From the series Georgina Herrera II

Regarding the racial question in Cuba, it must be remembered that it is not directly known, but through its government; whose projection is necessarily self-interested, due to its ideological nature from its very political practice. This works like this even internally, with a population meticulously educated based on a foundational myth; that interprets history —and organizes that myth— as its own justification, from the flawed hermeneutics of dialectical materialism[1].

The problem with this is the reduction of the phenomena to absolute terms, as nothing in reality is; which is serious, in the case of porous concepts such as racism, in all its variation from Cuban to that of the United States. In this sense, the affirmation of Cuba as the most racist country in the area before 1959 is tendentious[2]; ignoring the ethnographic exceptionality of these countries —in a generic Caribbean—, including mestizo racism in Haiti and Jamaica.

From here, there are enough inconsistencies in this governmental projection to doubt these parameters; such as the racial configuration of its ruling class, or the surveillance of foreign intellectual elites and its own. This is especially important with respect to the racial problem, because it constrains it to this governmental projection; which, being racially defined by the overwhelming white majority of its leadership, has repercussions on this inconsistency of its.

What is striking in this case would be the will of those foreign elites, by assuming this projection as credible; since it never exceeds the limits set by the government in its cultural policy, as de facto police surveillance. This may be understandable in the case of African Americans, because of the benefit of the political support of that government; whereas, however, it does not exceed the territorial refuge of its extreme combatants in the struggle for civil rights; but apart from that, it is reduced to a fruitless rhetoric, typical of its own confrontation with the U.S. government.

That solidarity, however, does go beyond that self-serving and comprehensible exchange of Afro-Americans; and permeates the politics of the black Caribbean, without even being able to be explained in such an exchange, beyond the rhetoric itself. Thus, the understanding of the Cuban racial problem must be built from the ground up, because its tradition was interrupted; which in fact would allow it to be more objective, projecting it even transnationally, in a maturity of the phenomenon; that recognizes the problem as cultural rather than political, in its popular projection —not the talented tenth[3]—.

After all, what would have distorted this understanding of the problem is this intellectual elitism of theirs; even as a class justification in that elitism, which is always of an upper middle class —as a false bourgeoisie[4]— and never popular. This, of course, is a contradiction, like the many that populate every historical development, in its punctuality; as a vicious circle, because of its historical transcendentalism, which can only be broken in an exceptional circumstance.

This is the case of art —especially poetry— because of the existential unconventionality of its reflection on the real; that allows it to circumvent all political or ideological conventionality, with its existentialism. Of course, too, that is only so long as art does not lose its popular character, and shuns that special convention of ideology; which, as a false existential experience, imposes from the hermeneutic that conventionality of the political. This is the value of transcendentalism in Georgina Herrera, retaining the existentialism in its surreptitious marginality; as the immediate referent of its immanence, which is not to be sought in the apparent consistency of ideology.

This allows Herrera scandals such as her identity with dubious heroes like Nzinga Mbande, unthinkable in theological orthodoxy; or her complex conception of motherhood, which includes the disdain for the sterile woman and the violence of her own power. Correcting the excesses of historical materialism understanding reality, transcendence is a condition of the immanence; with all transcendence as an existential experience rather than a political one, as in this case of Georgina Herrera’s poetry.

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[1] Cf: Introduction to trialectic of the real and The trichotomous question, in El enigma Morúa Delgado.

[2] It is a classic reduction, contrasting black people as popular with the white bourgeoisie, from the mimicry of the upper and middle bourgeoisie respect to North American segregationism; but ignoring the marginal spaces, in which blacks and whites transacted behaviors, to the point of the general miscegenation of the population. // Cf: Manuel Granados, Apuntes para una historia del negro enCuba.

[3] . It’s an allusion to a pivotal essay of WEB Du Bois, The talented ten, in which he insisted in the specialization of an intellectual elite to promote black development; contrary to the insistence of projects like that of Booker T. Washington, who insisted in a development through industrial training. // Cf: El error del Sr. Du Bois.

[4] . It is the upper middle class as a false bourgeoisie, which is false insofar as it does not establish itself as a class by its power of production but by its power of consumption. In this sense, the contempt with which they criticize the manual and service works to which the proletariat is forced is especially striking; when as a class identification —and from the so-called socialist morality— these should be the privileged ones, showing their inconsistency.

From the series Georgina Herrera I

Regarding women's poetry in Cuba, Catherine Davies points out that until the triumph of the revolution there were no black women writers; which may be excessive, referring more to their visibility than to an undoubtedly improbable non-existence. In any case, the contrast is strong with respect to the sample of black writers, who cover the entire literary spectrum; curiously, with more resonance in conservative media —such as the Diario de la Marina—, becoming even a niche.

In any case, the difference refers to the political precariousness of black people, determining its priorities; more serious in the case of women, even without cases like that of Phillis Wheatley in United States, who had the patronage of her masters. In Cuba, on the other hand, social freedom did not make this type of patronage possible, which alleviated the harshness of the environment; which, though less rude, was still beyond the strength of individuals aspiring to such a specialty as that of poetry. With men it is different, because its projection —and connections— is always political, allowing for other developments; contrary to women, who must leap from the domestic, when this —and not poetry— was the priority, as a primary need.

However, history is not an immobile, universal and abstract phenomenon, to be looked at with absolute parameters; on the contrary, as a reality, it occurs in the concrete phenomena in which it is realized, punctual in its exceptionality. It was then a matter of time before some pioneer would put her pike of blackness in the Flanders of Cuban literature; a development traumatized by the triumph of the revolution, with what that meant institutionally and ontologically.

That is the strange circumstance of Georgina Herrera, who makes her literary debut with the new institutionality; curiously, on the losing (Ediciones el Puente) and not on the triumphant side, which persists in its racial elitism. In fact, her older age compared to her contemporaries exposes her as the pioneer who did not materialize; grouped in an extemporaneity that did not allow her to establish group but only her own references, in her sufficiency.

In another circumstance, Herrera would have renewed the national spectrum with her sentimental existentialism; in her actual circumstance, she was neutralized by her low political profile, persisting in that existentialism. Perhaps this made possible her special sensitivity to African openness, dubious outside of the country's political manipulations; and yet this allowed her to reconnect with a transcendence, in which identity transcends the problems of childhood.

Recognized in all its splendour, her poetry is nevertheless dragged down by the weight of mediocre criticism; that, resorting to the commonplace, still tries to put together a political discourse where there is only personality; It is also about overexploiting that other commonplace of motherhood, more complex and dramatic than idyllic in her. Herrera is, in any case, an enigmatic and complex figure in every sense, from thematic to strictly literary existentialism; because her poetry does not derive from the symbolism with which modernity culminated, in its critical rationalization of romanticism; but matures directly from this romanticism, probably thanks to her formation, unique and sufficient as her self-taught.

Georgina Herrera navigated the iron system with her apparent modesty, camouflaging her haughtiness in silence; which further guaranteed her existentialism, with her persistence in the low political profile, which preserved it. In the end, there is nothing more political than that scandalous silence of her, like the stamp of his African elegance; something that the country insists on disdaining, as if it were not the needle that gives consistency to world, only that she already was and will be.

On the racial contradiction of Cuban government, in the country and outside it

A problem for the existence of black Cubans outside Cuba, is the projection of their own government; exposing them in a special way to the economic impoverishment of the country, but not recognizing this precariousness either. As a principle, the Cuban problem in general is expressed as economic, but it is eminently political; since it consists in the incapacity of that government for that economic development, which it justifies in its historical transcendentalism.

In this regard, the people of Cuba in general suffer the hardships of this inefficiency, which insists on its political nature; in an eternal dispute with the United States, which has historical bases, but involving the government and not the people it sacrifices. In this sense, it is not the nature of this national institutionality to defend that dignity, but of individuals; whom as nationals, would have to endorse with political mechanisms the representativeness or not of that government. That is not possible in Cuba, which thus falls into the conventional category of political dictatorship; even with its violence, which is necessarily directed against the people, as a form of political control.

It is in this situation that black person is particularly affected, given his political precariousness; which is systematic and endemic, preying on the revolutionary process, but stagnating because of it. This may be a common state for the Negro in the West, but here he does not have the resources to solve it; which being in its transnationality, it comes up against the barrier of false solidarity with which its government interferes in these processes.

Indeed, one of the paradigms of the Cuban revolution is that of its solidarity with the international proletariat; as a single category, in which every stratum other than the bourgeoisie, including the blacks, is gathered. The first defect of this category is that as a determination it is political and not existential in nature; but beyond that technicality, the problem is the demonization of Black dissent by the rest of Blackness.

Thus, the black Cuban —like all conservatives by extension— is morally disqualified on principle, as anti-black; identifying racism with capitalism, as if all African development were not capitalist, for example. Worse than that, all of these categories are established by a white, Western, eighteenth-century ideology; which, acting in its own interest, subordinates everything else in its own sense of the historical, including the racial problem.

This would show the inconsistency of discourses on racial identity, at least in their political projection; in which they are only legitimate when they follow a direction, curiously established by the very ones who created the problem. It is not that identity does not exist as a sufficient object, or that it has not emerged from the postcolonial tradition; but the persistence of a political situation of the first half of the 20th century in the 21st, on an ideology of the 19th.

Above all, an ideology so Western that it is a derivation of its culture in the inhumanity of its Humanism; and that for that reason alone, it should force black people to look over the wall, even to contemplate the suffering of their brethren. In an incomprehensible way —or not at all— the intellectual elite of black Americans persists in averting their gaze; which is also not surprising, if they had already subordinated their own blackness, since the dissolution of the Niagara Movement by W.E.B. Du Bois.

The Black Problem in the Cuban Revolution

The problem with the Cuban revolution is that, like all revolutions, it justifies itself and within its own parameters; so that it reorders history, in an understanding that justifies it transcendentally, just like religions do. In fact, all this has been happening since Modernity, in which politics assumes the doctrinal character of religions; and in doing so, it assumes its own superstructural function[1], stripping culture of its existential value.

With respect to the Cuban revolution, this means its reordering of history in an ideological sense; which, functioning as a foundational myth, legitimize it in its political behavior as transcendent. The problem with these justifications is that they are proper to the historical transcendentalism, of the idealist tradition; and in this, they do not understand the basic problem of dialectics, as a Manichean reduction of reality, which cannot comprehend this. In this specific case, it ignores the determinations of the real, in its understanding of the historical; remaining political rather than existential, thus violating the effective determinations of history, with ideology.

In any case —consciously or not— this is a political process with existential repercussions, not the other way around; and in this way it will respond to the political determinations —not existential ones— of Cuban society, different from its culture. Cuban culture and society diverge from the determination of the latter, in the feat of independence; which, ignoring the popular will of the country in its relationship with Spain, imposes nationalism as a founding principle.

The problem here is the violence, intrinsic to Cuban political culture, from its origin in the voluntarism of its patricians; whom as warlords, settles their differences with that violence and popular manipulation, in populism. This, coupled with the growing racial differentiation of the economy, will increase these already typical contradictions; which erupts into systematic conflicts, such as successive revolutions and coups d'état, beginning in 1906.

In these conflicts, the Massacre of 1912 stands out, which bloodily culminated the Independent Party of Color; imposing a turn that definitively marginalize blacks, as an emerging force in the political tradition; and whose development, although contradictory and difficult, had led one of them to the presidency of the Senate[2]. Since then, blacks have tended to join the ranks of the Communist Party in politics, due to their patronage; as is characteristic of modern liberalism, insofar as it subordinates it to its own political cause against capitalism[3].

This is the national state in which the Cuban revolution triumphs, but —at least in principle— as a bourgeois revolution; which went against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, precisely by that high bourgeoisie, because of its popular rather than populist character; as indeed it is that bourgeoisie, in its contradiction of this popular character of politics, that belches with Batista's violence. Note that the revolutionary process itself is as violent as Batista's, only justified in its transcendence; which is where the communist forces take it, organizing it ideologically, in the same sense of Christian theology.

In this sense, the advance of blacks is definitively interrupted by the strong political corporatization of society; which, responding to the political guidelines of communism, does not allow individual developments such as those that help black development. This may not be necessarily due to a racist character of the revolution, but to the racial nature of its bourgeoisie; which, being the one that feeds the revolution and integrates its political structure, reproduces typical behavior.

This process is also internal, not visible to the outside world behind the ideological curtain of socialism; which in its struggle against capitalism, subordinates all the contradictions of modern society. Thus, aligned with liberal anti-capitalism, the political emergence of the black Americans does not accede to this reality; having to contend with its own patronage by that same liberalism, which subordinates it to its particular political interests.

In any case, the inefficiency of the Cuban government would not be ideological but practical, due to its economic incapacity; and this is what makes it politically illegitimate, by justifying this incapacity in ideology, without effectively resolving it. It would be in this contradiction that blacks are especially affected, given their own political precariousness; in which they would lack the necessary resources to overcome it, due to the endemic disproportion of their poverty; that in the face of the revolution had alternatives in individuality, frustrated in this strong corporativity of socialism.

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[1] tags. Cf: On the Structure [Politics of Society and Its Substructural Functions]

[2] tags. Cf: Martín Morúa Delgado

[3] tags. Cf: On the Dialectical Contradiction Between Capitalism and Socialism

From the Gustavo E. Urrutia’s series

It cannot be stressed enough the difference between the intellectuality of Morúa Delgado and the political acuity of Urrutia; they only share the pragmatism, which in one is probabilistic and in the other is socially projected, more tactical than strategic. Between them, they illustrate the diapason of black intelligence in Cuba, with all its conservative nuance; which the relative liberalism of exceptions such as Juan Gualberto Gómez barely manage to tinge, pointing out its functionalism.

The difference is not only strange but also functional, which is what makes them both important in this illustration; one with the organization of a cosmology in the dramatic value of the real, whose anthropology emerges in their literature; the other in the understanding of that cosmology, and implementing it meticulously, in the brief piece of journalism. That is why Urrutia can never dare —nor does he care— in a project like Morúa's Political Essay[1]; but he can push that vision, as the other cannot do in his literary excellence, speaking to the common man.

Urrutia's other value is the illustration of Cuban conservatism, in its political advance with the triumph of Batista; that cannot obey just to a folkloric frivolity or a mere immorality, which is what it is reduced to ideologically. Any understanding of Batista is determined by his violence, as if the revolutionary one were not just as vicious; as if violence were not the characteristic of Cuban political culture, from its very genesis in the voluntarism of the Creole landowners of the independence.

This persistence should draw attention to its nature, at least in the case of black Cubans; who since Morúa presided over the Senate, only with Batista —and never again— did they achieve any political preeminence. Batista means something that is more serious than the supposed fickleness of a people that no one bothers to understand; and that secret would be in this sarcastic shadow, which follows him like a sixty-four[2] that the country recurrently encounters.

Urrutia makes it clear that Cuban racism, distinct from its racial prejudice[3], is a mimicry of that of the American; which is why it is typical of a high bourgeoisie with aristocratic pretensions, distancing itself from all petty bourgeois and proletarian ties[4]. That is important, because it is this false bourgeoisie that rejects Batista as well as Cubans in general in politics; and in this game of dichotomies, the Cuban is that sarcasm that persistently crosses it, eventually with its own violence.

This is important, because it diverts to Cuba the possibility of development that is impossible in the United States; since humanity cannot be concretized in this violence of subjugation, if it depends on the will to relate ones to others. That what means Batista's strength, understandable in the incredibly liberal reasoning of Urrutia's conservatism; and it is the kind of subtlety that, in its extreme tactical practicality, escapes the great cosmologies such as that of Morúa and his literature.

There is a detail in the joy with which Urrutia refers to Nicolás Guillén, no matter the obvious ideological divergence; and that recalls the subreptitious persistence with which Guillén maintains the memoirs of Lino Dou and Morúa in the revolutionary Cuba. It is an identity that, not being political, is not racial either —in that same ideological sense— but existential; even if this existentiality comes —as pragmatism— from his experience, in the political precariousness of his race. It is the same silent effort —perhaps unconscious— with which Fernández Robaina collects them all and puts them in order; it doesn't matter if he does it underhandedly, in that context of the Aponte Society in Cuba, which others take advantage of to ripe the new slave market of American Universities.

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[1] tags. It refers to the Political Essay or Cuba and Racial Integration.

[2] . 64, Grand Dead (ancestor) in Cuban Charade.

[3] . Racism and racial prejudice would be distinct categories, one referring to the organization of society as a principle, and the other to a cultural atavism with concrete practices; In this case, Cuban racial prejudice would be subordinated in principle to the integrationism of Iberian culture, while its racism would be subordinated to the mimicry of the Cuban high bourgeoisie of North American segregationism.

[4] . The excessive stratification of modern rationalism tends to identify the bourgeoisie as a single class, unaware of its own formation; with the upper bourgeoisie generated from the financial specialization of a part of it, which allows it to replace the traditional aristocracy, with the transformation of capital, from military to financial.// Cf: Onthe Reactionary Character of Every Revolution