That thing of black conservatism

Black conservative differs from the white in that it is neither political nor economic, but existential; although it manifests as political, because it’s based on the existential precariousness of black people. All this manifests as political, but because politics has displaced the cultural determinations of reality; but this political nature is just functional en that case of black people, as related to the conservation of resources; which —like morals, religion, family, etc.—  are what provides existential support through that social precariousness.

This cannot be understood by white people, who relate to black people in function of their own political interests; like in their dialectical contradiction between socialism and capitalism, and everything in between. First at all, this is a false contradiction, related to the contradictions of western culture development; since the early capitalism, when Phoenician commercial expansion rescued their culture, after the Minoan disaster. That’s when Capitalism was born, as opposed to religious supremacy on the determinations of culture, with politics; and while it gave society its best tool with Democracy, it also deregulated the growth of economy in politics.

This is how dialectic became the way to understand reality, through the parallel development of philosophy; which with formal reason (dialectic) was the hermeneutical reference in the understanding of reality. As with Democracy, Dialectic is an useful tool to organize culture as a reality with a human sense; but as Democracy too, it’s unable to fully understand reality in its universal scope, since it’s part of that same reality.

That’s a natural contradiction, since as real itself, humanity is overwhelmed by reality, in this universal scope; but also, and as a principle, the need of humanity is to exist in this reality as its own, not to understand it. Here, what religious provided was the formal determinations of reality, reflected in its magical manipulations; not even objective but as a residual of that practices, that served as the hermeneutical references for the existential reflection. That’s why the reason provided by religion was not formal or abstract but practical, related to immediate needs; regulating culture with this, keeping it in a manageable dimensions, without that exponential growth of formal reason.

Is for all this functionality that it doesn’t exist such a thing as black liberalism, but just its conservatism; because —formal as politic— that contradiction is privative of western culture, and even related to Christianity. As a principle too, it looks like liberalism was born as late as the French revolution and the first ideas of socialism; but even that French revolution was an artificial crisis, produced by the development Christian Humanism as ideology; just when Christianity became a political (official) religion, to manage the crumbling of Western Roman empire. This is even when dialectic became that absolute way of reasoning, and so the first hermeneutical reference; which centered in society as its main object, cut the ability of the individual to get its references from reality.

As seen, this is even a distortion of Christianity in its own nature, by the overgrowth of formal reason in western philosophy; explaining the value of black American Christianity, putting back the magic in religion, with an existential function; providing reason that practical nature it lost to with the contraction of Christianity to ideological function, as political.

Black people on the political contradictions

The biggest political contradiction is that being dialectical it can be solved, not even in that fantasy of synthesis; since that would be the end of history, and history is the experience of life measured with time and space. So what happens with the political contradiction, is that it continues through the functional two parts it reduces society to; the one with power and the other without power, being power the object for which they both collide in their confrontation.

This is not the natural progression of history, but it’s what has become with the transformation of capital; which at the beginning was just force, and thus becomes the military, but then becomes ideological. This is happened with the ascendance of Christianity, as a way to secure the power in an understanding of reality; but as a contraction to its idealistic nature —as ideology— that thus lost its consistency as reality behind. This is why at the same time of that transformation of Capital to ideology, it organized its residuals in its potential; convening the money as a way to that same power, in direct contradiction of the ideology as nature of Capital.

This is why Christianity was reduced to Manichean puritanism, opposed to any and all form of materialism; which then get represented in money, as the way to gain power besides the conventional structure of ideology. So this is how the actual political contradictions are the same born with Christianity, in the peak of Medieval times; organized as the same confrontation between functional substructures of power, like that of aristocracy and monarchy.

This is what came to Modernity, and transforms then as a class confrontation, but fake in that contradiction; because the proletariat is never the subject but the object of power, always solved in the upper class of society. What happened was the transformation of monarchy and aristocracy, through that other transformation of economy; which as industrialization, ending the technological revolution of medieval times, continues through the new classes. This was the State as the main claim of sovereignty, and the financial elites as the new aristocracy; both of them fighting for the effectiveness of political power over the society, in its middle and lower classes.

This is the actual contradiction, with none of them actually interested on the real people but in their own interests; for which they manipulate those of the excludes by theses interests of them, as their supposed representation. Although the whole system is dialectically organized in that political perversion of political duopoly, it has no solution; except that other —and diachronic— process of entropy, for which the whole system would crumble in its own excesses.

Let’s be clear about this, because any attempt to interfere with the process becomes a part of the same; as this is proper of the same structurality of the system, and so it’s ineludible in its own structural nature. This doesn’t mean that society is condemned to its doom though, but that this model of society surely is; and at some point, of its progressive weakness, a group with political ingenuity and recursive will lead a new development; resulting in the stabilization of the whole structure, but as an adequation of those same excesses.

That was what happened to Roman culture —not the empire— with its demise in the western side of the empire; when it was reduced to crumbs with the Germans, which then reestablished the whole structure as political. In this case here, that would be the function of black people, in the United States as the crumbling new Rome; not because an ability to organize in an alternative development, always sabotaged with its political perversion; but because in their precariousness and marginality, they would be the remnant on those crumbles, and so would find the ingenuity for the reconstruction.

That question of the black struggle

One question runs through the racial problem, and that is why blacks cannot solve their political struggle; the obvious answer is that of the same political difficulty they confront, but the obvious is never the right answer. The problem is then why —behind that obvious— is so unsurmountable this political difficulty; and then, the not so obvious answer may be that the nature of the struggle is in the same nature of politics.

The problem could be that not a black person is really interested in the racial but in the political struggle; so the problem is not political then, but existential, related to the specific people it affects. That means that black people are really interested in personal advance, not political abstractions; but the capital for that advancement is now ideological, so then the priorities are distorted in function of the political.

This struggle of black people —at least in America— is like that of the old Germans in Rome, about development; but at that time the capital was military, leading to the integration of German culture through feudalism. That would be why this change in the nature of capital, from military to ideology is so important; weakening the ability of the person to advance by itself, forcing people to strive through ideological obedience.

Here lies the other problem, less obvious still than that of the personal interest in political advancement; and it’s the seudo religious nature of ideology, appealing to the irrationality of inner feelings; like that of historial shame, forceful integration of a social class and all that typical of Catholicism. It was Catholicism —as the historical matrix of modern Christianity— what made that change in the nature of capital; building the western society in the model of Christian humanism, as the human Utopia from Constantin to Saint Agustin.

That as human that utopia was  Manichean —and thus dialect— It is due to the origin of San Agustin; but the political nature of this utopia was due to the origin of Constantin, from the rubble of Rome. This is what black culture could change, but only as not conditioned by its origin in those western contradictions; not matter if it’s born and formed from that same contradictions, as ideology, in the anticolonial though; because with this it only serves those western interests, that lies in their own contradictions and not in our humanity.

Black people can solve the political struggle only recognizing its nature, as cultural —existential— and not political; because this way we can even shrink that distorted nature of capital to its economic —not even military— function. The primacy of religion on all this is its reign over ideology, but with ideology un function of political order and not as capital; this subtlety is what escapes to Christianity, because that Manicheism of Saint Agustin in his own distortion of religiosity; but lies in the trichotomic —not dichotomic— nature of history, as trialectic rather than dialectic.

This other contradiction —as a dysfunctionality of philosophy— is natural though, born in Modern rationalism; which was the peak of Christian Humanism, achieved in its development from the 4th to the 15th centuries; but five centuries have passed since the 15th, and three since the 17^th, and it’s about time to think on continual development. This is what the western culture can’t do by itself, rebasing its own entropy, started with its own development; when a millennia before Saint Agustin, Rome started its own rising, as the base of the western civilization.

This is why black culture is so important —as it was the Germanic— for that Western civilization development; but only as long as this black culture can growth its resiliency, appealing to its own sufficiency as political object; with its own existential rather than political function, because is here where lies its consistency, even is paradoxical. That means, turning to the economic advancement of its people, that would shrink capital to its economic nature; but that’s even the worst and biggest contradiction of Western culture, in the power struggle that distorted its own beginnings.

Georgina Herrera on Cuban’s Language Day

Miguel de Cervantes was born on April 23, 1547, and William Shakespeare was born on the same date, but in 1564; because both of them, this date is recognized as the day of the Spanish and English languages, which reach their maturity with the work of the latter. This points to the undeniable transcendence of these men, because it is in literature that language is organized and matured; as an external support, which enhances reflection as existential, as a peculiar understanding of the world.

On that same date but in 1936, Georgina Herrera was born in Jovellanos (Cuba), giving a similar value to poetry; not yet to language, which has matured since Cervantes, allowing this other maturation of poetry in Cuba; but to this poetry, which is peculiar because it renews the instrumentality of language for reflection as existential. It is, therefore, an event of similar significance, although the proximity somewhat clouds this scope of hers; because it will be in this instrumentality that culture achieves its best integration, as specifically Cuban.

Namely, as a reflection of reality, culture is a network of relations as chaotic as the former; but now —different from the former— with a sense on its own, because of the peculiarity in which it is carried out, even more as Cuban. In fact, Cuba is the critical point at which Western culture bubbles, unable to materialize due to its innumerable contradictions; which can only be reconciled in a functional integration, starting from a given and progressive understanding of reality.

This progression is what language would provide, as well as its own development and maturity, given in its functionality; and this is what would reside in its ability to reflect the real, in a poetic structure that unveils the meaning of life. This is what recognises the transcendence of art and literature, explaining the scope of Cervantes and Shakespeare; such as Georgina Herrera, whose poetics constricts the formal nonsense of Cuban literature to its existential function.

We should remember that Cuban literature has been distorted by political determinism since nineteenth century; when pseudo-realist symbolism prevails over the nascent national costumeries[1], provoking the bitter critique of the real. This is the drama that unfolds from Cirilio Villaverde and Morúa Delgado, and extends throughout the national novelistic; but unresolved, because the novel —distinct from poetry— is too susceptible to the author's interference.

For this reason, the Cuban novel can only expose these contradictions, but not solve them as poetry can; and this not for its own sake or in fact, but to the extent that this poetry escapes that same political determinism. Herrera does this, as the link that unites the two periods of splendor and decadence of Cuban culture; emerging as a power that sums up the first, to materialize itself through all difficulties in the second. The undeniable transcendence of Cervantes and Shakespeare is given by their immanence, no less undeniable; Georgina Herrera's remains to be seen, but like that lies in this existential —not political— nature of her poetry.

In all three cases, it is the durability that guarantees the functionality of the form, already excellent in its own value; in the latter case, because of that stubborn existentiality that denses it, beyond the political flourish and even the beautiful phrase. Herrera's poetry establishes a hermeneutic from which to reflect on the existence of the nation in its culture, that is its value; and it is functional, fulfilling Morúa's claim to Villaverde, with that effective integration of the political margin into its existentiality; not as a black —although because her blackness— nor as a woman —although because her femininity— but in her extreme humanity.

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[1] . It refers to “Costumbrismo” as a literary stile, based in the description of social costumes with similar sense to the Critical Realism of French modern literature.

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

The Rare Case of Cuban Hoodoo

More than religion, Hoodoo is a culture of the American black, with a broad religious expression; ranging from the conventional Christianity of Baptists and Methodists to magical practices of African origin. Although as a culture it is syncretic —like all others— it is original in this fusion, providing its own identity; which in many cases organizes itself in that original Christianity of his, and in others it refuses to do so with restraint.

This is the result of the relationship of these African cultures with the specific Christianity of Protestantism, which in its Baptist aspect —rather than the Methodist— enhances individual over collective responsibility; with great resonance in all African magical practices[1], especially those of Congo (Bantu) origin. In Cuba the relationship is reversed, given the peculiarity of Catholicism, susceptible in its imagery to this sensibility; to which the magical sense of its liturgy —no matter how much it is rationalized— and hierarchy also contributes.

This difference would cause Catholicism in Cuba to result in an inverse Hoodoo, as a popular expression of culture; which, contrary to its North American counterpart, is exhibited in all its syncretism, given the magical scope of its liturgy and devotional practices. This ambiguity, which permeates all religions in Cuba, reaches its maturity in the Kimbisa or Rule of the Christ for the Good Journey; an original religion, which effectively merges the three aspects that prevail in Cuba, Catholicism and the Lucumí and Conga rules. Such an artifice is due to a peculiar character—ñáñigo and tertiary Franciscan—, Andrés Facundo Petit; who not only created the Kimbisa Rule, as a result of his own syncretism, but also opened the Abakuá cult to the whites.

This is very important, as seen in the opposite sense of the North American Hoodoo, appropriating Christianity; which in fact is replicated in a certain way in Cuba with the Rule of Osha, before the Africanist purism that permeates the cult of Ifa[2]; but not to the point of an appropriation of blackness by whites, as in this case of Cuban syncretism. In fact, this syncretism permeates the entire cultural structure, from the promiscuity of the slums; that whites and blacks shared in the same humanity[3], without the economic differentiators of the American working class.

This is what is expressed in this religious appropriation by the whites, who thus integrate it as a political value; as blacks could not do so because of their political precariousness, added to the economic ones they shared with poor whites. That's important, because Christianity —as a Western cosmology—integrates this American cultural structure; It requires adjustments to restore its first function, as existential rather than political, but does not admit its negation.

This is what Cuban syncretism resolves, making possible the subreptitious movements of North American Hoodoo; And it does so because of this social projection of theirs, which compensates for the original individualism intrinsic to Protestantism; but without the political excesses that perverted it as Christianity, given the influence of traditional African practices. This functionality of a Cuban Hoodoo is not mysterious but pragmatic, given by practical —and not political— needs; and it would not have begun with Petit and the Kimbisa Rule or the entry of the whites into the Abakuá, but with Omí Ifá and the organization of the cult of Orula in Cuba; when —long before Petit— he consecrated whites in the orisha cult, to prevent their persecution by the African ogbonis.

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[1] tags. Lidia Cabrera highlights the individualistic nature of African religious practices, including the cellular character of the family as the ultimate community expression. Cf: Lidia Cabrera, La sociedad secreta Abakuá, Ed. CR (Havana)/ 1958, Liminares.

[2] . It refers to a tendency, which arose with the relative officialization of the cult, to seek legitimacy in African origin; but more as part of the contradictions generated by this process of officialization, reverted as a snobbish and intellectualist attitude. In any case, given the conditions in which it is formed in Cuba, this cult is an original and autochthonous religion in itself; that although it recognizes its African origin, it has a peculiar, sufficient and proper development, alien to that of religion in Africa.

[3] tags. Manuel Granados describes the way in which whites incorporate the social behavior of blacks as vernacular, based on this promiscuity aroused by poverty. // Cf: Manuel Granados, Apuntes para una historia del negro en Cuba, Afro Hispanic Review, Vol. 24, N0. 1.

Gustavo E. Urrutia and the Not-So-Strange Case of Black Conservatism

Martín Morúa Delgado may be the most dramatic black personality in Cuba, with his importance and deepness; but this drama has a historical meaning, given by the political confrontation with the Independents of color. More interesting, although less striking, would be the case of Juan Gualberto Gómez, with his black associationism; also Gustavo E. Urrutia, with his distrustful conservatism and middle-class rationality, excelling in prosperity.

All of them —but especially Urrutia— have against them that conservatism, making them reprobate to the revolutionary spirit; it may be —but no one knows— because in its anthropological functionality it shows the political dysfunction of the other. In short, liberalism is paradoxically conservative, with its emphasis on the preservation of the status quo; which is society as the ultimate structure of the human, in a value of its own that superimposes it on culture. In contrast, black conservatism is functional in its anthropological rather than political nature; responding to its intrinsic precariousness in this sense, even if it converges with classical conservatism; which is political, because of its directly economic determination, and based on the structurality of the social.

That is paradoxical as a principle, but not in the reality in which it occurs, as an expression of the middle class; with the agglomeration of an aristocracy resentful of the absolutism of seventeenth-century Versailles, with so much time available. This, in the context of a new economy extending the feudal clientelism in modernity with a consumer culture; in which economic corporatism subverts and corrupts industrialism, as traditional aristocracy is replaced by the financial, in the securing of capital.

None of this has anything to do with black culture, which emerges in Cuba as one of service, subordinated to this decadence; but it does condition it in that first precariousness, in which the concrete person must ensure his subsistence. This would be the explanation of this conservatism, incomprehensible to revolutionary moral suprematism; widespread in the patronage of the poor classes in another form of determinism, also racial in that suprematism.

In short, liberalism understands its own determinations, but not those of the black race it says to sponsor; and which it reduces to poverty of caste, with that difficulty of idealism in understanding historical singularity. The problem with conservatism in general would be that it starts from a contradiction of liberalism as a premise; which is false, because both are expressions of the same economic structure, distorted by political pressures.

From there it becomes the moral reduction, which presupposes a political identity proper to Black people, as poor; which is offensive, based on its patronage by the liberal contradiction, no less supposed than its own liberalism. Thus, the conservative Black person is universally regarded as declassed, condemned to the fate of the proletariat; who —in that racism of progressiveness— may escalate or try to escalate to petty bourgeois, but at the cost of its legitimacy.

For this reason, the political merit of these Black people is delegitimized on principle, without recognizing any possibility of it; discarding even—as supposedly individualistic—the family and community effort that built them. Gustavo E. Urrutia was formed as intellectual and politician against this political rudeness, from his professional solidity; as a representative of an astonishing black, Cuban and prosperous middle class, against all ideological reductionism.

There is no more eye-catching illustration of this than the collaboration between Booker T. Washington and Juan Gualberto Gómez; exchanging efforts for the professional training of black Cubans, as the foundations of their middle class and bourgeoisie. From this alternative network, which was of cultural rather than political resources, arose the elitism of the Athens Society; and this elitism, as the crosshairs of black society, as long as they were not played the dirty joke of socialist patronage.