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.

How Olódùmarè is effectively God

The problem with religious syncretism is its approach from opposites, even based on the same presupposition; which is wrong, trying to preserve religious structures in their purity, not in their functionality. For essentialism it is corruption, and for relativism it is an indiscriminate mixture of unrelated elements; and both positions assume that religions are definite phenomena, not functional systems in continuous adjustment.

But it is this continuous adjustment what gives consistency to the religious phenomenon, as its existential function; which is to regulate the relations of the concrete person with reality, in the reflection of its formal determinations. Hence, syncretism is precisely the development of this phenomenon, as an adjustment of this relationship; whose function is then ontological —and therefore structural—, relating functions of that reality, including the religious person.

So this is not a question of concrete religious identities, but of those functions of reality, conventionally represented; and where, for example, the Abrahamic God is not a figure essentially distinct from other supreme divinities. The difference would then lie not in their metaphysical nature, but in their different representations by the culture; and whose differences are in fact functional, marking that difference of their respective representations.

In that same example, the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition develops in highly institutionalized cultures; where representation fulfills a regulative function of the political and economic order, not merely existential. On the other hand, Olódùmarè belongs to a cosmology where this function is not representable, invokable or personified; that is, it is not subject to representation, because its culture has not developed that conventional institutionalization; so that their representation admits non-conceptual figures, and therefore alien to the logic of human hierarchies.

This contrast, however, is not an absolute opposition to Western rationality, but a functional difference; since this representation is not exclusive to Greek rationalism, but a consequence of its institutionality. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, religion already contracted from its double function, of infra and super-structural, to super-structural; with the political tension on the figure of the prince-priest, in which the former assumes the administration of trade and tribute.

From this transition arises the need for a conventional representation, which allows the management of the divine; in that super-structural function in which it organizes the instituted order, with culture as a transcendent identity. In this context, the equivalence between principles of different traditions is not ignorance or reductionism; rather, it is a structural operation, in which functions are translated, from one hermeneutical spectrum to another; and where hermeneutics is precisely cosmology, as a reflection of the transcendent determinations of the real.

What is thus at stake is not identity nor the names, but the function they fulfill in the cosmological system; in which Olódùmarè is "the vastness that knows the mystery", and God "the creative principle that orders the world". The equivalence does not lie in their respective attributes, but in their position in the ontological structure of culture; and in which syncretism does not fuse Olódùmarè with God out of naivety, but out of structural necessity; since what is at stake is to sustain a cosmology, whose very function is in fact existential and not religious; because the function of religion is existential, as that regulation of the relationships in which reality structures itself.

Thus, syncretism is not a symbolic negotiation, but a structure of survival, which resolves the function of the divine; and it can be said that the critics of syncretism respond even to that determination that they deny, in their representation; since, they must recognize that reductive representation of the divinity as of absolute value, not only epistemic. Thus, syncretism must be understood as an ontological reflection, of functional equivalences, that preserves religious structures; and does this subsuming them in other forms, for their validity lies in the functions they fulfill, organizing the relationships with the reality.

Ontological Pragmatism of African Origin, from the Epilogue to MogiNganga

The parallelism of the Greek and African cosmogonies is curious, although by confluence rather than direct influence; like in the rivalry of Olokun and Obatalá for control of the world in Ifé, as in Poseidon and Athena for Athens. In the Greek case, Athena defeats Poseidon by proving her usefulness, granting the people the power of judgment; in the Yoruba case, the judgment is of the divinities themselves in their sufficiency, and Obatalá wins it for his intelligence, not his usefulness. The Yemallá of popular tradition —collected by Rómulo Lachatañeré— synthesizes this conflict as existential; like the original Yembó, a sterile farmer woman, who receives fertility as she adopts Shangó, son of Obatala[1].

In this sense, the historical figure of Shango is that of the unpopular tyrant, condemned to suicide for his excesses; which he must undertake by the hand of his wife —with her as nature—, given its own scope as a political expression. This would not be a symbol of moral value —as from historical transcendentalism— but an existential dynamic; by which in its realization, as a political expression, the human being cannot overcome his individuality; and acts according to his interests, first individual and therefore as a class, corrupting that transcendentalism.

That is why its nature, at the height of its contradictions, produces its structural crisis in as a political expression; but existential in this critical sense, because of the contradiction of its immanence, in that transcendentalism. As a historical figure, assimilated to Yakutá, Shangó thus reorders the meaning of the pantheon, inaugurating the political; who’s potential then lies in Oggún, unfolding the cosmic drama in tension with him, through Yemallá.

Like Shangó —but unlike Oggún— Yemallá is a historical figure, assimilated to the divinity of Olokun; referring to the end of the age of the Erumales[2], more conceptual than the Greek cosmogony at the end of the titanic age. As an example, the personalities associated with Shangó are also associated with politics, or at least with its pretensions; but they are in themselves tragic and controversial, tending to the violence and existential frustration of this realization.

In an explanation of the example, a primordial myth of Shango explains its tragedy, similar to that of Heracles; bringing himself the misfortune of his house, with the careless manipulation of his powers over lightning, causing his madness. Note that, with Shango as a historical figure founding the political expression of the real, this is born of water; reproducing the dynamics of the Bantu cosmogony, although not in a consequential but converging, in parallelism.

That would point to a practicality, as not arising from nothingness but from the formless, like the Greek Chaos; whose first current connotation is in the wild, the Mount (Mayombe) as the spirit (Elán?) that expresses itself in the real. As a space of effective and non-symbolic value, this is the transcendent city of literature, in its referential function; from the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1-2) to the City of God, which ranges from Platonic Idealism to the humanism of Thomas More.

In that same function, but symbolic (political) rather than as a efferent, it appears in contemporary literature; in the transcendentalism of the so-called Magical Realism, from Santa Monica de los Venados, Macondo and Nueva Venecia. However, contrary to those previous cases, this space is not an abstraction (Eidos) that culminates the real (Power); but its Potential, to which the real turns in search of its references, which are existential, not political determinations like the former.

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[1] . Cf: Rómulo Lachatañeré, El sistema religioso de los afrocubanos [Oh, mío Yemallá!], Ed. Ciencias Sociales, La Habana 2001. // It should be noted that, contrary to Lachatañeré's mestizo and popular origin, Cuban ethnography is mostly the work of whites of bourgeois origin.

[2] . Erumale means radiance in the Yoruba language, explaining the emanationism of this cosmology, with the erumales coming from the absolutivity of God, while the orishas (Igbamoles) come from the Igba (güira) formed by Obatalá and Oduduwa.

Stories with ache, a critical review

Warriors Editions has presented the title Stories with ache, a trilogy of short stories by black Cuban authors; in what seems a naïve effort, attempting to overcome the lack of will for effective integration in Cuban culture; but which, more than that, is the proof of a reality in its own consistency, apart from that lack of will. Thus, as a preamble, this editorial effort may seem socially vindictive, or even be objectively so; but beyond that —vindictive or not— it shows the sufficiency of an incredible culture, condemned to the margins.

Politically, the vindictive scope of this anthology is secondary, because its value lies precisely in its marginality; from which it can reflect on reality, beyond those conventions of the political, in a different scope, as existential. This would have always been the proper meaning of art, at least from that conflictive modernity that confronts it with Reason; but in a dichotomy in which it progressively lost ground, in the face of the crude advance of that conventionalism.

That is another discussion, which helps to put this wonderful anthology in context, but that is also secondary; because what matters here is the reality boiling in these stories, invisible in the falsehood of our political culture. That is also another discussion, just as secondary, but which also helps to contextualize the need for these stories; which with better and worse luck aspired to the realization of their authors, at a time when art itself is declining.

Above all, these are authors who have worked, loved and written stories that were invisible until today; but which now serves as an index and handbook, to navigate the parallel history of black culture in Cuba. This is what makes it necessary, even if against the evolution in which art is already declining of so much conventionalism; because that culture requires its own expression, which could even explain the shortcomings in which the one that covers it fails.

With a prologue of deserved density, this compilation refers to the darkened roots of Cuban black literature; in the tension between Martín Morúa Delgado and Cirilo Villaverde, which perpetuates the whiteness of Cuban negrismo; and in this, it refers to the presence of the black in national literature, with Salvador Golomón in Mirror of resilience. There are many reasons to believe and disbelieve the foundational character of Mirror of resilience in national literature; above all of them —and in both senses— is the moment in which it is known, at the mid-nineteenth century; when the founding myth of the nation is shaped, adjusting the past to legitimize the projection of the future.

Since then, the Negro has always been presented as a passive object of national culture, even if heroic; which is just a political fiction of literature, which does not express that effective reality of cultural miscegenation. That is what makes this anthology pertinent, not precisely as a vindication, which is always unnecessary and effective; but as an access to a reality hidden in its own scope, which that is there, in its own sufficiency, for everyone.

This cosmology, withdrawn and profoundly existential, is what explains the life of the nation, expressed in its culture; and it is the one in these stories, deloused from the profuse editorial activity that characterizes these times. None of them attests to an era, but to a reality, which in its parallelism adjusts the visible one, giving it perspective; and it is good that this work is brought together, as a basis to establish the true canon of national literature.

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.

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.

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.

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.