Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 75

that on my breast one day
You discovered in very sweet calm,
that there also sensitive souls
Where the sun is ungrateful.27
We can go back to Tanco Bosmoniel to see how in
many narrations and poems from this period there are
also references to dancing or “Cuban dances” as a fatal
mix of African and Spanish rhythms. Similarly, cultural mixing is criticized just the same, and one sees a
deep concern about Cubans thinking only of parties all
the time. Once again, one sees a fear of “Africanization,” “pornographic” literature is condemned, and
dancing is even seen as the last step just before concubinage and prostitution.28
This worry is not only present in Cuba. It is typical of
other lettered cities that watched with horror distant
manifestations of oral and marginal culture that
Pichardo “gentualla” [low-life people]. As Angel
Rama would say in The Lettered City, this happened
in Argentina at the beginning of the twentieth century,
when the Tango appeared. Leopoldo Lugones reacted
virulently against the “foreign rabble.”29 Of course,
the Argentine Tango, contains an African component
that comes from the Habanera, but Rama doesn’t mention this as something problematic for Buenos Aires
intellectuals, but does emphasize their “plebian urbanism,” their untroubled coupling of orality and awkward writing,” which was foreign to cultured groups
in the city, who could not incorporate them into their
strict order.30
In his poem “La danza cubana” [The Cuban Dance],
read at one of Nicolás Azcárate’s tertulias, Eduardo
Ezponda wrote:
With the children of Gambia and Nigricia
That make up our working people,
Africa, its music, brought us,
Making dancing a delight.
Monotonous song, defenseless ditty,
Is the Cuban dance, with its harmony,
From a people, gourmet poetry,
The opium with which to feel pleasure and sleep.31
There is no doubt that those late nineteenth-century
intellectuals understood where the rhythm of these

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songs came from. The problem was that they once
mo re perceived this influence as alienating, like the
opium with which Cubans slumbered when what the
moment required was to reform the country and put an
end to these social scourges.
However, in the eighties, the orality, rhythm and lyrics
these songs represented began to take root in the majority of the island’s population; a number of songbooks are published. If one analyzes these lyrics, one
can detect some of the tension between late nineteenth-century intellectuals who were against African
influence, and those who fought against the city that
marginalized them by proposing a different way of understanding culture, racial mixing and dance.
At that moment, the fundamental worry of the lettered
city was not slavery, which was abolished in 1886, but
rather what it left in Cuba: blacks who were now free,
mestizos, and their spiritual, material and rhythmic
culture, which was invading the city. The goal was to
“administer” this heritage and ensure the survival of
its own European customs. One hardly need mention
that they were not successful.
Notes:
1-Douglas, Mary. Purity and danger: an analysis of
concept of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge,
2002.
2-Jackson, Richard. “Black Phobia and the White
Aesthetic in Spanish American Literature.” Hispania
58: 3 (1975): 467-480.
3-Anselmo Suárez y Romero. Colección de artículos.
(La Habana: Establecimiento tipográfico La Antilla,
1859): 358.
4-Duque de Estrada, Antonio. Explicación de la doctrina acomodada a las capacidades de los negros bozales. Habana: Oficina de Arazoza y Soler, 1818.
5-Pichardo y Tapia, Esteban. Diccionario provincial
casi razonado de vozes cubanas. La Habana: Imprenta la Antilla, 1875.
6-Op. cit., 52.
7-Hall, Gwedolyn Midlo. Social control in Slave
Plantation societies. A comparison of St. Domingue
and Cuba. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971;
Sklodowska, Elzbieta. Espectros y espejismos: Haití
en el imaginario cubano. Madrid: Iberoamericana:
Vervuert, 2009).