Bantu persistence in Cuba, another prelude to the MogiNganga

One element slips away its silent presence in the political violence of Cuba's history, and that is its undeniable raciality; it may be invisible today, given the trauma that paralyzed all processes in the country, but latent in its rawness and potential. Of course, even the political trauma of the Cuban revolution exhibits its racial nature, in its own recurrences; but it has also camouflaged this nature of the conflict, with the myth of priorities, avoiding its transhistoricity.

Cuban racial violence would be submerged in politics since independence itself, which was already artificial; if in fact it did not count on the will of the people to redeem, but on the interests of his economic elite, which it legitimized. The first break would occur with the very first conflict of the republic, given its inconsistency, not directly but laterally racial; capitalizing on racial resentment in the face of the apathy and cynicism of that economic elite, which was already also political.

That would not be gratuitous, coming from the arrogance that justified this violence, with its literary and political fictions; which is the perversion inflicted with Martí's martyrology, like a useless Christ in that idealism of the modern spirit. Nor will it be gratuitous that the expression of times and place is Modernism, with its symbolist grandiloquence; surreptitiously perpetuating the postposition of black people, which is the one bringing some realism, in his existential pragmatism.

From there, like everything that is denied, that element will feed on its own negation, growing in its potentiality; not so total as to annihilate the nation, but enough to wash it down, in its impossibility. However, nothing can hide the contradiction, transparent in the inconsistency of the country's projections; and in which, what is frustrated with surreptitious racism is reality itself, rather than the black who expresses it.

The Negro, as a person in whom reality as a human is enhanced, cannot be frustrated in the face of difficulty; but only to remain in that same latency, looking for the way out in which to realize itself as that reality. Racial frustration is here the political trick with which he is manipulated, to tie him in symbol to transcendentalism; which as historical instead of metaphysical, does not offer him any possibility, but is what keeps him unreal.

The conflict then erupted in 1906, with Quintín Banderas, executed by the arrogance of his own naivety; in which, like the mythical popular simple faith of Catholicism, he mocked those he executed, in the name of his executioners. The conflict thus becomes scandalous with the massacre of 1912, but it is insidiously hidden, blaming Morúa Delgado; who covers the bastardy of José Martí, like the cursed inheritance of a nation arisen against the will of its people.

That’s why the conflict is retracted to the crisis of the Batistatos, making it clear that the problem is of a cultural nature; it is transhistorical instead of historical, not of transcendence but of immanence, denying the cosmos that sustains the black; and with it the whole adjustment of the Western culture, as the force in which the Negro would realize himself, if he overcomes the difficult. The peculiarity consists in the double religiosity that permeates Batista's culture, blackened in its popular character; with strong and cunning officials, such as the Coc of Buena Vista, positioned over the corpse of the one from San Isidro.

It is known that Morúa Delgado was a Freemason like Martí, it is speculated if that —unlike him— he could be a palero too; but it is known that Gustavo E. Urrutia was a palero, with fables of cauldrons buried in the gardens of Miramar; signifying, to the horror of Cuban Catholicism, that cultural advance, insidious because of hermeneutical in existentialism. Nor can it be gratuitous that the political violence against Batista was led by the Catholic university students; with a systematicity that provokes a reaction in accordance with its bloodthirstiness, but unforgivable for what it meant.

Negros cubanos del exilio

Por supuesto, los negros tendremos que organizarnos si queremos tener alguna influencia en el desarrollo de cuba; pero para eso tendremos que entender las experiencias anteriores, y la recurrencia con que fallan. El problema parece ser la ambigüedad, por la que la red de intereses personales se expande en los políticos; como una proyección social de los mismos, que es lo que los explica en su autenticidad, pero también los pierde.

Eso es entonces apenas natural, ya que los intereses no existen en abstracto sino en esa consistencia de lo personal; pero como una relación peligrosa, en que el peso del egoísmo y la mezquindad arrastra a la inteligencia en su falta de alcance. Es por eso que este esfuerzo no debería estar sesgado por esas limitaciones personales, no importa la premisa; y eso por una cuestión incluso práctica y no moral, en tanto proyección personal, que nunca generará la confianza que necesita.

La experiencia ha mostrado que como objeto común, la expresión política ha de ser colegiada; asumiendo la reunión de todos los intereses, no importa lo difícil que sea, y hasta las contradicciones que eso implica. En definitiva, la contradicción es sólo el condicionamiento de toda proyección, más allá de lo personal; que así deviene en práctica, en vez de sublimarse en el idealismo, cuya falsa moral la hace inconsistente.

Los negros cubanos podemos seguir intentando todas las exclusiones que queramos, legítimas o no; es la realidad misma la que se impone, decidiendo qué tiene futuro y qué no lo tiene. El error es la persistencia de posarse sobre el ego, ansioso de reproducir el poder blanco; porque esto es lo que resta posibilidades a toda proyección, con la misma soberbia que dice combatir.

El mismo hecho de que alguien lo reconozca y no se atreva a cruzar ese límite, sería la señal de peligro; que no reside en la legitimidad, sino en la inconsistencia, terminando por socavar esa legitimidad. ¿En definitiva, si una proyección es tan personal, cómo puede ser legítima y coherentemente política?; ese es el contrasentido que secuestró a la revolución cubana, conduciéndola al desastre antropológico que es.

Eso es lo que, por ejemplo, permite la manipulación en discursos que secuestran la fuerza colectiva; haciendo que los conflictos sean insolubles, abstraídos a su legitimidad, tras el prestigio personal; que es en definitiva aparente, ocultando sus falencias inevitables, y que no tendría que ser tan importante. Lo práctico es entonces lo que permite la solución de los problemas, explotando todas sus aristas; pero para lo que tiene que ir más allá de lo personal, desconfiando de ese genio sublime que no puede negociar.

El ejemplo de esto sería la incapacidad de los negros, para establecernos como fuerza política en el exilio; no importa el crecimiento proporcional desde el éxodo de 1980, que reconfiguró al exilio histórico. Quizás el problema esté en sus genios, ocupados en construirse un nicho político en la élite blanca de ese exilio; en vez de dirigirse a una mediación con los afro norteamericanos, que redunde en el debilitamiento de su liberalismo.

O quizás no, sino que ese puede ser precisamente el propósito, en un esfuerzo solapado por ese ascendiente; que con su fe en lo político marca al liberalismo desde su nacimiento, con la Modernidad. También quizás, esto provenga de que esos líderes no son genuinamente negros, sino sólo por defecto; porque los blancos les recuerdan que no son blancos, siendo negros por resentimiento y no por valores positivos. Esto explicaría esa dependencia del liberalismo blanco, que a cambio los usa como moneda de cambio; pero debilitándolos tanto que no pueden intentar ningún esfuerzo efectiva, dado que su consistencia es ideológica y no existencial.

Eso explicaría la incapacidad anterior para actuar en una mediación efectiva ante la fuerza política de los afroamericanos; a los que no se puede presentar una alternativa suficiente, en esa inconsistencia, que nos sume en su misma ambigüedad. Para eso necesitaríamos una proyección que comprenda incluso nuestro conservadurismo, que es pragmático y no moral; e incluso la verdadera hondura en una nueva profundidad ontológica, en vez de repetir lugares comunes con la mera esperanza de —por fin— hacer filosofía.

That thing with Cleopatra in Netflix

The thing with the black Cleopatra is that it shows how we black suffer from the same shortsightedness as the white folks; since they have multiple cases of miss representation, and the war against it has been bloody. True is white people blackface anything they need or want, in order to at least appear more accurate; but that’s not a need for this Jada Pinkett fiasco, since the basis here is that Egyptians were black.

That’s even partially true, because the XXV dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs were Kushites; that means, actual Sudanese people, darks as the deepest night. But it is also true that Cleopatra was not even ethnically Egyptian but Greek (Macedonian); so this inaccuracy is related to that other problem of skin dysmorphia, understandable in a race so despised as the blacks in America. Of course we may claim that some people grow over they childhood traumas and struggles, becoming reasonable adults; but that’s not the natural case in that elite specialized in stupidity, like the cronies of art industry in America; who live of those traumas, and this fear —as the devil— of a solution that prompts them to actual jobs.

It’s not like that industry doesn’t enslave them, as the church with their religious orders and priesthood; but it precisely lures them with this idea that they’re not working but teaching us with their superiority, in exchange of a bunch of devalued printed paper. So that’s how we got these superficial personalities, so empties that need to hook to any narrative they can understand; which by the way, can’t be too deep, or they would not be able of that understanding.

That’s the case of those blacks, who need the fat walls of the pyramids to feel greats like the Greeks they love; simply because they can’t understand the hermeneutical complexity of sub-Saharan  cosmologies, as they can’t believe there is subtlety in cults. Of course that’s their ineptitude, but they are the ones with access to that money, for which they have to produce anything; it’s not that they need to produce something solid but that appears solid enough, and nothing like this appearance of deepness in an Egyptian link.

That’s not new, it’s even a tradition started by African scholars, who dismissed their own cosmologies; trying to thicken their divination systems with that Egyptian link, without see the mistake of reducing those systems to the same practice of divination. A religious complex is an hermeneutical order for existential references, with practical subproducts like the divination and magic implicit on it; but those scholars are from a time of European rational positivism. That explain why those scholars couldn’t understand the deep scope of their cosmology, if even Europeans couldn’t understand theirs; worse still in a case of frank stupidity, like this of the crony elite of Hollywood celebrities, as Jada Pinkett and Netflix.

At the end, those scholars have had the time to correct their inputs, because they rely in science; but that’s not the case of these celebrities of today, who doesn’t have had that time, nor they rely in science either. Anyway, the worst part of stupidity is the arrogance, and so that’s the problem with this celebrity’s elitism; as the actress who impersonates Cleopatra called the critics to simply don’t see the program. That’s just why Capitalism is so important, as is the market what sets the rationality and not the other way around; something that may looks superficial now because it’s just a mediocre art, but that would be too late when reaching actual politics and economy.

It looks like that arrogance was a response to abusive criticisms, but it’s still arrogance and shows the failure to understand reality; and so those abusive criticisms were stimulated precisely for that arrogance, as a proof of its counter productivity. That’s then the problem with dysmorphia as a root of political  legitimacy, because it solves nothing but complicates everything; as —as elders and traditions always say— it’s better the dignity of self-growth and acceptance, even if the situation is not too inviting.

Passing

This is a strange film, that gives mixed experiences, from aesthetic exaltation to a deficient dramaturgy; which is already strange, because as an adaptation of a novel (1929), it should have resolved its dramaturgy. This is not precisely because of the stylistic excess, which the English language does not allow in its North American syntax; but that cinema does stimulate, because of the aesthetic possibilities with which photography affects drama.

Passing tells of two black girlfriends, who meet again in a  New York subject to segregation laws;  and  one of which passes for white, in one of the most recurrent existential dramas of American culture. That can be a bit contrived for other cultures outside the North American, laxer in their racism: for in truth, American racism is virulent and reinforced by political rigorism,  in a strange and explosive mixture;  which links rational simplification to the ferocity of an impoverished class, such as the early Irish migration, in competition with emancipated blacks.

Hence the meticulous code of the drop of black blood, which discourages and punishes any effort at integration; giving rise to dramas like this one by Passing, as early  in the cinema as in 1934, with Imitation of Life. This dilemma may still not be understandable, because the pernicious reduction of the Negro to its most impoverished class; without the strip of political and  economic ambiguity, in which people  relate to each other beyond their race.

The film does not resolve  this context, unbalancing its dramaturgy, wallowing in its own moral supremacism; although it does manage to break the stereotype of the indigent black, with a relatively prosperous and snobbish bourgeoisie.  The original novel develops  the existential  impact of contradiction, when people lie about themselves; but the film fails to  resolve that, with the simple overlap of elements not directly related to each other, without the required developments.

An example of this is the reluctance of the protagonist to face the dilemma in its political dimension, as a family; being a social activist, involved in an organization reminiscent of the NAACP. Perhaps the object is a critique of the snobbery and limitations of that black liberal bourgeoisie, for its lack of commitment; that not only did it not pour its resources —not that it had many— into its own community, concentrated on its own elitism.

Nor does the casting of the protagonists help, with two actresses who hardly ever pass for white; which is irrelevant in theater or television, but not in the greater realism of cinema, because the conventions to which it responds. That and the hysterical volatility of the current political context, threatens a serene perception of the history the film narrates; which otherwise would have been able  to channel a powerful drama, just limiting itself to being cinema.

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The film does excel in dazzling photography, bringing out the best of black and white, and its epochal recreation; although that results in the greater slowness of a poorly resolved dramaturgy, which gives the feeling of emptiness. That may be the problem of the excessive aestheticization of drama, which original violence does not require poetics nor transcendentalism; as a false styling of black cinema,  which resolves in its own existential inconsistency, trying to pass for intellectual (white). It is the same excess that unnecessarily thickens interesting experiments, such as  that of Daughters of Dust (1991); and with what it question that same consistency they claim, disdaining their own dramatic elements; which are not intellectual but existential, reproducing the contradiction that affects American intellectualism, in its artificiality.

In short, it is not only in the upper middle class  —and those which seek to integrate it— that  idealistic reverie flourishes; it is the one that has resources to waste on it, or to distort its perception of reality with false priorities, nor less false humanism. The overlooked reference to the NAACP in this film may remind us of this, precisely because of the political ambiguity of its origin; like that false bourgeoisie of Harlem, which fails again and again to understand its own contradictions.

African Folktales & The Brave ones

In a time of false representation and inclusivity, Netflix offers an approach to African literary cinema; not needing the conventional rhetoric, recreates the African in all its splendor and dignity. These are not folkloric themes, which perpetuate the traditional clichés about the relationship with nature and color; but mature and contemporary literature, which can go to its popular traditions, without losing an iota of this contemporaneity.

Not  that this is new or strange, in a continent that has in fact contributed classics to universal literature;  but it has lacked fair representation, as a lack now compensated, to the greater joy of all. As said, African folktales is then a series of tales not exactly folkloric, but very literary;  maybe due to  its dramatic efficacy  that does not resort to sociological discourses, but to the very complexity of the real.

Perhaps then this is a cultural prerogative of the mother continent, in which the past does not disappear;  smiling instead in any corner, while maintaining this appeal that gives meaning to his art, not corrupted yet with conceptual glimpses. Africa is thus an exotic continent, not because of the fauna that is seen in any zoo, nor the clothes that the rest of the West imports; but because of this faculty of a still human culture, which resolves its existential drama in the lives of people and not in speeches.

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That is what undoubtedly feeds its wonderful art, in this series that also brings fresh faces to the screen; apart from a spectacular cinematography, apo supported by the beauty and immensity of the continent. To give an idea  –if  that were possible– these stories remind of those of Malá Straná, even in their strange contemporaneity; all in a visual language that have not issues with social contrasts but does not overexploit them either, because it is art and not a discourse.

If any black person still feels the need to be represented, then they should look at this beauty of his mother continent; instead of stuffing themselves into other people's silks and powdered wigs, of which should be ashamed like of a minstrel.  African Folktales  is not an entirely  commercial product, but a collaboration between UNESCO and NETFLIX; so it is another cultural grant project, which nevertheless  –in this case– stands out for its efficiency.

That's probably because it arises in the narrow strip where popular culture lacks the resources to specialize; very different from that other where popular culture already disappears in its corruption, selling itself as what it is not. In any case, this is efficient in that literary vitality of its cinematography, already disappeared for the rest of the  West; perhaps because of that precariousness so unromantic of its environment, which is what sustains its art, with its slow and difficult integration into the world.

Of course, being from Netflix there is a whole section of African films and series, which knows glory and dishonor; but in a market saturated by the expensive trifle of Black Panther, the  action and fantasy series The brave ones also stand out. What is interesting about this —like in the other— is the authenticity of its Africanism, not derived from superficiality of comics and superheroes; so it has a wide range of supernatural traditions, to which it resorts in its practical value, not playing with horror and mystery.

As a defect, its cinematography abuses the teal & orange filter, which  is almost universal like a fake black and white;  but saved this difficulty, everything is party in a dramaturgy well pressed, that plays with its climax and anti climax. In fact it is not a simple confrontation between Good and Evil, as is typical of the series of superheros; but a very complex plot, with all the humanity that used the ancient myths, in addition to its magic.