About the issue of Afro-Hispanic review dedicated to Georgina Herrera

Almost four years after her death, The Afro-Hispanic Review dedicates a thematic issue to Georgina Herrera; and the delay may — but is not known — due to the tense negotiation over its questionable legitimacy. The number was planned at the very moment of his death, and I was invited to participate by Juana María Cordones, who was a guest editor; but which I conditioned on the exclusion of Roberto Zurbano —for reasons that everyone should know—, to which she refused.

Neither the reluctance of the invitation nor the refusal are important, because they are banal and subjective; but the appearance of this number points to an appeasement, even more offensive than the original offense. I did not condition my participation on Zurbano's exclusion out of arrogance, but because of his disrespect and opportunism; and the fact that they excluded him without renewing my invitation, speaks of that arrogance and opportunism on themselves, and of cowardice and weakness.

It is not a struggle between two mediocrities, but about Georgina Herrera's ascendance in her motherhood; usurped —or pretended— by Zurbano in his manipulations, on the negrerismo of the North American universities. Put like this, they could even made him the guest editor, since the offense is even greater, if Herrera's son is excluded; it does not matter the reason, beyond the irresponsible hypocrisy with which her motherhood is spoken of and praised.

Right here Zurbano is mentioned, as the origin of the outrage to Georgina Herrera, so it is clear that it is about dignity; something that has been unknown to that magazine, with that arrogance of French aristocrats at the end of the eighteenth century. That explains the naturalness, with which they spend public money on patting each other, while they continue to exploit blacks; ignoring in this also the dignity of those who do not need them, because they do not live on another people's money.

They had alternatives for this number, which at least would have saved their face, in a situation that deserved care; even if they had had to take the fief from the white master, and there is no black person —from Vanderbilt to Puerto Rico— who dares to do so much. That, even more than the personal, is what hurts about this slamming door, as a weakness of a race incapable of dignifying itself; in proof that nothing has changed, but only that they have increased the payroll of foremen and butlers.

In fact, and as is typical of racial behavior, this number does not even do justice to Georgina Herrera; because it ignores its importance, more axial than anecdotal, in the determination of the black cosmos in Cuba. That, which occurs in the intense power of her poetry, is mostly manipulated as a poetics of resistance; that hides in it the existential scope, with which it reorganizes the Cuban ethos, in its true dimension.

Too many important people have collaborated in that number, and no one knows the conditions or why they did it; the good will of some is enough not to go around offending them all, in what would be an act of unforgivable vanity. However, to those who do know that they acted with duplicity and cowardice, it only remains to lament the poverty and pettiness; if they are so transcendentalists, they should know that this is what will remain of them, the arrogance and ignorance they exhibit.

Nor should nobody exhaust the limits of love, no matter how immense, because it always dries up in the inconsistency; and that would be irreparable, after having grown only from faith and the memory of a distant past. It is not strange that this is done by Cuban cultural institutionalism, to which this thoughtless arrogance is natural; but it is sad that American universities —which use public money— accompanied them like this, into the abyss of that vulgarity.

Bantu persistence in Cuba, another prelude to the MogiNganga

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frantz Fanon against Negritude, the mask

If Leopold Sedar Senghor is the capital figure of Negritude, Frantz Fanon is the reaction that tries to make it revolutionary; an effort in which he ends dissolving it, because it precisely attacks the exceptionality that gives it its meaning. Fanon's dynamic in this sense reproduces that of self-confessed communism, as in the case of the Haitian René Depestre; but it is more interesting than this, because his anti-culturalism is pseudo-culturalist, in his psychological diagnosis of the political problem.

To begin with, it is impossible to have an anti-culturalism that does not participate in the culturalism that is criticized, as it’s determination; the praise of Jean Paul Sartre, the target who rationalizes Senghor's poetics, subordinates it to him, is enough for suspicion. As with Senghor, Sartre seizes Fanon in the prologue to The Wretched of the Earth, imposing his exegesis; which responds to that false universalism of political determination, to which he reduces Marxism even from its economism.

In fact, Fanon's critique of Senghor —about the idealization of the African past— is erroneous and uncomprehending; for although Irrationalist is not romantic, and even romanticism is not historicist but referential in its reflexivity. This type of reduction is recurrent, precisely because of this misunderstanding of that object, in its extrapositivity; clarifying their incapacity, both to understand the real, and to provide a viable solution to their contradictions.

As if in an act of mockery (MogiNganga?), Fanon wears the black mask on the white spirit of Marxism; and gives lessons —although putting the body as a neo-cristical praxis— of how blacks should not be blacks but proletarians. Unfortunately, Fanon does not have the reference of English liberalism, which gives existential scope to W.E.B. Du Bois; his whole life is of a pure praxis, which does not allow him to peer into the paradoxical walls of history, but only to suffer it, at its feet.

Hence his poetic enthusiasm for the second verse of The Internationale, which still moves even its victims; even more so to his revolutionary and practical sensibility, not an intellectual one, exhausted in that pure existence. The mistake is in giving intellectual connotation to the groan of the slave who cannot maroon, believing in the contra mayoral; that Sartre of a ladino Marxism —not theoretical but political— as a monk who weaves theological subtleties about Marian virginity.

Fanon's books are thus only manuals of revolutionary theology, their reference is morality and not intelligence; and Negritude can do nothing in the face of this, because it is not a reality but a necessity, supposed as formal. Negritude, on the other hand, is another extension, not necessary but possible in its own formality, which is therefore not constrictive; instead of rational dogmatism, it responds to irrationalist probabilism, not to the psyche but to poetry, as poetic.

Fanon nevertheless has a capital value, enhancing the hermeneutical density, still necessary, by contradicting it; a function that becomes more amiable in that anti-culturalist pseudo-culturalism of his, instead of the political aridity of Depestre. After all, Fanon does not speak to the wretched of the earth but to himself, as yet another among them, hopeful; while Depestre participates in that elitism of the Haitian mestizo bourgeoisie, without the level of praxis that Fanon exhibits.

Leopold Sedar Senghor, or the Hermeneutical Contraction of Western Culture

In the spirit of civilization, Sedar Senghor stresses the political importance of art, but as a cultural function; not in the discursive sense of W.E.B. Du Bois[1], but of the analogical quality of aesthetic reflection as an existential function. Of course, that is only in principle, and requires the adjustment that makes it functional, in a gnoseological rather than a political sense; in a systematization, in which it already loses that analogical specialty, but is organized in a conventional hermeneutics.

This is what religious thought resolves, in its practical principle, organized in a mythological body; by which it represents an understanding of the real in its cosmic dramas, in relation to the specific culture in question. This peculiarity would then be common to all cultures, resolving the projection of the human as real, in its political expression; but also susceptible to distortion, due to the eventual superposition of that political expression, as determination; which would happen with the inevitable development of this expression, at the basis of its existential practice, as a religious one.

The contradiction is not paradoxical but apparent, due to the diachronic nature of the processes of these cultures; differing in this affectation from one to another, with their successive collisions, as they relate to each other. In the case of the West, the problem would not be in its final monotheism, which reflects —but does not determine— that superposition; but would come from the other development of philosophy, also peculiar, as a specialty of its culture.

The problem with this peculiarity would be in the political function, that this philosophical practice acquires; replacing the religious one, with conventions such as power, in an abstractionist hermeneutic, allowing its economic isolation. This would have caused the political overdimension of power, as a problem of that culture, more than in any other; since in the others it would lack this abstract nature, which allows its ideological manipulation, as the center of its ontology.

As an example, Western ontology is always resolved around the problem of Being; to the point of providing the nomenclature for its reflection, from the second generation of physiologism[2]. This is the problem of the Heracliteo-Parmenidean contradiction, from the preoccupation with the real of his first generation; that from Thales of Miletus to Anaxagoras and Anaximenes, dealt with the real as the mythological tradition, as a totality.

Being, however, is not isolable, not even in its individual condition, making this nomenclature problematic; to the point of confusing the early schools of Arab realism, trying to order the Aristotle's determination of the substance; which own condition is simultaneity, even in the other diachronic condition of these determinations. This is nevertheless compatible with quantum exceptionalism, reconciling even Einstein's doubts in a moderate determinism; treating the real no longer in the conventional abstraction of a nature, as an extension, but as a condition of phenomena, in their punctual realization.

In turn, as a body of cosmological reference, mythology had practical and existential sense, not conceptual; organized into representations, similar —as systematic— to that of Aristotle's determination of the substance; whose realism was a contraction to the efficiency of mythology, as opposed to Plato's idealist abstractionism. This will be what affects the Western religious base, conditioning its realistic probabilism with determinism; solved reflexively with its hermeneutical rationalism, no matter if it is eventually and necessarily contradicted by culturalist eruptions, as Romanticism and Irrationalism.

This is what Senghor's contraction with Negritude is about, as probably the final crisis of that tradition; in which he participates, in his parallelism to the hermeneutical emergence of science, like a postmodern physiologism. For this reason, his recognition of the special function of black art lacks the Platonic sense that it has in W.E.B. Du Bois; but allowing a conciliation with its ontological efficiency, by providing the hermeneutical framework it needs in its existentialism. Du Bois is thus the Hegel of black ontology, making it immanentialist, and Cornel West the Heidegger who explains it; Senghor is then the Marx who gives it political scope, from the anthropological sense of the Haitian Jean Prince Mars; all of them in this contraction, which culminates the hermeneutical tradition of the West, in the New Black Thought.

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[1] . Cf: From aesthetic thought in W.E.B. Du Bois and the Harlem Renaissance, in From the Niagara Crossing to the New Black Thought, Kindle 2021.

[2] . Here the problem subjacent is the inability to separate the verb “To be”, as “being” and “be”, like in the romance languages; in which “To be” could mean “to be something” or “to be somewhere” or “in some way”.

On the mystical and recurrent ghost of Duvalierianism

One of the most incomprehensible and strange phenomena of Haitian political culture, is the recurrence of voodoo; as an example, by Western standards, of the primitivism of this culture, whit repercussions on its social backwardness. In the first place, the problem would be that Haitian political culture does not respond to these parameters of the West; not being able to materialize as such since its emergence as a country, product of the same Western political crisis.

In this sense, and beyond its historical references, Haitian political tradition and culture is hard broken in its periods; without a connection between these, allowing the consolidation of any residual tradition, to be used as a reference. The first problem here is in the French pressure, posing the economic debt that prevents this organization; not only in that conflict of the nineteenth century, but also in the present, with the American interests, throughout the twentieth century.

It should be remembered the creation of the Haitian central bank, transferring the debt to the United States; and the occupation of the country for two decades, creating the imbalance that conditions any attempt at restructuring. In this context, Duvalier's rise to power —like that of Batista in Cuba— responds to this structural deficit; which is of a sufficient political tradition, and dates to the destabilization caused by the Petion-Boyer’s republic.

This instability is not due to the brutal tribalism of Dessalines and Christopher, with their monarchical pretensions; but precisely to the idealistic pretensions about a democratic republic, without the economic resources to do it. Due to the early stage of modern humanism, the incomprehension of this is easy to understand, as with any development; but no the persistence of those pretensions, despite the evidence of this importance, while still not allowing this development.

Strangely, this is what explains the ascendancy of mysticism, as a substitute for an organized political culture; which, not being able to establish itself, subsists in that perpetual —and certainly brutal—contraction of religious functionalism. This is what the monarchism of Dessalines and Christopher meant, legitimizing itself as a revolutionary mysticism; from that Boukman's proclamation to the Bondye, in which the revolution began, to Louverture's struggle with the French recalcitrance.

The answer to the Haitian political problem is thus anthropological, because the problem is first anthropological; emerged from the great crisis that was the French Revolution, as an anthropological disaster of West culture. This does not mean that the alternative to Haiti's political deficiency is Duvalier's violence, but only that it’s deficiency; and its solution would be an emergent development, by which these contradictions are appeased, in a national reconciliation; allowing the weaving —as anthropologic— of economic relations at popular level, no corporate and less still of foreign.

This is the meaning of Haitian gangs, which are also popular and not elitist, as an alternative to interventionism; whose violence is not different from that of the recurrent dictatorships, because it fulfills the same coercive function. In fact, it is not new but the same as the movement that opposed the martyrdom of Charlemagne Peralta to American interventionism; which resurfaces after the same threat of intervention, from the dictatorship —no less brutal— of Raoul Cedras.

No one will ever want to accept this premise, because of the idealistic faith that keeps the whole West in crisis; not just Haiti, which is only the place that lacks a sufficient tradition to assimilate and consume that disaster; but to the entire West, converging in the transitive —even racial— tension, that begins in Haiti and culminates in Cuba. Haiti is then only the extreme expression of that crisis, which by its dimensions resembles the Minoan cataclysm; now reproduced as culture, thus preventing its recovery, as that of Phoenician commerce on Mycenean population.

So spoke the uncle, introductory review to the book

This major catauro by Jean Prince-Mars ispublished by Memories of the Inkwell, explaining its synthesizing function; by which, even with political value, it is in truth an understanding of politics in its anthropological, not ideological, value. This already establishes it as the updating and adaptation of all the references in this regard, from Antenor Firmín, who establishes them as the very principles of humanism, but which Mars applies to Haitian singularity.

At both extremes is the development of that understanding of blackness as a nature, in Blackness as a possibility; which as typical of the West culture, adequate its idealistic excesses, with the realistic practicality of African cosmology. We must be careful with this, because there are many meanings of Realism, most of them of a materialist nature; but here the notion of realism refers to reality —or the real— as the object of reflection, distinct from its transcendent determination. It is from this that this black cosmology is understood as a new pragmatism, but already practical in realism; not idealistic, like that one —lacking the Dasein— of the tradition it opposes, as Western Idealism in general.

Mars begins his treatise asking —without rhetoric— whether the body of Haitian traditions are their own or assimilated; this allows him to establish the measure of consistency and uniqueness of this culture, and therefore its value, if any. The book then proposes an inquiry, which allows this probabilistic development of realism, in its pragmatic approach; avoiding the errors of extreme positivism, which does not differentiate between appearance and reality, or in fact dissolves one into the other.

Of course, none of this is possible ignoring that dense extension of the Haitian enlightenment, crowned by Mars; especially if it is based on a conditioned approach such as that of René Depestre, who precisely says goodbye to Negritude. But that does not have the fatality of the oracle either, since Depestre is only an ideological and not a philosophical wall; beyond him, the rainbow of communism dissolves his optical illusion into Haitian reality, and this is narrated by Mars, not by him.

Mars's analysis is acute, he uses a principle of discrimination instead of infinite sum to organize this body; starting from a demand for idealist rationality (Leibniz), which guarantees him the right understanding of reality. This is the kind of subtleties that culturalism resolves as a practical realism, in its reflexive pragmatism; Mars's contribution is thus philosophical, with the adequacy of transcendental pragmatism (Peirce) in Du Bois; which is here immanentialist, and thus more efficient in its probabilism, as the realistic basis of black thought.

By rationalizing this body of traditions as folklore, Mars distinguishes the analysis of the masses from that of the elites; obviously opting for the popular, which in its pragmatism extracts the desideratum from all traditions, even those of others; appropriate in their practicality and not because of their apparent necessity, in a function that is then existential rather than political. Blackness is important here, because it is that African cosmology —not western philosophy— what allows this realism; which survives in tradition, and not —Mars clarifies— as a vestige of the past, but actualizing the functional principles of the social structure, as a culture.

The Western defect is to ignore this cultural nature, solving its structure in its political expression as a determination; thus provoking the crisis of modern humanism, from its origin in medieval Christianity, which inverted that order. The Haitian enlightenment —as of blackness— is the effort to reverse this disorder, which is the entropy of the West culture; renewing its structure, with that contraction to the functional principles in which it organizes, through the reflexivity of African cosmology.

Welcome Back to Blackness

The conflict that Captain General O'Donnell faced in Cuba was not one of effective rebellion, but of cultural blackening; as a danger emanating from the recent Haitian republic, providing a paradigm political for black Cubans. This does not translate into dangerous uprisings, which the geography of the country would have allowed to control easily; but the formation of an enlightened focus in Santiago de Cuba, which would hinder the primacy of the white sacrocracy.

It is no coincidence that the Independents of Color rose up in Santiago, nor the Haitian ascendancy of their leaders; nor that this was also the ascendancy of Rómulo Lachatañeré, the black anthropologist who questioned Ortiz. Santiago de Cuba was undoubtedly a focus of new hermeneutics, arising from the conflicts between Haitians and Dominicans; who landed there with their problems, even of identity, immersed themselves in their discussions, foreign to Havana.

The reference is strong, with an Antenor Firmin who challenges the founder of French anthropology in France; and a Joseph Janvier who rescues the discipline to its own value on humanity, from its ethnological reductions. Black tension is strong in Cuba, with the West threatened on two fronts, not only the one at the East; there is also that of the trade with Louisiana, to where fled Haitians and French, mixed in their disagreements.

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Meanwhile in Cuba, the most that can be done is to launch that dove of intellectual flight of miscegenation; which is postulated as pure logical necessity, but of difficult reality in this fiction of political syncretism. In short, miscegenation is not only an abstract and conventional category, but also conditioned by its subordination; while people behave like blacks or whites —no emulates— relatively but also firmly.

Mestizaje cannot access the intricacies of politics, which reacts angrily every time the rule is broken; that is what the bourgeoisie did not forgive Batista, justifying the violence against him as revolutionary. Behind Batista was the broad wing of black conservatism, which had bourgeois aspirations in its proletarian character; and that was unthinkable, like that constant threat emanating from the Caribbean, until the revolution was able to control it.

That is what René Depestre's work consists of, with a title as illustrative as Welcome and Goodbye to Negritude; but so meticulous that it collects and organizes even his own political shortcomings, with which he dissolves the movement. This book by Depestre emulates the dissolution of the Niagara Movement, by W.E.B. Du Bois, in North America; subordinating all possible American blackness to the political strategy of liberalism, which is ideological and white.

Depestre's critique focuses on the culturalism of the movement, as a futile effort to establish a new ontology; not seeing that it was a matter of recovering the original ontology of black ancestry, adequating the defects of the Western one. He could not understand it —as it cannot yet be understood— because the problem is not only ontological; it is in fact hermeneutical, because that dependence of Marxism on the Idealist tradition from which it evolves, even as its expression; and whose transcendentalism derives to the historical, trying to resolve some immanentism for its lacks, but unsuccessfully.

Blackness still offers that capacity for renewal for the whole of the West, which stubbornly refuses to do so; not because it is perverse but childish in its stubbornness, given that insufficiency in which it cannot understand its shortcoming. The New Black Thought, by reorganizing the phenomenon, can make up for this lack, which is hermeneutical; and that due to the enlightened excess of modernity, has precipitated its entire civilization into entropy; which is not serious, if after all there is Haiti, ready with its own enlightenment, welcoming Negritude again.

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.