, zambo, and indigenous laborers. Such inscription of the washerwoman may represent an indictment of the alienation produced by slavery, a vindication of Afro-Peruvian women’s vital presence in Peruvian society as a whole, an attempt on the part of the author to counter the marginalization of the Black woman. However, what seems to prevail is a reiteration of the romantic veil that disguises the construction of the Black body as a commodity. After all, it is a drawing that points to a period in the nineteenth century after the Republic has been founded in which slavery was still defended and protected; a period in which, according to Carlos Aguirre, the slave trade in Peru was re-opened. 3. If on the one hand, the literary adaptation of the Yoruba creation myth and its fundamental notion of the propagation of spirits, divinities, and ancestors on earth articulated by the trope of the crossroad as a place of confl ict and possibility are key to the innovative structure of Malambo, at the same time that structure is weakened by an excessive use of techniques such as personification of natural and supernatural phenomena, well-worn metaphors, and convoluted dialogues that oftentimes project the characters as types. Sudden shifts of focalization, together with inconsistencies in the structural development of time and lack of development of situations, make it difficult at times to determine who is speaking in a given passage. Likewise, such phrases as “una semana sin sábado” (“One week with no end”; 6),” “una voz negra como el mediodía” (“a black voice like the midday”; 23), “se le desataba una risita maravillada por lo que sus ojos podían ver” (He would let out an amazed little laugh for all that his eyes were able to see”; 106)—referring to Tomasón in his hut—come across as awkward, tired and discursive images. Adding to the excessive use of literary tropes are such historical inaccuracies as the one found in the Venancio’s mother characterization as a “free womb washerwoman” (8); the free womb law was introduced in 1821, over one hundred years after the time frame of the novel. 4. “Performatives, in J.L. Austin’s understanding of the term, refers to language that acts, that brings about the very reality that it announces . . . ” (Diana Taylor. “Remapping Genre Through Performance: From ‘American to ‘Hemispheric’ Studies.” PMLA 122.5 (2007): 1417).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agirre, Carlos. Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Perú. Una herida que no deje de sangrar. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Cngresso del Perú, 2005. Alexander, M. Jacquil. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Blanchard, Peter. Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1992. Bowser, Frederick. The African Slave in Colonial Peru. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974.

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Charún-Illescas, Lucía. Malambo. Trans. Emmanuel Harris II. Chicago: Swan Isle Press, 2001. Cummins, Thomas. “Images for a New World.” The Virgin, Saints, and Angels: South American Paintings 1600–1825 from the Thomas Collection. Ed. Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt. Milan, Italy: Skira, 2006. Duncan, Quince. “Afrorealista Manifiesto.” Hispanic Journal 27 (2006):135–143. Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Mellor, Anne K. ‘“Am I not a Woman, and a Sister?’: Slavery, Romanticism, and Gender.” Romanticism, Race, and Imperial Culture, 1780–1834. Ed. Alan Richardson and Sonia Hofkosh. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Mujica, Marisa. Perú. 10.000 Años de Pintura. Lima: Universidad de San Martín de Porres, 2006. Mujica Pinilla, Ramón. Los Cristos de Lima. Lima: Fondo Pro Recuperación del Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación, 1991. Ojeda, Martha. “Búsqueda y Negación del Yo en Malambo de Lucía CharúnIllescas.” Afro-Hispanic Review 23.2 (2004): 13–19. Olúpona, Jacobo K. “A Sense of Place: The Meaning of Homeland and Sacred Yorubá Cosmology.” Experiences of Place. Ed. Mary N. MacDonald. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Reid Andrews, George. Afro-Latin America 1800–2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Rostowrowski, María. Pachacamac y el Señor de los Milagros. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) Ediciones, 1992. Salcines, Angélica Ma. “Afro-Peruvians-Constructing Identity Through Literatura: Monólogo desde las Tinieblas (1975) by Antonio Gálves Ronceros and Malambo (2001) by Lucía Charún-Illescas.” Master’s Thesis, University of California, San Diego, 2004. Tardieu, Jean-Pierre. Los Negros y la Iglesia en el Perú. Siglos XVI–XVII. 2 vols. Quito, Ecuador: Centro Cultural Afroecuatoriano, 1997.

5

Myth, Legend & Reality Redesigning the Narrative Style in Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker Cristina Cabral

In 1993, with Hemingway, the Death Stalker (Hemingway, el Cazador de la Muerte), Zapata Olivella revisits Africa, a place he left behind in 1983 after the publication of his masterpiece, Chango, the Baddest Dude (Changó, el Gran Putas). But this time, said return signifies not only a return to the roots of the Black man but also of all humanity. It is a vantage from which to construct a message of universal peace and harmony based on African cosmology, concretely on Muntú philosophy, which we shall refer to further on in this essay. A note from the author at the beginning of the work advises the reader it is wholly a product of fiction and any similarity with reality is a mere coincidence. Given the abundant “realist” information with which the plot and characters of the novel are developed, such an initial warning holds more than an ironic tone of truth. In this regard, in the introduction to Zapata Olivella’s last essay, published in 2002, William Mina states that what stands out is how reality and fiction blend in the work of this author: He masterfully assigns the vitality of African traditions with the historical ‘realism’ of deeds and personages of real life, without disregarding the structure of effective social alienation, to produce something akin to mythic realism. ( . . . consigna magistralmente el vitalismo de las tradiciones africanas, con el “realismo” histórico de los hechos y personajes de la vida real, sin desconocer su estructura de alienación social y efectiva, para producir algo así como el realismo mítico.) (sic; 20). According to Mina, mythic realism is not a manner of falsifying reality but of creating a symbolic and imaginary world from which the contents of that reality can be explained (21).1 This combination of mythic and realist elements Mina distinguishes is taken up again and, in a way expanded, in 2004 in the literary trend defi ned by Quince Duncan as Afrorealism, in his analysis of Afro-Hispanic American literature. 2

100 Cristina Cabral To this end, we can deduce the presence of mythic and realist elements characteristic of Zapata Olivella’s work. In fact, a similar combination presents itself in his previous novels Chango,the Baddest Dude (Changó, el Gran Putas, 1983) and The Execution of the Devil (El Fusilamiento del Diablo, 1986). This essay reveals some of the most relevant myths and realist elements in Hemingway, the Death Stalker and analyzes how such a combination makes possible the creation of an aesthetic literary space where myth and reality generate a unique narrative style which, at the same time, is postcolonial and afrocentric. The story is set in Kenya during the 1950s. Through synthesis, the novel tells the events that happen during a scientific expedition led by Ernest Hemingway with the objective of climbing Mount Kenya and investigating the possible ascent of elephants before dying. During the expedition, several obstacles and conflicts arise whose resolution exceeds the limits of the expeditionists’ logic and scientific knowledge. Although the expedition is successful in discovering convincing proof of elephants on the summit of the mountain, the violation of a taboo on the part of Hemingway initiates a series of tragic occurrences, leading to the madness and eventual suicide of the protagonist. On one hand, the mythic component of the novel is limited to the African tradition, explaining certain conceptual aspects of Kenyan culture pertaining to the Kikuyo tradition. On the other hand, the novel recreates the reality of colonial Kenya during the 1950s, based on the reconstruction of its historical, geographical, and cultural context, as well as in regard to the development of the main characters. This essay is organized primarily to emphasize the wide range of “realist” aspects that structure the fiction in order to later study its mythical aspects at depth. From there we shall establish a new literary space, one that emerges from the combination of the two elements.

THE REALITY OF THE FICTION One of the most evident realist elements in the novel is directly related with the development of the main characters. The author chooses as protagonists of the fiction two widely known persons from the African and Western worlds, Jommo Kenyatta and Ernest Hemingway. Beyond being a creative reconstruction of the personages Kenyatta and Hemingway, the novel offers elements that allow us to come close to their thoughts and of other groups present in the society: peasants, activists, colonists, and missionaries. With the purpose of showing the historic reconstruction of the novel, the following relevant information about Jommo Kenyatta and his world is included, which include the Kikuyo and the Mau Mau movement. Despite the great contribution of historical content to Hemingway, the Death Stalker, the work does not pertain to the historical novel genre. Perhaps it

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 101 belongs to historical fiction; however, that subject will not be discussed in this essay. The following biographical information is useful for identifying some of the resources potentially used by the author in the development of the work’s central theme. The research does not seek to offer a recounting of the strategies developed in the work but rather to stress the implicit significance of some elements possibly selected by the author and the creative form with which they are placed in the novel.

I. THE KENYAN LEADER Jommo Kenyatta is one of the novel’s central characters. Jeremy MurrayBrown, in his book Kenyatta (1979), offers an unauthorized biography about this Kikuyo leader who came to be president of Kenya from 1963 to 1978 and who stands out in the independence struggles, the scene in which the novel is set. Murray-Brown’s book refers to Kenyatta’s infancy, family, education in the Presbyterian Church, stay in London, trips to Moscow, return to Kenya, political activism, and presidency. At the same time, Murray-Brown offers information about the Kikuyo, to which Kenyatta and the majority of the members of the independence group Mau Mau pertained. From this book, we gleam information that helps us to better understand the creation of the Kenyatta character, as well as the relationships established between the novel’s characters. It is important to stress the Presbyterian education Kenyatta received during a great part of his life. Kenyatta’s membership to the Scottish mission, along with his fifteen-year stay in London, gives him knowledge about British customs and thinking. Murray-Brown mentions that at an early age, Kenyatta joined the Scottish mission in Thogoto, and in 1909 entered Western history with his tribal name “Kamau wa Ngengi” (belonging to Ngengi, his uncle, and also his stepfather). “It first appears in a list in the mission archives recording the dates when the first boys and girls came to Thogoto” (42). Murray-Brown points out the Scottish mission’s system could be boiled down to the word “discipline”: discipline of the community, of one’s self, and of Scripture-based faith. In 1914, Kenyatta sealed his commitment to the mission’s faith through baptism. After being baptized, he acquired the Christian name “Johnstone Kamau.” After receiving the Presbyterian baptism, he faced as well the circumcision ritual inherent to his Kikuyo tradition, thus showing his personal religious syncretism. Johnstone Kamau would be another transitory name, as many years later, during his militant nationalist period, he would adopt the definitive name “Jommo Kenyatta.” In the novel, the character Kenyatta appears on several different occasions with the same aforementioned names: Kamau, Johnstone, and Jommo Kenyatta. This causes some confusion for the uninitiated reader, as s/he does not know to whom the narrator is referring. Such confusion is clarified in his biography, which explains the different names corresponding to the different stages of the protagonist’s life.

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In 1920, Kenyatta traveled to London where he stayed for fi fteen years. In these years, he journeyed to Moscow and came into contact with African intellectuals and activists who would motivate his return and political activity in Kenya. During his stay overseas, Kenyatta wrote Facing Mount Kenya (1938), a collection of studies about Kikuyo life and customs composed for lectures given by Malinowski. Facing Mount Kenya and Murray-Brown’s comments about the book allow us to access, in part, Kenyatta’s philosophical, cultural, and political thinking, and to see how it presents itself in the novel. According to Murray-Brown, the collection contains autobiographical references and a wealth of ethnological details. The aim of the African exile writings was to challenge the white historical vision; as such, he describes the principles of order, self-sufficiency, and virtue, which shaped Kikuyo life before the arrival of the white man. The writings stress the importance the land has in Kikuyo culture. MurrayBrown argues all strength and unity is found in the land: the living, dead, and unborn live through the land, and through reincarnation they are an organic whole. These general ideas about the importance of the land for the Kikuyo and other African ethnicities are discussed, among others, in the works done by John Mbiti (1989) and Paulin Hountondji (1983), and it permit an understanding of the importance of the scientific expedition organized by Hemingway to explore the mountain considered sacred territory by the natives. By knowing the significance of said mission in the African imagination, it is possible to understand the tenacious resistance unleashed by Kenyatta and other natives. It is also important to recognize the European ambiance of the period in order to recreate the psycho-social background of the expeditionists and other characters that represent the colonizers in the novel. In 1936, Ethiopian Emperor Ras Tafari Haile Selassie, forced by the invasion of Mussolini, left his country to spend five years in exile in London. The struggle of the Ethiopian monarch from exile was a catalyst for the Black movement, as it overcame certain differences between groups and showed the Emperor as a model of a progressive monarch. In 1937, in this regard, the idea of Pan-Africanism developed among Kenyatta and his comrades. Its message, according to Murray-Brown, was very simple: to win domestic rights, civil liberties, and self-determination for Africa. Kenyatta took an active role in the movement but from a more moderate perspective than his Communist or racist colleagues. Kenyatta spoke of a single Kenya where all races could live and work in peace, insisting they should all consider themselves Kenyans, not Africans, Europeans, or Asians. Pan-Africanism arose from strong nationalism and although there were many outstanding political leaders, “Kenyatta was the leader of the nationalist movement” (251). 3 This nationalist, but at the same time conciliatory, characteristic of Kenyatta’s personality manifests itself from the beginning of the novel. The character approaches Hemingway and acts as a mediator between the expeditionists and tribal chiefs, including accepting to accompany the expedition.

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 103 II. THE FREEDOM MOVEMENTS Murray-Brown notes that in 1948 a new word, Mau Mau, arrived on the social scene and was associated with an independence movement that proclaimed it wanted to kill all whites in Kenya. Although the colonizers associated the Mau Mau movement with the figure of Kenyatta, MurrayBrown expresses that in an encounter with 30,000 Kikuyos, Kenyatta launched his eternal message of working together, abandoning crime, and drinking, while at the same time publicly condemning the movement: “If this resistance movement gathers strength, then I think we shall succeed in rolling back the Mau Mau movement before too long” (250). In their book, Carl Rosberg and John Nottingham review some of the key political moments in Kenya from 1888 to its independence in 1963, focusing on the protests of the 1920s, cultural nationalism, growth of political militancy, violence, governmental reforms, and organized political movements.4 In the introduction, the authors explain that many of the present-day political problems confronting Kenya are a product of its colonial legacy after seventy-five years of British rule. They point out that, during British colonialism, a growing nationalism began developing in Kenya on the basis of constitutional petitions and protests that moved on to be a militant nationalism capable of using direct action in search of a new political and social order. This situation led to the declaration of a state of emergency in Kenya in 1952, which lasted for seven years. At fi rst, it was characterized for its violence and later for its dramatic reforms. The Mau Mau movement is identified with the militant nationalism period and violence that characterized Kenya’s central politics before and during the fi rst years of the state of emergency. Rosberg and Nottingham emphasize that few African mass movements had been as controversial as the Mau Mau. For the colonial administration, missionary church leaders and colonists in general, Mau Mau symbolized the epitome of irrationality. They were seen primarily as barbarians, as an anti-European tribal culture whose leaders planned to convert Kenya into a land of darkness and death. For representatives of colonial British rule, the movement was perceived as a dangerous, hypnotic obsession based on primitive emotions, not intellect. For that reason, it could not be eradicated only by military action; drastic political and economic reforms for the Kenyan people would be needed. The British demanded the rehabilitation of tens of thousands of Africans, based on individual confession of sins, hard work, reestablishment of Christian values, and respect for colonial authority. Years earlier, similar punishments were imposed on Jomo Kenyatta by the Scottish church, which accused him of “living in sin” and drinking. This affi rms the influence the church had on governmental affairs in Kenya. The colonizers thought the Mau Mau were a product of the fault of the Kikuyo to totally adapt to the demands of rapid modernization, and the situation should be analyzed and corrected within religious and psychological terms.

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Rosberg and Nottingham offer another explanation for the rise of the Mau Mau as part of the nationalist development, politicalization, and mobilization of the Kikuyo. The authors emphasize that the violence unleashed in 1952 was not due to an African fault, but to a European one, as British politicians would not recognize the necessity for significant social and political reforms. They stress that for the European conception, the Mau Mau constituted a myth, whereas for them it “was indeed an integral part of an ongoing, rationally conceived nationalist movement” (xvii). As to Kenyan nationalism, the authors consider it necessary to make certain geographic distinctions: In the pre-emergence period, the strongest zone of nationalism was the Nairobi area, Kikuyo reserve, and the European settlements in the Highlands and the Rift Valley. In these areas is where the greater part of the action of Hemingway, the Death Stalker takes place. The alienation of European colonists from the land was a dominant and unifying theme in politics. Rosberg and Nottingham analyze modern African politics with regard to these elements. The creative mind of the Mau Mau was Jomo Kenyatta. When the Mau Mau movement appeared, the English believed it was just another group of religious fanatics, based on the emotion of their meetings, the use of religious symbols, and the singing of hymns. The worship was anti-European and, as mentioned earlier, many considered it sought Kikuyo domination in all of Kenya. For the Scottish church in Kenya, the Mau Mau signified the resurgence of the old pagan faith reacting against Western civilization and the new religion. According to Rosberg and Nottingham, another factor that reinforced the colonist community’s conviction that the Mau Mau was essentially an irrational rejection of modernity was “the widespread use of oaths and oathing ceremonies” (331). This was clear and unequivocal proof Kikuyo politics had a primitive character. The authors point out people participated in the Mau Mau movement because it offered a new alternative, norms, and rules that would be rigidly enforced and blindly obeyed.5 A review of the details of Kenya’s history confi rms Zapata Olivella set the novel in the country’s most convulsive period, during the beginning of the state of emergency (1952–1960). Events unfold in the most violencelashed territories, such as Nairobi, Mount Kenya, and the surrounding area. Historical records also show how the methods of persuasion used by the missionary churches and colonial government of Kenya coincided. Rehabilitation was a project developed by the government but conceived on the basis of values established by the missionary church. As such, respect to authority was part of the education imparted by the missionaries, and confession was the fi rst step in the process of punishment. The government considered the churches’ rehabilitation processes as the opportunity to reestablish Christian values. It is interesting to stress that Zapata Olivella as well as Rosberg and Nottingham frequently used the word “white” when referring to British colonizers. Zapata uses the same term in his Kikuyo name musungo or

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 105 m’zungo. 6 In Hemingway, the Death Stalker, another character appears to which Rosberg and Nottingham also make particular reference: arathi. Grammatically, arathi is plural of murathi, which designates one of the most important figures in Kikuyo religion: a prophet or a spirit guide. In 1934 and 1947, two messianic-type movements appeared among the Kikuyo, which ended in violence and death. These prophets totally rejected the missionary teachings. They built their own church on a mountain in Fort Hall and prohibited the use of European clothing or money. Its followers were permitted to sleep only in a Kikuyo hut belonging to a member of the same faith. In the novel, the scene with the arathi is one of the most significant and shall be discussed further later on.

III. ERNEST HEMINGWAY With respect to Ernest Hemingway, the novel incorporates information about his life and his world, his propensity for women, safaris, bullfights, and alcohol. In the work, all these themes related to Hemingway develop in relation to British colonialism in Kenya, expressing themselves in a direct or indirect manner in the novel. It would not be in the interest of this paper to do an exhaustive description of Hemingway’s life and work; however, a presentation of some of the most relevant aspects of the character in relation to the work in question is called for, such as his trips to Africa, his African stories, and his links with sports and nature. In 1999, Charles M. Oliver published Ernest Hemingway: A to Z, a dictionary that alphabetically records events and persons related to the life and work of Hemingway. The book contains numerous photos of the writer at different moments in his life, as well as a brief outline of his life and work. The book also offers a summary of each novel, short story, and his only play. Oliver begins the introduction of his book by saying, “Ernest Hemingway, arguably the most popular American writer of the 20th century and certainly one of the best, killed himself at age 61 after a life of adventure and productivity like few others of his time” (xi). Oliver recounts the adventures of Hemingway’s life, which included, among other activities, participating in five wars, volunteering as an ambulance driver during the First World War, being a reporter during the Spanish Civil and SinoJapanese Wars, and surviving four automobile and two airplane accidents. He married four times and had three sons. He wrote nine novels, four nonfiction books, over 100 short stories, approximately 400 articles, one play, and some poetry. In 1954, he and his fourth wife, Mary Welsh Monks, survived two air accidents in Africa. In this same year, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize. Oliver points out that during the 1930s, the name Hemingway was almost daily in the media and his experiences were covered in photographs and reports as if he were a Hollywood star. Oliver’s book emphasizes the various trips Hemingway made

106 Cristina Cabral to Spain and his passion for bullfights and the running of the bulls during the feast of San Fermín in Pamplona. Also Hemingway, Oliver comments, “He was handsome, active, and intelligent” (xi). Just as the character in our novel, it is incredible to think that a man with such an emotionally intense and adventuresome life should end in suicide. Hemingway converted himself into a species of a legend, and even forty years after his death, more is written about him than about any other dozen authors, even though some of these writings diminish the stature of his works on theoretical and ideological grounds. Since 1980, the Hemingway Society has existed, which publishes newsletters and journals circulated world wide. In the same period, there have been more than sixty conferences dedicated in part or solely to Hemingway, over 100 books, and 1500 articles about him or his work. At the same time “a $7,500 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award given each year for the best fi rst book of fiction, and an industry of products named after Hemingway—clothes, hunting gear, fishing tackle, a house design, even a Hemingway wallpaper” (xi). The quote proves there still exists important academic and commercial activity around the figure of Hemingway. Nonetheless, Zapata Olivella’s novel does not focus on the life of Hemingway but rather on those values that establish an allegory between colonialism and the character’s tragic end. It is important to recognize the concurrence of some mental or psychological problems Hemingway manifested that are recreated in the character, for example, obsession. At the beginning of the novel, reference is made to the obsessive and delirious state in which Hemingway was when admitted to the Mayo Clinic. He also reveals the reason for such obsession immediately: awaiting the Sacred Mammoth’s revenge. From the novel’s opening, he establishes his plot in the territory shared between reality and myth. Likewise, Oliver comments that Hemingway suffered several periods of depression in his life, during which death transformed itself into an obsession for Hemingway. Death also was present several times in his life, in accidents he suffered and in his failed suicide attempts. In the novel, Hemingway experiences a growing state of obsession and delirium after shooting at the Sacred Mammoth. In 1936, Hemingway suffered a period of depression and insomnia and spoke of suicide. In 1953 he attended the Feast of San Fermín in Pamplona and went on safari in east Africa. In 1960 Hemingway suffered from insomnia and hypertension and presented symptoms of depression and change of behavior. He became paranoid, with an uncontrollable temperament. His family checked him into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester under a false name, where he received electroshock treatments. Evidently Zapata Olivella had knowledge of all this information about Hemingway’s mental health and where he had been hospitalized, as this novel begins with the protagonist interned in the Mayo Clinic. Zapata Olivella was not only a novelist with the ability to brilliantly incorporate biographical facts into fiction but also was a psychiatrist. As such, his knowledge of the human psyche gave him the necessary tools for the psychological reconstruction of a personality. In the

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 107 beginning of the novel, in the dialogue between Hemingway and the doctor, the reader finds out about the character’s obsession. He is certain he has a bullet lodged in his head, exactly in the same place he shot the Sacred Mammoth. The protagonist has hallucinations of elephants pursuing him through the clinic. Oliver comments that in 1961 Hemingway abandoned the Mayo Clinic and returned home to Ketchum where he attempted suicide twice. He returned to the clinic to receive more electroshock therapy and left on June 30. On July 2, he committed suicide in his home. This situation is recreated in the novel in the first scene and in the last two, thus completing a circular structure of the work. Africa was an important part of Hemingway’s life, especially east Africa, as is obvious from his various trips, as well as the publication of works such as Green Hills of Africa (1935), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1935), along with a series of articles about his own hunts and the short story “An African Betrayal,”7 taken from a passage of his work The Garden of Eden (1957). Additionally, Hemingway published the article “a.d. in Africa: A Tanganyika Letter,” in which he describes his intentions to write without a typewriter and to hunt while recuperating from “amoebic dysentery” (a.d.). From the structural point of view, the existing association between Hemingway, Africa, and the safaris totally justifies his prominence in the novel. One fi nds some of the details of Hemingway’s work reencountered in the novel Hemingway, the Death Stalker. One example is, the person who drives the truck in Green Hills of Africa is a Kikuyo named “Kamau,” who is described as “a quiet man of about thirty-five who managed always to give an impression of great elegance” (Oliver 183). The name “Kamau” as well as the description of the character alludes to Jommo Kenyatta. Another common element between the authors is the inclusion of Mount Kenya in their works. Mount Kenya is the attention motif in Green Hills of Africa, where Hemingway “says that to fi nd big rhino you want to go up on Mount Kenya.” The agreement established between the previous quote and the motive of the scientific expedition in Hemingway, the Death Stalker is evident. This type of thematic similitude is also seen in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, most evidently in the following epigraph: “Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude” (Oliver 186). The foregoing quote exhibits the existence of a certain intertextuality of Hemingway’s novels in those of Zapata Olivella. On the one hand, both Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro adopted as places where, respectively, the Kikuyo or Masai god lives. On the other hand, Hemingway notes the inexplicable presence of a leopard’s dry and frozen carcass on the west side of the mountain, while Zapata Olivella refers to the presence of elephant skeletons on the great heights of Mount Kenya. Also, both works lack a scientific explanation of how these animals, whether elephants or leopards, ascended to such an altitude on those icy peaks.

108 Cristina Cabral Another element common to the novel being analyzed and the real world of Hemingway is the theme of nature, the natural world, of flora and fauna. The nature and exuberance of the African landscape are constantly mentioned by the main characters of Hemingway, the Death Stalker; in like manner, they offer varied descriptions of Mount Kenya’s snowy summit, cities, and villages that compose the geographic scenery of the work. At the same time, nature also possesses great importance in Hemingway’s life, as one can deduce from reading Hemingway and the Natural World (1999) by Robert E. Fleming. In the introduction to this book, it is pointed out, “Few authors in history have been so closely identified with the natural world as Ernest Hemingway” (1). Fleming comments that Hemingway would have his final union with nature resting beneath the pines of the small cemetery in Ketchum, Idaho. It was in Ketchum and Sun Valley where, in 1996, the Seventh International Hemingway Conference was held, from which Hemingway and the Natural World was published. The book is a selection of papers delivered at the conference about the existent connection between Hemingway and the natural world. Fleming emphasizes Hemingway’s contact with nature began in his childhood, on his summer vacations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where, from his father, he learned to hunt, fish, climb, and ski and also the art of taxidermy. Hemingway’s knowledge of these sports surfaced in his many trips to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S., in the numerous books he read on the topic, and the opinion of experts—fishermen, bullfighters, and scientists—who accompanied him. Fleming mentions that on many occasions, Hemingway’s scholarship and knowledge in areas such as hunting, fishing, and other sports associated with his name surpassed that of their masters (his teachers). Fleming points out the respect for nature Hemingway developed in his childhood. He recalls that his father taught him not to waste the animal hunted but to use it entirely. “As a boy, Ernest was forced to eat a porcupine he shot . . . ” (cited in Fleming 1999: 3). In 1933 Hemingway fulfilled every hunter’s dream, going on his first safari to east Africa. From that trip he published in 1935 Green Hills of Africa. In 1953–1954, Hemingway and his wife Mary went together on safari, during which they suffered two plane accidents and miraculously survived while the rest of the world gave them up as dead. In Hemingway, the Death Stalker, an air accident also occurs, which carries dramatic repercussions in the protagonist’s life. Both the real and fictitious accidents happen in the same region in east Africa in the same period. The elements common to the real and fictitious lives of the main characters form part of the work’s structure. Zapata Olivella, in the creation of Hemingway, the Death Stalker, continues his tradition of incorporating historical fact as a stylistic resource for his narrative. However, at the same time, the story seems intimately tied to myth. In the novel, the character’s reality is contextualized with the Kikuyo myth of the Sacred Mammoth. The careful selection of biological elements and their skillful manipulation assigns the work to post-modernism, through the concept of historiographical metafiction defi ned by Linda Hutcheon.8

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 109 IV. BULLS AND DEATH Another fundamental aspect regarding the life of Ernest Hemingway incorporated into the novel is his passion for bulls, which is tied to his fascination with death. In 1959, Hemingway devoted the summer following the bullfighting circuit. According to Oliver, Hemingway not only participated several times in traditional Spanish bullfighting festivals and the San Fermín feast, but he also used said themes in his fiction and articles. In several chapters of Death in the Afternoon, especially Chapter 14, he establishes that “the bullfight is not a sport in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the word, that is, it is not an equal contest or an attempt at an equal contest between a bull and a man. Rather it is a tragedy . . . ” (143). On the basis of Oliver’s comments, we can argue that bullfighting did not represent just a mere sport to Hemingway but that it had a much more profound significance. The author explains that Hemingway, in trying to learn to write, realized it was necessary to begin with the most simple, and one of the simplest and most fundamental things of all was a violent death. To this Hemingway commented, “(the) only place where you could see life and death, i.e., violent death now that the wars were over, was in the bullring and I wanted very much to go to Spain where I could study it” (143). This means the writer also took bullfighting to be a didactic question, given its connection with violent death and Hemingway’s interest in learning about the same. According to Oliver, Hemingway did not make a moral judgment about bullfighting, either, which he admitted was indefensible from a Christian point of view; rather, he only tried to honestly say, “the things I have found true about it.” He also wrote several articles on the subject, among them “Bullfighting, Sport and Industry” (1930) and “Bull Fighting a Tragedy” (1923). The devotion to bullfighting is a characteristic of Hemingway that is incorporated into the novel through the character Antoñete, the expedition’s biologist and who dramatizes the bullfighter. In the scene “The Penny Man,” Antoñete is presented as Hemingway’s godson. Antoñete is a biologist who fantasizes all the time of being a bullfighter like his father, a fantasy he attempts to fulfill confronting a rhinoceros, which leads to his death. In the work, Cayetano, Antoñete’s father, is a professional bullfighter and also Hemingway’s intimate friend. These character details coincide with information found in Ernest Hemingway: A to Z, which mentions two Spanish bullfighter friends of Hemingway, Antonio y Cayetano Ordóñez. About Antonio Ordoñez, it is said he was one of the two bullfighters Hemingway had written about in The Dangerous Summer. Oliver notes both men met in Pamplona in 1953, and Hemingway was very impressed from the moment he saw Antonio. He adds that Hemingway and his wife Mary visited the Ordóñez home in Cádiz several times. Antonio was the son of Cayetano Ordóñez, known as “Niño de la Palma,” whom Hemingway had met around 1920 and who was the model for his character “Pedro Romero” in the novel The Sun Also Rises (1954). In regard to Cayetano Ordóñez, Hemingway emphasizes in Death in the Afternoon (1960) that in his fi rst

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year, “he looked like the messiah who had come to save bullfighting if ever any one did” (Oliver 252). In view of this, one observes that the inclusion of Antoñete and his father Cayetano in Hemingway, the Death Stalker, is not arbitrary but rather that both characters were bullfighters who belonged to the circle of Ernest Hemingway’s Spanish friends. In the eighth chapter, “The Night of the Buffalo,” the Spanish bull tradition and Hemingway’s admiration for Cayetano and Antonio Ordóñez are shown through the insertion of part of a poem by Federico García Lorca, Poema del Cante Jondo (1931), dedicated to Cayetano Ordóñez. In the novel, the bullfighting atmosphere is provided by the presence of Antoñete, who brings along on the safari his father’s rapier and cape, as well as a bottle of chamomile, the classic pre-fight toast. Additionally, the use of bullfighting terminology stands out in the discourse of the narrator. In one of the fi rst encounters between Hemingway and the central character Renata, the special way she refers to Hemingway, “The Old Bull,” is established: “He summoned me as if he were ready to nail me with a pair of banderillas” (“Viejo Toro”: Me citaba como si se dispusiera a clavarme un par de banderillas; 21). Other bullfighting symbols alluded to may be found in Episode 3, “A Look Back,” in which the movement of Renata’s red sweater is compared to a bullfighter’s cape, a movement that powerfully attracts the attention of Hemingway, “The Old Bull.” Bullfights are clearly approached in Episode 17, “Afternoon of the Bulls.” Here, the expeditionists encounter a group of grazing buffaloes, and Antoñete decides to simulate a bullfight. This idea precedes the fi nal fight with the rhinoceros, which will cause his death. This event foreshadows Antoñete’s death. Imitating the taurine ritual, Antoñete takes out the cape and rapier he has brought along, takes a drink of the chamomile, and begins the performance. This imprudent act also manifests in the Spaniard’s pride and imprudence in challenging an animal as strong and dangerous as a bull. In the scene, there are not any other incidents; Antoñete manages to pass the cape in front of the bull, which runs away indifferently. Towards the end of the novel, during Antoñete’s wake, Hemingway and Cayetano integrate into their conversation a figurative language in which bulls represent life’s obstacles: both friends’ philosophy about the hypocrisy of life, based on a language of the bullfight, which converts it into a metaphor about life. Hemingway says, “Life has many horns” (La muerte tiene muchos cuernos; 324), to which Cayetano adds that the last bull, that which has to produce the death, is the most difficult to confront and one never knows when it will appear. Hemingway responds that the solution to this, that the last bull never surprises one, is suicide. This is the fi rst time the protagonist begins to consider suicide as an alternative solution to the uncertainty of the arrival of death. Just as the biographical facts delineate the profiles of the central characters Ernest Hemingway and Jommo Kenyatta, the novel uses a gamut

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 111 of descriptive geographical facts of the scenery where events unfold and botanical and biological information about the dense African flora and fauna. With respect to the flora, Murray-Brown refers to the mogumo tree mentioned several times in the novel. Murray-Brown points out the functional help this tree has given to Kenyan society, as its hard wood is resistant to ant destruction; for that reason, mogumo was used in the construction of huts. According to Murray-Brown, mogumo also possesses a myth significant to the Kikuyo, as it was a sacred tree where the elders made their sacrifices far from the sight of women and children. Nothing is taken for granted in this novel. Each element is carefully selected, being part of the base from which fiction takes life. The other part that completes the literary space contributing to this work’s own narrative style is its mythic content.

THE MYSTICISM OF REALITY Antonio Tillis dedicates the sixth chapter of Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature to an analysis of Hemingway. In it, the critic stresses the aesthetic innovations contained in the work, over and above their social and protest aspects: Hemingway veers thematically and aesthetically away from social realism and protest in the Americas in order to concentrate on aesthetic innovations. Blackness remains a central preoccupation to the text . . . but the work is clearly more aesthetic than problematic. (112) Tillis recognizes African mythology and tribal traditions are a central part of the text and, as such, Afrocentricity. But the novel’s aesthetic preoccupation transcends Afrocentricism, as well as social realism and protest, creating a more complex scene, richer in aesthetic innovations. Part of such aesthetic innovations resides in the literary space created by the confluence of myth and reality. In the last book published by Zapata Olivella in 2002, Bewitched Tree of Liberty (El Arbol Brujo de la Libertad), the author exhibits a wide-ranging historical-anthropological-cultural investigation, in which he returns to Africa to explain, from the genesis of Homo Sapiens, the particular characteristics of the African presence in Colombia. With respect to religious African thought, Zapata explains that such arose in Homo Sapiens’ fi rst questions and answers in the face of nature and in respect to his own existent. African religious experience differs intrinsically from that of the West, in that religion in Africa “is not a religion to show, but to internalize, to live and to be integrated” (No es una religión para mostrar sino para interiorizar, para vivir y comportarse; 65). The almost-mythic transcendence that nature possesses for Africans explains the negative reaction Hemingway’s expedition to Mount Kenya awakens in the novel. It is perceived as a violation, an abuse of a sacred abode.

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In several works, Zapata refers to Muntú7 philosophy to explain the harmony that exists between the living and the dead, plants, animals, the cosmos and tools. In the last part of The Genes Rebellion (La Rebelión de los Genes, 1997), Zapata explains that Muntú philosophy “is not inspired by a sacred or moralist intention, but by a valuing of some codes of behavior to insure the continuance of life and society” ( . . . no se inspira en un propósito sagrado o moralista, sino en la valoración de unos códigos de comportamiento para asegurar la persistencia de la vida y la sociedad . . . ; 361). The presence of the expedition on Mount Kenya would be violating such codes of behavior, which is allegorically expressed in the novel by the shot executed by Hemingway against the Sacred Mammoth.10 In Hemingway, the Kikuyo tradition constitutes the cultural palimpsest of the work. What remains is for us to decode some aspects of the message contained in the plot. Murray-Brown begins his book with one of the various legends that explains the origin of the Kikuyo people from a group of disappeared groups of Pygmies. In a similar vein, the novel offers another version of the genesis of the Kikuyo and their relationship with Mount Kenya. In the dialogue between Hemingway and the British police commissioner, it is established: Kikuyo! They consider themselves the sons and lords of Mount Kenya. Their tradition says that Moombi, the fi rst woman created by the god Mwene-Nyaga, upon contemplating the grandeur of the tall mountain, miraculously felt the quickening of a child in her womb. Thus was born the fi rst male child, who later procreated with his mother, hence giving origin to the tribe. (¡Kikuyo!, se consideran hijos y amos del Monte Kenia. Su tradición cuenta que Moombi, la primera mujer creada por el dios MweneNyaga, al contemplar la grandiosidad de la alta montaña milagrosamente sintió que en su vientre se movía su hijo. Así nació el primer

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 113 varón, quien posteriormente al procrear con su madre, daría origen a la tribu). (32) In accordance with the novel, in Kikuyo genealogy, God first created woman who miraculously gave birth to a son, and from both emerged the rest of the Kikuyo nation. The narrator explains that whether this be superstition, myth, or legend, this was the accepted and venerated ontogenic truth for the natives. Murray-Brown stresses that the Kikuyo world is closed and self-sufficient and is delineated by four mountains: Kere-Nyaga to the north, Kea-Njahe to the east, Kea-Mbiroiro to the south, and Kea-Nyandarwa to the west. Kere-Nyaga, or Mount Kenya, is the largest and most inspiring, at 17,058 feet high, and also known as the “Mountain of Light.” The novel’s plot is placed precisely in the homeland of Kikuyo culture, in the vicinity of Nairobi and Mount Kenya. This fact is key in evaluating the significance that said mountain has for the Kikuyo community and the repercussion of the colonists’ expedition directed towards Mount Kenya. In the chapter entitled “The Valley of Eternal Clarity,” and on the basis of figurative language, the narrator refers to the whiteness of Mount Kenya, establishing it as the abode of god: The fi rst storyteller of Kikuyo mythology, awed by the whiteness of the Valley of Clarity, had the conviction that God, creator of the Universe, should have there his earthly bed in which to rest and be amazed by his own greatness. (El primer fabulador de la mitología kikuyo, asombrado ante la blancura del Valle de la Claridad, tuvo la convicción de que el Dios creador del Universo debía tener allí el lecho terrenal donde reposar y sorprenderse de su propia grandeza.) (261) The plot of the novel rescues and recreates the mythic-religious importance Kere-Nyaga (Mount Kenya) had in Kikuyo tradition. For this reason, that is where the characters direct themselves, seeking traces of elephants. It is the place where the events that will change the course of the protagonists’ lives will descend. The importance of Mount Kenya is stressed in the second part of the novel, in the episode “Kere-Nyaga, the White Mountain.” There, the narrator advises, “Kere-Nyaga, in the Kikuyo language, means ‘Mountain of Whiteness.’ The Masai took a piece of the land as if they were shaking the hand of the Great Father” (Kere-Nyaga, en lengua kikuyo, significa! montaña de blancura! El masai recogió un poco de tierra como si estrechara la mano del gran padre; 144). The quote uncovers that in the Kikuyo as well as the Masai culture; Mount Kenya acquires a religious significance that alludes to the God Mwene-Nyaga. The text notes the fraternal manner in which the Masai approached the land. One observes how the presence of myth in the novel is used by the narrator to reconstruct the emotional bonds that exist between the African community and their land.

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The expeditionists are also awed by the grandeur of the mountain and express it by awarding it anthropomorphic characteristics, on a physical and spiritual level: “Mount Kenya! Above the blue clouds we discover its white baldness. With the sunlight on its shoulders, it stood solitary and pensive.” (!El Monte Kenia! Por encima de las nubes azules descubrimos su blanca calvicie. Con la luz del sol a sus espaldas, se empinaba solitario y pensativo; 143). Indirectly, the image of an old giant with white baldness, with the light dazzling off his shoulders alludes to a divine image. The quote suggests a calm and reflective atmosphere about Mount Kenya that submerges the reader into the mysticism of African philosophy. At the foot of the mountain, the expeditionists meet a group of priests singing prayers. The Masai explain to the expeditionists that these priests “[r]eject the religion, money and instruments of the wazunga” (Rechazan la religión, el dinero y los instrumentos de los wazunga; 128). According to the quote, the religious character of the priests does not imply passivity or indifference towards the colonizers. Rather, they manifest a political position rejecting the elements characteristic of colonization: religion, money, and instruments.11 The narrative of this episode includes a prayer directed by the arathi, which is accompanied by a choir and dance. The ceremony culminates in a state of possession of the prophet by a spirit, a state that is manifested by the shaking of his body, along with the speaking of words incomprehensible to the expeditionists. This scene describes aspects similar to those perceived in other ceremonies of African origin developed in the Americas, such as umbanda, candomblé, voodoo, santería, as well as in certain Baptist churches in the U.S. The expeditionists witness the ceremony armed with their rifles, which shows the degree of mistrust and tension that reigns in the air. On the basis of African religion and mysticism, the novel presents a cosmovision of the place where events occur within a framework of a nature rich in meaning that serves as an intermediary between man and God. This religious symbiosis experienced by Africans is not perceived nor understood by the expeditionists, for whom the ascent of Mount Kenya is simply a scientific mission, whereas for the natives it signifies a defilement of the temple where the God Ngai lives. For this reason, the prophet of the Watu-wa-Mngu tribe warns the character Hemingway, “You, m’zungu, 8 who treads upon the sacred dwelling of Ngai where all is peace and clarity, gather up your pride and death-wielding arms” (Tú, m’zungu, que pisas la morada sagrada de Ngai donde todo es paz y claridad, recoge tu soberbia y tus armas portadoras de la muerte; 240). The prophet’s message exposes the attitude and firearms of the “white man” as the principle destructive agents of the African environment. This affirmation summarizes the conflict maintained between colonizers and those colonized. It is Jommo Kennyatta, in his role as mediator, who attempts to reconcile the tensions between the two groups. Muntú philosophy permeates the plot of the novel in its presentation of the elemental principles of survival and coexistence between man and nature. In The Genes Rebellion, Zapata establishes that such principles were taken

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 115 up during the first experience of humanity and have been being enriched throughout time with the contribution of different cultures. These philosophical principles explain “those correlations between all cultures: language, myths, religions, morals, foods, agriculture, grazing, craftworks, housing, etc.” (esas coincidencias entre todas las culturas: lenguaje, mitos, religiones, moral, alimentación, agricultura, pastoreo, artesanías, vivienda, etc.: 361) and are expressed in the novel, not only through the main protagonists, but also through the speech of animals. For example, the theme of the elephants fulfills its importance in the work in the episode “The Elephant Cemetery.” In this scene, the magic component reappears when an old elephant speaks with Hemingway, takes his hand in his trunk, and leads him to the elephant cemetery. Hemingway is taken to the plains and listens to the tale of elephants killed in a massacre. The oldest elephant begins the discourse emphasizing how peaceful were their lives with the natives before the arrival of the whites. The rest of the elephants respond heatedly: “Let the man die! Let the man die!” (!Muera el hombre! ¡Muera el hombre! 98). The elephants’ conversation blames the white man for destabilizing the harmony that had reigned in Africa, and warns that all of humanity will be the one to pay the price for his actions. This alludes to the work’s central theme about the boomerang effect caused by colonial intervention in Africa. The episode of the elephants represents a fable in the novel that is transformed into an allegory of life and death; remembering the oral storyteller tradition, in such a fable men and animals act with a didactic finality. Given their supernatural elements, this episode exemplifies the work’s magic realism, and, above all, it is a tribute to the oral tradition of African legends. The novel presents various animal myths, fables, and legends that serve as a pretext for delivering a consciousness-raising message; at times, the grotesque and the erotic form part of these stories included in the novel. In the episode “The Lion and the Zebra,” the expeditionists encounter a dead zebra being devoured by marabous. Kenyatta explains where there are zebras, there are also lions, comparing the animal situation with the Kenya of those days. He speaks in a symbolic tone and through a parable explaining that the fertile lands with their naïve natives and workers attracted the colonizer, who later devoured everything, leaving a desert where men and animals died. The colonizer’s voracity is compared to the lobster, adding that the “pax inglesa” is imposed through death, prison, and profits. Ironically he exclaims, “Long live the Empire and civilization!” (Viva el imperio y la civilización! 161). At that moment, Hemingway takes note of Kenyatta’s ideology and comments, “he was a revolutionary with a political program and a formula for action” ( . . . era un revolucionario con un programa político y una fórmula de acción . . . ; 161). The episode concludes with a reflection about the behavior of African people who, subjected to so many pressures, can become as violent and dangerous as a lion. One of the defi nitions offered by the Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory for the word “legend” is, “a story or narrative which

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lies somewhere between myth and historical fact and which, as a rule, is about a particular figure or person” (452). The central legend in Hemingway is that concerning the “Sacred Mammoth.” It is not known whether this pertains to the Kikuyo world or arose from the creative abilities of Zapata Olivella. On the subject of certain intertextualities between the novel Hemingway and some of Ernest Hemingway’s works, such was established in the fi rst part of this work. Concerning the authorship of the legend, we shall attempt to discover its role in the novel. The legend of the Sacred Mammoth is presented early on as a conversation between Hemingway and the commissioner. The uninformed Hemingway speaks of an elephant instead of a mammoth, and at no moment does he consider it an obstacle to the expedition’s plans. “A Kikuyo legend tells of an elephant that roams alone in the Valley of Eternal Clarity on Mount Kenya” (Una leyenda kikuyo habla de un elefante que recorre solitario el Valle de la Eterna Claridad en el Monte Kenia; 15). Immediately the commissioner recognizes the legend of the Sacred Mammoth. Hemingway explains that, according to it, spears thrown against the Mammoth would ricochet towards the hunter’s body, towards the same place where the Mammoth was injured. It is important to point out that in the fi rst two episodes of the novel, foreshadowing suggests that Hemingway shot at the Sacred Mammoth and that he is found in the psychiatric clinic hallucinating of its apparition in search of vengeance. The legend of the Sacred Mammoth represents the logical explanation, from the African Kikuyo perspective, for the series of catastrophes that strike the expedition, as well as Hemingway’s madness and suicide. Episode 71, “The Old Bull,” the next to the last of the work, is a monologue by Hemingway several years after the expedition. Hemingway is the sole surviver of the technical team and is alone, looking apathetically out a window, accompanied by his carbine, and thinking about the Sacred Mammoth that is covertly persecuting him inwardly. A depersonalization of the protagonist occurs, in which for a few moments he becomes a wounded bull, dragged to the slaughterhouse, and in others is a wounded bullfighter taken to the hospital. The chapter reveals the degree of obsession about the Sacred Mammoth Hemingway reached, while he survives amidst the feelings of guilt, shame, and loneliness. We fi nd the protagonist confi ned, with fleeting, torturous delusions that lead to madness. His mental health is totally unbalanced and in his delusions appears incessantly, obsessively his shot at the Sacred Mammoth. He is “[r]educed to the smallness of a bullet, embedded in my brain, extending his trunk the full length of my nerves, paralyzing my emotions” (Reducido a la pequeñez de una bala, incrustada en mi cerebro, extiende su trompa a lo largo de mis nervios paralizando mis sentidos; 334). The quote alludes metaphorically to Hemingway’s experiences in his encounter with the Sacred Mammoth in Africa. Hemingway experiences certain transitory symptoms, such as blindness, deafness, hallucinations, and trembling of the hands, which give an idea of

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 117 his advanced physical deterioration. It is outstanding how Zapata achieves, in associating Hemingway’s history with Kikuyo tradition, a reconstruction what could have been the last days of the writer’s life, offering a creative and developed metaphysical explanation for Hemingway’s suicide. Only Zapata, in his capacity as a psychiatrist and talented writer, knows the effective formula for developing a character in who advanced insanity is combined with the discovery of philosophic truths. One fi nds the protagonist hounded by phantoms caused by his own acts, and from that, the great feeling of blame that invades him. The last episode of the novel, entitled “The Last Shot,” circuitously connects with the beginning of the novel, as the scene is set in Ketchum and refers to Hemingway’s suicide that occurred on July 2, 1961. The scene transpires in a hospital, which can be compared to the Mayo Clinic, where the writer had found himself a few days before his death. Hemingway experiences worsening hallucinations. If he looks at himself in the mirror, he sees the Mammoth’s trunk, and later he sees a herd of elephants in his room, which he calls dwarf mammoths. He confuses the nurse with his friend, Commissioner Smith, and believes he was captured by the Mau Mau and forced to drink their potions, converting him into a zombie. With this, the author alludes to a common fear regarding African rites and rituals. The use of symbols and metaphoric language foreshadows the suicide as the outcome of the novel: “Time pushed me to an appointment that could not be postponed” (El tiempo me empuja hacia la cita impostergable; 339). The protagonist is preparing for his last rendezvous with the Mammoth. His mind is transported in space and time, and stops in Kenya, in the era of the dinosaurs. This represents the character’s regression, in search of his roots or an ontological truth that can save him. Hemingway prepares to shoot at the Mammoth. He has it in his sights and is certain he cannot miss. A single, decisive bullet is fired, without need for a mercy shot. This time the Mammoth staggers and finally falls. The suicide is in the form of an allegory and is delivered through the liberation Hemingway feels upon confronting and mortally wounding the Mammoth. “In that instant, having no control at all over my movements, I felt my own body free of connections, floating without the bonds of life” (En ese instante, perdido el control de mis movimientos, siento que mi propio cuerpo, sueltas las amarras, flota sin las ataduras de la vida; 342). The accumulation of verbs in the present indicative tense to narrate this story completed in the past suggests the possibility that it itself is a feeling told in the present or, in other words, from the death of the protagonist. The novel ends with a brief commentary about “the lamentable and tragic death” that occurred July 6, 1991, in the city of Ketchum. The report does not mention the name Hemingway. It only describes some of the burial’s details. In this manner, Zapata continues alternating fiction and reality, creating a work unique in its genre. As a way to facilitate the analysis, historical elements were separated from those aspects of myth and legend. Nonetheless, those elements coexist

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inseparably in the cosmology of African natives. It is worth saying that in the Kikuyo world, historical reality is fluid and is meaningful only in relation to a system of values and principles of philosophical and religious order. Zapata Olivella, an expert in African history and cultures, develops this vital unity throughout the entire novel, recreating events that occurred in Kenya during the 1950s, and converting the legend of the Sacred Mammoth into the explanation for Hemingway’s suicide and into an allegory for the central theme of the work: the self-destruction of humanity and of the environment owing to the devastating advance of colonialism in Africa. The elaboration of the theme tackled in this work is rooted in the ties of dependence still maintained between African countries and the different Western imperialist powers.12 NOTES 1. For more information on mythic realism, see William Mina Aragon. Manuel Zapata Olivella: Pensador Humanista, 2006: 174–175. 2. For more information on Afrorealism, see Quince Duncan. “El Afrorealismo una Dimensión Nueva de la Literatura Latinoamericana” (Afrorealism A New Dimension in Latin American Literature). Revista Virtual Istmo (2004): 8–10. Also, see Cristina R. Cabral. Postcolonialismo y Afrorealismo en Hemingway, el Cazador de la Muerte de Manuel Zapata Olivella. AfroHispanic Review 25.1: 55–65. 3. For further information on Jommo Kenyatta’s personality see Montagu Slater’s The Trial of Jomma Kenyatta. See bibliography. 4. The essay makes reference to the book, The Myth of “Mau Mau”: Nationalism in Kenya, by Carl Rosberg and John Nottingham. See Bibliography. 5. Musungo is the singular of Wazunga, which is a disrespectful Kikuyo epithet referring to the White man. 6. Bruce J. Berman and John M. Lonsdale also made an important contribution to a deeper understanding of contemporary Kenyan society, and of the British and Kikuyo origins of Mau Mau movement in their collection of essays Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (1992). Along the essays Berman concentrates on the white settlers and the colonial concerns and administration and Lonsdale focuses on the African responses, including the intellectuial roots of the Mau Mau revolt. For more information on the movement, also refer to Louis Leakeys Defeating Mau Mau. (See bibliography). 7. “An African Betrayal” was published in 1986 in Sports Illustrated and in 1987 with the title “An African Story” in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (qtd. in Oliver 5). 8. For more information, see Antonio Tillis Changó, el Gran Putas: A Postmodern Historiographic Metafictional Text. See Bibliography. 9. Zapata Olivella refers to Muntú philosophy in order to explain the connection that exists between the inhabitants and things of the universe, in Changó, the Baddest Dude, The Genes Rebellion, and Bewitched Tree of Liberty. 10. For more information on African religiosity see Aloysius M. Lugira’s African Religion: World Religions. See bibliography. 11. Refer to Henry Muoria’s I, the Kihuyu and the White Fury for a deeper understanding of Kikuyu religiosity and its relation with the British colonizer’s beliefs. See bibliograhy. 12. For further information on African literature and Colonialism/Postcolonialsm, refer to Simon Gikandi’s African Literature and the Colonial

Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Hemingway, the Death Stalker 119 Factor, and Adele King’s postcolonial African and Caribbean Literature. See bibliography.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Berman, Bruce J. and Lonsdale, John M. Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 1992. Cuddon J. A. Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 4th Edition, revised by C. E. Preston. London: Penguin Group, 1999. De Toro, Alfonso. “Postmodernidad y Latinoamerica (con un Modelo para la Narrativa Postmoderna).” Revista Iberoamericana 57.155–156 (1991): 441–467. Duncan, Quince. “El Afrorealismo una Dimensión Nueva de la Literatura Latinoamericana.” Revista Virtual Istmo (2004): 8–10. Fleming, Robert E. Hemingway and the Natural World. Idaho, Moscow: Idaho University Press, 1999. Gikandi, Simon. “African Literature and the Colonial Factor” The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. Edited by F. Abiola Irele and Siman Gikandi. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 379–397. Hountondji, Paulin. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Trans. Henri Evans and Jonathan Reen. London: Hutchinson, 1983. Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu. London: Secker and Warburg, 1938. King, Adele. “Postcolonial African and Caribbean Literature.” The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. Edited by F. Abiola Irele and Siman Gikandi. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 809–849. Leakey, Louis S. B. Defeating Mau Mau. London: Methuen, 1955. Lugira, Aloysius M. African Religion: World Religions. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1999. Mbiti, John. African Religions and Philosophy. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1989. Mina Aragón, William. Manuel Zapata Olivella: Pensador Humanista. Columbia: Próculo Alberto Ramírez Ed., 2006. Muoria, Henry. I, the Kikuyu and the White Fury. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1994. Murray-Brown, Jeremy. Kenyatta. 2nd ed. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1979. Oliver M. Charles. Ernest Hemingway: A to Z. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1999. Postcolonialismo y Afrorealismo en “Hemingway, el cazador de la muerte” de Manuel Zapata Olivella. Afro-Hispanic Review 25.1 (2006): 55–65. Rosberg, Carl G., Jr. and Nottingham, John. The Myth of “Mau Mau”: Nationalism in Kenya. New York: Frederick Praeger Publishers, 1966. Slater, Montagu. The Trial of Jomo Kenyatta. London: Secker and Warburg, 1955. Tillis, Antonio D. “Changó, el Gran Putas: A Postmodern Historiographic Metafictional Text” Afro-Hispanic Review 20.1 (2001): 97–103. . Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005. Zapata Olivella, Manuel. Hemingway, el Cazador de la Muerte. Bogotá: Arango Editores, 1993. . La Rebelión de los Genes: El Mestizaje Americano en la Sociedad Futura. Bogotá: Altamir Ed., 1997,. . El Arbol Brujo de la Libertad. Colombia: Fundación para la Investigación Socio Jurídica y el Desarrollo Social, 2002.

6

Nicomedes Santa Cruz and Black Cultural Traditions in Peru Renovating and Decolonising the National Imaginary Martha Ojeda

Nicomedes Santa Cruz (1925–1992) is notably the foremost Afro-Peruvian poet of the twentieth century and one of the most important representatives of the African legacy and its contribution to Peruvian national culture. Through poetry, newspaper articles, and essays he challenged Peruvian intellectuals to rethink and redefi ne their conception of peruanidad. The official discourses on peruanidad, up until the beginning of the 21st century, had essentially ignored the important role Blacks played in the formation of our national culture. Santa Cruz identified and called attention to prevalent Peruvian cultural practices that are examples of the African cultural legacy, such as the procession of Our Lord of Miracles and La Marinera (Peru’s national dance). In doing so, Santa Cruz irrevocably transformed and decolonized our national imaginary by incorporating diverse and heterogeneous cultural histories. Furthermore, Santa Cruz paved the way for contemporary Afro-Peruvian writers such as Lucía Charun-Illescas, Delia Zamudio, Gregorio Martinez, Antonio Galves Roneros, José Campos Dávila, Maritz Joya, Máximo Justo Torres (Majustomo), and Mónica Carillo (Oru), among others. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: fi rst, to present Nicomedes Santa Cruz’s literary biography by highlighting his work in poetry, journalism/essays, and muscicology; second, to critically dissect aspects of Santa Cruz’ poetic language delineating the aesthetic and ideological evolution of his poetry; and fi nally, to argue for his full incorporation into the Peruvian literary canon. Nicomedes Santa Cruz was born to the playwright Nicomedes Santa Cruz Aparicio (1871) and Victoria Gamarra Ramírez (1886) on June 4, 1925, in the district of La Victoria, one of the largest enclaves of Lima’s population of African descent. During his childhood he was exposed to the decimista oral tradition. He recalls his years in La Victoria (his earliest memories of his encounter with the decimista tradition) filled with neighborhood street recitals and his mother’s songs and lullabies in décimas.1 After completing elementary school, he was trained as a blacksmith and became quite successful at this art, and by the time he turned twenty, he

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 121 had already opened his own workshop. In 1948, he met Porfi rio Vasquez (1902–1971), the last living decimista of the moment, who became Santa Cruz’s artistic master and trained him in the art of the decismista tradition. This tradition, up until then, had been predominantly oral, and it was characterized by improvisation, and poetic duels (contrapunteo). This talent and love for poetry became Santa Cruz’s “raison d’être,” so much so, that he even wrote décimas on the backs of the plans for his wrought-iron projects. This commitment to artistic production urged him to leave his practice as a blacksmith and to travel throughout Peru in order to participate in poetic duels and competitions. Nicomedes Santa Cruz considered this act as a search for his destiny. By the mid-1950s, he was very active in musical and theatrical productions along with his sister Victoria Santa Cruz. They collaborated with the “Pancho Fierro” theater group, which became “Ritmos Negros del Peru” under the direction of José Durand Flores. They performed a few plays in some of Lima’s most important theaters. “Escenas de Pacho Fierro” was quite successful, but it was short lived because of internal disagreements relating to the choreography and the programming.2 In the 1960s, Nicomedes Santa Cruz started his career as a journalist and actively contributed to several newspapers and weekend cultural magazines. He had his own column called “La Página de Nicomedes” in La Nueva Crónica, a newspaper that had gone through a complete restructuring as a result of General Juan Velasco Alvarado government’s nationalization of Peruvian mass media, which occurred in the early 1970s. During that time, one of the most active of his career, Santa Cruz was at the peak of his artistic and journalistic careers. He published several poetry collections that went out of print shortly after release. In terms of sales, he was one of the most popular poets of his times. He also participated in several national and international cultural events and conferences in Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, and Senegal, where he lectured on folk music and on the influence of African culture and its manifestations in the Americas. During this period, the Peruvian Revolution, under the leadership of General Juan Velasco Alvarado, was in full swing, and Nicomedes Santa Cruz expressed his support for the government through his poetry and his journalistic work as Santa Cruz shared General Velasco’s vision of social reform and social justice. However, the so-called “first phase” of the revolution came to an abrupt end in 1975. Politically, what followed was almost a total reversal of the programs put in place by the Velasco regime. The “second phase” was led by General Morales Bermudez. The artistic spaces that had been created during the previous government were closed and those who supported them fell out of favor. Unfortunately, Santa Cruz was among those who lost the support of the government. He continued to write poetry and to contribute to local newspapers until 1980, when he quietly left Peru for Spain. Nicomedes Santa Cruz spent the last twelve years of this life in Spain. There, he found a renewed public interest in his cultural creation that was appreciated greatly by his Spanish audience. He soon became involved and

122 Martha Ojeda active in the artistic community in Madrid. He was hired by Radio Exterior de España where he hosted a weekly radio show called “Juglares de Nuestra America.” This medium enabled him to expose European audiences to Latin America’s folkloric musical traditions in Spanish, Quechua, and Guaraní. His efforts and exemplary work in this area were recognized through “the fourth International Radio Award ‘España’ for the program “Los Mejoraneros Panameños” (Chapter 8 of the series “Juglares de nuestra America”).3 In this period of intense cultural activity, Nicomedes, in addition to his demanding radio show, resumed his participation in conferences in Spain and abroad, including trips to Africa, Cuba, and the Caribbean. Although he wrote extensively for papers, journals, and magazines, his poetic production was very sparse during this time. He wrote roughly ten poems, which were edited posthumously by his son Pedro Santa Cruz.4 In 1992, after a long and productive artistic career, Nicomedes Santa Cruz passed away. During his lifetime, his cultural creation, namely his poetry, was better known and had received more critical and theoretical attention abroad than in Peru, his native country. However, in 2002, Peru’s National Cultural Institute paid an official tribute to Nicomedes Santa Cruz recognizing him as “Honorable representative of the cultural heritage of the nation . . . granting him the highest posthumous recognition for his invaluable contribution to Peruvian culture”.5 In 2004, the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos hosted the First International Conference dedicated to Nicomedes Santa Cruz’s artistic production. Although Santa Cruz has been credited with rescuing and continuing the decimista tradition, his contribution of lasting impact has been the validation of the existence of an important and vibrant African cultural legacy. In 1982, he published his seminal work, La Décima en el Perú (The Decima in Peru), where he compiled the poetic production of forgotten decimistas and traced the history of this tradition in Peru. Santa Cruz not only compiled and recorded the poems that circulated orally but also wrote several hundred décimas. In 1959 he published his first collection of décimas. In the introduction to his Anthology: Decimas and Poems (Antología: Décimas y Poemas, 1971), he wrote: “[m]y first decimas date back to 1949 (I was about 24 years old). When I was a boy my mother would put me to sleep singing décimas en socabón. My childhood friends—in my native district of La Victoria—were children or grandchildren of decimistas” (Mis primeras décimas datan de mediados del año 1949 (frisaba yo los 24 años de edad). De niño mi madre me arrullaba cantándome décimas en socabón. Mis amigos de infancia—en mi barrio natal de La Victoria—fueron hijos o nietos de decimistas; 11). Santa Cruz continued this artistic tradition in Peru and using this poetic form, he exposed the condition of Black Peruvians and Indians, while condemning racism and advocating an alliance between different ethnic groups. Furthermore, in his décimas, he undermines traditional stereotypes about Blacks replacing them with positive and complex representations of AfroPeruvians and their contributions to Peruvian culture.

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 123 Between the 1960s and 1970s Santa Cruz published four poetry collections, short stories, and two anthologies: Décimas (1960), Cumanana (1964), Canto a mi Perú (I Sing to Peru, 1966), Ritmos Negros del Perú (Black Rhythms of Peru, 1971), Antología: Décimas y Poemas (1971), and Rimactampu: Rimas al Rimac (Rimactampu: Rhymes to the Rimac River, 1972). He was able to reach large audiences through his radio and TV programs, Así canta mi Perú (This is How Peru Sings), and Danzas y Canciones del Perú (Songs and Dances of Peru), broadcast in the late 1960s and 1970s. Santa Cruz affi rmed his negritude and criticized those who rejected their African heritage in widely circulated and read poems such as “De Ser como Soy, me Alegro” (I’m Glad to Be How I Am), “Soy un Negro Sabrosón” (I’m a Tasty Black), and ‘Cómo Has Cambiado, Pelona’ (How You’ve Changed, Baldy). As a journalist and essayist, Nicomedes Santa Cruz published hundreds of articles to show the influence of African culture on Peruvian popular customs, history, philosophy, sports, education, language, culinary art, dance, and religion. Some of his most important newspaper articles are “Tondero and Marinera” (1958), “La Décima en el Peru” (1961), “Cumanana” (1964), “Festejo” (Celebration, 1964), “El Negro en el Perú” (The Negro in Peru, 1965), “Racismo en el Perú” (Racism in Peru, 1967), and “De Senegal a Malambo” (From Senegal to Malambo, 1973). These articles were published in major newspapers and magazines such as Caretas, El Comercio, and Expreso—the latter one is the most widely read among the popular classes. These articles, besides highlighting the African legacy, were a vehicle for raising awareness about the social situation of Blacks in Peru and the Americas. Through his articles and essays such “El Negro en Iberoamérica” (The Black in Latin America, 1988), he continued to denounce racism and the oppression of marginalized classes and ethnic groups. In “El Negro en Iberoamérica,” he wrote the unrecorded and forgotten history of Blacks and their contributions to the Hispanic world. Fortunately, current history books, such as Burkholder and Johnson (1994), already mention the important role that Blacks played since their arrival to America with the Spanish-conquering troops. With respect to the work of Santa Cruz, R. Romero (1994) asserts that “the process of reconstruction in itself did succeed, but it did not help at that time to confirm black identity in Peru” (323; my emphasis). Romero rightly notes that the initiative taken by the poet was the first step towards recuperating the African legacy. This first step has encouraged many to explore the situation of Blacks and their culture in Peruvian society. For example, the growing interest in language, culture, the experiences of Blacks and their contributions to Peruvian national culture, is evident in recent studies by Fernando Romero (1987, 1988), Carlos Aguirre (1993), and José Antonio del Busto Duthurburu (2001), among others. Regarding musicology, Nicomedes Santa Cruz is a key figure in the reconstruction of Afro-Peruvian music and dance. During the 1950s he

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played an important role in excavating and recovering these musical and dance traditions. His sister, Victoria Santa Cruz also played a key role in this process. Both collected, performed, and recorded forgotten AfroPeruvian rhythms such as festejo, zaña, landó, samba-malato, panalivio, and socabón. Many of these dances and songs were carefully studied and described in the newspaper articles Nicomedes published in Expreso and El Comercio in the 1950s and 1960s. He also compiled and released a total of sixteen records between 1957 and 1980. The fi rst one was Gente Morena (Colored People) and the last album was Décimas y Poemas (Decimas and Poems). These included mostly poems recited with musical accompaniment known as cumananas and socabón. The two other albums that stand out are Cumanana (1964) and Socabón (1975) because they underscored the contributions of the African descended population to Peruvian traditional musical folklore and dance. Each of the albums contained twoLP records and a sixty-seven page booklet that explained the origins of the songs included in the album. These dances and songs were created by the people in the coastal regions of Peru and are historicized lyrically by Santa Cruz through his use of the décima to describe their origins. Socabón contains musical samples of Afro-Peruvian folklore, and a detailed description of each instrument’s fabrication. The booklet also includes a brief artistic biography of Manual Covarrubias (1896–1975), the great vals composer and singer; Don Vicente Vásquez, the greatest guitar player, and Don Porfi rio Vásquez Aparicio, singer and dancer of marineras. Santa Cruz disseminated his African cultural legacy through newspaper articles such as the “Folklore Costeño” (Coastal Folklore) series, where he described in great detail some of the instruments used to perform traditional Afro-Peruvian music. He wrote descriptive essays on el cajón, la quijada de burro, el guiro, and la carrasca among other instruments. He also wrote about Afro-Peruvian dances such as el son de los diablos, el festejo, el alcatraz, and el ingá. Santa Cruz presented these cultural traditions in conferences in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. In reading and studying these collections, one can appreciate their didactic nature. This effort underscores one of Santa Cruz’s goals to rescue and to preserve the Afro-Peruvian cultural legacy for future generations. Much of what we know and have maintained of Afro-Peruvian coastal folklore is possible because of Nicomedes and Victoria Santa Cruz’s contributions. G. Martinez & F. Jarque comment on the contribution of Santa Cruz to the Renaissance of Afro-Peruvian music: “One of the undisputed pillars of the Afro-Peruvian musical resurgence was poet, composer, and musicologist Nicomedes Santa Cruz. In the 1950s, he began compiling and rejuvenating Afro-Peruvian cultural forms; later, as a student and a supporter of the Black consciousness movement, he used radio and television as forums for bringing many unknown Afro-Peruvian musicians to public attention” (1995: 4).

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 125 THE POETIC LANGUAGE OF NICOMEDES SANTA CRUZ6 Santa Cruz’s poetic and ideological evolution from Decimas to Black Rhythms of Peru, is marked by three specific periods: Negritud (the fi rst poetry collections), socio-political commentary (from the 1960s to mid1970s), and hemispheric and international vision (last poetry collections). As mentioned in the Introduction, this section seeks to, on the one hand, critically dissect aspects of Santa Cruz’ poetic language delineating the aesthetic and ideological evolution of his poetry; and on the other hand, to argue for Santa Cruz’s works to be fully incorporated into the Peruvian literary canon. Decimas marks the fi rst period and is characterized by the exclusive use of the décima as a poetic form. In this volume Nicomedes rescues AfroPeruvian folklore and affi rms the African identity and consciousness: “My grandmother came from Africa/adorned in shells,/Spaniards brought her/ in a caravel ship. “(De Africa llegó mi abuela/vestida con caracoles/la trajeron lo’españoles/en un barco carabela” (Decimas, 1960: 29). According to Salas et al., Santa Cruz is the Peruvian poet of Negritud because his poems “Soy un Negro Sabrosón” (I Am a Tasty Black) and “De Ser como Soy me Alegro (“Of being as I am, I am glad) transmit a pronounced feeling of pride and appreciation for the African heritage. Of being as I am, I am glad He who criticizes is ignorant. The fact that I am black does not harm anyone. (De ser como soy me alegro ignorante es quien critica. Que mi color sea negro eso a nadie perjudica.) (Decimas 59)

Estuardo Núñez, one of the foremost Peruvian literary critics of the 1960s, emphasizes the importance of the poet because “in Peruvian letters, Santa Cruz has affi rmed the new conscience of the negritud” (27). In other poems such as “Fue Mucho el Tejemaje” (The Fuss Was Too Much) in Canto a mi Peru (1966), he ridicules the prevalent Europhilia to which he attributes the discrimination and racism in Peruvian society:7 Because in this bad crucible who has an eighth of white inflates his crop like turkey, and over his shoulder he looks at blacks with disdain and at cholos with belittlement.

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Martha Ojeda (Porque en este mal crisol quien tenga blanco un octavo infla el buche como pavo, y por encima del hombro mira al negro con asombro y al cholo con menoscabo). (28)

The prevalent racial prejudice and discrimination present in Peruvian society has its roots in the colonial period, when a complex set of racial classification was put in place in order for the ruling class to consolidate and maintain their control. In this type of “pigmentocracy” those of lighter skin color would be treated more favorably than their darker skin counterparts; it is this sort practice that Santa Cruz questions and undermines.8 Cumanana marks a decisive moment in the explorations of Santa Cruz’s artistic and socio-political engagement. Here, the poet fi nds his own voice: he uses a variety of poetic forms, his poetry has a militant tone, and his voice vibrates with the voice of the working class in order to denounce a clearly unjust society. Santa Cruz chooses to use a politically engaged poetic language that questions the very nature of “art for art’s sake.” Moreover, it is important to stress that such commitment transcends historical specificity and it is not a mere literary exercise as for many of his literary contemporaries. With “Talara, No Digas ‘Yes’” (Talara, Don’t Say Yes), he supported the campaign for the nationalization of oil and condemned the American appropriation of oil wells in northern Peru. Although his previous poetry collection already preludes the contestatory nature of his poems, this tone is sharply marked in Cumanana. Nicomedes comments on this matter “And so, in my fi rst book, to the folkloric, jocular, lyric, anecdotal and circumstantial, I added “Talara, don’t say yes” and I did it to close the collection, not so much as end to a period, but as an announcement of a total commitment to the cause of my people” (Intro. Antología 15). (Así pues, en mi primer libro, a lo folklorico, jocoso, lírico, anecdótico y circunstancial, añadí “Talara” y lo hice cerrando el poemario, no tanto como fi n a una etapa cuanto como una anunciación de un compromiso total con la causa de mi pueblo). This act of solidarity and of historical conscience urges Nicomedes to express the suffering of the Indians and to wish “fi nally, to die embracing/ your immense heart.” (al fi n, morir abrazado/ |a tu corazón inmenso’; 56). As Pablo Neruda, he will give his voice to the Inca to shout his suffering: 9 Indian? No: Inca! or Peruvian! I go towards your mute complaint, bring your ear close to my voice we will not speak in vain: I, your brother; you, my brother, fruits of an intense pain!

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 127 (¿Indio ? No : ¡ Inca ! o ¡Peruano ! Voy hacia tu muda queja, acerca a mi voz tu oreja que no hablaremos en vano : ¡ Yo, tu hermano ; tú, mi hermano, frutos de un dolor intenso !) (Cumanana 56)

Canto a mi Peru (I Sing to Peru) continues to elaborate on themes treated in the two preceding poetry collections, but it is more nationalistic in nature and shows the ideological commitment to the Peruvian Revolution. In poems like “Patria o muerte!,” “Pasaje Obrero” and “Piedra, Piedra” he vindicates the worker, supports Agrarian reform and denounces social injustice: I shout revolution and I attack any government that in everlasting negligence buries education. .................... My soul is revolutionary because in any possible way I am ready to fight for Our Agrarian Reform. (Yo grito revolución y ataco todo gobierno que en olvido sempiterno sotierra la educación. .................... Mi alma es revolucionaria Porque a como dé lugar estoy dispuesto a luchar por Nuestra Reforma Agraria) (Canto a mi Peru 109–110)

“Patria o muerte!” contains the most explicit revolutionary language, which reflects the sentiment of a disenfranchised sector of Peruvian society in the 1960s. He transmits his message of vindication using the décimas and a variety of poetic strophes of the Spanish classical verse. Ritmos Negros del Perú evidences a hemispheric and international dimension. These poems contain a universal message of cultural solidarity between Latin America and the rest of the world. His wish for a multicultural inclusive society stands out in the poem “América Latina,” which according to Salas and Richards, represents a new stage in the poetic art of the decimista. Nicomedes asserts “’Latin America’ . . . more than to end a stage, it announced my continental and integrationist projection” (America Latina . . . más que sellar una etapa, anunciaba mi proyección continental e integracionista; Anthology

128 Martha Ojeda 16). The poems “Johannesburgo” and “Congo Libre” stress the poet’s support for the oppressed and the African peoples’ struggle for liberation: Africa, land without coldness, Mother of my darkness, every dawn I long for every dawn I long for every dawn I long for your complete freedom. (Africa, tierra sin frío, Madre de mi obscuridad, Cada amanecer ansío Cada amanecer ansío Cada amanecer ansío Tu completa libertad.) (Ritmos Negros 80)

This ideology evolves from the concern with the personal and ethnic vindication to the concern for the universal human cause and shows a deep commitment to building a multiethnic and a multicultural society. A close reading of his poetry reveals that, despite his preferential use of the décima, Nicomedes employs a variety of strophes, and his poetic language is essentially contestatory. His poems express the non-conformism that emanates from the prevalent oppression and injustice. The “rhymespear” (rima-lanza) is one of the predominant metaphors in his poetry. In the poem “Johannesburg,” the poet fences with his rhyme: I want my rhyme as sharp as a spearhead. May another hand wield it if he can. (Quiero aguda mi rima como punta de lanza. Que otra mano la esgrima si alcanza.) (Cumanana 85)

As mentioned above, in the last fi fteen years of his life, Nicomedes Santa Cruz devoted himself to writing essays and although his poetical compositions were almost nonexistent, it is precisely during this time that he reflected upon his poetic creation. It is worth noting that in 1975, he writes “Canto del Pueblo” (Song of the People) a kind of “Ars poetica” where he reaffi rms the committed aspect of his poetry and defi nes his conception of art:

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 129 The song has to be profound as are our problems. and it must deal with the problems of this world. Not even for a second May the singer forget That his duty and his honor, His role and his destiny are to light the way of the hard-working people. (El canto ha de ser profundo Como son nuestros problemas. Y ha de abordar en sus temas Los problemas de este mundo. Ni por un solo segundo Ha de olvidar el cantor Que su deber y su honor, Su función y su destino Son alumbrar el camino Del pueblo trabajador.) (Obras Completas I 482)

Additionally, in 1991, in his essay “The Black and His Song: Adventure of Oral and Written Poetry in America” (El Negro y Su Canto: Aventura de la Poesía Oral y Escrita en América), Nicomedes makes a penetrating analysis of his creative process in particular where he underlines the oral and collective character of his poetical production. He writes we, the singers that have begun from the most orthodox trouvadouresque tradition, we have our voice as a principal tool and the repentista improvisation as vital creative mechanism. Then, the daily exercise of addressing the public present (live), allows us to exercise a sort of energetic tuning with the auditorium, whose flow and ebb perfect our singing to the just measure and to the exact demand of our audience, no matter how numerous and heterogeneous they may be. (los cantores que hemos empezado a partir de la más ortodoxa tradición trovadoresca, tenemos como principal herramienta la voz y como vital mecanismo creativo la improvisación repentista. Luego, el ejercicio cotidiano de dirigirnos a un público presente (en vivo), nos permite ejercitar una suerte de sintonía energética con el auditorio, cuyo flujo y reflujo nos va afi nando el canto a la justa medida y a la exacta exigencia de nuestra audiencia, por muy numerosa y heterogénea que ésta sea.) (168).

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This oral aspect and the fluency that it implies, unlike the static nature of the written word, is a unique feature of the poetic creation of Nicomedes Santa Cruz that appears even in those fi xed/printed poems in a poetry collection. It is not unusual to fi nd his poems revised and re-edited in later editions.10 It is perhaps these multi-layered aspect and characteristic of his poetry (oral performance; musical accompaniment as in cumananas) that made it difficult and challenging for literary critics to study his poetry because it did not fit into any traditional classifications and the critical tools they possessed were not adequate for the analysis of this unique poetry. Although Santa Cruz’s poetic output in the 1960s and 1970s was predominant in Peru, it did not have an ample resonance in academic circles and it did not receive adequate critical attention. Ciro Alegría and Sebastián Salazar Bondy praised and emphasized the originality of his literary contributions but focusing mainly on the popular aspect. However, at the beginning of the 1970s, Santa Cruz began to be recognized as a poet but mainly abroad. In 1970, Jeanette Kattar-Goudiard and and Rene Durand, published Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Black Poet of Peru: Poem Presentation and Selection, in Senegal. In the middle of 1970s, Richard Jackson, one of the leading scholars in the field of Afro-Hispanic Literature, placed the work of Santa Cruz in the literary panorama in The Black Image in Latin America Literature (1976), and Black Writers in Latin America (1979). These seminal works contributed to the dissemination of Santa Cruz’s poetic production. Otis Handy is the author of the fi rst doctoral dissertation on Nicomedes Santa Cruz’s work. The Spanish American Decima and Nicomedes Santa Cruz (1979). Handy’s study focused on Santa Cruz’s work on recovering and continuing the decimista tradition. In the 1980s, a more sustained critical and theoretical attention was devoted to the works of Nicomedes Santa Cruz in academic journals and literary magazines in the U.S. The publication of books and critical articles in literary magazines dedicated exclusively to Santa Cruz’s work, expanded his readership introducing both poet and work to literary circles globally. In 1981, Estuardo Núñez, one of the leading Peruvian literary critics of his times, published his article: “La Literatura Peruana de la Negritud” (Peruvian Literature of the Negritud), emphasizing the importance of our poet because “in Peruvian letters, Santa Cruz has affi rmed the new conscience of negritude” ([d]entro de las letras peruanas, Santa Cruz ha afirmado la nueva conciencia de la negritud; 27). After this study, the process of revalidation of his literary work was interrupted in Peru. While in the U.S., Teresa Salas and Henry Richards edited Asedios a la Poesia de Nicomedes Santa Cruz, 1982 (Challenges to the Poetry of Nicomedes Santa Cruz), and in 1983, Marvin Lewis published Afro-Hispanic Poetry, 1940–1980: from Slavery to Negritud in South American Verse. Lewis is one of the fi rst literary critics to study the work of Santa Cruz within the socio-historical context of the Afro-Peruvian reality and to analyze his poetry.

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 131 In 1988, Jackson underscored the evolution of Santa Cruz’s poetic vision towards a pluricultural, hemispheric, and all-inclusive ideology in his book Black Literature and Humanism Latin America. Furthermore, in the late 1980s, Peruvian literary critics began to re-evaluate the distinctive character of Peruvian Literature. In La Formación de la Tradición Literaria en el Perú (The Formation of Peruvian Literary Tradition, 1989), Antonio Cornejo Polar briefly discussed what he described as the “marginal traditions” (tradiciones marginales) where he outlined some ideas on indigenous and popular literatures. Nevertheless, his limited knowledge on this particular subject, as he himself admitted in an interview with Carlos Arroyo, did not allow him to study the subject thoroughly. He concluded that “one must recognize—even against one’s will—that Peruvian Literature is multilingual and multicultural. And this constitutes a call for a reconstitution or reformulation of the concept of Peruvian Literature itself” (hay que reconocer—aunque no se quiera—que la literatura peruana es multilingüe y multicultural. Y esto constituye una recomposición o reformulación del concepto mismo de la literatura peruana. Arroyo 61). Cornejo Polar gives us his present vision of Peruvian Literature, which according to him “is a literature born out of resistance and confl ict” and “a corpus where different literary systems coexist even producing contradictory simultaneities within the same hegemonic system” (es una literatura hecha de contrastes y confl ictos” y “un corpus en donde coexisten sistemas literarios diferentes incluso producen simultaneidades contradictorias dentro del mismo sistema hegemonic”; Cornejo Polar 66, Arroyo 31). Francisco Carrillo, another important literary critic proposes “a reordering of the literary starting with a frank and open vindication of all that vast literature that is just now being studied and compiled and it goes from Quechua, Aymara, and Amazonian literatures to the novels of the Peruvian black world and to what has been called popular or oral literature” (un reordenamiento de lo literario a partir de una reivindicación, franca y abierta, de toda esa vastísima literatura que recién se encuentra en proceso de estudio y de recopilación y que va desde las literaturas quechua, aymara, y amazónicas hasta la novelística del mundo negro peruano y lo que se ha dado en llamar la literatura popular u oral; Arroyo 39). It is crucial to emphasize the critical efforts, although limited, to incorporate the socalled marginal literatures into the national literary corpus. A key problem that Carrillo points out, in the attempt to incorporate these literatures into Peruvian Literature, is that these native and popular literatures had not been studied thoroughly not only because of the lack of sufficient text compilation, but also because of the lack of a suitable theoretical-epistemological apparatus that does not exclude the contribution of anthropology and other social sciences and that uses clearly different categories to those that are used for the study of erudite (canonical) literature.

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Martha Ojeda (las literaturas aborígenes y populares no se habían estudiado con mayor detenimiento no sólo por la falta de recopilación suficiente de textos, sino también por la carencia de un aparato teórico-epistemológico idóneo que no excluya el aporte de la antropología y de otras ciencias sociales y que maneje categorías evidentemente distintas a las que se utilizan para el estudio de la literatura erudita.) (Arroyo 39–40)

This fact underscores the need to establish a non-Eurocentric theoretical apparatus and critical methods, because the existent ones have functioned as mechanisms of exclusion of the diverse expressions and non-Western literary traditions. Nicomedes Santa Cruz’s work has been catalogued as popular and underestimated even by those who are questioning the basic premises and the validity of these classifications (Antonio Cornejo Polar, Toro Montalvo, Romualdo, and Carrillo). These positions are due, partly, to the limited knowledge and/or ignorance of Santa Cruz’s vast poetic production that has reduced him to the author of “Cómo Has Cambiado, Pelona” (How You Have Changed, Baldy). Nevertheless, his rich literary production demonstrates his skillful use of multiple poetic forms and an ample thematic registry, which should secure his place in university literature programs and in the canon. The central debate on the process of canon formation is characterized by the ideological discrepancies and the difficulty to establish a basic criterion that determines unequivocally the aesthetic value of a work. On the one hand, as Barbara Mujica points out, the defenders of the Western canon such as Harold Bloom, affi rm that “works are canonical not because they represent a particular ideology or teach moral values, but because they are aesthetically superior and have borne the test of time” (209). If we analyze the criteria established to determine the literary value of a work, one notices the lack of a universally accepted and acceptable set of criteria to determine the above mentioned aesthetic value. This reality has been eloquently expressed by Brown and Johnson: The concept of “literary value” is elusive and no universally-accepted criteria exist by which to defi ne a “masterpiece” deserving of immortality. Important attributes of such work can be identified but not quantified. They include a work’s aesthetic attainment (Hume), its ability to provide models and ideals (Cook), its innovation in terms of literary history (Bloom). Other important aspects are historical and political significance, communication of tradition, insight into the human condition, relation to theory, and cultural content. (7) The most forceful proof of the difficulty of determining exactly the literary value of a work is in the results of the evaluation of fifty-six doctoral programs’ reading lists in the U.S. conducted by Joan L. Brown and

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 133 Crista Johnson published in the article, “ Required Reading: The Canon in Spanish and Spanish American Literature,” who conclude that Only two authors and two works from Spain achieved 100 percent representation on the lists. Thirty-nine authors (one female) and 22 male-authored works from Spain, and 24 authors (two female) and 10 male-authored works from Spanish America were present on 75 percent or more of the lists. At the other end of the spectrum, nearly 1,000 different tittles appeared just once in the database, demonstrating presence on only a single reading list. The fi ndings show little agreement about what constitutes literary value in this field. (1) Nicomedes Santa Cruz is a perfect example to illustrate the above-mentioned state of affairs in academic circles. In spite of his extensive literary production of indisputable and innovative originality, literary criticism prior to the 1980s has tended to present a Nicomedes generally limited to only one or another of his multiple facets. His works had been occasionally commented on and often underestimated and tacitly alienated. Before the critical attention of the 1980s, Santa Cruz was a writer yet to be discovered and adequately studied. Santa Cruz affirms that in spite of his popularity and the widespread diffusion of his works in the 1960s, his poetry was marginalized from academic studies and literary debates of the moment because of the existing prejudice towards the so-called “popular” literature. Furthermore, his lack of academic training excluded him from the literary groups of the time. Santa Cruz questions the artificial and arbitrary division between learned poetry and popular poetry, highlighting the undeniable tie between both types of production from time immemorial and invites us to re-formulate the basic concepts of literature in order to allow the insertion and the reproduction of “marginalized literatures.” This reality leads us to explore the mechanisms and the political processes in the formation of a literary canon. A methodological analysis of his poetic production places Santa Cruz among the most original and representative Latin American poets for his mastery of language, his diversity of topics, his skillful handling of varied poetic forms, his use of rhyme and rhythm, and rhetorical skills such as humor and satire. The arguments presented by Peruvian literary critics such as Antonio Cornejo Polar and Fernando Castillo, on the one hand, and critics like Corie Schweitzer and Barbara Mujica, on the other, emphasize the urgent need for a critical review of the work of Santa Cruz. After discussing the difficulty of discerning “the literary” in a purely aesthetic sense, Schweitzer concludes “Just what the “literary” looks like, in a purely aesthetic sense, may not be easily discernible anymore (193–194) and points out some criteria that have been used to evaluate the literary value of a work and to determine its inclusion in the canon.11 Because of space limitations, I will elaborate only four of the most relevant aspects for the analysis of poetry: writerly-ness of the

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poetry, relationship to established genres, degree to which the work represents its literary age, and uniqueness/originality. In order to maintain clarity, below, I appropriate Schweitzer’s alphabetical listing of the criteria: (a) Writerly-ness of the poetry (presence and manipulation of the metaphor, sound, imagery, rhythm, meter, etc.) Santa Cruz’s mastery of poetry is demonstrated both in his mastery of multiple stanzas, poetic forms and in his varied thematic register. It is worth noting his exceptional command of the glossed décima, also known as la décima de pie forzado (compared to the sonnet for its rigid structure) as well as forms of the Spanish classic and popular poems. His skillful handling of the poetical language stands out in the décimas of ironic and satirical tone such as “Fue Mucho el Tejemaneje (The Fuss Was Too Much) and “Dentro del Género Humano” (In the Human Race). His use of metaphors, similes and anaphors stands out, among others, in the following poems: “Negra” (Black Woman), “Llanto Negro” (Black Lament), “La Noche” (Night), “Congo Libre,” and “ Meme, Neguito.” See the poems quoted below for some brief examples: “Negra” In the night of your face There is a half-moon smile The lantern’s tongue licked his glass lips, After a rasping noise of iridium He was quiet yawning soot (En la noche de tu cara Hay media luna de risa. .................... ... ... La lengua del lamparín lamió sus labios de vidrio, tras un estretor de iridio calló bostezando hollín . . . ) ( Cumanana 20) “Llanto Negro” Cry, blacks of the world. Cry until you shed the last tear. Cry until your pupils explode, and with the black and empty socket still keep on crying tears of pain and of silence.

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 135 (Llorad, negros del mundo. Llorad hasta secar la última lágrima. Llorad hasta que estallen las pupilas, y con las cuencas negras y vacías aún seguid llorando lágrimas de dolor y de silencio). (Cumanana 91) “La Noche” This immense shade this eternal shade that began at the beginning of the beginning rotary eclipse total eclipse asks men for a solemn rite that is horizontal And every twelve hours it comes, I rejoice because half a world is dyed in black and in it, there is no place for racial distinction (Esa sombra inmensa esa sombra eternal que tuvo comienzo al comienzo del comienzo rotativo eclipse eclipse total pide a los hombres un solemne rito que es horizontal Y cada doce horas que llega me alegro porque medio mundo se tiñe de negro y en ello no cabe distingo racial) (Cumanana 74) “Congo Libre” Africa, land without coldness, Mother of my darkness, every dawn, I long for every dawn, I long for every dawn, I long for your complete freedom. (Africa, tierra sin frío, madre de mi obscuridad, cada amanecer ansío cada amanecer ansío

136

Martha Ojeda cada amanecer ansío tu complete libertad.) (Ritmos Negros 80)

Under the deceitful simplicity of his poems, the reader can capture the ethno historic, political, and social complexities of a society in formation. (b) Relationship to established genres. How does he adhere to the generic mandates and how much it makes formal innovations. In Latin America, the décima, which was a “learned” poetic form used by the Golden Age poets in Spain, takes root in the so-called popular poetry, and especially in the black communities. This was largely due to the contact with and the participation in the popular representations of “Moors and Christians.” The decima in Peru was initially used to catechize and Christianize natives and Blacks, but already during the colonial period, it became an instrument to denounce the social injustices of colonial rule. According to Santa Cruz, the décima flourished in Peru during the latter half of the nineteenth century and until the middle of the twentieth century when it almost disappeared with the death of Porfirio Vásquez (1902–1971), one of the leading decimistas of his time. Santa Cruz re-appropriates this poetic form to rescue and historicize the life of the Afro-Peruvian and to denounce social problems. The above-mentioned appropriation has a subversive character because through poetic manipulation, Santa Cruz presents to us a counterdiscourse to the colonial discourse. Although he continues to use the rigid structure of the décima de pie forzado, a form inherited from his decimistas masters, he covers topics of patriotic, political, and social nature, thereby breaking away from the traditional classifications of “A lo divino” (to the sacred) and “A lo humano” (to the profane). Santa Cruz also broadens and renews the poetic style by incorporating neologisms, afro-peruanisms, and quechuisms as well as quatrains that come from the Inca yarawi poems. (d) Degree to which the work represents its literary age. Santa Cruz fully participates in the poetic tradition prior to and proper to the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America. His poetry continues the oral tradition established by his decimista predecesors and masters such as Porfi rio Vásquez. His work can also be described as socially and politically committed and compared to other Latin American poets, including the Cuban Nicolás Guillén, the Chilean Pablo Neruda, and the Nicaraguan Ernesto Cardenal. For his use of colloquial/popular language, his treatment of the quotidian, his tie with the oral tradition, and his socio-political commitment Santa Cruz emerges as a “popular” poet like Guillén, Neruda, and Cardenal. For example “Indio” is a poem that deals with the historical and continuous injustice endured by native peoples. As mentioned previously, like Pablo Neruda, Santa Cruz lends his voice to the voiceless:

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 137 It boils with deaf murmur blood in your stoic chest while haughty and heroic your pride goes solitarily . . . I want to fight for your cause As if it were mine! Let me shout, at least, Your sadness in my song! (Hierve con sordo murmullo

La sangre en tu pecho estoico Mientras altivo y heroico Va solitario tu orgullo . . . ¡Quiero luchar por lo tuyo Como que si mío fuera! ¡Déjame gritar, siquiera, tus tristezas en mi canto!) (Cumanana 56)

Furthermore, his collaboration with the most renowned poets and writers of his times such as Léopold Sédar Senghor, Quince Duncan, Nelson Estupiñán Bass, Manuel Zapata Olivella, Nicolás Guillén, and Rafael Alberti is a powerful testament to his full participation in the literary currents of his times. Nevertheless, it is worth emphasizing that Santa Cruz privileges oral poetry, he writes for the people and about the people. Santa Cruz tells us “my song comes from the people/and my song goes to the people” (mi canto del pueblo viene/y mi canto al pueblo va. “Canto lo que el pueblo siente”; 1974). Santa Cruz was the poet-chronicler of his people and of his epoch. His main goal was to safeguard the collective memory of his ethnic group, to put his poetry at the service of the people and to use it as an instrument of liberation. (i) Uniqueness/originality Nicomedes Santa Cruz is one of the fi rst poets, in Peru, to link his poetry with an African, indigenous, and Hispanic oral tradition and to reach an unusual degree of originality. Through performance, orality, and the marriage of poetry, music, and song, Santa Cruz endows poetry with its original qualities. It is critical to emphasize this artistic gift possessed by Nicomedes who had the ability to recite continuously up to twenty poems in addition to improvising new decimas on the spot. In this, he was following the popular oral tradition of the griot and the countrapunteo (poetic duel) and his admirable memory allowed him to preserve a vast repertoire. The socabón (sung decimas with musical accompaniment) and the cumananas improvised popular folk songs in desafio) will become part of his unmistakable style. Because of the incorporation of the Inca and

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African myths, and the Spanish folklore, Santa Cruz’s décimas represents the coexistence of three literary systems; that is to say, the syncretism of the Spanish, African and indigenous cultures. If for Harold Bloom, one of the most fervent defenders of the western canon, originality or “strangeness” of a work is the principal factor that determines its inclusion in or exclusion from the canon; then, Santa Cruz’s originality in lyrically historicizing the experience of slavery, and his warm sympathy and human understanding of the poor would guarantee his inclusion in the literary canon. It is clear Nicomedes Santa Cruz carried out an important task by preserving the decimista tradition and by vindicating the contributions of Black Peruvians to the formation of a national literature and culture. His contributions to musicology and journalism have been essential to the preservation of Peruvian folkloric music and dance. Santa Cruz found several venues (poetry, music, dance, journalism, and essays) by which to advance his cause for social justice and equality. He traveled to many continents to share and exchange the rich multi-ethnic and pluri-cultural heritage of Peruvian culture. Pablo Mariñez eloquently sums up the uniqueness of Santa Cruz’s persona when he states “Nicomedes Santa Cruz possesses a set of qualities that only, exceptionally, had been demonstrated and developed in figures such as Nicolás Guillén and Aimé Césaire, in poetry; Louis Armstrong, in music; Fernando Ortiz and Alejo Carpentier in research. All these qualities are assembled in one self-taught journalist, comunicologist, and a tireless traveler, who covered almost all of Latin America, good part of the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Europe. ” (Nicomedes Santa Cruz reúne en sí un conjunto de cualidades que sólo, excepcionalmente, se habían manifestado y desarrollado en figuras como Nicolás Guillén y Aimé Césaire, en la poesía; Louis Armstrong, en la música; Fernando Ortiz y Alejo Carpentier en la investigación. Todos estas cualidades están reunidas en un autodidacta, periodista, comunicólogo, y viajero incansable, que recorrió casi toda América Latina, buena parte del Caribe, Africa, Asia y Europa; 19–20). Thus, Nicomedes Santa Cruz has transformed the literary, political, and landscape of Peruvian culture by leaving an indelible mark in our national imaginary challenging Peruvians to acknowledge the African contributions to the multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual nature of our society. Although much remains to be done to accomplish Santa Cruz’s dream of a just and harmonious society, the Peruvian government’s official recogntition of contributions of Blacks to the formation of a national culture is an important positive step. NOTES 1. A décima is a poetic form of ten verse stanzas with (abbaaccddc) rhyme scheme. The decimista is the person who uses this poetic form. Santa Cruz is mainly known as a decimista but he also used other poetic forms. 2. Nicomedes writes in detail about this event in his newspaper articles “Estampas de Pacho Fierro” February 2, 1964, 7 and “Ritmos Negros del Peru” January 9, 1964, 7.

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 139 3. Taken from “La Página de Nicomedes.” http://www.nicomedessantacruz.com/ ingles/home.htm (accessed17 July 2007). 4. Information on how to obtain his complete works, including his unedited poetry can be found at http://www.nicomedessantacruz.com/ingles/home.htm (accessed 17 July 2007). 5. http://mesadetrabajoafroperuana.blogspot.com/2007/06/nicomedes-santacrus.html. 6. Parts of this section are a summarized and modified version of the article “Nicomedes Santa Cruz Frente al Canon Literario Peruano: Argumentos para Su Inclusion” published in PALARA 2004. 7. This poem satirizes a conference on mestizaje that took place in Peru in 1965. 8. Busto Duthurburu in Breve Historia includes viceroy Amat’s “Cuadros del Mestizaje” (Misegenation Charts) where there is a detailed classification of the degree of miscegenation of Blacks. For further information on the topic, see also Zenón Cruz Isabello’s Narciso Descubre Su Trasero: (El Negro en la Cultura Puertorriqueña). 9. These verses echo Pablo Neruda’s “A las Alturas del Machu Picchu” where, in a similar fashion, the poet lends his voice to become the spokesperson to express the suffering of the workers. 10. Some examples are “Africa” (1960), revised in 1963 and “Mujer Negra” (Black Woman), Cumanana, 1966, later published as “Que Mi Sangre se Sancoche” (May My Blood Boil ) in Ritmos Negros del Perú, 1971. 11. Here, I include a complete list of the criteria created by Schweitzer to determine the merit of a text for its inclusion in the canon. According to Schweitzer, “aesthetic claims (defined as that which can make a given text ‘good’ for any stated purpose, whether the person stating that purpose is a member of academia or a member of the reading public) can mean any of the following: a) Writterly-ness of the poetry or prose (the presence and manipulation of metaphor, sound imagery, rhythm, syntax, meter, etc.) b) relationship to established genres (how well the work adheres to generic mandates and how much it makes formal innovations) c) narrative technique d) degree to which the work represents its literary age e) philosophical utility f) intellectual and literary influence on subsequent generations—the work’s lineage from intellectual and literary influences g) popularity h) historicity i) uniqueness/oringinality” (194).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alegría, Ciro. “El Canto del Pueblo.” Santa Cruz, Décimas. Lima: Librería Studium, 1966. 9–13. Arroyo, Carlos. Hombres de Letras: Historia y Crítica Literaria en el Perú. Lima: Ediciones Memoria Angosta, 1992. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Riverhead Books, 1994. Brown, Joan L. and Crista Johnson, “Required Reading: The Canon in Spanish and Spanish American literature,” Hispania 81.1 (1998): 1–19. Busto Duthurburu, José Antonio del. Breve Historia de los Negros del Perú. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2001.

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Carrillo, Francisco. Las 100 Mejores Poesías Peruana Contemporáneas. Lima: Anthologies de la Rama Florida, 1961. Cornejo Polar, Antonio. “La Formación de Nuestra Tradición Literaria.” in Hombres de Letras: Historia y Crítica Literaria en el Perú. Ed. Carlos Arroyo. Lima: Ediciones Memoria Angosta, 1989. Handy, Otis. “Nicomedes Santa Cruz and the Spanish American Décima.” Tesis de Doctorado, Universidad de California Berkeley, 1992. Jackson, Richard. The Black Image in Latin American Literatura. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1976. . Black Writers in Latin America. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1979. . Black Literature and Humanism in Latin America. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988. . Black Writers and the Hispanic Canon. Twayne’s World Author Series (TWAS) 867 Nueva York y Londres: Twayne Publishers, 1997. Kattar-Goudiard, Jeannette and René L. F. Durand. Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Poeta Negro del Perú: Presentación y Selección de Poemas. Dakar: Centre de Hautes Études Afro-Ibéro-Amériques, Université de Dakar, 1970. Lewis, Marvin A. “From Cañete to Tombuctú: The Peruvian Poetry of Nicomedes Santa Cruz.” Afro-Hispanic Poetry 1940–1980: From Slavery to Negritud in South American Verse. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983: 46–80. Mariátegui, José Carlos. Siete Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana. América Nuestra Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria SA, 1955. Mariñez, Pablo. Nicomedes Santa Cruz. Decimista, Poeta y Folklorista Afroperuano. 2ª. Ed. Lima: Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima, 2000. Martínez, Gregorio and Fietta Jarque, “Program and Biographical Notes” for the CD The Soul of Black Peru: Afro-Peruvian Classics, Ed. David Byrne and Yale Evelev (Burbank, CA: Luaka Bop/Warner Bros., 1995) Mujica, Barbara. “Teaching Literature: Canon, Controversy, and the Literary Anthology.” Hispania. 80.2 (1997): 203–215. Neruda, Pablo. Canto General. Biblioteca Contemporánea 86–87. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1955. Núñez, Estuardo. ‘La Literatura Peruana de la Negritud.’ Hispanoamérica 10.278 (1981): 19–28. Ojeda, Martha. Nicomedes Santa Cruz: Ecos de Africa en Perú. London: Tamesis Books, 2003. . Nicomedes Santa Cruz Frente al Canon Literario Peruano: Argumentos para Su Inclusion.” PALARA: Publication of Afro-Latin/American Research Association 8 (2004): 5–19. Romero, Fernando. El Negro en el Perú y Su Transculturación Lingüística. Lima: Editorial Milla Batres, 1987. . Quimba, Fa, Malambo, Ñeque: Afronegrismos en el Perú. Lengua y Sociedad 9. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1988. Romero, Raúl. “Black Music and Identity in Peru: Reconstruction and Revival of Afro-Peruvian Musical Traditions.” Music and Black Ethnicity: The Caribbean and South America. Ed. Gerard H. Béhague. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994. Salas, Teresa Cajiao and Henry J. Richards. “Nicomedes Santa Cruz y la Poesía de Su Conciencia de Negritud.” Cuadernos Americanos 202 (1975): 182–199. . Asedios a la Poesía de Nicomedes Santa Cruz. Quito: Editora Andina, 1982. Salazar Bondy, Sebastián. “Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Poeta Natural.” La Prensa (Lima), 4 de Junio de 1958.

Nicomedes Santa Cruz 141 . “Nicomedes Santa Cruz ante Su Enigma.” El Comercio (Lima), 24 de Mayo de 1964. Starn, Orin, et al., eds. The Peru Reader: History, Culture and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. Santa Cruz, Nicomedes. Gente Morena. Lima: Odeón, 1957. . “Ensayo sobre la Marinera.” El Comercio, 1 de Junio de 1954. . Décimas. Lima: Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1960. . Décimas y Poemas. Lima: El Virrey Industrias Musicales, SA, 1960. . “La Décima en el Perú.” El Comercio, 1 de Octubre de 1961, 2, 11. . Cumanana: Décimas de Pie Forzado y Poemas. Lima: Librería Editorial Juan Mejía Baca, 1964. . Cumanana. Lima: El Virrey Industrias Musicales, SA, 1964. .“El Festejo.” Estampa, 26 de Enero de 1964, 7. . “Folklore Peruano: Cumanana.” Estampa, 24 de Mayo de 1964, 5. . “El Negro en el Perú.” Estampa, 21 de Marzo de 1965, 13. . Canto a mi Perú. Lima: Librería Studium, 1966. . Décimas. 2ª ed. Lima: Libreria Studium, 1966. . “Racismo en el Perú.” Estampa, 24 de Setiembre de 1967, 12. . “El Tondero y la Marinera.” Suplemento Dominical del diario El Comercio, 1 de Febrero de 1970. . Antología: Décimas y Poemas. Colección Los Juglares. Lima: Campodónico Ediciones SA, 1971. . Ritmos Negros del Perú. Poetas de Ayer y de Hoy. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1971. . Rimactampu: Rimas al Rima. Lima: Ciba-Geigy Perúana, 1972. . “De Senegal y Malambo.” Caretas, 21 de Junio de 1973, 22–24. . Festejo Peruano. Colección de Canciones: DP 1014, con Notas de Rene Villanueva Lima: Discos Pueblo, 1975. . Socabón: Introducción al Folklore Musical y Danzario de la Costa Peruana. Lima: El Virrey Industrias Musicales, SA, 1975. . Ritmos Negros del Perú: Nicomedes Santa Cruz y su Conjunto Cumanana. Lima: RCA, 1979. . La Décima en el Perú. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1982. . ‘El Negro en Iberoamérica.’ Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 451–452 (1988): 7–46. . “El Negro y Su Canto: Aventura de la Poesía Oral y Escrita en América.” Afroamericanos y V Centenario: Ponencias Vencuentro de Antropología y Misión. Madrid: Editorial Mundo Negro, 1992. 167–188. . Obras Completas. Vol. 1. Poesía (1949–1989). Compiled by Pedro Santa Cruz, Buenos Aires: Libros en Red, 2004. . Obras Completas. Vol. 2. Investigación (1958–1991). Compiled by Pedro Santa Cruz, Buenos Aires: Libros en Red, 2004. Schweitzer, Corie. “Publishing ‘New’ Canons: The Politics Aesthetics of Recovering Texts.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 29.4 (1998), 191–211. Toro, César Montalvo. Historia de la Literatura Peruana. 13 tomos. IV: Literatura Negra del Perú. Lima: AFA Editores, 1991–1996. . Antología de la Poesía Peruana del Siglo XX: (Años 60/70). Lima: Ediciones Mabú, 1978. . Grandes obras Maestras: Resúmenes de la Literatura Peruana. Lima: Editorial San Marcos, 1998. Zenón Cruz, Isabelo. Narciso Descubre Su Trasero: (El Negro en la Cultura Puertorriqueña). Tomo 2. Humacao, Puerto Rico: Furidi, 1975.

7

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural Political Order Elisa Rizo

Drama, in much the same manner as the rest of the literary genres cultivated in Equatorial Guinea, signals concurrent processes of nation-building and decolonization. In spite of its potential for penetrating a national audience with little access to formal education, dramatic writing has not been a favored expression of Equatorial Guinean authors, most of whom tend to write poetry, fiction, or essay. Notwithstanding a reduced corpus, the dramatic texts available to the readers inside and outside of Equatorial Guinea emerge as an active space in the formation of discourses of nation and citizenship. This is in spite of the environment of surveillance under which these texts are written and performed.1 Indeed, the political censorship that surrounds dramatic writing in Equatorial Guinea (and all literary and journalist writing for that matter) is reflected in most plays. Referring to this issue, Marvin A. Lewis has indicated in An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship, that corruption and power are the forces that permeate theatrical texts. 2 His observation, as well as the very subtitle of his book, Between Colonialism and Dictatorship, reminds us that Equatorial Guinean dramatic writing (and literature in general) is produced in the cracks of historical, political, and economic climates that have maintained this sub-Saharan country and its population in the margins of Hispanism and the global community. Furthermore, Lewis’ remarks prompt us to recognize a mechanism inherent to Equatorial Guinean literature, one that forms “another sensibility, another consciousness of the condition of marginality: that in which marginality is the condition of the center,”3 as Trinh T. Minh-Ha would put it. Under the above considerations, Equatorial Guinean drama comes to light as a literary practice that signals awareness of a marginal location within the global system. Consequential to this trait of Equatorial Guinean drama, I will call attention to the manner in which Pancrasio Esono Mitogo’s El Hombre y la Costumbre (Man and Custom, 1990), Trinidad Morgades’s Antígona (Antigone, 1991), and Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 143 Los Hombres Domésticos (Domestic Men or Home Boys, 1994)4 respond to a context determined simultaneously by national policies, on the one hand, and by agendas of “cultural diplomacy”5 and economic expansion on behalf of different countries with interests in Equatorial Guinea, on the other hand. I suggest that focusing on this tension between the national and the transnational might help us identify points in common between Equatorial Guinean plays and other dramatic traditions in the Hispanic literary tradition.6 This chapter will begin with an overview of national and transnational politics that have impacted Equatorial Guineans, before moving on to the dramas mentioned above to observe their treatment of national/transnational tensions. In the process, I will highlight the differences or similarities between the proposals for civic participation presented in these plays and those of a larger effort on behalf of African dramatists across the continent to promote social consciousness among their national audiences. Finally, to the extent that these dramas reflect—directly or indirectly—on a Spanish colonial past, Equatorial Guinean theater is recognized as an art that bridges other literary traditions produced in the Hispanic world.

THE MAKING OF A NATIONAL CULTURE: BETWEEN LOCAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL ECONOMICS The Equatorial Guinean population has endured decades of transition toward the solidification of a nation-state since the end of Spanish colonial occupation in 1968. Shortly after independence, Equatorial Guineans saw their democratic ideal truncated, as the government of Francisco Macias Nguema—elected president in 1969—progressed into a violent and isolating dictatorship.7 In 1979, Macias was defeated through a coup d’état known as the “Golpe de libertad” (Freedom’s strike) led by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Once more, the initial sense of optimism that came with the beginning of this new administration deteriorated quickly as the autocratic nature of Obiang’s rule became evident. In fact, time has shown that, if Macias’s government was based on hostility, systematic assassination, and torture, Obiang’s regime (prevailing until these days) has continued with this pattern, although in a less bloody fashion and somewhat more concealed. Moreover, a diachronic view of Obiang’s government unveils that his management has recurred to an additional strategy to stay in power: the attraction of foreign capital. Related to this fact, the agenda of economic cooperation and cultural diplomacy of other countries, Spain and France in particular, during the 1980s and early 1990s, reveals the impact that neo-colonial interests also play in the shaping of domestic politics and official statements on national culture delivered by the Equatorial Guinean president. Within Equatorial Guinea’s complex postcolonial history, there are two events that are associated with major developments in national policies on

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culture and economics: one is the Primer Congreso Internacional Hispánico-Africano de Cultura (or First International Conference of HispanicAfrican Culture), celebrated in the Equatorial Guinean city of Bata in June of 19848; the other one is the inclusion of Equatorial Guinea in the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (International Organization of Francophone Countries)9 in 1989. The First International Conference of Hispanic-African Culture was a conference intended to locate Equatorial Guinea within the spectrum of the Spanish-Latin American relations, and at the same time, within the African nations. With this objective, this meeting was attended by intellectuals from Equatorial Guinea, other African countries, Latin America,10 and Spain. In sum, the attendees recommended a plan to foster a civic society on the basis of a common language and common cultural and spiritual references; namely, the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture, the revitalization of pre-colonial languages and cultures, and the recognition of a national chapter of the Catholic Church that would integrate local cultural elements into the religious practice.11 Given the location of Equatorial Guinea in a predominantly Francophone region, for the Equatorial Guinean intellectuals involved, this meeting symbolized an effort to instill civic participation, while fostering a national identity that acknowledged and defended their country’s Hispanic singularity. Indeed, the adhesion of Equatorial Guinea to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie12 in 1989 was, to say the least, problematic. This is because the country’s affiliation to this constituency was preceded by its inclusion in the CFA zone13 in 1986, just two years after the Conference of HispanicAfrican Culture. This action involved a change in the national currency— from the Bipwele to the CFA franc, a transnational currency backed by the French treasury14 and shared by its fourteen member countries in Western and Central Africa. While these cultural and economic dynamics echo old colonial competitions in the region, they also reveal a unique strategy on behalf of the national government. As it will be observed in the dramatic texts, these relationship between the Equatorial Guinean government and transnational constituencies based on language, culture, and even economic zones, have given birth to a perceived national identity of sorts that assumes a location in the margins of Hispanidad and, to a much lesser extent, of the Francophone countries,15 an identity that searches civic participation in the midst of a constantly shifting and ever-forming distinctiveness, always dependent on non-local matrixes. In this view, the search for a model of civic participation is set for one that will equip the population with the ability to recognize the centrality of their situation within a world that insists on their marginality. By proposing and evaluating different models of citizenry, the dramas by Esono, Morgades and Ávila16 respond to the positioning of their country within the above described global dynamics. Hence, Equatorial Guinean playwriting, in spite of the censorship practiced by their governmental

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 145 regime, emerges as a space where politics are reflected upon, and where the population is presented with tools to analyze their situation as well as their alternatives. In this light, drama becomes a potentially accessible platform where the competing models of national identity—whether introduced by the national government, by transnational powers, or by independent intellectuals—can be evaluated by the population.

PERFORMING THE OFFICIAL POLICY OF NATIONAL CITIZENRY: ESONO’S MAN AND CUSTOM Over the eleven-year period between 1979 and 1990, the one television station and the one radio station in Equatorial Guinea were controlled by the government and were dedicated to the celebration of the president and his cabinet.17 Accordingly, since 1985, authors were permanently requested to create works that would support the government’s “cause” of enhancing the image of the president.18 In this circumstance, some writers opted for exile, others for silence, and some others for dissidence. Nevertheless, there were others who took upon Obiang’s call and supported the governmental “cause.” Moderately futuristic, the plot of El Hombre y la Costumbre (Man and Custom, 1990)19 by Pancrasio Esono20 is situated in the year of 1999. The play envisions an economic bonanza in which Equatorial Guineans, thanks to the support of the government, are able to grow crops, manufacture products, buy, and sell products nationally and internationally. But most importantly, the drama places emphasis on the observance of traditional values within the process of modernization in order to achieve balance between progressive and customary practices. In this light, Esono’s drama echoes Obiang’s call for “adapting ( . . . ) traditional forms to the legal and administrative structures of our times ( . . . ).”21 Structured in two acts of five and three scenes, respectively, the drama focuses on two nuclei of characters: those who have successfully incorporated modernity and local customs and those who have failed in such integration. Within the dynamics of the play, this failure could be due to engagement in corrupt actions or embracing ‘erroneous’ (i.e., noncompliant, non-state-sanctioned) interpretations of the African tradition. The fi rst act elaborates on elements such as the revitalization of long-established practices—like community cooperation in agricultural activities—via state programs, while underlining the importance of the education provided by the state in the process of becoming better citizens. The second act focuses on traditions that pertain to the private sphere, specifically the role of women and men in society. Interestingly, in both acts the behaviors attributed to model citizens—obedient, hard working, disciplined, well versed on African traditions and thankful to the government—are proposed as the kind of conduct needed to enhance the stability of the country. Thus,

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throughout the play, it becomes obvious that the state’s prosperity, based on the obedience of the population (“buenas costumbres” y “buenas tradiciones”), is more relevant than the development of a sense of belonging to a national community. Since the play is set to provide an imagery of governmental policies and national dreams, it is not surprising, then, that the main characters are bureaucrats. In the fi rst act, we observe the arrival of Jesusa, Andrés, and Juan. These characters have received higher education thanks to the state’s support and have been appointed to the little town of Mezdap to implement a federal program to modernize agriculture, and with this, to help farmers in maximizing their production, commercializing it, and exporting it (25). Consequently, they act as distributors of the government’s projects for development, playing a key role in the instruction, training, and administration of modern agricultural techniques, including the distribution of modified seeds, fertilizers, and the allocation of loans for farmers (23–29). However, the play concentrates principally on one of these bureaucrats, Juan, whose failure is tied to ignoring African traditions and other “good habits” in his efforts to become “modern.” Echoing the title of the play, it is implied by other characters that he practices malas costumbres (bad habits or customs): he is corrupt, lazy, and libertine. Predictably, a highlight of the play is an attempt to rescue Juan from himself. In scene five, Andrés shares with him an important lesson that he learned while studying Agriculture in the imaginary fi rst world, “Progalaxia”: ANDRÉS: I spent 5 years in Progalaxia, studying. There, I became aware of things. . . . There are many traditions in Progalaxia and it is the most evolved continent. . . . Many peoples forget their good traditions; this is not good. The irony of it is that the globe’s most evolved peoples are those who cherish their good traditions; in other words, tradition is what we call culture.

(ANDRÉS: Pues estuve 5 años en la Progalaxia, estudiando. Allí me di cuenta de verdad y aprendí que el mundo da vueltas. . . . En la Progalaxia hay muchas tradiciones, pero es el continente más evolucionado. Muchos pueblos olvidan sus buenas tradiciones; esto no es bueno. Lo paradójico es que los pueblos más evolucionados del globo son los que más guardan sus buenas tradiciones; las tradiciones son lo que llamamos cultura, en otros términos.) (34) In an openly didactic and moralistic manner, the dialogue continues: JUAN: You may be right. ANDRÉS: I am right, brother, do not doubt it. Man is conditioned by the society that surrounds him. As long as our actions do not

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 147 go against the morals of society, Christian morality, or the law, you can be sure that those are good habits. (JUAN: A lo mejor tienes razón. ANDRÉS: La tengo. No lo dudes, hermano. El hombre está condicionado por la sociedad en que subsiste. Siempre que lo que hagamos no vaya contra la moral de la sociedad, contra la moral cristiana o contra las leyes, se puede considerar como una buena costumbre.) (34) Hence, African tradition is presented as a realm closely related to social and Christian morals as well as the laws regulated by a government. This depiction also presents at least one implication: it seems to borrow from the strategies of population control exercised by the colonial policies of francoist Spain. The latter becomes evident when contrasting Andrés’s advice with Spanish colonialist texts, like the one entitled “La Cultura, Problema Fundamental de Colonización” (“Culture, the Fundamental Problem of Colonization”). In this document, education in ‘Spanish Guinea’ was supposed to . . . try to awaken abilities, guide instincts, so that the fi rst ones would build a conscious man, and the latter would lead him to a behavior filled with virtues. ( . . . intentar despertar facultades, encauzar instintos, para que aquéllas forjen al hombre conciente y éstos le conduzcan a una actividad llena de virtudes . . . )22 The text continues stating that colonial education should . . . . in a Spanish sense, build men whose formation would be balanced and in conformity with the moral and Christian laws, with which knowledge and practice they could reach human and spiritual perfection, which is the true objective of education. ( . . . . en sentido español, hacer hombres cuya formación sea equilibrada y conforme a las leyes de la moral y de la vida cristiana, con cuyo conocimiento y práctica se acerquen a la perfección humana y espiritual que debe ser el verdadero fin de la educación.)23 By contrast with Álvarez’s text, it seems that virtue, respect for Christian morals, and adherence to laws—the main objectives of cultural assimilation during the colony—are echoed by the bureaucrat Andres in Esono’s drama, as when he utters “As long as our actions do not go against the morals of society, Christian morality, or the law, you can be sure that those are good habits” (34). Problematically, all through the play, the so-called

148 Elisa Rizo traditional values are evoked as a thing of the past that must be revived and cherished. Only the elderly seem to know about these Bantu values and, even though they preach them (as in the second act, when they offer an explanation of “nsua”24 39–43), they remain in the periphery of the action. The characters that carry the plot and the “relevant” knowledge for the public sphere are those educated abroad, like Andrés. Hence, this literary elaboration presented initially as afrocentric, ends up favoring foreign perspectives in the end. Even though El Hombre y la Costumbre does not make direct reference to the economic and cultural interactions between Equatorial Guinea, France, and the African French bloc, and Spain, Esono’s portrayal of a more modern Equatorial Guinea relies on the imitation of foreign (more specifically, colonial) paradigms. Consequently, in Esono’s model of good citizenry, Equatorial Guineans are requested to embrace local traditions as they mimic a culturally abstract “other” (Progalaxia) that, conflictingly, is reminiscent of Francoist educational values. Seeing this way, El Hombre y la Costumbre complies with a structure that perpetuates the historical and structural dependency of Equatorial Guinea in relation to former metropolitan powers, a phenomenon described by Anibal Quijano with the term coloniality of power as he approached the Latin American neo-colonial context. Although I recognize the differences between the neo-colonial realities of Latin America and Central Africa, in the case of this play and the governmental policies it seems to embody, the concept of coloniality of power helps to describe how former dominated populations perpetuate the model of Eurocentric hegemony as if it were the only epistemic knowledge available.25

FROM LOCAL TO UNIVERSAL: THE MARGIN AS THE CENTER There is another trend within contemporary Equatorial Guinean drama that manages to deliver alternative proposals for national culture than those conveyed by colonial-like, dictatorial neo-conservatism. These dramatic texts introduce an analysis of the Equatorial Guinean circumstance at the national and the transnational level and, at the same time, reveal an awareness of a variety of conceptual political frameworks that are sustained in other national experiences in Africa. Thus, in spite of marked local differences and approaches, the reader may encounter an indirect dialogue between the production of Equatorial Guinean writers and others of neighboring countries about common issues. One focus of such dialogue is the continued oppression and impoverishment of the national population in spite of the consolidation of their independences. In this regard, Femi Osofisan, one of Nigeria’s most notable playwrights, has appealed for a farewell to Negritude and proposes an embracing of post-Negritude. Osofisan’s concept offers a self-reflective analysis that denounces the

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 149 appropriation of Negritude-like rhetoric by dictatorships and insists on the caducity of Negritude’s polarized logic. Moreover, post-Negritude places the concerns of Africa and its population at the “center” of study. From this perspective, Osofisan’s term considers the critical evaluation of the present through the scope of history. He states . . . post-Negritude does not [ . . . ] believe in, or promote, a willful mystification of the African past [ . . . ] post-Negritude does not reject the past either; it only demands a critical attitude to the exhumation of our heritage, such that such remembrance will not just present our culture as a static, nostalgic monument, but rather as a dynamic process, hybrid, and sometimes even self-contradicting. 26 Post-Negritude could be understood, then, as a present-day effort on behalf of African intellectuals to analyze those instances in which the rhetoric of Negritude and national discourses, in general, were used by different agents to build structures of domination within the national realm after independence; and that, in some cases, has resulted in atavistic cultural policies. Although in his proposal Osofisan criticizes postcolonial theory’s shortcomings, his argument is in alignment with Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s proposal delivered in No Master Territories in that post-Negritude recognizes the need to put the experiences of margin at the center of the discussion to achieve liberation. It is because of this parallelism with Minh-Ha’s proposal that I consider Osofisan’s alternative as a viable model to observe the formation of a margin-centered grammar articulated by African playwrights, as it pertains to the Equatorial Guinean dramas to be observed as follows. Looking back at the policy on national culture and national economy developed by the Equatorial Guinean government during the 1980s, it is remarkable to see how the very same context that surrounded the production of Esono’s play also encompasses the production of Morgades’s Antígona and Ávila’s Los Hombres Domésticos. These plays attest to the shared concern between the Equatorial Guinean thinkers and other African intellectuals, while inviting the Equatorial Guinean audience to engage in a different conceptualization of the national realm. Although with different levels of intensity and directness, both texts offer a critical view of the impact of the dictatorial paradigm on the postcolonial history of Equatorial Guinea. First published in 1991 in the banished cultural magazine África 2000, Morgades’s elaboration of Sophocles’s Antigone seeks to locate Equatorial Guinea in the universal realm. Organized in three acts, corresponding to the dawn of independence, the elections, and the collapse of Francisco Macias’s brutal regime, Morgades’s Antígona recollects the feelings of hope among Equatorial Guineans at the moment of independence as well as the national deterioration at the hands of Macias. Consequently, the original Greek plot is modified and some important characters, such as Henon, are eliminated.

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Other important changes include the transfer of the role of Creón to that of the president (el presidente) and the incorporation of elements such drums and dancers.27 Equally, while one of Sophocles’s Antigone salient features is the use of the chorus to point moral questions derived from the actions of the characters; in Morgades’s Antígona, this structural aspect is substituted by the “voces.”28 The drama problematizes the idea of building a nation-state centered on one man’s power. Hence, at different moments in the play, like the one that follows, these “voices” state the president’s moral responsibilities, his privileges, and duties: VOICES: You have been chosen among your brothers to establish freedom, peace and justice in this land. [ . . . ] Do not inflate your heart with arrogance. You life will be elongated if you commit to the common good. The welfare of your people should be your fi rst thought as you wake up every morning of your existence including the last morning, when you take your leave to rest in the eternal night. (VOCES: Has sido escogido entre tus hermanos para establecer en esta tierra la libertad, la paz y la justicia. [ . . . ] No eleves tu corazón con la soberbia. Tu vida será alargada si te comprometes a hacer el bien común. El bien de tu pueblo es el primer pensamiento que deberá estar en tu mente todas las mañanas de tu existencia y la última mañana, al retirarte para el descanso eterno de la noche.) (240)29 Thus, the voices establish that the president is no longer an ordinary man; his life is to be dedicated to his people. When the president fails to perform according to these standards and begins the massive killing of his own people because of fear of a rebellion against him, the voices are quick to remind the audience of the universal morals against which the character of the president turns his back. Additionally, the voices announce the subsequent punishment: VOICES: Evil is stronger than you. He has defeated you. You have been destroyed at the fi rst tight spot. You people will perish and you with them. (VOCES: El mal es más fuerte que tú. Te ha vencido. Has acabado con el primer tropiezo. Tu pueblo acabará y tú con él.) (242) With a conspicuously deterministic tone, the allegory of Macias’s dictatorship in Antígona frames the lost opportunity to form a participatory society after independence. Nevertheless, this determinism fades away as the play advances. One of the key elements of this “weakening” of the deterministic mode lays in the fact that Morgades’s elaboration of this Greek tragedy seems to focus on the condemnation of the ill reasoning of the

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 151 tyrant. In Act III when Antígona confronts the presidente, who condemned her for burying the people he had sent to kill, she responds “with serenity and determination” (muy serena y decidida): ANTÍGONE: It is only just to obey the laws dictated to educate your people, for the good of the people. PRESIDENT: Isn’t it just to teach the people to obey the law? The law says: you shall not kill; and they wanted to kill me. ANTIGONE: You are alive. PRESIDENT: They were coming to kill me. ANTIGONE: I see you there, and they no longer exist. (ANTÍGONA: Sólo es justo obedecer las leyes que son dictadas para educar al pueblo, para el bien del pueblo. PRESIDENTE: ¿No es justo enseñar al pueblo a obedecer la ley? La ley dice: no matarás; y han querido matarme. ANTÍGONA: Estás vivo. PRESIDENTE: Venían a matarme. ANTÍGONA: Te veo allí, y ellos ya no existen.) (243) As in Sophocles’s Antigone, the Equatorial Guinean character of Antígona is a symbol of justice and human will that unveils faults in the tyrant’s logic. In contrast to Sophocles’s tragedy, however, the character of Antígona does not die, nor is the tyrant given a chance to reflect upon his mistakes. Young Antígona survives the tyrant, who dies alone, abandoned by his followers. Critics such as Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins suggest that the transplantation of the Helenic tragic trope as well as similar re-enactments of classical pieces in a non-Western, postcolonial context could be interpreted as an indirect contestation of the values of the old European empires.30 However, other critics, like Abiola Irele, propose a different application for Greek and Roman classic tropes in African literatures: Helenic and Roman civilizations have a direct significance for us as much as for any European . . . they made the conceptual breakthrough responsible in large part for the scientific and technological civilization which defi nes the modern world.31 Thus, Irele claims the right of African authors to access the tools of deductive thought that lie in Greek tragedy, not only to respond to colonial structures, but to analyze Africa’s own national circumstances and to discuss the political and moral elements around the founding of societies ruled by state policies. Expanding on his approach, we can begin to realize the analytical nature of the Equatorial Guinean Antígona. As in Sophocles’s Antigone, in Morgades’s tragedy the dialogues between the entities symbolizing the laws of tradition and those of the state open a debate about which of the two better ensure human welfare. Following

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Sophocles’s model, Morgades raises a moral question regarding the limit of the state’s authority over its people. Coincidentally, the same feature has been noted in Sophocles’s tragedies. Ángel María Garibay highlighted a contention in the classical texts between the state and the individual and, thus, an indication of the dangers of the state’s power: One of the major achievements of Sophocles’s tragic oeuvre is the balance achieved between submission to traditional and political norms, and human dignity. Man can rise against these norms if they are either damaging to him or go against higher values. (El equilibrio entre la sumisión a las normas tradicionales y políticas y de la dignidad del hombre, que puede oponerse a ellas, cuando le son nocivas y van contra principios más altos que atisba en su interior, es para mí el mejor de los dones de Sófocles en su obra trágica.)32 Consequently, the defense of human dignity defi nes the common ground between the classic tragedy and its Equatorial Guinean counterpart. Visibly, Morgades contextualizes this message in Equatorial Guinea’s history, specifically the period between 1968 and 1979 (Independence and Macias’s regime). Therefore, her play calls for resistance to the dictator. Moreover, her work suggests that this action of subversion is in harmony with God’s and nature’s laws. Thus, while Sophocles’s Antigone commits suicide as the only way to resist state laws, which transgress her morals, the Equatorial Guinean character of Antígona escapes death and is able to witnesses the death of the tyrant. Morgades’s turn to the image of an erupting volcano in the fi nal scene reinstates the local context of the play by symbolizing a ritual of passage in the Equatorial Guinean nation. 33 Seeing it in this manner, the eruption of the volcano conveys, in spite of the chaos, the necessary force to establish a new start. Antígona is able to flee from the fury of the eruption with the help of an anonymous character. The president, alone, remains on the collapsing stage. As the result of the eruption, a new order emerges at the end of the play. This new reality is described with a prophetic tone (reminiscent of the Bible’s “Book of Revelations”) by the voices: VOICES: And I saw a new sky and a new earth; because the previous earth and the previous sky have passed and the sea of blood no longer exists. I also saw a clean and vigorous city. I heard a voice that told my people: While you live under My Law, you will not be destroyed . . . (VOCES: Y vi un nuevo cielo y una nueva tierra; porque el cielo anterior y la tierra anterior han pasado, y el mar de sangre ya no existe. Ví también una limpia y sana ciudad. Oí una voz que decía al pueblo: Mientras vivas bajo Mi Ley no serás destruid . . . ) (245)

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 153 This last intervention of the voices seems to refer to a supranatural influence that incites the renovation of the Equatorial Guinean nation and, hence, reestablishes its dignity. However, the historical allusion to this moment of “salvation” is problematically linked to the beginning of the “new order” that substituted Macias’s regime: that of Obiang’s. From this standpoint, the analytical potential of the play is limited to that of the fi rst dictatorship. In spite of this restraint, the play introduces a declaration of the right of the population to confront oppression in the promise that liberty (represented in the play with Antígona) will prevail. On the other hand, the final words of the voices convey, once again with a biblical tone, a warning: “while you live under my law, you will not be destroyed.” In spite of the omission of any critical comment to the current regime, the play could obliquely suggest a warning to the new government to obey “universal” morals. The voices, thus, may be recognizing the new governmental cycle as one under probation, in which the new leader will have to prove his aptitude to rule. While Morgades presents an image of self-renewal based on respect for natural law (symbolized by the volcano) in correlation with Western biblical dogma, her play also demonstrates a conscientious appreciation of the Equatorial Guinean circumstance. The meta-dramatic critical apparatus that frames this reconstruction of the Greek tragedy justifies the identification of Morgades’s piece as part of African post-negritude drama as it underscores theater’s capability of historical and social reflection. In the end, Antígona reveals an objective of re-organizing a recent and traumatic past, while advocating—even if subtly—the civic right to demand fair treatment by of state leaders. While Morgades’s Antígona inscribes a vein of political assessment within Equatorial Guinean drama, Ávila Laurel’s Los Hombres Domésticos (“Domestic Men”) -awarded fi rst prize in the 1993 12 de Octubre contest34 —stands out as the only drama published at the beginning of the 1990s that openly charges the government for creating a nation inhabited by servants. Domestic Men comes forth as a call for civic action towards democracy by scrutinizing the state’s manipulation of the official policy of “traditional culture” and “national autonomy.” Arranged in seven acts, Ávila locates the action of the plot in the capital city of Malabo. As in Esono’s play, the main characters are bureaucrats, but they are far from being figures of success. Irgundio, Próculo, and Ergenio are three brothers who share a humble house with their wives and children. Irgundio, a proud government employee, is the head of the household. It was he who had obtained—by suspicious means—this residence, formerly inhabited by another family who could not pay “fees” to the government. However, in spite of this advantage given to them by the state, they live under great tension due to the scarcity of space and financial resources. The main action is triggered by a peculiar illness endured by one of Próculo’s brothers, who works as an anchor for the National Radio Station.35 The play signals the lack of functional public institutions and the

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need of international aid with the appearance of a doctor from Médecins sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders), a Luxembourgian called Frantz Weber. As part of his assessment of the cause of Próculo’s acute headaches, Weber asks him about his daily activities. When Próculo indicates that his headaches start after he reads the daily news over the radio, the doctor asks to see some of the news scripts. After reviewing some of them, Weber asserts to Próculo’s wife, in front of whole the family: “This is causing your husband’s illness.” (“Son la enfermedad de su marido”). Weber continues This news is false; its daily repetition on the Radio creates in a sensitive individual, who knows well that this news is contrary to reality, a repulsion or aversion. This situation can make him sick, and even cause him death. (Estas informaciones son falsas con la repetición diaria de ellas por la Radio, crea en un sujeto sensible una repulsa o aversión a unas versiones que de antemano conoce como contrarias a la realidad. Esto le puede hacer enfermar y hasta morir.) (25) Weber’s diagnosis suggests that Próculo’s job demands from him the reenactment of a farce. Thus, his job implies collaborating with the government in the manipulation of the population. The moment Irgundio hears the doctor’s antigovernment dose of the doctors diagnose on his brother’s illness; he decides to take Weber to a traditional tribunal, an ancient practice re-instituted by the Obiang’s regime. At this tribunal, responsible for solving family and local matters, Irgundio accuses Weber of having an affair with his wife, an accusation to which Frantz reacts in disbelief. To Irgundio’s surprise, the traditional chief refuses to take the case and directs the case further up in the chain of command. That is, he sends the case to the military judge, the “Superior Court,” where Frantz ends up in a cell and Irgundio is subjected to scorn at the end of the play. As the traditional chief explains to his aid, when the latter asks him why he relinquished the case: CHIEF: You don’t understand. If it happens that after our actions, the case gets to the ears of the President or the Ambassador of this white man’s country; the mercenaries would want to wash their hands and would come to me. Do you know what would happen if they were to transmit on a foreign radio station that a traditional chief charged and banned one of their own? The authorities of that country would act as if they had never thrown a stone. (JEFE: No entiendes. Si resulta que después de nuestras acciones el asunto llega al Presidente o al Embajador del país al que pertenece el blanco, los sicarios querrán lavarse las manos y vendrán a mí. ¿Sabes lo que pasaría? Si se informa por una emisora extranjera que

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 155 un Jefe Tradicional multó y expulsó a un súbdito de donde sea, las autoridades de este país harían como si fuese que nunca tiraron una piedra.) (26) The traditional chief’s reluctance to potentially spark international trouble by passing judgment on member of a non-governmental organization (NGO) informs the audience of the considerable infi ltration of foreign powers into Equatorial Guinea’s national realm. His reasoning also refers to the national government’s acquiescence to this international presence. This circumstance is further denounced in the play when the Chief and the Secretary engage in an openly critical dialogue about the situation of secondclass citizens that they endure in their own country, where foreigners enjoy more rights than nationals do. Their conversation ends as follows: SECRETARY: This country will be worse than South Africa if the thing does not change. CHIEF: This country will go down if we do not get out in the streets to demand a change. (SECRETARIO: Este país será peor que Sudáfrica si la cosa no cambia. JEFE: Este país se hundirá si no salimos a la calle a pedir el cambio.) (26) The call for civic involvement by the sentinel of traditional culture, the traditional chief (Jefe tradicional), signals a rejection of the romantic idea of tradition proposed by Obiang36 and emphasizes the need for the people’s participation in the still unfi nished formation of a modern state. On one hand, Ávila Laurel’s drama accounts for domestic issues (like poverty and corruption); on the other, it serves to locate such issues within the realm of the continued isolation of Equatorial Guineans from the rest of the world and the continued dependence on foreign humanitarian assistance. Ávila’s call for democracy and civil rights is in alignment with the post-negritude objectives described by Osofisan: “creating committed, responsible, patriotic and compassionate individuals out of their civic populations.”37 Furthermore, Domestic Men embraces the duty of popular theater in Africa expressed by Oga S. Abah as follows: [ . . . ] theatre needs to declare itself an active practice in favor of enlightenment and change. This means that theatre should no longer restrict itself to simply reflecting society. It should be engaged in mediating society; and even more, it should be involved in critical intervention. 38 Hence, Ávila’s drama calls for political consciousness, protest, and action. In the same vein as Morgades’s Antígona, his play draws attention to the Eurocentric dependence of the domestic policies, and calls for resistance

156 Elisa Rizo to that system. However, Domestic Men goes a step further in that it does not locate the plot in a mythical realm (like Morgades’s) but in a very real present that demands immediate action. The preceding observation of Equatorial Guinean drama during the 1990s suggests that the development of this genre is marked by two main tendencies: one that is tied to a national and transnational politic agenda and a second one that shows signs of questioning and confronting that agenda. In this framework, the official discourse of Equatorial Guinean culture and economic development, with its spread of propaganda and celebration of the ruling class, as seen in Esono’s play, has proven efficient only in the measure that it hinders the possibilities for a real improvement in the living conditions of the population and that it ensures the continuation of the authoritarian regime. On the other hand, Morgades’s and Ávila’s plays interrogate the possibilities of sustaining human dignity in a dehumanizing environment, echoing other African thinkers, such as Wole Soyinka.39 In the same way, the visited works of Morgades and Ávila share many points in common with the preoccupations of post-Negritude espoused by Osofisan, such as the desire to foster citizen awareness and civic action. This nuance of Equatorial Guinean drama within the broader realm of African letters—even if unintentional—marks a tendency within this national literature to move away from a discourse based on binary oppositions (traditional versus modern, Western versus African) into a more complex logic that centers on the advancement of the human and civil rights of marginalized populations. Equally, Equatorial Guinean drama emerges a site of reflection on the configuration of national formation within the context of present transnational capital interests that have evolved from colonial structures of power. Located, due to economic policies, in the margins of Francophone countries and, due to a colonial past, in the margins of Hispanism, Equatorial Guinean texts (dramatic and of all sorts) gain from a unique perception. However, in regard to its acknowledgment in Spanish-speaking areas, it faces at least two difficulties: one is due to this country’s far away location and the absence of Equatorial Guinean books in Latin American libraries and bookstores; the other difficulty is that of the remains of institutionalized racism in Latin American literary studies. It is a fact that, until very recently, within the Latin American literary canon, the production of AfroHispanic writers has been effaced to a corner. As Afro-Hispanic studies as a discipline continues to gain acceptance in the academy, it is key to incorporate the study of the Equatorial Guinean literature. Read alongside the literature written by Spanish American authors of African descent, the emergent Equatorial Guinean literary tradition provides the opportunity to examine several key themes, such as the experiences on both sides of the transatlantic foundation of colonial and capitalist systems in the Hispanic world, the construction of racialized societies, as well as the opportunity to learn from diverse epistemologies that emerge from other historically marginalized spaces, such as those of Amerindian literatures and the literature

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 157 produced by various diasporas in the Hispanic World. Indeed, Equatorial Guinean literature provides a juncture to analyze proposals for the dismantling of hegemonic practices of exclusion and, in that task, the bridging of literary traditions within the Hispanic World. NOTES 1. The present work focuses on written drama, not performance. 2. Lewis’ chapter on drama is dedicated to Morgades’s Antigone, Esono’s Man and Custom, and Avila Laurel’s Domestic Men and Imperfect Preterit. Lewis’ study provides a much needed background on these plays and points out stylistic and thematic characteristics, noting the impact of national and international politics in Domestic Men specifically (89). Although the present study does not include Imperfect Preterit, it adheres to Lewis’s, while it focuses on how the tension between local/national and transnational forces impacts works of the same Equatorial Guinean playwrights. Marvin Lewis, An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 82–100. 3. Thinh T. Minh-Ha, “No Master Territories,” in The Post Colonial Studies Reader, ed. B. Ashcroft, G. Griffits, and H. Tiffi n (London: Routledge, 1995), 216. 4. Man and Custom and Home Boys are the translations offered by Lewis for El Hombre y la Costumbre and Hombres Domésticos, respectively (ibid, 83 and 88). I also suggest the more literal translation of Domestic Men for Ávila’s play because the adjective “domestic” opens a larger realm of semantic associations, a typical feature of Ávila’s style. Aside these titles, all translations in this chapter are mine. 5. I am borrowing Mary Niles Maack’s definition of “cultural diplomacy”: “ . . . that aspect of diplomacy that involves a government’s efforts to transmit its national culture to foreign publics with the goal of bringing about understanding for national ideals and institutions as part of a larger attempt to build support for political and economic goals” Mary Niles Maack, “Books and Libraries as Instruments of Cultural Diplomacy in Francophone Africa during the Cold War,” Libraries and Culture 36, no. 1 (2003): 2 6. This approach can also be applied to narrative, essay, and poetry produced in Equatorial Guinea. 7. Max Liniger Goumaz, “Dictadura y complicidades,” in Misceláneas guineanas, ed. Editorial Tiempos Modernos (La Chaux: Editorial Tiempos Modernos, 2001), 155–158. 8. While not dealing with the Primer Congreso Internacional Hispánico-Africano de Cultura, Igor Cusack points out to other important factors that contributed to the construction of a national identity in Equatorial Guinea. Igor Cusack, “Hispanic and Bantu Inheritance, Trauma, Dispersal and Return: Some Contributions to a Sense of National Identity in Equatorial Guinea,” Nations and Nationalisms 5, no. 2 (1999): 207–236. 9. The inclusion of Equatorial Guinea in this organization is rather a formality related to the inclusion of this sub-Saharan nation in the Communauté Financière de l’Afrique Centrale (CFA) economic zone. Spanish is the population’s preferred former metropolitan language. According to John Lipski “Occasionally French surfaces, due to the presence of numerous natives of Cameroon, and the fact that thousands of Guineans took refuge in Cameroon

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10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

Elisa Rizo and Gabon during the Macias regime, and learned at least the rudiments of French. John Lipski, “The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea,” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8 (2004): 117. Latin American participants included writers of African descent such as Manuel Zapata Olivella and Nicómedes Santa Cruz. Gobierno de Guinea Ecuatorial, “Informe Final del Primer Congreso Internacional HispánicoAfricano de Cultura,” (Malabo” Ediciones Guinea, 1985), 33–34. The content of the report suggests that the conference was developed in common agreement between the government and the participants; in fact, Obiang signed the “dedicatoria” of the report (Ibid, 7–8). As suggested by its name, this conference had as its primary objective the definition of a cultural identity for Equatorial Guinea based on Hispanic and African legacies. Hence, the concluding section of its final report offers a series of recommendations to the government of Equatorial Guinea to foster such an identity. The participants of the Congreso recommended, first of all, that the Spanish language be preserved and promoted through the establishment of an Equatorial Guinean Academy of Language that would work in conjunction with the Spanish Royal Academy. Additionally, they recommended other actions, including the following: the study of oral traditions, the encouragement of study of all the African languages spoken in the territory, the legislation of intellectual property, the respect of Human Rights in the development of artistic and cultural endeavors; the creation and conservation of museums, the safeguarding of the rights of the elderly and women, protection of the environment, cooperation of the state with the Catholic Church in order to promote the cultural incardination of the Church of Equatorial Guinea, and finally, a request that United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and other international organizations support these proposals. Ibid, 65–73. This is a community of nations that affi liate themselves—whether historically or presently—with French language and culture (see statements and mission in http://www.francophonie.org). Accessed July 11, 2011. Abaga Edjang, “El Advenimiento del Euro y Sus Consecuencias Económicas para Guinea Ecuatorial” Cuadernos 2 (2002): 9. Jacqueline Irving offers an explanation of the impact that the European economy has on Africa in “For Better or for Worse: the Euro and the CFA Franc.” http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol12no4/euro.htm. Accessed July 11, 2011. Fernando Abaga specifically explains the relationship between Equatorial Guinea and the French treasury. Abaga, “El Advenimiento,” 12–13. In addition to French, as recently as July 2007, Portuguese was also declared an official language of Equatorial Guinea by President Obiang. It should also be pointed out that the presence of U.S. oil companies has had an impact in social dynamics within Equatorial Guinea. For a study that deals with one Equatorial Guinean drama, (not included in the present work) popular cultures, and the impact of the U.S. presence, see Elisa Rizo, “Teatro Guineoecuatoriano Contemporáneo,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 7, no. 3 (2006): 289–310. Mbare Ngom Fayé refers to these plays in addition to Ávila’s, “Pretérito Imperfecto” (Imperfect Preterite, 1991), to indicate the relative growth of the dramatic genre during the 1990s. M’bare N’gom, “Literatura Africana de Expresión Española,” Cuadernos 3 (2003): 131. United Nations, “Core Document Forming Part of the Reports of States Parties: Equatorial Guinea,” Human Rights Instruments, September 12 2003. http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/898586b1dc7b4043c1256a450044f331/9 e4b668cbed6413bc1256e31002e2d5f/$FILE/G0345121.pdf.

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 159 18. Obiang states that Equatorial Guinean intellectuals where those who: “ . . . sacrificing their personal, familial and material aspirations, were inspired by a permanent desire to contribute to the process of national re-building embraced by the government.” (“ . . . sacrificando sus aspiraciones personales, familiares y materiales, están animados por una voluntad permanente de contribuir en el proceso de la reconstrucción nacional emprendido por el Gobierno.Teodoro Obiang, Guinea Ecuatorial, País Joven (Malabo: Ediciones Guinea, 1985): 351. 19. According to Donato Ndongo, along with Trinidad Morgades’ Antigona, Esono’s play was staged in the Centro Cultural Francés in the 1990s. Donato Ndongo, “Seminario de Literatura de Literatura Africana Escrita en Español.” University of Missouri-Columbia. April 3, 2005. Seminar Lecture. 20. According to a report by Valente Bibang published in La Gaceta de Guinea Ecuatorial, Pancracio Esono was the Secretary of Cutlure of Equatorial Guinea until circa 2006. www.lagacetadeguinea.com/100/18.htm. Accessed July 11, 2011. 21. Obiang, Guinea Ecuatorial, 98. Obiang’s statement shows a remarkable alignment with one of the main objectives of the Bank of Central African States (BEAC): “to Africanize the structure and the decision making organisms of th Central Bank.” (qtd. in Abaga, “El Advenimiento del Euro,” 16) 22. Heriberto Ramón Álvarez, “La Cultura, Problema Fundamental de Colonización,” qtd. inOlegario Negrín Fajardo’s Historia de la Educación de Guinea Ecuatorial (Madrid: UNED, 1993): 145. 23. Ibid. 24. A Bantu practice that has been inaccurately paralleled with the practice of Western dowry. 25. For a defi nition of “coloniality of power,” see Anibal Quijano, “Colonialidad del Poder y Clasificación Social,” Journal of World-Systems Research 11, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2000): 342-86. For a more extensive analysis of Esono’s play, see Elisa Rizo, “Políticas culturales, formación de la identidad hispano-africana y ‘El hombre y la costumbre’” in Discursos poscoloniales y renegociaciones de las identidades negras, ed. Clement Akassi and Victorien Lavou (Perpignan: PU Perpignan, 2010), 201–213. 26. Femi Osofisan, “Theater and the Rites of ‘Post-Negritude’ Remembering,” Research in African Literatures 30, no. 1 (1999): 10. 27. This feature was noted by Kathleen McNerney in “A Guinean Antigone,” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8 (2004): 237. Importantly, García-Alvite has pointed out that the drums in this Antígona display a semantic code attached to the local oral tradition of Equatorial Guinea. Dosinda García-Alvite, “Womanism and Social Change in Trinidad Morgades Besari’s Antígona from Equatorial Guinea,” Cincinnati Romance Review 3 (Winter 2011): 118. 28. Adaptation noted by Lewis, Introduction to the Literature, 91. 29. All quotes come from the 2004 reprint of this drama in the Arizona Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (2004). 30. Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 38–42. 31. Abiola Irele, “In Praise of Alienation,” in The Surreptitious Speech, ed. Y. Mudimbe (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1992), 223. 32. Angel Maria Garibay, Introduction to Las siete tragedias (Mexico: Editorial Porrua, 1998), XIII. 33. As in the fictional city of Morgades’ drama, Malabo (the capital of Equatorial Guinea) is garlanded by a volcano (Pico Basilé).

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34. This contest was sponsored by the Centro Cultural Hispano-Guineano (or Center of Hispanic-Guinean Culture). In 1994, this play appeared in “Africa 2000,” the cultural magazine of the extinct organization. More than a decade after its publication, the theatrical group from the Instituto La Salle Lea (from Bata) staged “Domestic Men” at the Malabo and the Bata locations of the Centro Cultural Español (or, Spanish Cultural Center) in 2005. This event marks a notable moment in the cultural environment of Equatorial Guinea, given the great restrictions of free speech in the country. Unfortunately, the play was only staged once in each city (November 25, 2005 in Malabo and February 11, 2005 in Bata). 35. The few means of communication that exist in the country are subjected to censorship. 36. “Democratic Change” (El Cambio Democrático) in Obiang’s Guinea Ecuatorial, País Joven 98. 37. Femi Osofisan, “Theater and the Rites of ‘Post-Negritude’ Remembering,” 6. 38. Oga S. Abah, “Perspectives in Popular Theatre: Orality as a Defi nition of New Realities” in Theatre and Performance in Africa, ed. Eckhard Breitinger (Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 2003), 81. 39. Soyinka focuses on the systematic suppression of human dignity of different national governments across the globe. Wole Soyinka, Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World (Random House, 2005).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abaga Edjang, Fernando. “El Advenimiento del Euro y Sus Consecuencias Económicas para Guinea Ecuatorial.” Cuadernos: Centro de Estudios Africanos de la Universidad de Murcia 2 (2002): 9–39. Abah, Oga S. “Perspectives in Popular Theatre: Orality as a Defi nition of New Realities.” Theatre and Performance in Africa. Ed. Breitinger, Eckhard. Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies, 2003. 79–99. Ávila Laurel, Juan Tomás. “Hombres Domésticos.” África 2000 16 (1994): 20–28. Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (AECI). Cooperación Cultural y Científica. “Memoria de Actividades 2005.” Red de Centros Culturales. Representación “Los Hombres Domésticos.” Centro Cultural Español de Bata, November 25, 2005. http://www.aeci.es/09cultural/03prom/memoria/fichacc.a sp?Registro=193&NumActividad=1339. Bibang, Valente. “Tamtam Bantú en el Festival Cultural Venezolano con los pueblos de África.” La Gaceta de Guinea Ecuatorial. 100 (Feb 2006). www.lagacetadeguinea.com/100/18.htm. Accessed July 11, 2011. Cusak, Igor. “Hispanic and Bantu Inheritance, Trauma, Dispersal and Return: Some Contributions to a Sense of National Identity in Equatorial Guinea.” Nations and Nationalism 5, no. 2 (1999): 207–236. Esono Mitogo, Pancrasio. El Hombre y la Costumbre. Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), 1990. Garibay, Ángel María. Introduction to Sophocles’ Las Siete Tragedias, México: Editorial Porrúa, 1998. García-Alvite, Dosinda. “Womanism and Social Change in Trinidad Morgades Besari’s Antígona from Equatorial Guinea.” The Cincinnati Romance Review 30 (Winter 2011): 117–129. Gilbert, Helen and Joanne Tompkins. Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.

Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World 161 Gobierno de Guinea Ecuatorial. “Informe Final del Primer Congreso Internacional Hispánico-Africano de Cultura.” Malabo: Ediciones Guinea, 1985. Irele, Abiola. “In Praise of Alienation.” The Surreptitious Speech. Ed. Y. Mudimbe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 210–224. Irving, Jacqueline. “For Better or for Worse: The Euro and the CFA Franc.” African Recovery 12.4 (1999). United Nations website. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/ geninfo/afrec/vol12no4/euro.htm. Accessed July 11, 2011. Lewis, Marvin A. An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2007. Liniger Goumaz, Max. “Dictadura y Complicidades.” Misceláneas Guineanas. Tiempos Próximos (eds). La Chaux: Editorial Tiempos Próximos, 2001. 155–158. Lipski, John. “The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8 (2004): 115–130. McNerney, Kathleen. “A Guinean Antigone.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8 (2004): 235–238. Minh-Ha, Trinh T. “No Master Territories.” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Ed. B. Ashcroft, G. Griffits, and H. Tiffi n. Routledge: London, 1995. 215–218. Morgades Besari, Trinidad. “Antígona.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 8 (2004): 239–245. Negrín Fajardo, Olegario. Historia de la Educación de Guinea Ecuatorial. Madrid: UNED, 1993. Ngom Fayé, Mbaré. “Literatura Africana de Expresión Española.” Cuadernos 3 (2003): 111–135. Niles Maack, Mary. “Books and Libraries as Instruments of Cultural Diplomacy in Francophone Africa during the Cold War.” Libraries and Culture 36, no. 1 (2003): 58–86. Obiang, Teodoro. Guinea Ecuatorial, País Joven. Malabo: Ediciones Guinea, 1985. Osofisan, Femi. “Theather and the Rites of ‘Post Negritude’ Remembering.” Research in African Literatures 30, no. 1 (1999): 1–11. Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, http://www.francophonie.org/. Accessed July 11, 2011. Quijano, Anibal. “Colonialidad del poder y Clasificación Social.” Journal of World-Systems Research 11, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2000): 342–386. Rizo, Elisa. “Teatro Guineoecuatoriano Contemporáneo: el Mibili en ‘‘El Fracaso de las Sombras.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 7, no. 3 (November, 2006): 289–310. . “Políticas culturales, formación de la identidad hispano-africana y ‘El hombre y la costumbre’.” Discursos poscoloniales y renegociaciones de las identidades negra. Clément Akassi (ed. and intro.) and Victorien Lavou (ed.) Marges 32. Perpignan, France: PU de Perpignan, 2010. pp. 201–213. Soyinka, Wole. Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005. United Nations. “Core Document Forming Part of the Reports of States Parties: Equatorial Guiena.” Human Rights Instruments. September 12, 2003. http:// www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/898586b1dc7b4043c1256a450044f331/9e4b668c bed6413bc1256e31002e2d5f/$FILE/G0345121.pdf. Accessed July 11, 2011.

Part III

Defining and Redefining Identities in Latin American Literature

Introduction to Part III Antonio D. Tillis

Probably one of the most convoluted and divergent issues in the Americas is the construction of identity, which historically has posed particular challenges to Latin America. The Western historical understanding of the creation of “identities” in a Latin American context is aligned with the history of the New World encounter and the “discovery” of (an) other species of humans and the subsequent migration of yet another. In their varied voyages into the new territories, European explorers devise a rubric for distinguishing themselves from the encountered and/or imported “other.” Often formulated in a manner to render European socio-cultural superiority based on valuing and devaluing observed and practiced normality, the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch, to name a few, were to establish criteria for identifying the encountered indigenous populations, the imported African populations, and the miscegenated progeny of interracial/interethnic mixing. It is a part of the public intellectual discourse that European explorers of the New World hegemonically instituted a system of classification that distinguished “them” from the encountered and hybridized “other.” This process created a Western system of identity construction that has been wrought with post-colonial vestiges relating to power, resistance, race, ethnicity, and gender social positioning. However, the aforementioned is not an attempt to essentialize the process of identity formation in the Americas. It serves to complicate the issue with respect to how one is defi ned and redefi ned as presented in the four chapters that comprise this fi nal section of the volume. “Black, Woman, Poor: The Many Identities of Conceição Evaristo” by Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves, delves into the creation and recreation of the Black Brazilian woman, as explored in the works of Conceição Evaristo, a leading voice in contemporary Brazilian literature. Through an analysis of Evaristo’s poetic works, Gonçalves demonstrates how Evaristo’s poetic voices recapitulate the evolutionary process of defining oneself as a racial, gendered, and social self within the social strata of Brazilian racial, gender, and class politics. Gonçalves’s analysis presents the tripartite struggle faced by numerous Black Brazilian women in an attempt to “locate,” define, and empower themselves within the socially constrictive confines of Brazilian society.

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Dawn Duke in “The Triumph Within: Carolina Maria de Jesus and Strategies for Black Female Empowerment in Brazil” continues the focus on Black women in Brazilian society. Duke’s examination of the socio-political implications of race, class, and gender in the work of Carolina Maria de Jesus foregrounds the discussion on Black Brazilian women, who happen to be “slum dwellers” and their access (or lack thereof) to power and social mobility in Brazil. For Duke, Maria de Jesus’s work offers insight into the plight of poor Black women and how their socioeconomic and political situations impact their identity as being women, Black, and poor. In the third chapter, Emmanuel Harris, III, shifts to Puerto Rico in “Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega: Identity, Gender and the Subversive Portrayal of Mestizaje.” Through a critical analysis of Vega’s work, Harris shows how Vega compromises the established normative understanding of national identity in contemporary Puerto Rico. Through interjections of Black cultural legacies in national Puerto Rican cultural expressions, Vega’s work centers the contributions and history of Africans and Africadescendants to/in the island nation. In so doing, Vega’s texts forge a “redefi ning” of the construction of national identity in Puerto Rico. Lesley Feracho, in the fi nal chapter, creates a popular culture dialogic in terms of how identity is expressed in rap and hip-hop lyrics from Cuba, Brazil, and Puerto Rico. Reading the presented rap artists as modern-day African Diaspora griots, Feracho deconstructs the poetic voices of male and female cultural performers in an attempt to expose how each challenges the accepted prescriptive for national identity. The four cultural performers, artists, under examination in the chapter demonstrate the narrow confi nes of national identity and expose the manner in which national defi nitions of Cubanness, Puerto Ricanness, and Brazilanness have been exclusionary and a source of marginalization for certain segments of the population, particularly national subjects of African ancestry. Rap and hip-hop lyrics as performance poetry is presented and analyzed by Feracho to disclose issue pertaining to ownership of and membership into the established social paradigms that constitute national identity in Latin America. Queried in the four chapters in the section is the critical perspective on how one becomes “black” in a Latin American context. Through literary and other forms of cultural analysis, the four critical works in the fi nal section of the volume focus on how identity, relative to race, class and gender, is constructed by, for, and about people of mixed ancestry in Latin America. Interesting is the ontological understanding of what is means to be “Black” within certain geographical situations and the socio-cultural matter used to forge such a shift in consciousness. Through varied literary texts, Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves, Dawn Duke, Emmanuel Harris, III, and Lesley Feracho render critical analysis on identity construct in Latin America.

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Black, Woman, Poor The Many Identities of Conceição Evaristo Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves ESPERA-SE QUE A MULHER NEGRA SEJA CAPAZ DE DESEMPENHAR DETERMINADAS FUNÇÕES, COMO COZINHAR MUITO BEM, DANÇAR, CANTAR, MAS NÃO ESCREVER. ÀS VEZES ME PERGUNTAM: “VOCÊ CANTA?” E EU DIGO: “NÃO CANTO NEM DANÇO” (It is expected that black women be able to perform certain tasks, like cook very well, dance, and sing, but not write. Sometimes people ask me: “do you sing?” and I say: “I don’t sing nor dance”) (“Eu não sei cantar,” Evaristo)

The classical concept of Diaspora is associated with the Jewish exile experience, with pain, with suffering. It is also applied to the great involuntary exodus of Black Africans brought to the New World via slavery creating one dimension of the Black Diaspora. This perception of Diaspora as a traumatic experience implies a feeling of loss resulting from the inability to return to the land of origin, engendering a tension between two places: the place of origin and the new, exiled home place. This tension shapes what is commonly referred to as the diasporic subject: one who by consequence becomes a hybrid subject. Hybridity in this context does not refer to any racial composition of the population, but to a process of cultural translation, which is never completed but in constant negotiation, disrupting any “fi xed” model of cultural identity. First, we must consider how these negotiation processes take place and second, the consequences of the Diaspora experience to fi xed models of cultural identity. It is in this sense that we relate Diaspora to nation deformation. That is, the diasporic condition disrupts the idea of nation-state because it disrupts the classical idea of the “nation” as a homogenous society and questions all forms of nationalism related to homogeneity. Diaspora, then, for our purposes must be considered as “a process which has an impact on the way people live and upon the society in which they are living” (Kalra et al. 2005: 29). In so doing, the consciousness of the diasporic condition questions every single form of belonging because it is “entirely a product of cultures and histories in collision and dialogue” (Kalra et al. 2005: 30). In constant collision and in constant dialogue, one could add.

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If we relate the situation of Afro-Brazilian women to our discussion on Diaspora, we can affirm, as shown in the epigraph to this text, that even in the twenty-first century the construction of an Afro-Brazilian female identity is a key question to be observed. The epigraph above shows us the “lack of recognition, respect, and value accorded to Afro-Brazilian women” (Caldwell 1). Even in the Portuguese language, the country’s official discourse, in the expression “mulher negra” (Black woman), the adjective “black” carries the implicit connotative signifiers of dirty, melancholic, doomed, and so on. Additionally, principles of equity have not been a part of Afro-Brazilian women daily lives. During slavery, Black women in Brazil, even though necessary for labor, were seen as objects that could be bought and sold. After the abolition of slavery in 1888, national identity projects did not include these women. They remained at the margins. However, it eventually became necessary to “integrate” Blacks into the narratives national discourse. This necessitated inclusion was at the expense of the manipulation, subordination, and stereotyping of their identity, hence, the imaginary creation of the Afro-Brazilian subject. In her discussion of cultural transvestism as a strategy of manipulation Jossiana Arroyo states that Apesar de la presencia inminente y necesaria de ese cuerpo, estas narrativas conforman una serie de estrategias para contenerlo, disciplinarlo o sublimarlo. Con ese fi n se manipulan estratégicamente la raza, el género y la sexualidad en la construcción del imaginario nacional. (5) (In spite of the imminent and necessary presence of that body of people, these narratives conform to a series of strategies to contain them. Discipline them or subjugate them. With this end, race, gender and sexuality are manipulated within the construction of the imaginary nation.) Today, Afro-Brazilian women still have the lesser paid jobs and, despite the fact that many have obtained university degrees, the market still rejects them because of “appearance.” Their history is a history of silences and of being silenced, and despite their large numbers, they remain invisible. The historical marginalization of Afro-Brazilian women calls for the need to attack all forms of silencing, of invisibility in an effort to rise and construct new, alternative identities from within. Identity, for our purpose, follows Kabengele Munanga’s thought (2006). Based on Craig Calhoun’s theory, he proposes that “a identidade é um processo de construção de sentidos” (19; identity is a process of constructing meaning) from different sources, and “um mesmo indivíduo, um mesmo ator coletivo pode possuir muitas identidades” (19; a person or a group can possess various identities). Calhoun considers that the social construction of identity is based on relations of power and distinguishes three types of identity originating in different ways. The fi rst type, “legitimizing identity,” is elaborated by society-dominant institutions, with the purpose of

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understanding and rationalizing its domination on social agents. “A identidade legitimadora cria uma sociedade civil, isto é, um conjunto de organizações e instituições, uma série de autores sociais estruturados e organizados, reproduzindo, até quando é conflitual, a identidade que racionaliza as fontes de dominação estrutural.” (qtd in Munanga 21; legitimizing identity creates a civil society, that is, a group of organizations and institutions, a series of structured and organized social agents that reproduces, even when it conflicts, the identity that rationalizes the sources of structural domination). Social actors that fi nd themselves in inferior or devaluated positions in society produce the second, “resistance identity.” As a mechanism of resistance and survival, they resist the principles that rule society. It usually leads to the formation of communities. It “elabora configurações de resistência coletiva contra uma opressão que, sem isso, seria insuportável” (21; elaborates collective resistance configurations against oppression). Finally, the third type of identity is “identity-project,” where identity is built based upon the cultural material at their disposal. This form of identity construction “produz o desejo de ser um indivíduo, de criar uma história pessoal, de dar sentido a um conjunto de experiências da vida individual” (21; produces the desire to be an individual, to create a personal history, to give sense to a numer of experiences of private life). Identity is, then, constructed and reconstructed with the purpose of defi ning one’s position in society and, consequently, changing its structure. In addition, Munanga proposes that “essa pluralidade de identidades pode engendrar tensões e contradições, tanto na imagem que o indivíduo tem de si como na sua ação no seio da sociedade” (19; this plurality of identities can generate tensions and contradictions, either in the image that the person has of him/ herself or in his/her behavior in society). It is “pela tomada de consciência das diferenças, e não pelas diferenças em si, que se constrói a identidade” (20; when we become conscious of the differences, not because of the differences, that identity is constructed). The literary representation of Afro-Brazilian women is still anchored in the images of their past as slaves, not adequate to the aesthetic model that prevails in Brazilian society. Literature, as well as history, produces an erasure of those women, thus minimizing or obliterating the importance of an African matrix in Brazilian society. Therefore, we can read the literature produced by Afro-Brazilian women as a tool of empowerment, as Thrin Minh-ha proposes, a stage of resistance of the diasporic subject, a place where “Diaspora claims are made, unmade, contested, and reinforced” (Walters xi). It is where the diasporic subject negotiate, re-negotiates his/ her identities, and where his/her alternative identities are shaped. In this essay, I will examine how Afro-Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo constructs her identities: that is, how she rises from invisibility and transforms marginalization into empowerment. I will concentrate my analysis exclusively on a number of poems from a collection entitled Poemas de Recordação e Outros Movimentos, published in 2008.

170 Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves Poetry is a way to narrate the world. More than that, it is above all a revelation, an idealistic desire to build another world. Through poetry, the world that could be is narrated. And by longing for a new world, poetry manifests dissatisfaction with the pre-established order. (203) These are the words of Maria da Conceição Evaristo Brito, or Conceição Evaristo, as she is known in the literary milieu. Conceição Evaristo was born in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, a state located in the southeast region of Brazil. She grew up in the shantytown “Pindura Saia” until 1971, when she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she now lives. Poet, novelist, and short story writer, she has contributed with poetry and short stories to several issues of Cadernos Negros, a publication dedicated to Afro-Brazilian literature. Ponciá Vicêncio, her fi rst novel was published in 2003 and has been translated into English. In June 2006 she published her second novel, Becos da Memória, and in 2008 her book of poems Poemas de Recordação e Outros Movimentos was fi nally published. Evaristo’s work examines complex social issues, such as life in the shanty-towns, prejudice, and exclusion. But she also speaks of love, of hope,and of family. Her feminine perspective shows her constant search and her different strategies to fight against prejudice, oppression, and social injustice. It is through the thematic focus of her work that she takes one step further in the struggle for social and political recognition. It is through her work and the themes she writes about that she re-constructs and negotiates her identities; the identities of a woman, the identities of a Black woman, and the identities of a Black poor woman. Writing for Conceição Evaristo represents an act of resistance, as she states As escritoras negras buscam inscrever no corpus literário brasileiro imagens de uma auto-representação. A escre(vivência) das mulheres negras explicita as aventuras e desventuras de quem conhece uma dupla condição que a sociedade brasileira teima em querer inferiorizada, mulher e negra. (205) (black women writers seek to inscribe in the Brazilian literary corpus images of self-representation. The writing of black women explicit the adventures and disadventures of those who know the double condition which Brazilian society insists on inferiorizing, woman and black.) (205) Zilá Bernd in her book Literatura e Identidade Nacional (1988) affirms that it is the discourse of discriminated groups that “funcionam como o elemento que vem preencher os vazios da memória coletiva e fornecer os pontos de ancoramento do sentimento de identidade, essencial ao ato de auto-afirmação das comunidades ameaçadas pelo rolo compressor da assimilação” (13; functions as the element that fulfills the empty spaces of collective memory and provides supporting points of identity belonging, which is essential to

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the act of self-affirmation of communities threatened by assimilation). Following the same line of thought, Maria Nazareth Soares Fonseca states that “as vozes marginalizadas, ao serem reproduzidas pelo traço da escrita, provocam intensos ruídos na transmissão oficial dos fatos ou na forma como o social é construído” (11; the marginalized voices, as they are reproduced in writing, provoke intense interferences in the official transmission of facts or in the way which the social is constructed). Soares Fonseca continues, “ao se permitir que os silenciados ocupem lugares delineados pela escrita, dá-se vazão ao reprimido que emerge rasurando a cena dos grandes feitos para comporem outras histórias” (12; by allowing the silenced to occupy places portrayed by writing, the repressed is liberated, and the scene of great tasks is erased through the composition of new histories). In her proposal of a “new mestiza consciousness, which moves constantly out of crystallized forms” (706), Glória Anzaldúa points out a solution: The work of a mestiza consciousness is to break down the subjectobject duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and the collective consciousness is the beginning of a long struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, bring us to the end of rape, of violence, of war. (2214) Thus, marked by forms of domination in which the paternalism of our societies and the colonial system are remarkable, these women, Evaristo in our case, as they seek through their texts strategies to revert this situation, they are at the same time reconstructing themselves. Writing in this case should be seen as a constant process of self-(re)defi nition. For this reason, the construction of a Black feminine subject is the fi rst aspect of our interest in this text. In “Eu-mulher,” we perceive a poetic voice that recognizes the importance of being a woman: she is the strength that moves the world, the one who generates life. Through images such as blood and seed, we see life. Nonetheless, she is aware that the world is still masculine: life is inaugurated in a low voice; the world is not prepared for her and for what she has to say. Images of silence and unspoken words show us that the female voice is still silenced. Her desires are vague and her hopes, barely insinuated. Eu-mulher em rios vermelhos inauguro a vida. em baixa voz violento os tímpanos do mundo. (18)

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Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves (I-woman in red rivers inaugurate life. in a low voice violate the tympanum of the world) (18)

In like manner, “A noite não adormece nos olhos das mulheres” (Night never falls in the eyes of women) conveys the image of women as those who generate life, those who resist patiently through time. The poet brings to women the responsibility to preserve memory and the need to resist, because resistance is a characteristic of the peoples of the Diaspora. But resistance happens in a different way: patiently. Patience is, then, a powerful weapon that will bring freedom. A noite não adormece nos olhos das mulheres a lua fêmea, semelhante nossa, em vigília atenta vigia a nossa memória. (21) A noite não adormecerá Jamais nos olhos das fêmeas pois do nosso sangue-mulher de nosso líquido lembradiço cada gota que jorra um fio invisível e tônico pacientemente cose a rede de nossa milenar resistência. (21) (Night never falls in the eyes of women the female moon, similar to us in alert vigilance watches our memory. Night will never fall in the eyes of females because from our blood-woman from our remembering fluids in each drop that pours an invisible and tonic thread patiently sews the net of our millennial resistance.) (21)

Among the strategies used by Evaristo, we can highlight what Carole Boyce Davies calls autobiographical subjectivity. According to Boyce Davies, “the autobiographical subjectivity of Black Women is one of the ways in which

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speech is articulated and geography redefi ned” (21). She goes on to state that: “the rewriting of home becomes a critical link in the articulation of identity. It is a play of resistance to domination which identifies where we come from, but also locates home in its many transgressive and disjunctive experiences” (115). Thus, migration creates the desire for home, which in turn produces the rewriting of home. Homesickness or homelessness, the rejection of home or the longing for home become motivating factors in this rewriting. Home can only have meaning once one experiences a level of displacement from it. Still home is contradictory, contested space, a locus for misrecognition and alienation. (113) Conceição Evaristo in “Mineiridade” sees her place of origin, Minas Gerais, as an ideal place left behind. The use of what we could call vocabulary from Minas, or regional lexicology. Words such as “trem” and “uai,” of food generally associated with that state and the reference to the way of being of the people born in Minas, even stereotyped, take the poetic “I” back to an idealized place, which is not necessarily the real one. It is this sensation of exile that puts the female poetic voice, or “I” in conflict with her perceived reality: Quando chego de Minas trago sempre na boca um gosto de terra. Chego aqui com o coração fechado, Um “trem” esquisito no peito. Meus olhos chegam divagando saudades, meus pensamentos cheios de “uais” e esta cidade aqui me machuca me deixa maciça, cimento e sem jeito. (When I arrive from Minas I always bring a taste of sand in my mouth I arrive here heart broken, A weird feeling in my chest. My eyes arrive wandering homesickness my thoughts full of “uais” and this city here hurts me leaves me hard cement and without resolve.)

This feeling of dislocation, coupled with nostalgic longing is a characteristic of the literature of the Diaspora, in general associated with physical alienation of population, with slavery, with the imposition of colonial language. In the new “home” space, the desire for the metaphoric return

174 Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves and the sadness of the current reality shape the poetic tone. Laced with terminology of region or place, the poetic voice transmits vestiges of “home” into the exiled location as a means of linguistic survival and familiar recuperation. Another aspect to be observed in Evaristo’s poetry and in Afro-Brazilian poetry in general is a revision of history and “a tentativa de preencher os espaços vazios deixados pela historiografia tradicional” (Bernd, Introdução à Literature Negra 80; the attempt to fulfi ll the empty spaces left by traditional historiography). Pereira, in her discussion of Afro-Brazilian literature, proposes that “é fundamental pensarmos o processo da escravidão e seus desdobramentos como paradigma de uma herança cultural cujas marcas estão inscritas nos diferenes âmbitos que dizem respeito à cultura brasileira” (121; it is fundamental to think the slavery process and its consequences as paradigms of a cultural heritage whose marks are inscribed at different aspects that relate to Brazilian culture). Evaristo punctuates the history of Afro-Brazilians, recovering signs of slavery, but transforming them into ways of a new birth, turning positive every negative aspect of slavery. In “Todas as Manhãs” (Every Morning), we perceive such aspects: Todas as manhãs junto ao nascente dia ouço minha voz banzo, âncora dos navios de nossa memória. E acredito, acredito sim que os nossos sonhos protegidos pelos lençóis da noite ao se abrirem um a um no varal de um novo tempo escorrem as nossas lágrimas fertilizando toda a terra onde negras sementes resistem remanhecendo esperanças entre nós. (13) (Every morning at dawn I hear my banzo voice anchor of the ships of our memory. And I believe, yes I believe that our dreams protected by the sheets of night when they open one by one in the line of a new time our tears will drop fertilizing the land where black seeds resist re-morning hopes among us.) (13)

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In the poem, we notice various themes that could be considered leitmotifs in Evaristo’s poetry: the need to preserve memory, the need to resist, the reversion of symbols, and, most important, the hope of the Afro-Brazilian population. The revision of official history through a feminine voice is another predominant thematic point observed in Evaristo’s poetry. At this point, it is important to recall the observations by Andréas Huyssen on the flourishing of the discourse of memory. According to the author, “um dos fenômenos culturais e políticos mais surpreendentes dos anos recentes é a emergência da memória como uma das preocupações culturais e políticas centrais das sociedades ocidentais” (2000: 9: one of the most surprising cultural and politicas phenomenon of the recent years is the emergence of memory as main cultural and political preocupation of western societies). Besides that, still according to Huyssen: discursos de memória de um novo tipo emergiram pela primeira vez no ocidente depois na década de 1960, no rastro da descolonização e dos novos movimentos sociais em busca por histórias alternativas e revisionistas. (2000: 11) (memory discourses of a new type emerged for the fi rst time in the West after the sixties, on the wave of decolonization and of the new social movements in search for alternative histories) As he continues, Huyssen interjects the vague interpretation of memory discourses in the global. He states ao mesmo tempo, é importante reconhecer que embora os discursos de memória possam parecer, de certo modo, um fenômeno global, no seu núcleo eles permanecem ligados às histórias de nações e estados específicos . . . o lugar político das práticas de memória é ainda nacional e não pós-nacional ou global. (2000: 13) (at the same time, it is important to recognize that although the discourses of memory may seem, in a way, a global phenomenon, in its nucleus they are related to specific histories of nations and states . . . the political place of memory practices is still national and not post-national or global) “Vozes-Mulheres” (Voices-Women) is a powerful poem in which the history of her family is recovered. This history symbolizes the history of AfroBrazilian women in general. The poem begins with the image of her great grandmother, a child brought as a slave to the New World. Her cries for her lost childhood are heard in the hold of the ship: A voz de minha bisavó ecoou criança nos porões do navio.

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Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves Ecoou lamentos de uma infância perdida. (10) (The voice of my great-grandmother echoed child in the holds of the ship. Echoed cries of a lost childhood.) (10)

The stanza above recollects the history of the middle passage, directly connecting the poetic voice and grandmother to Africa, as slaves are brought to Brazil for the slave trade. The “echoes” metaphorically recall the wailings of numerous grandmothers trapped in this horrific circumstance. Finally, the “echoed cries of the lost childhood” speaks to the disrupture, as the exiled subject undergoes a development detachment from home, representing another manifestation of loss. The image of her grandmother, an obedient slave whose voice only new the word “yes” is recovered in the poem, as seen in the following stanza: A voz de minha avó ecoou obediência aos brancos-donos de tudo. (10) (The voice of my grandmother echoed obedience to the whites-owners of everything.) (10)

This stanza is representative of the female conditioning under the terrorism of slavery. The “echoed obedience” poetically demonstrates the subservient positionality of the Black female subject. Interestingly, the reader is left to critically fill the silences of this experience as the white male slave master is interjected. And, in so doing, the critical reading of “echoed obedience” and “of everything” lends to a reading of the rape and pillage of the Black female body, of which she has no ownership or authority. As the poem continues, the generational focus shifts to mother. Her mother, as many Afro-Brazilian women, were only allowed second-hand jobs such as cooks, servants, and cleaning women; the one that will take care of the ‘master’s’ house and clothes. But this woman, after a day of work, goes back to the shantytown, the only place she can afford to live. Favela, for Evaristo, is the contemporary senzala, the slave-quarters, a place of suffering, of poverty, but also a place of resistance. Therefore, it is in the image of her mother that the fi rst signs of resistance are perceptible; still her voice is very low: A voz de minha mãe ecoou baixinho revolta

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no fundo das cozinhas alheias debaixo das trouxas roupagem suja dos brancos pelo caminho empoeirado (10) rumo à favela. (The voice of my mother echoed revolt in a very low tone in the back of somebody else’s kitchens under the bundle dirty clothes of the whites in the dusty way to the shantytown.) (10)

Yet, her voice is still astonished with society’s social injustices. Images of blood and hunger depict the violence suffered by the Afro-Brazilian population: A minha voz ainda ecoa versos perplexos com rimas de sangue e fome. (10) (My voice still echoes astonished verses with rhymes of blood and hunger.) (10)

But, it is through her daughter, symbol of past, present, and future, the one who carries within herself the history of all Afro-Brazilian women, that the sounds of freedom will be heard. This generation and the generations yet to come will demand better life conditions for Afro-Brazilian women: A voz de minha filha recorre todas as nossas vozes recolhe em si as vozes mudas caladas engasgadas nas gargantas. A voz de minha filha recolhe em si a fala e o ato. O ontem—o hoje—o agora. Na voz de minha filha se fará ouvir a ressonância o eco da vida-liberdade. (10–11)

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Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves (The voice of my daughter retraces all of our voices it gathers in itself the mute silenced voices choked in the throats. The voice of my daughter retraces in itself the word and the act. Yesterday—today—now. In the voice of my daughter the echo of life-freedom will be heard.) (10–11)

The image of the woman warrior, the one who is in control of her body and her needs, in search for pleasure, denouncing women exclusion, but at the same time living her femininity, as we see in “Meu Corpo Igual” (My Same Body). Na escuridão da noite meu corpo igual fere perigos adivinha recados assobios e tantãs. Na escuridão igual meu corpo noite abre vulcânico a pele étnica que me reveste. Na escuridão da noite meu corpo igual bóia, lágrimas, oceânico crivando buscas cravando sonhos aquilombando esperanças na escuridão da noite. (15) (In the darkness of the night my same body wounds dangers guesses messages whistles and drums (tantãns). In the same darkness my night body

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opens volcanic the ethnic skin that covers me. In the darkness of the night my same body floats, tears, oceanic screening searches plunging dreams marooning hopes in the darkness of night.) (15)

In “My same body,” we perceive the necessity to break with those manipulative strategies referred to in the beginning of this text, from subordinated, the poetic “I” is now in control, realizing the transformation of self. This female voice communicates her dreams and her desires through whistles and drums, as runaway slaves. This aspect takes the reader back to slavery, but the “fight” here is within herself. As her identity was stolen “in the darkness of the night,” it is “in the same darkness” where the female poetic voice must find, locate, and reconcile herself to her past and present, while forging a new future. The refusal of the marginalized position to which the Afro-Brazilian population is subjected becomes the focus of “Canto 1” (Song 1). At the same time, the poem also condemns the violence that has taken Brazil, especially in the shantytowns, where the majority of the Afro-Brazilian population lives. “Lost bullets” (balas perdidas) as references in the stanzas below, signify people that are killed by accident either because they were caught in the middle of a shooting or simply because a stray bullet “gets lost” and kills them. It shows the need to speak up instead of suffering in silence, and this voice, no longer silenced, cries for freedom. The canto, or song goes: O silêncio mordido rebela e revela nossos ais e são tantos os gritos que a alva cidade, de seu imerecido sono, desperta em pesadelo. (29) E pedimos que as balas perdidas percam o rumo e não façam do corpo nosso, de nossos filhos, o alvo. (38) O silêncio mordido, antes o pão triturado

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Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves de nossos desejos, avoluma, avoluma e a massa ganha por enteiro o espaço antes comedido pela ordem. (29) E não há mais quem morda a nossa língua o nosso verbo solto conjugou antes o tempo de todas as dores. (29) E o silêncio escapou ferindo a ordenança e hoje o inverso da mudez é a nudez do nosso gritante verso que se quer livre. (30) (The beaten silence rebels and reveals our pain and so many are the cries that the clear city, for its undeserved sleep, awakens in nightmares. (29) And we ask that the lost bullets lose their way and do not make of our body and the body of our children, the target. (29) The beaten cry, previously the grinded bread of our wishes, grows, grows and the masses gain the space before controlled by order. (29) And there is no one who bites our tongue our free verb conjugated before the tense of all pains. (29)

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And the silence escaped wounding the order and today the contrary of muteness is nudeness of our gigantic verse that wants itself free.) (30)

“Canto 1” sings from and about place. It surfaces as an oxymoronic love song; in that, despite the pain and inconsequential suffering experienced, there is still a feeling of love. The poor, majority of Black dwellers in the shantytown incite reformation. As mentioned above, for Evaristo the shantytowns are contemporary representations of slave quarters, senzala. In this specific poem, it is transformed from a place of superfluous violence to a place of resistance, as the poetic progression of the stanzas shift to reform and reclamation of place. The naked word shows itself; it no longer hides in pain but incites revolt. The concept of Black feminine writing is an ongoing issue. The media, the academy itself, and even certain Black communities still resist discussing it. Race is a taboo even in the twenty-fi rst century. Writing is, then, an act of resistance. In as much, literature, an important part of the socialpolitical debate, becomes a “weapon” to be used against marginalization. Trinh Minh-ha, in her considerations of women’s writing asserts: . . . as a focal point of cultural consciousness and social change, writing weaves into language the complex relations of a subject caught between the problems of race and gender and the practice of literature as the very place where social alienation is thwarted differently according to each specific context. (6) For bell hooks, Blackness is a way of “transforming the image, creating alternatives, and asking ourselves questions about what types of images subvert, pose critical alternatives, and transform our worldviews and move us away from dualistic thinking about good and bad” (4). In the spirit of feminist thought as espoused by hooks and Minh-ha, Evaristo uses her writing as a theoretical tool of social protest and resistance. For Evaristo it is indispensable to speak up. As poet, she is aware of the power contained in the explicit and implicit lyrics that frame her stanzas. As a Black Brazilian woman acquainted with the realities of urban poverty in her home space, she knows and believes in the transformative power of the written word. Thus, her verses become weapons as she speaks to the plight of her tripartite identity: Black, woman, poor. For in speaking, she recognizes that she breaks the cycle of voicelessness that has marginalized lack Brazilians. She recognizes that through the power of the seen word, her plights are made visible. Finally, for Conceição Evaristo, only through exorcising a collective “voice” can Black women reconcile the past, in order to manage the present, as they visualize the future:

182 Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves Falamos para exorcizar o passado, arrumar o presente e predizer a imagem de um futuro que queremos. Nossas vozes-mulheres negras ecoam desde o canto da cozinha à tribuna. Dos becos das favelas aos assentos das conferências mundiais. Dos mercados, das feiras onde apregoamos os preços de nossas vidas aos bancos e às cátedras universitárias . . . Quem aprendeu a sorrir e a cantar na dor, sabe cozinhar as palavras, pacientemente na boca e soltá-las como lâminas de fogo, na direção e no momento exatos. (We speak to exorcize the past, arrange the present, and predict an image of a future we want. Our black voice-women echo from the kitchen corner to the tribuna. From the alleys of the shantytowns to the seats of world conferences. From the markets where we fi xe the prices of our lives to the university seats. Those who learned to smile and sing in pain, know how to cook the words, patiently in the mouth and soltálas as fi re in the right direction and in the right moment) Through the power of collective poetic speech, Evaristo rejects pre-established orders, as demonstrated in the poems analyzed in this essay. She refuses to not remain passive. She is deeply committed to questioning the position of African-Brazilians, especially women. Her poetry gives testament to the perceived dialogue in which the poet tries to discover and understand essential facets of her own existence: Black, woman, poor, and Brazilian.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anzaldúa, Gloria. “A Tolerance for Ambiguity.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2001. 2213–2214. Arroyo, Jossiana. Trasvestismos Culturales: Literatura y Etnografía em Cuba y Brasil. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2003 Bernd, Zilá. Introdução à Literature Negra. Porto Alegre: Mercado Aberto, 1988. . Literatura e Identidade Nacional. Porto Alegre: Editora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), 2003. Boyce Davies, Carole. Black, Women, Writing, and Identity. Migrations of the Subject. London: Routledge, 1994. Caldwell, Ki Lilly. Negras in Brazil: Re-envisioning Black Women, Citizenship and the Politics of Identity. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Evaristo, Conceição. Poemas da Recordação e Outros Movimentos. Belo Horizonte: Nandyala, 2008. . “Gênero e Etnia: Uma Escre (Vivência) da Dupla Face.” Mulheres no Mundo, Etnia, Marginalidade e Diáspora. Ed. Nadilza Martins de barros Moreira and Diane Schneider. João Pessoa: Idéia, 2005. 201–212. Fonseca, Maria Nazareth Soares. Brasil Afro-Brasileiro. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2001. hooks, bell. Black Looks. Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

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Huyssen, Andréas. Seduzidos Pela Memória. Portuguese Trans. Sérgio Alcides. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano, 2000. Kalra, Virinder S. et al. Diaspora and Hybridity. London and New Delhi: Thousand Oaks, 2005. Minh-ha, Trinh. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989. Munanga, Kabengele. “Construção da Identidade Negra no Contexto da Globalização.” Vozes (além) da África. Ed. Enilce Albergaria, Renato Bruno, Ignacio Delgado, and Gilvan Ribeiro. Juiz de Fora: Editora Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), 2006. 18–41. Pereira, Prisca Agustoni de Almeida. “Signos do Atlântico Negro em Trânsito: Algumas Vozes da Poesia de Língua Portuguesa Conemporânea.” Vozes (além) da África. Ed. Enilce Albergaria, Renato Bruno, Ignacio Delgado, and Gilvan Ribeiro. Juiz de Fora: Editora UFJF, 2006. 119–133. Walters, Wendy. At Home in Diaspora. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

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The Triumph Within Carolina Maria de Jesus and Strategies for Black Female Empowerment in Brazil Dawn Duke Saber-se negra é viver a experiência de ter sido massacrada em sua identidade, confundida em suas perspectivas, submetida a exigências, compelida a expectativas alienadas. Mas é também, e sobretudo, a experiência de comprometer-se a resgatar sua história e recriar-se em suas potencialidades. (Santos Sousa 1983: 17–18) To know yourself as black is to live the experience of having been massacred in your identity, confused in your perspectives, subjected to pressing demands, drawn by alienated prospects. But it is also, and above all, the experience of commitment to recover your history and recreate yourself in all your potential.

INTRODUCTION As Brazil’s fi rst Black female writer from the slums, Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914–1977) stands out because she does not conform to expectations that society has for those of her lowly socio-economic circumstances. Through her writing she transforms herself, an empowering act that results in the distinction she enjoys today as a heroine of the Afro-Brazilian women’s cause. Afro-Brazilian women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) celebrate her legacy given the way her life story converges on issues of literary writing and ethno-racial identity in Brazil. Highly regarded by the Black women’s movement, she has also left her mark on the Brazilian Black Movement and contemporary Afro-Brazilian literature. Carolina’s trajectory is unique because she dared to believe herself a writer, a conviction that determined the path her life took and made her mistress of her own destiny. Possessing a spirited and aggressive personality, she expressed her beliefs openly and proudly in a way that clashed with the desperate socioeconomic reality in which she dwelt. Feracho (2005) appropriately describes Carolina’s trajectory as part of a broader process of self-realization. “In establishing their subjectivity women have used writing as a means of chronicling personal growth and actively redefi ning themselves in a society that oftentimes had already established categories of identification for them” (15). Her determination to write and

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publish is responsible for the recognition she now receives. Debate continues regarding her literary value within the context of a national literature that measures her writing using paradigms symbolically represented by the Brazilian Academy of Letters. It is clear that she will never be able to measure up to the imposed standards of classic erudition. Her tremendous literary and social worth lie in the vividness of her depictions of absolute destitution, the appealing quality of her textual style, her dramatic rise to fame, and distressful return to abject poverty. Her vivid descriptions combine to have a positive long-term effect on discussions about slum life and the Afro-Brazilian female condition. These circumstances relate to issues of gender, race, and class that, through Carolina, collide with the prosperous world of publishing, intellectual debate, and the exclusive world of Brazilian Letters. Today she is an icon within the Afro-Brazilian women’s movement where she receives lasting acknowledgement and is part of a gallery of famous Black Brazilian women in history.

CAROLINA’S LIFE STORY Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914–1977) has her place in Afro-Brazilian women’s history as a slum dweller, the great-grandchild of slaves, and one of the fi rst women with this background in Latin America to write and publish about her life.1 She records her experiences vividly in Quarto de Despejo: Diário de uma Favelada (1960) translated as Child of the Dark: the Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1962). Her lowly status as an Afro-Brazilian writer living in the slums of São Paulo begs reconsideration of the prestige supposedly gained from writing and publishing. As her life story confi rms, fame and social status are an illusion for someone like her whose fate is already written by force of historical circumstance and the socio-racial structure of her urban space. Carolina was born into a very poor rural Black family in Sacramento, a provincial town in the southern part of the state of Minas Gerais, bordering the state of São Paulo. She went to work at a very early age and was only able to complete the second year of primary school. After her mother’s death, Carolina moved to São Paulo in search of work. Single, uneducated, and poor her options were very limited; she could sell her body as a prostitute or work as a domestic servant. Her personal pride and dignity led her away from the fi rst towards the second, the only form of employment she would ever have. It was while working as a maid that Carolina had access to books and newspapers and even participated in discussions about politics and current events. However her humble rural background, color, and lack of education clashed with the economics of life. An attractive woman, Carolina was also in her childbearing years and became pregnant. She was summarily dismissed from her job as a domestic, and in 1947 she and her three children ended up in the Canindé slum, in one of the three

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hundred shacks on the banks of the Tietê River. To survive, they collected paper and cardboard for recycling.2 Carolina and her family become a part of the urban tragedy visible in the masses of emigrants who even today continue to migrate from the impoverished or drought-stricken northern and northeastern states, and other rural regions, to fi nd work in the big cities. Largely uneducated and completely lacking in resources, migrants face grossly underpaid jobs, and more often than not, unemployment. Unsuccessful in their quest for betterment, they end up in horrific living conditions that have given rise to the massive slums, or favelas, of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.3 Carolina’s experiences draw attention to the Afro-Brazilian woman’s precarious living conditions and few employment choices. Domestic work and prostitution are more often than not the options for survival in the urban setting as racial discrimination and sexism combine to exclude her from the kinds of socio-economic activities that would ensure her wellbeing.4 What saved Carolina from becoming just another statistic in the cycle of domestic and urban violence was her love of reading and writing. She painstakingly recorded every detail on scraps of paper found in garbage dumps, writing her way to fame and fortune. The experience was brilliant however brief, for her themes of destitution, slum life, racism, sexism, and marginalization did not survive the test of time in publishing circles. With the growing disinterest in her work came the gradual draining of her fi nancial resources and an eventual return to a humble existence. She died in 1977 a recluse, impoverished, and forgotten in her home in Parelheiros, the only tangible evidence that was left of her spectacular rise into the distinguished very white and status-driven world of Brazilian Letters. A few months before her death, she was seen going through the garbage near an old highway in São Paulo.5

CAROLINA THE INDOMITABLE WRITER Carolina lived through two dictatorships, the Estado Novo (New State 1937–1945) and the long military regime (1964–1985). The socio-political context of the late 1950s and 1960s served as the backdrop for her career as a writer. She became famous prior to the 1964 military overthrow of the João Goulart government and the start of military rule.6 Throughout her years living in the slum, she filled scraps of paper collected from the city’s garbage with intense details of how traumatic it was to be a favelada (female slum dweller). While visiting the Canindé slum in April 1958 Audálio Dantas, a young reporter in search of a different kind of story, discovered that Carolina was writing a diary. Perceiving the possibility for something new and intrigued by the descriptions of her life, Dantas felt that it could interest his readers. After editing her work, he published an excerpt in his afternoon newspaper. Following the public’s enthusiastic response,

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he proceeded to edit selections of her diary entries into book form and to search for a publisher. After several rejections, Livraria Francisco Alves, one of the country’s most renowned and traditional bookstores and publishing houses, accepted the manuscript in a kind of risk-taking venture given the circumstances of the current market in which the success of a book largely depended on the status and fame of the author.7 A testimony to her life of hardship Quarto de Despejo (1960) became an instant best-seller. Her fi rst big success the diary remains to date her most prominent and popular production. The book describes her life from July 15, 1955 to January 1, 1960. With her newly gained wealth, she was able to purchase a brick house in Santana. She became a public figure, courted by the press, intellectuals, and politicians. She gave presentations, did book signings, and did talk shows on the radio. Audálio Dantas recalls that she composed music, including sambas. When she became famous she produced and recorded music for RCA Victor, a record company. Accompanied by the Titulares do Ritmo band, she launched her own long-playing album, giving it the title of her diary and singing her own compositions. Her lyrics express her sentiments of gratitude and humility. “What melodies could this wretched (more than others) Canindé slum produce, mired in mud at the edge of the Tietê river; this ‘garbage room’ stifled by the opulence of the great city of São Paulo?” (¿Qué melodias poderia produzir esta infeliz (mais do que as outras) favela do Canindé, atolada na lama de beira-Tietê; este “quarto de despejo” abafado pela opulência da cidade grande de São Paulo? Rufi no 2000: 4).8 Besides her extensive diary entries she wrote poems, short stories, parts of plays, and novels; however, most of her efforts remain unpublished. Her other publications include: Casa de Alvenaria: Diário de uma Ex-favelada (1961), Pedaços de Fome (1963), Provérbios (1965), Diário de Bitita (1986), Meu Estranho Diário (1996a), and Antologia Pessoal (1996b).9 Although less known, these texts together serve as a testimony of her life and place her as one of the most prolific Black writers Brazil has ever produced. Recognition of her achievement has been late in coming, and it is only since the late 1990s that Brazilian academic circles have began to show an interest in her work. As one of the earliest contemporary authors, Carolina Maria de Jesus captured on paper the situation of marginalized Black woman, yet, in spite of the success of her first diary, few appreciate the power of her writing and the way it serves to debate the institution of Brazilian Letters, the literary status quo, issues of literariness, and the Afro-Brazilian woman writer. There are various moments in her writing when her convictions match concerns that relate directly to Black female existence in Brazil. The violation of basic human rights and the broad cultural depreciation of the woman of African descent appear as a constant in all her writing as she expresses abhorrence at her immediate circumstances. Her later writings contain interesting moments when she simply and artfully gives her impression of people and situations that accompany her brief walk through fame.

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As her fi rst published work Quarto de Despejo is most clear in presenting a consistent view of the Afro-Brazilian experience and racism in Brazil. The diary created a dilemma for, in addition to symbolizing the voice of the Other, it brought into the literary world of the 1960s a perspective for which there was really no place. There was little in the work that met expectations of the literary establishment guided by the very prestigious Brazilian Academy of Letters. Her textual individualism retaliated against the concrete difficulties she faced in the midst of the illustrious Luso-Brazilian world of publishing very distant from the circumstances of misery from which she emerged. She rose to fame at a time when literature by women was closely linked to questions of class and levels of education. The Luso-Brazilian women writers of the fi rst half of the twentieth century whose works were known (Cecilia Meireles, Rachel de Queiroz, Patrícia Galvão, Lygia Fagundes Telles, and Clarice Lispector) were still experiencing difficulties of recognition in the maledominated literary sphere while Afro-Brazilian women’s literature as a category of writing did not exist. Carolina’s lack of formal education, economic destitution, and social marginalization therefore stood out in the distinguished circles into which she stepped. Quarto de Despejo appears stylistically as a diary about suffering, tremendous necessity, social abuse, and ostracism. Carolina writes about herself, her children, and her neighbors. Afro-Brazilians appear in circumstances of abject poverty and need. The most striking moments are the ones in which Carolina describes the desperate physical conditions of the urban poor. The little boy who found and ate a piece of rotten meat only to die horribly of food poisoning, persecution of Blacks by the police, the racist insults she must tolerate as part of living in the slum, and her own constant illnesses and nausea from hunger and starvation are stories that are most striking. There are moments in her text when her knowledge of Black historical struggle coincides with the pain and sadness of her daily war against hunger. A particularly difficult day was May 13, 1958. Celebrated each year as a national holiday, the May 13 is nationally recognized as the day that highlights the Afro-Brazilian community since it was the date slavery was abolished in 1888. Official versions emphasize the Golden Law signed by Princess Isabel on 13 May 1888. Although mainstream historical focus on the act of manumission and the gracious signature of a Portuguese princess confi rm a top-down approach, Afro-Brazilian writers and Black Movement activists analyze the situation in conjunction with the current social, political, and economic circumstances. They question the sense of universal achievement and glory their national history associates with that royal gesture, especially in relation to the conditions of the descendents of slaves today. Interpreting abolition as a condescending favor, they hold the view that the struggle is far from over. They further distance themselves from the so-called benevolent gesture of freedom for the way it devalues, even erases, the long legacy of armed slave resistance to oppression.

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Carolina’s personal cynicism matches that of Afro-Brazilian activists however translated into the more basic trauma of just not being able to feed her children. She starts the day with nothing to eat but beans and salt. Later that day, after managing to sell some scrap iron, she is able to purchase rice and thin sausage. Yet it is just not enough, and she is forced to beg a neighbor for more food. They manage to eat at nine o’clock that night. “And so on 13 May 1958 I struggled against modern slavery—hunger!” (E assim no dia 13 de maio de 1958 eu lutava contra a escravatura atual—a fome! De Jesus 1960: 32).10 Her metaphors are sharp and appropriate; she does not need to be a declared feminist or Black Movement activist since her writing benefits from direct exposure to subhuman conditions. As a writer, she artfully employs metaphors she is most familiar with. Later she writes, “May 28 . . . Life is like a book. We only know what is in it after having read it. And it is when we are at life’s end that we know how our lives turned out. Mine until now has been Black. Black is my skin. Black is the place where I live” (28 de maio . . . A vida é igual um livro. Só depois de ter lido é que sabemos o que encerra. E nós quando estamos no fi m da vida é que sabemos como a nossa vida decorreu. A minha, até aqui, tem sido preta. Preta é a minha pele. Preto é o lugar onde eu moro. De Jesus 1960: 160). Carolina examines human behavior and relationships at various levels. At times she seems philosophical, at others, biased and naïve. She is both part of the slum community and its fierce critic, for she does not always agree with what other slum-dwellers say and do. They perceive her as being different because she does not really like to fight and enjoys books. She observes and writes about the suffering of other Blacks, about the Bahians in the favela (slum), about the way Blacks are generally feared because they are perceived as aggressive and violent, and given to fighting a lot.11 At the same time, she focuses on the way they are disrespected and recalls the occasion when she herself was abused and insulted. “Dirty nigger. Common. Tramp. Garbage.” (Negra suja. Ordinária. Vagabunda. Lixeira. De Jesus 1960: 97). She records the difficulties women have in the slums (abusive men, pregnancy, illness), the way all Blacks are deemed scavengers, and she visualizes the Afro-Brazilian favelados especially as a lost people. In trying to understand their experience and describe their need she says. “Previously the blacks tended to [took care of] the whites. Today the whites tend to [are in charge of] the blacks’ (Antigamente eram os pretos que criava os brancos. Hoje são os brancos que criam os pretos. De Jesus 1960: 26). In perceiving them as a people with no hope she continues, 14 September . . . Today is the Easter of Moses. The God of the Jews. The same God who keeps the Jews free even today. The black is persecuted because his skin is the color of night. And the Jew because he’s intelligent. Moses, when he saw the Jews barefoot and ragged, prayed asking God to give them comfort and wealth. And that is why almost all the Jews are rich. Too bad we blacks don’t have a prophet to pray for us.

190 Dawn Duke (14 de setembro . . . Hoje é o dia da pascoa de Moysés. O Deus dos judeus. Que libertou os judeus até hoje. O preto é perseguido porque a sua pele é da côr da noite. E o judeu porque é inteligente. Moysés quando via os judeus descalços e rotos orava pedindo a Deus para darlhe conforto e riquesas. É por isso que os judeus quase todos são ricos. Já nós os pretos não tivemos um profeta para orar por nós.) (De Jesus 1960: 118). Carolina’s writing expresses a very acute awareness of the confl ictive and diverse circumstances of the Afro-Brazilian. She is not afraid to express such a view or draw her own conclusions about the differences between whites and Blacks at all level. I kept thinking: North Americans are considered the most civilized and they have not yet realized that discriminating against the blacks is like trying to discriminate against the sun. Man cannot fight against the products of Nature. God made all the races at the same time. If he had created Negroes after the whites, the whites should have done something about it then. (Fico pensando: os norte-americanos são considerados os mais civilisados do mundo e ainda não convenceram que preterir o preto é o mesmo que preterir o sol. O homem não pode lutar com os produtos da Natureza. Deus criou todas as raça na mesma epoca. Se criasse os negros depois dos brancos, aí os brancos podia revoltar-se.) (De Jesus 1960: 119) This small attempt at reasoning is not without its flaws. Her assessment appears simple but is definitely typical of someone who is trying to describe and analyze issues using her life experiences. Given to very vivid descriptions of actual experience, her writing becomes inconsistent when she seeks to reflect deeper on personal motives and cultural processes responsible for such experience. Joseph and Szuchman (1996) comment on these inconsistencies: She sings the praises of her own blackness and Afro-Brazilian heritage even while she disparages such traits in others. She heaps scorn on politicians and their unfeeling system even as she goes to great lengths to register and vote and acts as a champion of legality and order within the favela. She is full of praise for “the poor” in the abstract, yet fi nds her own impoverished neighbors intolerable and wishes only to distance herself from them.” (Joseph and Szuchman 1996: 166–167) Internal inconsistencies in Carolina’s depictions result from collision of interests for more often than not she mixes global events into personal

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tragedy and insists on expressing her opinion about everyone and everything. Although her views may not always coincide logically, they interweave, creating internal textual conflict that has opened the author up to criticism. Sebe Bom Meihy raises this issue as central to this author’s reception by the media and literary circles in Brazil. “Carolina soon showed herself to be a contradictory author especially when called upon to display a logical, militant, left-wing position, a constant and systematic opposition” (Carolina logo se mostrou una autora contraditória, principalente quando se lhe era cobrada uma posição lógica, militante, de esquerda, de oposição constante e sistemática. Sebe Bom Meihy 1996b: 27). Sebe Bom Meihy criticizes this interpretation as superficial, preferring instead to place her writing alongside issues of literature by Blacks, feminist writing, social oppression, and the negation of human rights. Rather than read Carolina’s internal textual differentiations as problematic we could view them as symptomatic of her astute alertness to differences between the problem (poverty, racism, violence against women, and crime) in the abstract sense of the word and her individual personal experiencing of the problem (her own desperate situation, other people’s actions and attitudes). These are exactly the same problems against which Black women activists today do battle. Rufi no’s O Poder Muda de Mãos Não de Cor (1997) matches Carolina’s position as it articulates the effects of colonial history, contemporary racism, and violence, laying bear inconsistencies in the political and judicial system that work against women and sustain the status quo. In Casa de Alvenaria (1961), Meu Estranho Diário (1996), and The Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1999), Carolina describes her encounters with Afro-Brazilian cultural and literary entities, intellectuals, and other prosperous Blacks from home and the U.S. that took place primarily during the early 1960s. It is a period that witnessed a wealth of Black literary, theatrical, and cultural activity in São Paulo.12 She was invited to participate in literary events and other celebrations promoted by distinguished Afro-Brazilian figures and organizations. In Casa de Alvenaria, she outlines the May 13, 1960, anniversary of emancipation when she meets famous university professors, actors from the Teatro Popular Brasileiro (Brazilian Popular Theater), and its famous director, the Afro-Brazilian poet and playwright, Solano Trindade. Later, she is the special guest at the launching of a newspaper, O Ébano (Ebony) where she meets another important Afro-Brazilian poet Eduardo de Oliveira. She describes the homage paid to her by distinguished Blacks of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro at the home of José Correia Leite, one of the most distinguished members of the Black Movement. She is the guest of honor at the Black Cultural Association on the Dia da Mãe Preta where she receives gifts as members of the Teatro Negro Experimental (Negro Experimental Theatre) sing a samba in her honor.13 Carolina’s work was publicized and authenticated by publishing authorities completely alienated from the kind of miserable circumstances of

192 Dawn Duke existence she described. The dire human effects of elitist politics were fundamentally what Carolina was writing about, and this combined with the praise her fi rst diary received meant that such attention was fraught with its own undercurrents to which Carolina herself was subject. Casa de Alvenaria records her trajectory through the world of publishing houses and bookstores where she comes to grips with issues of social status. The world she describes is very different from the slums, and she feels like an outsider. The gradual disinterest in her writing and her eventual decline into obscurity confi rm how difficult it is to reverse the tragedy of poverty and realize her dream of a better life and career as a writer. For the world of writing and publishing her decline meant a return to normalcy, to quote Sebe Bom Meihy, “all things (and people) in their respective places” (todas as coisas (e pessoas) no lugar devido; 1996a: 9). Meu Estranho Diário (1996a) recounts her participation in an event to commemorate the Lei do Ventre Livre, an activity that was part of the Primeiro Congresso Mundial da Cultura Negra (First World Conference on Black Culture).14 Her later writing reveals new awareness of the discourse of Negritude and Black Movement activism. Her fame coincided with the 1960s when Black militants were very active in combating racism in Brazil, drawing their inspiration from apartheid in South Africa, the African struggles against colonization, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Her diary entries in Casa de Alvenaria confi rm her rising consciousness; Carolina mentions her distress at the events surrounding the death of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. (De Jesus 1961: 137). Her eyes absorb the world of Black artists, writers, and intellectuals for it provides inspiration for her writing and opportunities to reflect on the dynamics of race and class. She discusses racism and differences between whites and Blacks in Brazilian society in a way that is different from her childhood described in Diário de Bitita. She is more aware of the way people were always trying to make her feel equal, especially whites. Her views vary depending on the event and the reaction it provokes in her. During her visit to a Black club for example, she observes the rift between the mayor and the Afro-Brazilians and wishes that there would be an end to the quarrel between Blacks and whites. Further, her own growing awareness of the vast differences between whites and Blacks in the U.S. serves to increase her discomfort in the presence of white North Americans who come to meet her. She also realizes just how different her world is from other educated Brazilian Blacks; she notices for example that many distinguished personages become embarrassed when she raises the favela (slum) problem. Carolina comes to understand the reality of prosperous Blacks and the class differences that separate them from slum dwellers like herself. She is sharply critical of them at times, describing them as having elevated social aspirations or susceptible to hypocrisy and even racism. Sebe Bom Meihy and Levine (1994) later confi rm that generally she received no consistent solidarity from the militant left or the cautious right. Now herself a

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celebrity, she is no longer at the same level as her neighbors many of whom are stunned to see her treated like an empress. She is besieged by requests for fi nancial assistance and faces open hostility from those who view her as a threat or a freak, transformed by fame. Carolina’s fortunes shift rapidly and radically from national icon, to forgetting, to posthumous revaluing as an early Black woman writer. Sebe Bom Meihy sums up the trajectory of this writer who, in the 1960s, represented those who had been summarily left out. “Sua história, contada e cantada em prosa e versos, era chaga aberta das condições impostas aos miseráveis, filhos excluídos do desenvolvimento jucelinista do fi m dos anos 50.” “Her story, told and sung in prose and verses, was the open sore of conditions imposed on the destitute, the excluded sons of Juscelino’s development during the late 1950s” (1996a: 9).15 Carolina de Jesus was exploited as a national icon by right and left wing politicians, by both literary circles and spheres related to Black Movement activism. In the case of the latter movement though, her affi rmations had more in common with those coming from Black North American militants, than with Afro-Brazilian artists and intellectuals who had difficulty aligning their race-based agenda and learned literary form of expression with her class-race concerns about poverty and destitution. Her works and her own image as a subaltern figure served a variety of political interests. It was this situation that in many ways made it difficult for there to be any long-term success for her. Negative reactions to Carolina’s writing refer back to historical and cultural perceptions of literature produced by Black writers in Brazil. An uneducated woman of the slums, her very subjectivity further supports the local view that her writing, marked by a very unliterary content and mundane themes, can never really be considered literature in the classical erudite sense of the word. Levine and Sebe Bom Meihy (1995) and Levine (1998b) observe over time the waning national interest in Carolina’s writings. Her fame during the 1960s contrasts with public disinterest in the new editions of Quarto that came out in 1993. By the 1990s, slum conditions are far worse than those in her diary, and Brazil fi nds itself overwhelmed by a multitude of other serious social problems. “Today, faced with corrupt and ineffective governments, political and economic instability, uncontrolled inflation, noise, pollution, recession, and rising crime, many educated Brazilians had become inured to the suffering of others, and were uninterested in Carolina’s story” (Levine and Sebe Bom Meihy 1995: 93). Levine further criticizes the fact that her diary is little known and under appreciated among students of literary studies. The very late publication of a collection of her poems, Antologia Pessoal (1996) by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Press confi rms this. Carolina’s uniqueness lies in the fact that she was the fi rst to somehow fi nd a way to represent in words the universe of the socially dispossessed and marginalized. Being the fi rst major slum writer means that she produces a discourse that is not really literary and for which there still is no

194 Dawn Duke real literary place of accommodation. The language code she invents is a direct derivation of her physical and mental condition. Rather than celebrate its ethno-cultural difference, academic circles compare her discourse with distinguished representations of literary production and come to the conclusion that her writing is faulty and deficient. Carolina did not have a close relationship with the Afro-Brazilian intellectual and cultural circles of the 1960s. As Moura explains . . . due to her exoticism, Carolina Maria de Jesus was never considered a writer, even by some members of the black intellectuality. She did not meet the necessary criteria to be incorporated into that black intelligentsia [intelligence] that fights for a passport into the republic of institutionalized letters (pelo seu exotismo, Carolina Maria de Jesus jamais foi considerada uma escritora, mesmo por alguns membros da intelectualidade negra. Ela não preenchia as condições necessarias para se incorporar a essa inteligência negra que luta por um passaporte na república das letras institucionalizadas.) (Moura 1994: 192). Although they celebrated her achievement along with the rest of the country, they were not too eager to acknowledge her as one of them. Unfamiliar with the activities of Black consciousness movements and militant artistic circles, Carolina proved a problem also because she was not of the Black educated class to which the majority of then Black intellectuals belonged. It is 1966, two years since armed forces staged a coup that overturned the elected government and installed a military dictatorship. Carolina’s luck has turned, and she is living in Parelheiros under difficult conditions. She continues to make diary entries; however, these remain unpublished in Brazil. Levine has published excerpts in English in The Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1999). These later entries are not about life in the slum, rather they describe experiences dealing with her family, money, writing, and views about important issues that affect her personally. Never having been an integral part of Black militancy, Carolina is nevertheless very conscious of race and gender differences between Blacks and whites. She has obviously read and thought about these matters deeply. Her entries under September 6, 1966 (Levine and Sebe Bom Meihy 1999: 173–175) are a vigorous politicized discussion about the way her society just does not value Afro-Brazilian men and women. There is a moment when Carolina feels she has been cheated out of the fi nancial profits that were rightfully hers. Her experiences as a publishing writer open her eyes to the world of publishing and selling her work. At one point she is dissatisfied with a book seller, and she comes to the realization of the challenges that Black writers face, challenges that are an offshoot of the limited possibilities offered them. She declares that it is indeed a Black

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world for Blacks who, 100 years after abolition still have no access to good living conditions or fi nancial independence. She observes that there is no Black entrepreneur, and the trend is for a Black person to be a socially marginalized and seen as inferior. She questions and challenges what she sees here as a historically imposed condition and worries about the future of the Black community in Brazil. Yet her prognosis of Brazilian racism is still favorable alongside the North American experience. “How would it be if Brazilian whites decide to copy the North American whites’ prejudice in relation to blacks?” (Levine and Sebe Bom Meihy 1999: 174). Her perception of the Black female condition is even more troubling. Her observations coincide with those made later by the militant Afro-Brazilian women’s groups that arose during the early eighties. She observes distinctions between Black and mulattoes in Brazil and the way Black women especially are rejected as partners or wives by men. Her observation here matches earlier diary entries that explain her decision never to marry for fear of mistreatment and loss of independence. At the same time, she admits that today Black women study through high school and can even contemplate a distinguished profession, an opportunity not available to her during her youth. In her own way she recognizes the impact race and class inequalities have on women’s lives. Carolina’s writing matches the subtleties and complexities of the Brazilian racial experience in which the broad human condition of discrimination is often overlooked by isolated references to success and progress and even denied by instances of positive outcomes. The majority of Black women in Brazil still can’t afford an education, have very few employment options, poor living conditions, and therefore have no voice. The criticism that Carolina suffered is only now interpreted as instances of that threepronged prejudice based on race, class, and gender. The positive value of her writing as Black female experience continues to register more specifically within limited circles: “Carolina Maria de Jesus became a heroine for a small group of marginalized black intellectuals and lives vaguely in the memory of scattered groups of poor black women” (Levine and Sebe Bom Meihy 1999: 192).

HARMONIZING WITH THE BLACK WOMAN’S CAUSE Carolina is far removed from the classic image of the attractive, often tragic, mixed race heroine that populates nineteenth and twentieth-century Brazilian literature. A plain, very dark, poor, unrefi ned, proud, arrogant female subject, she forcefully makes herself the heroine, the very center of her writing. She produces the discourse and is the source of all the action, thoughts, and opinions that derive thereof. These are the qualities however that comprise the set of iconic characterizations that Afro-Brazilian women activists seek to extol. Their recuperation of her legacy in the 1980s

196 Dawn Duke is a form of making amends, of undoing a great and consistent injustice of which she is a part. Afro-Brazilian women entities such as Fala Preta (São Paulo), Criola (Rio de Janeiro), A Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra (Santos), and Geledés (São Paulo) are the fruits of sacrifices such as her own. They bestow on Carolina positive qualities and attributes such as strength, dignity, pride, and resistance, making her a vital part of the larger project of reaffi rming the presence and participation of the Afro-Brazilian woman.16 They celebrate her as a woman who defied the odds to be heard. The heritage of enslavement to which her family so closely connects makes her memory even more important. She is deemed part of a historical trajectory that started in Africa and that symbolizes enslavement, forced dislocation, cultural decimation and the continued socio-economic deprivation against which mobilized sectors of the Afro-Brazilian community decry to date.17 Appropriated by these sectors, Carolina has become symbolic of the current national confrontation between race and the politics of national hegemony. For militant AfroBrazilians, her memory serves to promote a stance of ideological, racial specificity. As Sebe Bom Meihy (1996a) confi rms, Carolina’s experiences as a writer reveal the complexities between discourse and the possibilities for concrete social transformation. Carolina lived prior to the advent of organized Black women’s advocacy in the 1980s. Organizations arose out of community needs and the desire among Afro-Brazilian women to create and control their own space, agendas, and political articulation.18 These women saw and appreciated the powerful message behind Carolina’s life and writings, a message that very much complemented their own drive towards upward social mobility for women. Analyzing Carolina’s importance as the fi rst Afro-Brazilian woman writer of the twentieth century to receive international recognition means confi rming her current status as a very valuable part of an important cultural movement being promoted by Black women’s NGOs. It is one intent on recuperating and reaffi rming the place and participation of the Afro-Brazilian woman in the historical trajectory of the country. During the 1980s, under the direction of Alzira Rufi no, participants of the Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra (Black Women’s Cultural Center), one of the long-established Black women’s organizations located in the town of Santos, São Paulo, launched a project aimed at detailing the lives of Black Brazilian women who by their words or actions left their mark in history.19 A key publication arising out of their research was Mulher Negra tem História (Rufi no et al. 1986). It is a biographical collection of women, often of humble origins, who went on to become formidable leaders fighting against enslavement, racism, and social injustice. From varying backgrounds, and scattered throughout the centuries, these women range from former African royalty (Anastácia and Aqualtune), to twentieth-century freedom fighters (Maria Brandão dos Reis and Maria José Bezerra), and to contemporary icons (Benedita da Silva, ex-governor of Rio de Janeiro and

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Lélia González [1935–1994], anthropologist, feminist, and Black activist). Carolina appears included as one of the thirty women presented as icons and heroines of a specific Brazilian experience, one exclusive to the Black Brazilian woman. She has the distinction of being one of the only three authentically Black literary female figures immortalized as part of the great Black women of Brazilian history. Their biographies appear in publications by Criola and the Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra. 20 Homage to women in history is also one of the ongoing projects of Criola, a leading Afro-Brazilian women’s non-profit organization in Rio de Janeiro. They have compiled biographies of personages who throughout the history of Brazil have fought for freedom, justice, and women’s rights. As Criola’s director, Jurema Werneck’s ardent speeches indicate how they serve as the organization’s source of inspiration and raison d’être (Werneck 2002). Criola writes “Carolina Maria de Jesus. Author of the important “Quarto de despejo,” this writer gave voice to women who spend their lives struggling for survival in the slums and peripheries of the big cities” (Carolina Maria de Jesus. Autora do importante “Quarto de despejo,” esta escritora deu voz às mulheres que gastam sua vida na luta pela sobrevivência nas favelas e periferias das grandes cidades; Criola 2002). For the women of Criola, Carolina’s consciousness and willingness to speak out against difficulties and injustice are clear signs of her commitment and ultimately contribution towards the promotion of change in the lives of women. Under Alzira Rufi no’s guidance, the Casa now possesses an archive symbolically named the Centro de Documentação e Pesquisa “Carolina de Jesus” (The Carolina de Jesus Documentation and Research Center) in homage to this woman who brought home the horrors of poverty, destitution, and famine in the favelas or slums of Brazil. Naming the archive after her is a symbolic act in recognition of her will power and achievement. She stands as an example of survival and resistance, characteristics so important in a context that continues to present many challenges for the AfroBrazilian woman. Focusing its attention on Afro-Brazilian and women’s themes, the Carolina de Jesus archival library contains books, journals, and magazines, and other memorabilia. It operates as a free public center for education and research. Rufino et al. (1986) reinforce the value of Carolina’s writing in terms of the Casa’s commitment to fight poverty and need. “Child of the Dark was translated into 13 languages and impressed the world with the force of its narrative and testimony that portrayed the hunger and misery of the slum dwellers.” (Quarto de Despejo foi traduzido para 13 idiomas e impressionava o mundo pela força de sua narrativa e pelo depoimento que retratava a fome e a miséria dos favelados. Rufino et al. 1986: 16). These researchers make a point of contrasting the local reception of this writer with the one she receives internationally, their way of calling attention to the ruling classes’ persistent disinterest in conditions of economic urgency. “While in Brazil Carolina was considered a folkloric fact, her book was acclaimed by

198

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the international press with several of her pages transcribed in the American magazine ‘Life’ and the French magazine ‘Paris Match’.” (Enquanto no Brasil Carolina era considerada um fato folclórico, seu livro era comentado plea imprensa internacional, sendo várias de suas páginas transcritas na revista americana “Life” e na francesa “Paris-Match. Rufino et al. 1986: 16). Women activists in Brazil today no longer question the value of having Carolina as a part of their entourage of distinguished women in history. Their efforts reflect a deeper cultural commitment whose roots lie in perspectives related to Black Movement activism and historical interpretations. 21 As activists, they spearhead the re-writing of historical events, intentionally attacking the detrimental effects of contemporary forms of racial discrimination and social marginalization. Their crusade is ongoing as Brazilian historical narratives continue to recognize few Africans and Afro-Brazilians who have made contributions to the nation. The great difficulty researchers have in fi nding material on Black achievement confi rms a process of historical obliteration that results today in the limited awareness of heroines. They perform a particularly specific kind of research because records of women’s lives and actions are extremely rare. These lives have to be recreated using community and individual memory, personal libraries, and occasional historical references found under totally different topics. Information is scattered far and wide in bringing it together requires ongoing collaboration and networking. For these researchers, it is not merely historical recuperation, but more of a cultural mission, a debt owed to the next generation. “Now our black children can also talk about and admire their heroines with pride and without fear and initiate the formation of an identity that the Official Schools of Thought did not bother to record. Axé!” (Agora nossas crianças negras também poderão falar e admirar suas heroínas com orgulho e sem constrangimento e dar início à formação de uma identidade que as Escolas Oficiais não se preocuparam em registrar. Axé! Rufi no et al. 1986: 7). 22 As director of the Casa, Alzira Rufi no confi rms that the biographies compiled are very meaningful as they focus on women as the protagonists in circumstances they sought to transform: “It was not our intention also to record only those who had an officially acknowledged participation, rather all black women who, in one form or another, contributed to the culture and liberation of our people and our race.” (Não foi nossa intenção, também, registrar apenas aquelas que tiveram uma participação official, mas todas as negras que de uma forma ou de outra contribuíram para a cultura e libertação do nosso povo e nossa raça. Rufino et al. 1986: 7). In their commitment to women’s cause, both Criola and the Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra have made the eradication of violence against women a decisive part of their organizations’ work and purpose. They approach the issue as one directly connected to issues of racism, problems of gender relations, failures in the legal system, and violation of civil rights. Their studies confi rm that in the majority of cases both historical

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and contemporary, violence against women, especially those women who fi nd themselves in conditions of subordination, originates as sexual persecution and physical abuse. These entities are particularly dedicated to ensuring that women’s rights are respected and that the legal system works in their favor. A substantial part of their human and fi nancial resources goes towards helping victims receive the psychological care, education, and legal counseling needed to assist them in overcoming their condition of inferiority and powerlessness attributed in a society that continuous to be patriarchal in outlook. They also train specialists to examine the current judicial system, uncover its shortfall, and propose legislature that would positively alter the current state of affairs in which most cases of violence go unpunished. 23 Women activists prefer to speak and negotiate in terms of gender relations for they envision these as historically and socially constructed based on relations of power. “To speak of gender relations would be then a way of always declaring that the woman is not naturally inferior, and that there are distinct social structures and relations of power that make the woman inferior.” (Falar de relações de gênero seria então uma forma de afirmar o tempo todo que a mulher não é naturalmente inferior, e sim que há diversas estruturas sociais e relações de poder que fazem com que a mulher seja inferiorizada. E isso não de faz sem violência. Werneck 2002: 5). Rufi no and Werneck define violence very broadly for the range of attacks is every-increasing and constantly changing. Murder, rape, sexual, physical and verbal abuse, incest, threats, beatings, trafficking, low salaries, and victimization confirm the daily conditions under which many women, often of limited economic means, live. These circumstances represent portraits of masculine domination and forced feminine subordination. Werneck (2002) observes that when racism is factor as well the pain, isolation, and lack of support are even more unbearable. Brazilian society is known for its collective silence on issues of racism, preferring instead to ignore and marginalize the victim. Even today it takes a lot of courage for a Black woman to denounce her violent husband, lover, parents, brother, or boss. Barriers such as the unwillingness of the system and the lack of financial means make it almost impossible for her to receive the justice she so desperately needs. Carolina appears as an appropriate inclusion in the project of Black female accreditation by virtue of her actions and words. There are numerous moments in her writing when she addresses racial inequality, sexism, stereotypes, abuse, and persecution, and she attacks these problems directly. “A brave warrior against the forces of the racist, anti-interior, discriminatory legacy in relation to women and above all a person who confronts marginalization and political negligence.” (Uma guerreira valente contra as tropas da herança racista, antiinteriorana, preconceituosa em relação às mulheres e, sobretudo uma pessoa afrontadora da marginalidade e da negligencia política. Sebe Bom Meihy and Levine 1994: 19). She expresses an invigorating consciousness born from an inner inability to identity the enemies

200 Dawn Duke of her existence and through her only weapon of dissent—her words— undermine narrow-minded and crippling attitudes. Carolina distinguished herself proudly as a woman of African descent, a descendent of slaves, the product of a diverse even confl ictive family experience that determined who she became. Black women activists dwell directly on her convictions about her roots and her dreams of success and prosperity as strategic motivators in a broad cultural project of Afro-Brazilian historical achievement and socio-ethnic potential. Quarto de Despejo transcends its immediate social value as a cry for help and becomes a literary and historical document that records a crucial experience in Brazilian contemporary history. The decision among Afro-Brazilian women’s movements to include Carolina as one of their heroic icons confi rms the conviction among such activists that the Black woman’s path to self-realization has been unique and deserves a different kind of treatment if it is to be recognized and bestowed its rightful place. Carneiro’s statement, “black women come from a culture that has no Adam” (Carneiro 1999: 218) confi rms the belief in a distinct historical trajectory for the Afro-Brazilian woman, a factor taken into consideration and used as justification for the need to branch off and focus on specific Black woman-centered agendas. Rufi no associates Black female empowerment not with the rise of the feminist movement in Brazil but rather by a differentiated process of cultural reconstruction inspired in a separate and distinct conglomeration of historical experience and contemporary social exposure. Her efforts within her own organization confi rm her belief that today’s Afro-Brazilian woman is the result of those experiences of racism, sexism, and economic exclusion, a profi le she is determined to reverse. Rufi no’s essay, “Un Diario de Sueños y Privaciones” (2002), fi nds inspiration in Carolina’s diary, offering insight into the kinds of concerns that made her a champion of the woman’s cause. She highlights the trajectories of women who continue leaving their mark on history within the context of African cultural and religious heritage and racial inequalities in Brazil: Five hundred years of resistance mark our presence in the Americas and the survival of our African goddesses and gods in the daily life of the black community. As the white woman was educated following a model of submission and abdication to sexuality so did the black woman in Brazil have as her models the powerful, independent, sensual warrior goddesses. (Quinientos años de resistencia marcan nuestra presencia en las Américas y la sobrevivencia de nuestras diosas y dioses africanos en el cotidiano de la comunidad negra. Así como la mujer blanca fue educada siguiendo un modelo de sumisión y abdicación de la sexualidad, la mujer negra en el Brasil tuvo como modelos a las diosas guerreras, sensuales, independientes y plenas de poder.) (Rufi no 2002)

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The celebration of female strength and ability to triumph proves a far more effective tool in a social sphere whose tendency is to demean, ostracize, and disregard Black female initiative. 24 Carolina became very famous because of her diary, yet she died in the same misery and obscurity from which she sought to escape through writing. For her, the liberating effect of writing was transitory and could not permanently overcome the forces of abject poverty and discrimination based on race, class, and gender. During her period of fame in the 1960s, for a short while the media, publishers, writers, and the socially conscious celebrated her as an exotic anomaly, as a symbol of the socio-economic problems and differences on the one hand and as a Black woman who had overcome tremendous odds. A deeper appreciation of Carolina’s accomplishments emerges after her economic decline and death. Her temporary material prosperity faded; what remains is her place in history and permanent cultural image of her as an Afro-Brazilian woman writer, an inspiration for the Afro-Brazilian community, the Brazilian Black Movement and Black women’s entities that highlight and preserve such achievement. NOTES 1In her memoirs Carolina mentions that she is not quite sure if she was born in 1914 or in 1921. (De Jesus 1986: 120). 2. Robert M. Levine “Introduction.” Bitita’s Diary (1998a); Alzira Rufi no “Carolina de Jesus “Carolina de Jesus ‘Diário de uma Favelada” (2000); Alzira Rufi no et al., Mulher Negra tem História (1986). 3. Carolina’s experiences confi rm the socio-economic human circumstances that were the direct results of transformations in government policy, as well as changes to industrialized forms of agricultural production. The State deemphasized rural agricultural expansion and prioritized urban industrial development. Policies that promoted modern urban industrialization and growth replaced those favoring the modernization of agricultural sectors. The focus on the cities and urban progress combined with adverse weather patterns negatively impacted the lives of country dwellers forcing them to seek alternative means of survival. (Sebe Bom Meihy “O Inventário de uma Certa Poetisa,” 1996a). 4. Darién J. Davis, “Afro-Brazilian Women, Civil Rights, and Political Participation” (1995); Jean Claude Garcia-Zamor, “Social Mobility of Negroes in Brazil” (1970). 5. Alzira Rufi no, “Carolina de Jesus “Diário” (2000). Robert Levine, “Carolina Maria de Jesus. From Ragpicker to Best-Selling Author and Back Again.” (2004) speaks of her decline into poverty, however, not as a return to the destitution she once knew, rather a slipping backwards into a meager and bare lifestyle, alone and forgotten. 6. Robert M. Levine, “Different Carolinas” (2001). 7. Robert M. Levine, “Introduction” (1998a). 8. With the exception of Quarto, all English translations were done by the author of this essay. 9. Robert M. Levine (1997) describes the body of Carolina’s writings as a treasure, with a substantive part still unpublished. Among this personal material

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10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

are two unpublished novels, short stories, hundreds of poems, and many of Carolina’s handwritten diary entries. The two shorter published works, Quarto de Despejo and Casa de Alvenaria depict Carolina in a limited way, in contrast to the impression that would be gained if all her diary entries had been published or if her body of work was perused as a whole. Levine and Sebe Bom Meihy’s translation, The Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1999), is a testimony of this. All English translations of Quarto de Despejo are taken from Child of the Dark. The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Translation by David St. Clair (1962). Bahians are originally from the northeastern state of Bahia. Little distinction is made between being Bahian (in Portuguese “baiano”) and being AfroBrazilian. In “Black Political Protest in São Paulo, 1888–1988,” George Reid Andrews describes 1946–1964 as “The Second Republic” (1992: 161), a period between dictatorships that saw the restoration of civil liberties. Among urban Blacks this meant increased employment opportunities, expanded suffrage, more involvement in mainstream party politics, and the expansion of Black cultural organizations. Kim D. Butler (2000) provides a detailed discussion of the establishment of Black newspapers, social clubs, and cultural associations in Sao Paulo. Her discussion confi rms that deep roots of Afro-Brazilian Collectives and ongoing socio-political consciousness. Dia da Mãe Preta, literally meaning “Black Nanny Day,” used to be celebrated every year to honor nursemaids and servants, almost all of whom were Black. Meu Estranho Diário (214). On September 28, 1871, a law called Lei do Ventre Livre was passed freeing all children born of the slave woman. It was the fi rst small step towards the end of slavery. Total manumission was granted in 1888, making Brazil the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Juscelino Kubitschek, president of Brazil 1956 to 1961. Geledés (São Paulo), Fala Preta (São Paulo), Criola (Rio de Janeiro), and Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra (Santos) are established Black women’s NGOs. An important part of their sense of identity rests in the way they fi nd inspiration in Afro-Brazilian women who have gone down in history as leaders of important slave rebellions and many other forms of sacrifice and resistance. Their historical icons include enslaved African nobility Anastácia and Aqualtune, the maroon leader Dandara, the slave leader Luiza Mahin, and the fi rst Afro-Brazilian woman writer Maria Firmina dos Reis. See Rufi no et al. Mulher Negra tem História (1986). Scholarly articles by de Barros Mott, de Almeida Pereira (1995), and Feracho (1999) confi rm the way recent studies of Afro-Brazilian writing are intent on reversing views that still propagate the non-existence of a Black literary tradition in Brazil. Lovell (1999, 2000), Carneiro (1999), Soares et al. (1995), Tabak (1994), and Alvarez (1990, 1994) describe the formation and expansion of feminism, women’s movements, and the Afro-Brazilian woman’s agenda. Alzira Rufi no was the fi rst woman to write about feminism and racism in the Santos city press. She organized the fi rst Women’s Week to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8, 1985. Together with a group of Black women in 1986, she founded the Coletivo de Mulheres Negras da Baixada Santista (Black Women’s Collective of Baixada Santista), a group that later changed its name to Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra (Black Women’s Cultural Center). Also consult Dawn Duke (2003) and Alzira Rufi no (1997).

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20. The other two writers are Firmina dos Reis (1825–1881) and Auta de Souza (1876–1901). 21. Articulating the Black women movements with the two other movements (the feminist and Black movements) is a way of sensitizing society to the complexities and contradictions embedded in issues of race, gender, and politics. Carneiro (1999) describes the women’s original participation in the Black Movement as the motivating factor for the formation of organizations like Rufi no’s. From the early 1980s onwards, therefore, there is a strengthening in the black female’s perception of her position within such settings, her interpretation of ethnic pride in terms of what it means for her as a woman, and her determination to represent herself in all significant spheres of national life. 22. “Axé” is an Afro-Brazilian blessing. It describes the energy that flows from the natural world. It refers to a positive spiritual force that that expands and develops from rituals and participation. 23. See Rufi no O Poder Muda (1997) and Articulando (1988). 24. See Rufi no Mulher Negra (1987) and Articulando (1988).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alvarez, Sonia. Engendering Democracy in Brazil. Women’s Movements in Transition Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. . “The (Trans)formation of Feminism(s) and Gender Politics in Democratizing Brazil.” Ed. Jane S Jaquette. The Women’s Movement in Latin America: Participation and Democracy. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994. 13–63. Andrews, George R. “Black Political Protest in São Paulo, 1888–1988.” Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (1992): 141–171. Butler, Kim D. Freedoms Given Freedoms Won. Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2000. Carneiro, Sueli. “Black Women’s Identity.” Race in Contemporary Brazil. Ed. Rebecca Reichmannn. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. 217–228. Criola. “Homenagem a Mulheres Negras. Carolina de Jesus.” http://www.criola. ong.org. Accessed December 16, 2002]. Davis, Darién J. “Afro-Brazilian Women, Civil Rights, and Political Participation.” Slavery and Beyond. The African Impact on Latin America and the Caribbean. Ed. Darien. J. Davis. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1995, 253–263. De Almeida Pereira, Edimilson. “Survey of African-Brazilian Literature.” Callaloo 18.4 (1995): 875–880. De Barros Mott, Maria L. “Escritoras Negras: Resgatando Nossa História.” http:// sites.uol.com.br/cucamott/escritorasnegras.htm. Accessed February 14, 2003. De Jesus, Carolina Quarto de Despejo. Diário de uma Favelada. São Paulo: Livraria Francisco Alves, 1960. . Casa de Alvenaria: Diária de uma Ex-Favelada. Rio de Janeiro: Paulo de Azevedo, 1961. . Pedaços de Fome. São Paulo: Aquila, 1963. . Provérbios. Luzes: São Paulo, 1965. . Diário de Bitita. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1986. . Meu Estranho Diário. Orgs. José Sebe Bom Meihy and Robert M. Levine. São Paulo: Xama, 1996a.

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. Antologia Pessoal. Org. José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ, 1996b. . I’m Going to Have a Little House. The Second Diary of Carolina. Maria de Jesus. (Casa de Alvenaria: Diário de uma Ex-Favelada 1961). Trans. Melvin S. Arrington Jr. and Robert M. Levine. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press:, 1997. . M. Bitita’s Diary. The Childhood Memoirs of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Trans. Emannuelle Oliveira and Beth Joan Vinkler. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. Duke, Dawn. “Alzira Rufi no’s Casa de Cultura da Mulher Negra as a Form of Female Empowerment: A Look at the Dynamics of a Black Women’s Organization in Brazil Today.” Women’s Studies International Forum 26.4 (2003): 357–368. Feracho, Lesley. Linking the Americas. Race, Hybrid Discourses, and the Reformulation of Feminine Identity. New York: SUNY Press, 2005. Garcia-Zamor, Jean-Claude. “Social Mobility of Negroes in Brazil.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. 12.2 (1970): 242–254. Joseph, Gilbert M. and Mark D. Szuchman. I Saw a City Invincible. Urban Portraits of Latin America.: Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1996. Levine, Robert M. “Carolina Maria de Jesus. From Ragpicker to Best-Selling Author and Back Again.” The Human Tradition. Modern Brazil. Ed. Peter M. Beattie.Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2004. 231–247. . “Different Carolinas.” Luso-Brazilian Review 38.2 (2001): 61–73. . “Introduction.” Bitita’s Diary. The Childhood Memoirs of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Ed. Robert M. Levine. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1998a. xiii–xxiv. . “Afterword.” Bitita’s Diary. The Childhood Memoirs of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Ed. Robert M. Levine. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1998b, 153–163. . “Afterword.” I’m Going to Have a Little House. The Second Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Trans. Melvin S. Arrington Jr. and Robert M. Levine. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. 151–175. Levine, Robert M. and José C. Sebe Bom Meihy The Life and Death of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. . The Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus. Trans. Nancy P. S. Naro and Cristina Mehrtens. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 1999. Lovell, Peggy. “Women and Racial Inequality at Work in Brazil.” Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil. Ed. Michael Hanchard. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999. 138–153. . “Gender, Race and the Struggle for Social Justice in Brazil.” Latin American Perspectives 115.27 (2000): 85–103. Moura, Clóvis. Dialética Radical do Brasil Negro. São Paulo: Anita Ltda, 1994. Rufi no, Alzira Mulher Negra: Uma Perspectiva Histórica. Santos, São Paulo: Alzira Rufi no, 1987. . O Poder Muda de Mãos Não de Cor. Santos, São Paulo: Alzira Rufi no Série Mulher Negra, 1997. . Articulando. Santos, São Paulo: Alzira Rufi no, 1988. . “Carolina de Jesus ‘Diário de uma Favelada.’” Emparrei. Jornal da Mulher Negra (April 2000): 4. . “Um Diario de Sueños y Privaciones.” http://www.cantinho.com/ccmnegra /artigos2.htm. Accessed January 24, 2002 Rufi no, Alzira et al. Mulher Negra tem História. Ed. Alzira Rufi no, Nilza Iraci, and Maria Rosa Santos, São Paulo: Pereira, 1986. Santos Souza, Neusa. Tornar-se Negro. Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 1983.

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Sebe Bom Meihy, José Carlos. “O Inventário de uma Certa Poetisa.” Carolina Maria de Jesus. Antologia Pessoal. Ed.. José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 1996a. 7–36. . “A Percepção de um Brasileiro.” Meu Estranho Diário. Eds. José Sebe Bom Meihy and Robert M. Levine. São Paulo: Xama, 1996b. 20–30. Sebe Bom Meihy, José C. and Robert M. Levine Cinderela Negra: A Saga de Carolina Maria de Jesus.: Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ, 1994. Soares, Vera et al. “Brazilian Feminism and Women’s Movements: A Two-Way Street.” The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women’s Movements in Global Perspectives. Ed. Amitra. Basu. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995. 302–323. Tabak, Fanny. “Women in the Struggle for Democracy and Equal Rights in Brazil.” Ed. Barbara J. Nelson and Najma Chowdhury. Women and Politics Worldwide. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. 127–141. Werneck, Jurema. “Violência contra a Mulher: Uma Questão de Gênero, uma Questão de Raça.” www.criola.ong.org/htm/apresentacao.htm. Accessed December 16, 2002.

10 Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega Identity, Gender and the Subversive Portrayal of Mestizaje Emmanuel Harris II ¿Dónde empieza la literatura y termina la historia? ¿Cómo es que, con todo y el autoincriminante título de ‘Falsas crónicas’, un texto literario puede, sin proponérselo y hasta a pesar suyo, rellenar alguna que otra laguna del ayer? . . . ¿O será que en el país hay cada día más y más hijos que descubren como nosotros, después de viejos, que eran adoptados? (Ana Lydia Vega, “Nosotros los historicidas”)

Ana Lydia Vega (1946) recognizes the obstacles and literary traditions she and other Puerto Rican authors face. Writing, she professes is “hopelessly intertwined” with the reaffi rmation of cultural roots, the recognition of political identity, and the reconciliation of ethnic bonds (“To Write or Not to Write?” 129). Although some may wonder about the African vestiges in the color of her skin, the color in her works is poignant, pervasive, and polymorphous. Vega not only acknowledges but also creatively brings to the forefront, African aspects of the island’s ethnic and cultural background, while emphasizing social and political issues relevant to Blacks and mulattoes in her homeland and in all the Caribbean. To borrow a phrase from Antonio Tillis, Vega’s works add further to the “darkening of Latin American fiction.”1 Her texts, renowned for their innovative style, creative content, and biting social commentary depict a noteworthy presence of characters and themes related to people of African origin. The collection of short stories in Encancaranublado y otros cuentos de naufragio (1982) contains many stories that depict African-ancestored protagonists in Caribbean settings, including Puerto Rico. She also wrote Pasión de historia y otras historias de pasión (1988). In El tramo ancla (1988), Vega and a number of other national writers presented a series of articles originally published in 1985 in the weekly Claridad. As Vega points out, the fi rst and last essays of hers within the collection deal primarily with Blacks: immigrants from Haiti and festival participants from Martinique. The stories in Falsas crónicas del sur (1991) take place in the southern coast of Puerto Rico, in Arroyo, the native region of the author’s mother and, a pueblo mulato as Vega states in the introductory pages of the

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 207 book (2). In this work, she adds fiction to local history, daily occurrences and popular legends, while always providing a core of social criticism. Additionally, Esperando a Loló y otros delirios generacionales (1994) is a collection of her essays. Ana Lydia Vega initially, however, was more recognized for her feminist social criticism. Her first book of short stories, co-authored with Carmen Lugo Filippi and entitled Vírgenes y mártires (1981), contains many historical and pan-Caribbean elements. It received national and international acclaim for the quality and memorable perspective of the text’s feminist stance.2 The pervasive humor coupled with acerbic social criticism couched in satire and rich, vivid metaphors garnered Vega much popular acclaim as well as critical attention. In the book we find some of her most entertaining and controversial works with a medley of gender, race, class, and nationality themes. Blacks, and particularly Black women, fall into the same polemic as women from the dominant class in regard to their traditional roles and representations. Black women, especially, are customarily limited to the domestic sphere and depicted as responsible for maintaining cultural and social norms in teaching the established values to their children. As outlined later in this essay, this traditional sphere of influence (the home) became even more entrenched during slavery times when many Africanancestored women shouldered the majority of the burden for the perpetuation of their families and their communities. This responsibility and authority may have been one of the reasons that led a number of negritude writers in the 1920s and 1930s, like Luis Palés Matos and Nicolás Guillén, to portray Black or mulatto women as representative of ethnic and national roots. Within the Puerto Rican literary tradition, women who write racially sensitive texts are confronted with not only the mandates of custom and the pressures to affi rm feminist ideology but also the imposition to alleviate oppression based on race. These forces—tradition, feminism, and race—at times confl icting with each other constitute a multifaceted polemic that merits closer scrutiny.

IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION AND THE NEW BORINQUEN WRITERS I am not african. Africa is in me, but I cannot return. I am not taína. Taíno is in me, but there is no way back. I am not european. Europe lives in me, but I have no home there. I am new. History made me. My fi rst language was spanglish. I was born at the crossroad and I am whole. (Aurora Levins Morales, “Child of the Americas”)

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Vega considers herself as pertaining to a relatively new generation of Puerto Rican writers, who like her Borinquen predecessors are inherently bound to themes of national identity. This generation shepherded especially by women and influenced by having witnessed the effects of the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam War, women’s liberation, and Black and gay movements, has created a collective body of literature that celebrates traditionally marginalized voices (“Nosotros los historicidas” 102). She argues in “De bípeda a Escritora Puertorriqueña” that one of the traditional themes in Puerto Rican literature involves the depiction or reaffi rmation of national identity. Vega states the following: “Our literary subconscious tyrannically dictates to us the poetic arte of the ‘historic compromise’” (Nuestro subconsciente literario nos dicta tiránicamente el arte poética del “compromiso histórico”; “De bípeda” 85). This historic commitment or obligation to defi ne and uphold Puerto Rican identity has consciously or subconsciously been addressed throughout the history of Puerto Rican literature. Vega notes that dating from Manuel Alonso (author of El jíbaro, 1849) to the current generation of writers, we can observe a plethora of approaches accessing lo puertorriqueño. Unlike Cuba, for example, whose relative economic, political, and social isolation in the past decades has made for a peculiar local identity, Puerto Rico, since Europeans encountered it, has been inundated with different influences, thus complicating a homogeneous, inveterate conception of identity. Werner Sollors states in the introduction to The Invention of Ethnicity that terms like “ethnicity,” “nationalism,” or “race” may be examined as inventions based on a conglomeration of fictitious assumptions (xi). According to Sollors, literature aids in making more concrete these fabricated identities in order to serve political and social purposes such as producing and maintaining a sense of community or nation (xv). Amaryll Chanady arrives at similar conclusions in reference to identity in Latin America. Her work emphasizes the hegemonic discourse in literature that seeks to promote the exclusion or inclusion of diverse peoples where difference is based on a construction of identity that distinguishes oneself from “others.” Chanady problematizes what she terms “collective identity”: “Any investigation of collective identity today, if it is not to become an essentialist quest for a national spirit or soul, must necessarily bear in mind that knowledge is constructed, and that this construction is endlessly renewed” (x). She adds that because there does not exist a cultural essence, all such constructions are subject to and deserving of re-examination, interpretation, and critique (x). The issue arises, therefore, as to which elements of a particular society are to be included (or excluded) in national representations and what political and social purposes they might serve. The ethnic, social, and gender groups evidenced in Vega’s texts become even more relevant when we consider the Puerto Rican identity the works portray in terms of a construction. Obviously, the ideological importance of a society’s different elements, for example, Black and mulatto people will vary for the respective writers.

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 209 Many theorists view the mixed ethnic and racial makeup of the Caribbean as the fundamental element for the area’s identity formulation. Antonio Benítez Rojo states the Caribbean possesses a characteristic “certain kind of way” that has resulted from the transgenerational mixing of indigenous, African, European and later Asian peoples. Among the astute commentaries found in his work, The Repeating Island (1992), he identifies the diverse ethnicities, economies, and social structures that make the Caribbean unique. The Borinquen writer, José Luis González complements similar arguments when he stresses that, of the island’s indigenous, African, and European roots, the African cultural elements provide the core of Puerto Rican identity. González defines the country as being composed of four different tiers or stories, which in many instances correspond to racial divisions. The first story of Puerto Rican society consists of Blacks and mulattos, descendants of slaves, while the second tier is composed of people who immigrated into the country in the early nineteenth century. The third level he describes occurred as a result of the 1898 war and the U.S. invasion; the fourth level pertains to a still forming rising class of former lower strata dwellers. Ana Lydia Vega makes reference to González’s work in “De bípeda desplumada” in which she refers to Puerto Rico as the country composed of four and a half stories. The half story, she states pertains to women (Esperando a Loló 94). However for Gonzalez, he argues that because Blacks and mulattoes were forcibly cut off from Africa as a result of slavery and because they tended not to feel any particular loyalty to the European nations, African-ancestored peoples were the first to accept Puerto Rico as their home (39). Throughout the first three centuries of the country’s post-Columbian history, he argues, popular culture was essentially Afro-Antillean in character, which consequently made the island similar to other Caribbean nations (11).3 For the critic Efraín Barradas, José Luis González exemplifies the writer who bridges the previous literary generations—that of the 1940s and 1950s—with the so-called Generation of the 70s, in which Vega classifies her own writing. He is among many scholars and writers who argue that today’s most noteworthy Puerto Rican writers constitute a new generation in the island’s literary tradition. In Barradas’s anthology of Puerto Rican authors (Apalabramiento: Diez cuentistas puertorriqueños de hoy, 1983), he provides what he views as the representative characteristics of the then contemporary narrators. He identifies the commonalities in their collective works as consisting of the following: use and manipulation of popular speech; a strong feminine/feminist presence; use of history; the presence of the economically lower classes; a unifying, inclusive view of the Caribbean; and the fusion of the narrative voice with those of the protagonists (xvii– xxvii). Yazmín Pérez Torres more specifically characterizes the generation in an article published in 1994, eleven years after Barradas’s book. She stresses that the recent narratives address themes such as women’s oppression, the oppression resulting from bourgeois ideologies, the African roots

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in Puerto Rican culture, the presence of the homosexual, the history of the “other,” and the reality of Puerto Ricans in New York (570). Although Barradas does not offer a name for this new generation of writers, he alludes to various ones that other scholars have given them, such as the Generación del Sesenta and Promoción del Setenta. He adds that writers such as Luis Rafael Sánchez, Manuel Ramos Otero, Magali García Ramis, Carmen Lugo Filippi, Rosario Ferré, and Vega, among others, present significant innovations as to represent a new generation of Puerto Rican writers. According to Barradas, Luis Rafael Sánchez initiates the new literary generation with the collection En cuerpo de camisa (1966); however, Ana Lydia Vega points to Ferré’s Papeles de Pandora (1976) as the text that broke ground especially for women writers. Vega states the following in an interview with Elizabeth Hernández and Consuelo López Springfield: When [Ferré] published, she immediately gained national attention. This broke down barriers. This and the feminist struggles of the 1960’s began to change popular consciousness. In turn, it allowed a group of women writers to gain legitimacy in the sense that they appeared in anthologies, achieved critical attention, and reached more readers than men who were publishing then. (817) The result has been what Vega calls a boom in recent Puerto Rican literary production (Vega Esperando a Lólo 94; Geisdorfer Feal 152). Although Vega acknowledges the linguistic and stylistic influence of Sánchez on most recent Puerto Rican writers, herself included, she notes that Ferré and other women writers of their generation have attempted to achieve different ends with these innovations (Geisdorfer Feal 151). Ana Lydia Vega uses characters of diverse social classes and cultural backgrounds for her construction of identity. The protagonists particularly in Falsas crónicas del sur present a discernable ideological inclination regarding national identity and feminism. Prior to each story, Vega provides a brief essay in which she describes the historical background of the text’s events and her motivation in choosing the respective topics. For “El baúl de Miss Florence: Fragmentos para un novelón romántico,” the fi rst story in the collection, she notes the irony that the main street of Arroyo, a “pueblo mulato,” is named after Samuel Morse, a man who out of convenience erected in the town the island’s fi rst telegraph and who, as Vega states, “nunca brilló por su abolicionismo” (2). Vega’s story, she claims, provides an explanation for the tragic deaths of Morse’s descendants.

FROM MARGIN TO THE CENTER AND “EL BAÚL” “El baúl de Miss Florence: Fragmentos para un novelón romántico” tells the story of the English woman, Florence Jane, who goes to Puerto Rico

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 211 to tutor the unruly son of Edward and Susan Lind, formerly Susan Morse. The novella takes place primarily between 1856 and 1859 during the late adolescence of Charlie, the only child of the Lind family. The Linds operate a slave plantation and a warehouse in Arroyo, located on the island’s southern coast. Miss Florence, thrust into this setting, is forced to cope with her feelings of loneliness, the realities of a slave society, and the pressures imposed on her by the bourgeois, Puerto Rican culture. Nearly twentyseven years after her initial stay there, she retrieves a journal she kept while working for the Lind family and had since guarded in a locked trunk. Her entries compose the core of the story we read. The story begins with two epigraphs taken from letters written by two figures who appear as characters in the novella. The fi rst is excerpted from a letter written by Samuel Morse and shows the American inventor’s advocation of slavery, stating the institution was ordained by “Divine Wisdom” (4). The second is taken from a letter by his daughter, Susan, while she lived in Arroyo, and it states “folks here pity my loneliness but I continue to exist . . . ” (4). Using these epigraphs, Ana Lydia Vega establishes the tone of the story that follows in that structurally, the epistolary work is composed almost exclusively of the journal entries and letters written by the protagonist. In addition, just as Samuel Morse’s quotation appears first, a patriarchal ideology, which advocates slavery forms the backdrop for the text’s events. These events, as suggested from the second epigraph, deal with a woman’s attempt at maintaining her sense of self in an adverse environment set in Puerto Rico’s southern coast. Charlie vehemently disagrees with the way his father forces his will upon all those on the estate and fi nds consolation among the Black and lower class communities, just as Florence has an occasional interlocutor in a doctor friend and in the Black housekeeper, Bela. Bela’s position on the estate suggests that she bridges the masters’ and slaves’ communities. Presumably born on the island, she has intimate contacts with and influences over various economic and social sectors of the area. Because of these contacts and her longevity, Bela has knowledge of many public and private events that shape the plantation life. She, in fact, informs Florence of the Lind’s eventual ruin upon encountering her when the English woman returns to the island in the stories latter pages. Bela’s “grandson” brings Florence to the home of the former servant, now a free person, where Bela’s discourse provides closure to many of the story’s events. Bela tells Florence how upon Charlie’s return from an unsuccessful venture in Paris, he committed suicide after his father forbade him to marry a mulatto woman and that Mr. Lind died from disease only six months after his son. Bela also recalls how Miss Susan eventually lost her mind and how the estate fell into complete destruction in spite of Bela’s intervention. Bela’s role and influences position her as a fundamental element for the representation of Puerto Rican identity. Ana Lydia Vega’s story as a whole purports to reaffi rm Puerto Rican identity with a revision of history that gives presence and voice to

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often marginalized sectors of society, particularly women and African-ancestored people like Bela. “Miss Florence,” in addition, depicts the sexist oppression concurrent with the island’s patriarchal tradition in which Black and mulatto women are also victimized. Accordingly, an understanding of progressive feminist ideals incorporating women of African descent in Hispanic texts could aid in a more productive reading of the text. During the 1980s and early 1990s, a number of feminist theories were written by and about women who considered themselves “twice a minority” such as Chicanas and Blacks.4 The groundbreaking work edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back (1981), addresses the lack of inclusion of groups such as Blacks and Chicanas in traditional feminist discourse. Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano expands on Moraga and Anzaldúa’s writings and advocates the formation of a more inclusive type of Chicana feminism: “the development of Chicana feminism in coalition with other women of color dedicated to the defi nition of a feminism which would address the specific situation of working-class women of color who do not belong to the dominant society” (733). Yarbro-Bejarano, like other theorists, advocates a feminism that bridges the differences that customarily exist between mainstream feminism and a feminism that incorporates women of color—like Sonia Saldívar-Hull. 5 The Chicana feminist that Saldívar-Hull describes must confront many of the same polemics that Vega outlines in her essays. What for Vega implies adhering to the “Puerto Rican literary tradition” Saldívar-Hull labels “cultural tyranny” for Chicanas where, in addition to a struggle against racism from the dominant culture, women must also confront the oppressive attitudes perpetuated within Chicana culture. bell hooks argues in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center published in 1984, that these divisions weaken the feminist movement and stem from how people delineate the feminist movement. hooks argues that a feminist movement formed under the auspices of a shared sense of victimization fails because such a mind-set, which originates from sexist ideology, positions women as victims, and implies that women must fi rst and continually feel themselves victimized in order to partake in the struggle. Likewise, a feminist movement cannot be sustained with the concept of a common enemy, because as hooks states, this masks and mystifies the complexities and varieties of women’s objectives. True solidarity or sisterhood (as opposed to support which only temporarily sustains) occurs, hooks continues, when individuals acknowledge biases such as racism, sexism, and class privilege and consequently change their political commitments and actions so that positive gains may be achieved for white and women of color (Feminist Theory 55). As hooks argues, “We need to do more research and writing about the barriers that separate us and the ways we can overcome such separation” thus we begin to make diversity a strength rather than an obstacle (56). One of the objectives of this investigation consists in analyzing if and how such barriers exist in Vega’s writing, in that a feminist inquiry of “El

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 213 Baúl de Miss Florence” would unveil some of the more latent racial and class issues the work presents. Critics such as Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal’s argue for a feminist approach to all Afro-Hispanic literature. She states, “it is precisely through feminist inquiry that we may discover many rich possibilities for Black women as expressed through Afro-Hispanic literature” (25). Geisdorfer Feal identifies the dilemma of advocating a feminist reading in works with a strong African presence as a double-bind where individuals must “uphold the dignity” of Afro-Hispanic protagonists while, at the same time, engage in feminist advocacy. She explains the issue in the following way: “In examining (hi) stories concerning women of color, we often fi nd ourselves confronted with the reimplantation, or the translation, of the same patriarchal values that oppressed all Africans in the colonial societies in the New World” (25). “El Baúl de Miss Florence” merits such an examination and the story’s depiction of characters of African ancestry provides substantial material for a feminist inquiry. The historical timeframe in which the story takes place, however, complicates the possibilities of the metaphorical tightrope which Vega attempts to maneuver—that of promoting progressive feminist ideals and reaffi rming national values and identity. Because the work’s action occurs primarily around the 1850s, many Blacks and mulattoes still lived in slavery (slavery was officially abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873). Although the story concludes in 1885, the Black people who were only recently freed remained in conditions similar to those under involuntary servitude. The social mobility and authority allotted African-ancestored people was substantially limited during this time, which could conceivably limit Black female characters’ possibilities for the demonstration of feminist practices. The ways of showing Black women advocating progressive agendas and actions becomes difficult (but not impossible) when these characters exist in slavelike conditions. Historians concur in regard to the traditional roles and responsibilities often required of Black and mulatto women, especially during and immediately following slavery. James Walvin alludes to the effects of slavery on the family structure: It is likely . . . that the role traditionally assigned to the man, as producer and protector of the wider family, was seriously jeopardized and even eroded by slavery. In its turn this placed a great onus on slave women—on mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters—to act as the cohesion to family life. (80) Black women’s heightened responsibilities within the family unit thus, in this situation, resulted from a consequence of slavery rather than a conscious choice by individuals undertaken within a patriarchal social structure. Margaret Crahan and Franklin Knight suggest similar conclusions and

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go so far as to argue that the prevalence of African cultural transmission was directly influenced by the percentage of women among the population (12). Vega, in situating the text within this setting, fi nds her characters confi ned in a certain way. However, as Patricia Hill Collins remarks, oppressed people, both real and fictional, can demonstrate subversive ideals in a number of ways: through consciousness of their situation, the display of subversive thoughts or the actual evidence of transgressive actions. Hill Collins quotes Nanny from Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to illustrate her argument: Ah was born blak and in slavery so it wasn’t for me to fulfill my dream of whut a woman oughta be and do. But nothing can’t stop you from wishin! You can’t beat nobody down so low till you can rob ‘em of they will. Ah didn’t want to be used for a work-ox and a brood-sow and Ah didn’t want mah daughter used dat way neither. (83) Accordingly, Vega’s depiction of a slave woman or recently freed slave woman would not prohibit the exhibition of progressive, feminist ideology. A feminist inquiry, just as Geisdorfer Feal argues, that incorporates Blacks’ perspective is fundamentally necessary especially in regards to the polemic such an approach presents in conjunction with established literary tradition and national values. Recent criticism of one of Vega’s previous works also addresses such a polemic and offers a way to make sense of her fiction while acknowledging certain thematic contradictions. In an article which greatly incited my own research, Catherine Den Tandt argues that the inherent opposition between affi rming progressive roles for women and supporting traditional, national values necessitates an innovative reading of Vega’s texts due to the fact that the author’s maintenance of ambiguities and tensions put into question the very nation-building discourse the text espouses (20–21). My investigation applies feminist theory to the novella and argues that the tensions underscored in “Miss Florence” are primarily due to questions of race and mestizaje and rather than reconcile, Vega’s work de-centralizes dominant discourse. Although various critics analyze Vega’s use of African culture as one of the foundations in Puerto Rican and Caribbean identity (Falcón, Zielina, Vélez, and Emmanuelli-Huertas), they tend to emphasize the author’s earlier works, while not proposing Black feminist issues. Feminist approaches to Vega’s writing, as well as critics who analyze her texts as literature written by a woman (Fernández Olmos, Ostrov, Daroqui, Rodríguez-Luis, and Vega Carney) often address Vega’s feminine and feminist agendas as they pertain to Latin American women. These studies, however, do not concentrate primarily on feminist ideology as it relates to Black and mulatto women. The most theoretically similar work to my own comes from the previously mentioned study done by Catherine Den Tandt. Other analyses

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 215 of Vega’s fiction have examined the writer’s incorporation of history (Acosta Cruz, Pérez Torres, Den Tandt [1993]), manipulation of language (Romero and Muñoz), innovations in style (Arroyo), and exemplification of ideology (Boling).6 However, as bell hooks argues, the feminist movement is a movement to end sexist oppression: Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all our lives. Most importantly, feminism is neither a lifestyle nor a ready-made identity or role one can step into. (Feminist Theory 26) Feminism is an ideological position that inherently demands a political and social position. A critical inquiry of works like those of Ana Lydia Vega, which incorporates Black women, helps us understand better the existent realities and the socio-political, ideological amplitude necessary for the true trans-class and trans-racial ideals.

A FEMINISM THAT INCORPORATES BLACK WOMEN, A CRITICAL INQUIRY In the novella, Florence, Susan, and Bela markedly have oppressed lives; however, Bela stands out as a pivotal character for the representation of national identity. As González states Blacks and mulattos were the first on the island to feel that they were Puerto Rican; consequently, Bela’s character provides a distinct symbol of Puerto Rican identity from the very sector of society—that concerning Blacks and mulattoes—which González claims felt the most attachment to the nation. As González argues, the people of African ancestry and their culture provide the nation’s ideological foundation. Bela’s position on the estate suggests that she bridges the masters’ and slaves’ communities and influences the area’s ideological foundation, further illustrating how her character incorporates various aspects of Puerto Rican identity. A similar phenomenon has occurred with Black servants in U.S. history, as Susan Tucker argues that domestics in the southern U.S. provided a communication between Black and white communities, and also enabled each party to know more about the customs and intimacies of the other. She states the following: Black domestics became, therefore, interpreters who explained white life to blacks and black life to whites. Through black domestics, many black children heard fi rsthand accounts of the ways of ‘the white folks,’ and many white children heard similar, though usually more censored, stories about the lives of blacks. (189)

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Bela shows many of the same characteristics Tucker alludes to and therefore contains a more representative conception of Puerto Rican lifestyles. In fact, Bela represents “lo puertorriqueño” at the level of the common person as compared with the other protagonists who originate from the dominant class. She exemplifies a synthesis of Puerto Rican identity in various manners, including her language, experiences, and actions. Bela’s linguistic knowledge, evident throughout Florence’s journal entries, parallels the historical and present day multi-linguistic influences on the island. The text mentions on various occasions that the family and the servants spoke English within the home. The story also shows Bela talking “el patois de las islas ingleses” (24) as well as Spanish, the only language her “grandson” speaks. The dominating cultures during the time of the story, as well as today, arise from English-speaking countries and Spain. Bela not only reflects these linguistic influences, but she also plays an active part in shaping and transmitting Puerto Rican identity. She influences the identity construction of those around her by disseminating knowledge about the history of the land and its people. The then free woman talks at length with Florence near the text’s conclusion and explains not only the family’s demise but she also describes in some detail the emancipation of Puerto Rican slaves. She explains the events with reference to their historical significance and even chastises the younger generations, represented by her grandson, for their apparent lack of concern for such history, “La juventud no se ocupa de estos cuentos de viejos” (71). The older Black generation, as exemplified by Bela, thus helps preserve local history and unify and perpetuate the community’s existence. Her influence, in fact, extends from the matriarch of the Lind family to different children in the African-ancestored community. After Charlie’s suicide triggers Susan’s insanity, Bela appears and helps ensure her welfare as well as additionally assuming responsibility for Edward Lind’s funeral arrangements. Just as the former servant watches over the inhabitants of the area as they age and in their death, she also administers to the youth. Bela states that Andrés, a young, mulatto man— implied to be Lind’s illegitimate offspring—is her grandson, yet Florence knows this cannot be true because Bela was around fifty years old and childless when Florence left the island. Bela has, therefore, taken a child and raised him as her own (as her grandson to be precise) to ensure the child’s proper upbringing. Bela actively helps perpetuate the community and influences the formation of the inhabitants’ identity. As a representation of Puerto Rican identity, she displays the linguistic command of the diverse cultures in the area, she possesses and perpetuates the historical knowledge of its inhabitants, and she actively fosters the prolongation of the (Arroyo) community. Bela demonstrates a great deal of influence over the Lind family; however, her actions and persona remain relatively traditional and conformist. Granted, she lives in a state of slavery throughout the majority of the novella; nonetheless, she never even attempts to undermine her oppressive

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 217 existence, nor voices a desire to do so. The only time she is able to assert any sort of power in this setting occurs at the expense of her overseers, both Susan and Florence: she cares for Susan as her dementia worsens, and on the three occasions that Florence falls ill, only Bela’s remedies ease her sickness. Thus, Bela’s deeds may be considered a consequence of her compassion rather than an attempt at subversion or ideological opposition to the patriarchal society. Throughout the story Bela never voices any concern about her limited freedoms.7 Rather than even demonstrating silent resistance, as was common among slaves, she maintains an acquiescent background position. The text portrays the Black, former servant as incorporating many of Puerto Rico’s diverse influences that make up the nation’s identity, yet her character remains (contented apparently) in a prohibitive existence. Even towards the text’s conclusion, when all the slaves were free, Bela’s discourse with Florence remains free of rancor or dissension regarding her forced servitude or the limitations imposed by the society. This penultimate section of the novella is narrated intermittently in the fi rst person—through Florence— and the third person; however, we only read Bela’s dialogue as Florence relays it, thus never allowing Bela to speak for herself. As Shoshana Felman states, the fi rst symbolic step of the feminist revolution involves giving voice to women (9). The only time that Bela arguably asserts any defi nitive actions that could be interpreted as feminist occur in relation to Mr. Lind’s lovers. Whether her actions represent the desire or an act to subvert sexist oppression remains questionable, however. On two occasions the story depicts Mr. Lind’s affairs with women of African ancestry. One, a mulatto servant named Selenia, Bela opposes immediately as Florence states in her journal: “Por alguna razón, opaca para mí, Bela le declaró la guerra en seguida” (26). The two argue incessantly, and fi nally, after Bela informs Susan that Mr. Lind has impregnated Selenia, Susan dismisses Selenia. Mr. Lind brings a second lover, a Black woman, to the house only six months after Charlie’s suicide and Susan’s initial breakdown. Bela, a free woman at the time of Charlie’s death, decides to pack her belongings and leave for the pueblo. She states the following regarding the episode: “Aquella negra no era quien para tenerme a mí de criada” (79). We may argue whether Bela’s condemnation of Mr. Lind’s extramarital relationships with a Black and mulatto woman constitutes an act of solidarity with Susan or conformity with the traditional institution of marriage. The fact that Bela explicitly refuses to be a maid to a Black woman suggests a number of revealing possibilities: Bela may have disdain for Lind’s mistress for she considers her unscrupulous and unethical and therefore beneath her service, or she may accept being subservient to white folks, as the patriarchal, Euro-centric society dictates but unwilling to concede power to someone of her race and class. Bela’s (in)actions and repeated submissive attitudes imply that the former servant incorporates the dominant oppressive ideology into that of her

218 Emmanuel Harris II own. Patricia Hill Collins states that the description of Black female servants as accepting of their subordination is a mythical representation. Collins argues that when these women were given the opportunity to describe themselves; they actually expressed their attitudes as being unaccepting of their servitude—viewpoints that they passed to their children (71–73).8 The scholar states “Black women intellectuals have aggressively deconstructed the image of African-American women as contented mammies (sic) by challenging traditional views of Black women domestics” (71). Bela, however, never demonstrates such inclinations; rather, she appears even hesitant to celebrate her emancipation. She tells Florence that when the slaves were fi nally freed, it took Charlie’s urgings to get Bela to celebrate with the rest of the former slaves: He seemed content: he even brought me out of the kitchen so that I would go down to the batey. And from where he stood he insisted that I lighten up, that I shake off the shackles of my soul. (my translation) (El se veía contento: hasta me sacó de la cocina para hacerme bajar al batey y me hacía desde lejos que bailara, que me sacudiera, que me quitara de encima los grilletes del alma.) (70) She has internalized her oppression to such a point that she requires the urgings of her young, former master to embrace more fully her freedom. Nonetheless, because Florence narrates the story, she may arguably be unaware of Bela’s more subversive thoughts and or actions. As Collins argues, the mythical image of the Mammy in America “symbolizes the dominant group’s perceptions of the ideal Black female relationship to elite white power” (71). However, Ana Lydia Vega states in an interview that she chose to narrate the novella from Florence’s perspective to provide a view of the events from an objective, distant observer who would be able to critique the problems and issues of the then emerging Creole population (Hernández and Springfield 820–821).9 Florence’s viewpoint provides the depiction of a more objective reality, rather than that of a character biased by ingrained local experiences and prejudices—although oversights, such as not seeing Bela’s more transgressive acts, could definitely occur. In the same interview, Vega states that another reason she decided to write from Florence’s perspective was that she wanted a women’s view to explore the slavery theme, “not only the enslavement of Blacks but also of women in the patriarchal world of haciendas” (821). We observe revealing effects of women’s oppression by examining the lifestyles of Florence and Miss Susan who are both women of European ancestry “enslaved” in Puerto Rican society. The parallels between Miss Florence’s social status and the social status of the slaves appear almost as soon as she arrives on the estate. Although the Lind’s hire her to tutor their son, Susan Lind insists that Florence call her Miss Susan “como lo hacen todos sus sirvientes”

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 219 (7). The text clearly establishes that Florence’s position in the household resembles that of a slave, a similarity of which Florence is also aware. She refers to herself as the following: “esta esclava sin cadenas cuya alegría depende del capricho de un amo siempre ausente” (48). Mr. Lind is the amo referred to in the quotation, although young Charlie and Susan also assert authority over her. At one point Charlie deceives Florence into entering an old brick shanty where he locks her inside for a lengthy time. Being forcibly enclosed in such a heated and confi ned space enrages Florence, and Charlie tearfully releases her stating “sólo quería hacerle comprender lo que es la vida para un prisionero” (23). The true prisoner, however, is Florence, for in spite of Charlie’s very limited independence, he still is able to oppress her both symbolically and literally, albeit in this instance in a joking manner. In addition, Charlie’s parents dictate Florence’s actions throughout the story. Edward and Susan Lind decide when to allow her vacations, where she goes, what social gatherings she must attend, and how she should properly dress for such gatherings (Susan has Florence’s “dream” dress made according to the styles of society, which results in a dress with a very revealing neckline according to Florence—presumably designed for the male gaze). Although Susan helps perpetuate the oppressive system by controlling various aspects of Florence’s daily life, the English tutor observes the similarities of their respective plights. She makes the following statement in view of Susan’s resignation to the status of a housewife in an underdeveloped country: Although I’m truly moved by the sacrifice of her resignation, there is also a dark feeling that I have along with my pity. I too fi nd myself a willing prisoner but the lose of my liberty is a result of much less subtle causes. (my translation) (Aunque me conmueve plenamente el sacrificio de esa renuncia, un sentimiento oscuro corre paralelo a mi lástima. Yo también me hallo presa por voluntad propia pero la pérdida de mi libertad obedece a causas mucho menos sublimes.) (21) Perhaps the much less sublime causes to which Florence refers, include the economic necessity that fi nds her on the island, stripped of her liberties. Susan’s wealth enables her more freedom than Florence although she still remains a victim of an oppressive patriarchal society. Susan’s sacrifices and solitude characterize her daily existence, as Florence makes note in her journal: It seems so absurd to me the existence that destiny has designed for my matron! I understand her mal de vivre, her indifferent submission to daily tedium! She has abandoned modernity, bustling city life, the intellectual ferment of her upbringing in order to bury herself in a perpetual

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Upon closer examination, the text implies that Susan is conscious of her precarious situation. We recall that the first epigram quotes a passage from one of her letters, which states “folks here pity my loneliness but I continue to exist . . . ” (4) In other words, facing her solitude (and oppression?) Susan acknowledges that she continues to survive. Also, among the books in her library, Florence discovers a work by Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), the British author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). Florence does not give the title of the volume, but she states that the text deals with the equality of the sexes, thus implying that because it belonged to Susan and she brought it with her to the island, she was familiar with such ideologies and thought enough of these ideas to include the book among her select collection. However, juxtaposed—or rather, literally tucked inside—with the Wollstonecraft work on gender equality, lies a drawing that seems to reaffi rm Susan’s objectified and oppressed standing. In the book, Miss Florence discovers a sketch done by Samuel Morse of Susan dressed as one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology. Florence states that her employer had often boasted of having similarly posed for a now famous painting done by her father. The paradox of having the complete objectification of a woman by a man (in this case her father) symbolized by Susan posing as a Muse—the quintessential image of divine inspiration here presumably resulting from her physical beauty—found inside a book that expounds pre-feminist ideologies underscores Susan’s own situation. Although she is aware of what should be a society without gender bias, she remains enslaved in a patriarchal, machista society. Perhaps the awareness of such a dilemma leads her to eventually become insane. Both in fiction and reality, insanity or madness has been observed repeatedly as a manifestation of a woman’s inability or unwillingness to submit to various forms of oppression. As Patricia Collins states, fictional African-American women characters retreat into madness (and other remedies such as drugs, alcohol, and excessive religion) in efforts create worlds different from their painful realities (83–84). Shoshana Felman invokes Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness, to argue that madness becomes “conditioned by an oppressive and patriarchal male culture” (6). Felman continues by stating that we cannot confuse insanity with political or cultural revolution; rather, madness becomes a symptom for those

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 221 women unable to protest or re-affi rm themselves: “Far from being a form of contestation, ‘mental illness’ is a request for help, a manifestation both of cultural impotence and of political castration” (7). By Susan going mad, she makes a cry for help from her oppressive plight, thus conscious of her condition, she manifests a means of coping with it. Florence is equally aware of the society’s shortcomings in regards to women’s liberties and openly expresses her disillusions throughout her journal. These women present an awareness and subsequent rejection of the sexist oppression they confront, unlike Bela who never questions nor addresses such a feminist inquiry. This is not to say that Bela must go insane to satisfy a feminist critique that incorporates the perspective of Black women; however, the character fails to display any reservations of her condition. The former slave, rather, requires Charlie’s urgings to initially acknowledge her civil freedom. Yet and still the textual importance of the characters and the events in the story must not be overlooked. Ana Lydia Vega dedicates substantial essayist attention to Falsas crónicas del sur and particularly “El Baúl de Miss Florence” in a chapter of Esperando a Loló, where she discusses the reaction in Arroyo to the book’s publication. People from the region lauded the author for her work and for metaphorically putting Arroyo in the national and international spotlight for its history as well as local folklore. However the unflattering, although admittedly restrained portrayal of Samuel Morse, whose name to this day still adorns the town’s central avenue, garnered harsh reactions in other circles: Meanwhile, a growing group of Morse detractors, opposed his defenders, who were burning incense in front of his bust and openly doubted the veracity of my sources. The latter, did not delay in hammering rusty nails in the heart of a black doll, constructed in my image and likeness. (my translation) (Mientras tanto, al grupo creciente de los detractores de Morse, se oponía el de sus defensores, quienes quemaban incienso ante su busto y dudaban abiertamente de la veracidad de mis fuentes. Estos últimos no tardaron en atravesar con clavos mohosos el corazón de una muñeca negra, confeccionada a mi imagen y semejanz.) (109) The public outcry and the mutilation of the effigy of a Black Vega suggest that the readers objected to the dissemination of Morse as a racist or slaveholder. Race issues and race consciousness provoked the strongest reactions—equally emblematic of the public indifference to the status of women and sacredness of “national values.” Vega directly states that she had hoped to rewrite local history and dominant discourse, although she had not anticipated that a revision of this history would incite such a powerful response. Other supporters of the book proposed to rename the street in honor of the mulatto anti-imperialist

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leader, Nicasio Ledée, also fictionalized in Falsas crónicas (“Nosotros los historicidas” 109). Race truly does matter and the reaction by the public serves as a testament to its importance. One could inquire too, as to whether Ledée’s name would even have been suggested as a new name for Avenida Morse had it not been for Vega’s text. “Regreso del héroe” a short narrative in the collection Falsas crónicas del sur presents a fascinating polemic along racial lines and yet further exemplifies the darkening of Hispanic literatures. A feminist reading of the story is somewhat difficult due to the dearth of female characters, although the near absence of women protagonists in itself implies a certain ideological inclination. However, Ana Lydia Vega reconstructs Puerto Rican history granting primacy to people of African descent. The texts that results as Gosser-Esquilín states “forces its readers to keep in mind the arbitrariness of such concepts as truth, reality, objectivity, fiction, and the imaginary, especially in the so-called cronistas” (Grosser-Esquilín 204). Accordingly, her story does more to foment discussion than to unify and rectify. The narrative recounts the triumphant return of Nicasio Ledée from imprisonment for having been one of the leaders of “La Torre del Viejo,” a subversive sect, organized against Spanish rule. Vega states in her prefatory remarks about the ambiguous, if not nearly completely unknown origins of this obscure local hero. She asserts, “lo que sí queda claro en todos los relatos es su condición de subversivo y de mulato” (Falsas crónicas 122). Ledée “entró a Arroyo como entraban en los pueblos de Puerto Rico los viejos capitanes generales” (Falsas Crónicas 124), states one of the epigraphs, complete with carriages, and all the fanfare of a parade. A local figure who is both a drunk and a voyeur, described by Miguel Gomes as a pícaro, manages to enter the carriage in which Ledée rides. Soon afterwards, the hero dies presumably from a heart attack from all the excitement. The pícaro, acquiescing to the cries of the public for some sign of acknowledgment from their newly arrived luminary, takes the dead man’s hand and with it waves to the crowd outside of the window, thus provoking overwhelming jubilee. The story closes with the following: Upon opening the carriage in the plaza, those that found him inclined in the seat, holding the dead hero’s hand, weren’t completely sure if what was abundantly flowing down his cheek was in reality sweat or tears. (my translation) (Al abrir la puerta del coche en la plaza, los que lo encontraron tendido en el asiento, con la mano muerta del héroe entre las suyas, no supieron decir a ciencia cierta si lo que le bajaba a raudal por las mejillas era en verdad surdor o lágrimas.) (133) The implication being that the incredulous, previously pro-imperialist pícaro does or does not finally understand what Ladée represents to the masses.

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 223 What readers can extract from this critically quite over-looked narrative centers around race and the racialization of the story’s events. Vega clearly and unequivocally states that Ledée was both subversive and mulatto. The work’s title implies the ideological slant that readers should consider upon approaching the text. The idolatrous following lead by “un mulato alto, fuerte y pelirrojo” who initiates the festivities with “Abrele paso a la familia” (126) and a repeated “Que viva Nicasio Ledée,” reinforces sentiments of brotherhood. The community unites in Ledée’s shadow, the color of which eventually envelopes the pícaro. For example, one bystander who originally questioned the derelict’s participation now “lo trataba como si de niños se hubieran tirado juntos en yaguas por las cuestas empinadas de La Sierrita, le echó un brazo fraternal” (128), and together they bask in the celebration of one of Arroyo’s own. Imprisoned in Africa (Ceuta) for transgressions against Spain, Nicasio Ledée becomes a symbol in life and in death of lo puertorriqueño. The pícaro’s presence coupled with the text’s ending complicates as well as compounds the reader’s responsibilities in interpreting the work. True, many different conclusions can be ascertained from the story’s events, yet such is the power of Vega’s prose. Furthermore, without the inclusion of ‘Regreso del héroe” Nicasio Ledée, mulato, national Puerto Rican hero, would be even less known. Historical fiction such as Vega’s Falsas crónicas del sur presents particular challenges for readers and critics alike. Likewise the author’s narratives without direct historical foundations—although hopelessly intertwined with Puerto Rican identity—allows relevant commentary under the gaze of a feminist inquiry that incorporates Black women. “Letra para salsa y tres soneos por encargo” (Vírgenes y Mártires 1981), has rightfully been the subject of substantial critical attention. “Letra para salsa” tells the story of a mestizo woman (La Tipa) who inverts the traditional gender roles and solicits sexual intercourse from a young, Black street bum (El Tipo) who repeatedly had been assaulting her with cat calls. When the moment of the sexual act arrives, nevertheless, El Tipo discovers much to his chagrin that he is physically unaroused. The story concludes with three possible endings: (i) the woman consoles the man with rhetoric of solidarity among Puerto Ricans and the advocation of a society without classes and they fi nally consummate the interlude; (ii) the woman harangues the man with a barrage of feminist ideology whereupon El Tipo repents and, in an act of equal reciprocity, they make love; and, (iii) confronted with the man’s impotency, the woman returns him to his street corner where he resumes his cat calls. Catherine Den Tandt argues that the color (race) and unemployed status (class) of the male protagonist depict a social belittlement on behalf of the female character, which weakens or even subverts the woman’s “feminist triumph.” Because the woman dominates a man of a lower economic group who is non-white, the female protagonist’s victory is pyrrhic. Den Tandt also accurately notes that La Tipa resorts to such desperate measures

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because a dentist she truly desires has married a Puerto Rican “blanquita”: “the turning of the sexual tables that humiliation entails are seemingly more the consequence of her thwarted desire to become the dentist’s ‘wife’ than the result of her feminist consciousness” (16). Regardless, one of the story’s possible endings explicitly states the character’s feminist awareness, in spite of her degrading acts. Although the story depicts some stereotypical, or at best problematic images—in particular that of a darker-skinned woman seeking temporary gratification through sex with a Black man who is unemployed—the text graphically dramatizes the difficulties and conflicting ideologies women confront in attempting to live more fulfilled lives. An oppressive, patriarchal system, of which the female protagonist is conscious, has, in her mind, driven her to such disparaging ends. Like John Perivolaris in assessing Luis Rafael Sanches’s La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos, the use of “stereotypes with powerful resonances constitute a strategically offensive position from which to attack the conventional nationalist messianism of Puerto Rican paternalism” (Perivolaris 193–194). Similarly, Vega’s writing and portrayal of racially loaded imagery is used to incite, enlighten, and attack the public’s perception of the status quo.

CONCLUSION Many writers and critics have classified Ana Lydia Vega’s works as pertaining to a new generation of Puerto Rican writers. Although Vega states that each generation of national writers is tied inherently to the historic compromise of reaffi rming national identity, among the distinguishing characteristics of this new generation, we can observe the re-examination of national history, a prominent feminine/feminist presence and the portrayal of African roots in Puerto Rican culture. Vega’s “El baúl de Miss Florence” demonstrates these characteristics and presents the fascinating polemic of reconciling the reaffi rmation of Puerto Rican culture and values with the advocation of progressive feminist ideology. The story fi rmly establishes African-ancestored characters as one of the cornerstones of national identity as represented by Bela. She is an amalgamation of the island’s diverse cultural influences evidenced in her mastery of the many languages of the area, her knowledge and dissemination of the town’s history, and her efforts to maintain and perpetuate the respective communities. However, unlike the novella’s white, female characters, Bela, who represents the core of Puerto Rican identity, demonstrates little, if any, sort of feminist consciousness. Although the author is renowned for the feminist stance in much of her writings, the story designates an African-ancestored character to show the incorporation of her oppression and the uncritical acceptance of the patriarchal society. Despite the shifting narrative voice near the text’s conclusion, the voice of Bela remains subject to Florence’s interpretation, who

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 225 originates from the dominant class. Not even at the fundamental stage of feminist advocation, that of allowing women to speak for themselves, does the story facilitate the Black, former servant to demonstrate progressive ideology. Black and mulatto characters to a large extent support, affi rm, and represent the traditional, patriarchal value system, while white women advocate progressive ideologies, critique the oppressive status quo, and reflect on their societal impotency as women in “El baúl de Miss Florence.” Lest we forget nevertheless, that at the conclusion of the story, the characters that remain on the island, disseminate knowledge of their community and extol their heritage are of African descent. Like in “Regreso del héroe” the presence, persistence and plethora of Black characters fi ll gaps in Puerto Rican history while at the same time, Vega’s works provide more questions than answers, more insight than illumination, and more color than clarity. NOTES 1. Antonio Tillis in Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature describes the development of the “black aesthetic” in Manuel Zapata Olivella’s works as the “darkening” of Latin American literature. We can observe a similar occurrence in examining Vega’s texts and her development of African-ancestored characters. 2. I understand feminism just as bell hook’s defi nes the term in Feminist Theory: “Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires” (24). 3. Isbelo Zenón Cruz’s book Narciso descubre su trasero (1974) precedes González’s essay and advocates a complete revision of the history and representations of Black folk on the island, because of the transgenerational misconceptions that literature and popular myths have propagated. For Zenón Cruz, Puerto Rican identity consists of indigenous, African, and European ethnicities and cultures—all are inseparably within the individual, rather than “part” of an islander (47). He argues “no sería tampoco exacto hablar de elementos, porque la separación de dichos elementos es producto de una abstracción mental que no corresponde a la realidad” (47). Although his text may arguably attempt to isolate the island’s African-ancestored peoples, his ideological leanings appear within a generation of Puerto Rican writers who have attempted to give voice to often marginalized groups. 4. María Herrera-Sobek employs this term in the introduction of a text she edited, Beyond Stereotypes: The Critical Analysis of Chicana Literature (1985). She notes that the literary critics Eliana Rivero and Margarita B. Melville had previously popularized the term. 5. By “women of color” we may include Chicana, Puerto Rican, Native American, Asian-American, and other so-called Third World women. 6. Often these general classifications overlap as the different issues are many times interrelated (for example, some may argue that Vega’s approach to history incorporates a feminist perspective or marginalized voices; others see how the author’s linguistic style contributes to a portrayal of Puerto Rican and Caribbean identity, etc.).

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7. The only evidence which approaches a display of discontent on Bela’s part appears near the text’s conclusion, upon Florence’s return. The fi rst thing she says to Florence is “ahora somos gente libre” (92), which implies the importance she places on the topic. 8. We might recall Circe from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, who when fi rst given the opportunity to express her thoughts about her servitude to the now defunct white overseers, states the following: “‘You don’t listen to people. Your ear is on your head, but it’s not connected to your brain. I said she killed herself rather than do the work I’d been doing all my life!’ . . . ‘Do you hear me? She saw the work I did all her days and died, you hear me, died, rather than live like me. Now what do you suppose she thought I was! If the way I lived and the work I did was so hateful to her that she killed herself to keep from having to do it, and you think I stay on here because I loved her, then you have about as much sense as a fart!’” (247). 9. Vega states in the same interview that during the time of the story’s setting, the majority of landowners in Puerto Rico were foreign, “they weren’t even Spanish . . . [Puerto Rico] was very international. There were British, Dutch, Danes. People from all over Europe as well as those who came via the Caribbean Islands” (820–821).Vega notes that “this world where everything is foreign, where everyone is foreign, must have created special difficulties for the emergence of the Creole, of Puerto Rican consciousness” (821). She continues stating that Charlie’s character best represents the sector of society that manifested such contradictions in identity formation because he is born and raised in this setting; however, his suicide at a young age, and the fact that he is immersed in the problems, eliminated him for consideration as the primary narrator (821).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barradas, Efraín, ed. Apalabramiento: Diez cuentistas puertorriqueños de hoy. Hanover, NH: Ediciones del Norte, 1983. Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Trans. James Maraniss. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992. Chanady, Amaryll. “Latin American Imagined Communities and the Postmodern Challenge.” Introduction. Latin American Identity and Constructions of Difference. Ed. Amaryll Chanady. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Collins, Patricia Hill. “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images.” Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1990. Den Tandt, Catherine. “Excavating Histories: Ana Lydia Vega’s Falsas crónicas del sur.” Feministas Unidas 13.2 (1993): 1–6. . “Tracing Nation and Gender: Ana Lydia Vega.” Revista de estudios hispánicos 28(1994): 3–24. Felman, Shoshana. “Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy.” Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Geisdorfer Feal, Rosemary. “Interview with Ana Lydia Vega.” Hispania 73 (1990): 151–153. Gomes, Miguel. “El Desengaño de las alegorías y la escritura de la nación: El caso de Ana Lydia Vega” Revista iberoamericana, 67.194–195 (2001): 201–217. González, José Luis. Puerto Rico: The Four Storeyed Country and Other Essays. Trans. Gerald Guinness. New York: Markus Wiener, 1993.

Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega 227 Gosser-Esquilín, Mary Ann. “Ana Lydia Vega’s Falsas Crónicas del Sur: Reconstruction and Revision of Puerto Rico’s Past. A Twice-Told Tale: Reinventing the Encounter in Iberian/Iberian American Literature and Film. Ed. Santiago Juan-Navarro et al. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Hernández, Elizabeth and Consuelo López Springfield. “Women and Writing in Puerto Rico: An Interview with Ana Lydia Vega.” Callaloo 17.3 (1994): 816–825. hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End, 1984. Levins Morales, Aurora. “Child of the Américas.” Boricuas: Infl uential Puerto Rican Writings—An Anthology. Roberto Santiago ed. New York: One World/ Ballantine, 1995. p.79. Moroga, Cherrie and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, Massachusetts: Persephon, 1981. Perivolaris, John. “Little Stories of Caribbean History and Nationhood: Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá and Luis Rafael Sánchez.” The Cultures of the Hispanic Caribbean. Ed. Conrad James et al. London: MacMillan Education Ltd., 2000. Saldívar-Hull, Sonia. “Feminism on the Border: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics.” Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature, Culture and Ideology. Ed. Héctor Calderón and José David Saldívar. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Tillis, Antonio D. Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005. Tucker, Susan. Telling Memories among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Vega, Ana Lydia. “To Write or Not to Write?” Philosophy and Literature in Latin America: A Critical Assessment of the Current Situation. Ed. Jorge J. E. García and Mireya Camurati. New York: SUNY Press, 1989. . Falsas crónicas del sur. Río Piedras: University of Puerto Rico Press, 1991. . Esperando a Loló y otros delirios generacionales. San Juan, Puerto Rico: University of Puerto Rico Press, 1994. Vega, Ana Lydia and Carmen Lugo Filippi. Vírgenes y mártires. Rio Piedras: Antillana, 1991. Vega Carney, Carmen. “El Amor como discurso político en Ana Lydia Vega y Rosario Ferré.” Letras femeninas 17 (1991): 77–87. Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. “Chicano Literature from a Chicana Feminist Perspective” (1987). Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991.

11 Dialogically Redefining the Nation Hip-hop and the Collective Identity Lesley Feracho

The roots of hip-hop are not only found in urban North American communities like the Bronx, New York, but also in its myriad forms, from disco, street, funk, and toasts, signifying the dozens to its African predecessors, the griots of Nigeria and the Gambia (Mitchell 4). As a form of popular culture, it can be understood as a complex interaction of social, historical, and political discourses that engage past and present, individual and collective, marginal and mainstream. As George Lipsitz notes in Time Passages: Popular music is nothing if not dialogic, the product of an ongoing historical conversation in which no one has the fi rst or last word. The traces of the past that pervade the popular music of the present amount to more than mere chance: they are not simply juxtapositions of incompatible realities. They reflect a dialogic process, one embedded in collective history and nurtured by the ingenuity of artists interested in fashioning icons of opposition. (99) This vision of hip-hop as dialogic highlights its role as not only resistance to but also simultaneous engagement with the historic and socio-cultural: a navigation of voice, power, and subjectivity. For many hip-hop artists, this musical space provided a voice for a collective reality not addressed on a mainstream and political level. The music and lyrical content challenged the belief that only a few were entitled to self-expression. By chronicling day-to-day lives, struggles, and dreams, hip-hop artists spoke to local concerns and a larger public that crossed the boundaries of specific, individual and regional texts. It became an example of what Roland Robertson describes as the glocal: “combining the global with the local, to emphasize that each is in many ways defi ned by the other and that they frequently intersect, rather than being polarized opposites” (qtd. in Mitchell 11). As hip-hop spread beyond the boundaries of the U.S., its social and political function was adopted and transformed by communities fighting different manifestations of oppression around the world. As rap and hip-hop culture developed into “local, linguistic, musical, and political contexts” they have

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become a particularly pointed tool for youth protest, ethnic minorities, and political statements on local, racial, sexual, and class issues (Mitchell 10). As part of this articulation of historically and politically silenced voices, hip-hop music and culture also became a way of challenging not just the social structures but also the very concepts of the nation itself. This study examines how artists of the African Diaspora, in particular Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil, use hip-hop to redefi ne notions of national inclusiveness and marginality. I will show how four artists, the Cuban group Orishas, Brazil’s Daúde, also Brazilian rapper Nega Gizza, and Puerto Rican hiphop/reggaeton artist Tego Calderón utilize and rework the musical genre and thematic content to contest and expand national identities of Cubanness (or Cubanidad), Brazilianness and Puerto Ricanness (Boricua identity), respectively. The result is a declaration of their position as citizens: bringing marginalized “objects” into subjectivity through an emphasis on race, class, gender, religion, and sexuality among others. These artists assert their individual and collective voice by crossing the margin in five important ways: (i) through a reimagining of national borders and Diaspora that defies racial and ethnic binaries; (ii) through a dialogue of traditional and contemporary discourse and musical forms; (iii) through the mixing of rural and urban histories of “o povo”/the people; (iv) through the crossing of gendered boundaries and the transgression of codes of sexual identity; and lastly, (v) through a dialogue of historical, social collective identities with contemporary realities of oppression and resistance. The fi rst example demonstrates how the song “5.3.7 Cuba” from the album “A lo Cubano/Cuban Style” by the hip-hop collective Orishas engages in a discussion of “Cubanidad/Cubanness” as extending beyond its national borders. The concept of “Cubanidad/Cubanness” is one that has been analyzed in sociological and literary fora (Fernando Ortiz, Virgilio Piñera, Reinaldo Arenas, and some essays of Nancy Morejón to name a few examples) and in the context of more traditional Cuban music played in North America and the Caribbean but remained comparatively understudied with more contemporary musical forms. Largely due to political and economic concerns, this group of Cuban musicians left their homeland to establish residency in Paris and, thus, enter the group of Cubans who make up the Cuban Diaspora and are in part defi ned by a sense of exile. For these citizens, identity is tied to issues of displacement, at times engaging in the creation of what Anderson calls “imagined communities.” (13) As part of this reimagining of the nation, these exiled citizens assert a Cuban identity that is temporally flexible, making connections that cross the socially and historically imposed divisions of race, as well as limitations of time and distance. Musically, the Orishas’s use of hip-hop exemplifies its diasporic appeal. As Mitchell states in Global Noise “A common feature of the hip-hop scenes in most of these countries is their multiethnic, multicultural nature as vernacular expressions of migrant diasporic cultures . . . ” (10). At the same time, the growing

230 Lesley Feracho popularity of rap and hip-hop in Cuba positions it as a contemporary marker of Cuban cultural identity, to such an extent that the revolutionary leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro called it “the existing revolutionary voice of Cuba’s future” (Mitchell 3). The employ of Orishas as the group’s public signification is the fi rst way in which divisions, in this case racial, are broken down. By referencing the term used to describe the deities of santería (a religious practice born in the colonial encounter of Africa and Europe), they valorize African influence as more than just a folkloric reference. Africanized religious practice thus emerges as a significant part of a contemporary Cuban identity: even diasporic Cuban identity. (Fairley 387) This notion is evidenced in songs like “Canto pa’ Elewa and Changó,” which invokes the god of the crossroads and the warrior god of lightning and justice, respectively, as part of the group’s national and spiritual identity. The second example of Orishas’s ability to cross social and historical borders is through the musical structure of “5.3.7. Cuba.” By drawing on the melody of the song “Chan-Chan” by the renowned interpreter of son Compay Segundo, they not only show respect for the Cuban tradition that impacted them, but, affi rm its importance as part of their contemporary reworking of Cubanidad/Cubanness. As the song states: I am from Cuba that imposed itself And that stays with you And when you arrive it doesn’t separate, it stays, it sticks What the Russian put in the speech That Compay Segundo put between your eyebrows Now the distance stays (Soy de Cuba Lo que impulso Y que se pega Y cuando llega No despega, Pega, pega lo que puso El ruso en el discurso Que Compay Segundo puso entre tus cejas. Ahora la distancia queda) (Orishas 2000)

The use of the son to make this statement is not by chance. It originated in eastern Cuba in the fi rst part of the twentieth century as a musical representation of the growing nationalist fervor that sought to combat hostility towards social divisions and U.S. domination by embracing Afro-Cuban culture as a synthesis of the European and the African without positing a hierarchy between the two (Manuel 35–36). The Orishas therefore incorporate its project of national identity into their own.

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The last element of this reimagination of their place in the Cuban nation is through a diasporic reconnection: bridging the gap between Paris and Cuba. This transnational connection is achieved in part through references to a deep sense of longing for return, an affi rmation of a spiritual connection and an evocation of places that is reminiscent of African-American rap’s emphasis on place and locality that is rooted in part in complex geographies of the post-modern or the global city (Forman xviii). Lyrically, the aforementioned is illustrated in the following: And from the depths of my heart I feel nostalgia A strange sensation like desire It is the distance that puts itself in the middle I will return one assumes (Y desde lo profundo de mi corazón siento nostalgia Una extraña sensación como añoranza De esta distancia Que se interpone. Que regresaré bien se supone.) (Orishas 2000)

There is an acceptance however that the physical distance may not be bridged but give way to an emotional and spiritual remembrance that places them in the middle of Europe and the Caribbean thus stretching the reach of Cubanidad beyond its “national” shores. The specific references to Cuban cities is further evidence of this: Cayo Hueso, San Leoporto Buena Vista, Miramar Alamar, La Victoria Old Havana, Barrio Nuevo Bejucal (Orishas 2000)

These cities and the others mentioned later in the song are not distant memories, or just sites of nostalgia but anchors of identity. As Forman notes in his examination of race, space, and place in rap and hip-hop, it is not an empty void but a cultural construct of sorts that links place, power, identity, and experience: “The category of space comprises the social arena in which individuals reproduce or challenge their experiential boundaries of action and interaction” (23). For Orishas, the places named and the emotions and traditions evoked support their declaration of being “100% Cuban prototype” and challenge the geographical boundaries that would negate their identity. I will now turn to Brazil as another representation of boundary crossing. In the song “Vida Sertaneja” from the self-titled debut album of the Bahian singer, Daúde uses the voice of a twentieth century, Northeastern male poet of the people, “Patativa do Assaré” (Antonio Gonçalves da Silva by birth),

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to give voice to the marginalized resident of the sertão (or hinterlands). Her choice of Patativa do Assaré’s work is important because of his embodiment of the synthesis of the diverse musical styles of Northeastern Brazil, particularly the “poesia de bancada” (poetry of the bench) and “poesia caboclo” (in this case the poetry of the agricultural laborers; Cariry 1). In his poetry, the representation of the dialect of the caboclo identifyies with the oppressed classes while not losing sight of what is also going on in the world (Cariry iii). The use of music to give voice to the silenced and transform the world is in part represented by his particular use of the musical style repente. It is a musical style from nineteenth-century Northeastern Brazil (in places like Paraíba) that is characterized by an improvisation of lyrics sung with the accompaniment of musicians playing the guitar and the tambourine. (Cleary 338) These musicians of repente however did not consider themselves as such, preferring to identify their work more with poetry than music. Daúde’s evocation of this traditional form is not just the choice of a poem/ song that brings marginalized people into subjectivity but also crosses the distance between the past and present. Just as the Orishas combine son and hip-hop, so too does Daúde: fusing repente with hip-hop. The result is a rhythmic and lyrical mix that seems wholely modern, but is in fact rooted in this nineteenth-century tradition that was a manifestation of the “literatura de cordel” or printed ballads by regional poets that involved duels of balladeers (akin to traditions of call and response and later “battles” between rappers). (Cleary 338) When Daúde takes on “Patativaa do Assaré” and the poetic voice begins to sing, the dialogic is noted: By the force of nature I am a Northeastern poet However I only sing the poverty Of my small world (translation mine) (Por força da natureza Sou poeta nordestino Porém só canto a pobreza Do meu mundo pequenino) (Daude 1995)

Later, she declares that I sing the life of this people That work until they die. . . . That, even in hard times, Feel glad and happy (translation mine) (Canto a vida desta gente Que trabaia inté more . . .

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Desta gente sem leitura Que, mesmo na desventura Se sente alegre e feliz) (Daude 1995)

Daúde is not only singing of the sadness of their lives, but also equally as significant, she sanctions their voice as important parts of the stories of Brazil. Although the subject of “Vida Sertaneja” begins by stressing that: “I am a peasant from the hinterlands”—a region considered backwards, particularly in contrast to an ever modernizing Brazil, the male voice’s centrality in this repente/hip-hop tale of humble people fi nding contentment amidst difficult circumstances bridges the gap between the traditional and the contemporary, between his rural and her urban. However, the choice by a Black female singer of a male Northeastern poet should not be overlooked. Daúde’s identity can be placed within a history of Black women’s silence in Brazilian society. As Sueli Carneiro notes: Black women are not ideals of anything, we are portrayed as the antimuses of Brazilian society. . . . We are women identified as objects . . . We come from a violated, folkloric, and marginalized culture that is treated as primitive, diabolical, and alien to our own national culture. (218) Symbolically, the valorization of the peasant, marginalized voice is also her own: bringing the objectified woman into subjectivity through her musical text. Their vocal mirroring and gender crossing is a symbolic act of solidarity between two groups: Blacks and sertanejos. Together they are once silenced voices that now speak of their lives in “their” Brazil. I will now turn to another Black Brazilian musician, specifically the Carioca (a term used to refer to someone from the city of Rio de Janeiro) rapper, named Nega Gizza. In her song “Prostituta” from the debut album “Na Honestidade” (“Honestly”), she gives her listener a fi rst person account of a prostitute who explains her dreams and struggles amidst a life of sexual promiscuity, frustration, and deception in contemporary Brazil. Nega Gizza’s choice of this subject matter is important for two reasons: as a chronicle of a social problem that plagues not only Brazil but also many countries like the U.S., Cuba, and Denmark, to name a few; and, as her insertion into the equally expansive disourse of female rapper’s representation of sexuality. The studies of prostitution show that it is many times determined by economic misery and the lack of reasonable activities for the female participant. As a result, not only must the prostitute deal with threats of violence and disease and emotional fallout but also with the stigma projected onto her. As Maria Dulce Gaspar notes, this stigma sets other forms of discrimination in motion. As much as it presents sexual conduct as an explicit reference, it is projected onto other life roles of the prostitute (77).

234 Lesley Feracho This stigma is echoed by the lyrical subject when she states: You think that it is a lack of morality, excessive promiscuity Be a whore two minutes and survive I have dreams, love and pride (Você acha que é falta de moral, promiscuidade excessiva Seja puta 2 minutos e sobreviva Tenho um sonho, amor e vaidade) (Nega Gizza 2002)

And later adds I am a prostitute in the mouth of the people, known as a whore Obliged to learn the positions of Karma Sutra If my son cries it is I, the mother who listens May God forgive me, I am not to blame I fought alone. (Sou prostituta na boca do povo conhecida como puta Obrigada a conhecer as posições do kamasutra Se meu filho chora sou eu a mãe que escuta Se deus desculpa não tive culpa só fui a luta) (Nega Gizza 2002)

The voiced subject in “Prostituta” establishes a counterpoint between the opinions of others who see her as nothing more than a prostitute and her own expressions of regret tinged with frustration that the outcome was predetermined for her as a single mother. However, it is her self-definition as mother that I want to highlight here. In order to counteract the essentializing condemnation of her identity based on her sexual activity, she stresses that there is another part of her that is important: the role of mother, which should make her part of the universal family of mothers. By positing her relationship to her son and her concern for him, this female voice tries to keep a space of her life free from the contamination of prostitution’s stigma and change the way in which she is identified. It is an act that can be explained by the specific terminology that social critic Marlene Spanger uses when speaking of “Black Prostitutes in Denmark”: I shall not refer to the women as prostitutes, because the term reflects an identity rather than an act. . . . I fi nd the term “women-who-prostitute” more precise for my study, because it reflects an act or some discursive practive of the women’s lives. The mainstream pejorative term “prostitute,” I shall claim, reflects essentialist thinking. (121) Although the female subject does use the term “prostitute,” it is many times framed implicitly as the perception of the other that she continually fights

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against internalizing. For others she is “the happy and sad harlot,” “the video game,” and “the prostitute . . . known as whore.” This constant struggle to define herself on her own terms is symbolically akin to declaring herself “a woman who prostitutes.” However, the success of her attempt to claim subjectivity by asserting that she is more than a transgressor is always in doubt because of the repetition of the phrase: “I am the absence of love with the presence of money.” The dialogic tension between “presence” and “absence” is therefore not just a struggle between money and love (cold materialism and human emotion) but also symbolically the contrast of a female voice that is heard and one that is silenced in the national identity. The female voice’s declarations give voice to her inner struggle with a society that asks for a standard of beauty that is represented by a sculpted body (and other specific racial and class connotations). All she wants is to “be an artist, give autographs, interviews and be on the cover of a magazine. To be seen as beautiful on television.” As a result, Nega Gizza’s female voice engages in role playing that challenges the society and country that would marginalize her under the stigma of sexual deviance and a lack of beauty. While her story brings to light the troubling question of female oppression and social ills, at the same time, it affirms her voice as valid and her identity as a Brazilian woman who refuses to stay relegated to the marginalized space. For Nega Gizza as rapper, this representation of sexuality is a challenge shared by female rappers across the globe. As Tricia Rose notes “Black women rappers articulate the fears, pleasures, and promises of young black women whose voices have been relegated to the margins of public discourse” while also dealing with themes like sexual promiscuity, emotional commitment, infidelity, racial politics, and Black cultural history (146). Rose also clarifies that overall, this struggle for self-articulation is not just in opposition to male rappers but is a dialogue with each other: Black men, Black women, and dominant culture (148). Although Rose places her analysis chiefly in the context of African-American female rappers, these dynamics can also be seen here in the Brazilian context given like similarities in the marginalization of Black women. Nega Gizza’s choice of a prostitute’s life as the theme is also an example of the ongoing debate over the representation of sexuality by female rappers as an affirmation of Black beauty that, as Rose notes, counters what Black feminists such as Hortense Spillers see as “a history of silence surrounding Black women’s sexuality” (168) or a representation that “preserves the logic of female sexual objectification” (147). The tension noted in the prostitute’s self-definition is part of that dilemma. Ultimately what Nega Gizza achieves in “Prostitute” is another example of the breaking down of borders that Daúde achieves when she takes on the voice of the Northeastern poet in order to reinsert not only the story of a life (and subsequently, the story of a collective), but also herself in the national consciousness. At the same time this sense of erasing divisive lines and calling for a more inclusive definition of Brazil is akin to what the Orishas assert through their Cuban diasporic declaration of pride.

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In the last example I will discuss how Puerto Rican artist Tego Calderón in his song “Loiza” from the album El Abayarde uses the history of the Northeastern seaside town of Loiza as a backdrop for a critique of contemporary practices of alienation of Black Puerto Ricans in order to ultimately call for not only awareness but also resistance. Born as Tego Calderón Rosario in Loiza, Puerto Rico, Tego’s insertion within the Puerto Rican hip-hop scene marked an evolution of a musical trajectory on the island that originated in the early 1980s (approximately 1981). As rap developed in urban sites in New York City (particularly the South Bronx) as a way of giving voice to the disregarded and hidden experiences and disillusionments of marginalized communities, Puerto Rican hip-hop found a similar use for this musical style. As Mayra Santos-Febres notes in her essay “Geografía en Decíbeles: Utopías Pancaribeñas y el Territorio de Rap” (“Geography in Decibels: Pan Caribbean Utopias and the Rap Territory”): One could argue, following the analysis of Rodriguez Juliá in The Farmhouse Burial, that if salsa was the musical revolution of Muñoz’s development from its migratory leg in the United States, Boricua rap is the musical expression of the failure of the development plan from the circuit of circular migration unleashed by the economic crisis that Reaganism and the decadence of “Operation Bootstrap” caused in the Puerto Rican populations. (translation mine) (Se podría argumentar, siguiendo el análisis de Rodríghuez Juliá en El entierro de Cortijo, que si la salsa fue la revolución musical propia del desarrollismo muñocista desde su pata migratoria en E.U., el rap boricua es la expresión musical del fracaso del plan desarrollista desde el circuito de migración circular desencadenado por la crisis económica que causó para las poblaciones puertorriqueñas el reaganato y la decadencia de “Operación Manos a la Obra.) (97) Despite the promises and claims of modernization of the island that would result in equal access to economic prosperity or advancement, government projects such as “Operación Manos a la Obra”/”Operation Bootstrap” by Governor Luis Muñoz Marín resulted not only in large amounts of migration from the island to centers like New York City but also the creation of disenfranchised communities in Puerto Rico’s and New York City’s urban sites. Instead of fi nding better economic opportunities, what a large number found was poverty, struggle, and a lack of resources. However, the result was not divisiveness, but a stronger sense of community: “Poverty, the lack of social resources and the “inner city” or urban experience became obligatory references that promoted the development of a common symbolic language” (translation mine) (La pobreza, la falta de recursos sociales y la experiencia del “inner city” o lo urbano se convirtieron en referentes obligados que fueron fomentando el desarrollo de un lenguaje simbólico común. Santos-Febres 98). It is this

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common language that not only forefathers like Vico C, DJ Herc, and others used, but also innovators like Tego who saw hip-hop not as a structured model of specific musical elements. For Tego, hip-hop is a musical space for dialogic experimentation where he can engage hip-hop, reggaeton, salsa, mambo, plena, and bomba. Although identified as a reggaeton artist to some (forming part of the musical style that Halbert Barton has defi ned as “dancehall reggae in Spanish, rapping over pan-Caribbean, Afro-diasporic beats”) (70) and claims origins in not only Jamaica but also Panama as well as Puerto Rico, Tego has also worked within hiphop, not only taking advantage of its musical flexibility but also of its history as a form of social protest (Barton 70). Tricia Rose notes Poor people learn from experience when and how explicitly they can express their discontent. Under social conditions in which sustained frontal attacks on powerful groups are strategically unwise or successfully contained, oppressed people use language, dance, and music to mock those in power, express rage, and produce fantasies of subversion. These cultural forms are especially rich and pleasurable places where oppositional transcripts, or the “unofficial truths” are developed, refi ned and rehearsed . . . , these dances, languages, and musics produce communal bases of knowledge about social conditions, communal interpretations of them and quite often serve as the cultural glue that fosters communal resistance. (99–100) Tego’s choice of the town “Loiza” serves as one of the best examples of the power of music to critique. The town of Loiza is known historically as the embodiment of the African tradition in Puerto Rico. (Dávila 93) A site where slave communities were settled, Loiza embodies cultural expressions of Africanness that connect to metonymic representations of Puerto Rican identity in religion, exemplified in celebrations such as the Festival of Santiago Apostol in Las Cuevas, and in music through the form known as bomba. It is this implicit reference to the African history of Loiza—although regarded by some as purely folkloric—where Tego is able to establish the first part of his dialogue: the contemporary voice of Puerto Rican Black youth with the African past that has marked that very geographical space. As Juan Cartagena has noted, the bomba itself is a music that has grown from protest: Bomba is also the music of resistance and rebellion for it was during bailes de bomba that slaves plotted their escape. . . . Other commentators highlight bomba as being ‘subversive’ in challenging the notions of nationhood; in accepting our African roots; and in offering an alternate understanding of our spirituality, sensuality and our relation with nature (17, 19). This link of Puerto Rico and Africa through hip-hop is also part of a larger crossing in which Tego’s song participates, and one that I will use as a

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framework for my lyrical and musical analysis of his redefinition of Puerto Ricanness. The transnational nature of his hip-hop/reggaeton fusion is another example of what both Mayra Santos-Febres and Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez have noted in Puerto Rican culture (particularly music) and literature as a contestation of the national and specific while also reaching out. For Santos-Febres this is a process that accompanies and in some ways reacts to globalization: Compared with the globalization of the culture (in which, obviously, the genre participates) the rapper’s voice anchors itself in the specifically regional/territorial, and from this rooting in the marginal residential communities it seeks communication with other territories in like conditions and at the same time adds another point of tension in the battle over what shapes national culture. (translation mine) (Frente a la globalización de la cultura (de la cual, obviamente el género participa) la voz rapera se ancla en lo específicamente regional/territorial, y a partir de ese enraizamiento en las comunidades residenciales marginales busca comunicación con otros territorios de igual condición y de paso añade otro punto de tensión en la batalla sobre lo que conforma la cultura nacional.) (99) In a parallel form, Sanchez Gonzalez has noted that Puerto Rican literature, what she specifically calls Boricua literature and ultimately Boricua culture has been a Diasporan culture whose development has continuously crossed borders, resulting in what she describes as a p’acá y p’allá dialectics: Because the Boricua community is a subaltern colonial Diaspora, Boricua critics should attend to this, our dual eviction. Our unique sociohistorical movement emerges in a specific co-motion, an incessant shuttling of radically racialized and gendered bodies-between continents cities, and neighborhoods, between languages, genres and identifications. . . . What I have termed p’acá y p’allá dialectics may provide one way of accounting for the condition of subaltern, transnational eviction and approximating the epi-fenomenality of Diasporan cultural production. P’acá y p’allá means right here, over there, and everywhere in between, among other things, and can imply a crossing or transgression-between places, communities, sounds, and genres-marking a Diaspora’s interstitially gyrating struggle to survive in style. (167–168) Tego’s crossing and transgression is demonstrated in three important ways:(i) a musical representation of the crossing of rhythms such as bomba with hip-hop; (ii) a rejection of Loiza as solely a site of folkloric ideas of Blackness; and, (iii) a challenge to more exclusive notions of Puerto Rican identity that diminished the representation and contributions of peoples of African descent. The fi rst crossing is evident at the very beginning of the

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song through the opening drumbeats. The rhythms that begin his song and continue throughout represent not only the African heritage that is part of his individual identity but also a connection with both Loiza and specifically the bomba that came out of the presence of African slaves in this territory. In so doing, he immediately incorporates an African/Puerto Rican cultural didactic and history into a model imported from outside the Caribbean. The protest he expresses is therefore from the beginning not a copy but a re-visioning and re-appropriation of cultural forms. As Jorge Giovannetti notes in “Popular Music and Culture in Puerto Rico: Jamaican and Rap Music as Cross-Cultural Symbols” such an act can often be found in different cultural productions throughout the Caribbean: These parallel tendencies of roots recognition and searching are related, in part, to the need to affiliate the global musical trrends received with the local setting where the music is performed and to the inevitable and constant process by which Caribbean cultures and societies search for, establish, and negotiate identity. As noted once by Stuart Hall, Caribbean “identities for the twenty-fi rst century do not lie in taking old identities literally, but in using enormously rich and complex cultural heritage to which history has made them heir, as the different musics out of which a Caribbean sound might one day be produced.” (91–92) However, the Caribbean sound that appropriates this older identity is immediately recontextualized as reaching forward to the Puerto Rican present when Tego sings (Listen! This is for my people! With affection, from the “fire ant”! For my people, that I love so much! From Calderón, for all of Loiza! Listen!) (translation mine) (Oye! Esto es pa’ mi pueblo! Con cariño, del abayarde! . . . Pa’ mi pueblo, que tanto quiero! De Calderon, pa’ Loiza entero! Oye!) (Tego Calderón, Loiza)

The call to listen is fi rst and foremost for his people of Loiza—for other Black Puerto Ricans there with whom he continually reinforces his connection. By doing so, Tego starts out in the smallest geographic space (the town of Loiza), rhythmically and historically (by naming Loiza as the recipient of his message) connecting it to a larger diasporic one: Africa. By placing this

240 Lesley Feracho link within the context of a dialogue between bomba and hip-hop, he continues the geographical crossing already part of the contemporary hip-hop form’s development. As Santos-Febres notes in her explanation of the incorporation and popularity of reggae rhythms and the resulting reggaeton: I suspect that the acceptance of rhythm between rappers is not solely because of the ties of this music with the Caribbean-urban (in their conceptions of rhythm) but also the fact that reggae dancehall is the other leg of the development of the musical expressions of the afrodiasporic urban culture, this time from the branch originating in Jamaica. (translation mine) (Sospecho que la aceptación del ritmo entre raperos no es tan solo por los vínculos de esta música con lo caribeño-urbano (en las concepciones de ritmo) sino también el hecho de que el reggae dancehall es otra pata del desarrollo de expresiones musicales de la cultura urbana afrodiaspóricas esta vez desde la rama proveniente de Jamaica.) (emphasis mine; 115) As part of this urban afrodiasporic musical expression, Tego uses hiphop/bomba as not only a musical development but also as a part of an accompanying social project. It is not just an expression of his love but of solidarity, born out of his anger at the oppression and injustice they have experienced. I walk with no hurry But your slowness angers me ........................................ You want to make me think That I am part of a racial trilogy Where all the world is equal, with no special treatment (translation mine) ........................................ (Ando sin prisa Pero tu lentitud me coleriza ......................... Me quiere hacer pensar Que soy parte de una trilogia racial Donde to’ el mundo es igual, sin trato especial) (Tego Calderón, Loiza)

From the fi rst stanza Calderón calls into question the Puerto Rican version of racial democracy, namely the racial trilogy that equally values the Taíno, Spanish, and African influences that together have made up Puerto Rican identity. However, Calderón’s observation that this is something they want

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to make him think immediately dismisses that national identity as a myth propagated by mainstream, Puerto Rican discourse and not in step with the reality of how they are treated. His disillusionment and anger is in fact channeled into an acknowledgement of two key emotions: forgiveness and shame. Both together reveal a reversal of the power structures of oppression that had excluded him as invisible. Tego demonstrates this power over the anger of his exclusion by stating that he is capable of forgiveness. Conversely, he emphasizes that it is the idea of the racial trilogy that is the problematic, and that consequently those who propagate it, should feel shame at having violated certain tenets of human interaction and equality: I know how to forgive It’s you that doesn’t know how to forgive So, since you justify so much evil It is because your history is shameful Among other things (translation mine) (Sé perdonar Eres tu quien no sabe disculpar So, como justifica tanto mal Es que tu historia es vergonzosa Entre otras cosas) (Tego Calderón, Loiza)

He is not only able to control his reaction to his oppression and channel it into consciousness and forgiveness but also achieve and express a distance from it that allows him to see national identities as fictions out of touch with the realities of social division. However, Tego’s call is a process that does not just stop at condemnation but includes revelation. It is in his description of the social inequality where he most strongly challenges the idea of Loiza’s Blackness as something of an African past, to be exploited through festivals for outside, tourist consumption (Hiraldo 66): Among other things You exchanged the chains for handcuffs Not all of us are equal in legal terms And this is proven in the courts Clearly justice is obtained with pieces of gravel That is why we are how we are. . . . A legal sentence is a second-class defense (translation mine) (Entre otras cosas Cambiaste las cadenas por esposas No todos somos iguales en terminos legales Y eso esta probao en los tribunales En lo claro la justicia se obtiene con cascajos

242 Lesley Feracho Por eso estamos como estamos. . . . Sentencia legal es defensa de segunda) (Tego Calderón, Loiza)

Tego subtly emphasizes that Loiza is in fact a community, but one that in part has suffered through a criminalization of its residents where marginalization is most effectively realized through incarceration. For Tego, this aspect of the link to Loiza’s slave past is not a focus on the legacy for African descended peoples through a celebration of the African culture but through a focus on the oppressors who “exchanged the chains for handcuffs,” where justice is never fully achieved, only in parts and the legal sentence is in fact a condemnation to a second class defense. The history of enslavement is therefore one that continues with modern ramifications for Black Puerto Ricans who have been abandoned by the system. It is interesting to note that Tego’s reference to the criminalization of Black Puerto Ricans is not only of their physical bodies but also subtly implies their enclosure in other symbolic ways, particularly through their avenues of expression and protest. As Santos-Febres has noted, the mainstream concerns over expressions that posed a threat to standards of moral decency in the late 1990s (1998 for example) led to frequent invasions of neighborhoods and clubs where rap was assumed to be prevalent and led to the confiscation of rap and hip-hop records: The invasion of shacks and districts as part of the project “Strong Hand Against Crime” of Governor Pedro Rosselló and the invasion of discos and schools to eradicate rap is not pure coincidence . . . But besides using police action, the state (with the help of private businesses) is constituting itself and a legitimate marker and demarcator of rap, thus exercising the control, vigilance and canalization of such expression. In this way they intend to prevent rap from colonizing other social territories. One can also add that the border between legal Puerto Rico and the rap territory is marked by a police fence. (translation mine) (La invasión a caseríos y barriadas como parte del proyecto “Mano Dura Contra el Crimen” del gobernador Pedro Rosselló y la invasión a discotecas y escuelas para erradicar el rap no es pura coincidencia . . . Pero además de usar la acción policial, el estado (con ayuda de las empresas privadas) está constituyéndose como marco legitimador y demarcador del rap, ejerciendo así el control, la vigilancia y la canalización de dicha expresión. Así se propone evitar que el rap colonice otros territorios sociales. De más está decir que la frontera entre el Puerto Rico legal y el territorio rapero está marcada por un cerco policial.) (96) As she notes, such actions were not by coincidence and were more than a censorship of individual and communal expression, but an enforcement of the national identity through its moral codes. Although this enforcement was eventually weakened and ultimately abolished to the point where hiphop in Puerto Rico has gained mainstream acceptance, the boundaries that

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separate dominant Puerto Rican populations from those of, for example, African descent remains. Tego’s critique of this division is therefore a transgression of these borders, a resistance ironically to the historical, economic, and cultural colonization of Black Puerto Ricans (by not only Europe but also the U.S.) and ultimately a challenge to the idea of the Puerto Rican nation both implied and protected by these limits. This national identity and the marginalization of the Black Puerto Rican to whom Tego speaks, is not only carried out through the penal system, but more insidiously, through education. As he notes later in the song: To whom else Would it occur To saturate the mind of innocent children With inconsistent education Viciously manipulated A convenience of the prominent of the well-to-do (translation mine) (A quien más Se le ocurriria Saturar la mente a niños inocentes Con educación inconsistente Manipulada viciosamente Conveniencia del prominete de los pudientes) (Tego Calderón, Loiza)

The belief that all members of the community were treated as equal was taught from the beginning to young Puerto Rican’s undertaking the long process of socialization and citizenship at school. However, as Tego again reveals, such lessons were again inconsistent manipulations to maintain power structures and complacency. It is this national deception against which he fights, not through the judicial system, which has already proven a failure, but through music. The weapon therefore with which he challenges Puerto Ricanness is through rhythm and the word: using both to make historical links that not only decry exclusion, but bring Black Puerto Ricans center stage in the national musical consciousness, an act which in itself Barton sees as transgressive: The African presence in Puerto Rican culture had been denied for so long and in so many different ways that to bring it to center stage in any significant way was to be, and continues to be a controversial, if not revolutionary, act of history-making proportions. (70) Just as Tego begins “Loiza” with a call to his “pueblo”/people he uses language throughout that reinforces the last stage of the process: resistance. The consciousness shared with his listeners of the myths of racial and national inclusiveness is a steppingstone to awareness and action. In the chorus he explains one part of this resistance: the rejection of such truths as authority:

244

Lesley Feracho There will never be justice without equality Damned evil that destroys humanity Because you protest, you are going to take away my freedom But I do not recognize your authority . . . There will never be justice without equality . . . Because you protest, you are going to take away my freedom But I do not recognize your society . . . (translation and emphasis mine) (Nunca va a haber justicia sin igualdad Maldita maldad que destruye la humanidad Porque protesta, va a quitarme la libertad Si yo no reconozco su autoridad . . . Nunca va a haber justicia sin igualdad . . . Porque protesta, va a quitarme la libertad Si yo no pertenezco a tu sociedad (emphasis mine)

On two occasions in the chorus, Tego reacts to the realization that justice and equality must always accompany one another in order for humanity to survive. The answer to any attempt to take away his freedom is to disempower it, albeit symbolically: if the dominant discourse is not recognized as the controlling force it intends to be, its power can be minimized. Similarly, if the individual and community remove itself from the hold of the social structures that regulate and exclude them, its oppression can be challenged. Tego’s embrace of marginalization as a site of resistance is reminiscent of the strategy pointed to by bell hooks for resistance by reversing the position of outsider into a position of power (149–150). Tego’s action is, I repeat, a symbolic one, not necessarily a literal political strategy to be adopted. However, his challenge of such authorities is also achieved when he addresses and affi rms the community’s ties. Unlike earlier recognition of the bonds of oppression, the bonds he highlights in the latter part of the song is of cultural and racial pride: “I am niche/Proud of my roots/Of having thick lips and big noses (translation mine) (Yo soy niche/Orgulloso de mis raices/De tener mucha bemba y grandes narices). Reminiscent of the poems of Negrismo poet Nicolás Guillén like “Negro Bembón” and “La mulata” where the latter points to specific African facial features as a source of pride (“mulata, ya sé que dise que yo tengo la narise como nudo de cobbata”/”mulatta, I know that you said that I have a nose like a knot in a tie” [translation mine]) and Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos’s “Cry for a Kinky Haired Girl” where she states: “Ay, ay, ay I am black, pure black/ kinky hair and Kaffi r lips and a flat Mozambian nose . . . ” (Ay,ay, ay que soy grifa y pura negra/grifería en mi pelo, cafrería en mis labios/y mi chata nariz mozambiquea), Tego uses the term “niche” as a signifier of the identity whose African roots and facial features are a source of pride and not shame. This culminates in the last stanza in which the community is united with the contested and expanded national identity:

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Boricua! This is the Fireant! Bringing it like it is! Give it to you, to wake my people up! . . . Listen, how beautiful my Loiza is! Look how beautiful it is! (translation mine) Boricua! Este es el Abayarde! Trayendola como es! Metiendole fuertemente, pa’ depertar a mi gente! . . . Oye, que bonito es mi Loiza! Mira que bonito es! (Tego Calderón, Loiza)

Their inclusion into the national space is indicated by the use of the term “Boricua.” As Sanchez Gonzalez notes: “Boricua is a common term of selfaffirmation in the stateside community; is an adjective that references the indigenous (Taíno) name of Puerto Rico’s main island, Boriquén, as recorded by two Spanish era chroniclers . . . ” (1). It is a term that, in its popular use, also recognizes the “African Diaspora roots of Puerto Rican social history” as well as the indigenous and is often used as a term to unite Puerto Ricans (particularly abroad) under a specific national and ethnic identity. However, Tego in no way is content with allowing his listeners to be subsumed into the now symbolically expanded Boricua identity. Although it implies recognition of the African roots, he emphasized this link by ending with a reference to Loiza’s beauty. The crossing of the African and Puerto Rican history through musical bridges of bomba and hip-hop is completed by a racial and socioeconomic critique and affirmation of the collective that Loiza embodies. Through the use of hip-hop in dialogue with other traditional musical forms, these four voices of the Americas (Orishas, Cuba; Nega Gizza and Daúde, Brazil; Tego Calderón, Puerto Rico) are able to use this urban musical form as a tool for reworking not just a local identity, as Mitchell observes can be found in much of global hip-hop, but more specifically as an outlet the musicologist Pratt calls “ . . . a valuable cultural alternative to marginal sectors in society”(7; Pratt 2000: 38). Their voices serve as a contestation and expansion of the national that reflects music as an important cultural and political tool of the African Diaspora not only to recognize and respond to continued forms of oppression but proactively and ultimately to reinforce and expand communal ties across regional, national, and linguistic boundaries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Benedict. Imagined communities: refl ections on the origin and spread of nationalism. 2nd ed. London: Verso, 2006.

246 Lesley Feracho Barton, Halbert. “A Challenge for Puerto Rican Music: How to Build a Soberao for Bomba.” Centro Journal. 16.1 (2004): 68–89. Calderón, Tego. “Loiza”. El Abayarde. Sony International. 2003 CD. Cariry, Rosemberg. “Patativa do Assaré-um Mestre da Poesia Popular.” Ispinho e fulô by Patativa do Assaré. Ed. Rosemberg Cariry. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1990. 1–x. . “Patativa do Assaré: Depoimento.” Ispinho e fulô by Patativa do Assaré. Ed. Rosemberg Cariry. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1990. x–xiii. Carneiro, Sueli. “Black Women’s Identity in Brazil.” Race in Contemporary Brazil. Ed. Rebecca Reichmann. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. 217–228. Cartagena, Juan. “When Bomba Becomes the National Music of the Puerto Rican Nation.” Centro Journal 16:1 (2004): 15–35. Cleary, David. “Meu Brasil Brasileiro.” World Music: Volume 2. Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific. Ed. Simon Broughton and Mark Ellingham. London: The Rough Guide, 2000. 332–349. Dáude. “Vida Sertaneja.” Daúde. 1995. Dávila, Arlene. Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. Fairley, Jan. “Cuba-Son & Afro-Cuban Music: ¡Qué Rico Baila Yo!” World Music: Volume 2. Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific. Ed. Simon Broughton and Mark Ellingham. London: The Rough Guide, 2000. 386–407. Forman, Murray. The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and HipHop. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Gaspar, Maria Dulce. Garotas de Programa: Prostituição em Copacabana e Identidade Social. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1985. Giovanetti, Jorge. “Popular Music and Culture in Puerto Rico: Jamaican Rap Music as Cross-Cultural Syhmbols.” Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin/o America. Ed. Frances Aparicio and Cándida F. Jáquez. New York: Palgrave, 81–98. Hiraldo, Samiri Hernández. “If God Were Black and From Loiza: Managing Identities in a Puerto Rican Seaside Town.” Latin American Perspectives. 33.1 (2006): 66–79. hooks, bell. “Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness” in Yearning: race, gender and cultural politics. Boston: South End Press, 1990. 145–153. Manuel, Peter. Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Mitchell, Tony. “Introduction.” Global Noise: Rap and Hip-hop Outside the U.S.A. Ed. Tony Mitchell. Middletown: Wesleyan Universitiy Press, 2001. Nega Gizza. “Prostituta.” Na Honestidade. Zambja/Dum Dum Records 2002. www.midiaindependente.org. Orishas. “5.3.7. Cuba.” A lo Cubano. CD. Universal Music Latino. 2000. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Sánchez Gonzales, Lisa. Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. New York: New York University Press, 2001. 1–39 Santos-Febres, Mayra. Sobre Piel y Papel. San Juan: Ediciones Callejón, 2005. 94–99. Spanger, Marlene. “Black Prostitutes in Denmark.” Transnational Prostitution: Changing Global Patterns. Ed. Susanne Thorbek and Bandana Patanaik. London: Zed Books, 2002. 121–136. Spillers, Hortense. “Interstices: A Small Drama of Words,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Ed. Carol Vance. Routledge: Kegan Paul, 1984. 73, 100.

Contributors

Cristina Cabral is an associate professor at North Carolina Central State University. An acclaimed poet, Cristina Rodriguez-Cabral was born in Uruguay and is the fi rst Afro- Uruguayan person to achieve a doctoral degree. Cabral has published a book of poetry From my Trench (1993) and the anthology Memory & Resistance (2004). Her poetic work has been analyzed by several scholars and included in collections like Alberto Britos Anthology of Black Uruguayan Poets (1990) and Myriam DeCosta-Willis Daughters of the Diaspora (2003). Cabral has recently participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute on Equatorial Guinea, and published a “Fifty words autobiography” in the Spanish literary magazine El Ciervo. Dawn Duke is an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. She specializes in Afro-Latin American literature and cultural studies. Her book, Literary Passion, Ideological Commitment: Toward a Legacy of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian Women Writers (Associated University Presses, 2008), examines Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian women writers and analyzes the roles of women of African descent in Cuban and Brazilian literature. Professor Duke has published various articles on race, gender, and writing in Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Lesley Feracho is an associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages and the Institute of African-American Studies. Professor Feracho specializes in contemporary Latin American narrative and in particular women’s narrative of the Caribbean, as well as Afro-Latin American narrative and poetry. Her current research involves crosscultural literary texts (in both narrative and poetry) of women writers of African descent from the Americas (both Spanish-speaking and from Brazil). She is the author of Linking the Americas: Race, Hybrid Discourses and the Reformulation of Feminine Identity (SUNY Press, 2005). Additionally, she has published work on the poetry of Carolina

248

Contributors

Maria de Jesus, Miriam Alves, and Nancy Morejon in the journals AfroHispanic Review and Hispania. Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves is a professor of Latin American Literature at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. She received her PhD from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1996. Gonçalves serves on the editorial board of Publication of the AfroLatin/American Research Association (PALARA) and IPOTESI. Her main research area is Afro-Latin American Literature. She has lectured widely throughout the Americas. Her numerous published articles have appeared in periodicals in Brazil and the U.S. Aida L. Heredia is an associate professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College. Professor Heredia has published two books, De la Recta a las Cajas Chinas: la Poesía de José Kozer (Editorial Verbum, 1994) and La Representación del Haitiano en las Letras Dominicanas (University of Mississippi, 2003). She has also published articles on national identity, memory, and religion as counter-colonial practice in scholarly journals. Her research interests include cultural representation and the African diaspora in the Americas. Professor Heredia has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright-Hays Program. Emmanuel Harris II is an associate professor of Spanish at University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Professor Harris has articles published in various academic journals such as the Afro-Hispanic Review and PALARA. His fi rst book, published in 2004 by Swan Isle Press was an English translation of the Afro-Peruvian novel, Malambo by Lucía Charún-Illescas. The translation was recognized by ForeWord Magazine as the year’s best translation. Currently Harris is writing the autobiography of Herman Mitchell tentatively titled: The Last American Caddy: Herman Mitchell Professional Caddy to Lee Trevino and Others. Dorothy E. Mosby is an associate professor at Mt. Holyoke College. Professor Mosby is the author of Place, Language, and Identity in Afro-Costa Rican Literature (University of Missouri Press, 2003), which explores contemporary black writing from Costa Rica. She is currently preparing a critical study on the work of Costa Rican writer Quince Duncan. Mosby’s poetry has appeared in Hispanic Culture Review. She has presented her research at numerous conferences and institutes and is a member of the Modern Language Association, the College Language Association, and the Afro/Latin American Research Association. Martha Ojeda is an associate professor of Spanish and French at Transylvania State University. She is the author of Nicomedes Santa Cruz:

Contributors 249 Ecos de Africa en Peru (Tamesis Books Ltd., 2003). She has published widely journals such as The Afro-Hispanic Review and PALARA. Her research focuses on contemporary Latin-American prose fiction, AfroHispanic literature (especially Afro-Peru), and Latin American civilization. Professor Ojeda is the recipient of a Bingham Award for Excellence in Teaching. Elisa Rizo is an assistant professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University. She has published and presented scholarly papers dealing with the literature and culture of Equatorial Guinea, Mexico, and the African diaspora of contemporary Latin America. Upcoming projects include comparative analysis of literary expressions by writers of the African diaspora in Spanish America and by authors of Spanish-speaking Africa. She is also continuing her research on official discourses related to Afro-descendants and indigenous peoples in Mexico. Professor Rizo was a guest seminar lecturer for the NEH Summer 2008 Institute on “The Literature of Equatorial Guinea: A Pedagogical Perspective” (June 23–July 25) at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Antonio D. Tillis is an associate professor in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, where he serves as chair. Professor Tillis is the author of Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature (University of Missouri Press, 2005), Caribbean-African upon Awakening: Poetry by Blas Jiménez (Mango Publishing, 2010) and, (Re) Considering Blackness in Contemporary Afro-Brazilian (Con) Texts (Peter Lang, 2011). Dr. Tillis’s essays have appeared in such journals as Publication of the Afro-Latin/American Research Association, MOSIAC Journal, Afro-Hispanic Review, Hispanic Review, Transit Circle, and College Language Association (CLA) Journal. He is the immediate-past President of the College Language Association and the managing editor of PALARA. Sonja Stephenson Watson is an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Texas Arlington. Her areas of specialty are Contemporary Latin-American Literature, Hispanic Caribbean Literature, the Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel, and Afro-Hispanic Narrative. Professor Watson has published articles in the College Language Association Journal and the Afro-Hispanic Review. Currently, she is working on her manuscript The Cultural Politics of Race in AfroPanamanian Discourse, which traces the development of literary Blackness in Panama from the nineteenth century to the present.

Index

A “A lo Cubano/Cuban Style,” 229 Abah, Oga S., 155 África 2000, 149 African cosmology, 71–75 Afro-Brazilian women, 167–182, 184–202 Afro-Costa Rican literature, 5–28 Afro-Hispanic historical novel, 30–49 Afro-Hispanic Poetry, 1940–1980: from Slavery to Negritud in South American Verse, 130 Afro-Hispanic texts, 1, 3, 30–49 Afro-Panamanian writer, 30–49 Afro-Peruvian poet, 120–139 Afro-realism, 40–47 “Afternoon of the Bulls,” 110 Aguirre, Carlos, 88, 93, 123 Alarcón, Juanillo, 83–84 Alberti, Rafael, 137 Alegría, Ciro, 130 Alexander, Jacqui, 88 Alfaro, Olmedo, 44 Alonso, Manuel, 208 Alvarado, Juan Velasco, 121 Alves, Livraria Francisco, 187 Anderson, Benedict, 229 Antígona, 142, 149–152, 155–156 Antología: Décimas y Poemas, 122, 123 Antologia Pessoal, 187, 193 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 171, 212 Apalabramiento: Diez cuentistas puertorriqueños de hoy, 209 Apartheid, 62, 67–68, 192 Approaching Transnationalism, 54 Arenas, Reinaldo, 229 Armstrong, Louis, 16, 138 Arroyo, Carlos, 131, 215 Arroyo, Jossiana, 168

Asante, Molefi , 39 Asedios a la Poesia de Nicomedes Santa Cruz, 130 Así canta mi Perú, 123 At Home in Diaspora: Black International Writing, 5 Ávila, Juan, 75

B Ballumbrosio, Tomasón, 80–81, 83–96 Barradas, Efraín, 209–210 Barton, Halbert, 237 Bass, Nelson Estupiñán, 137 Becos da Memória, 170 Beleño, Joaquín, 34–39 Bernard, Eulalia, 6, 9–10, 14, 16, 21 Between Colonialism and Dictatorship, 142 Bewitched Tree of Liberty, 111 Bezerra, Maria José, 196 Birmingham-Pokorny, Elba, 34, 40 Black Atlantic, The, 73 Black Christ, 79, 81 Black cosmopolitanism, 66–67 Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas, 66 Black Cubena’s Thoughts, 34 Black cultural traditions, 120–139 Black Diaspora, understanding, 6–28 Black female empowerment, 184–203 Black globalization, 51–52 Black Image in Latin America Literature, The, 130 Black Literature and Humanism Latin America, 131 Black Movement, 102, 184, 188–193, 198, 201

252

Index

Black nationalism, 17–18, 25–26 “Black Prostitutes in Denmark,” 234 Black woman, 53–54, 57, 167–182, 184–203 Black Writers in Latin America, 130 Blackness: poverty and, 167–182; transnational Blackness, 5–28; understanding of, 5–28 Bloom, Harold, 132, 138 Bondy, Sebastián Salazar, 130 Brown, Joan L., 132 Brown, John, 37, 44, 45 Brown, Naualpilly Guadalupe, 41 Brown, Salvadora, 45 Brown, Simón Bolívar, 41–42 “Bull Fighting a Tragedy,” 109 “Bullfighting, Sport and Industry,” 109

C Cabral, Cristina, 73, 99, 247 Cadernos Negros, 170 “Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal,” 22 Calderón, Tego, 229, 236–245 Calhoun, Craig, 168 Campbell, Shirley, 6, 10, 21–22, 25 “Canto 1,” 179–181 Canto a mi Perú, 123, 125, 127 “Canto del Pueblo,” 128 “Canto pa’ Elewa and Changó,” 230 Cantos de Vida y Esperanza, 66 Cardenal, Ernesto, 136 Caretas, 123 Carillo, Mónica, 120 Carneiro, Sueli, 200, 233 Carpentier, Alejo, 138 Carrillo, Francisco, 131, 132 Cartagena, Juan, 237 Casa de Alvenaria: Diário de uma Exfavelada, 187, 191, 192 Castillo, Fernando, 133 Castro, Fidel, 230 Catholicism, 15, 31, 47, 77–83, 96 Cebiano, Bandelé, 43 Cedeño, Joaquín Beleño, 32 Central American Writers of West Indian Origin: A New Hispanic Literature, 9 Cesaire, Aimé, 21–22, 138 Challenges to the Poetry of Nicomedes Santa Cruz, 130 Chanady, Amaryll, 208 “Chan-Chan,” 230 “Changó, el Gran Putas (Shango, Great Son of a Bitch):

Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel,” 36, 40 Chango, the Baddest Dude, 99 Charún-Illescas, Lucía, 73, 75, 77–97, 120 Chesler, Phyllis, 220 “Child of the Americas,” 207 Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, 185, 197 Chombo, 34, 36–37 Christianity, 78, 81–83, 92, 96 cimarronaje, 87–88 Claridad, 206 collective identity, 228–245 Collins, Patricia Hill, 214, 215, 218, 220 “Cómo Has Cambiado, Pelona’, 123 Conference of Hispanic-African Culture, 144 “Congo Libre,” 128, 134–136 cosmology: in Hispanic texts, 71–75; as technique, 73, 77–97 cosmopolitanism, 51–69 Crahan, Margaret, 213 Cristo Moreno, 79, 81 Cruz, Acosta, 215 “Cry for a Kinky Haired Girl,” 244 “Cubanidad/Cubanness,” 229 “Cubena,” 3, 30–49 Cuentos del Negro Cubena: Pensamiento Afro-Panameño, 34 “Cultural Contributions of Blacks in Panama, The,” 43 cultural political order, 142–159 cultural traditions in Peru, 120–139 cultural transnationalism, 51–69 Cumanana, 123, 124, 126 Curundú, 35

D Da Silva, Antonio Gonçalves, 231 Da Silva, Benedita, 196 Dantas, Audálio, 186–187 Danzas y Canciones del Perú, 123 Darío, Rubén, 65, 66 Daúde, 229, 231–233, 235, 245 Davies, Carole Boyce, 172 Dávila, José Campos, 120 “De bípeda a Escritora Puertorriqueña,” 208 De Burgos, Julia, 244 De Jesus, Carolina Maria, 166, 184–203 De la Palma, Niño, 109

Index De la Piedra, Manuel, 77–97, 82, 84, 94 De las Casas, Bartolomé, 46 De las Nieves de Monte Monarca Moreno, Lesbiaquina Petrablance, 42, 43, 47 De Oliveira, Eduardo, 191 De Porres, San Martín, 41 De Queiroz, Rachel, 188 “De Senegal a Malambo,” 123 “De Ser como Soy, me Alegro,” 123 Death in the Afternoon, 109 Décimas, 123 Decimas to Black Rhythms of Peru, 125 Décimas y Poemas, 124 decimista tradition, 120–122 DeCosta-Willis, Miriam, 38, 40 Del Busto Duthurburu, José Antonio, 123 Den Tandt, Catherine, 214, 215, 223 “Dentro del Género Humano,” 134 “Deseo,” 14 Dia da Mãe Preta, 191 Diário de Bitita, 187, 192 Diaspora, understanding, 4–26, 167–168 Dibango, Manu, 16 Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 115 DJ Herc, 237 Dolores, Felicidad, 30–49 Domestic Men, 143, 149, 153, 155 Dos Reis, Maria Brandão, 196 DuBois, W. E. B., 10 Duglin, James, 36 Duke, Dawn, 166, 184, 247 Duncan, Quince, 6, 16, 20, 21, 41, 53, 77, 99, 137 Durand, Rene, 130

E Edison, Thomas Wayne, 35, 40 El Abayarde, 236 “El baúl de Miss Florence: Fragmentos para un novelón romántico,” 210–225 “El Cisne,” 65, 66 El Comercio, 123 El Entierro de Cortijo, 236 El Hombre y la Costumbre, 142, 145–148 El jíbaro, 208 “El Negro en el Perú,” 123 “El Negro en Iberoamérica,” 123

253

El Séptimo Círculo del Obelisco, 22 El tramo ancla, 206 “Elephant Cemetery, The,” 115 En cuerpo de camisa, 210 “En el País de Vietnam,” 51, 61–64, 68 Encancaranublado y otros cuentos de naufragio, 206 Equatorial Guinean drama, 142–159 Ernest Hemingway: A to Z, 105, 109 “Escenas de Pacho Fierro,” 121 Escudo Cubena, 33 Esono, Pancrasio, 75 Esperando a Loló, 210, 221 Esperando a Loló y otros delirios generacionales, 207 Estado Novo, 186 “Eu-mulher,” 171–172 Evaristo, Conceição, 167–182 Execution of the Devil, The, 100 Expreso, 123

F Facing Mount Kenya, 102 Falsas crónicas del sur, 206, 210, 221–223 Farmhouse Burial, The, 236 Feal, Rosemary Geisdorfer, 213, 214 Felman, Shoshana, 220 Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, 212 Feracho, Lesley, 166, 184, 228, 247 Ferré, Rosario, 210 “Festejo,” 123 fiction, reality of, 100–101 Filippi, Carmen Lugo, 207, 210 First International Conference of Hispanic-African Culture, 144 “5.3.7 Cuba,” 229, 230 Flack, Roberta, 16 Fleming, Robert E., 108 Flores, José Durand, 121 Fojas, Camilla, 62, 65 “Folklore Costeño,” 124 freedom movements, 103–104 “Fue Mucho el Tejemaje,” 125, 134

G Galvão, Patrícia, 188 Gamboa Road Gang, 35 Garden of Eden, The, 107 Garibay, Ángel María, 152 Garvey, Marcus M., 16–21 Gaspar, Maria Dulce, 233 gender, and identity, 206–226

254

Index

Genes Rebellion, The, 112, 114–115 Gente Morena, 124 “Geografía en Decíbeles: Utopías Pancaribeñas y el Territorio de Rap,” 236 Gilbert, Helen, 151 Gilroy, Paul, 5, 7, 25, 73 Giovannetti, Jorge, 239 Giovanni, Nikki, 10 Gizza, Nega, 229, 233–235, 245 Global Noise, 229 globalization, 4, 6, 51–52, 61, 238. See also transnationalism “Golpe de libertad,” 143 Gomes, Miguel, 222 Gonçalves, Ana Beatriz Rodrigues, 165, 166, 167, 248 González, José Luis, 209, 215 González, Lélia, 197 Gonzalez, Lisa Sanchez, 238, 245 Gordon, Edmund T., 5 Goulart, João, 186 Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores, The, 30–49 Green Hills of Africa, 107, 108 Guillen, Nicolas, 21–25, 136–138, 207, 244

H Hall, Stuart, 7, 239 Handy, Otis, 130 Harris, Emmanuel, 166, 206, 248 Hartman, Saidiya, 86 Hemingway, Ernest, 100, 105–111, 114–118 Hemingway, the Death Stalker, 73–74, 99–119 Hemingway and the Natural World, 108 Heredia, Aida L., 73, 77, 248 Hernández, Elizabeth, 210 hip-hop, 228–245 Hispanic texts, 71–75 Hispanic world, 142–159 Hitchcock, Peter, 51–54, 60 Hombres Curtidos, 16, 18–19 hooks, bell, 181, 212, 215, 244 Hurston, Zora Neal, 214 Hutcheon, Linda, 108 Huyssen, Andréas, 175

I identities: collective identity, 228–245; gender and, 206–226; in Latin America, 163–182, 206–226

“If We Must Die,” 22 Imaginary States: Studies in Cultural Transnationalism, 52, 60 International Organization of Francophone Countries, 144 Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship, 142 Invention of Ethnicity, The, 208 Isabel, Princess, 188

J Jackson, Richard L., 34, 40, 53, 130, 131 Jarque, Fietta, 124 Jiménez, Blas, 51, 53, 59 “Johannesburgo,” 128 Johnson, Crista, 132–133 Joseph, Gilbert M., 190 Joya, Maritz, 120 “Juglares de Nuestra America,” 122 Juliá, Rodriguez, 236 Justo, Don, 36–37

K Kattar-Goudiard, Jeanette, 130 Kenyatta, 101 Kenyatta, Jommo, 100–104, 110, 114–115 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 16, 39 Knight, Franklin, 213 Kwankwo, Ifeoma, 66

L “La Cultura, Problema Fundamental de Colonización,” 147 La Décima en el Perú, 122, 123 La Formación de la Tradición Literaria en el Perú, 131 La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos, 224 “La Literatura Peruana de la Negritud,” 130 La Misión Secreta, 34 “La Negrita,” 15 “La Noche,” 134, 135 La Nueva Crónica, 121 “La Página de Nicomedes,” 121 La Paz del Pueblo, 16, 20–21 “La Torre del Viejo,” 222 Ladrón, Bartolomé, 46 Laforest, Marie Hélène, 7–8 “Last Shot, The,” 117

Index Latin American literature, 163–182 Laurel, Juan Tomás Ávila, 142–144, 153, 155 “Leaders! Emerge!,” 18 Ledée, Nicasio, 222, 223 legend, and narrative style, 99–119 Leite, José Correia, 191 Levine, Robert M., 192–195, 199 Lewis, Carlos Ambrosio, 46 Lewis, Marvin A., 130, 142 “Lion and the Zebra, The,” 115 Lipsitz, George, 228 Lispector, Clarice, 188 literary traditions: in Hispanic texts, 71–75; in Hispanic world, 142–159 Literatura e Identidade Nacional, 170 “Llanto Negro,” 134–135 “Llegada,” 22 “Loiza,” 236–245 Lorca, Federico Garcia, 110 Los Forzados de Gamboa, 35 Los Hombres Domésticos, 143, 149, 153, 155 “Los Mejoraneros Panameños,” 122 Los Mosquitos de Orixá Changó, 34 Los Nietos de Felicidad Dolores, 30–49 “Lost bullets,” 179 Lumumba, Patrice, 192 Luna Verde, 35

M Malambo, 73, 77–97 Man and Custom, 142, 145–148 Mandela, Nelson, 16 Manuel Zapata Olivella and the “Darkening” of Latin American Literature, 111 Marín, Luis Muñoz, 236 Mariñez, Pablo, 138 maroonage, 87–91 Martinez, Gregorio, 120, 124 Matos, Luis Palés, 207 McDonald, Delia, 6, 21, 23 McKay, Claude, 21–22 Médecins sans Frontiers, 154 Meihy, Sebe Bom, 191–196, 199 Meireles, Cecilia, 188 Mellor, Anne, 93 “Meme, Neguito,” 134 Message for Rosa, A, 16 Mestizaje, 206–226

255

“Meu Corpo Igual,” 178–179 Meu Estranho Diário, 187, 191, 192 “Mi Madre y el Tajamar,” 14, 15 Mignolo, Walter, 51, 61, 62 “Mineiridade,” 173 Minh-Ha, Trinh T., 142, 149, 181 Mitchell, Tony, 229 Mitogo, Pancrasio Esono, 142–145, 148, 153, 156 modernismo, 62, 65 Monks, Mary Welsh, 105, 108 Moraga, Cherríe, 212 Morales, Aurora Levins, 207 Morejón, Nancy, 4, 51–69, 229 Morelos y Pavón, José María, 46 Moreno, Anibal, 45 Moreno, Juan, 37, 42, 44, 45 Morgades, Trinidad, 75, 142–144, 149–155 Morse, Samuel, 210, 211, 220, 221 Mosby, Dorothy E., 3, 5, 248 Moura, Clóvis, 194 “Mujer Negra,” 53–54, 57, 68 Mujica, Barbara, 132, 133 Mulher Negra tem História, 196 Munanga, Kabengele, 168–169 Murray-Brown, Jeremy, 101–102, 111–112, 114 My Black King, 14 “My Last Chains,” 14 “My same body,” 178–179 mysticism of reality, 111–118 myth, and narrative style, 99–119

N “Na Honestidade,” 233 Naciendo, 21–22 Nájera, Manuel Gutierrez, 65 “Nana Silente para Niños Surafricanos,” 51, 61–62, 67–69 narrative style, redesigning, 99–119 nation, redefi ning, 228–245 national imaginary, 120–139 nation-building, 30–32 Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Decentralized Nations States, 6, 25 “Negra,” 134 “Negro,” 53, 57, 60, 68 Neruda, Pablo, 126, 136 Nguema, Francisco Macias, 143 Nguema, Teodoro Obiang, 143 Nicolas, Lito, 36–37

256

Index

Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Black Poet of Peru: Poem Presentation and Selection, 130 No Master Territories, 149 “Nosotros los historicidas,” 206, 208 Nottingham, John, 103–105 Núñez, Estuardo, 125, 130

O O Ébano, 191 O Poder Muda de Mãos Não de Cor, 191 Ojeda, Martha, 74, 96, 120, 248, 249 “Old Bull, The,” 116 Olivella, Manuel Zapata, 40, 46, 73, 75, 99–119, 137 Oliver, Charles M., 105–107 “Operación Manos a la Obra,” 236 Ordóñez, Cayetano, 109–110 Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, 144 Orishas, 229–232, 235, 245 Ortiz, Fernando, 138, 229 Osofisan, Femi, 148–149 Otero, Manuel Ramos, 210

P Papeles de Pandora, 210 “Pasaje Obrero,” 127 Pasión de historia y otras historias de pasión, 206 Pataperro, Nato, 42 “Patativa do Assaré,” 231–232 “Patria o muerte!,” 127 Paulo VI, Pope, 46 Pedaços de Fome, 187 “Penny Man, The,” 109 Pensamientos del Negro Cubena: Pensamiento Afro-Panameño, 34 Pereira, Prisca Agustoni de Almeida, 174 Perivolaris, John, 224 peruanidad, 120 Peruvian national culture, 120–139 “Piedra, Piedra,” 127 “Pindura Saia,” 170 Piñera, Virgilio, 229 Poema del Cante Jondo, 110 Poemas de Recordação e Outros Movimentos, 169, 170 poetic journeys, 51–69 poetic language, 125–138 Polar, Antonio Cornejo, 131–133 political order, 142–159

Ponciá Vicêncio, 170 “Popular Music and Culture in Puerto Rico: Jamaican and Rap Music as Cross-Cultural Symbols,” 239 postcolonial reading, 30–49 Pratt, Mary Louise, 62 Primer Congreso Internacional Hispánico-Africano de Cultura, 144 “Prostituta,” 233–235 Provérbios, 187

Q Quarto de Despejo: Diário de uma Favelada, 185, 187–188, 193, 197, 200 Quijano, Anibal, 148

R “Racismo en el Perú,” 123 Raíces Africana, 34 Ramírez, Victoria Gamarra, 120 Ramis, Magali García, 210 reality: of fiction, 100–101; mysticism of, 111–118; narrative style and, 99–119 “Regreso del héroe,” 222–223, 225 Reid, Policarpo, 45 Repeating Island, The, 209 “Requiem para Mi Primo Jamaicano,” 17 “Required Reading: The Canon in Spanish and Spanish American Literature,” 133 Richards, Henry, 130 Rimactampu: Rimas al Rimac, 123 Ritmohéroe, 9, 14, 17 Ritmos Negros del Perú, 123, 127 Rizo, Elisa, 74, 142, 249 Robertson, Roland, 228 Rojo, Benítez, 209 Roneros, Antonio Galves, 120 “Roosevelt, A,” 66 Rosberg, Carl, 103–105 Rose, Tricia, 235, 237 Rosselló, Pedro, 242 Rotundamente Negra, 10–11 Rufi no, Alzira, 191, 196–198, 200

S “Sacred Mammoth,” 116 Salas, Teresa, 130 Saldívar-Hull, Sonia, 212

Index Sanchez, Luis Rafael, 210, 224 Santa Cruz, Nicomedes, 74–75, 120–139 Santa Cruz, Pedro, 122 Santa Cruz, Victoria, 124 Santos-Febres, Mayra, 236, 238, 240 Schweitzer, Corie, 133–134 Secret Mission, The, 36 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 137 “Ser Negro en el Caribe Es,” 59 Short Stories by Cubena, 34 Silva, José Asunción, 65 Smart, Ian I., 9–10, 34 Snows of Kilimanjaro, The, 107 Soares Fonseca, Maria Nazareth, 171 Socabón, 124 social protests, 40–47 “Somos el País de Tres,” 14 Songoro Cosongo, 22 Sophocles, 149–152 Sousa, Santos, 184 “Soy un Negro Sabrosón,” 123 Spanger, Marlene, 234 Spanish American Decima and Nicomedes Santa Cruz, The, 130 Spillers, Hortense, 235 Springfield, Consuelo López, 210 Sun Also Rises, The, 109 Szuchman, Mark D., 190

T Tafari Haile Selassie, Ras, 102 “Talara, No Digas ‘Yes’,” 126 Tapscott, Stephen, 65 Teatro Negro Experimental, 191 Teatro Popular Brasileiro, 191 Telles, Lygia Fagundes, 188 “The Black and His Song: Adventure of Oral and Written Poetry in America,” 129 “The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism,” 61 Their Eyes Were Watching God, 214 This Bridge Called My Back, 212 Tillis, Antonio D., 3, 51, 73, 111, 165, 206, 249 Time Passages, 228 “Todas as Manhãs,” 174–175 Tompkins, Joanne, 151

257

“Tondero and Marinera,” 123 Torres, Máximo Justo, 120 Torres, Pérez, 209, 215 Torres, Yazmín Pérez, 209 transnational Blackness, 5–28 transnational economics, 143–145 transnationalism, 6–8, 51–69. See also globalization Trindade, Solano, 191 Tucker, Susan, 215

U “Un Diario de Sueños y Privaciones,” 200 Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria de Jesus, 191, 194

V Vasquez, Porfi rio, 121, 124, 136 Vásquez, Vicente, 124 Vega, Ana Lydia, 206–226 Vico C, 237 “Vida Sertaneja,” 231, 233 Vindication of the Rights of Women, A, 220 Vírgenes y mártires, 207, 223 “Vozes-Mulheres,” 175–176

W Walters, Wendy, 5, 6 Walvin, James, 213 Watson, Sonja Stephenson, 3, 30, 249 Weber, Frantz, 154 Werneck, Jurema, 197, 199 West Indian Danger in Central America, 44 Westerman, Marcelina, 42 Wilson, Carlos “Cubena” Guillermo, 3, 30–49 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 220 Women and Madness, 220

Y Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne, 212 Yoruba cosmology, 73, 77–97

Z Zamudio, Delia, 120 Zoggyie, Haakayoo, 34