The Morúa’s Enigma, an introduction

El enigma Morúa Delgado is not limited to the historical problems surrounding this character, but goes within his reach; thus, it is more of an anthropological analysis of the historical determinations of politics in Cuba than of this politics in itself. Even in this sense, treating Cuba as the specific context in which Morúa Delgado relates to the Western culture; so it is also an anthropology of than Western culture, expressed in the political contradictions of its development.

That is why, for example, he compares —in appendices— the development produced by the Greek political singularity; but not in relation to the latest political processes in the West, but to their parallel in another exceptionality, African. The book is full of these contrasts, as the one proposing an understanding of history other than dialectics; with an introduction to trialectics, as proper to reality, which in turn would be the nature of the historical.

That is why, despite not being a long book, it gives the impression of being digressive, in its thematic expansion; with appendices as dense —sometimes denser— than the body of the book, trying to break down their topical implications. In this sense, it can be a book as difficult as the subject, struggling to establish an audience of its own; for postulating against the conventional understanding of history, it is as specialized as that very convention.

However, this difficulty is inescapable, even if it means postponing in time the impact of the book; because it is precisely another step in the development of a New Black Thought, like another tradition. Especially important in this sense, then, it seeks to correct the anthropological axis of national culture; moving it from his founding myth to a more practical understanding of these historical determinations.

Morúa Delgado, in short, was the one who postulated a pragmatic and non-moral argument against the autonomic solution; which thus allows for a more realistic establishment of the independence culture, and thus a more functional of these determinations. That’s why its importance is anthropological rather than political, even if its expression is inevitably political; and this in turn as a contradiction, which explains the instability of the republic, leading to its constant implosion.

Another interesting aspect of this approach to Morúa, is based on its same anthropological nature; which in this understanding of history, places it at one of the trico and non-dichotomous extremes of contradiction. The other two extremes would be that of Estenoz —overshadowing the angular function of Ivonet— and Juan Gualberto Gómez; and beyond them, those of Fidel Castro and Toussaint L'Overture, narrowing the Caribbean and displacing the centrality of José Martí.

It is therefore a complex vision of a phenomenon, that is already very complex, without reducing it in its determinations; and hence its contradiction, of avoiding conventional specialization, but with its own specialty, as emerging. Its index of complementary readings, apart from the direct bibliography, is just as apparently random and contradictory; but imposing with it its own object, on the transcendent determination of the real and its comprehension.

This is what makes this book so extremely complex, in that functional centrality of Morúa Delgado; as an elusive topic in current discussions of history and politics, which also now extends to philosophy. Hence the cardinal function of these appendices on Hegel's inconsistencies in relation to dialectics, for example; starting from the same contradiction about the Dasein, which he himself lacked, given his cultural hyper-specialization.

This is the contradiction correctable by black culture in its emergence, but distancing itself from all conventionality; even if through that thick thicket of true marronage, outside the domestic realm of academia. That’s why this approach aims to solve the so-called black problem, but undoing its artificiality; which is why this personality of Morúa Delgado is so central to the history of Cuba, as its capital correction.

This edition is accompanied by  that of Morúa's own Political Essay,  from which his anthropology is extracted; as that understanding of the ontological determinations of the Cuban, at the basis of a true national tradition of thought. With the subtitle of Cuba and the Race of Color, this essay by Morúa is one of his most and worst cited sources; with biased readings, which dissolve into specific data the scope of his very original systematization of the racial problem.