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.

Ibaé, Tomás Fernández Robaina

Para comprender a Tomás Fernández, habría que saber que investigó, compiló y publicó a Gustavo Gutiérrez; que no es sólo una personalidad importante de la negritud cubana, sino probablemente la más controversial. Ese es exactamente su valor, teniendo en cuenta el contexto de agresividad y vigilancia ideológica en que trabajó; porque Gutiérrez es una contradicción en todo sentido, que requiere un esfuerzo de coraje e inteligencia sublimes.

Que él pudiera hacerlo, reconociendo el peso de esa personalidad, es lo que mejor lo retrata por lo que es; no por el folclor del humor cáustico y snob, por el que Cuba no entiende sus problemas y los padece para siempre; sino por la tenacidad de una persona que trabaja en silencio, desde la oscuridad, y en lo que importa. Mientras el cubano común trata de sobrevivir —lo que es legítimo en su inmensa dificultad—, él vivió a plenitud; no porque careciera de dificultades, sino por la entera y la generosidad con que las enfrentó, al punto de este trabajo.

En este sentido, los negros cubanos se aferran a esa ambigüedad de clase que es lo intelectual, y tratan de vivir; por eso se venden al mejor postor, y protestad la maldad de los blancos, a los blancos que viven de eso. Robaina se vuelve y establece la bases para el movimiento de la antropología cubana al lado negro de su mestizaje; e inteligente, no lo hace sobre la base de una retórica política, enarbolando la apariencia manipulable de una necesidad; sino enumerando los aportes específicos de eso negro a la cultura cubana, que rebasan el burlesco de su música y su baile.

Justo por eso, su muerte es tan terrible como temible, porque no hay personalidades que llenen ese vacío; todas las investigaciones se mueven ahora en la legitimidad mayor de comer todos los días y viajar, o la vindicación personal; pocos —si alguno— exhiben ese nivel de satisfacción, por el que pueden despreocuparse de sí mismos y simplemente trabajar. Todavía hay que poner perspectivas, y centrarlo en el problema racial, al que dedicó sus mayores esfuerzos; y por el que pudo sortear los problemas de esa contradicción ideológica de Gutiérrez, para sacarlo a la luz.

Probablemente ese de Gutiérrez no sea su trabajo más importante, pero sí el más ilustrativo de ese esfuerzo; que es de lo que se trata, como la comprensión de su personalidad profunda y amable hasta con la historia. Robaina así da sentido hasta a la Sociedad Aponte, a la que ofrece la trascendencia de que carece en su ilegitimidad; sacrificándole la suya, como un escalón en que el futuro puede posar sus pies de esclarecimiento para la historia nacional.

Another side of the black struggle

With a poem to Washington and Du Bois[1], Dudley Randall shown the root problem of the political black struggle; which is its reduction to a dialectical opposition, and so keep unsolvable in this oppositional nature as its own. The problem here is that each of them solves an aspect of reality, but ignoring the other on this effort of understanding; and so creating and imbalance in this comprehension, to which reality is reduced as an idea, not reality itself.

It doesn’t matter which side of reality a person chooses, it still needs the other to be real, overcoming its idealistic nature; and this relationship can’t even be of subordination of one to other but equal, so that reality is not distorted in this subordination. That's the problem with political conflicts, as a recurrent reduction of reality to a set of ideas, in a hermeneutical function; they’re always this formal reduction of reality to an idea of it, that then lacks its consistency, as an ideology.

Centering in ideology rather than reality itself, determinations will respond to a logic —but not to reality real— needs; as political, but when since politic is the expression and not the determination of reality, which is always culture. This is why both sides are irreconcilable, to the same irrationality, presented as a transcendental rationalization (Moral); but it doesn’t matter if one makes more sense than the other in its more practical nature, as with the capitalist scope of industrialism; it’s still irrational as pure counter rational, ignoring —and thus distorting— reality on its political projection.

As the other false contradiction of Socialism Vs Capitalism, this could be solved only by overcoming its dialectical fatality; with the proper understanding of reality, in its own trichotomic rather than dichotomic nature; thus in a trialectic rather than a dialectical way, that allow the better understanding of reality on its own scopes. This is the pertinence of Garveyan pragmatism, still dysfunctional without these projections of Washington and Du Bois; since all of then just have an intuition, but that of Garvey is just about the complementarity of the others two.

What Garvey had that the others lacked, was the moral consistency of his projection, as a real rather than a political need; but he lacked the ability to overcome his political difficulties, as the material ways to secure his own consistency. So Garvey —like the other two— failed in its own idealism, although he brought this intuition about complementarity; and so will lead any effort to establish a political reality for black people, but just as long as he can assembled what the others made.

It should not be a surprise that just a poet could understand the nature of this contradiction as purely formal, in a poem; because is art what truly understands reality, as an also formal projection that can understand it objectively. Is this what put the existential scope in the reflection of reality, finding its hermeneutical references in its own possibility; developing then as an effective probabilism, without the political vices of philosophy, in its own —and just apparently— gratuity.

It should not surprise either it were Garvey the one who brought the complementarity, from its root in reality; not even the pragmatism of Washington, based on its own political specialization with its faith in Capitalism; as idealistic as Du Bois with its own faith in Socialism, because both of them ignored the real nature of reality itself. Contrary to them, Garvey came from the syndical movement in the black Caribbean, with its ascendence in England industrialism; which was different from that of Washington, was based on the real conditions —and contradictions— of workers struggles. This was the cause of Washington own struggles with his own students at Tuskegee, because his own political specialization; that only Garvey could solve in a real —not just political— pragmatism, even if still in need of political the organization he never got.

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[1] . Cf: Dudley Randall, Booker T. and W.E.B. Du Bois

El Monte (the wild) or the Igbo example for black American political contradictions I

In some accounts, Igbo means wild —signifying forest and woods—, so they are the people of the wild; with their rejection of the so-called civilized conventions, although their own culture is politically exemplar. This is what primitive African oppressive political systems had, different from those the westerns; the ability of the people to leave and star again by their own, creating a new society from the scratch of mere living.

This is then how Igbo people organized their society, based in economical relationships but not as political determinations; which keep dissociated of economic power, and linked to age, as a gerontocracy nucleated in the family. That’s why the system was able to regulate their political development, avoiding those western sclerosis of Modernity; at least ‘till that same modernity overpowered them, since the weakness of this model is its military disorganization.

Still the system is so efficient, that allows its immediate reparation, as long as people find a way back to the wild; that means, if only people are willing to leave the accommodation of civilized society, and start from the ground. This Igbo culture is especially interesting, because it allows the understanding of African anthropologic structures; and in this sense, humanity evolves cellularly, splitting societies when their overgrowth makes them sclerotic in their determinations.

Because of this, deities are of an ambiguous nature hard to understand, but which is not even necessary at all; because reality is what is at stake —and it’s always concrete and immediate in its functionality—, no matter if human or divine. Which makes African culture so different from the western, which always depend on universalities and abstractions; leading to development as precious as disastrous, like that of Western philosophy, specifically its modern Idealism.

That explains the flexibility and adaptability of the Igbo pantheon, which is only and organization of reality; subjected to the constant adaptation of the nature it manifests in, with the specialized interpretation that adequate culture to reality. Thus here lies the importance of the medicine men —root workers and curanderos— as the priesthood, rather than philosophers; responsible for the interpretation of this entanglement of determinations, and so organizing them in an intelligible sense.

What’s curious here is that this is how pantheons evolved in human history, even those of Western civilizations; and not only with the fusion of religions but even in its internal development, as in the case from Atonism to Christianity and Islan. This is then what shows the resilience of human nature, over the sclerotic decadence of its western structures; as the true consistence of humanity, based on its own reality and not on the idea they have of themselves.

The difference is in the beginning, where Igbo culture insists on splitting while West cultures insists in the overgrowth; to the point where it can no longer overcome its own entropy, after that moment of its splendor that was modernity. This is then what happens with Modernity, with society becoming postmodern and thus starting its declining; with this example of United States as the New Rome, in a position no other power has been before in the West.

Everything has been a just development, between these two splendors of Rome in antiquity and the United States in postmodernity; and so the new developments would lie in the cultural group that holds the functions of German at the moment of Rome decadence. This would be the case of black people, as the ones stablishing their own determinations to survive the crumbling of the structure; but for which they need to do nothing else than preserve their own ancestrallity, because it’s the only source of sense for the new reality; and other than that would be the extension of the same crumbling structure, dragging us in its agony.

Black people on political contradictions III

Black people are complaining that liberal state governments waste public money, helping immigrants before them; they allege that those states need the population increase by immigration, in order to keep they seats in Congress. This is based in the lack of population for those states, due the high taxes of their model of welfare; so black people will vote Democrat or Republican, depending on their particular understanding of the problem.

From here, all of them will be defending this dependence on government help, not their ability to live on their own; and the problem with this is that this living in government assistance is to live as client of the political class. The question of who or how to distribute that help is secondary, as the problem is political rather than practical; and defined by ideological lines, one side notes the help is shrinking, while the other just add it to the national debt, already astronomical.

None of them is right, because none brings the real solution, of making people able to live by their own; so black people and immigrants are fighting the fight of the whites, from which them will get nothing. Instead, we could ask candidates nearest to us, even if looking to what are they really able to do; like Cornel West, to whom nobody takes seriously —not even himself— but nobody confronts him with real questions either.

Cornel West looks at politics like a philosophical abstraction, and not the entanglement of dirty interests it really is; but the right questions could face him with the harsh reality of constituency, forcing him to develop his better tools. Instead, black people are scared with the demoralization of Trump or Biden, placing the hope in just another black or liberal; not seeing that Obama —black and liberal— did nothing to fix that real problem, of their government dependence.

Obama even have the help to the financial institutions that pushed everyone, more harshly yet the black people; and just set the path for more of that anti-black war on drugs, with the duo of Kamala Harrys and Joe Biden, after the impasse of Trump. Republicans aren’t better, if they can free themselves of that liability of Donald Trump, whom —despite his achievements— can just negotiate; and that shows how that party is crumbling with the system, unable to responds for itself and less still for anyone else.

This means that the entire system is in crisis, in a momentum black people could profit from, playing their interests smartly; like with this lateral push of the most improbable candidacy of Cornel West, who can just clear the path to real freedom of black people. Cornel West may not know what he is doing, but the crisis of his erratic liberalism would have that desired scope; we already know the crisis of an erratic conservatism with Trump, and very well could evaluate the flavor of this other, if at the end the game is always against us.

Black people on political contradictions II

Capitalism is a joke for black people, because its economy is based on power consumption rather than of production; and that means that blacks have not chance on it, due to that bad start without that power of consumption. That’s what makes blacks dependent of society, but being socialism equally a joke due to its ideological nature; that forces people to feudal clientelism, with politicians who never fulfill their promises, because then they would lose the source of legitimacy.

This doesn’t mean that black people don’t have a space in politics, but that we need to put that power to a real use; like forcing society out of that fake confrontation of Capitalism Vs Socialism, which always use black people as clients. Black people can and should force society back to its industrialism, shrinking economy to production instead of consumption; so we could build our own possibilities through economy, based in our human sufficiency rather than in the constrictions of political protections.

The problem with this is its political dissonance, as out of that fake contradiction Capitalism and Socialism; that turning capital to ideology, dries human sufficiency to collectivism, through that political dependency. It doesn’t matter if that dependency is directly political like in socialism, or indirectly as in capitalism; in this last case it’s still political, through economic dependence of government, and so its allegiance to liberalism; and in both cases results in the same inability for political sufficiency, subjecting persons to political corporatism.

As the main problem is the economy, the best example here is the neoliberal overgrowth of corporate capitalism; which is the socialist economy, as governmental capitalism, modeled by Lenin to sustain its proletariat dictatorship. The problem is that this corporatism is what reduces individuality to clientelism, thus to the abstraction of social class; so the solution would be to retort to basic industrialism, with the growth of a small and middle bourgeoisie from that middle class.

The fake solution is the promotion of that middle class as a false small bourgeoisie, with the small and middle enterprises; which still depends on the services from those corporations, from financial services to supply and utilities; just taking from their shoulders the task of management and direct supply to society, but not allowing the individual resilience of the small bourgeoisie. So a real solution would lie in politicians able to shrink back to real industrialism, based on production rather than consumption; that means real money, as when industrialization began, not just services that tie people to financial institutions.

This is what the system will not allow, as a whole corporate organization, integrating politicians and big finances; turning postmodern societies into a kind of neo-feudalism, that just doesn’t allow the growth of individuality as contrary to clients. It should be remembered that this false contradiction of modern politics was created by the push of those financial elites; acting corporately in the support of Monarchy against traditional aristocracy, which supplied the military as capital; and to which they substitute, supplying that capital, turning it from military to financial nature, as the ability of government to govern.

So a real solution for black people is to look locally, resisting the push to integrate a category as client of a corporate trust; this would allow us to survive the crumbling of the whole system, doomed by its political sclerosis, due to its corporate overgrowth. Again, this doesn’t mean that black people shouldn’t or couldn’t participate in politics, but that we need to play it defensively; growing our own kind of politician rather than accepting whomever that now traditional aristocracy sell us as black leader; because like that earlier bourgeoisie of the financial elite, they will sell us in their own lust for power, which is only natural.