IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 143

gives you surprises, it is better not to ask
questions, and just enjoy them.
2. When María Zambrano spoke about a
secret Cuba, as part of her reaction to
Lezama’s poetry, she didn’t seem to
need to refer to the other Cuba, the
public one, as it seemed so obvious to
her. This was the Cuba associated with
the clearest symbols of its existence or,
put differently, with its tourist
attractions—tobacco, sugar, beaches,
and popular music. Of course, this last
item is indirectly mentioned as a
reference to poet Nicolás Guillén, “with
his indelible rhythm.” That secret Cuba
is not “images, not a living abstraction of
palms and their environment, nor a way
of being in the space of people and
things, but rather their shadow, their
secret weight, their measure of reality.”
Too literal a reading of this reasoning or
other similar forms of thought have been

creating a growing vacuum regarding
that very obvious Cuba, whether or not
they are sophisticated forms of racism or
not. That Cuba has been so fondled by
tourism that it is often mistaken with its
landscape to the point that its
obviousness starts to make it invisible,
as happens in Poe’s famous story. The
result is that today we are the opposite of
those secrets enunciated by Zambrana.
For every more or less serious project on
the rumba, there are three or four
dedicated to examining some aspect of
infinitely limited Orígenes group’s
phenomenon. Given its unproductive
results, what is truly sad about this is
that the insistence upon seeing them
(rumba and Orígenes) as opposites, as if
they were not equally essential
manifestations of one same reality.

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