El miedo al negro en Cuba

El miedo al negro es un tema viejo en la tradición política cubana, que sin embargo persiste en su rara actualidad; no tal vez en el terror a la virulencia de la revolución haitiana que lo inspirara al principio, pero todavía efectivo. Hoy día supura en las negaciones de la necesidad de un caucos negro, que pueda condicionar las políticas nacionales; reproduciendo las reticencias de la Enmienda Morúa, pero mil años después, cuando la experiencia ha demostrado esa necesidad.

La propuesta del Partido Independiente de Color (PIC) era quizás excesiva en su momento, pero trataba de corregir una realidad; y ese exceso puede haber sido la simple incapacidad para negociar su existencia, en un momento  políticamente cargado. No obstante, el Partido Independiente de Color surgiría justo por la incapacidad nacional de negociar una integración racial efectiva; y por eso se habría tratado de una colisión inevitable, como las contradicciones naturales a todo desarrollo dialéctico.

En ese sentido, el sacrificio de Estenoz y los otros líderes del PIC adquiere tonos crísticos antes que críticos; y se vuelve positivo, al sentar un precedente político que puede madurar en un momento más productivo. Ese podría ser este momento, en que el país ha agotado todas las variantes del mito de la unidad nacional; más escandalosamente inconsistente cuanto más se hurga en la historia de Cuba, y se descubren sus incongruencias y ambigüedades.

Primero, por ejemplo, por la falsa vocación independentista del país, que requirió una táctica de tierra arrasada; a cargo de Máximo Gómez como su estratega más importante, pero por las dimensiones pírricas de sus victorias. No se olvide la costosa victoria de las Guásimas, que consumió los recursos de toda la guerra, ni la muerte del presidente de la República en Armas; tampoco su autoritaria preferencia por el autoritarismo de Maceo, ni —respecto a este— la nebulosa desaparición de Flor Crombet; y añádase al coctel el rosario de tendencias que confluyera en Guáimaro, explicando en ella misma el desastre que le seguiría.

De ahí a la debilidad de Estrada Palma, cuya única virtud habría sido la honestidad presupuestaria, todo se explica; y Cuba no habría tenido nunca ni idea ni intención de unidad, como no sea respecto a su estructura racial. En este sentido aún, la sociedad cubana —como toda otra sociedad— es racista, porque la raza es un objeto discriminable; y toda sociedad se estructura en la discriminación, asignando recursos según la función específica de sus diversos estratos.

Hay diferencias entre el racismo norteamericano y el hispano, pero son funcionales y de grados, no de consistencia; pero en ambos casos se trata de una característica política, que produce la misma disfunción de la estructura en general. Ciertamente, el problema racial cubano es parte —tan importante como las otras— de las contradicciones del país; su posposición entonces sólo repercute en la de la solución a las mismas, como condicionante que las afecta en todo sentido.

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Es entonces un signo de madurez política la existencia de un grupo de interés racial, como de todo otro interés; que establecido en la especialidad de sus necesidades concretas, negocie y condicione en ello el desarrollo posible. Esa es al menos la esencia de la democracia moderna, incluso como ideal inalcanzable, frente al autoritarismo feudal; que siendo el modelo prexistente en Cuba, debía llamar la atención sobre esta necesidad como extrema y hasta especial.

El argumento de la inexistente unidad nacional, sólo resaltaría la poca seriedad de la oposición a esta necesidad; y por consiguiente, agrava una confrontación que se profundiza en la misma medida en que se le niega, como todo trauma. El país ha tenido espacio y tiempo suficiente como para que sus incapacidades salgan a la luz, y ya es hora de que las asuma; y el miedo al negro es sólo un fantasma que impide el desarrollo armónico, en la tozuda inmadurez de nuestra cultura política.

Acerca de Yesenia Selier y el problema racial en Cuba

Yesenia Selier

El Centro Cultural Cubano de NuevaYork tuvo recientemente un panel de discusión sobre el problema racial, en el que Yesenia Selier presentó una ponencia no muy organizada, con la que exponía extractos de su propia tesis de estudio. Entre sus afirmaciones, una resaltó los excesos y reducciones comunes, acerca del desarrollo de Cuba antes de la revolución haitiana; que así es el paradigma no sólo de la cuestión política en la región, sino también su catalizador económico.

Sólo que como excesiva al fin y al cabo, dicha afirmación no es exacta y se presta a la mala representación; porque antes de la revolución haitiana Cuba sí tenía una economía próspera, que de hecho explica su derivación al contrabando. Primero, es un error achacar el contrabando a la pobreza, porque para insertarse en este es necesario tener algo que ofrecer en intercambio; y Cuba poseía exactamente el bien más buscado —por su funcionalidad— en las actividades de contrabando, que es el dinero.

Ciertamente, Cuba no tenía una economía de producción como la haitiana, pero sí una —muy desarrollada— de servicios; sostenida por el enorme presupuesto del situado de México, como cuartel general del imperio español en las Américas. Eso es lo que explica el fenómeno excepcional incluso, de lo que probablemente fuera el primer conflicto del capitalismo en España; cuando la sublevación de los vegueros (1717) respondió a la traumática transición de la economía feudal al transaccionismo capitalista.

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Este conflicto es típico de la contradicción interna en la clase media alta, en su proceso de crecimiento exponencial; que se daría sobre la base de la explotación económica de las inferiores, con sus distorsiones inevitables; en tanto se trata de un proceso real (industrialización), y no abstracto como su crítica moral. Curiosamente, esto ocurre antes que la toma de la Habana por los ingleses estimule el desarrollo capitalista en Cuba (1762); y refleja el mismo tipo de tensión entre las economías del norte y el sur en los Estados Unidos, resueltos con su Guerra Civil (1861); aclarando que el conflicto haitiano no era ni excepcional ni en ello catalizador, como simplemente otra contradicción en un proceso más amplio por su globalidad.

Esto incluso explicaría la discordancia de Louverture reteniendo la institución esclavista, mejor que la inconsistencia moral; volviendo el foco al tipo de relaciones que se gestaban en Cuba y los Estados Unidos, aún si sobre esa base anterior de la falencia haitiana; que no es gratuita, sino debida justo a su carácter eruptivo e inicial, y por ende funcionalmente negativo. Esto se refiere a una función dialéctica, en la que se posibilitan los desarrollos, justo con la contracción que sintetiza los anteriores; y en ese sentido, se habría tratado entonces de la simple manifestación en el nuevo mundo —como extensión de Occidente— del desarrollo político europeo; en el avance del industrialismo anglo francés, con los problemas estructurales de este último en su base humanista, frente al pragmatismo del otro.

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En Norteamérica esto sería el contraste de sus colonias, entre el carácter empresarial de la mayoría y el todavía feudal de Carolina; cuya ascendencia está precisamente en el colonialismo feudal de las Antillas, introduciendo esa contradicción en el continente. En ese panorama, Cuba retiene incluso la función excepcional que normalmente se atribuye a Haití, aunque el conflicto se determina económica y no etnológicamente; pero explicando en esta salvedad la función moral de esa primacía haitiana, como justificación mítica —desde el heroísmo clásico— de la proyección neo feudal (corporativista) del Humanismo moderno.

Nada de eso está oculto, pero es accesible sólo a una perspectiva pragmática, no a la manipulación ideológica; con la que los catedráticos, como escolarcas medievales, se agotan con la población angélica que cabe en un alfiler. Eso no restaría consistencia la revolución haitiana, cuya función política vendría a ser como la —igualmente equívoca— de Sócrates en Filosofía; no fundacional sino conclusiva, en esa contracción que permite el desarrollo posterior, semilla que se pudre entonces antes que floración gloriosa.

Más importante es sin embargo la imposibilidad de discutir esto, por ese elitismo de monjes que son los académicos; porque la ponente —por la razón que fuera— no se dignó a presentarse a la discusión, luego de exposición tan corregible. Queda no obstante la confirmación de la realidad ignorando las pretensiones elitistas, perdidas en el distanciamiento; no importa si este se basa en la supremacía moral del resentimiento, que es siempre legítimo pero igualmente improductivo.

The Birth of a Nation, The Black Wars of the United States

To my brothers in Blackness,

Jonathan Richardson & Crystal Kornickey

To understand the United States, one would have to dismiss the narrative of a white country with a racial problem; which maintaining the perspective on social injustice, persists in the subordination of its reality to the liberal tradition of the West. It's not that that's right or wrong, in a sense of moral legitimacy, but that it's historically wrong; so not allowing a full understanding of reality, even less will admit an effective solution of their problems.

The United States is thus not one but at least two countries, converging and overlapping, each with their own contradictions; still aggravated, because these respective contradictions will also contradict each other, creating new synergies. This gives a new dimension to the postulate of W.E.B. Du Bois, in his discourse of a nation within a nation; reduced, by the Manichaeism in which dialectic has come, as a proposal of self-segregation; that although positive, only maintain —and even feed— the initial contradictions that gave rise to the rupture.

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As firsts, these contradictions would respond to the complex formation of the present United States; which is taken as concluded, when it would respond even to the same evolutionary problems of the West; that far from being a process already completed, would only channel the transition from the peak of modernity (ss. XVII-XVIII) to its posterior stage. Therefore, the history of the United States would compress previous processes, even the distant passages from the high to the low Middle Ages; scarcely surpassing, with its barely four hundred years, the first half of its development, no more convulsive than the early Germanic movements in Europe.

In this sense, American blackness acquires its true foundational scope with the eastern colonies; which differing in the way in which one they were constituted, will give rise to the controversial space of the new Africa. It will not be a question of translation, of an original African culture to the United States, but of a syncretic reconstitution; so profound, that it includes the process of its own wars of conquest, as an alternative space in expansion and development.

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In this same sense, the American black wars would not be a reason for political fiction of protest; but a concrete historical fact, begun with the rebellion of Stono, as early as the year 1739. As Cuba itself was the exception that allowed the religious reorganization of Ifá in America, Stono would function politically; because it involved a slavery not originated in the mere hunting and usual trade, but in the Congolese civil war.

In this regard, when we talk about the origin of slave trafficking in African, we ignore its peculiar reality and development; as a trade that, being relatively internal, did not produce existentially traumatic changes. It is the irruption of European demand that unbalances the local slave market, producing political disruption; whose scope will be not only existential and punctual, but also anthropological and systematic[1].

In addition, the specifically Congolese case —which originated Stono's rebellion— was not strictly commercial; it was the product of a civil war, selling soldiers and not civilians as captives, thereby producing a specific type of slave. It is this type of slave that causes a major disruption in the culture of the Eastern Islands, already isolated by their own geo-environmental conditions; and where it contrasted with a pre-existing population of slaves, mostly civilians, engaged in a specialized farm works.

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Of course, as in the case of Cuba, the semi-anarchy of the slave trade favors this type of exceptionality; already treated by Antonio Benítez Rojo in The repeating island, as a natural product of chaos theory, to which we should add the effect of critical mass and the principle of exodus[2]. In any case, the introduction as slaves of the Congolese warrior class coincides in these Islands with the malaria epidemic; promoting the incubation, within an already neo-African climate[3] in itself, of a foundational and nativist postulation.

That’s what the Stono rebellion means, and it would explain the otherwise incomprehensible claim of the Gullah as a nation; not in the geo-political sense of the Western tradition, but in the uniqueness of the recognition of the Indians by the U.S. government. It should be remembered that the recognition of indigenous nations, while systematic, was a long and complex process; which was resolved in successive treaties, followed by bloody wars, with their consequent defections and changes of sides.

The Gullahs —from Florida to the Carolinas— can thus claim their miscegenation with the Indians, as black Seminoles; even coming to prominence in the Second Seminole War, which in this way would be the first war properly Gullah[4]. Also then, they can or must treat it as their own process of exceptional foundation because their own critical mass in historic terms; which has not only produced a specific political and economic fabric, but also generated from this the genesis of a complete and singular anthropological phenomenon.

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[1] . The same phenomenon will be seen and in parallel, with the slave market revolution between English settlers and Native American, resulting in the redesign of the political map, for the indigenous of the southeastern United States.

[2] . The exodus’s principle is a reference to the dynamics by which at a certain stage, and because the asynchronous nature of developments, these stagnate; until an exodus movement allows the exit of the very new elements, reorganized into a new structure, with its own origin already in this higher stage. The most typical case would be that of the evolution from polytheism to monotheism, stuck in henotheistic practices by the monitoring of conventional substructures; but it would also occur with other types of development, such as the evolution from religious to philosophical thought. As examples of the first case, there would be the biblical exodus, from Abrahamic monotheism to that of Moses; as well as the Christian diaspora with St. Paul —versus Peter's conventionalism— and the Muslim hegira to Medina —Versus the presbyterianism of Mecca—; while an example of the second case would be the development of philosophy in the Greek Cassic period, in contradiction and as an overcoming of the conventions of religious thought.

[3] . It is understood as neo-African, by sor syncretic synthesis from various African and Caribbean sources. In the relatively isolated climate of what will be the Gullah Geechee corridor.

[4] . In fact in letter to Andrew Jackson, the general Thomas Gesup, would specify What this was a black war and not India”; the original text Pray What "Throughout my operations, I found the Negroes the most active and determined warriors; and during my conference with the Indian chiefs, I ascertained that they exercised an almost controlling influence over them. This, you may be assured, is a Negro and not an Indian war; and if it be not speedily put down, the South will feel the effects of it before next season".

About The New Black Thought

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In tales of the Caribbean, published in Cuba by Casa de las Américas, Andrew Salkey's Anancy stands out; not for wrong reasons, it would be a mistake to criticize Cuban cultural policy at its greatest moment of prestige; but for the way it illustrates the errors that ruined that prestige, true even if manipulative. Anancy is not only a folkloric character from the Caribbean basin, but a divinity imported with his slaves; and in this story, he has a note from the translator, clarifying that this type of tradition used to have parabolic and moral value.

Salkey's tale undoubtedly has a parabolic and moral value, but that would be only its practical and minor aspect; logical at the time when enlightened rationalization was rushing into its decadence, from the vortex of its heyday. As of a divinity, Anancy's adventures explain the processes in which the Self is existentially resolved; from which to extract specific notes, to clarify also specific situations, but at the cost of their greater scope.

In this one, Salkey recounts how Anancy is betrayed by his spirit, which defeats him instigated by his enemies; from which the advice of never fighting with oneself is extracted, for this is what weakness consists of. Beyond this advice, Anancy could be prostrating the complexity of existential determinations; that being of extrapositive value, they would not be rationalizable, but no less true.

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It would be that, in the tense relationship with reality, the spirit is inevitably dissociated from the Self; but as a process, not a state, which thus points to its maturity, with its subsequent reconciliation. This would even be the case for black in the Americas, including that black depth of the Caribbean, in its tension with the West; the one he can even save from himself, but as long as he reaches this maturity of the spirit of Anancy reconciled with Anancy.

In this sense, the translator's reductive note would be pointing to the same process that impoverished culture; from the arrogance of modern immanentism, reducing everything to the positive aspect of reality; even when it refused to do so in the Germanic negativism, which was only its renomination, just as reductive. In both cases, it was the reduction of reality to its immanence, identified as positive or negative; but ignoring in any case the transcendent aspect, from which its determinations would come.

This explains the excesses of the tradition of German Idealism, no less than those of French Rationalism; to which it only replies, but incorporating in it its own formal determinations, as its mere contradiction. From that fatality, incorporated with the Manichaean Catholicism of San Agustín, is that we are saved this literature of the Caribbean; infusing in the West the sufficiency of African ontology, with the immense flow of its myths and cosmologies; no greater than those of the same Western tradition, but still incorrupt because its contraction to the reflective function of literature.

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It would have been the process of excellent rationalization of reflective practices that corrupted this function; giving rise to that other one, as excellent as it was excessive, which vitiates Western philosophy in its history. This would have been Senghor's intuition, in his search for an African philosophy, lost in his later subordination; when in search of the legitimacy of the enlightened elitism of the West, he turns to the Sartre that precipitates it in its abyss.

From that morass is that we are rescued by this Caribbean literature, recovering the reflexive function of art; that in its access to the transcendent determinations of reality, offers back the understanding of its ontology. This is what The New Black Thought is all about, in its attempt to rescue this much-needed contraction in a singular philosophy; not only by forming its critical body over that of early Black thought, but also —and better— over its art.

Gullah Geechee: What's in a language?

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What’s Italian but broken Latin, what’s Spanish but broken Latin, what’s French but broken Latin; so when you say Gullah Geechee is but broken language, you maybe talking about the next development of the west; started three centuries ago, as the Germans overtaking Europe from the Romans with a single but steady and long move. If Romans have had a powerful institution like the modern Academies of languages, we would haven’t evolved to our actual languages; like our mothers and family correcting our insistence in speak the way we do, as the best way to express our singularity. 

The only problem is that those languages reached maturity with their literature, while we persist in verbality; but that’s what’s in a language, and that’s what’s in a written literature, opposed to the spoken tradition. Oral tradition is a referential tool to guide the behavior and reflect about it, no to understand the world; that’s what literature do, setting the structure of the phrase, and linking everything (cosmos) in a drama.

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There’s still the undeniable fact of how logic is born, not from mathematics but from grammar, when Aristotle organized the relationship and functional links between subject and predicate. Not for nothing the old philosophers were called grammarians over properly philosophers, rather than mathematicians; but all the modern philosophers that leaded to the distortion of logic were magnificent mathematicians, not grammarians.

From Pythagoras postulating his intuition as a fact, the Plato that doesn’t dared to question it, to Descartes; from this late to Kant and Hegel, from this one to Heidegger understanding that something was wrong on all this. The total evolution of the west history of though is full of mathematicians, unable to understand reality in its own complexity; because rather than the flexibility of literature and arts in its reflection of reality as an object, they just tend to force its determination.

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It doesn’t matter anyway, all those languages struggled through centuries from their first attempts to maturity; but it may be about time for this ultimate transformation, organizing the understanding the world as a cosmos. Not even that first attempt of the Gullah Bible is enough or still good, on this sense of hermeneutical tools; because it doesn’t surpass that same insufficiency of the storytelling, as just a tradition with moral reference; not an actual tool to rationalize the world, which is what hermeneutics is about.

The bible is not a step, as neither the manuals of grammar, because they’re just a conventional interpretation; that working as the same effort of any conventional Academy, struggles to reflect the reality in its complex functions. As a reflection of life, languages are alive themselves, and Gullah Geechee need to breath by its own; that’s what Adam did naming the things, to give them a specifical human function, through the hermeneutical effort of understand the world as human.

That’s then what Gullah Geechee is called to be, as the last step of the struggling west to understand its own nature; a comprehension already distorted by the critical mas of its conventions, leading to the distortion of logic because this insufficiency. And that’s then what’s in a literature, as the ultimate organization of a language, the maturity of an entire world; that can this way rearrange new conventions as a new way of life, that gives humanity the new spaces it needs for rest and grow.

 All this is important for something more than its mere postulation, which refers only to political and fairness; this is important because the problem with Gullah Geechee is not just a problem of identity (political) or fairness. It solves the ontological contradiction of the whole humanity, and that’s more important than even the unfairness of history; that’s what’s in a language, and in its literature as its stage of maturity and sufficiency, not just the dignity of some people but the live of the world.