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1419 Africa en America Latina* English*
N4 Africa in Latin America : essays on
A3713 history, culture, and! socialization /
1984 Manuel Moreno Fraginals, editor ;
translated by Leonor Blum*
: Holmes 6 Meier, 1984*
New York —
342 p* ; 24 cm*
Translation of: Africa en America
Latina*
Bibliography: p* 332-336*
Includes index*
#8763 Bailen $49*50*
ISBN 0-8419-0748-X
1* Blacks
— —
Latin America* 2* Latin
America Civilization African
influences* I* Moreno Fraginals,
Manuel* II* Title

15 OCT 90 10402657 NEWCxc 84-639

Africa in Latin America
 AFRICA
IN
LATIN
AMERICA
Essays on History,
Culture, and Socialization

Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Editor

Translated by Leonor Blum

Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., New York

Unesco, Paris
First published in the United States of America 1984 by
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.
30 Irving Place
New York, N.Y. 10003

Great Britain:
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Ltd.
131 Trafalgar Road
Greenwich, London SE10 9TX

English translation
Copyright © 1984 by Holmes & Meier Publishers. Inc.

All rights reserved

Original Spanish edition:

AFRICA EN AMERICA LATINA © Unesco 1977

This book has been published with the financial assistance of Unesco

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Africa en América Latina. English.

Africa in Latin America.

Translation of: Africa en América Latina.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.
1. Blacks— Latin America—Addresses, essays, lectures.
2. LatinAmerica— Civilization—African influences-
Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Moreno Fraginals, Manuel.
F1419.N4A3713 1984 980\004'96 84-639
ISBN 0-8419-0748-X
 Contents

Historical Beginnings: From Plantation Life to Class Structure

1 . Cultural Contributions and Deculturation 5

MANUEL MORENO FRAGINALS
2. Flight and Confrontation 23
GERMAN CARRERA DAMAS
3. Social Organization and Alienation 38
OCTAVIO IANNI

Cultural Forms: Religion, Literature, and Music

4. Religion and Black Culture 61

JUANA ELBEIN DOS SANTOS AND
DEOSCOREDES M. DOS SANTOS
5. African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 83
RICHARD ALLSOPP
6. The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 103
EDWARD KAMAU BRATHWAITE
7. African Influence in Latin America: Oral and Written
Literature 145
SAMUEL FEIJOO
8. Music and Dance in Cuba 170
ODILIO URFÉ
9. Music and Dance in Continental Latin America, with the
Exception of Brazil 189
ISABEL ARETZ
10. Music of African Origin in Brazil 227
JOSÉ JORGE DE CARVALHO

Socialization and Development

1 1 Hello andGoodbye to Negritude 251
RENE DEPESTRE
12. Latin America in Africa 273
PIERRE VERGER
13. Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 286
SIDNEY W. MINTZ
14. A Case Study: The Problems of Slavery and the
Colonization of Haiti 306
JEAN CASIMIR
About the Contributors 329

Bibliography 332

Index 337
Africa in Latin America
Historical Beginnings:
From Plantation Life
to Class Structure
 1

Cultural Contributions
and Deculturation
Manuel Moreno Fraginals

Taking Inventory

The oldest documentation referring to the transportation of Black Afri-

cans to America directly from Africa dates back to 1518. The first arrival
of individual Blacks in America is even more remote. The last slave cargo
of which we have documented proof landed on the Southern coast of
Cuba in April, 1873, and was immediately sent to the Juraguá sugar mill
near the city of Cienfuegos. There are indications that a few more slave
ships came to Cuba after this, but there is no concrete proof of their
arrival. Thus, if we establish 1518 and 1873 as limiting dates, we have 355
years of African slave trade. During this time we witness the most mas-
sive coercive transport of human beings in history. It is estimated that no
fewer than 9.5 million Black Africans arrived in America during those
years to labor in six fundamental areas of production: sugar, coffee, to-
bacco, cotton, rice, and mining.
In the event, the African slave trade reached such vast proportions that
thousands of slaves were soon employed outside these productive areas,
eventually permeating every corner of all American societies. In the latter
part of the nineteenth century we find Blacks born in America (criollos) as
well as Africans in the highlands of Mexico and Peru, in New Granada, in
Santiago de Chile, and even on the Argentine pampas. Above all, we find
them on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of America. Thousands of pages
have been written about these Blacks who were grafted onto predomi-
nantly White or Mestizo (a mixture of White and Indian) societies and
about their colorful characteristics. Space limitations do not allow us to
discuss these geographical regions: this brief analysis will center on Brazil
and on the old European colonies in the Caribbean. About 90 percent of
the people uprooted from Africa arrived in these areas (or in what is now
the southern United States, which is also excluded from this volume).
In attempting to present a global view, fully aware of the dangers
involved in generalization, we will concentrate on plantation economies
and certain urban centers. The most reliable and best documented esti-
mates show that 65 percent of all Africans brought over were assigned to
the production of sugar. Other plantation crops absorbed another 15 per-
cent. As a result of the plantation economy, certain demographic struc-
6 Africa in Latin America

tures appeared in places where the predominance of Africans and their

descendants made the conflict between masters and slaves most intense
and where we find the most intricate process of transculturation taking
place. It is in these areas that a cultural world, so brilliantly termed by
Sidney W. Mintz "the Africa of Latin America," was formed and per-
fected, and is still being created and recreated.

Mechanisms of Deculturation

By deculturation we mean the conscious process by which, for purposes

of economic exploitation, the culture of a group of human beings is up-
rooted to expedite the expropriation of the natural riches of the territory
the group inhabits, and/or to utilize the group as a source of cheap, un-
skilled labor. The process of deculturation is inherent in every form of
colonial or neocolonial exploitation. In the case of African slavery in the
New World, the destruction of a culture can be seen as an applied tech-
nological resource to optimize labor value. Total deculturation, however,
is impossible; nor are the exploiters interested in converting the cultural
values of the exploited class into a tabula rasa. They only wish to eradi-
cate those elements which create an obstacle to the establishment of the
system of exploitation. In fact, it is normal for the dominant class to
protect and even to stimulate the development of isolated cultural values
of the dominated class, just so long as these values contribute to the
reinforcement of the desired structure. African cultural contributions to
Latin America and the Caribbean are the result of a cruel class struggle
and of a complex transculturation-deculturation process. In such circum-
stances, the dominant class applies to a maximum its mechanisms of
deculturation as hegemonic tools, and the dominated class takes refuge in
its culture as a means of identity and survival.

Slavery created a bipolar social structure where class contradictions

were expressed in their simplest form: an enormous dispossessed mass,
forced to work for its survival, subjected by a small dominant group with
all-encompassing powers. Opposite skin colors further differentiated mas-
ters and slaves. A typical example of this structure was the plantation
system, although the exploitation of Black slaves in the mines was not all
that different. Within these socioeconomic organizations, the lifestyle of
the slaves was ruled by the pragmatic concept of the economic worth of
slave labor. Literature on slaves and Blacks is plagued by lyricisms prais-
ing the generosity or demonstrating the cruelty of slaveowners, even
pinpointing distinctions between the behavior of Spaniards, Englishmen,
Frenchmen, etc. This can be considered literature only in the non-
scientific or "Uncle Tom's Cabin" sense of the word. As a matter of fact,
whatever the nationality of the master or the ultimate job of the slave, the
master was neither interested in torturing nor in pleasing the slave. For
 Cultural Contributions and.Deculturation 7

the master, the slave was merely one more of the factors of production
that brought him wealth. Therefore, the master had no philanthropic or
perverse motives. His interests were of a purely economic nature. Since a
slave was imported to produce goods for sale on the international market,
the resulting profits had to make the total investment in the slave worth-
while. Profitability depended on a series of parameters that varied with
the product, with time, place, the availability of productive equipment,
and with other factors, some quantifiable, some not. We can thus con-
clude that the treatment of slaves was strictly a matter of economics.
Setting aside, then, the idyllic interpretations and a few exceptions, we
are left with the concrete fact that a mass of Africans were forcibly moved
to America and made to work within an organization of prisonlike charac-
teristics for productive purposes. This elementary principle cannot be
ignored one wishes to analyze seriously the cultural contributions of
if

Africans in America. One must keep in mind, moreover, that the majority
of these Africans upon arriving in America, did not become integrated
into organically created and developed towns. On the contrary, they were
taken to uninhabited areas, where homogeneous work groups were
formed under the absolute command of certain individuals who forced
them to work in the fields or mines. On other occasions they were forcibly
incorporated into productive units of this type that were already in opera-
tion.
The reliability and productivity of the enterprise to which the African
slave was attached was based on its simple organization and jail-like
character and on the limiting of communication between its members. In
the same manner that a jail is not a society, so plantations and mines do
not constitute social organizations, although they may, in the long run,
cause a new society to be created. Plantation owners, in fact, had a vested
interest in not permitting slaves to interact freely, for with social cohesion
might come a sense of solidarity. That is why we can say that decultura-
tion was a technological device applied to the exploitation of slave labor,
since a common culture gives a group dignity, cohesion, and a sense of
identity.

The Tools of Deculturation

Ethnic Diversity

Large groups of slaves were never made up of Africans of a single ethnic

group: that is, of persons of common tribal or cultural origin. In the

thousands of documents about African slaves on Brazilian and Caribbean

plantations, one can observe a general pattern indicating the care with
which slaves from various regions, speaking different languages or
dialects, with different religious beliefs, and at times even displaying feel-
ings of hostility towards each other, were deliberately grouped together.
8 Africa in Latin America

The hatreds among ethnic groups have remote origins which need not be
analyzed here; times they were engendered by the slave traders them-
at
selves to bring about the frictions and rivalries necessary for successfully
hunting down slaves. Once they were on the plantations, these ethnic
rivalries were just as systematically cultivated by the slave owners. Ob-
stacles were thus created to the formation of a class consciousness against
common exploitation; in its place the creation of antagonistic groups was
encouraged.
In urban centers these ethnic differences were institutionalized. In
Cuba, for example, the colonial government that represented the interests
of slave owners, sponsored and legalized the formation oí cabildos (lodge-
type mutual-aid associations on a strictly regional or tribal basis, with
religious, social, and cultural overtones) where slaves could get together.
With the same care displayed by plantation owners, urban authorities
encouraged cabildos of various ethnic groups to form, making sure that
none was sufficiently powerful to overshadow the rest. The urban cabil-
dos permitted the survival with a relative high degree of purity, of certain
aspects of African culture, including language, which acquired ritual
significance. In this respect, the Spanish slave policy differed radicially
from British colonialism Caribbean, which persecuted all African
in the
cultural manifestations. As implied above,
it would be naive to see in

these different policies of dominance a difference in moral attitude or an

expression of respect for African cultures. We are, in fact, faced with two
tactics equally disdainful of all that Black and African, both leading to
is

the same strategy of exploitation of slave labor. Admittedly one tactic had
the virtue of preserving the cultural values which the other destroyed.
In plantations and mines, ethnic diversity brought about a fascinating
process of interethnic conflict and rapprochement; that is to say, there
was a simultaneous process of cultural mixture among people of different
African cultures, at the same time as between them and their White mas-
ters. All of this occurred within the superimposed framework of decultur-
ation. Later, differences between African- and American-born Blacks,
and, because of variations in skin color, between Blacks, mulattoes,
quadroons, etc., also developed.

Age and Culture

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Africans brought to

America were very young, usually between ages fifteen and twenty. After
the 1830s, massive imports of children between ages nine and twelve were
initiated. Age determined productivity. The mine and plantation system
of extensive labor required young, healthy, and strong slaves. In addition,
youth ensured the statistical longevity of the slave, which resulted in
 Cultural Contributions and Deculturation 9

better training, and of course in greater productivity. A longer life also

meant a lower rate of cost amortization and greater profitability.
The age limits of fifteen and twenty were the most logical from an
economic viewpoint. Younger slaves would have been assets (in ac-
counting terms) of low productivity, running the same risk of death as
more productive slaves. Older slaves would have had great difficulties in
adapting to work, a stronger resistance to deculturation, a lower life ex-
pectancy and inferior productivity, and would have required a higher rate
for amortization of the investment. Only after the 1830s, when the end of
slave traffic became certain, were child slaves brought to America as a
last recourse for the survival of the plantation system. Other factors con-
tributed to the policy of massive imports of children, but they will not be
analyzed here.
The age of Africans, registered at the time of their purchase, was
usually estimated by sight, which, of course, is subject to a certain margin
of error. But undoubtedly slave traders were experienced at judging age,
and probably employed an empirical system of observation that reduced
errors to a minimum, especially since their sample was so large. We have
documents which provide meticulous descriptions of slave purchases,
including physical dimensions, dental conditions, the presence of body
hair, etc. Since there were annual inventories of existing slaves on planta-
tions and mines, the calculated age of an incoming African was always
registered. The following year, when the new inventory was conducted,
notations from the previous year were copied, a year was mechanically
added to the age of all surviving slaves, the dead were stricken off the list,
and the newborn and new acquisitions were entered. When slaves were
transferred from one master to another, the new master often ignored the
estimates of his predecessor and fixed the age according to his own esti-
mate.
The survival of thousands of such inventories, which also record sex
and other personal items, has permitted the pyramidal graphing of planta-
tion populations. These pyramidal graphs, representing the period of
maximum atrocity against slaves, reveal population centers with very few
women, even less children (8 to 10 percent between ages and 14) and
with a tiny population of elderly people (5 to 7 percent over age 59). These
are the demographics of a human nucleus, constituted, ad hoc, for pro-
ductive purposes, by forced migration. They lack the normal characteris-
tics of pyramidal population graphs, those that occur naturally through
vegetative growth. Mortality and migration are the steps of the pyramid
without base or top.
While the formation of slave populations of varied ethnic origin was
planned to enhance security and further deculturation, the inclusion of
mostly young men and children occurred primarily for economic reasons.
¡0 Africa in Latin America

Nevertheless, age also turned out to be a deculturation factor. The Afri-

cans came from cultures that relied on an oral tradition, where knowledge
was the privilege of the elders. In bringing only the young, the least
cultured members of a society (cultured with regard to accumulation of
knowledge and survival of traditions), were imported. The learned elders
seldom came to America; those that did were exceptions. Therefore,
incoming slaves, particularly the children, had the least culture to contrib-
ute and to transmit. Because of the natural adaptability of youth and
adolescence, it was easier to erase in them elements of their own culture
and to fix in them the required norms of plantation life. It is fair to say that
every African slave by his thirty-eighth birthday had lived longer in
America than in Africa.

Sex, Production, and Culture

The standard procedure of the slave trade, until the early nineteenth
century, was to import relatively few women. British statistics on slavery
(the most complete of their kind) show a 78:22 male-female ratio for
slaves brought to America during the eighteenth century. These figures
varied over the years, but the proportion of males always remained high
until the 1820s. It was only when the end of the
at this time, legal slave
trade (as opposed to slavery itself) came clearly into view, that more
balanced numbers of male and female slaves began to be imported. This
tardy development was triggered by the same
critical situation that had
led to the importation of child slaves: forced by the closing down of their
traditional source, slaveowners were building up their breeding stock.
The predominance of male imports, like every other aspect of slavery,
was determined by productivity. Women had always been considered,
literally, livestock of low productivity. The sole advantage over men was
their capacity to increase invested capital by bearing new slaves. This
advantage, however, was negated by several factors. First, the very fact
of male and female slaves living together threatened the prison-like struc-
ture of the plantation or mine, and obliged the masters to allow, if only to
a minimal degree, a certain institutionalization of the family or of child
bearing. Second, the number of deaths at childbirth was extraordinarily
high, which meant a risk in the capital invested in female slaves. Third,
Black female slaves always displayed a very low fertility rate, an ex-
tremely interesting biological and cultural result to be discussed later.
Finally, infant mortality was so high on plantations, that only about 10
percent of the children reached adulthood. During the final stage of slav-
ery, particularly in the nineteenth century, conditions changed.
Under these circumstances, up until about 1815, it was cheaper to
purchase an average adult male in the slave market than it would have
been to breed and raise to the same age a slave child on the plantation. In
the nineteenth century, however, the abolition of the legal trade of Black
 Cultural Contributions and Deculturation II

Africans and its conversion into contraband, persecuted by Great Britain,

drove the price of slaves up yearly. Since the cost of breeding and raising
slaves on the plantation rose less rapidly than the market price of a slave,
there was a point when the two curves crossed, and projections indicated
that it would be less costly to breed than to import. It was this cost
relationship, not moral reasons, that led Cuban and Brazilian slave trad-
ers (these were the last countries to abolish slavery) to import massive
numbers of African women and to alter the prisonlike setup on planta-
tions.
One of the most traumatic experiences of slave life on plantations was
the absence of heterosexuality, which led to such behavior as masturba-
tion and sodomy among the slaves placed in constrained quarters with
other men only. Unfortunately we lack quantitative studies that would
give us an exact idea of the magnitude of the problem. In the Cuban case,
we have a list of almost four hundred plantations that reveals the follow-
ing sex distribution:

African Slave Populations on Cuban Plantations

Distribution in Percentages by Sex

Years Males Females

1746-1790 90.38 9.62
1701-1822 85.03 14.97
1840-1849 69.70 30.30
1860-1869 59.80 40.20

Only African slaves are tabulated. Their Creole descendants are

omitted. A quick look at these figures indicates that, while legal slave
and the cost of a male who could perform according to
traffic lasted
normal productive standards was relatively low, there was no interest in
importing women. This implies that procreation among Creole slaves was
minimal. Practically the entire plantation population of both men and
women was active; they were all of working age. This explains the fan-
tastic per capita output, as compared to British colonies, where the per-
centages of women, children, and older people was higher. As we pointed
out earlier, as soon as slave traffic became illegal more women were
imported, and there was a tendency towards balancing the proportions of
the sexes.However, not even in the 1860s, when slave trade was almost
extinct,was there ever a perfect balance in the proportion of sexes, nor
was there a positive demographic growth rate on the plantations.
The severe disproportion of sexes created an atmosphere of repression
and an obsession with sex, which was expressed in many different ways,
such as stories, games, songs, dances. In any study of the African cultural
heritage regarding sexual relations, one must always keep in mind that
even stronger than the cultural tradition was the obsessive world of the
plantation. Certain African dances and songs that had no sexual connota-
12 Africa in Latin America

tion, merely sublimated sex, acquired an almost lascivious

or that
significance under slavery. It is therefore no coincidence that a large part

of the Cuban and Brazilian sex vocabulary originated on the sugar planta-
tions. To summarize: the marked preoccupation with sexual matters to be
found among certain sectors of Black American life, far from originating
in physiological or cultural causes, is merely a holdover from the inhuman
conditions prevailing on the plantation and mines under slavery. In areas
where the balance of the sexes was conducive to a more normal life, these
behavioral patterns did not occur. However, such balance was the excep-
tion. Slavery distorted the slave's sex life, and racists justified these dis-
tortions by devising myths about the sadistic sexuality of Blacks, the
immorality of Black women, and the libidinous nature of Mulatto females.
All this disregarded the fact that in urban areas and in solitary mansions,
sex was the only device women could use to improve their economic
condition.
In all of the Caribbean, and at a certain time when there was a crisis in
the supply of slaves (it is important to recall that this crisis occurred at
different times in different colonies) the owners of slaves tried to form
compulsory family units according to Western European ethical and cul-
tural norms. These attempts, although encouraged by various religious
sects, met with little success. The family, in the White bourgeois concep-
tion (here we use the term "White" as a synonym for the European or
Creole colonizer), is an institution that thrives only in a favorable setting.
Plantations, however, were, culturally, a totally different world. It was
not sufficient to give the blessing of the church and to legalize sexual
unions that either emerged spontaneously or that were forcefully im-
posed. Legalization, the ceremony, and the church ritual only created the
formal appearance of a family unit. The stabilization and integration of the
family core required socioeconomic conditions that were not present on
plantations. For example: a family tie could be dissolved by the unilateral
and unappealable decision of the master to sell, give up, transfer, or move
one or more slaves in a group. Advertisements like "Black woman for
sale, with or without her brood" reveal the absolute disdain for mother-
hood and Black family life held by the dominant, slaveowning class. Such
advertisements appeared with frightening frequency in the Cuban and
Brazilian press. Furthermore, the European, bourgeois concept of family,
with its complex world of interdependent and hierarchical relationships,
was incongruous with African cultural norms, and was unviable in a pris-
onlike setting where individuals lacked the most elementary rights of self-
determination, such as ownership of and authority over their own chil-
dren. A family unit within a plantation was like a naturally rejected
foreign body. Since the production and subsistence framework was im-
posed upon the slaves, they lacked all economic, personal and familial
responsibility, as they were not in charge of their own economy and had
no control over the hierarchy of blood relationships. They had neither
 Cultural Contributions and Deculturation 13

social nor familial responsibilities, inasmuch as all activity was regi-

mented and became a function of production. Free time had been sus-
pended, and after an oppressive and hateful sixteen-hour workday, the
few remaining hours could only be used for basic biological survival func-
tions.
These conditions determined the sexual behavior patterns of rural
communities descendant from slaves. Instability and fleeting unions
based on sexual relations were a plantation routine that was to become
the most destructive force within the slave heritage of Antillean society.
In many Caribbean islands, and among peasant groups descended from
slaves, we still find widespread instances of successive or simultaneous
polygamy, whereby men and women frequently change mates and have
more than one spouse.
Lacking family, property, and a concept of personal economy, with
their worldview reduced from early childhood on to the monotony of the
sugar fields and the sugar mill, many African and Creole Black slaves
found the abolition of slavery traumatic. Without paternalistic relation-
ships and exploitation, these slaves, particularly the older ones, were left
in a state of total helplessness. Incapable of adapting to wage employ-
ment, too inept even to comprehend the new economic relationships,
lacking in food, clothing, and a roof, all of which had always been pro-
vided on the plantation, they sank to the lowest level of social degrada-
tion. With sticks and leaves they built their bare homes on roadsides, and
there they patiently awaited their slow death. These solitary Blacks with
no social or familial ties were a depressing, routine spectacle in the Carib-
bean after the abolition of slavery.
In brief, in organically originated societies, particularly those formed
during the feudal and precapitalist eras, there existed a concrete relation-
ship between production and the institution of the family. However, a
plantation, like a jail, is not a society. Seen from any angle, the plantation
is an economic enterprise; its population is formed of an aggregate of

individuals who are not permitted to interact with each other and whose
—
actions are coercively directed towards one end production. All the
communities to which the Black slaves originally belonged had a series of
distinctive institutional relationships. But Blacks segregated from their
original communities and enslaved either lost their traditional mores or
observed them surreptitiously. Thus the plantation, wherever possible,
broke the continuity of African traditions, establishing its foundations
upon the destruction of every tie or union, including even that of the
family, though families normally develop out of the uncontrollable urge to
procreate. The plantation took its toll, leaving the deep sense of instability
and discontinuity that had been very useful for maintaining the slaveoc-
racy, but absolutely contradicted what was required of a salaried indus-
trial worker.
An important way in which the socioeconomic structure had an impact
14 Africa in Latin America

on biological urges is revealed by the very low fertility rate of female

slaves. Since this fact adversely affected the later plantation economy, it

was seriously studied by technical experts of the times. Well-regarded

doctors, particularly during the nineteenth century, were urged to find an
answer for the apparently unheard-of question of why women with a free
sex life, with no concern for virginity, and without the inhibitions of upper
class Whites, had a lower fertility rate than the White women. Among
doctors of various nationalities who analyzed the problem were the
American J. Urdermann, the Frenchmen Bernard de Chateauselins and
Henri Dumont, and the Cubans, José R. Montalvo and Luis Montane
Dardé. Even though color and class prejudices obscured their scientific
reasoning, all the doctors had to recognize that the low fertility of Black
women was a consequence of their work routine.
In reaction to her position as a slave, the Black female slave imposed
upon herself rigid birth control methods, reviving and generating Malthu-
sian and abortive practices. Contrary to common assumptions, such prac-
tices are a cultural phenomenon that occurs at certain critical periods; and
they are a part of the cultural practices of so-called "primitive" people.
Even today, the pragmatic knowledge of birth control in certain ethnic
groups of the Congo astonishes modern gynecologists. Potions prepared
with the fruit and leaves of papaya (Carica papaya) were used so fre-
quently in the slave-rich region of western Cuba that the term "papaya"
became synonymous with vulva. The persistence of such practices
generated innumerable uterine diseases, and inventories of Cuban planta-
tions show that, at times, more than 25 percent of the women had a fallen
uterus.

Patterns of Food Culture

Food, dress, and housing are the three needs that make up basic cultural
patterns. Africans who were coercively moved to American plantations
had dressed and lived in Africa in their own economic and cultural world.
Within this cultural and economic environment, each ethnic group had
created a system of symbols that constituted the fundamental elements of
its culture. To eat, dress, and build or decorate one's home in one way or

another was of implicit hierarchical, moral, and religious value. But this
cultural world of Africans was crushed by the plantation.
The economic parameters of the plantation determined the slave's nu-
tritional balance. A slave's food intake was determined by his dietary
needs (as they were understood at the time, and according to the eco-
nomic realities of the plantation) and by the market value of various
foods, the ease with which they could be transported, and their resistance
to lengthy storage periods. The slave, who from the productive point of
 Cultural Contributions and Deculturation 15

view was considered a piece of equipment, from the nutritional viewpoint

was seen as an ingesting-excreting mechanism that required a daily fuel
ration, or source of energy (food), to complete its work and to insure its
useful existence for the estimated depreciation period.
A plantation slave had two daily meals, prepared with a generous
starch base (rice, corn flour, plantains, etc.) to which was added an ample
portion of jerked meat or salted fish. The selection of ingredients varied
periodically with market prices and with availability on each plantation.
In short, it was food met dietary, administrative, and even psycho-
that
logical needs, since its abundance even led to a feeling of satiation. The
nutrition of slaves was usually maintained within these limits, with
numerous variants in form, but not in nutritional value. When they
worked on a sugar plantation (as did approximately 65 percent of all
imported slaves) slaves usually consumed a large quantity of sugar. They
would get the sugar from cane juice while cutting down the cane (this
liquid contains about 14 to 16 percent sucrose) or they would drink it
directly out of the large open pans used for evaporation. They devoured
the pieces of pan sugar that stuck to the containers and coolers; they
would abscond with all the sugar they could from the draining room;
finally, they would drink large quantities of molasses.
Accounting information from numerous plantations in the Caribbean
points to an almost generalized feeding practice over two centuries. The
slave was given a daily ration of some 200 grams of jerked meat or salted
fish (raw) which contained approximately 70 grams of animal protein, 13
grams of fat, and some 380 calories. The 500 grams of corn flour (or of
another starch) added a supplement of 15 grams of vegetable protein, and
more than the necessary calories for the daily work routine. This level of
nutrition, although deficient, was superior to the normal diet of the Afri-
can tribes the slaves came from. The population groups of Equatorial
Africa had a particularly precarious nutritional level, with little animal
protein and an inordinate amount of starch. But the fact that plantation
diets were superior to those of Africa does not imply that they were
optimal. Plantation life erased all dietary rituals and was characterized by
a persistent monotony. Foods were totally lacking in African tastes and
flavors. Almost no African culinary art was brought to America. How-
ever, in the vicinity of the sugar plantations, people developed a strong
taste for sweets, which, in urban areas, engendered a rich variety of
sugar-based dishes. This taste for sugar was so extraordinary that the
Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, has mentioned the possibility of
writing a "sociology of sweets."
The excessive taste for sugar was by an equally excessive
paralleled
taste for salt. This was another work. Working all day
result of plantation
under the hot sun, or in the high temperatures of the boiler room, the
16 Africa in Latin America

slaves sweated out large amounts of salt, and even required a daily sup-
plement of sodium chloride.

Clothing and Culture

The plantation economy required uniform, low-cost dress for slaves. It is

possible that mass-produced clothing was first made to dress plantation

slaves. It is not known when the dress code typical to all the Caribbean
colonies was first established. However, by the middle of the eighteenth
century, the production of slave apparel had already been standardized so
had a minimal number of pieces and required
that each item of clothing
amount of sewing. Five commercial sizes were established for
the least
men, and four for women. Boys and girls wore a one-piece shirt with one
lateral seam.
The annual clothing allowance in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies was as follows: During the months of October and November each
man was given a pair of pants and a shirt (which looked more like a tight,
short tunic), a wool cap, a flannel jacket, and a wool blanket. Women
received a tunic, a kerchief, a cap, a blanket, and a jacket. For the second
semester of the year, men received a pair of pants and a straw hat, while
women were given a dress and a straw hat. Footwear was never handed
out. There was even an eighteenth century French decree forbidding
giving shoes to Blacks because "shoes tortured their feet."
The traditional artisanry of African dress and decoration was lost on
the plantations. Slaves who added some element to their apparel that
differentiated them from others were punished. The only tribal markings
maintained by the Africans were their tattoos and their filed teeth, which
could not be obliterated. Tattoos and tooth filing were forbidden to Black
Creoles; this prohibition, however, was frequently disobeyed.

Housing and Culture

Slaves were housed in huts, built according to a regular pattern that

facilitated surveillance. It was forbidden to place any symbol or distin-
guishing element either on the fagade or in the interior of the hut, since
such symbols could have indicated a special status or might have had
Cuba, where slavery continued after it had been
religious significance. In
abolished in the French and British colonies, the owners of the large
plantations of four hundred, five hundred, or more slaves, built rectangu-
lar stone structures, sometimes one hundred or more meters long, with
only one large door in the center of one side of the rectangle, leading to a
large central patio. This was a typical prisonlike structure, with architec-
ture carefully designed to reduce communication between slaves, to make
surveillance easy, and to improve productivity. Housing, like dress, and
 7

Cultural Contributions and Deculturation 1

nutrition, then, had the objectives of enhancing productivity and of wip-

ing out the African cultural world.

Alienating Work as a Factor in Deculturation

Because plantations were obliged to rely on slave labor, and since slaves
were their capital investment, it is logical that production costs were
primarily reduced by optimizing labor productivity. From the beginning
of the eighteenth century on, we have studies in the Caribbean about the
efficiency of workers and their timetables. This data was, in a way, the
colonial forerunner of the typical research on division of labor, so fashion-
able among the encyclopedists.
Present day economists have the erroneous idea that a slaveocracy
functioned without technical controls, without the "modern" analytical
models on work efficiency. However, by the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, the British had already devised control models which followed step
by step the production flow on sugar plantations, kept detailed records of
the daily activities of slaves, and even permitted the quantification of
worker productivity. These models were later improved by the French,
and, in the eighteenth century, by Cuban planters. Without exaggeration,
it can be affirmed that modern accounting adds very little to the model

established by Dutrone de la Couture in 1785, for example. Adam Smith

even praised the French for "their good management of their slaves."
If the thesis that industrialization is based on the measurement of work
is accurate,we could find in the quantification of slave labor a serious
effort towards industrialization without machinery. An analysis of work
models reveals that the typical scheme of elementary group work was
instituted in sugar plantations. The total volume of production was raised
by increasing the number of slaves, equipment and tools. But, since the
strength of a group could not grow indefinitely by adding new workers, at
a certain point the addition of slaves increased the total volume of produc-
tion but diminished per capita productivity, since the productivity of each
new man was marginal. The large slave concentrations that had emerged
from market demand became more ingrown instead of evolving, thus
perpetuating the moral and economic degradation of the slave.
Since slave work did not permit specialization, the only possible type
of agriculture was extensive "despoliation agriculture," according to Jus-
tus von Liebig, which not only progressively lowered agricultural yield,
but also, on the long run, impoverished the soil. To stabilize the total
production volume it was necessary for the falling curve of agricultural
productivity to be compensated by a proportional increase in slave labor.
Comparative data on the amount of sugar produced and the size of the
slave population in all of the British West Indies, illustrate this process.
For example, in Barbados, between 1700 and 1780, slave population
18 Africa in Latin America

doubled, and sugar production went down by approximately 30 percent.

were 14,663 slaves; towards the end of the
In St. Kitts, in 1729, there
century there were 26,000 (77 percent more), but production remained
constant. Montserrat also tripled its slave population in fifty years without
increasing production. In Antigua, between 1729 and 1780, it was neces-
sary to double the slave force to achieve a production increase of 10
percent.
Extensive labor required not only more men, but a lengthening of the
workday. The problem with the longer work day was the same as that of
increasing numbers of slaves: production did not grow proportionally
because the productivity of each additional hour was only marginal. Thus,
being practical, plantation owners sought the optimal limit of productivity
as a function of the number of slaves and the duration of their workday.
As circumstances became more difficult, the workday was extended to its
biological extreme, so that slaves could maximize their output within a
previously calculated productive life span.
Cuba, the extensive work system reached a climax in the 1840s.
In
J. Liggins, an experienced British landowner, visited Cuba and was un-

able to contain his surprise at the length of the workday. In testimony

before a British select committee on slavery in 1853, he repeatedly com-
mented on this: "They worked very slowly and very carelessly, but the
advantage of their employment was, it was continuous." James Kennedy,
one of the most astute observers in the British diplomatic service, re-
ferred to the effects of extensive 18-hour work days: "I have wit- . . .

nessed that. At the end of the crop season [the slaves] look more like. . .

idiots than human beings. . . ; they are . . . worn out."

Modern studies on industrial fatigue show that men who have been
submitted to extensive tasks over many years are never totally able to
regain their energies. Thus, to daily fatigue one must add residual fatigue,
accumulated over time, which induces an early reduction of work capac-
ity and premature aging. Residual fatigue could only be eliminated by a

proportional amount of rest; but the constant work pace did not permit
this, so fatigue set in at the beginning of each workday. After some time
this accumulated fatigue became irreversible. The unnatural rhythm must
have brought about a deep-seated dissociation between human time and
the time required for production, a total lack of synchronization between
biological capabilities and the task that had to be performed.
By employing all available biological time for productive labor, social
relationships among slaves were suppressed, and slaves only had time to
perform their vital bodily functions. In addition to being necessary for
increasing productivity, the suppression of the slaves' free time was also
intended as a security measure and was part of a deliberate process of
deculturation. All slaves were equalized, differences in ability within a
 Cultural Contributions and Deculturation ¡9

group were erased, and communication and interaction among group

members were made impossible, since all the slaves were occupied exclu-
sively with one monotonous elementary activity repeated to the limit of
physical resistance.
Slaves lost their human significance. They were devoid of personality.
Although each had a name for identification purposes, they were all ma-
chine men, specialized work equipment acquired in the marketplace.
They were expected to have a certain productivity and durability, as long
as their productive efforts were controlled and they were provided with
adequate maintenance. An attempt was made to convert them into mech-
anisms of maximum efficiency, to make of them a mass with no initiative,
but with automatic responses to work stimuli. Siegfried Giedion writes of
mechanized barbarism as the most repulsive of all barbarisms: this is what
was imposed on Black slaves, both African and Creole, with the differ-
ence that the slaves themselves were transformed into machines.
Finally, we must say that, notwithstanding all the efforts made to oblit-
erate ancestral cultural ties and relationships among slaves, despite at-
tempts to create dissension among them, in the long run, there was always
a natural feeling of solidarity among the slaves. It is a feeling that emerges
in all human beings forced to live together and to share conditions of
oppressive exploitation. Since frank and public communication was not
possible, horizontal, underground means of communication sprouted.
The necessity of transmitting secret messages for the sake of survival
created a morale of clandestineness which contributed to the strengthen-
ing and syncretization of certain African sects. It is possible, for example,
that the key to the social strength of the abakuá lay in the necessity to
create a gut-system of communication.
Extensive work engendered in slaves a special instinct to survive for
the mere sake of survival. This instinct is still operant in certain Carib-
bean societies in the twentieth century. It is expressed in a Cuban phrase
that has its equivalent in Brazilian Portuguese: "The problem here is to
keep from dying." This philosophy of simple endurance emerges today as
an ancestral, almost atavistic force in human beings who have been ex-
ploited and decultured.

The Urban Setting

Plantation colonies producing merchandise for export required large ur-

ban concentrations, generally by the commercial infra-
ports, populated
These urban
structure for the sugar, coffee, cacao, and cotton economies.
centers also housed the non-absentee or semi-absentee dominant elite,
the governing and administrative bodies, the repressive forces, the
church, etc. Thus the cities became the heart of the "cultural life,"
whether scarce or prolific, within the colony.
20 Africa in Latin America

The infrastructure and productive sector of these cities was always

subsidiary to the plantation economy, and required large numbers of free
workers and slaves for domestic and nondomestic services. For obvious
reasons the urban slave had a better standard of living, and he could
communicate more freely with the mass of other slaves and with both the
incipient proletariat and urban lumpenproletariat. In the cities, Creole
Blacks were more numerous than African slaves, which meant that
Blacks born in the colony were selected for infrastructural tasks because
they had been subjected since birth to the deculturating process of domes-
tication. Cities also had a more balanced sexual ratio, and, at times, there
was even a greater number of females. Undoubtedly it was materially
impossible to establish plantation controls on urban slaves; it was there-
fore essential for the dominant class to establish different systems of
subordination and control, which, although sometimes laxer, were not
necessarily less efficient. However, as we shall see later, the methods of
domination imposed on urban slaves, which endured among the poorest
groups of the proletariat after the abolition of slavery, permitted the rec-
reation of symbols and of daily behavioral patterns inherited from Africa.
In our opinion it would be impossible to get to the root of this question
by starting off with a fixed anthropological scheme that considers
transculturation as a phenomenon of conflict and synthesis between a
group of immigrants (coercive or voluntary) inserted into a society with
European cultural values. The truth of the matter, at least in what are
loosely called "the Black regions of the Caribbean," is totally different.
From the very beginning we are dealing with new societies formed of
Africans and Europeans who arrived simultaneously: the former as a
conquered people in a rapacious, capitalist war, the latter, as a group of
exploiters. There was no preexistent European society into which the
African imports were inserted. It is therefore methodologically wrong to
search for Africanisms and to judge how many of them were accepted into
an already established mold. Urban culture in Caribbean societies, just
like every other culture, was created, recreated, and updated to conform
with group necessities, interactions, and production. To this we can add
that it was elaborated, recreated, and updated in conjunction with the
contradictions and emergent possibilities of the economic, political, and
social situation on the plantations. From their very beginning these were
American societies in the process of recreating their Euroafrican compo-
nents. Within this framework, Black and Mulatto groups made up the
poorest, most helpless and most exploited social strata. On the cultural
level, they were the objects of prejudice and discrimination, consigned to
social pariahdom. They were deliberately isolated or marginalized, with
conflicts stirred up among them to make cohesion ever difficult. In this
respect, the cultural patterns of these groups, whether handed down,
created, or recreated, were closely linked to their specific situation: a
 Cultural Contributions and Deculturation 21

situation of neediness, of social marginalization, economic rejections, and

cultural nonacceptance. From our point of view, therefore, the current
approach to an anthropological study of this sort should lie in the direc-
tion of studying the ways in which this culture of exploitation has been
created (or recreated) and has endured. And not only the culture of the
direct descendants of the old African groups, but also its dynamic spin-
offs, which deeply modified the culture patterns of all other exploited
groups within the same society, regardless of skin color or "racial" origin.
Once slavery was abolished, the deculturation process continued as a
mechanism of subjection in the small Caribbean islands. In Cuba and
Brazil it became a divisive factor within the proletariat. An example of the
deliberate process of fomenting social schisms, one that involves what
has been called "high culture," is given by the following event. During the
1860s, the Anthropological Society was founded in Cuba. It was not an
its European
underdeveloped cultural organization that simply imitated
counterparts. The Cuban Anthropological Society emerged out of the
need of the dominant class to face the problems of cultural confrontation
on the island. Almost its entire directive body consisted of physicians
with the highest qualifications who had studied in Paris. For example, its
president, Luis Montané Dardé, besides having been a prominent student
in Paris, had been the disciple and later the coworker of Paul Broca (the
founder of the Revue ¿'Anthropologic) and of Ernest Theodore Hamy,
founder of the Trocadero Anthropological Museum, known today as the
Musée de 1'Homme. These distinguished scientists discussed, among
other things, what was meant by the term "Cuban." Almost unanimously
it was decided that a Cuban was a White man born in Cuba. As these

meetings were taking place, the Ten Year War had already ended, a war
in which many thousands of Blacks and Mulattoes had given their lives in
the struggle for Cuban independence. The deputy commander of the Cu-
ban forces had been, precisely, a Mulatto, General Antonio Maceo. This
double standard of behavior (at the top and at the bottom of society)
shows to what degree cultural differences were more than the theoretical
antagonisms between European and African patterns and values: these
were no abstract transcultural clashes in empty air, but the highly con-
crete results of direct class conflict. This led to what some sociologists
have called "socialized ambivalence." As Benoist points out, this ambiva-
lence operates both on the broad social level and deep within the indi-
vidual psyche. Certain cultural values, specific forms of organization and
institutionalization, were dynamically preserved (that is, reproduced and
regenerated) as a source of orientation, identity, cohesion and dignity for
the dominated group. Other standards and values of the so-called "high
culture" (those that provided a background of Euroethnocentric domi-
nance) were adopted, reproduced, and recreated as a source of cohesion
for the dominant group and as a power mechanism.
22 Africa in Latin America

Cuba, where the bloody independence wars were fought by armies

In
that on one side had a large proportion of African descendants (Creoles in
the process of becoming Cubanized), national synthesis took place faster
than in other countries of the Caribbean. However, U.S. intervention and
economic dominance over the island until 1959 revitalized the disag-
gregating processes of colonial times. The critical decades of the 1920s
and 1930s were essential in stirring up the cultural base and in structuring
wide unified workers' movements among the physically hungry proletar-
ian groups, which cared nothing for the distinctions, so carefully nurtured
by the ruling class, between what was European and what was African.
The violent strikes in Jamaica, Barbados, and Guyana and the definitive
organization of the Cuban workers' movement took place at this time
under the leadership of Mulattoes, to whom "color," whether their own or
other people's, was a matter of total indifference. This was also the era of
the great dignifying cry for negritude which, with time, paradoxically
became a submissive, neocolonialist instrument.
To summarize, anyanalysis of Africans in Latin America taken out of
its proper context of class struggle, is merely an empty digression. One
cannot forget that the Black African came to America as a production
factor, and that his descendants have continued to perform that same
function. Sidney W. Mintz, in referring to the theory of marginalization,
has shown, with his habitual brilliance, that if Blacks were secularly
marginalized with regard to society and culture, they were never mar-
ginalized as producers of surplus value. It was upon their shoulders that
the large plantation fortunes were created.
The Cuban revolution has performed a social "miracle" by eliminating
racial discrimination within a few years. This invalidates the theory of
marginalization. The "miracle" was simply the logical byproduct of the
definitive rupture of the economic and class structures of capitalism. In a
relatively short period, the elements of the dominated culture, jealously
conserved and recreated as cohesive modules, have passed into national
folklore, or are becoming extinct, now that the reasons for their existence
have passed away. For example, music and dances originally linked to
African religions have been passing into the national domain without
requiring that the public be aware of their symbolic contents. In the same
way that outside its original context the abakuá ritual loses its tran-
scendental sense, so the dominated culture loses its raison d'etre once the
class structure breaks down. A book on Africa in Latin America must do
more than trace the African footsteps, it must analyze how African, Euro-
pean, Asian, and Indoamerican social groups, molded by concrete eco-
nomic forces, created societies that differed from their components.
 2
Flight and Confrontation
German Carrera Damas

The development of slavery from

historic perspective that sees a linear
the past to the present has painted a picture of slavery in Latin America
that omits the most important aspect of this socioeconomic phenomenon.
I refer to the fact that, stricktly speaking, Black slavery cannot yet be

considered merely as a part of the Latin American past. (In the same vein,
one can claim that to this day, or until very recently, Indian slavery has
survived in some areas of Latin America, despite its legal abolition four
centuries ago.)
The consequences of employing the traditional historic framework in
this case are varied and significant.
In the first place, one is forced to think of Black slavery as an historic
process that had imprecise origins, that was subsequently controlled
through legislation, and that finally culminated in a legislative act: aboli-
tion. This perspective confuses the formal existence of slavery with its

real existence. In many cases the historic study of the legal boundaries of
slavery presupposed that these boundaries in some way reflected reality
or even helped to shape it.

In the second place, the above-mentioned evolution of the process is

not really taken into account in evaluating and considering Black slavery
as an institution. Such evaluations or general considerations that do not
consider time spans and occurrences that have been properly described
and chronologically determined, lose their concrete significance.
In the third place, the most enduring consequences of the phenomenon
of slavery, those that occurred after its legal abolition, have been either
totally ignored or reduced to "relics." It may not be exaggerated to see in
this approach the effects of the great problem faced by nineteenth-century
Latin American liberalism: the persistence of slavery, an institution
whose abolition was expressly and definitely called for in all the constitu-
tional texts drafted in expectation of the coming liberal order. Slavery, as
a legal institution, should disappear with abolition. The legal act of aboli-
tion helped liberalism to clear its conscience, after half a century of incon-
gruent coexistence of liberalism and slavery. For these reasons the eco-
nomic, social, and have been studied in great
political aspects of slavery
detail, usually within the judicial framework, while the study of "sequels"
or "relics" of slavery is rare or nonexistent. Such a study would undoubt-
edly have had to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that slavery, far

23
24 Africa in Latin America

from having been relegated to the Latin American past, is still an integral
part of its present.
To summarize, apart from confusing the formal existence of slavery
with its real existence, the study of slavery has been reduced to a work
relationship that does not deal with the significance of social and racial
discrimination against Black slaves, which is of fundamental importance.
It does not take into account the fact that, if both aspects have determined
slavery, the transformation of the work relationship (often relative), did
not necessarily suppress discrimination. This means that it is not possible
to explain the new work relationship outside the context of discrimina-
tion, for the entire Black sociocultural complex has been, and continues
to be, tied to slavery.
Some became dissatisfied with this framework and sought a
time ago, I

different focus that would be closer to real Latin American social and
historical perspectives. This new focus looks at Latin American societies
where Black slavery was widespread as societies that are currently under-
going the phase of real abolition of slavery. This present-day abolition is
to be understood as a complex and lengthy process through which the
socioeconomic institutions and the ideological-political framework are
being dissolved.
Thus, Black slavery is not just a part of the past of these societies, but
also a current factor, since it is not difficult to see how the present is

conditioned and even determined by the tremendous weight of the con-

ventional "past." In other words, slavery did not end with legal abolition,
which merely put an arbitrary end to an historic phenomenon, for its
existential vigor does not fall within the legislative framework but lies
within the socioeconomic structure. More than a century after abolition
was legislated, slavery survives as an active component of the sociohis-
toric picture. Its endurance can be witnessed through social conflicts and
tensions that bear a clear relationship to those that existed before aboli-
tion.
where Black slavery reached a significant level,
In colonial societies,
the two most important around liberation and the strug-
conflicts revolved
gle for equality, areas in which the incessant confrontation between
Creoles, Spaniards, Blacks, and slaves took place.
In the case of the slaves, the struggle for freedom appears to be an
individual or collective effort to "escape" slavery without attempting to
suppress slavery itself, even though, during the course of the process,
certain critical factors evolved, that did, in fact, help in the "suppression"
of slavery. Suppression was not a direct result of the struggle for indepen-
dence. Instead, social tensions were generated that forced the slaveow-
ners to negotiate their way out of the tensions by creating the illusion of
the certain or imminent suppression of slavery (such as manumission) or
by preserving the essential aspects of the institution and transforming
 Flight and Confrontation 25

slavery into more or less veiled forms of personal bondage. Abolition

became a prerequisite to negotiate the conversion of slavery into forced
labor systems (which is what manumission really was) under the guise of

peonage, the inseparable companion of Latin American societies.

The intimate ties between the struggle of slaves for freedom and their
meaning since abolition: there
struggle for equality have attained their full
was no automatic between the attainment of freedom (as a
correlation
consequence of the formal, legal act of abolition) and the attainment of
equality. Moreover, the achievement of formal freedom, as it occurred,
inspired by liberalism, in the socioeconomic context of implanted
Latinamerican societies, was translated into the reinforcement of real
inequality and thus, into an absence of freedom.

The intimate relationship between the slave's struggle for his freedom
and his egalitarian aspirations, a direct consequence of the dual exploita-
tive and discriminatory nature of slavery, generated an intricate interplay
between the individual and collective, active and passive forms of resist-
ance, corresponding to the inherent nature of the deculturation process.
1

This deculturation is fundamental to all Black slavery in Latinamerican

societies, since it is a process which attempts to uproot the culture of the
exploited to achieve their more effective exploitation.
In the case of the Black slaves in America, the deculturation process
inherent, more or less intensely, in every form of colonial or semicolonial
exploitation, was applied even more rigorously than in Africa. Slavery not
only created the necessary ad hoc conditions, but also served to repress,
to a large degree, factors that could operate against deculturation, reduc-
ing these to surreptitious practices (even though these practices often
filtered into the established coercive norms), leading to a highly traumatic
cultural inauthenticity.was through this inauthenticity that slaves and
It —
—
thus the Blacks were forced to abandon their own values and to adopt
values whose main effect was to uproot their own. The process of decul-
turation was imposed upon the following groups:

a. Human beings uprooted from their traditional habitat and grafted,

without possibility of return, onto physical surroundings that were in

large part totally new to them.
b. Human beings whose socialstructure was completely demolished
from the very beginning (although slavery was not foreign to them), leav-
ing the individuals isolated and deprived of a social position within their
group.
c. Human beings belonging to various ethnicities and from various cul-
tures. In the new environment the concentration of individuals of a same
tribe was avoided, while preexisting inter-ethnic conflicts were usually
maintained and reinforced. New habits were forced upon these groups:
26 Africa in Latin America

was dissolved, erasing shared

thus the cohesion that brings about culture
experiences that make possible communication and cooperation.
d. Men brought to America at a very young age. As a rule the ages ranged
from 16 to 20 until the 1840s, and from 10 to 15 after that date. (This
implies forced massive immigration of children.) Youth made decultura-
tion easier, since the Africans came from cultures based on oral tradition,
where knowledge was the sole domain of the older generation, particu-
larly the elders.
e. Groups controlled twenty-four hours a day, whose communications
and relations with other groups was forbidden and whose exploitive unit
became their universe. The so-called Caroline Black Code, the royal de-
cree regulating the treatment of slaves by their owners and the tasks they
had to perform, was issued in Aranjuez on May 31, 1789. One stipulation
concerning the types of entertainment permitted to slaves was that
"Owners, and in their absence overseers, should see to it that their slaves
engage in simple diversions, precluding all contact with slaves of other
estates and observing the separation of sexes." The system of extensive
labor to which they were subjected sought to have all the slaves' physio-
logically available time solely devoted to productive work. In addition to
its economic value, the suppression of free time also served security

purposes. Absorbed continuously with the same elementary activity, re-

peated to the limits of physical resistance, the differences in ability within
a group were eliminated and interaction between group members became
impossible.
f. Groups persecuted for their cultural heritage, suppressed as being bar-
baric, and which was replaced with new cultural forms that were most
inauthentic.
g. Groups deprived of alternatives in the way they could satisfy their four
basic biological needs: food, sex, dress, and home. These four basic
cultural manifestations had to conform to the productive needs of the
units of exploitation. Thus, building traditions, dietary and cooking
habits, the artisanry of dress and decoration, and the sense of ritual and
hierarchy were all disrupted. Sexual behavior patterns were necessarily
altered by the unnatural male-to-female ratio of slave groups. At the same
time, these groups found themselves forcibly inserted into strange reli-
gious and moral frameworks.
h. Men who from their first day in the colony had to adopt the language of
the exploiter not only for vertical communication, but also for horizontal
communication with slaves from other ethnic groups who spoke different
languages.
i. Men who were brutally inserted into a system of production and subor-
dination totally alien to their conception of tribal institutionalization,
j. Men who were forbidden to practice their own religion and upon whom
the religion of the exploiter was imposed.
 Flight and Confrontation 27

k. Men who were not permitted to have even the most elementary form
of identification —not even their own name — since another name was
picked for them in their oppressor's language.
1. Men whose possibility of physical survival was reduced to five or ten
years of from the moment they arrived on the plantation (during the
life

days of greatest barbarism); and to ten or fifteen years of life as of 1840 in

Cuba and Brazil.

was what Manuel Moreno Fraginals calls a system of

In brief, slavery
total controlover of the physical and cultural personality of the Africans
and their descendants that incited an immediate, sustained, and varied
resistance.

The ability of the Black slave to cope under these conditions was
obviously determined by his instinct for survival. The "physical taking
over" that we have talked about, also meant permanently keeping the
slave upon that narrow margin between survival and death. Thus, in the
worst of cases, the slave could only choose between a survival that an-
nihilated his own identity, and a revolt that would somehow end in death.
The various forms of resistance The most common
invite classification.
classification uses active or passive resistance as a criterion, while bear-
ing in mind be taken to an extreme. The
that this differentiation cannot
poles of resistance were established by what may be called the "process
of enslavement" on the one hand, and rebellion on the other. Within this
spectrum escape and suicide were the most important forms of resistance.
One of the main problems met with in studying the resistance of slaves
is that most of the information comes from the enslavers, and, even more

significant, from both the judiciary and the police control and repression
apparatus instituted by the slaveocrats to preserve and to reproduce the
slave system. Thus, any act of resistance acquired a significance that was
determined not solely by the act itself or by its particular meaning, but
was seen within the framework of control and repression that had been set
up to preserve the system.
In contrast to sources on political life in Latin America during that
period, supplementary sources on slavery are scarce, and sources
generated directly from the slave quarters are practically nonexistent. As
a result, we are left with a difficult situation for the historian, who has
advanced very little in formulating an appropriate methodology for deal-
ing with these sources. (This is not the case with regard to the economic
aspects of slavery, however.)
For example, to underline the importance of this methodological
difficulty, we see that, according to "slaveocratic" sources, Black slaves
never fought against slavery as a system, since any effort to escape from
the system was accompanied, according to confessions frequently ob-
28 Africa in Latin America

tained through torture, by the purpose of enslaving the White masters,

and particularly their women. This was a part of a supposed global
scheme to subvert the social order to the point of annihilating all slave-
owners and all Whites, to generate a "race war," the idea of which was a
constant threat to Creoles from the end of the eighteenth century on.
A very critical source treatment would be required to establish the
criteria for classifying the types of resistanceemployed by Black slaves.
At present it is not feasible to put aside the old method based on active
and passive resistance.
In response to what we have called the "process of taking over," which
was no less than the total domination of the physical and cultural person-
ality of the slave, and which began from the very moment of his capture
and removal from his homeland, the predominant form of resistance on
the slave's partwas purely passive. This passive resistance, as a means of
rejecting oppression and channelling the slave's trauma, included simulat-
ing obedience while complying only with the minimum of what was or-
dered, imperfectly and unwillingly, and directing his anger against his
tools. The tradition of ladinis mo, that is, of pretending to perform chores
but doing so only partially and inefficiently, has had serious repercussions
on today's Black social groups, since it has generated negative work
habits. This indirect, passive rebellion, instead of confronting exploitation
violently, atomized and neutralized the effects of coercion. However, in
the long run, perpetuated the extensive work system. The violence
it

against the production equipment required that it be designed and built

very strong and heavy to reduce the number of breakages. But with this
equipment slave labor became slower and less productive, since the
slaves now had to work with machetes or hoes that were twice as heavy
as those used by free men. There is ample documentation on the low
productivity of Black slaves, especially regarding their indolence, their
carelessness in the use of tools, their negligent treatment of work animals,
their shiftlessnessand tendency to pamper themselves. We have, in sum-
mary, the slaveowner's view of the slaves' passive forms of resistance, a
view that at that time served to promote slavery as a system, and that
since abolition, has nourished the stereotypes of racism.
"Active resistance" was displayed through individual or collective
forms of rebellion. Although it is hard to measure active resistance in
quantitative terms, there is no doubt that it flourished every day on plan-
tations, on estates, and in mines. Even bearing in mind what we already
noted, that the descriptions of the slaves' acts of rebellion had as their
source the slaveowners' own apparatus for repression, there is no doubt
that active resistance became the permanent bugbear of slave society. It
was unpredictable and inevitable, and contained great potential for vio-
lence that, once unfurled, could multiply a hundredfold the daily accumu-
lation of violence generated through exploitation and discrimination. The
 Flight and Confrontation 29

words "race war" were a constant threat to slaveowners; they triggered

both his violence and his fearful behavior. The racial war in Santo
Domingo that occurred as the culmination of the development of slavery
at the end of the eighteenth century had such an impact on the Caribbean
slave societies that even well into the nineteenth century, the event was
used as an argument in the debate on abolition. As for individual acts of
rebellion (frequently poorly disguised suicide attempts), their high inci-
dence reflects the violent treatment suffered daily by slaves. Manuel
Moreno Fraginals points out that, according to documents of the Perma-
nent Executive Military Commission in the Cuban National Archives,
more than one thousand slave owners, overseers, and administrators of
sugar plantations were executed by slaves between 1836 and 1870. There
is reason to believe that communication, the lack of cohe-
difficulties in
sion within slave groups, and the extreme vigilance by the repressive
slave system, often prevented group rebellions, but these methods were
unable to stop an individual about to commit an act of desperation.
Between the opposite poles of passive and active resistance there were
individual and collective ways of escaping slavery through marronage or
through suicide.
A maroon was a slave who ran away without having committed any
acts of violence against his master or those in charge of him. The Slave
Act of 1696 made a distinction between marronage and rebellion. A run-
away was a slave who, having lived on the Island of Jamaica for more
than three years, fled and hid for less than a year before recapture or
surrender. His punishment was a whipping. A slave who had been gone
for over a year became a rebel and was punishable by death. A slave who
had been on the island for under three years was punished less severely.
Captured maroons were sent to "workhouses." Marronage accompanied
the development of slavery, from the beginning of the sixteenth century
on. In 1523 there were already maroons in the Zapotee region of Mexico,
and there is proof of their presence in Santo Domingo in 1545, in Darien in
1548, in Castilla de Oro in 1575, and in Panama and Uruguay in 1574. At
the beginning of the eighteenth century there were some twenty thousand
maroons in Venezuela. 2 Repression of maroons was accomplished not
only by punishing their flight, but also by finding the most efficient
methods of preventing their escape. It therefore was considered neces-
sary to take specific measures, including special laws and traditional
forms of harsh punishment, even though the futility of these measures
was frequently noted.
In Cuba, as in the rest of America, marronage is as old as slavery.
However, the institutionalization of counter-measures (forced return to
the place of work, punishment, and imprisonment) only began in 1796. In
that year the King approved the "new regulations and rewards applicable
to the capture of runaway slaves." Written by Francisco de Arango y
30 Africa in Latin America

Parreño, the law summarized and adapted all the old and diffuse legisla-

tion on fugitive slaves to conditions on Cuban plantations. The law, in

effect until 1870, institutionalized the system of slave-hunters (the ranche-
adores) prisons ("depositories") and applicable forms of punishment. A
"correction house" was even established to punish maroon slaves and
others who were considered by their masters to be in need of punishment.
Suicide was the most expeditious way for slaves to escape, either
through an act of self-destruction or by rebelling under conditions that
guaranteed death. Chroniclers of the early colonial period document how
the enslaved Indians deliberately sought their own death, individually or
collectively,and would thereby frustrate the expectations of slave traders
or masters. Suicide was also a frequent practice among Black slaves, a
desperate response to their excessive workload, to hunger, or to punish-
ment. Suicide was so prevalent on Cuban sugar plantations that an inves-
tigation was started in 1840, compiled in a voluminous file now kept at the
National Cuban Archive, entitled "Causes that influence the frequency of
suicide of our slaves and measures that must be adopted to avoid them."
The Bishop of the Cathedral, the prosecutor of the "Audiencia Pretoriar
and a commission of the most prominent rural slaveowners named by the
Royal Development Board, all testified at the hearings. It was agreed that
the problem was "appalling," since two to three suicides were occurring
each year on all large plantations (those with 250 or more slaves), that the
suicide rate was higher among men than among women, who "rarely
commit suicide," and that, as the Bishop stated, "It is not the ill-treatment
of the slaves that produces frequent suicides, but their lack of religious
instruction." According to incomplete urban statistics, which, of course,
number of suicides occuring on plantations, 83
did not include the large
percent of Havana's suicides during the 1840s were those of Black
slaves. 3
The various forms of resistance to slavery created a climate of severe
social tension by the end of the eighteenth century. This resulted in a
hardening of the position of slaveowners, shown by their attempts to
make the means of controlling slaves more efficient. To summarize, one
cannot say that slave resistance considerably weakened the slave system.
However, the flareup of political events in North America and Europe at
that time makes it difficult to evaluate to what extent the slave system was
weakened, if it was, particularly because the slave question became a part
of the general crisis within colonial society.
The growth of slavery during the seventeenth century created, among
other things, severe and ever-growing inequalities between the "White"
and the "non-White" population of Latin America, affecting particularly
the Blacks and the Mulattoes, given the decreasing importance of the
Indian population. Tensions arose that kept slaveowners constantly on
guard, once they realized the various difficulties involved in maintaining
 Flight and Confrontation 31

tranquility and control over their slaves. Through the above-mentioned

Black Caroline Code, the King claimed to have consistently established,
observed, and followed a system that would make slaves useful, and that
"set the rules for owners to provide their slaves with whatever education,
treatment, and occupation was required, according to the rules and princi-
ples dictated by religion, humanity, and the good of the state, compatible
with slavery and with public peace." Three factors directed at overcoming
the slaves' struggle for freedom were thereby established: the normative,
regulatory influence of the state; religious indoctrination; and the repres-
sive vigilance of slaveowners.
Moreover, according to historic documents from the end of the eigh-
teenth century, the effect of the regulatory and control factors that
guaranteed the stability and the proper functioning of the slave system
were nullified by the repercussions of the "occurrences in Santo Domingo
and Guarico." The social climate of the time, admirably portrayed by
Alejo Carpentier in his novel Century of Lights, reflects the interaction
between the crisis-generating factors within the slave system and the new
currents and ideas emerging from the crisis of the old French regime. The
stimulus received from these new currents by the struggle of Black slaves
for their freedom and equality contributed to the development of a social
situation in Latin America in which the attitude towards slavery rapidly
became the key to evaluating the scope of ideologies and movements. It is
impressive to note that, at a very early stage, a group was formed that
proposed the liberal answer to the slave question. Their three main princi-
ples were: the preservation of the economic structure; harmonization of
the liberal principles of property, liberty, equality, and fraternity; and a
guarantee of White hegemony.
It might be worthwhile to look at the Venezuelan case in more detail,

because it illustrates the process so well, and because circumstances in

Venezuela so accurately reflect the general history. Events that took
place in Venezuela in 1797 were shaped by men whose connection with
the French revolutionary thought of 1793 has been proven, and whose
position on slavery was clearly defined in the constitutions or ordinances
written by Juan Bautista Picornell, instigator of the so-called "Picornell,
Gual, and España" conspiracy. In fact, the first two principles were
clearly spelled out in articles 32, 34, 36, and 37 of the ordinances, as
follows.

32. Inhabitants of all provinces and districts are hereby declared equal, and
it isurged that total harmony should reign between Whites, Indians, and
Blacks, and that they all view each other as brothers in Christ, equal before
God, seeking advantage only through merit and virtue, which are the only
two real distinctions among men that will from now on be recognized among
individuals of our Republic.
32 Africa in Latin America

34. Slavery is of course abolished because it denies humanity: therefore, all

slaveowners are expected to present to the governing junta of their towns a
list of their slaves, which will include their name, mother country, age, sex,
job, costs, years of service, and a note on their conduct and their illnesses, if

any, so that, in their presence the General Junta can determine and order
the just payment out of the public coffers to their respective owners. All
slaves shall remain in the service of their masters until the General Junta
decides otherwise.
36. All new citizens must swear their loyalty to their country, which they
will serve as members of the militia until freedom of the country has been
attained, as long as circumstances so require. To prevent the neglect of
agriculture, plantation workers, slaves and servants living in the interior of
the country shall remain with their old masters, and shall receive fair wages
for reasonable work. To avoid all excesses and damages by one side or the
other, no servant or new citizen may leave his master without a valid rea-
son, approved by a member of the governing junta who will be named as
judge.

37. Once the Nation has attained independence, the new citizens will be
discharged and will be offered all help deemed necessary.

The reaction of Venezuelan Creoles to the "Picornell, Gual, and

España" movement was to close ranks in defense of the colonial order
and its slave structure. This reaction was dictated, with regard to slavery,
by the necessity to exert effective controls, not only over slavery, but
over the entire non-White population. The conspirators of 1797 seemed
quite aware of this crucial question, which is why they included in article
7 of their ordinances that the governing junta of each city or village should
be formed by ". . . Only those local estate-owners, who had already
shown beforehand unequivocal proof of their constant patriotism, of their
love for the poor, and of their knowledge about government." 4
The importance of maintaining effective controls over society not only
served to sustain the right of property and the economic structure, but
also increased as a consequence of the "racial war" that broke out in
Santo Domingo. This war determined the immediate objectives of regulat-
ing the growth of the Black population and of perfecting the means of
control and repression. The first objective was accomplished through the
decree of August 14, 1810, drawn up by the Supreme Junta of Venezuela
which stated, "The introduction of Blacks into these provinces is forbid-
den." The second objective was accomplished by creating a national
guard with the specific mission of repressing slaves.
Thus, the crisis in the slaveocracies of Latin America resulted from the
coincidence of the slavery crisis with the societal crisis in Europe and was
characterized by the following events: in the first place, the dominant
Creole classes became aware that in establishing new countries they had
to offer an answer to the slave question. In the second place, from the
 Flight and Confrontation 33

very beginning of the crisis, a basic norm was established regarding slave
expectations that, with certain variants, was reproduced throughout Latin
America.
In the third place, the methods used by slaves in their resistance to
slavery were changed, quantitatively and qualitatively, when they were
called upon to participate in the struggle for independence (which they
associated with their aspirations of freedom and equality). This call to
action from without, unrelated to the slaves' aims, in the end had the
effect of changing into a struggle against slavery what had previously been
basically the individual slave's fight for his freedom.
It was during the wars of independence that the slaveowners, the

Creoles and the Spaniards, first experimented with a new attitude towards
slavery. I will venture to explain some of the stages and ideas developed
during this period.
It is interesting to note that at the beginning of the period, which varied
in duration in each area, rebels and loyalists both made win the
efforts to
slaves over to their cause by urging them to participate in the struggle.
This encouragement to fight (often consisting of pure and simple recruit-
ment) did not necessarily include an offer of freedom, as it did in the case
of the slave rebellions against the first Venezuelan Republic (1811-1812)
promoted by the clergy.
It was during the second phase of this period that participation of
slaves became a prerequisite for freedom, as can be observed in Bolivar's
decrees of 1816 (as in the ordinances of 1797). However, some of the
revolutionary heroes were genuinely in favor of abolition. The constant
debate between those who in some way encouraged the participation of
slaves in the wars and those who, aware of the system's requirements,
were favor of keeping the slaves on the sidelines of the struggle as a
in
means of avoiding the proliferation of the non-White population, accom-
panied the various phases of the independence period.
In the absence of any systematic study of the participation of Black
slaves in the wars of independence, it has been difficult to establish the
connection between the resistance to slavery and the new political situa-
tion. However, it is clear that by the end of the wars, the liberal republic
had developed the following attitudes towards the slave question: (a) slav-
ery as an institution was condemned through legislation and according to
ideological principles, even though its real extinction was subordinated to
economic, financial, and a system
political considerations; (b) slavery as
was by prohibition of the slave trade, reinforced by
structurally affected
the new world order that had been initiated and promoted by Great Brit-
ain; and (c) slavery as a socioeconomic structural order was generally
preserved through legislative provisions, administrative proceedings, and
the tolerance of some illegal practices.
To summarize, a situation was created based on two powerful con-
34 Africa in Latin America

cerns of the new dominant class: In the first place, the effective control of
societies disrupted by the war was resumed, which implied the reestab-
lishment of slavery. This is why we can speak in terms of the recurrence
of slavery after independence. In the second place, the White sector of
the population was invigorated by realigning previously incompatible
groups and by encouraging large waves of White immigrants to enter the
countries, while prohibiting Black immigration (the prohibition of the
slave trade soon developed into the pure and simple prohibition of Black
immigration).
The establishment of republican regimes became a severe threat to the
Creoles, since the rupture with the colonial orderwas brought about by
lengthy wars that were cruel and filled with profound social repercus-
sions. The recurrence of slavery, the growing non- White population, the
demographic and social weakening of the Creoles, all played a crucial role
in the rapid process of disenchantment that followed initial illusions that
the coming of a new social order would replace with positive values the
somber traits of the old colonial order.
The Creole, oppressor and exploiter of Indians and Blacks, imposed
upon the colonial order a new social order in which he became a member
of the dominant class. As the heir to the destiny of the "implanted" Latin
American society, he faced the challenge of turning into reality the na-
tional ideal, so laboriously formulated during the war. It is impossible, in
this short essay, to mention even briefly theproblems of establishing the
new republic. Let it suffice to point out that it soon became obvious to the
dominated classes that, with regard to slavery, the new order was a reflec-
tion of the old, though without the presence of royal representatives.
It became quite clear that, as far as slaves were concerned, the reestab-

lishment of the economies destroyed by the war was to be achieved by a

more rational and careful exploitation of their work, by prolonging and
reinforcing the slave system (in spite of the existence of a system of
manumission which was as grudging in theory as it was disregarded in
practice) by controlling the situation through police force and judicial
repression, conditions that echoed those at the end of the eighteenth
century. Thus, conditions were created that encouraged the same forms
of resistance to slavery as those practiced under the Spanish colonial
order, such as unwillingness to work, marronage, and rebellion.
It is worth mentioning that for the republican period, the problems

regarding historic sources are identical to those of the colonial period.

The persistence of maroon settlements and the frequency of notices in the
republican press offering rewards for fugitive slaves point to the conflict
between reality and ideology in the doctrine of militant liberalism.
The difficulties encountered by Creoles as they established the republic
soon led to a desperate search for explanations, which attempted to un-
cover the root of their failures and to present curative proposals. The
extensive list of remedies served basically to absolve the ruling class of all
 Flight and Confrontation 35

responsibility and placed the blame for all failings squarely upon the
shoulders of Indians, wherever there were Indians, and upon Blacks,
all

wherever these accounted for a large part of the population.

It thus became possible to strengthen even further the social and ethnic

discriminatory web that had entangled both slave and Black almost since
the discovery of America. The Black was no longer merely a hindrance:
he was now the real obstacle to the development of society and the
achievement of the republican order. Not slavery: the Black. In such an
ideological climate, it is understandable that the legal abolition of slavery
became basically a political and an administrative problem. The funda-
mental problem was no longer the incorporation of a contingent of slaves
into a free society, but rather the existence and growth of a large sector of
non-Whites inexorably marching towards control of the society. Aboli-
tion, once the right of property was guaranteed, resolved a number of
problems, not only economic but also social: it dissipated tension, con-
flict, and even the potential of insurgency, which could have become

particularly dangerous given the ethnic composition of the population; it

homogenized the dominated class under conditions that made control
easier; and it opened an escape valve for egalitarian pressures. It re-
vealed, in sum, that, as slaves, Blacks had the ability to exert pressure
disproportionate to their numbers, whereas, atomized by a "free" society,
they became pariahs, overwhelmed by the weight of deculturation and
servitude. would be hard to find a more important political step than
It

abolition taken by the Creoles once they became aware of the threat
represented by the non-White population, and once they were convinced
of the futility of their efforts at demographic and social reinforcement
through massive immigration of Whites. Their wisdom was revealed by
their eagerness to abolish slavery, and thus take away the detonator that
could blow up the volatile social situation.

The negative portrayal of Blacks as the explanation for the chaotic

some of the Latinamerican republics in the nineteenth century
situation in
was reinforced in the years following abolition. The racist simplicism that
Blacks were not the prime cause of all delays because they were slaves,
but because they were Blacks, gained popularity. The unrelenting and
insiduous debate on the abilities of Blacks, a debate in which racism used
every possible argument and the social context was deliberately ignored,
placed Blacks in a very difficult position. They were operating in a dis-
criminatory social order and had to carry with them the burden of slavery
as a social and a cultural reality.
During this new phase of slavery, flight and confrontation were no
longer viewed as resistance to slavery. Among freed Blacks one can find
similar reactions to a society marred by racial prejudice and by the mar-
ginalization of Black people.
Rebellion as a way of escaping slavery merged into civil war before and
36 Africa in Latin America

after abolition in those Latin American societies that had broken their
colonial ties at the beginning of the nineteenth century.One example was
the rebellion of free Blacks at Aponte, that took place in Cuba in 1811.
Flight and marronage also had their counterparts among the free
groups before and after the abolition of slavery. Perhaps one could also
include in this analysis Black attempts to return to Africa, as well as the
isolation of many units of the Black population. However this should not
be the definitive explanation for such phenomena.
In societies where Blacks were few or very dispersed, abolition was
the final blow to resistance to deculturation, even though this might seem
to contradict the deculturing nature of slavery. In fact, the last pos-
sibilities of resistance vanished as soon as direct coercion ceased, as soon
as Blacks were faced with the problems of becoming incorporated into a
discriminatory society without even the support of a viable cultural iden-
tity. The large Black populations of Cuba and Brazil had a totally different
experience, since it was possible for them to preserve and to cultivate a
part of their cultural identity.
Thus a situation developed which I will refer to as "cultural marron-
age, " by which I mean a flight from all that was Black. This occurred
when socioeconomic progress, in a medium where all that is African was
rejected through prejudice, could only be achieved by denying one's
Black African past. Cuba offers some incredible examples of cultural
marronage. The most important Black cultural society was called the
"Athens Club," and the most important Black recreation society was
called "The Young Waltzers" (later the spelling was changed to the Span-
ish vals). It is also significant that a group of Black university intellectuals
in 1902 asked for and obtained from the government the prohibition of
other comparsas and other forms of Black dance and music.
However, the mimicking of "White" values to escape slavery, which
affected both freed slaves and old slaves once abolition had occurred,
when seen does not really become an alterna-
in a sociocultural context,
tive to the reestablishment of "Black" values. Structural conditions deter-
mined both alternatives and usually they would evolve into a cultural
confinement for the Black man, a cultural confinement that only differed
from that of other exploited sectors within society because it carried with
it the additional burden of discrimination that was part of the legacy of

slavery. In summary, a situation developed in which Blacks were simply

denied access to the higher cultural levels and to the social participation
that would have permitted them to act efficiently whether mimicking
"White" values or revaluing "Black" values.
Therefore, one must study this problem in the context of social struc-
tures and of possibilities for vertical mobility. Such possibilities must be
understood not as exceptions that existed even in times of the most rigid
slavery, but as institutionalized and regular guidelines. One should not
 Flight and Confrontation 37

even though the slaveowners wanted to maintain

lose sight of the fact that
a system of exploitation, they were no less interested in preserving White
hegemony. For this reason it was essential that Black freedom, no matter
how obtained, should not bring with it more than a rhetorical equality,
never a real one. The health of the system and of the entire society hinged
upon this. Thus, abolition never contemplated the fact that the old slave
could have any other destiny than that of swelling the ranks of the peons,
both ignorant and poor. That was the reason for rigorous social
stratification, and social and racial discrimination.
The "re-evaluation of Black values," seen neither as a position of re-
treat nor as a historically reactionary evocation of nostalgia, must occur
intrasocially, or else it becomes a sort of autosegregation. This presup-
poses the development of a set of social, economic, and cultural attitudes
that could not appear within the framework of social structures that would
have to be shaken to their roots in order for such a revaluation to occur.
Therefore in republican societies that developed as a result of the crisis in
the structure of the colonial societies of Latin America, pro-African or
anti-African, pro-Black or anti-Black positions have all been the result of
a class struggle in which class was determined by skin color. But when the
class structure is annihilated, such ideology also dies, although not im-
mediately, since mental attitudes often survive the structural reasons that
accounted for their existence.
To summarize, the absolute destruction of slavery in Latin America
does not seem possible within a framework of a society divided into
classes, such as the capitalist society, not only since its "unequalizing"
effect counters the egalitarian aspiration of the former slaves, but also
because capitalism reinforces the inequitable principles of a slaveocracy.
So long as this situation remains unchanged, the resistance to slavery
initiated by Black slaves and continued by freed Blacks before and after
abolition, can enrich itself with new forms of struggles or witness the
transformation of a few nuances, yet under such circumstances the strug-
gle against slavery and its lasting effects will never cease.

Notes

1. This section is based principally and extensively, on concepts first put forth

by Manuel Moreno Fraginals.

2. Miguel Acosta Saignes, Vida de los Esclavos Negros en Venezuela (Caracas:
1967), pp. 249-250.
3. Information made available by Manuel Moreno Fraginals.
4. Casto Fulgencio López, Juan Picornell y la Conspiración de Gual y España
(Madrid: 1955).
 3

Social Organization and Alienation

Octavio Ianni

Race and Culture

In Latin America and in the Caribbean, the Africans became Blacks and
Mulattoes. During the course of centuries, and under the most varied
social conditions, the Africans' many personifications or social figurations
came to include the following: slave, newly arrived African, Creole,
Ladino, free born, freedman, Mulatto or Black. Confronted with Whites,
Indians, Mestizos, European immigrants, Asian immigrants, and other
social groups, Africans were gradually transformed into Blacks and
Mulattoes. And it is Blacks and the Mulattoes who appear on the White
social horizon, and on their own social horizon, in the twentieth century.
They appear in work relationships, in politics, in religion, in play, in sex
and in other relationships as social types that differ from Whites in their

physical, phenotypical, psychological, and cultural attributes.

1

With re-
gard to social relations Whites and Blacks themselves end up thinking and
acting as though Blacks had a different culture —
another way of evaluat-
ing relationships among people, with nature, and with the supernatural. In
general, theirs is a subordinate race. Blacks are not like Whites: they are

different and strange. In almost all countries, Blacks appear as the second
or third race after Whites and Indians.
This is the psychological significance of the Black race. The racial
differences, socially reworked, engendered, or codified, are constantly
being recreated and reproduced, preserving, altering, reducing, or even
accentuating the physical, phenotypical, psychological, or cultural traits

that distinguish Whites from Blacks. The biological, cultural, national,

linguistic, religious, and other distinctions and differences are constantly
being recreated and reproduced in the relationships between persons,
families, groups, and social classes. Within the various strata of social
organization, in work relations, in religious practices, in the relationship
between the sexes, in the family, in regard to artistic production and free
time, or in other situations, the races are constantly being recreated and
reproduced as socially different and unequal. In every country the social
criteria employed to classify people, groups, or classes can vary. But in
each case, for the White, the Indian, the Mestizo, the Italian, the German,
the Japanese, the English, the French, and others, Blacks belong to a
different race, to a universe of values and sociocultural norms that can be
somewhat or very different from that of Whites.
38
 Social Organization and Alienation 39

More specifically, the criteria that define social races differ from one
region to the other in the Americas. In one region the important criterion is

ancestry, in another sociocultural criteria prevail, and in the third, physical

appearance is the fundamental base for the classification of social races. As
a result, a different number of social races and a different structural ordering
of racial relations emerges in each one of these regions. The different ways
in which each region conceives of the social races reflect the relations
between people of various biological and cultural origins within a large
2
society.

It is in these terms that Blacks emerge on the horizon of scientific

analysis. They appear to Whites, and even to themselves, as social types
whose sociability and culture present traits that differentiate them from
Whites. Some of their activities, as well as the values that organize these
activities, seem and to discriminate against Blacks to the
to differentiate
point of transforming them into a problem or a challenge to Whites and to
themselves. The White attempts to find in the Black the motive for the
social distance, the prejudice and the tensions that appear in the relation-
ships between the two. The Black, on the other hand, tries to enter and to
move within the network of social relations where he appears different,
alienated, and discriminated against by the White. The identity of the
White contains a kind of reflection of the identity he gives to the Black.
And the latter, to achieve an identity, must accept passively or critically
the identity given to him by the White. This is the core of the tense social
universe within which the Black appears as a problem not only to the
White but also to himself and to the social researcher.
This search for the social and cultural particularity of Blacks is present
in a large body of the research and interpretations of anthropologists,
sociologists, historians, and other social researchers who have worked
with the problem of social relations between Whites and Blacks in Latin
America and the Caribbean. Fernando Ortiz, Gilberto Freyre, Melville J.
Herskovits, E. Franklin Frazier, Frank Tannenbaum, Marvin Harris,
H. Hoetink, Eugene D. Genovese, J. Halcro Ferguson, Sidney W. Mintz,
David Brion Davis, Magnus Mórner, Verena Martinez Alier, Florestan
Fernandes and Roger Bastide are some of the social scientists interested
in researching and explaining the historic and cultural contents of the
relations between Blacks and Whites in Latin American and Caribbean
countries. It is the problems discussed above that appear on the cultural
3
scale devised by Herskovits, first published in 1945. His system
categorizes information based on the presence of African cultural ele-
ments in various American and Caribbean countries. This chart permits
us to see how the cultural elements are distributed among various types of
activity intowhich Black and White relationships are organized, such as
technology, economic life, social organization, institutions, religion,
magic, art, folklore, music, and language. Although Herskovits tried to
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 Social Organization and Alienation 41

show how African culture persisted in the American and Caribbean coun-
tries, we can also view the table of cultural Africanisms as a table of
cultural losses, or as a scale of recreated cultural forms (see Table 1).

Another significance of the data presented by Herskovits could be to

show how researchers attempt to explain, through cultural Africanisms,
the metamorphosis of Africans into Blacks and Mulattoes. Understanding
how Africans changed into Blacks and Mulattoes is certainly a crucial
question, as is the reason why
White, Black, and Mulatto relationships
became marked and tainted by racial differences rather than extinguishing
or diluting such differences. To explain this metamorphosis, anthropolo-
gists, sociologists and historians turn to the relationship between race and
culture.
Let us therefore examine how the relationship between African culture
and the Black condition are usually treated. To understand the social
condition of Blacks in Latin America and the Caribbean we can begin by
looking at what appears to be the peculiarity of their culture. There are at
least three different interpretations of the cultural contribution of African
people and their descendants to Latin American and Caribbean societies.
Let us describe them briefly:
The first interpretation establishes that African culture, as such, is

present in all slave societies. This culture exists, of course, in varying

degrees, in different social activities and organizations such as religion,
folklore, music, language, the family, cooking, etc. It also emerges in
different intensities according to country, region, and locality, but it is

always present, and can be recognized as being originally African, distinct

from European, Asian, or Indian cultures. This means that some aspects
of the social and cultural life of Black populations in Latin America and
the Caribbean, as well as certain aspects of the relationship between
Whites and Blacks, are influenced by African cultural elements. These
elements are preserved by the descendants of Africans as cultural surviv-
als that are transmitted to individuals, families, groups, and communities.
As for the second interpretation, it maintains that the culture brought
by the Africans was more or less destroyed and reworked through slav-
ery. With regard to the social and technological organization of produc-
tion relations, slavery brought its own culture that had little or nothing to
do with European, African, Indian, or Asian cultural elements. The cen-
turies of slave work broke all the preexisting cultural contributions and
produced a peculiar, vigorous culture that took root and expanded within
the society, among individuals, families, groups, and social classes.
Therefore, what appeared later, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
as Black culture was only a culture produced by slave society. Within the
former slave societies, typical slave cultural elements persisted well into
the twentieth century. These were the elements that appeared in religious
practices, magic, music, family organization, cuisine, and other aspects of
42 Africa in Latin America

Black social activity in Latin America and in the Caribbean. Few African
elements were preserved; those that did survive would have been re-
worked by relationships and structures deriving from slavery.
A third interpretation maintains that both the African and slave cul-
tures were destroyed and superseded by the capitalist relationships and
structures that became predominant in Latin American and Caribbean
societies in the twentieth century. Of course one can still identify African
and slave cultural elements in the life patterns of Blacks and Whites in the
twentieth century; such elements can be detected in religion, music, folk-
lore, family organization, cooking, language, and other aspects of social
life. However, the dominant trait is capitalist culture —
a heterogeneous
culture, unequal as well as contradictory, whose relationships and struc-
tures only make sense in terms of the capitalist mode of production.
These three interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
One can be a part of another. In a certain way the first and second can be
encompassed within the third. The fact that capitalist relationships and
structures create their own cultural elements, be they material, organiza-
tional, or spiritual,does not prevent the coexistence of certain African
and slave-related cultural elements. Capitalist relationships and struc-
tures have the ability to create and to recreate the new as well as the old.
The heterogeneity, inequality, and cultural contradictions (in both mate-
rial and spiritual terms) must be a part of the heterogeneity, inequality,

and contradiction typical of capitalist relationships and structures.

The common denominator of each of these interpretations of the cul-
tural contribution of Africans to Latin American and Caribbean societies,
is the uniqueness of the Black. On what terms and for what reasons does

the Black appear to the White and to himself as a unique social type, a
different race with a different way of thinking, feeling and acting?
To become Blacks in twentieth-century Latin America and the Carib-
bean, Africans were not only first slaves, but they were also transformed
into laborers. Furthermore, in the twentieth century Blacks were trans-
formed, or transformed themselves, into industrial workers, agricultural
workers, day laborers, specialists, functionaries, employees, merchants,
politicians, intellectuals, or other social types. And it is under those cir-
cumstances that they do not reproduce themselves as Africans or as
slaves in the twentieth century. What remains of the African or of the
slave in their culture or in their Weltanschauung, can hardly be explained
as the survivals, the mixture of cultures, or the syncretisms that hide the
ex- African or the ex-slave. What remains of the African or the slave in the
culture and the worldview of Blacks in Latin America and the Caribbean
is that which is continuously recreated and reproduced. But this constant

recreation and reproduction is not decided or acted upon by Blacks them-

selves, but by the conditions and the relationships of interdependence,
alienation, and antagonism determined by capitalism.
 —
Social Organization and Alienation 43

This is true to the point that what seems to be African or Black culture
in Latin America and the Caribbean really consists of components in-
trinsic to the present-day, living culture of these countries. In santería, in
voodoo, in candomblé, in umbanda, and in other expressions of the reli-
gious culture of Blacks and Mulattoes, we find not only elements of spirit-
ism and Catholicism, but we also find White, Indian, Mestizo, German,
Italian, and Polish elements. Black religions, just like magic, music, folk-
lore, and other expressions of Black and Mulatto life, are more or less
absorbed or reworked by the existing cultural systems in those countries.
It is not by chance, exoticism, or cultural survival that certain "African,"

"slave," or "Black" cultural elements emerge and reemerge, are created

and reproduced in the big cities and in the large industrial centers of each
country. In Latin America and in the Caribbean, the Black cultures
—
working class, middle class, or other are popular dimensions of the
political and economic relationships that guarantee the reproduction of
society with its harmony, inequality, and contradictions.

Social Reproduction of the Races

In the twentieth century Blacks and Mulattoes are continually recreated

and socially reproduced by the same social relationships that recreate and
reproduce members of the other "races," such as Whites, Indians, Mes-
tizos, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Jews, Italians, Germans,
British, French, Dutch, Northamericans, and others. In each of the na-
tional societies that form Latin America and the Caribbean, some, and at
times all, of these groups are socially recreated and reproduced by the
social relationships that organize and move each society. In work, polit-
ical, religious,sexual, recreational, and other relationships, they repro-
duce Therefore anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, and other
socially.
social researchers find different signs of "European," "African," "Asian,"
and "Indian" cultural elements in the social organization in economic,
4
religious, and other activities.
It must be understood that the continuous reproduction of racial cate-

gories also implies the recreation and reproduction of African and slave
cultures. On plantations, in haciendas, sugar mills, factories, and offices,
at home, in schools, barracks, churches, temples, etc., the African and
slave cultural elements appear, sometimes clearly, at other times blurred.
However, in every case, the elements appear and reappear only because
they are recreated and reproduced socially by the various races in their
activities and in their political, economic, and cultural relationships. Gen-
erally, it is the course of concrete social relations in the material and
spiritual spheres (hacienda, factory, school, church, etc.) that determines
the invention and reinvention, or the recreation and reproduction, of the
cultural values, behavior standards, ideas, ideals, thought patterns, racial
44 Africa in Latin America

characteristics, phenotypical traits, and cultural traits that determine

whether the Black, the Mulatto, the White, the Indian, the Mestizo, and
others will be taken practically and ideologically as different and unequal
racial categories.
Reviewing the entire picture and focusing on some characteristics of
the relationships between African, slave, and Black cultural and social
organization in Latin America and the Caribbean, Roger Bastide gives us
the following summary:

In the first been a separate society. Black

place, Black society has never
society and slavery have destroyed the African models, and the Black
. . .

man has reacted by restructuring his community. He was no longer a man

surrounded by nature, but formed new institutions; he gave himself a new
life style and he created for himself his own organization, apart from the

Whites. . . .

second place, we have learned to distinguish, depending on the

In the
region, two types of communities: those in which African models persist, of
course under pressure of the environment, and which certainly are forced to
change in order to adapt themselves and to be accepted; we will call these
'African communities. " And those, in which, to the contrary, the pressures
of the environment have been stronger than the pieces of collective mem-
ory, who were employed as servants for centuries, but where racial segrega-
tion has not permitted that the descendants of slaves accept the cultural
models of their masters; in these cases the Black man has had to invent new
life styles within the society, in response to his isolation, to his work pat-
terns,and to his new necessities; we shall call these "Black communities."
Black, because the White man is excluded from them, but not African,
because these communities have lost the memory of their former mother
country.
These two types of communities are no more than ideal abstractions. In
fact, we are faced with a continuity between the two types. Thus, one sector
of a society can remain purely African, such as religion, while another
responds to the new environment, such as the family or economic structure.
Naturally, the Black maroon communities are closest to the first type, those
formed by new arrivals from Africa. The communities formed following the
abolition of servile labor, such as the Creoles who lived in isolation in the
countryside, are closest to the second type. Within the Black villages of the
Caribbean and South America we find an intermediate type, because "na-
tions" could easily be formed during the slave era, without White control, in
order to secretly hold on to traditions. However, among themselves, these
Blacks were forced to comply to the State's matrimonial, economic and
5
political laws, and thus to adapt to the model imposed upon them in exile.

The social recreation and reproduction of Blacks and Mulattoes,

among other racial categories, occurs only within political and economic
relationships that establish the basis for the continuing recreation and
reproduction of the society's relationships and structures. In this perspec-
 —
Social Organization and Alienation 45

tive the great complexity ofracial composition that organizes and moves
the relationships between Blacks, Mulattoes, and Whites, begins to be-
come clearer. At first the racial map of Latin America and the Caribbean
seems quite complex, heterogeneous, and even contradictory. But, when
seen in the context of politicoeconomic conditions in which social rela-
tions and structures are reproduced, this map acquires more precise con-
tours and movements. In an article on Caribbean societies, Sidney W.
Mintz describes in a fairly clear manner some of the aspects of the rela-
tionship between race and social organization. The relationships between
the structural differentiation process and the recreation, reordering, and
reproduction processes of relationships and categories become obvious:

Caribbean "racial" composition is highly diverse. First, the phenotypic

variety of Caribbean peoples is unusual, due both to the circumstances of
immigration, and to the lengthy colonial careers of their component
societies. Second, the codes of social relationships typifying these societies
take account of phenotypic variety, but each society employs its code in its

own distinctive fashion. Hence, while "race" is important throughout, its

significance and its particular uses in social assortment vary from one Carib-
bean society to another. If one conjures up a "racial map" of the region,
employing the criteria common to white middle-class North Americans, one
finds societies such as Haiti or Jamaica, in which nearly everyone appears
to be of African or largely African origin, and others such as Puerto Rico,
Cuba, Saba, or the Cayman Islands, where this is much less the case. But
since perceptions of physical type are culturally conventionalized, such a
map does violence to the realities of Caribbean social life. A more effective
map would depict perceived "race," for those persons who fall within all of
the locally defined categories between black and white. While a number of
writers have contributed significantly to our understanding of what this map
might be like, it remains largely imaginary, and its complexity is difficult to
grasp. Yet a third such imaginary map could deal with ethnic divisions
with those population segments falling outside any black-white scale for —
which perceived cultural differences (including stereotypes), rather than
perceived physical differences, appear to constitute the primary basis of
social assortment or allocation.
But "maps" of these societies in terms of "race," perceived race, and
ethnicity evade what many theorists would regard as a much more obvious
and fundamental basis of assortment: the class structure. Caribbean
societies are, of course, stratified and class-differentiated entities. Color and
ethnicity are not neatly correlated with class membership, even if it was
— —
once generally true and, to a very large extent, still is that lightness or
whiteness and upper status tend to accompany each other, much as do
darkness and lower status. What is more, the introduction of large popula-
tions that are not perceived to be aligned along any single gradient from
blackness to whiteness, such as the Indians in Trinidad or the Chinese in
Cuba, has made much more complicated any analysis of the relationship
among economic status, physical type, and ethnic identity.
46 Africa in Latin America

While many features of the traditional stratification systems of the region

are still operative, changes in class structure have proceeded along different

lines, such as the decline of local planter classes, the emergence of corpo-
rate, foreign plantation systems, the growth of tertiary, service-rendering
sectors, the development of externally oriented consumer economies, the
emigration of large populations, etc. These changes have affected the distri-
bution of persons of particular physical or ethnic identities within local
social systems, and the linkage between these identities and class member-
ship has accordingly become more nuanced. Changes in political arrange-
ments have also altered the traditional picture. To note but two very differ-
ent cases, in recent decades in both Cuba and Haiti a clear upward
movement in position or in life-chances for substantial numbers of darker
persons has marked political change; many would argue for parallel
phenomena in other parts of the region as well. In these ways, the sociolog-
ical complexity of these societies may be seen to have increased
significantly, in accord with political, economic, and demographic proc-
6
esses that extend themselves over time.

The same basic differentiation process of the social structure has also
occurred in the Latinamerican societies outside the Caribbean. In the
twentieth century, the social division of labor and the expansion of pro-
ductive forces brought about, in some cases, the massive immigration of
Europeans and Asians into the area. It is obvious that this immigration
modified the characteristics of the White population of Spanish, Portu-
guese, English, French, and other origins. This means that the immigra-
tion altered the entire demographic, racial, social, and cultural context
within which the Blacks and Mulattoes operated.
Nowadays there are further expansions of urbanization and of produc-
tive forces in the industrial sector. Along with agriculture, mining, and
other activities, the service, transportation and commercial sectors have
become more dynamic. In some cases, industrialization as a basic process
7
decisively influences and even determines social relations. Urbanization
and industrialization occur simultaneously with migration from rural
areas and small towns to larger urban centers. Sometimes these large
urban centers are also important industrial centers. From an historical-
structural perspective, the social division of work, the expansion of pro-
ductive forces, urbanization, industrialization, and the growth of the com-
mercial, transportation, and service sectors modify the structure of social
and racial relations quite profoundly. The African and slave cultures "get
lost" in the capitalist culture. That is, in a society based on salaried work,
on production and earning requirements, and the supremacy of capitalist
monopoly, the values and cultural norms inherited from Africa and from
slavery lose their original meanings and acquire others. As the twentieth
century progressed, we find that the capitalist organization of production
relationships became dominant. Gradually, all aspects of social life be-
 Social Organization and Alienation 47

came determined, or recreated and reproduced, according to the require-

ments of the politicoeconomic relationships of capitalism. In this context,
what appears to be the survival of an African or slave cultural trait can
only be understood as a cultural element inserted into current capitalist
relationships. What seems to predate capitalism only preserves this ap-
pearance. Just as the social relationships or the politicoeconomic struc-
tures are recreated and reproduced according to the conditions and neces-
sities of the forces that are dominant in society, the same applies to the
cultural elements.
Thus, in the social formation of capitalist societies, social organization
continuously redistributes and reclassifies persons, families, and groups
by sex, age, educational level, religion, ethnicity, race, and social class, in
addition to fundamental or secondary attributes. Therefore, in the twen-
tieth century people are also classified as White, Black, Mulatto, Indian,
Mestizo, Italian, German, Japanese, and so forth. In the social reproduc-
tion of life, in factories, haciendas, schools, churches, barracks, and other
areas of society, both the material and the spiritual are reproduced. In
recreating and reproducing social relationships, society is constantly re-
—
producing the White and the Black and other races according to the—
attributes and to the images that each and all have of themselves, and that
some have with regard to others.

Awareness of Alienation

Among Blacks and Mulattoes of Latin America and the Caribbean an

awareness of alienation is most frequently perceived in the realm of reli-
gious values and practices. Under slavery, as well as in the class societies
of the twentieth century, Black religion seems to be the sociocultural
sphere in which the understanding, be it naive or critical, of the alienated
lifestyle of Blacks and Mulattoes is most evident.
In this perspective, the two forms of religion presented by Roger Bas-
tide can be considered as two types of organization of Black awareness.
Bastide classified the stabilized religions as those "in preserve" and "live"
religions. Both are religions lived by Blacks, Mulattoes, and also some
Whites. However, whereas one group is relatively stable, the other
changes. Bastide places the Afro-Brazilian religions in the first group and
Haitian voodoo in the second group.

Religions "in preserve": . Against the unrelenting corrosion by society,

. .

Black culture resists by congealing, becoming immobile, for fear that any
change could indicate its end. Thus a phenomenon, if we can thus call it, of
one prefers a comparison with what an
cultural mineralization, occurs; or, if

individual experiences when he endangered by the envi-

feels his integrity
ronment, a defense mechanism. Religion is what is lived but what is not
48 Africa in Latin America

living, in the does not develop, that it does not change with
sense that it

time, that it is what has been taught by the ances-

fixed in accordance with
tors. ... In fact, Brazil has never been isolated from Africa, and after a
relative period of isolation, communications are currently being resumed.
Thus the Afro-Brazilian sects remain in contact with their mother religions.
"Live" Religions: This is not the case with other Afro-American religions,
particularly with regard to Haitian voodoo. The result has been the lack
. . .

of centralization of one religion, which, having been cut off from its African
links, burst into multiple sects, that, having departed from one nucleus,
each developed in their own manner. . . .

In fact, voodoo has become, as we have already said, the sword to fight
against European culture, an expression of the organization, the necessities
and the aspirations of the national peasant society, that will change, as a
consequence, as the agrarian structures change.

The religions that stabilized or were "preserved" and the "live" reli-
gions can thus be taken as two different types of organization of the social
conscience of the Black and Mulatto populations. It so happens that in
religion, the critical awareness always appears in its "innocent" form,
stylized, sublimated, and inverted. In Black religion Blacks also seek
refuge, preserve themselves, and become organized to confront the
Whites, the power of the state, and other expressions of alienated social
relations. In Brazil, the Afro-Brazilian centers or cult sites, must register
with the police, which is not the case with other churches and sects.
Most researchers recognize that there are African cultural traits in the
Black religions of Latin America and the Caribbean. Together with music,
folklore, and magic, religion is the part of social life in which many origi-
nally African cultural traits remain. Even when Black religion in a given
country is strongly impregnated with elements of spiritism or Catholi-
cism, researchers tend to believe that beneath the appearances of syncret-
ism there exists a basically African religion. Some authors suggest that
the borrowing of non- African cultural elements, such as Catholicism,
spiritism, and Indian religions, does not alter the African spirit of Black
religion. Even in cases where the experience of slavery was quite deep
and lengthy, religion (together with folklore, music, and magic) is con-
sidered a social trait in which African cultural elements prevail or persist.
Herskovits explains that music, folklore, magic, and religion retained
more of their African nature than economy, technology, and art, because,
during slavery, the masters were far more interested in controlling the
economic and technological aspects of the life of their slaves. What was
expressed in legends or in songs was of little importance to the masters,
who mounted few obstacles to its preservation. There were
therefore
some external controls on religion; magic, since it was mostly secret, was
not directed by the masters. Herskovits accounts for the failure of African
art to survive in places other than Guyana, and to a lesser degree Brazil,
 Social Organization and Alienation 49

by proposing that the life of slaves was so strictly organized for produc-
tive purposes that there was little time for artistic expression. 9
In view of all this, Bastide suggests that the Black religions are not
African, but largely syncretic. He believes that the slave trade and slavery
vastly destroyed African culture. Bastide describes the varying degrees of
syncretism as follows: Ethnically, syncretism is far more pronounced in
the case of theDahomans than the Yorubas, and it is less pronounced in
the Bantu who were the most vulnerable to external influences. Ecologic-
ally, syncretism is stronger in rural areas than in towns, where freed
slaves could form their "nations." Institutionally, syncretism is more ac-
tive in "live" than in "preserved" religions. Sociologically, syncretism
varies depending on the morphology, the institutional level, and the level
of occurrence of collective awareness. And Bastide concludes:

It is necessary to take into account the nature of the occurrences that are
being studied. The rule for religion lies in the establishment of correspon-
dences; the rule for magic lies in accumulation.
Syncretism through the correspondence of gods and saints is a funda-
mental process and therefore the most researched. It is explained, histori-
cally, through the necessity of slaves, during colonial times, to hide their
pagan ceremonies from the eyes of the whites; thus they danced before a
Catholic altar, and the masters, in view of such an extravagant act, did not
imagine that the Black dances were directed to the African divinities, rather
,0
than the paintings and statues of saints. . . .

During the course of centuries of slavery, relationships of political

domination and economic appropriation permitted the master class to
destroy and to recreate or restructure the cultural elements of the slave
class. Observe that slavery was the form taken by the acculturation of
Africans, and that this acculturation was enforced, submitted to, and
organized according to the interests and the predominance of a caste of
Whites. Thus, even for Bastide, what was once African became Black
through slavery. Through this process, Black religion became a more or
less autonomous, totally syncretic form. With this interpretative perspec-
tive, Bastide unravels the mixtures and correspondences between Black
and White, or Catholic and Afroamerican divinities. This data is repre-
sented in table 2."
It has already been suggested that Black religion is a religion of the
defeated; of the defeated who maintain a funda-
in their religious practice
mental element of resistance to the domination of the conqueror. A reli-
gion of the defeated, a subculture, or a counterculture, these are the
hypotheses or interpretations that emerge from some of the analyses. For
beneath the Africanisms, or under the mixtures and correspondences of
religious syncretism, there was presumed to be a subculture or a counter-
culture of a socially subordinate nature.
 Table 2
The Correspondence of Gods and Saints
 Social Organization and Alienation 51

It has frequently been noted that, when an invading people imposes its

religion upon the defeated, a disequilibrium of values occurs, following the

transition of the more or less egalitarian society into one that is more or less
stratified. The religion of the conqueror becomes the only valid public reli-
gion for the masses, while the religion of the defeated . . . degenerates into
magic or is transformed into a clandestine religion based on initiation rites
and secrecy. . This secrecy, however, bothers the Whites, who believe
. .

that, within the places of worship of closed sects frightening forces are being
manipulated, and since they don't always have a clean conscience regarding
their relations with Blacks, they fear that these forces could be used against
them. This thought does not lack substance, as slaves, in effect, used
Ochún, Ogún and the herbs of Osain to fight against the economic and racial
oppression of the dominant class. 12

This interpretation is and presents some convincing

quite attractive
elements. It shows that Latin American and Caribbean Blacks of the
twentieth century hold on to, or recreate cultural elements that originated
in Africa to defend themselves and to oppose the domination of Whites.
In this sense, the Black religion, be it syncretic or not, is a type of spiritual
catacomb which the Black seeks refuge, hides, resists, or expresses
in
some struggle against the supremacy of the White.
But the interpretation of Black religion as a type of counterculture does
not clarify two basic questions. In the first place, it is based on the Black-
White opposition, considered, basically, as racial. There is no doubt that
the relationships of interdependence and alienation between Whites and
Blacks generate an antagonism that is unbearable for Blacks. To the
ideology of White supremacy (in countries where Whites dominate the
political and economic power structures), Blacks tend to present an op-
posing counterideology. In the Black Weltanschauung, with regard to
racial categories based on social relations of production that also include
Whites, it is obvious that religion could have the nature of a countercul-
ture or could inscribe itself within the framework of a counterideology.
— —
For this purpose and in the second place it would be necessary for the
contents of the Black religion to be the expression of the interdependence
and alienating relations that mark the Black-White relationship. How-
ever, it has still not been proven that the content of Black religion is really
a counterculture or a counter-ideology.
As long as these two questions are not answered, the critical nature of
Black religion remains to be demonstrated. Notice that I do not deny that
Black religion in the Caribbean and in Latin America has a critical nature
or will eventually develop this nature. Likewise, it can be said that there
is a critical component to Black religion. Brazilian candomble Haitian ,

voodoo, and Cuban santería all contain social elements that express
worldviews that are not shared by Whites (other than those who partici-
pate in negrism). There are many indications that Africanism and syncret-
52 Africa in Latin America

ism hide some resistance to the worldview expressed by the racial ideol-
ogy of the White, or to aspects of the dominant culture.
What I am suggesting is that the Africanisms that persist in Black
religion, or in the syncretic forms assumed by this religion, do not in
themselves make it a resistance front in defense of the Black and in
opposition to the White. It is evident that the existing relationships of

interdependence and alienation between Black and White generate an-

tagonisms. What is not clear is that those antagonisms express and ex-
haust the position of Blacks versus Whites. The Blacks I refer to in Latin
America and in the Caribbean are also industrial workers, agricultural
laborers, functionaries, employees, soldiers, students, merchants, intel-
lectuals, petit bourgeois, etc., and so are the Whites. It is therefore crucial
to clarify how race and class reciprocally contain each other; or, when
and how the policy of racial antagonism implies or is manifested in the
policy of class antagonism.

Political Awareness

The metamorphosis of the slave into a Black or a Mulatto was also the
metamorphosis of one form of alienation into another. Through slavery,
slaves were alienated from their work product and from themselves. And
it is because of this condition that they reworked or recreated elements of

their African culture, combined with the culture of their own slave condi-
tion. In this context, religion, magic, music, folklore, and language be-
came expressions of an effort to guarantee a restricted sociocultural uni-
verse in which the slaves sought refuge, expressed themselves, asserted
themselves, and resisted the slave culture. The master class permitted
them this refuge. It even took this sociocultural universe as proof that the
slave class was in fact a different race. Nonetheless, the relationships,
values, and structures expressed through religion, magic, music, folklore,
and language turned into the sociocultural universe in which slaves found
refuge and upon which they focused their rebelliousness, their protest,
and their denial of the slave condition. Blacks and Mulattoes are here
defined by their condition as slaves, while in the class society, the Black is
a free worker. Despite the adverse conditions in which Blacks were
placed within the work force, where they were obligated to compete with
Whites, Indians, Mestizos or others, in the class society Blacks could
negotiate their labor value. As people they were formally free. They were
citizens, although second-class or dependent ones. But they were
alienated from the product of their labor (when they were wage earners)
and in their condition as citizens. They were Blacks or Mulattoes in
addition to being wage earners. In addition to being industrial or agricul-
tural workers, functionaries or employees, they were Blacks or Mulat-
toes. As a result of this condition, they reworked and recreated the cul-
tural elements of their social and racial condition. As Blacks, Mulattoes,
 Social Organization and Alienation 53

or wage earners, they recreated and reworked the cultural elements of

their class condition and of their slave past. The collective and historical
experience of having been a slave for two, three, or four centuries, was
recreated and reworked, together with the current experience of being
Black, Mulatto, or a member of the working class (urban or rural), of the
middle class, of the petit bourgeoisie or of another social category.
Therefore, in the twentieth century class system, the types of
awareness of alienation are more differentiated. It is true that religion,
magic, music, folklore, and language continue to be aspects of an impor-
tant sociocultural universe. But the sociocultural and political meanings
of this universe are given by the interdependent, alienated, and antago-
nistic relationships of the social classes. The racial and class conditions
are intertwined.
The politicoeconomic content of the social condition of Blacks,mean-
while, only developed in an irregular and at the same time contradictory
manner. The doubly inferior condition of the majority of the Black and
Mulatto population in almost all the countries of Latin America and the
Caribbean made the transition from an "ingenuous" (or alienated)
awareness of alienation to an adequate, politically organized, and critical
conscience, quite difficult. Blacks and Mulattoes were frequently doubly
alienated, because they were alienated as members of a different, inferior
race vis-á-vis the Whites, and as members of an equally subordinate
social class, of which the majority could be White. There are times when
this situation became even more complicated, since a Black majority
could be subordinated to White and Mulatto groups.
Under these circumstances, as in the case with other races and subor-
dinate classes, consciousness of alienation did not immediately present
itself as a political consciousness in the case of the Blacks and Mulattoes.
In every subordinate social category, political awareness develops mixed
with religion, morals, play, and other activities. The political values of the
dominant classes or races invade and permeate the consciousness of the
subordinates, mixing and confusing their understanding of their own life-
style.
The double alienation of the Black in almost all the Latin American and
Caribbean countries has created various responses. In addition to religion
and art in general, and to political organizations (associations, syndicates,
parties), the Black is now organizing his awareness and political prac-
tices. In Brazil, for example, in the 1930s, he organized the Brazilian
Black Front, suppressed by the Getulio Vargas dictatorship in 1937. Be-
tween the abolition of slavery and the creation of a more explicit political
movement, several significant expressions of political awareness took
place.
The formation of Black clubs and organizations began in 1915, and was
intensified around 1918-1924. The organizations that emerged did not, how-
ever, pursue "racial regimentation," their purposes were purely "cultural
54 Africa in Latin America

and welfare oriented." They evolved naturally, after 1927, under the pres-
sure of the economic and social position of the Black man in Sao Paulo. . . .

Other organizations, born from the incipient collective assertiveness of

Blacks, have more defined and combative purposes. The "Brazilian Black
Front," for example, was formed in 1931, to "congregate, educate, and
orient" the Blacks of the State of Sao Paulo. A parallel evolution took place
in the city's Black press. The first Black newspapers published between

1915 and 1922, started off as literary, but later turned into "educational or
protest vehicles," on account of the social problems afflicting the colored
people. . .
."

At the same time, Brazilian Blacks organized conferences, debates and

discussions to reestablish, develop, or deepen the understanding of their
problems with regard to the Whites and to themselves. They also orga-
nized artistic movements such as plays and dances to recreate and to
develop their creativity and to stamp them with the individuality and
originality of their lifestyle, feelings, thoughts, and doings. In more recent
years, between 1945 and 1975, the Brazilian Black has voted in political
elections for Black candidates. Blacks in Brazil do not have a party, since
this was forbidden by the 1969 Constitution, but Black groups in various
states (the country's administrative units) have elected councilmen and
state and federal deputies. There is a definite politicization of Black
groups, both within the proletariat and among those who have entered or
are entering the middle classes. As a group, from an historic perspective,
the Brazilian Black is evolving from a condition of anonymity that has
existed since the abolition of slavery, to a class situation. Following aboli-
tion in 1888, in many parts of the country Blacks became unemployed,
almost forming a lumpenproletariat, because of the adverse conditions
they had to confront competing with Whites, immigrant, Italians, Ger-
mans, and other Brazilian racial groups. During that period, Blacks were
probably the main element in the reserve army of labor. Later, they
gradually became absorbed in wage occupations that multiplied and be-
came more differentiated with urbanization and industrialization. Thus,
gradually, they turned into workingclass Blacks, both in industry and in
agriculture. Notice that being Black and being workers have been the two
constants in the lives of the majority of Blacks and Mulattoes.
It is obvious that the changes in social consciousness are not
homogeneous, nor are they the same in different Latinamerican and
Caribbean countries. In each country the capitalist social formation as-
sumes a particular shape. In addition the social structures of each society
differ;they reflect the degree of urbanization, industrialization, agricul-
tural development, demographic makeup, and distribution of the races
within each social class. As a whole, however, there is evidence of a
progressive transition from a religious awareness of the Black condition
to a political awareness. Observe that the transition from the religious
 Social Organization and Alienation 55

awareness to the political awareness does not mean the substitution of

one for the other. They are not exclusive or unique. There are, for exam-
ple, artistic forms that can express one type of awareness or another of
the alienated condition felt by the Black. Poetry, theater, music, painting,
and movies can express religious or political kinds of awareness as well as
other ways of understanding, accepting, or rejecting the condition of be-
14
ing a subordinate race. There are a variety of forms of awareness the
Black man has expressed and developed. The tendency, however, is for
the political consciousness to assert itself, or to begin to assert itself over
the others.
This politicization process progresses at a variable pace in the different
countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. In Mexico, Colombia,
Venezuela, Peru and some other Latinamerican countries, Black groups
are forced to subordinate their religious, artistic, and political activities to
the structures that were created and directed by Whites, or by Indians or
Mestizos. In Brazil, the same type of subordination exists, but with some
idiosyncracies. In some regions of the country, as for example in the cities
of Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Porto Alegre, religious, artis-
tic and political activities seem more and more. There are also
to develop
indications that Blacks and Mulattoes see themselves each time more
clearly as social categories with political potential. Racial alienation pro-
duces developments, in spite of the vigorously promoted myth of
political
racial democracy
that confuses Whites, Blacks, and Mulattoes. Obvi-
ously, the situation differs in some Caribbean societies where the Black
and Mulatto population is a majority or forms part of the government. In
these cases, the Black and Mulatto political movements acquire some or a
great deal of autonomy compared to religion and to other forms of social
awareness. They assert themselves and reject White political proposals.
But they assume political power without altering the class structure into
which Blacks and Mulattos are divided. In these cases, the Blacks and the
Mulattoes are the ones to confront directly and explicitly the double
alienation in which they have lived historically: they find themselves
structured into social class hierarchies, without having overcome the ra-
cial subdivisions of Black and Mulattoes —
or poor and rich Blacks and
—
Mulattoes the product of past and recent relationships with Whites, be
they colonizers or not. In this case, the racial condition can become
subordinate to the class phenomenon, either gradually or rapidly, depend-
ing on the context of interpendence, alienation, and antagonism of rela-
tionships generated by the reproduction of political and economic struc-
tures.
It so happens that Blacks resist the real conditions of their lifestyle as
well as the racial ideology of Whites. A Black worker, for example, does
not have the same White worker in the same condition. To be
rights as the
equal to the White worker, the Black worker must be better than the
56 Africa in Latin America

White one. In the occupational structure and in the wage scale, Blacks are
in a worse situation. In addition, they suffer prejudice, discrimination,
and also segregation. In other words, Blacks see themselves in a subordi-
nate position, both in practice and in ideology. White racial ideology
rejects or confuses them; it does not consider them equal. Paternalism,
ambiguity, the myth of racial democracy, and other expressions of White
dominance confuse or irritate Blacks. It is with regard to this practical or
ideological situation that Blacks become aware of their double alienation:
as members of a race and as members of a class. In this sense, in order to
reduce or to eliminate their alienating conditions and their doubly subor-
dinate condition, Blacks must build a double political awareness: they
must see themselves and have Whites see them as members of another
race and as members of another class. As members of a race, they are
alone, and they must fight this condition. As class members they mix with
elements of other races, and they must struggle against this condition. In
this context, race and class are in constant interplay, making the Black
political awareness and practice more and more complex.

Notes

Except in cases where the country and the period are specified, the discussion
covered in this essay includes all countries of Latin America and the Carribbean
with African slaves and descendants. At no point does the discussion focus on the
racial situation in socialist Cuba.
1. From this point on, the term "Black" will often include both Blacks and

Mulattoes. Sometimes, depending on the context, I will differentiate one from the
other.
2. Charles Wagley, The Latin American Tradition (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1968), p. 156. Quote from chapter 5, "The Concept of Social
Race in the Americas," pp. 155-174.
Melville J. Herskovits, The New World Negro (Minerva Press: 1969),
3.

p. 53. The table on Africanisms is in the chapter entitled "Problem, Method and
Theory in Afroamerican Studies," pp. 43-61.
4. Ibid. Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon
;

Press, 1958); Roger Bastide, Les Amériques Noires (Paris: Payot, 1967); Magnus
Mórner, ed., Race and Class in Latin America (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970).
5. Bastide, Les Amériques Noires, pp. 49-50.
6. Sidney W.
Mintz, "The Caribbean Region," Daedalus (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University (Spring 1974) pp. 45-71; citation from p. 52.
7. Ibid., p. 53.
8. Bastide, Les Amériques Noires, pp. 133-137 and 201-202.
9. Herskovits, The New World Negro, p. 55.
10. Bastide, Les Amériques Noires, pp. 158-159 and 160-196.
 Social Organization and Alienation 57

11. Ibid.
12. Roger Bastide, Les Religions Africaines an Brasil
(Paris: Presses Univer-
sitairesde France, 1960), pp. 548-549.
13. Florestan Fernandes, "A luta contra o preconceito da cor," in Roger Bas-
tide and Florestan Fernandes, Brancos e negros em Sao Paulo, 2nd ed. (Sao
Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1959), pp. 269-318 and 281-283. Also see A
integracáo do negro na sociedade de classes, 2 vols. (Sao Paulo: Dominus Pub-
lishers, 1965).
14. Jean Franco, The Modern Culture of Latin America (Penguin: 1970), esp.
pp. 131-140; Cesar Fernandez Moreno, ed., America Latina en su Literatura
(Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1972), esp. pp. 62-69.
 Cultural Forms:
Religion, Literature, and Music
 4
Religion and Black Culture*

Juana Elbein Dos Santos

Deoscoredes M. Dos Santos

There is nothing more evasive or more delicate than the historic changes
of perception and interpretation of transplanted Black African* religions
and their complex process of continuity and discontinuity in the New
World. A sensible and incisive chronological reading of the titles that
categorize the literature would give us the material for an instructive
history of racial prejudice, or better yet, of interethnic and intercultural
relations, in Latin America, including the volatile Caribbean region.
These relationships were shaped by the strong cultural ethnocentrism of
the elites that held the official institutional power, and by the international
interests and conditions that accompanied the development of slavery,
which was a product of European mercantilism. To view the development
of these relationships in terms of the world economy provides a fascinat-
ing backdrop that permits a coherent understanding of the role of religion.
—
The subject of African religion in the Americas its origins, its areas of
influence, its dogma, doctrine, liturgy, priesthood, mutilations, persecu-
tions, transformation, values, diversity of styles, and latent epistemolog-
ical unity, although apparently well studied, is actually in urgent need of
reinterpretation. Such a revision should encompass an almost total refor-
mulation of terminology and concepts; it must offer a broad enough per-
—
spective to permit in addition to an in-depth study of the religious struc-
ture, its philosophical, mystical, and symbolic contents, and the variety of
—
ways in which they are expressed an interpretation of its historic and
contemporary meaning. The last is the fundamental element that per-
mitted the dramatic struggle for psychic integrity and made possible the
preservation of a specific latent ethos that survived all pressures from the
elite who held political and institutional power.
Beginning with studies on witchcraft, magic, superstition, fetishism,
animism, and syncretism, and extending to the most sophisticated
classification of Afro- American cults, the old system of analysis implicitly

The term Black is used here to refer both to Africans and to their descendants in
America. It encompasses diverse models and cultural and genetic traits, both those that
were inherited and those that are new, reworked within their social and historic contacts and
contexts in the New World.

61
62 Africa in Latin America

denies the classification of religion to the mystical system left by Africans,

and reworked by their descendants. This denial not only pushes aside the
transcendental values of the culture brought by the slaves (thus justifying
the lucrative arrogance of repression, be it forced or indirect) but it funda-

mentally diverts and submerges the underlying unity, the transnational

character of African religions. Above all it covers up the fact that religion,
as a transmitter of institutional continuity, permitted the formation of
groups and communities that became the centers of organized cultural
resistance. More than any other aspect of culture, religion, and its related
activities, contained the elements that permit us to restructure the "com-
munality" within the Caribbean that Sidney W. Mintz refers to, and the
so-called "cultural focus" that Edward Brathwaite mentions in referring
to Black religions.
Just as Grecoroman civilization expanded through changing forms of
Christianity, the Black African civilization expanded and spread in the
diaspora by means of various changes and reformulations of traditional
Black religions. We will attempt to examine to what degree this adaptabil-
ity both created new forms of religion as dynamic replies to new social

and historical contexts, and also permitted the latent transmission and
homogenization of the essential elements of its original source.
The emergence and development of these variables, which at once hid
and expressed a strong resistance to adaptation, and the fact that they
could not be absorbed by the church of the dominant class, clearly shows
an institutional incompatibility between religions. Black American reli-
gion, as an elaboration of its African models, became a religious super-
structure that gave meaning to and permitted the physical and spiritual
survival of important sectors of the Black population in the Americas. It
also served as an antithetic response to the paternalism imposed by the
Christian church, which was one of the official ethnocentric systems.
In the old analyses, variables were studied separately within the geo-
graphic boundaries of national societies whose linguistic differences
sometimes hid similar phenomena; material was collected and described
without any deep interpretive analysis of the symbolic structural system,
or, what is worse, with foreign interpretations or fantasies. All this pre-
vented, with rare exception, a view of religious expressions as fragments
of a whole.
There is no doubt that Black American religion, just like Christianity,
is the result of a long process of selection, association, synthesis, and
reinterpretation of archaic elements, as well as an absorption and elabora-
tion of new ones, with variations based on the cultural baggage of each
local ethnic group and on socioeconomic interrelationships, all none-
theless conforming to and tracing out a basic, central system.
From this point of view, syncretism is understood to be a variable
within the overall system. It is a significant affirmation of continuity and
 Religion and Black Culture 63

expansion, a process in search of an original medium to survive in, inte-

grated into the religious superstructure which we have agreed to call
Black American religion, and always interpreted in terms of its African
roots.
A global view would permit us to have a coherent understanding of the
various models and situations that are the fragments of a Neoafrican
continuity, of that mystical and symbolic system —
so different from, and
yet dialectically a part of Latin America —that places a portion of this
continent within the orbit of a transatlantic community that still lacks a
self-awareness.
Nevertheless, at this stage of research, it remains difficult to introduce
this new perspective on Black American religion. We are still in dire need
of in-depth and updated studies of each region, and of a rigorous critical
revision of the vast existent bibliography, which could in itself provide us
with enough material for an entire volume. In addition, the rich oral
documentation has barely been researched and worked with, even though
among groups that use a ritualistic language it is particularly expressive,
and could therefore be an invaluable source of information coming
straight from the communities. Documents written by public officials
have not all been found and systematically analyzed, nor has the field
been subject to analytical studies that use contemporary methodology.
There has, in fact, been no valid interchange among the specialists on
each region, nor any field work or technical, international, interdiscipli-
nary work.
We need studies on basic subjects and comparative essays including
not only the various Latin American regions, but also Africa. Such com-
parative studies would point out the specificity of the models and of their
components and would permit us to analyze analogies that would, in turn,
reveal continuities and discontinuities, selective transmissions, innova-
tions, and the interplay between the African and the American heritage.
They would enable us to sketch out a global scheme, a vast scaffolding
into which we could fit all known variables with their characteristic and
distinctive traits, and which would be broad enough to encompass those
vast and important areas that are still unknown, but that will be the focus
of future research.
In a prior essay
1
we insisted on two essential points. First, we showed
the importance of comparative studies that would consider migrations,
influences, and cultural continuities; but we insisted that these generaliza-
tions would only be were based on systemically
scientifically valid if they
developed research, and if the existing material were subjected to critical
revision. Second, we argued that the important and defining themes
should include studies of the religious system, thereby filling our lacunae
of knowledge in that area. Basic concepts of the religions, such as the
nature of the Supreme Being or universal originator of matter, the other
64 Africa in Latin America

world, elements that form a part of a person, the deep

spiritual
significance of sacrifice, thedynamic principles and initiation rites, oral
traditions, and rhythm, would all have to be studied. Rare are the studies
that do exist on these matters; most of them are not published and there-
fore do not receive adequate distribution.
Roger Bastide was well aware of these lacks and difficulties. After
almost thirty years of dedication to Black American studies, with an
emphasis on Afro-Brazilian studies (under the current classification sys-
tem), Bastide emphatically maintained that: "There was an extremely rich
and subtle philosophy behind this religion." He also had the intellectual
honesty in one of his last articles to recognize that "Although I entered
candomblés as a member, not merely as an observer, the rules of matura-
tion of secrets prevailing in religions requiring initiation would consider
me profane, and would barely permit me to acquire a Black vision of the
world. Only a cult priest of very high status could write the type of text
that I was hoping to write."
He proceeds to mention the types of studies he is referring to, and
continues: "Unfortunately, at this time, such texts that reveal the wealth
of esoteric Afro-Brazilian thought, can only be found in the form of manu-
scripts, since the authors have been unable to interest Brazilian editors
who seem White society would be
to feel that the intellectual security of
threatened if candomblé were accepted as a philosophy, rather than as
folklore or an artistic spectacle; a philosophy that I will refer to as 'neg-
ritude,' by which I mean real negritude, not the negritude that is merely a
political ideology."
This text immediately confronts us with various very important prob-
lems, such as the contents of a religion requiring initiation and cultural
controls on the one hand, and the intellectual control of a dominant elite
on the other. However, for the time being we only wish to highlight the
concept of negritude, of "real negritude," not negritude as a political
ideology, that Bastide portrays as an "existential affirmation." In this
sense, negritude would be an expression of African latency, that ethos,
that "communality," that in some more or less obvious ways unites the
various expressions of Black American religion. From this perspective,
and were it not for the association of negritude with the well-known
position of a group of Black intellectuals, the most appropriate title for
this chapter would have been "Religion and Negritude."
One thing is clear: as we have insisted from the beginning, religion was
and is the most powerful transmitter of the essential values of Afro-
American negritude. These values never remained frozen; quite to the
contrary, they managed to survive with vigor in a medium with powerful
repressive pressures, precisely because of their extraordinary plasticity
and vitality, because of this dialectic process of resistance-
accommodation that generated the diversity that is referred to by some
specialists as a lack of continuity within continuity.
 Religion and Black Culture 65

It would be absolutely inaccurate to interpret fidelity to African roots

as a copy, as something immutable and frozen, particularly with reference
to the cults that most clearly reveal their African origins or "Africanism,"
since they are still in the process of restructuring their original elements
and their inherited systems. To talk about a freezing of values would
reveal on the one hand, a lack of knowledge of the dynamism within the
African-inherited system and its ability to renew its structure and to incor-
porate change, both in continuity and in stability; on the other hand, one
would be guilty of unconscious ethnocentrism if one registered as changes
only those that reveal any visible elements of Western origin.
Changes are less well perceived by social scientists in the "traditional"
cults because social scientists, generally members of the White world, do
not know enough about the original systems to appreciate the changes
that occurred in the new medium over successive periods. In addition,
these researchers have an external, indirect knowledge that does not
permit them to perceive the changes that do occur, since the new traits
are so profoundly assimilated.
Thus, those new elements that are "Africanized" are not perceived or
accepted as changes. They are attributed a static quality that has nothing
to do with the functional reality of these cults. This dangerous conclusion
has led to the unfortunate naming of those cults that have a strong basic
unity as "canned religions."
The preservation of their basic structure has permitted these cults to
adapt without becoming "Whitened" by interpreting the new elements in
terms of a philosophy in which the values of the past are renewed as a
source of continuity and stability, and as a nexus with history and belong-
ing.This renewal within stability, this peculiar mobility, became the best
transmitter of negritude, which, according to Bastide is the existential
affirmation, fundamental for the continuity of the Black ethos. Paradoxi-
cally, Bastide looked at the negritude of the cults that have a strong basic
African unity, and considers them congealed. We disagree. It was through
these cults that the most creative phenomena of Afroamerican negritude
were produced and extended.
There are numerous examples. To summarize one, in order to achieve
institutional and patrimonial continuity, Ashé Opó Afonjá, one of the
most representative communities of Nagó descent in Brazil, created, as a
part of its basic structure, a civil society within the framework of the
national society, whose governing body consisted of the prominent mem-
bers of its religious hierarchy. This civil society gave the community an
official acknowledgement and legally regulated its relationship with the
rest of the world.*

out that this same community, which is considered one of the

*It is interesting to point
most "traditional and pure," is now in the process of reaching an agreement with the

educational authorities of Salvador to establish an experimental community school of a

multicultural nature.
66 Africa in Latin America

Thus, we can say that, with regard to the degree of retention and
elaboration of the basic African elements, a greater or lesser ability to
rework foreign elements into the structure of their African roots would
give us the degree of negritude of the variables.
To offer an extreme example, we can look at the jazz phenomenon. It
is obvious that Black urban music in the United States, as in the case of
the Brazilian, shows its deep negritude despite all the foreign elements
that it has incorporated and reworked, beginning with the musical instru-
ments. Virgil Thompson classifies jazz as "the tacit reference," to the
expression of all that is And
he adds: "Classical European compo-
Black.
sition, Anglo Saxon meter of an Hispanic dance, hymns,
folklore, the
drums, the German Lied, ragtime, Italian opera, all are food for the insati-
able Black appetite, provisions to be chewed, as though within all Black
North Americans, when it comes to sound, there exists an old African
enzyme that can digest voraciously whatever it finds in its path" (our
italics).

This ability to "digest or to Africanize" contributions, as opposed to

"adding and summing them" while leaving their various components vis-
ible, would give us sufficient material for a primary classification of the
various expressions of Black American religion into homogeneous and
heterogeneous variables. We would include among the homogeneous
variables, all the religious expressions of the Gégé Nagó complex in
Brazil, lucumi and ñañigo in Cuba, rada in Haiti, shangó in Trinidad and
Grenada; and among the heterogeneous ones, the various cults of Bantu
influence from the Congo and Angola, with ramifications in all of Latin
America and the Caribbean; the petro complex in Haiti; the various forms
of umbanda, caboclo, and payelanza in Brazil, maria lionza in
Venezuela; the myal, cunfa, and poco forms with their variations in Cen-
tral America and the Caribbean (particularly in Jamaica and the Antilles);
the various forms that center on baptism and that are influenced by other
Protestant sects in the Antilles (shakers, shouters, convince, etc.); as well
as the cults practiced in Suriname,where the Ashanti elements are added
to Fon, Hueda, Yoruba, and Christian elements.
This organization of Black American religion into homogeneous and
heterogeneous variables is simply heuristic and should not be too rigid.
Into rada in Haiti, considered a homogenous variable of basic Fon struc-
ture, were absorbed elements of aizan, nagó, guedeví, hueda, and Ca-
tholicism.
On the other hand, a heterogeneous variable like the caboclo* cult
covers the immemorial necessity and strong African traits of worshiping
the ancestral owners of the earth, but with pseudo-Indian symbolic ele-
ments, such as feathered headdresses and bows and arrows, that have
little resemblances to the real ones. In the caboclo rites, the Brazilian

Indian pantheons that sometimes appear in payelanza are not venerated;

 Religion and Black Culture 67

instead they worship the individual and collective spirits of various tribes,
particularly those of the original owners of the lands onto which the
Blacks were settled. The cult really involves the worship of native
forerunners in typical Bantu African style; and in many cases, either on
successive or alternating days, the prétos velhos (old Blacks), the spirits
of the ancient slaves, the first ancestors of the Blacks in America, are
added to the worship list of Indian spirits.
The caboclo cult contains in its heart some of the essential characteris-
tics of the African system: its sense of continuity, its ties with the past, its
stability, expressed in a stable relationship between humanity and nature,
between humanity and the earth, which is the symbol of eternal rebirth.
This type of continuity could not be found by African descendants in
White culture, since the Whites were foreigners and conquerors; it could
only be found in Indian culture, among the natural ancestors of the land.
Thus, one can examine a heterogeneous variable that shows a foreign
element as its manifest cult object, but that has internalized basic African
contents.
It is important to point out that the préto velho, the African ancestor,
and the caboclo ,* the Indian ancestor, are not at all similar, even though
they belong to the same category. There is evidence of an addition, a
pluralism, not a fusion of values; each one has its own characteristics that
don't mix; there is a formal, spatial, and temporal separation. Whereas
the supernatural entities show up simultaneously in homogeneous cults,
they only appear separately in heterogeneous cults, thus pointing to the
diversity of their origins.
This also occurs, to a certain extent, in the umbanda cults, where
added elements appear next to a few syncretic mechanisms, such as the
pontos riscados, the cabalistic drawings that were sketched by the prétos
velhos. The oris has, (Nagó supreme beings) are saved, while St. Ciprian,
St. Michael and the falanges, spirits originating in the Congo and in
Angola, are worshiped simultaneously. On the altars one can find images
of Christ, St. Joseph, St. George, next to sirens, water goddesses, caboc-
los, prétos velhos, seals of Solomon, stones, and sea shells. The earth is
saved by pouring libations of water and rum and making the sign of the
cross. The supernatural beings appear in successive groups in the giras
but never mix; one moves (vira) from one gira to another, which some-
times occur on separate days.
The homogeneous two processes if they are un-
variables can follow
able to maintain a balanced dynamic between their basic structure and
new contributions: they can either lock themselves defensively into their
African roots and thereby really freeze, become reduced, or disappear;

*Caboclo: name given in Brazil to the Indian- White Mestizo, and by extension to the
Mulatto of a coppery-red skin color.
68 Africa in Latin America

or, they can add, without "digesting" them, new elements, thereby plu-
ralizingand transforming themselves into heterogeneous variables.
The heterogeneous variables have the potential of integrating their
original elements, becoming homogeneous, and thus creating a new
model or Black American religious system. So far there is no example of
such an occurrence. To this date, the homogeneous variables continue to
be those that center on African elaborations, and the heterogeneous ones
remain pluralistic.
Still, the heterogeneous variables run the risk of changing, or of serving

as alienating pseudo identifications with the very negritude they would

like to unify. It is on this level that one should understand the fierce
struggle between the so-called umbanda of the morro and the umbanda of
the "asphalt" and the two federations that represent them.
The morro contains the largest portion of the colored population and it
also absorbs and miscegenates the poorest White groups. Morro groups
living in favelas continue to reinterpret, within their own heterogeneous
elements, the fundamental structure of nagó, which permits them to
elaborate a specific or particular cultural continuity that expresses their
negritude or their "existential affirmation."
The groups of the "asphalt" adopted the standards of the White cul-
ture, at least as far as the class-culture structure permitted them to. They
structured their cults according to the image that the White man has of the
Black, adding magic and exotic stereotypes, thus transforming a seeming
identification process into a process of alienation.
Obviously, specialized literature has contributed a great deal to the
prolonged survival of such stereotypes, not to mention the negative role
of the press. Concepts used to describe Black religion that were employed
fifty or seventy years back are repeated to this day.

Fetishism, and above all, animism, continue to be discussed in recent

specialized publications. But we shall return to these concepts.
Before beginning an analysis of the formal content and structure of
Black American religion, we need to establish a structure that will frame
We should also include among the variables a series of occur-
its totality.

rences that, although on the one hand have served to atomize Black
religion into innumerable groupings of traits and styles, on the other, have
irradiated a Black ethos outside the institutionalized groups.
We refer here to numerous persons, who, regardless of whether initi-

ated into organized cults or simply autoinitiated, "savage" participants,

practice individual or family cults, or go to the homes of others to conduct
ceremonies and rites. Some
of these are transmitters of homogeneous
variables who often combine their individual practices with those they
share with their groups. Suchis the case with many priests who have been

knowledge or oracles or the handling of herbs. Others

initiated into the
form personal cults, consisting of various combinations, additions, and
 Religion and Black Culture 69

recreations of heterogeneous elements. This is quite common in remote

places, far from urban centers. Finally, there are others who present more
extreme innovations and therefore find it themselves to
difficult to attach
preexisting groups. As time goes by, if these innovations are
in tune with
the real adjustment needs of a community, small groups will form around
these individuals for an unspecified duration of time. This seems to have
occurred on several occasions in the Caribbean. One example is petro in
Haiti, originally started by the Creole Don Pedro. This group developed
very stable heterogeneous variables, in contrast to Bedwardism* and
others that disappeared with the death of their founders.
Just as we noted the presence of Christian elements in the Black
American variables, we cannot neglect the influence of Black norms on
the Christian cults that eventually permeated the entire society. This
influence is apparent, not in the liturgy or the dogma of the Christian
church, but in the selection of certain elements and concepts as opposed
to others, particularly among the ecumenical any syncretic elements of
Christianity, all of which are quite obvious in Latin American Catholo-
cism. In areas where descendants of Africans constitute 30 to 70 percent,
or even 90 percent of the population, one should not be surprised that
Black forms and habits spill over their own boundaries to affect all the
religions and lay manifestations of the national society.
The covert processes that Africans employed to adapt their own reli-
gions to the conversion process required by their masters are well known.
By worshiping their own supernatural beings while associating them with
specific saints and Catholic festivities, they tried to deceive their masters.
It is difficult to determine to what degree this was possible. A lengthy

array of delicate mechanisms, either fictitious or real, has created a wide

fringe of uncertainties and mutual influences. Various authors have spent
time constructing graphs to establish the various associations between
African and Christian supernatural beings; we will not go over them
again.
One must realize, however, that these associations are not sufficient, in
their present state of processing, to characterize anew religious system.
Syncretisms, as mechanisms of interethnic and intercultural contact,
were, and still are, undoubtedly real. But, with regard to Christian in-
fluence they were not reworked homogeneously to create a new and
unique institution capable of syncretizing into a dogma and a liturgy the
contributions of various incompatible institutions. On the other hand, due
to their compatibility, syncretisms deriving from various African ethnic
sources occurred naturally; they constituted the basic unit of the
homogenous and the transmitter of negritude in the heterogeneous vari-
ables.

*A religious, initiation-based movement, founded in the middle of the nineteenth century

by a Black Jamaican, which disappeared with the death of its founder.
70 Africa in Latin America

Although we are once again tempted to talk about a sum of characteris-

tics, Afro-Christian syncretism in Latin America is more evident on the

It is a well-known fact that almost all, if not all, the

individual level.
Blacks of Latin America are Christian, usually Catholic. At least they
have been baptized and go to church more or less frequently.
Despite the fact that there are no statistics on this phenomenon, it is

possible to determine empirically that a high percentage of the Mestizo

population goes to or belongs to some group or community that practices
a variant of a Black American religion. If the parallel practice of two
religions creates syncretic mechanisms, these are not translated into the
institutionalized organization of either religion; each maintains its own
basic structures, clearly separate, except for some complex traits, that, in

one sense or another, surpass the cultural class-group limits without alter-
ing them.
Still no new religion exists; no new whole different from the original
religions has developed; there is a change or addition of beliefs, each with
its own values and structures, practiced separately in their appropriate
places. Two liturgies are practiced: the Christian or official one in the

church; alongside it the Black or unofficial one, practiced either in tem-

ples, homes, or places that have been duly consecrated.
If we insist on these concepts it is in part because we believe them to be
highly relevant when examining the meaning of the various categories of
syncretism and association resulting from the dialectic of adaptation; but
above all, because they are in their diversity a part of the underlying unity
of Black "communality." Let us try to examine, from the perspective of
religion, what this negritude consists in, what transforms the various
fragments into the variables of a basic system. It is a system that is
reformulating Africa in Latin America, giving it, together with "indi-
genismo" a singularity or a specificity uniting it both culturally and spiritu-
ally, with a greater or lesser degree of awareness and official acceptance,
to Black Africa.

II

We spend time here discussing the historical development of

will not
Black American religion, nor on detailed descriptions of its variables. For
this we refer the reader to the existing bibliography, even though in-depth
studies are needed. It is our ambitious purpose to integrate all the vari-
ables and contradictions into a dynamic graph of structural elements, and
to try to highlight and to examine their abstract and concrete relationships
within the continuity of the religious system as a whole, as well as its
manifestation through its variables.
African culture constitutes a dynamic interrelationship of variables,
with religion as its fundamental expression. In the rich culture of the

various kingdoms of Occidental and Equatorial Africa that are the source
 Religion and Black Culture 71

of almost all Africans in America, religion impregnated and marked all

activities,pervading and regulating even the profane.

In the diaspora, religion was the most important factor that permitted
the institutionalized regrouping of Africans and their descendants. This is
very important. Religion became a cohesive element that permitted the
formation of groups and associations whose system of beliefs, a result of
ethnic heredity and sociohistorical adaptations, prescribed particular in-
terrelationships, norms, actions, and values that transformed the groups
into real communities with their own
characteristics. During the diaspora,
the geographic space represented by native Africa and its contents were
transferred into houses, temples, or rooms, where the power of ancestors
and supernatural beings that guaranteed not only a continuity to existence
but a lifestyle, were "planted," next to the symbolic elements.
Terreiro, tenda, casa, cabildo, hounfort, sect, center —whatever the
—
name of the group these are communities that, through their religious
practices, maintained a cohesive, collective consciousness of belonging.
They also contained the material and spiritual belongings, the structural
elements and their variables. An analysis of these contents gives us infor-
mation, not only on the religion, but also on the essential aspects of the
African system they are a part of.
It was through the continuous practice of religion that Blacks main-

tained a profound sense of community. In Latin America a cultural com-

plex was implanted and reformulated whose prime form of expression
was religion, and it was this religion that served to preserve and to renew
certain specific parts of the original system.
Throughout the entire process of slavery, and even during later in-
terethnic conflicts, religion and the communities observing the religion
became the bulwark of the Black psyche and of its cultural dignity and
integrity, since, for a long time, they were the only source of inviolable,
spiritual freedom.
Since religion became the only cultural element of cohesion within
these communities, it has been common to see the communities them-
selves as mere religious groups. This error overlooks the significance of
the communities as the institutionalized instruments of continuity and
reelaboration of a basic cultural system that insisted tenaciously and dy-
namically on participating with its own values, in a variety of ways, in the
national social structure.
These communities appeared both in rural areas and in urban centers,
on estates, in small landholdings, and in homes, even concentrated in a
single room. They all present certain common traits:
A portion of the members live in the place of worship or in its vicinity,
sometimes forming a neighborhood or a village. Other members live at
various distances, but come regularly to spend longer or shorter periods
at the place of worship, where they often have a room or some type of
72 Africa in Latin America

lodging. The link between the community members is unrelated to their

place of residence; the limits of the groups do not coincide with the
physical limits of the place of worship. The community tends to spill over
its material boundaries, which serve as the point of concentration and
irradiation from where it The
disperses to permeate the rest of society.
members of the community move, work, have ties with society
circulate,
as a whole, and constitute a fluctuating community that concentrates and
expresses its own structure in the consecrated places.

Furthermore, these communities form an extraordinary system of al-

liances. This system varies, depending on whether the community prac-
tices homogeneous or heterogeneous variables, from the simple and ge-
neric "fraternity" to the more complex hierarchical organization that
establishes communal relationships, recreating ties of lineage and of the
extended family as they existed in Africa. Blood relationships are re-
placed with community membership that is judged by age, obligations,
and initiatory lineage.
No matter who the supernatural being to whom a female priest is
consecrated may be, she is part of a whole, a "blood" member tied
through initiation rites to the gods that are worshiped as well as to the
initiated, to the authorities, and particularly to the forefathers and ances-
tors of the community. She is the repository of a force of which she is the
receiver, and, as times goes by, the transmitter. This force or super-
natural power, transmitted during the initiation of the oldest or newest
members, is kept and accumulated through the practice of the ritual,
which continuously revitalizes the community.
This brings us back to two interrelated subjects: the uniqueness of the
religious system, and the intrinsic elements that result from its structure,
dogma, and liturgy and permit it to maintain its own continuity and that of
the communities and groups of which it is the center.
At the beginning we talked about the necessity of a total reinterpreta-
tive examination. We expressed the need to adjust analytical and inter-
pretative instruments to arrive at an internal perspective on Black Ameri-
can religions. We could have attempted a methodological revision at that
time. However, we prefer to introduce it now that we have achieved a
certain distance from academic orthodoxy and can penetrate the in-
tricacies of the Black system.
We have elsewhere referred to the problems researchers meet when
they bring their academic baggage and their personal history with them,
leading them to use as references the class and culture they belong to. We
also underlined and analyzed the pros and cons of the actor or observer
position, adopted according to whether one did or did not belong to the
cultural community being studied. We pointed out that the observing
scientist,no matter how careful he is, cannot easily shed his own history
and the frame of reference of his own historic process, and that the actor,
 Religion and Black Culture 73

a member of the group, would fail to perceive the abstract and structural
realities of the system that he is living in. We thus pointed out two view-
points that, although difficult, are not impossible to complement.
Black religion constitutes an initiatory experience, "during the course
of which, knowledge is obtained through a lived experience on a biper-

sonal or a group level, through gradual development, through transmis-

sion and absorption of power and the symbolic and complex knowledge at
all levels of the person who represents the vivid incorporation of all the

collective and individual elements of the system; therefore it would seem

that the perspective we conventionally called the 'insider's perspective,'
becomes inevitable."
It is true that the absorption of a series of collective and individual
values and the act of reliving them through a group interaction, are not
sufficient to analyze and interpret them. It is necessary to place them in
perspective and to consciously restructure the elements and their particu-
lar relationships, thus revealing their symbolism.
We even be initiated," to learn the elements and values
insist that: "to
of a cult as an "insider," through interrelationships within the heart of a
group, and at the same time to be able to abstract from this empirical
reality the mechanism of the whole and its dynamic significance, its sym-
bolic relationships, while at the same time consciously abstracting "like
an outsider," is an ambitious aspiration and a fairly unlikely combination.
Perhaps it is unlikely; but since we are dealing with a system of initiation,
it is not only desirable, but it seems to us inevitable. With regard to Black

American religion, seeing and building "from the inside to the outside"
leads us to focus on three aspects: the factual, critical revision, and inter-
pretation.
By "factual aspect" we mean a dynamic description of the homogene-
ous and heterogeneous variables of a religion; an exact and detailed de-
scription of the ritual, from its most complex ceremonies and the compo-
sition and morphology of the group, its hierarchy, places, and objects,
and deities, down to the smallest gesture within the ritual. Included, of
course, is research into the oral traditions, the importance of which we
will discuss later.
We have already insisted several times on a critical revision, and this
aspect is very important when the cultural realities of the communities are
looked at "from the inside." We are concerned with demystifying im-
ported or superimposed ideologies, discarding ethnocentric European
ideas, so that we can see and place specific group values in their true light.
Such ethnocentric distortion has been one of the most severe barriers to
the comprehension of Black American values.
In this revision we will include, not only a critical rereading of a spe-
cialized bibliography that will place Black American values back into
their historic perspective, but also a deep conceptual examination of the
74 Africa in Latin America

terminology that denatures and corrupts the perception of a religious

system.
Although we do not hope by this synthesis to revise terminology, we
would like to call attention to some words and their associations.
Fetishism was, and continues to be, the most prevalent classification of
African religions transferred to Latin America. As is well known, the
word comes from accom-
the Portuguese feticio, a thing that has been
plished, or prepared, and was first applied by the Portuguese sailors to
objects and ritual images which began to be called fetiches. Thus, the
Portuguese attributed object worship to Africans, without perceiving that
the material objects were not the subjects of worhsip, that they were
instead, symbolic representations that had been duly consecrated, and
were a part of a complex system of very abstract and mystical relations.
We are not dealing with divinity-objects, omnipotent fetishes that control
their worshipers, but emblems consecrated through special ceremonies
that are accepted as symbols of beings and spiritual forces. "The initiate
does not bow before a stone, wood, clay, or porcelain, but before a sacred
abstraction, in the same manner that a Catholic does not adore the mate-
rial images of saints and crucifixes, but the mystical spirit they sym-

bolize." The sacred objects are not autonomous, they form a part of a
whole and acquire its significance by participating in a liturgical system
into which all manifestations of the sacred are organized.
We would also recommend a revision of translated terms that prevent a
proper understanding of the structure of the system. Thus, masked or
mask is applied to the spirit of an ancestor whose materialized repre-
sentation is invoked in ancestral worship. The very word mask, continu-
ously used in the language of ethnology and in the prestigious art books,
comes from an erroneous translation that alters the cultural significance of
the objects it attempts to define, and has nothing to do with the terms
applied to those objects in their original communities.
The talk of critical revision must be undertaken by the researchers as
they come across descriptions and concepts in specialized literature that
relate to their field experience, as they analyze the ritualistic texts and the
concepts used by the hierarchy of participants in a religion. Thus, for
example, restricted access to some ceremonies, particularly those related
to offerings, has often been attributed to the barbaric nature of these
practices, to fear of the law or to a desire to discourage scientific curios-
ity. In fact, only certain types of individuals are not permitted to be

present. We pointed out earlier that the initiation development was pro-
gressive, and that it depended on the acquisition of certain attributes and
powers. Therefore, access to certain rituals and ceremonies is determined
by the degree of initiation of an individual, his or her physical and spiritual
ability to participate in mystical experiences during the course of which
powers that are difficult to manage and that have a deep meaning are
 Religion and Black Culture 75

released and invoked. The precaution of keeping these ceremonies pri-

vate stems from the nature of the religious structure and has nothing to do
with immorality, barbarism, or other projections of the values of another
cultural system.
Revision also leads us to a problem that has been difficult to solve: how
to find in the national language words that are equivalent to the cultural
concepts used in the communities. There are no possible translations for
orishá, vodun, ashé, etc., concepts than can be analyzed but not
translated. This forces the specialist to overburden his work with un-
known words, or to repeated explanations when terms such as vodun are
redefined to correct their inappropriate former ethnocentric usage.
Our third concern is that of interpretation. The perspective of "from
the inside to the outside" developed with greater depth at this level.
is

Here we must analyze the nature and significance of factual material,

discover underlying symbols, and reconstruct the significance of the signs
as a function of their internal interrelationships and their interplay with
the outside world. The symbolic interpretation is the least studied aspect
of Black religion even though it permits us to see the ritualistic sequences
and to give them a logical structure. Religion, its morphology, its prac-
tices and all its contents are expressed through symbols or through com-
plex symbolic structures. Reciprocally, we can say that, by unveiling the
correspondence of symbols and interpreting them, we will be able to
explain the contents of the ritual and its variables.
—
These three aspects of religion the factual, critical revision, and inter-
—
pretation are all interrelated and become the interchangeable instru-
ments of a technique that must be adjusted to the slow but progressive
field work related to the study of "initiation."

Ill

We attempt to examine some essential aspects of Black American

will
religionand the elements through which it expresses itself; in other
words, we will look at the underlying relationship between the various
visible contents, a relationship that determines the level of "communal-
ity," Africanism, or negritude.
The main defining aspect of the religion we are concerned with is the
fact that it is an initiatory system. It is acquired, transmitted, and de-
veloped in a specific manner. The initiated partake of an experience,
during the course of which, either through a direct or a gradual interrela-
tionship, they receive, absorb, and develop a mystical and symbolic
power permitting them to become integrated with, and to identify with,
the elements of a dynamic system that they help to mobilize. We have
already referred to this fulfillment process to which we attributed the
development of the most precious content of the communities, responsi-
76 Africa in Latin America

ble for the very existence of the religions through the mystical alliance,
the "consanguineous" current, between the past, the present, and the
future.
This power, known Nagó word, or sé, a Fon word, is the
as ashé, a
beginning that makes processes possible. It is passed through
all vital
material and symbolic means and it is cumulative. It is a force that can
only be acquired through introjection or through other forms of contact. It

cannot be transmitted through objects or human beings.

According to Mopoil, it refers to "the invisible force, the magical-
sacred force within every divinity, every animate being, of everything."
But does not appear spontaneously and must be transmitted. An
this force
object, a being, or a sacred place can only become sacred by acquiring
ashé. The community with all of its material contents and initiates must
receive ashé, must accumulate it, maintain it and develop it.
The quality of the power varies with the combination of elements it
contains and directs; each combination is the transmitter of a power that
permits the occurrence of certain happenings. Ashé, like all forms of
power, can diminish, expand, or become stronger. These changes are
determined by activities and rituals.

Conduct is determined by the scrupulous observation of duties and obliga-

tions,guided by doctrine and liturgical practice, that the holder of ashé

observes himself, in his attitude towards the group he belongs to, and to-
wards the community. The more active and ancient the group, the more
elevated its degree of initiation, and the more powerful will be the commu-

nity's ashé. Knowledge and the development of initiation are a function of

the absorption and elaboration of ashé, and are transmitted through specific
combinations that contain material and symbolic representations, that are
individualized and thereby permit a specific meaning. Each combination is
unique and is determined by its function and its ritual. Ritual permits the
accumulation and revitalization of individual and collective ashé, and there-
fore, the continuity and vitality of the community itself.

A proper understanding of this power that permits the existence and

the transformation of a group is imperative to grasp the profound
significance of sacrifice and offerings as particular and symbolic ways of
conveying ashé.
Ashé is not learned, it is received, becomes enriched through the ritual
and the mystical experience; it is shared and distributed. Ashé is received
from the hands and the spirit of those who are more advanced, it is
conveyed from person to person through a live and dynamic relationship.
It is received through body and psyche and touches the deepest levels, it

can be conveyed through symbolic elements, through blood, fruits, ritual-

istic herbs, words, mystical pacts, and relationships that are established

with the ancestors, with nature, and with the group as a whole.
 Religion and Black Culture 77

The higher the hierarchical status, the more advanced is the mystical
development, permitting a greater accumulation of ashé and of initiatory
knowledge. The degree of initiation is determined by the years gone by
since initiation, not by the chronological age of the participant. Perform-
ance of the ritual will permit further development of a participant's ashé
and will decide his place within the community. The community is so-
cially structured according to the higher or lower levels of ashé of its
participants. Ashé is transmitted during the various degrees of initiation
and is reinforced during transition rites from one level to another and by
confirmation rites in which individuals are designated to hold certain posi-
tions within the hierarchy.
The heads of the communities are also their priests or priestesses.
Upon being invested, they become the maximum bearers of ashé within
the community, receiving and inheriting all the material and spiritual pow-
ers of the community since its creation. They are responsible not only for
the care of the temple, its altars, ornaments and all other sacred objects,
but they are also in charge of preserving, developing, and strengthening
Ashé, thus keeping alive the community. Whatever the religious variable
may be, be it homogeneous or heterogeneous, the head of the group, be it
iyalashé, hugan, hunon mokongo, tata, graman, etc., will be the deposi-
tory of maximum mystical and initiatory powers and liturgical knowledge.
The cult priest distributes or "plants" power by initiating novices and
infusing them with the power of which he is the depository.
It is this process that permits the internalization and mobilization of

symbolic and spiritual elements, both individual and collective, that trans-
form the human being into a real live altar in which the presence of the
supernatural beings can be invoked. These supernatural forces or beings,
models and symbolic regulating principles of cosmic, social, and indi-
vidual phenomena, are incorporated, known and lived, through the expe-
rience of "possession."
Possession accounts for another unique characteristic of Black religion
that classifies the different groups into one basic system of variables.
Possession institutionalizes a complex system of identification and recrea-
tion mechanisms; it updates and elaborates, either individually or collec-
tively, the cultural values of Latin- American negritude in the most faithful
African manner.
The dynamics of possession keep alive the cult of supernatural entities.
The beings are manifested through the body of the priestesses or the
initiated—talking, dancing, blessing, advising, using emblems and
parameters, communicating their origins, history, and significance. It is
not a matter of recalling the past, of myths or prototypes, of forces and
cosmic elements. It is a matter of reliving through a dynamic experience a
communication and identification with supernatural beings that transmits
an order, a moral discipline, and cultural forms and values that go beyond
78 Africa in Latin America

the liturgical plane and the individual experience, to become a part of the
life of the community.
During the experience of possession, the entire religious system, its
theogony and mythology, are relived. Each participant is the protagonist
of a ritualistic activity, in which Black historic, psychological, ethnic, and
cosmic life is renewed. The dynamics of possession psychologically re-
create here and now the existence of a system of knowledge that is drama-
tized through a personal experience. This system can only be understood
as it is lived through the ritualistic experiences, the analogies, the myths,
and the reenacted legends; knowledge only becomes significant when it is
actively incorporated.
We are thus pointing to one of the most, if not the most, important
aspect of the system, which in certain ways is causally linked to factors
we have pointed out before. Two persons, at least, are indispensable for
transmission through initiation. Knowledge passes directly from one be-
ing to another. No reading, explanations, or logical thought is required on
a conscious or intellectual level; the transfer of the complex code of
symbols is achieved through the real presence of people and their dy-
namic interrelationship. Material symbols and gestures; words that are
uttered, pronounced, and infused with life; modulations, emotions, and
the personal history of the one who utters them: all are a part of the
process of transmission. The word becomes so strong because it is im-
pregnated with power, with ashé; it goes beyond its rational, semantic
content to become the instrument for the conductor of ashé. Oral
transmission is a technique used within the dynamic system and is also
basic to the initiation system, present in all variables of Black American
religion.
The dynamicstructure of religion employs a type of communication
that must be constantly self-fulfilling. To utter a word or a formula in a
certain way, or in a certain context, becomes a unique circumstance.
Each word is born, accomplishes its function, and then disappears. Each
repetition has a unique result. Oral expression signifies interrelationships
and interactions on two levels; the social and the individual. In the social
context, the word is conveyed from one person to another, it is uttered to
be heard and is communicated from mouth to ear. It is the transmission of
the experience of one being to another and from one generation to another
and conveys the concentrated ashé of the ancestors to present-day gener-
ations. On the individual level, the utterance of the word is the culmina-
tion of acommunication process or an internal polarization. The sound
always presupposes the presence of something that is expressed and that
tries to reach its speaker.
Within the Black system, sound is invested with power and is a
transmitter of action. The dynamic interaction of active sounds appears
with all its symbolic content in formulas and ritualistic invocations as well
as in the sounds emitted by the instruments used in the ritual. Of course
 Religion and Black Culture 79

the instruments are prepared, consecrated, and receive the appropriate

ashé to accomplish their functions, and they can only be used by certain
members of the group. The combination of sounds produced by these
instruments, playing alone or with others, accompanied by the clapping of
hands, the spoken or sung word, are formidable in summoning the super-
natural entities, in transmitting action, and in promoting communication
between the present and the past, between this world and the parallel
supernatural world.
Sound is a synthesis; it is born from the interaction of two types of
generative elements, and itself becomes a third element;it is a dynamic

and originating movement. In the

structure, resulting in a third element
entire system the number three and its various combinations is always
associated with movement.
The word as an invocation relies on the dynamic power of sound. The
ritual texts and songs are invested with this power. Whether they are
recited or sung, whether they are or are not accompanied by instruments,
they mobilize ritualistic activity. All oral communication is a part of the
dynamic transmission system, where transmission is accomplished at a
level oí concrete interpersonal relations.
It isimportant to notice the peculiar rhythmic structure of the ritual-
istic A special symbiosis is established between the dynamic
language.
oral expression and its rhythmic structure. We would like to speak about
rhythm as an aspect that is unique to Black religion in every variable. But
we cannot spend too much time here discussing the significance of rhythm
as a social expression in which cosmic movement and harmony are re-
lived.
Even though oral transmissionso important in this system of an
is

essentially participatory individual, namely the Black, it is necessary to

place it within a global perspective, as one of the elements of the complex
dynamic structure wherein the basic principle is the interpersonal rela-
tionship.
Knowledge is not stored and frozen into writings and archives, it is
permanently relived. The archives are alive, they are chains whose links
are the wisest individuals of each generation.
The study of written texts can help catalogue aspects of religion and
give them a more or less rational explanation, but only the development of
initiation through the liturgy will permit the communication of integral
knowledge. The upper hierarchy of the cults generally opposes giving
information outside of the ritualistic context and refrains from writing
theological treatises. This is not only because they wish to keep secrets or
to maintain their position, or to selfishly hold onto knowledge. It is be-
cause written transmission goes against the very essence of real mystical
knowledge, which can only be acquired through interpersonal relation-
ships. It is possible that this essential aspect has contributed to the ab-
sence of written notations in Black African languages. The introduction of
80 Africa in Latin America

a written form of communication creates problems that shock and weaken

the very foundations of the dynamic relationships of the system.
Africans believe that existence occurs simultanously on two levels: in
the world or physical universe inhabited by human beings, and in another
— —
world abstract, infinite, and unlimited inhabited by supernatural be-
ings, including divine beings, ancestors, and spiritual doubles of all that
concretely inhabits our universe. The alem is not particularly associated
with any part of the real world. It is an abstract concept, a world parallel
to the realworld that coexists with it, with all of its contents. Everything
that exists in the real world has its counterpart or its spiritual double; the
opposite is also true, all that exists in the supernatural world has its
counterpart, its material or corporal representation in the real world. This
concept, which is the result of the dynamic interrelationship of the parts
that constitute the system, represents another essential African concept
that has been transmitted through Black American religions, namely the
two levels of existence: the real and the spiritual, or abstract, which are
parallel and inseparable. Thre is no dichotomy between them, their own
survival depends upon their dynamic interrelationship. This is expressed
in myths and representations, as well as in the ritualistic and communal
happening itself; it is seen quite clearly in the homogeneous variables and
somewhat more indirectly and in a more fragmented manner in the hetero-
geneous variables. The presence of supernatural and abstract beings in
the body of the priestess, through a complex initatory and liturgical proc-
ess ritualizes the existence of both worlds and makes it symbolically
irrefutable.
We cannot spend too much time on explanations of the concept of
material correspondence to every spiritual element. This concept is inher-
ent in the system and expresses itself in the selection of specific material
elements that contribute to the formalization of an emblem; it manifests
itself through those who hold and link ashé, the power of fulfillment, to
the point that each natural being is conceived a a concrete and indi-
vidualized piece of being as well as an abstract, spiritual, generating-mass
principle.
There is a constant relationship, an incessant current of transfer of

spiritual and material elements between the two worlds. This current
carries the essential burden of the supernatural power, the power of
fulfillment that mobilizes the entire system and that is orchestrated
—
through birth, death, real and ritualistic rebirth in other words, through
the constant transfer and redistribution of ashé, symbolized and regulated
by the ritual.
The initiating momentum is provided by the essence of existence and
the knowledge of past generations, to which is added that of present
generations, thus insuring the dynamic continuity of the community by
regulating the symbolic interrelations between the two parallel worlds. It
is not natural for Eshu, the supernatural being of the Nagó pantheon
 Religion and Black Culture 81

symbolizing the dynamic principle of ashé, to have been transposed from

itsethnic origins, and to have become one of the most extensively wor-
shiped beings in both the homogeneous and the heterogeneous variables.
Also known as Elegbara, Elegba, or Legba, the conveyor of the power of
fulfillment, it regulates communications between the multiple components
of the system. It is therefore the principle of individualized life that pro-
motes and develops individual destiny and that of the community as a
whole.
Having worshiped which represents the
for so long a being like Eshú,
principle of expansion and of offspring, transporting and regulating offer-
ings, returning and redistributing element-symbols loaded with sig-
nificance and power, the Nagó have internalized a principle that elabo-
rates the harmonic relationship, the cohesion and continuity of the system
and the group. Eshú, whose latent significance is expressed by a variety
of symbols, paraphernalia, iconography, and rites is the most complete
and complex representation of the dynamic structure of Black American
religion.
The Supreme Being, be it, according to its ethnic origin, Olorún,
Mawú, Nana, Nyane, Zambi, emanates and returns the power of
etc.,
fulfillment, a power that contains existence, direction, and objectives. But
it is a power that is "replenished" through its own dynamic of existing on

two levels, the natural and the supernatural. As we have already pointed
out, the supernatural world exists only as long as the real world exists,
and vice versa. The Supreme Deity, the origin of origins, the spiritual and
material promoter at both levels of existence, is constantly delegated and
restored through the configuration of symbolic beings, orishá, vodun, loa,
inquisi, wind, etc., that are representations and patterns of cosmic, social,
and individual elements, renewing themselves at different levels of power
through individualized elements or generalized ones that are linked to the
ritual. The Supreme Being is the recipient and distributor of this power
that regulates and mobilizes all existence. He is called in communities
that center on the rites of Nagó, Alaabé l'aashé, the one who is and has
the purpose and power of fulfillment. Because of its specificity, we insist
on the concept of Supreme Being, who encompasses all "space," the
contents of the natural and the supernatural world, transmitting and re-
ceiving in the permanent, dynamic circle the powers that form and acti-
vate the universe and its existence.
We do not wish to expand upon the idea of a Supreme Being, a difficult
task that must still be accomplished, despite the existence of a few pub-
lished studies. In this synthesis we have limited ourselves to an examina-
tion of a little-known aspect and one that is unique to this religious sys-
tem. It is easy to figure out that the real concept of a Supreme Being is
inscribed in and participates in the dynamic structure that interrelates and
characterizes all the components of the system.
We also wish to point briefly to another aspect of this interrelationship,
82 Africa in Latin America

expressed in the importance of ancestor worship. Often organized into

secret societies but sometimes a part of the normal liturgy of the com-
munities, usually known by the variables that are worshiped (egungun,
guede, esa, yorka, gabida, préto velho, etc.), ancestor worship inter-
nalizes the concept of belonging to a social structure. The forefathers
become identification models and guardians of morality and discipline
within the community. By insuring individual and collective immortality,
they institutionalize the continuity between life and death, between past
and present, and embody the survival of the community itself.

Social consensus, collective acceptance through initiation and ritual,

permit the introjection, transference, representation, materialization, and
activation of a complex, basic system that expresses the underlying cul-
tural identity, the "communality" or negritude, with all its varieties, to be
found Black American religion.
in
This structure is prolonged and accomplished through a series of mate-
rial objects and activities. We are referring to the very rich patrimony of

ritualistic objects, such as dress, metal, pottery, stone, sculptures, ob-

jects made of leather or rafia, music with its complex rhythmic structures
superimposed on texts and chants that complement one another. They all
constitute a powerful means of communication that, through representa-
tions and esthetic explorations, formally and conceptually express and
relive the principles, the values, and the particular cosmic vision of the
Black religious and cultural system.
This has not been an attempt to exhaust the subject, particularly be-
cause we are dealing with variables in transformation. Nor do we wish to
minimize the differences between variables. It was our intention to in-
troduce a perspective that, through a collection of the existing informa-
tion, would permit us a global, coherent, and articulate vision of a group
of phenomena whose most essential elements delineate a significant path
that expresses and constitutes, as few others do, the irrefutable continuity
of Africa in Latin America. Although it is not a passive continuum, it
justifies its own structural heritage by being versatile, resistant, and vital,
giving place to a dialectic process that makes the culture of Blacks in
Latin America unique, and possibly heading towards a new humanism
based on the existential multidimensionality of the human being.

Note

1. Deoscóredes M. Dos Santos, Axé Opó Afonja (Río de Janeiro: Instituto

Brasiliero de Estudos Afro- Asiáticos), 1963.
 .

5
African Influence on Language
in the Caribbean

Richard Allsopp

In the Hispanic and Portuguese-speaking countries of Latin America,

serious scholarly attention has for many years been given to African
linguistic survivals in the New World forms of Spanish and Portuguese
—
spoken in these countries. As long ago for the business of linguistics as —
1924, Fernando Ortiz's famous Glossary of Afronegrism presented a vo-
cabulary of some twelve hundred African terms in Cuban Spanish. The
author's care in explaining his dissatisfaction with the label Africanismos
(and preference for Afronegrismos) established a respect for the identity
of this corpus of African contribution to his country's language that both
made the work uniquely ahead of its time and indicated the approach
which others elsewhere have followed.

The words studied in this book comprise our Africanisms; not only those
that we could call Afrocubanisms, but also some that could be presented as
Afrohispanicisms
These voices comprise our Africanisms; nevertheless, we have not
wanted to call them that, because this nomenclature, which suggests geog-
raphy, does not give the idea exactly. These words come from Africa; but
not from the Arab peoples, not from the Turks of Egypt, not from the Boers
of the Transvaal, etc.; concretely, they come from "the Blacks of Africa."
Therefore, we have preferred to coin the word Negroafricanism, or Af-
ronegrism, which we consider of good alloy. [Introduction, p. xiv]

Thus it is the linguistic contribution from Black Africa that, says Ortiz,
must undoubtedly be acknowledged.
In Brazil, where distinguished anthropologists and historians have for
decades recognized the Black contribution to that vast country's culture,
particular writers have focused attention on the linguistic contribution as
well. Professor Joáo Ribiero devoted part 3 of O Elemento Negro to "A
Influencia do Elemento Negro na Linguagem" (pp. 78-143, with an appen-
dix, pp. 157-186); and other writers have also dealt with the matter in
detail, one of the most fulsome treatments being Nelson de Senna's Afri-
cans in Brazil. The bulk of this latter work (the last nine chapters, pp. 69-
274) given to detailed lists and related studies, in keeping with the
is

author's claim that "Consequently, scholars have an extremely wide field

83
 —
84 Africa in Latin America

of literary, philological, and scientific activity in that badly explored and

inexhaustible search for the Afronegrisms that enrich the vocabulary of
the Portuguese language as spoken in Brazil" (p. 21).
In Puerto Rico, Nazario's El Elemento Afronegroide en el Español de
Puerto Rico was a further massive contribution (453 pages) to the inven-
tory of African aportaciones to transatlantic Spanish; and although he
saw the words of African root as being "de menor importancia ... en el
conjunto del vocabulario hispanopuertorriqueño" (p. 202) he notes the
greater vitality of these words in the areas of greater concentration of
Black people. It is also interesting to note that his grouping of the léxico
afronegroide according to subject matter reveals that the survivals related
to the cultural life of the Negro (though he calls it Vida espiritual —
ceremonies, superstitions, music, and dancing) are the most significant in
number.
In addition to these general studies, which stand like monuments in the
sparsely built domain of studies of African linguistic diaspora, there stand
to the further credit of Hispanoamerican scholarship one or two works in
Brazil and Cuba concentrating on the survival of a particular African
language. Such a work as Lydia Cabrera's Anagó: Lucumí Vocabulary —
setting out as it does, in over three hundred packed pags, a listing of

seventy-five hundred —
words of Yoruba spoken in Cuba is conclusive
evidence, in this writer's view, that the African linguistic presence in the
New World is of such obtrusive importance that neglect of it can no
longer be excused even on the traditional emotional grounds.
In areas of Dutch control on the South American mainland circum-
stances forced acknowledgment and study of the African linguistic in-
fluence, especially in Suriname. In that country, a firmly established
Negerengelsch, confronting official Dutch, necessitated attention, and the
establishment of a Taalbureau and a Bureau Volkslectuur in Paramaribo
brought scholarship to bear on this distinctly Afro-influenced language
whose rise in national status and lingual credit is indicated by the replace-
ment of the pejorative name Taki-taki with the respectful Sranan Tongo.
Moreover, the distinguished work, first of the anthropologists M. J. and
F. S. Herskovits of Northwestern University, and then of the linguist Jan
1

Voorhoeve of the University of Leiden, have brought to international

attention the fact that the most solidly preserved African linguistic surviv-
als in the New World are to be found in Suriname, and independently of
the Sranan Tongo language. Saramaccan, the collective name given to the
"Bush dialects" spoken along the Suriname and Saramacca rivers, is actu-
ally a tone language

a ké = he wants (mid-tone on a)
á ké = he does not want (high-tone a)
2
 —
African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 85

—with a significant number of other African features, phonemic, lexical,

and sentence-pattern. Djuka is a third distinct language of Suriname
3

showing distinctive African features, though not as many as Saramaccan.

Again in Curasao, Papiamento, having by sociohistorical accident be-
come the common tongue, has stimulated controversy because of its
Creole status. But thereby it has also commanded serious attention, and
in 1951 Navarro Tomás argued in a brief but resounding article, that that
language had its origin in the Portuguese pidgin of the West African coast
in the slave era. True, Navarro Tomás, like so many others after him,
typically stressed the Portuguese element and dynamics of this pidgin, but
even so, the African influence, if grudged at that time, was indisputable.
The record of study of African linguistic survivals in the Anglophone
and Francophone Caribbean is far less substantial than that with which
the Hispanic, Portuguese, and Dutch scholars can be credited. The reason
lies in the social history of these places: in contrast to the Hispanic and

Portuguese New World societies, the English and French colonial

societies were sharply anti-integrative —
so were the Dutch, but then Sra-
nan and Papiamento profited from special circumstances 4 and in those —
colonies the association of Creole speech with Black people and with the
lowest social stratum meant that it was sharply despised by the whole
society, including the Creole speakers themselves. This is still the case
today, and since the Creole tongues —which may be regarded as dialects
in the Anglophone, but properly as languages in the Francophone
places —are the repository of all the surviving Africanisms; the study of
Africanism has had to await the change in attitudes brought about by the
recent, almost sudden scholarly "discovery" of the linguistic importance
of the Creoles. And still, the preference of modern linguistics for heuristic
rather than historical investigations —
synchronic vs. diachronic studies
has meant that the African linguistic influence, for example in West At-
lantic Black English, denied until L. D. Turner's famous work Africanism
in the Gullah Dialect, is still a greatly underdeveloped area in the domain
5

of language study in the Anglophone and Francophone New World. In-

deed such a reputable American scholar as Professor Robert Hall, Jr. still
maintains in principle that any African influence is superficial, failing to
reach the grammatical dynamics of the Creoles:

The surface characteristics of the various pidgins and creóles may often be
quite far from those of English, French, or the other Indo-European lan-
guages; but, on a deeper level of grammar, all varieties of Pidgin English and
creóles that have grown out of them have an underlying identity of structure
with English, and similarly for the French-based, Spanish-based, and Portu-
guese-based pidgins and creóles. No matter how much they may have
changed and have been brusquely restructured near the surface, they still
maintain a basically Indo-European pattern. This observation, incidentally,
 —
86 Africa in Latin America

forces itself on the observer even against his will: three times I have begun
work on a pidgin or creóle language (Neo-Melanesian, Stranan, and Haitian
Creole) with the determination to find init a non-Indo-European structure,

and each time the language itself has compelled recognition of its basically
6
English or French pattern, as the case might be.

It is worth quoting this opinion, presented in 1966, if only to contrast it

sharply with the older one of the Brazilian Professor Joáo Ribiero (1939?)
which the facts of this paper seem better able to support:

That which we call the "black element" designates all the sorts of alterations
produced in the Brazilian language through the influences of the African
languages spoken by the slaves introduced into Brazil.
These alterations are not as superficial as some scholars claim; on the
contrary, they are rather profound, not only in respect to vocabulary, but
7
also in regard to the grammatical system of the language.

It would therefore seem opportune to engage the rest of the present article
in giving special attention to the African influence to be found in the
Anglophone and Francophone areas of the Caribbean.

II

The "alterations produced through the influence of the African lan-

. . .

guages spoken by the slaves introduced" into the New World were indeed
"rather profound" for two important reasons. The first is that these "alter-
ations" go back to the origins of the development of the New World
Creoles in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the West and Central
African coasts. The second is that Creolisms, often unsuspected, con-
tinue to characterize the idiom and the general dynamics of the language
that is being standardized today, especially in the Anglophone territories,
bringing with them the same African linguistic conditioning that have
made them Creolisms.
Let us look first at the important matter of origins. Although the pro-
geniture of the New World Creoles remains a matter of controversy, no
credible theorists today deny a notable degree of West African input; but
the widely accredited basic theory is that a willfully simplified Portu-
— —
guese a sailors' pidgin was the communication vehicle to which vari-
ous African adjuncts were admitted or clung; that when the French, En-
glish, and Dutch (in that order) followed the Portuguese into coastal trade,
they used the same Portuguese vehicular structure only "relexifying" it
8
i.e., replacing the Portuguese lexicon wholesale with their own, so that

whichever European culture the slaves fell under determined the "Euro"-
variety of pidgin they learned, but the species was congenitally Portu-
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 87

guese, which would explain the striking similarity of their deformities in

Indo-European terms.
The first aspect of this theory to be questioned is that, if the linguistic
thrust in the creation and maintenance of this new "talk" was both basi-
cally and persistently European, why is it that the result was structurally
so often far from any of the European progenitors? Compare common-
place expressions like

Papiamento: nan ta bai Spanish: ellos van

Portuguese: eles váo

Antillean French Creole: yo ka alé French: ils vont

Jamaican Creole: im a go English: she is going

and one immediately struck not only by the irreconcilable differences of

is

structure horizontally but, at the same time, by the remarkable

similarities of structure vertically. In other words the Creoles (on the left)
clearly have something structurally in common, and clearly also whatever
is responsible for the obvious genetic linkage in the Creoles, it is not

—
Portuguese nor any other of the European languages in the picture. The
only reasonable conclusion is that that "something" is African, an African
structural base! Admittedly the example is a small one, and since it con-
tributes to the rather crucial contention that the progenitor "pidgin" of the
— —
Caribbean and New World Creoles was more African than it was any-
thing else, it is pertinent, especially in the context of this paper, to show
why this is probably a more reasonable hypothesis than the generally
accepted one of essentially Portuguese production of the initial "pidgin."
In the circumstances of the slave trade, certain postulates in regard to
language would seem indisputable:

a. In the contact situation the West African was the host culture and the
—
European the visitant. The host culture and its basic cultural uniformity
has been cogently brought to attention by Mervyn Alleyne 9 would be in —
a stronger position to influence, characterize, indeed stabilize the means
of communication than the visitant culture, simply because it had a fairly
stable and (at contact points) specially motivated resident majority using
the new interlingua, while the visitant culture was a minority partner
which was both irregular and unstable, migratory and changing in person-
nel from one ship's crew to the next, and periodically also changing in
nationality.
b. The interlingua or "new code" would be pressed into service by the
hosts to discover the newcomer's intentions, decide on and establish the
nature of relationship with them, test their trustworthiness and (very
importantly) circumscribe the limits of their intrusion. The visitors how-
 — —
88 Áfrico in Latin America

ever would need the new code for self-protection, for situation control,
and to pursue their intended (commercial) objectives. Self-interest and
self-protection would motivate both sides, with the minority visitors
especially in the early stages which are notably important, after all, in the
—
formation of a pidgin feeling their way vitally into the hosts' understand-
ing, and the hosts critically assessing meaning and testing the worthiness
of entertaining an intrusion. In such circumstances the "prestige" of the
visitor's language and its "dominance" in the production of the new code
are assumptions which, though common among all writers on the sub-
ject," seem rather questionable, if they are tenable at all. On the contrary
1

it seems quite possible that a situation in which a belief in mutual integrity

would have been to the advantage of the minority visitors should have
reflected mutuality in the "code" it produced.
c. A pidgin is product and instrument of an exclusively oral situation; and
a pidgin situation is also obviously dominated by performance, in the

linguistic sense of this term. In the African or host culture language is also
exclusively oral, every "speech event" being characterized by an actual-
ity and certain "performance factors"" that are, in contrast, not notable in

European languages. It would therefore seem reasonable to conclude that

the coincidence of these important African language characteristics with

certain important characteristics of a pidgin situation should be to the
advantage of the African "side" in a process of pidginization with a Euro-
pean "side."
In the face of such arguments it is difficult to see how the pidgin or
protopidgin which postulated as the progenitor of our Caribbean
is

Creoles can be called "Portuguese pidgin" or "pidgin Portuguese" or a

"Portuguese pidgin [from] medieval Sabir": and the fact seems to be
12

overlooked that this "Portuguese pidgin" is largely postulated and no one

—
has ever found a working sample of it yet in the ship's logs, diaries, or
travel accounts of the period. The proposition rests largely on a few
—
words far too few: Professor F. G. Cassidy makes the case for six in
Jamaican Creole savvy, pickaninny, dobl, candle, paen, sampata and —
the argument of a Portuguese progeniture as against other later European
possibilities for the last four of these is not conclusive, as Cassidy himself
indicates.
13
Moreover, one of the supposedly Portuguese words that evi-
dently continues to excite much interest in the genesis theory is the Portu-
guese feminine prepositional particle na, serving as a regular preposi-
tional particle in different Creoles, which Douglas Taylor (1960: 157) has
shown to be used in Sranan and Phillipine Creoles in a way quite "com-
mon" in Ibo, but quite "foreign to English, Spanish, and Portuguese."
Again, as Ian Hancock 14 points out, "the grammatical structure shared by
these English-derived Atlantic Creoles is no closer to Portuguese than it is
to any other European language," and, except for Saramaccan, have a
negligible percentage of their vocabularies traceable to Portuguese.
Altogether then, the case for Portuguese influence is patently thin and
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 89

indeed no case has ever been made for a Portuguese grammatical sub-
stratum coming through the "Portuguese pidgin" to the resultant Creoles.
On the other hand, that there is a case against an African substratum to
our Creole structure has been agreed on by scholars of such widely differ-
ing views as Hall (1966:58, 86) and DeCamp, the latter concluding that
"there could not have been any significant systematic African 'sub-
" I5
stratum.' A basic
problem, therefore, is: exactly what framework then
was "relexified?" The answer,if the theory is accepted, must be an Af-

roportuguese contact vernacular and this, following the indications in this

paper, and against opinions such as DeCamp's, was likely to be
"significantly" African. The distinguished sociolinguist William Labov
has remarked that "the penetration of one language by another, in lexicon
and grammatical subsystems, is .much deeper than most linguists
. .

would have been willing to believe possible;" 16 but when this interesting
statement is applied to the Afro-Portuguese case it seems that "interpene-
tration" would more properly describe what took place, and iTzterpenetra-
tion is, of course, not relexification. Indeed Weinreich, some time ago
now, (1958:379), seems still to have said the most apt word on the matter
among the scholarly voices: "In the formation of the Creoles, an unknown
African substratum, mutual interinfluence, and the 'minimization' (or
'optimization') of grammar which seems to be universally attendant upon
improvised communication conditions, all played a role [emphasis
mine]." In addition, Taylor (1963:813) at the end of a long article on the
origin of West Indian Creoles concluded that "if there was continuity in
the use of a grammatical system, everything points to Africa as the place
—
of that system's origin probably not in any one African language, but
more likely in some Afro-Portuguese pidgin."
There is, therefore, both evidence and scholarly support for an Afro-
Portuguese contact vernacular with a strong African substratum as the
basic language of the Portuguese fifteenth and sixteenth century trading
on the West African Coast. Indeed the strong African character of the
vernacular may be the reason why no written samples of it appear in
ship's logs, diaries, etc., as has been pointed out. One can well imagine
Portuguese reluctance or inability to write down rather un-Portuguese
vocables. Nevertheless the Portuguese had long enough to learn, to "in-
stitutionalize," this vernacular —
a century of uninterrupted contact from
1441 before the French intruded, as Cassidy (1964: 269) has noted. In fact
,

17
this is too long a time, as pidginization theory goes, for the term "pidgin"
to be still applicable to the "talk," and "vernacular" —
an established,
—
home-grown, utility "talk" is a more apt label. This, then, would have
been the established auxiliary vernacular that the Portuguese would have
taken with them in their later trading expansion around the world. And
this, too, would have been the basic auxiliary language that the African
hosts would have kept going as new waves of Europeans French, En- —
glish and Dutch in that order —
began from about 1550 to establish busi-
 "

90 Africa in Latin America

ness contact with them: it is this auxiliary language that would have been
"relexified.
The next problem is who did the relexifying —who made the postulated
"lexical shifts" replacing vocabulary from one source language by "wide-
spread borrowings" from a new source language (Stewart: 1962).
8
J. Voorhoeve' points out that the supposed relexification which produced
the prototype of the French Creoles clearly did not pass through a French
—
pidgin stage and everyone must agree, since French Creoles are a very
far cry from what Frenchmen would have done to their language to "sim-
plify" it. Indeed the French Creoles and French are and evidently have
always been mutually incomprehensible! But the theory actually requires
that the French, English, and Dutch "used the Portuguese pidgin as the
basis and model for pidgins of their own." This means that the French-
19

men would have learned an ongoing Portuguese pidgin as a second lan-

guage (!) and thoroughly enough to produce a third language (why ??)
very much like the second and very unlike their first in character except
for mass change in lexicon, and that Englishmen simultaneously, and
Dutchmen later, would have done the same. Such developments seem
most unlikely. If, on the other hand, one were to see the African hosts as
agents of the change, relexifying their own century-old auxiliary language
to accommodate new European trading nations, with each set of Euro-
pean nationals readily cooperating in the development of a trade language
specially for their advantage, at least illogicalities disappear. The only
difficulty with this approach is the question of whether there were
sufficient and significant enough similarities in the multifarious West Afri-
can (and later also Central African!) languages to justify postulating "an
unknown African substratum." The argument for a "basic cultural uni-
formity of West Africa" with an "African-derived deep-structure" in lan-
guage has already been referred to above (and see note 9). The matter
must, however, be taken further than that, and it can be. The now widely
accepted work of Greenberg (1966) based on the twin principles of "mass-
comparison" of "linguistic evidence only" groups the great bulk of the
languages in some three million square miles of Subsaharan Africa as
genetically related within a vast Niger-Congo family; and Armstrong
ended his great essay (1964: 23) emphasizing "the immense antiquity of
West African languages" and their "fundamental and elaborate unity"
(which he backed up with thirty-eight pages of illustrative lexical appen-
dix).

Ill

Such highly respected scholarly opinion is not the only basis on which
the thesis of uniformity of structure of a multilingual West African prod-
uct rests. The evidence of certain features of language in the Caribbean is
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 91

that there are common structures peculiar to them which can only be
accounted for by a conceptual uniformity intrinsic to their African pro-
geniture. The examples that follow now add to the minimal sample offered
above at the beginning of section 2.
Perhaps the simplest feature to bring to attention first is that of word
formation in the languages that have surfaced in the Caribbean. The sur-
face word for Standard English (SE) "tears" in many Caribbean Creoles is
a lexicosemantic structure made up of "eye" + "water." For example:

Guyana Creole eye-water

Jamaica Creole

Sranan Tongo watr'ai

(Suriname)

Patois Guyanais dileau-ouéye (de l'eau + oeil)

(Fr. Guyana)

And the parallel lexicosemantic structure may be found in many African

languages. For example:

Mandingo na-giyo

(Gambia) eye-water

Mende ngayei < ngamei + njei

(Sierra Leone)
face (eyes) water

Twi ani - suo

(Ghana) eye water

Fante nyinsuwa < enyiwa + nsu

(Ghana) eye water

Yoruba omi - oju

(W. Nigeria) water eye

Igbo anya - miri - akka

(E. Nigeria) eye water flowing

Efik mmong - eyet

(E. Nigeria) water of the eye

Luo pi - wang
(Uganda) water eye
92 Africa in Latin America

Lingala mayi-ya-miso

(Zaire) water of eyes

Ci-Nyanja misozi<liso (pi. "maso") + manzi

t rr u- \x -^ e ye water
(Zambia-Malawi) i

The number and wide scatter of these African examples from Gambia to —
—
Zambia demonstrating a sameness in word formation that is reflected
both in the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Creoles indicates
(a) that the parallel emergence was possible through slaves' calquing from
their different native tongues into the same European language whether
on the West African coast or in the New World; and (b) that this parallel-
ism was due to the characteristic similarity of African patterns.
—
Such deep-structure similarity especially if it spread beyond word-
—
structure level would contribute to an easy business communication
—
among Africans themselves a multilingual facility making possible an
auxiliary vernacular. One can see this "vernacular," with the universal
working principles of pidginization (see Weinreich's remark above) as an
added factor, being transferred to a business contact situation whether —
as trader or slave —
with Europeans, the latter's needs helping further to
unify the African product. In this light the African linguistic base of the
New World products would be seen as substantial, integrative, and pri-
mary rather than parasitic.
Indeed the evidence may be strengthened from an examination of the
idiomatic structures and the kind of conceptualization that came through
to the Creoles, where such structures both show a uniformity and indicate
African progeniture. Space must limit us to two categories of examples
here, the one of idiom and the other proverbs.
The first is a classic Creole structure which has been called "predicate-
clefting" or better "front-shifting" or "front-focusing." It is an aspectual
feature involving reduplication of the verb nucleus to emphasize the actu-
ality of a piece of information. An example from Haitian Creole that
Albert Valdman calls "a special case of embedding" 20 is:

(1) sé manjé 1 ap manjé

is eat he -ing eat

(= He's really eating)

Similar examples may be cited from other French Creoles, for example
Taylor's Caribbean examples (1951: 50) which he calls "a special kind of
inversion." The structure is "special" to Europeans, but it may be found
in all the Anglophone Creoles and post-Creoles except present Barbadian.
So, for example, in Guyanese Creole:
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 93

(2) a fraikn dem bin fraikn

it's frighten them (past) frighten
( = They were very much frighened)

and Bailey's (1966:86) Jamaican example:

(3) a tiif Jan tiif di manggo

it's steal John steal the mango
(= John did, in fact, steal the mango)

and Hendrik Focke (1855, Intro.: X) notices the structure with examples,
in Suriname's Neger-Engelsch:

(4) Da skrífi mi de skrifi

it's write I -ing write

( = I am actually writing)

Again Papiamento has this structure to express emphasis (Goilo, 1962:

89):

(5) Ta ke mi ke bo bai
Is want I want you go
( = I do want you to go)

This very particular type of reduplicative structure is as notably foreign to

Portuguese and European languages as it is notably present in African
languages. The following examples,
taken from languages of places as21

widely separated as Senegal, Nigeria, and Zambia and from language —

families as distinct as West Atlantic, Kwa, and Bantu — suggest that we
have here a generic African idiom:

(6) Wolof: Tayal la tayal rek

(Gambia) Laziness it is laziness only
(= He is/they are just lazy!)
(7) Mende: ngufei mia i wufei nga la i lowu
(Sierra Leone) nga
shame (emph.) he be ashamed (past) (emph.) he
hide (past)
(= It was really from shame that he hid)
(8) Twi wawu no, na owu ara na wawu
(Ghana) He died he, that he die even that he died
(= Having died, he was dead) (Christaller:147)
(9) Nupe: li lo nan wo lo nan, U gala ewun be
(Nigeria) O
The go(ing) that you go that it which fight bring
(terminal emph.)
( = The going that you went there caused trouble)
94 Africa in Latin America

(10) Yoruba: Pipa ni nwon pa a

(Nigeria) Killing it is they kill him
(= They actually killed him) (Rowlands, 1969:210)
(11) Kikongo: Kanuini ko, yela ketua yela
(Zaire) Not he drink not, sick he is sick
( = He is not drunk, he is actually sick)
(12) Ki-Yaka: Ayandi ! Ubela ka bela
(Zaire) It is so! Sick he sick
( = He is actually sick, not pretending)
(13) Ci-Nyanja: Kupita angapite, koma atate ace
azakalipa
(Zambia-Malawi) To go he can go but father his he will be
angry
( = He may certainly go but his father will be angry)

We may turn now to the field of proverbs, which, though widely

scouted by folklorists and anthropologists, seems to have remained virtu-
ally untouched by linguists. Yet the proverb is the esin oró ("horse word")
or vehicle of thought to the African, as one Yoruba proverb puts it, and is
It would be preposterous
intrinsic to serious dialogue right across Africa.
to suppose that the conceptual structure of African proverbs can have
been lusitanized by Portuguese trade-contact, and furthermore it would
be hardly possible to imagine their translation on any scale into a Portu-
guese coastal pidgin. Yet it seems an increasing matter of fact that a body
of evidently generic African proverbs arrived in the New World calqued
in the Creoles of whatever "base," evidently from some common concep-
tual African frame. The evidence is best illustrated by one of the many
examples in such a work as David-Jardel's Creole Proverbs of Martini-
que, a rich collection of proverbs in which those of the Francophone
Caribbean are mingled with those of West and Central Africa. Thus (pp.
53-54 of that work):

(14) Dominica: Faute manman ou ka teté magranne

(15) Haiti: Lors ou pas gan manman ou teté grande
(16) Louisiana: Quand na pas manman, teté grand-maman

with which are paralleled also.

(17) Mali: Faute d' avoir teté sa mere a teté sa

grand-mere (Fulani)
(18) A défaut du sein de sa mere, on tete celui
de sa grand-mére (Bombara)
(19) Celui qui n'a pas de mere prend le sein de
sa grand-mere (Malinke)
(20) Senegal: A défaut de ta mere, tu tetes ta
grand-mére (Wolof, Serer-Non)
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 95

(21) Guinea: Celui qui n'a pas de mere prend le sein

de sa grand-mere (Mandinka, Dyula, Fulani)
(22) Chad: Si tu ne peux téter ta mere, il te reste
les tétons de ta grand-mére (Mbai)

(23) Congo: L'enfant privé de sa mere suce les seins

de sa grand-mére (Kongo)

And to David-Jardel's impressive collection may be added another Carib-

bean relative:

(24) Guyana: Picknie can't get mamme, he suck granny

The parallel occurrence of such particular conceptualization —the kind

of data selected as carrier —of what a is commonplace of human
thought—that "one must make the best of what there better cannot be is if

found" — and the persistence of occurrence through caiques into new

this
language bases make it difficult to avoid the conclusion that there is an
African way of putting things that may be as deep and pervasive for Africa
22
as Whorf's Standard Average European (SAE) for Europe. In other
words a kind of Standard Average African or SAA. Indeed the evidence
almost tempts the suggestion that linguistically SAA may have a deeper
common conceptual base than SAE; but whether that be so or no the
evidence for a kind of SAA would explain an African facility for acquiring
other, not necessarily neighbouring, African languages his noted Af- —
—
romultilingualism by a process of calquing. However upon his contact
— —
with non- African languages those of Europe the principle of calquing
would influence only the intellectual base of the necessary new code, the
vocabulary being built upon universal principles of pidginization.
Now the role of calquing in pidgin-Creole evolution has been variously
23
noted by writers on the subject, but not emphasized: Taylor bases an
important paper on the "striking structural similarities between members
of lexically differently based groups which cannot be attributed to the
'source language'." Hancock
24
concedes "extensive calquing and Af-
ricanization of the Creoles," but does not allow that this process had
already begun in Africa. Hoenigswald
25
in some revealing paragraphs sug-
gests, in general terms, that "conditions of 'intimate' contact. . . . be-
tween grossly different languages may lead to excessive borrowing of loan
words and creating of caiques and loan-translations (process 1) with ef-
fects that would resemble rapid 'learning' uncorrected by any ironing-out
of flaws (process 2)." The argument of the present paper is that African
calquing is central to the origin of New World and probably other
Creoles, that the Africans, first in Africa and later in the New World,
interpreted or calqued ther native structural patterns in Portuguese or
—
French or English or Dutch this accounting for the indisputable struc-
between Papiamento and English-based and French-
tural similarities
 —

96 Africa in Latin America

based Creoles. This contention accordingly supports the thesis of Mono-

more precisely, however, as
genesis of the Creoles, identifying the latter
what may be called an Afrogenesis of Creoles of whatever base.

IV

—
We remarked earlier that "Creolisms" those features of New World
IndoEuropean languages that bear the historical coloring of Africa
continue to characterize these languages today. Attention may be drawn
first to a suprasegmental or "prosodic" conditioning that is especially
noticeable, at least in the English of the Creole-based speaker, which
distinguishes it in a systematic way from homeland or "British" English.
This feature has been observed both at sentence and at word level and
there can be doubt that it is, once again, generically African.
little

At sentence Cassidy (1961: Chapter 3) has demonstrated very

level,
effectively that the intonation of Jamaican speech bears an accidental
resemblance to Welsh or Irish English, which is nonfundamental, but that
"the only possible alternative source for the characteristic Jamaican into-
nation is the African languages that the slaves spoke when they came"
(p. 31) the Africans "carrying over into English some of the accidentation
of pitch to which they were accustomed" in such languages, as he shows,
as Twi. This systemic intonation, though strongest at folk level, is still
very noticeable at the standard level of Jamaican English; and the same
remark applies to the Englishes of other Caribbean territories, which,
though they have distinctive intonational features to Caribbean ears, are
all different from British or North American varieties.

At word level another feature that may be observed, the semantic pitch
differentiation of homonyms and homographs, seems to be clearly a resi-
due of phonemic pitch from the tone languages of Africa, as it is not a
feature of original English. 26 Since the words involved are not African, but
English, the feature — so subtle has long
that itundetected by scholars
lain
for what it is —involves a carryover onto English homonyms of the Afri-
can capacity to signal difference in meaning by change of pitch only,
without interfering with the words' stress pattern. Obviously the feature
is more easily demonstrated on words of more than one syllable, but Prof.

J. Berry, the distinguished Africanist scholar at Northwestern University,

has identified the feature on monosyllables working with Jamaican infor-

mants distinguishing tonemically, for example, the minimal pairs

bank (of a river) glass (a tumbler) pen (for writing)

bank (for money) glass (a window pane) pen (for cows)

The following examples of disyllabic pairs are, however, taken from

the present writer's own experience as a native speaker of Guyanese
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 97

English. (The stress is indicated in capitals, and the pitch by the custom-
ary use of numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc., representing relative levels from low
upwards.) Most of the examples apply also to present Barbadian English
and some (plus others not given here) also to St. Vincent, St. Kitts,
Antigua, Grenada, and Dominica, as checked by the writer with infor-
mants from those places.

Item Pitch Patterns

712/ ITU
ARCHer
BUTCHer
Family Ordinary words
COOPer
Names (S.E. usage)
FRIday
MAson
PORter
Ordinary words
TAYlor
Family names (S.E. usage)
WELcome
(tailor)
etc.

UGly
ordinary adjectives
WICKed Nicknames
(S.E. usage)
STUpid
BROther
Members of
FAther Blood
religious
SISter relatives
organization
MOther
ANSwer arithmetical result reply to a question
in classwork

WORKer Seamstress Workman

FIGure Shape of female (a) number
etc. body (b) guess

LESSon LESSen
FLOWer FLOur
etc.

The feature means, of course, that sentences like

(25) He is a butcher
(26) She is a mother

will each have very different meanings in these societies depending on the
pitch pattern used on butcher, mother. Though the feature is most com-
monly noticeable in disyllabic words, it is not limited to these, and trisyl-
labic and quadrisyllable examples can also be found e.g., —
 =

98 Africa in Latin America

BEAUtiful IV Ml nickname /2'2 1/ S. E. adjective

COMmon ENtrance /1'12'2/ a /2 ' 2

1
' 1/ regular public gateway
School examination

However, these prosodic subtleties are by no means the only Creol-

isms that mark the cultivated language of the Anglophone Caribbean
areas. Less subtle but nearly as pervasive African influence can be
identified at the morphosyntactic and idiomatic levels. The chief mor-
phological feature attributable to the African linguistic heritage is the use
of the uninfected English verb more in lexical than syntactic function, the
nature rather than the time of an action (see note 11) being commonly
signaled in the speech and writing of persons at many socioeducational
levels:

(27) I hear so yesterday.

(28) He say he is going.
etc.

The idiomatic cases are often readily spotted by English-speaking for-

eigners to the region and a few examples will suffice as illustration at this
stage.

to be able with someone ( = to manage or cope with someone

easily)

to be hard-eared ( to be obstinate)

to be big-eyed (= to be covetous or gluttonous)

to be two-mouthed ( to be deceitful)

their eyes made four ( their eyes met)

to have a basket to carry water ( to have a nearly impossible task)

to want to die laughing ( to be extremely amused)

to have to call somebody uncle (= to be the person's nephew or

niece)

"I'm there!" (in reply to the greeting "How are

you?"

(2nd person plural pronoun)

each of which may be shown to be an exact Dr near caique, often from

more than one African language.
Purely lexical remainders from African languages have been left for
last since these, the most obvious apports identifiable today have been the
subject of more common attention and therefore require simpler comment
in the present paper. Moreover, the appearance of the brilliant historical
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 99

Dictionary of Jamaican English (1967) has minimized the necessity today

of listing surviving African words still to be found at folk level in the
Caribbean. A count of the words in that dictionary whose etymology has
been either clearly identified as African or indicated as likely to be has
produced 473 cases out of an estimated 15,000 entries, or just about 3
percent. The low proportion is significant but, in the historical, social and
educational circumstances, does not need to be explained. The same
percentage probably applies roughly to other Caribbean territories here
—
and there, with significant exceptions again for historical reasons such —
as Barbados, where traces have been more massively eroded. It is the
near absence of this evidence of African survivals in the New World that
has led superficial investigations into serious misjudgments and misled
educators in the Anglophone territories into thinking that the English
superstructure had totally suppressed the African linguistic presence, so
that the learning of English needed only the educational routines designed
in England. But the truth, far from this, is that the lexical is about the least
of the African influences, which, as we have seen, are, in the wise words
of Joáo Ribiero "rather profound."

Notes

1. See M. J. and F. S. Herskovits, Rebel Destiny

—
Among the Bush Negroes
of Dutch Guiana (New York, 1934), which discloses the depth of African culture
preserved by the people living on the banks of the Saramacca River; and
Suriname Folklore (New York, 1936), in which there is also a section of "Linguis-
tic Notes" (pp. 117-135).

2. J. Voorhoeve, "A Project for the Study of Creole Language History in

Suriname," in Creole Language Studies II, ed. R. B. Le Page (Macmillian, 1961)
p. 105. See also the same author's "Le Tom et la grammaire dans le Saramaccan"
Word 17 (1961).
3.Dyuka is the collective name of the Bush dialects spoken along the
Mavowijne River of Suriname. See Voorhoeve, "Creole Language History,"
pp. lOOff.
4. Prof. Sidney W.
Mintz's paper "The Socio-Historical Background to Pid-
ginization & Creolization," in Dell Hymes,
ed., Pidginization and Creolization of
Languages, pp. 481-96, is an excellent account of the contrasting situations in
these colonial societies.
5. L. D. Turner's (1949) massive evidence of Africanisms in the Gullah
Dialect of the South Carolina-Georgia coast defeated such rash assertions as Prof.
Krapp's (quoted by him p. 6) that "it is reasonably safe to say that not a single
detail of Negro pronunciation or Negro syntax can be proved to have any other
than an English origin"; but some scholars still wish to defend some of this
ground.
6. Robert R. Hall, Jr. (1966:58). He however admits (p. 86) that "extensive
carryovers of patterns from the substratum (native) languages" will have been
 . —

WO Africa in Latin America

added to the "simplified versions of the fundamentally European linguistic struc-

tures" which the Creoles are.
7. Joáo Ribiero, O Elemento Negro, p. 83.

8. The term relexification" must be credited to W. A. Stewart (1962), though

others have contributed to the theory. The dominant role of a Portuguese pidgin,
as an inevitable lingua franca is the nucleus of this theory.
9. See Dr. Alleyne's "Acculturation and the Cultural Matrix of
telling article
Creolization," in Hymes, pp. 169-86, and esp. pp. 175-6, where he argues that the
relative basic homogeneity of the cultural area of West Africa would have had
"correlates" in the linguistic deep-structure.
Even those who are openly suspicious of the "Portuguese pidgin" hypothe-
10.
sis seem ready to concede, like Dr. Alleyne (ibid., p. 175) that "the African
community saw it in their interests to learn the languages of the European."
11. It is a well-known and widely encountered feature of the West African
languages (see, for example. Turner, 1949:225-27) that the nature of a "happen-
ing" (called aspect by the grammarians) in more important than the time of the
"happening," because the time (i.e., "tense") in such cases is already determined
by "present" contextual reference and "present" situational factors so that the
verb, doing what is properly a lexical job of signaling "nature" rather than "time,"
often needs no morphological or "tense" change at all, or only a change in syllabic
pitch. Also, the only vocabulary there is is actually functional, there being no
provision for "lexical sedimentation," which writing permits (Alexandre,
1972:32). It is to such characteristics that I refer in the term actuality. Related to
this are the "performance" factors of pitch-differentiation (in "tone" languages,
which are very common in West Africa) and the immediacy of the operation which
—
a speech event is, in contrast to a written "event" that is, there is no provision in
oral cultures for the maturation of a speech event that writing permits; and it is a
fair question whether performance —
in the linguistic sense, as distinct from the
—
speaker's ultimate grammatical competence is differently, more deeply, de-
veloped in oral than in scribal cultures. Another point is that multilingualism
—
another set of calls on a speaker's "performance" is an old habit of West African
cultures (Alexandre, 1972: 16-17) in contrast with monolinguistic European cul-
tures.
12. These are the terms which Hymes, De Camp, and Whinnom among others
use in their papers in Hymes, pp. 4, 23, 107.
13. In his article "Tracing the Pidgin Element in Jamaican Creole," in Hymes,
pp. 203-221.
14. Ian Hancock, "Provisional Comparison of the English-derived Atlantic
Creoles," in Hymes, pp. 287-291.
15. In his introductory article in Hymes, p. 20.
"The Notion of System in Creole Languages" in Hymes pp. 447-472.
16.

17. Hall's view (1966:1 16) that "half a century is, if anything a long time in the
time-perspective of pidgin languages" is not contested in principle by other
scholars.
18. Hymes, p. 189.
In a note in
19. Hymes, p. 203.
Cassidy, in
20. Prof. Albert Valdman of Indiana University, in a note describing "The
Language Situation in Haiti" in Hymes, p. 61.
21 I am indebted to the following very gracious informants, native speakers of
the languages, for the data given, though any faults in the presentation must be
attributed to me:
 African Influence on Language in the Caribbean 101

Mbye Cham
102 Africa in Latin America

Hall, R. A., Jr. Pidgin and Creole Languages, Cornell, 1966.

Hymes, Dell, (ed.) Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, Cambridge,
1971.
Navarro R. Tomas, T. "Observaciones sobre el Papiamento," Nueva revista de
filología hispánica 7 (1951), (pp. 183-89).
Nazario, M. A. El Elemento Afronegroide en el Español de Puerto Rico. San
Juan, 1961.
Oritz, F. Glosario de Afroñe grismas. Havana, 1924.
Ribiero, J. O — —
Elemento Negro: Historia Folklore Lingüistica. Rio de Janeiro,
1939.
Rowlands, E. Teach Yourself Yoruba, English U. Press, 1969.
de Senna, N. Africanos No Brasil. Bello Horizonte, 1938.
Steward W. A. "Creole Languages in the Caribbean," in Study of the Role of
Second Languages, ed. F. A. Rice. Washington: C.A.L., 1962.
Taylor, D. "Structural Outline of Caribbean Creole," Word! (1951): 43-59.
"Language Shift of Changing Relationship," LJAL 26(2) (1960): 155-61.
.

"The Origin of West Indian Creole Languages: Evidence from Grammat-

.

ical Categories," American Anthropologist, 65(4) (1963): 800-814.

Turner, L. D. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. U. Chicago Press, (1963), 1949.
Weinreich, U. "On the Compatibility of Genetic Relationship and Convergent
Development," Word 14 (1958).
 ,

6
The African Presence
in Caribbean Literature

Edward kamau Brathwaite

in december to about april every year, a drought visits the islands, the green
canefields take on the golden deciduous crispness of scorched parchment,
the blue sky burns muted, the dry air rivets the star nights with metallic-
cold, it is our tropical winter, this dryness, unexplained, is put down to 'lack
of rain.'
but living in st lucia at this time, i watched this drought drift in towards
the island, moving in across the ocean from the east, obscuring martinique
obscuring sails beating towards Castries and i suddenly realized that what i
— —
was witnessing that milky haze, that sense of dryness was something i
had seen and felt before in ghana. it was the seasonal dust-cloud, drifting
—
out of the great ocean of Sahara the harmattan. by an obscure miracle of
connection, this arab's nomad wind, cracker of fante wood a thousand
miles away, did not die on the sea-shore of west áfrica, its continental limit;
it drifted on, reaching the new world archipelago to create our drought,

imposing an african season on the Caribbean sea. and it was on these winds
too, and in this season, that the slave ships came from guinea, bearing my
ancestors to this other land. . ? .

Even before the slaves came—bringing, perhaps, Precolumbian ex-

first

plorers —there was the wind: an implacable climatic, indeed, geological

3

connection. Along routes and during its seasonal blowing, fifteen to

its

fifty were imported into the New World, 4 coming to

million Africans
constitute a majority of people in the Caribbean, and significant numbers
in the New World.

Transference and Adaptation

Now there is a persistent, established theory which contends that the

Middle Passage destroyed the culture of these people, that it was such a
catastrophic, definitive experience that none of those transported during
the period from 1540 to 1840 escaped trauma. But modern research is
5

pointing to a denial of this, 6 showing that African culture not only crossed
the Atlantic, it crossed, survived, and creatively adapted itself to its new
environment. Caribbean culture was therefore not "pure" African, but an
adaptation carried out mainly in terms of African tradition. This we can

This essay is dedicated to John La Rose.

103
104 Africa in Latin America

determine by looking at what anthropologists have called its culture-

focus. This concept posits that each culture has a distinguishing style or
characteristic; it may be sun-centered or acephalous, ceremonial or
casual, materialistic or contemplative. And everyone agrees that the
focus of African culture in the Caribbean was religious.
The argument claims, however, that it was only religion
anti- African
that the slaves brought with them, and a religion already tending more to
fetish and superstitition than to theology and ethics, and therefore weak
and unviable. They claim (and their twists of evidence would fill a whole
paper in itself) that the slave had no philosophy, no military organization,
no social life, no family structure, no arts, no sense of personal or civic
7
responsibility.
I fundamentally disagree with this view which I consider based (and
biased) on (1) mistaken notions of culture, culture change, and culture
transference; (2) untenable, sometimes ignorant, concepts of African cul-
ture; (3) a lack of intimacy with traditional African culture (most of those
who have written on Africa have been European scholars, with both
intellectualand interpersonal problems relating to Africa); and (4) an
almost total ignorance of Afro-American folk culture. 8 Until sensitive
African scholars begin to contribute to the study of New World and
Caribbean folk cultures, the presence of African elements within this
subculture is bound, for fairly obvious reasons, to remain obscure. How
can we explain the success of the Haitian Revolution, for instance, unless
we consider it a triumph of Afro-Caribbean folk arts and culture over
European mercantilism? Toussaint was a slave (a coachman) and an her-
balist, not an academy-drilled, socially motivated vaulter like Napoleon.

Religious Focus

The story really begins in the area of religious culture-focus already men-
tioned. A
study of African culture 9 reveals almost without question that it
is —
based upon religion that, in fact, it is within the religious network that
the entire culture resides. Furthermore, this entire culture is an organic
whole. In traditional Africa, there no specialization of disciplines, no
is

dissociation of sensibilities. In other words, starting from this particular

religious focus, there is no separation between religion and philosophy,
religion and society, religion and art. Religion is the form of kernel or core
of the culture.It is therefore not surprising that anthropologists tell us that

African culture survived in the Caribbean through religion. What we

should alert ourselves to is the possibility, whenever "religion" is men-
tioned, that a whole cultural complex isalso present. Of course we have
to take into account the depredations and fragmentations imposed upon
African culture by the slave trade and plantation systems; but this should
not alter our perception of the whole.
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 105

Emancipation

This African culture, focused upon a religious core which survived and
flourished under slavery, came under very severe attack at emancipation.
Under slavery, it had been possible for plantation slaves those not im- —
mediately or always under the surveillance of the master to continue —
practicing their religion and therefore their culture, or at least those ele-
ments of it that had survived under the conditions elements signaled by —
things like drum, dance, obeah* song, tale, and herb. At emancipation,
however, all this attack from a number of quarters.
came under
In the first place, the missionaries were naturally against African or
African-oriented religious practices among their ex-African adherents.
Hence the banning of the drum (voice of god or worship: nyame one of —
three Akan names for the Supreme Being); the gradual replacement of
African foods and foodstyles (nyamt/yam) by European or Creole substi-
tutes, and the Christianization of names (nommo Bantu for the Word) —
and ideas (nam). It was possible after emancipation to do this more and
more effectively because there was no longer the legal restriction on
missionary activity that had existed under slavery. Slowly the ex-slaves
began to lose or disown the most crucial elements of their culture in the
very area where it was most important and venerable. They began, in
other words, to go to churches and chapels rather than to beat their
drums.
Second, the process of education began — first clerical, then secular,

The African religious complex, despite its homogeneity, has certain interrelated divi-
—
sions or specializations: (1) "worship" an essentially Eurochristian word that doesn't
really describe the African situation, in which the congregation is not a passive one entering
into a monolithic relationship with a superior god, but an active community which celebrates
in song and dance the incarnation of powers/spirits (orishá loa) into one or several of
themselves. This is therefore a social (interpersonal and communal), artistic (formal/
improvisatory choreography of movement/sound) and eschatological (possession) experi-
ence, which erodes the conventional definition/description of "worship"; (2) rites de pas-
sage; (3) divination; (4) healing; and (5) protection. Obeah (the word is used in Africa and
the Caribbean) is an aspect of the last two of these subdivisions, though it has come to be
regarded in the New World and in colonial Africa as sorcery and "black magic." One
probable tributary to this view was the notion that a great deal of "prescientific" African
medicine was (and is) at best psychological, at norm mumbo-jumbo/magical in nature. It was

not recognized, in other words, that this "magic" was (is) based on a scientific knowledge
and use of herbs, drugs, foods and symbolic/associational procedures (pejoratively termed
fetishistic), as well as on a homoeopathic understanding of the material and divine nature of
Man (nam) and the ways in which this could be affected. The principle of obeah is, there-
fore, like medical principles everywhere, the process of healing/protection through seeking
out the source or explanation of the cause (obi/cvil) of the disease or fear. This was debased
by slave master/missionary/prospero into an assumption, inherited by most of us, that obeah
deals in evil. In this way, not only has African science been discredited, but Afrocaribbean
religion has been negatively fragmented and almost (with exceptions in Haiti and Brazil)
publicly destroyed. To we shall have to restore it to
properly understand obeah, therefore,
its proper place in the Afroamerican communion complex: kumina-custom-myal-obeah-
fetish.
tWest African (Mende, Ashanti, etc.) and Afrocaribbean for "food," or "to eat."
 —

106 Africa in Latin America

but always colonial. Depending on who owned the territory, the ex-slaves
were to be molded into the British or the French or the Spanish system.
They began to learn to read and write so that they were diverted from the
oral tradition of their inheritance; they became literate in a language
which was foreign them, "liberated" into a culture which was not
to
theirs. They began, in other words, to read about Versailles and cake and
Lord Nelson and Robin Hood and all those frescoes which, some time
ago, the Mighty Sparrow^ de-celebrated in his calypso, "Dan Is the Man
in the Van." At the same time, there was no countervailing influence to
help them learn about their own tradition. This of course did not "have to"
happen. It is conceivable that this education could have been truly bicul-
tural, so that, who knows, we might have struggled through Asante Twi
and the Zulu epics as well as French, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon. However,
under the dictates of mercantilism, education had a more monolithic and
materialistic aim: control of the ex-slaves for the profit of their labor.
was to retain its wall of social
Third, since the object of the plantocracy
and Caribbean, it supported these two "mission-
political authority in the
ary" drives with social legislation designed to prevent the former slaves
from achieving very much in the community. Their voting rights were
restricted, their socioeconomic mobility curtailed, and their way of life
brought under subtle but savage attack. Shango, cumfa, kaiso, tea-
—
meeting, susu, jamette-csLmiva\s§ all had to go.
The situation has been very slow to change. The law banning cumfa in
Suriname was only rescinded in 1971, and it is not unlikely that, techni-
l0

cally at least, laws against shango, bongo, poco, and obeah are still in
,[

force in the region. Recently, for instance, Dr. Eric Williams, Prime
Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and author of the radical antimercantilist
n
dissertation, Capitalism and Slavery, remarked with sardonic disap-

ÍThe name used by Slinger Francisco, the most talented and popular calypsonion of
recent times. Sparrow has dominated the calypso art form since the 1950s.
§Shango: an Afrocaribbean form of worship, centered mainly on Shango, the Yoruba
god of thunder and creativity, and most closely associated with the island of Trinidad.
Cumfa: one of the possession dance/ceremonies of the New World found under this
name mainly in the Guianas. In Jamaica, it is known as kumina.
Kaiso: an early form/word for calypso.
Tea-meeting: a speech contest and exhibition, at which syntactical logic is increasingly
abandoned or transcended. A kind of possession by the Word.
Susu: Yoruba/Caribbean word for cooperative group.
Jamette-carnival: Jamet, supposedly French Creole for diametre (literally, "the other
half"), was a term applied in Trinidad to the underworld of prostitutes, rudies, and, by
extension, the black poor. The ^'amfiii'-carnivals were obscured by the establishment on
grounds of "obscenity" (first routes, then hours of performance were restricted, until these
—
"ole mas" bands could appear only in the foreday morning jou'vert of the first day), and
—
thus became a maroon feature of the culture a dark area of celebration where the folk
expressed themselves without much reference to middle-class inhibitions and styles. Moko-
jumbies, jonkonnus, calindas (stick-fight dancers) and nation-bands (Shango, Congo, etc.)
were other features of this carnival.
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 107

proval that he didn't think it would be long before the obeah man would
be rehabilitated in the Caribbean." Such is the success of the Europhone
establishment at devaluing African culture in the New World. Not sur-
prisingly then, the teaching of African history at the University of the
West Indies has been, to say the least, spasmodic. The subject's most
distinguished native scholar, Walter Rodney, was cashiered from Jamaica
14
in 1968 and there has been no continuity of instruction since then. Afri-
can culture is not "taught" or even thought of at all, a fact reflected in the
dearth of books, records, films, and lectures on these matters available to
the public. Moreover, when an individual or group protests about this or
tries to do something about it, a multiracial howl goes up. The protesters
are accused of overemphasis on Africa (!) and asked to remember that
they are Dominicans, Bahamians, or what have you, with their own dis-
tinctive (!) and locally rooted (?) cultures. In August, 1973, for instance, a
Bajan cultural group, Yoruba House, commemorated Emancipation/
Freedom Day by issuing a number of awards in the arts the first such —
recorded in Barbados or indeed in the Anglophone Caribbean. These
were not awarded on the basis of annual competition/performances but in
consideration of contributions to the discovery, recognition, and status of
the African presence in the community. On this, the island's (then) only
newspaper felt it necessary to editorialize:

Our heritage is many cultures, with some having a

the result of exposure to
greater influence than others. because of this greater influence which
It is

has been mainly of British origin in Barbados, that much of our African
heritage has become submerged or even diluted to the extent that it can no
longer be identified as such. ." . .

With Africa, then, even submerged, and certainly safely out of

diluted,
the way, the article goes on to salvage from the culturalwreck the multira-
cial (Creole) notion of "Caribbean": "not totally European, nor is it pure
African." it also referred to extremists who "become fanatical in their
thinking about things African" (one wonders where or when!), warns
against "emotionalism" sweeping into the discussion, and finally con-
cedes that Yoruba could play "a big part in bringing into proper perspec-
tive what we owe to the African side of our heritage." My contention is
that the creation of this "proper perspective" requires more than lip ser-
vice from the establishment. It requires information, and an educational
program based on a revolutionized value system.

Religious Continuity

On the eve of theMorant Bay Rebellion, thirty years after emancipation,

there was a "strange" movement in Jamaica which, significantly, took the
form of a religious revival. Social and political unrest centered in the
108 Africa in Latin America

Baptist churches, which the slaves had always preferred, mainly because
of the "African" nature of their adult baptism and the comparative free-
dom of their communal worship. 16
Especially militant were the Black or
Native Baptist churches, started at the time of the American Revolution
when loyalist colonists fled from what was become
the United States
to
with faithful slaves or ex-slaves, some of whom
(George Leile, Moses
Baker) were helped or encouraged by their masters to spread the gospel of
Christ on the island. As a result, certain churches shifted away from a
17

Euro- American kind of organization into congregations that were not only
run by Blacks, but included African religious elements into their services.
In 1865, on the verge of the Rebellion (in fact a symptom and symbol of
it), there was a sudden proliferation of these churches.

This was followed by an even more "startling" phenomenon the —

public reappearance of myalism* which had no connection whatever
with Christianity. Myal * is a fragmented form of African religion express-
]

ing, through dreams, visions, prophesying, and possession dances

(kuminat), what the establishment called "hysteria" and later pocomania:
"a little madness." 19 Thousands of black Jamaicans became involved in
this revival which ranged from "left wing" Christian (Baptist) to Afro-
Jamaican radical or anarchic (myal). The Rebellion itself was a militant
political movement closely related to these. The leaders, Mulatto George
William Gordon and Black Paul Bogle, pastors of Baptist and Black Bap-
tist churches respectively, worked in close alliance. Bogle (like Tous-

saint, and Sam Sharpe later) probably carried the myal title of "Daddy"
(Dada) as well, although more research will have to be done to confirm
this. At present we know next to nothing about him,
:o
but there is evi-
dence 21 that some of his followers took oaths and drank rum and gunpow-
der, leading some contemporary observers to speak of "the supernatural
workings of Satanic temptation." 22 There was also an emphasis on color
—
("We must cleave unto the black") all of which suggests that a radical
Afro-myal movement underlay the more liberal/reformist Creole concern
with justice and land. Elements similar to this were present in the fer-
2'

ment surrounding Cuffee in Guyana (1763), Dessalines in Haiti (1799 to

1800), Bussa in Barbados (1816) and Nat Turner in the United States
(1831), so that we witness again and again a chain reaction moving the ex-
African's core of religion into ever-widening areas. It is this potential for
explosion and ramification that has made blackness such a radical if sub-
terranean feature of plantation political culture; for the African
"phenomenon," continuously present, like abomb, in the New World
since the abduction of the first slaves — a phenomenon subsisting in bases

*Myal: divination aspect of Afrocaribbean religion. The term is most commonly as-
sociated with Jamaica.
^Kumina: Afrojamaican possession/dance ceremony, similar to cufa in the Guianas.
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 109

deep within the Zion/Ethiopian churches of the United States 24 and in the
—
hounfortst of the Caribbean and South America triggers itself into visi-
bility at each moment of crisis in the hemisphere: 1790 in Haiti, 1860 in
Jamaica, 1930 in the West Indies, and 1960 in the New World generally.

s II

cannot maintain that African continuities are as easily traced in our

I

world I have so far described. This

literature as in the social/ideological
does not mean there is no African presence in Caribbean/New World
writing. It simply means that because of its almost inevitable involvement
with the establishment through education, communication and sales pro-
cessing (mercantilism), much of what we have come to accept as "litera-
ture" is work which ignores, or is ignorant of, its African connection and
aesthetic.
Until, therefore, our definition of "culture" is reexamined in terms of
its totality, not simply its Europeanity, we will fail to discover a literature
of negritude and with it, a literature of local authenticity. 25 Likewise, the
African presence in Caribbean literature cannot be fully or easily per-
ceived until we redefine the term "literature" to include the nonscribal
material of the folk/oral tradition, which, on examination, turns out to
have a much longer history than our scribal tradition, to have been more
relevant to the majority of our people, and to have had unquestionably
wider provenance. In other words, while a significant corpus of "prose"
— —
and "poetry" has been created and read by a few pesons in the major
Antilles; folk song, folk tale, proverb, and chant are found everywhere
without fear or favor and are enjoyed by all. It is from "the guitars of the
people," as Nicolás Guillen recently put it, that the "son went to the
salons of the aristocracy," 26 With this re/vision in mind, we see an African
literature in the Caribbean beginning to reveal itself.

Slavery

On when the European

the eve of emancipation, at a crise de conscience,
West Indies were becoming aware of the plural society 11
planters in the
developing around them and conscious of the need, if they were to retain
their hegemony, to destroy, subvert, psychologically control the Black
majority, a few books began to appear which described slaves in terms of
their own culture. 28
The most outstanding example in English is a novel, anonymously
written called Hamel the Obeah Man (1827), which for the first time

tName given in Haiti to the compound (courtyard and buildings) where vodun services
are conducted.
110 Africa in Latin America

describes a slave, Hamel, as a complex human being. In order to do this,

the author had to give him a cultural context, and, significantly, he chose
—
a cultural context based on his obeah obeah seen not as a debasement
but as a form of African religion of which he was a priest. Hamel was
placed in ideological opposition to a white missionary. The plot of the
book is, in fact, designed as a struggle between the white missionary and
the African priest. Out of a personal sense of loyalty, Hamel uses his
obeah to support righteous planter against subversive missionary. Never-
theless, Hame's intransigent opposition to the institution of slavery is
clearly established. It is suggested that, had he, rather than the mission-

ary, fomented the slave revolt which climaxes the novel, it would have
been practically uncontrollable. The book, in other words, is an antimis-
sionary tract. But it is also a remarkable act of fiction (for its genre) in that
Hamel is seen "whole," with real doubts and passions, and so provides
some insight into the West Indian slave experience. 29
After emancipation, due to the sociocultural disengagement between
Black and White, there were no further works by White/Creole writers,
even approaching the standard of Hamel. Since 1900 there has been a
certain reappearance of the White writer: H. G. DeLisser (Jamaica), Al-
fred Mendes and Ian McDonald (Trinidad), J. B. Emtage and Geoffrey
Drayton (Barbados), Phyllis Shand Allfrey and Jean Rhys (Dominica),
and Christopher Nicole (Guyana), to name perhaps the most important. 30
But with the exception of DeLisser in Jane's Career, none of these
writers has (yet) become centrally concerned with Caribbean Africans (or
Indians); most of them (again with the exception oí Jane's Career) seem
—
romantic, while a few are the opposite callous (Mendes in Pitch Lake) or
just plain boorish (Emtage) —
and betray what Kenneth Ramchand, using
a phrase of Fanon's, has called "terrified consciousness." 31

Indigenism/Negrismo

The above, however, is not intended in any wayWhite West

to exclude
Indian writers from our literary canon. In fact, in another study, 32
I have

attempted to show how the work of Roger Mais, a "White" Jamaican,

could in many ways act as a model for our developing critical aesthetics.
But the majority of White West Indian writers, it seems to me, are not yet
prepared to allow their art to erode the boundaries set up around their
minds by the physical/metaphysical plantation, and so do not yet recog-
nize that their world has become marginal to the majority sense of local
reality; or rather, that the plantation has transformed itself into other, new
mercantilist forms, in which they are enslaved as surely as the descend-
ants of their former bondsmen. It is only when this comes to them as
crisis, it seems to me, that the White West Indian writers will find their
voice.
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 111

The postemancipation period, therefore, has been one of literary

hiatus. Caribbean (written) literature, as truly native enterprise and ex-
pression, does not begin, in fact, until, in response to the American occu-
pation of the Greater Antilles," certain artists in Cuba and Puerto Rico
began to develop distinctive literary, and creative forms that have come
to be called indigenism and negrismo. This is interesting because the
populations of these two territories are predominantly ex-Spanish, rather
than ex- African. Unlike those in the rest of the Caribbean, the majority in
Cuba and Puerto Rico is "White" rather than "Black" Creole. Never-
theless, the literary expression which came out of these White Creoles
(and Mulattoes) was Black-based; they recognized that the only form of
expression which could be used as a protest, or an authentic alter/native,
to American cultural imperialism, was ex- African. This is at least part of
what the Cuban thinker Juan Marinello had in mind in the 1930s when he
said that due to the extinction of the Amerindians and the fact that they
had left "no architecture or literature," the Negro had assumed a "specific
significance." "Here the Negro is marrow and root, the breath of the
people, a music heard, [an] irrepressible impulse. He may, in these times
of change, be the touchstone of our poetry. 34

Crisis/Response

The best way to understand this in its fullest literary sense —one, that is,

which includes the oral tradition —

and the other expressions of
is to see it

the African presence which followed as responses to White cultural im-

peralism. During slavery, White cultural imposition was responded to
with worksong, gospel, blues, the spiritual, tnento (a secular Jamaican
folk song form), shanto (the word in Guyana for mento), shango hymn, a
folk tale. The postemancipation crisis saw a certain erosion of folk tales,
especially in the more urbanized areas, but it saw the entrenchment of the
literature of the hounfort. Urban immigration, from the end of the
nineteenth century, saw the formation of Black ghettos and the emer-
—
gence of a new urban folk art the dozens, urban blues, new urban
shouter churches, the Harlem Renaissance, Garveyite creative work,*
Rastafari,t the Nation of Islam, and Carnival.
The crisis of American imperialism brought us Price-Mars and Hippo-

*Marcus Garvey was one of the Black leaders to begin the resuscitation of self-help
first
folk entertainment, especially in the urban ghettos.
tThe Rastafari are a dynamic and distinctive ("dreadlocked") group in Jamaica, who
consider themselves Africans, recognize the Emperor Haile Selassie as the Living God, and
—
declare it their certain destiny to return to Africa (I-tiopia). As such a kind of modern
—
maroon group they refuse to acknowledge the materialistic governments of Babylon. Ras-
tafari art (including song, dance, drum, music, poetry, painting, carving, craftwork, and
above all word/symbols) is revitalizing Jamaican folk culture, and their philosophy and
lifestyle are already beginning to reach Black communities elsewhere.
112 Africa in Latin America

lyte and Jacques Roumain in Haiti, José Martí and negrismo in the Span-
ish Antilles and, in away, the international emergence of the calypso in
Trinidad." The crisis of European imperialism, as reflected in World War
II, produced the negritude of the French-speaking expatriate colonials as

well as a more locally based tigritude™ literature in the Black colonies of

Africa and the Caribbean. The recent crisis of neocolonialism and indi-
genous disillusionment has seen the Black Power movement and its vari-
ous ramifications, the explosion of urban folk in Jamaica and the United
States, the reemergence of "native" churches, a certain revitalization of
calypso, and a generally increased awareness of the authenticity of folk
forms. And as the Carifesta Revolution (1972) in Guyana clearly demon-
strated, these Caribbean folk forms continue to be uniquely, vitally, and
37
creatively African in form, rhythm, and soul.

Ill

There are four kinds of written African literature in the Caribbean. The
first is rhetorical. The He
writer uses Africa as mask, signal, or nomen.
doesn't know very much about Africa necessarily, although he reflects a
deep desire to make connection. But he is only saying the word "Africa"
or invoking a dream of the Congo, Senegal, Niger, the Zulu, Nile, or
Zambesi. He is not necessarily celebrating or activating the African pres-
ence. There are also elements of this romantic rhetoric within the other
three categories. The second is what I call the literature of African sur-
vival, a literature which deals quite consciously with African survivals in
Caribbean society, but without necessarily making any attempt to inter-
pret or reconnect them with the great tradition of Africa. Third, there is
what I call the literature of African expression, which has its root in the
folk, and which attempts to adapt or transform folk material into literary
experiment. Finally, there is the literature of reconnection, written by
Caribbean (and New World) writers who have lived in Africa and are
attempting to relate that experience to the New World, or who are con-
sciously reaching out to rebridge the gap with the spiritual heartland.

Rhetorical Africa

Tambour
quand tu résonne,
mon ame
hurle vers l'Afrique.
Tantót,
je réve d'une brousse immense
baignée de lune,
oü s'echevellent de suantes nudités.
Tantót
a une case immonde
oü je savoure du sang dans des cránes humains.
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 1 13

Drum
when you make sound
my soul curls back to Africa.
Sometimes
I dream of a great moonlit forest

alive with leaping nudes.

Sometimes
there is a simple hut
where I drink blood out of human skulls.'
8

Carl Brouard

There are many such poems in this category, among them work by Daniel
Thaly of Dominica/Haiti, Pales Matos of Puerto Rico, Claude McKay and
George Campbell of Jamaica, and E. M. Roach of Tobago. Perhaps the
most famous, a romantic/rhetorical poem as distinct from but still con-
nected to the primitive/rhetorical tradition of Brouard and Pales Matos, is
the Black American Countee Cullen's "Heritage":

What is Africa to me:

Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang. ." . .

In the Anglophone Caribbean, this is echoed in poems like Philip Sher-

lock's "Jamaican Fisherman":

Across the sand I saw a black man stride

To fetch his fishing gear and broken things,
And silently that splendid body cried
40
Its proud descent from ancient chiefs and kings. . . .

It is this kind of concern, persistent from the earliest days of Black New
World expression, which finally feeds into and influences the literature of
rehabilitation and reconnection:

C'est le lent chemin de Guiñee

La mort t'y conduire. . .
."'

Jacques Roumain

In general, however, rhetorical literature is static, wishful and willful in

nature. Although it betrays a significant instinct for Africa, the instinct is

based on ignorance and often, in the case of Brouard and his generation
and class, on received European notions of "darkest Africa." Louise
Bennett was quite right in humorously rejecting that kind of reconnection:

Back to Africa Miss Matty?

Yuh noh know wha yuh dah-say?
Yuh haffe come from some weh fus,
Before yuh go back deh? 42
114 Africa in Latin America

From this attraction/ignorance too, springs the sense, as in Leon Laleau 43

44
and Derek Walcott, that the two cultures present a dichotomy and that
one must choose between them. Dantés Bellegarde, a leader in the early
1940s of one of Haiti's anti-Africanist groups, held that "We belong to
Africa by our blood, and to France by our spirit and by a significant
proportion of our blood." In Andrew Salkey's novel, A Quality of Vio-
45

lence, the debate is expressed as follows:

We not frighten by white fowl talk or Africa or slave power! We don't

belong to them things. . . . We is who
on the land in St Thomas,
people live

not Africa. . . . We is no slave people, and there is no Africa in we blood the

way you would-a like we to believe. . . .

But you wrong, Miss Mellie. Me and you and the rest-a-people in St
Thomas all belong to the days that pass by when slavery was with the land.
Everybody is part of slavery days, is a part of the climate-a-Africa and the
46
feelings in the heart is Africa feelings that beating there, far down. . . .

In contrast, we have the acceptance of this dual cultural inheritance by

a poet like the Cuban Mulatto Nicolás Guillen.

We have been together from long ago

young and old,
blacks and whites, all mixed,
one commanding and the other commanded,
all mixed;
San Berenito and another commanded,
all mixed . . .

Santa Maria and another commanded,

all mixed
all mixed

But always there is the refrain with its positive recognition of Africa:

I am yoruba, I am lucumi,
47
mandingo, congo, carabali. . . .

The Literature of African Survival

The literature of African survival inheres most surely and securely in the
folk tradition — in folk tale, folksong, proverb, and much of the litany of
the hounfort. Here, for example, is a marassa (spirit twins) lament from a
vodun* ceremony:

*Vodun is the largest and most public African-derived (Dahomey: vodu) religious form in
the Caribbean, centered in Haiti. See also shango (in Trinidad), poco (in Jamaica), santería
(in Cuba) and the candomblé or macumba (in Brazil). Often, in this text, the term vodun is
used to apply to Afro-New World religions generally. In the culture of Dahomey, from
which Haitian vodun is derived, twins are held in special reverence. In vodun, they are
apotheosized as marassa (spirit twins).
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 115

Marassa élo, I have no mother here who can speak for me

Marassa élo
I have left my mother in Africa

Marassa élo
I have left my family in Africa

I have no family to speak for me

I have no relations to speak for me

Marassa élo 48

The connection between this and African elegies is obvious; as is the

connection with African lamentations in "New ships," "Tano," and
"Wake" from my own Masks and Islands. 49 There is also, in the hounfort,
the use of language based upon what are often only fragmented phonetics
of an ancestral African tongue, as in this shango hymn to Ajaja:

Ay ree ah jaja
Ay ree leh
Ah jaja wo goon
Ajaja way geh

which has been interpreted to mean

We are searching for you

Wherever you are
Show yourself
We wantto see you
We are searching for you
Come let us speak to you
We call you, we speak to you
Wherever you are 50

Similarly from Jamaican kumina comes this poem in which so-so means
water, and kuwidi means "call (ku) the dead (widi)."

Tange lange Jeni di gal eva

Wang lang mamao
Di le kuwidi pange le
So-so lange widi gal
So-so lange mama o

Dance tall Jenny gal

Walk tall mama o
The dead come to greet you
Water long like the dead, gal
Water long, mama o"

In "William Saves His Sweetheart," the folk imagination is again con-

cerned with water, 52 but this time its expression is entirely in intransigent
non-English or, as I prefer to call it, nation-language, since Africans in
the New World always referred to themselves as belonging to certain
nations (Congo, Kromantee, etc.) 53 Here there are no African word-
 !

116 Africa in Latin America

fragments or phrases as in the hounfort, but the tonal shape of the lan-
guage, its rhythm changes, structure, contours of thought and image,
eruption into song/dance/movement, make it clearly recognizable as Afri-
can speech-form:

an a so dem doo. dem an she kom. an im seh, yu nyaam mi peas

kal de gal,
tiday? him seh, nuo ma, me no Him seh, aa'right, kom, we go
heat non.
doun-a golli-ya. we wi' faen out. him tiek di gal an im go doun-a di golli, an
when going doun too di golli, im go op pan im laim tree, an im pick trii laim.
im guo in-a fowl ness, im tiek trii eggs an im staat, an haal im suod ... an
. . .

im go goun-a di golli. im pu-doun di gal in-a di lebble drai golli, an seh, see
ya! tan op deh. mi de-go tell yu now, ef yo heat mipeas, yu de-go drounded,
bot if yu nou heat ih, nottn wuon doo yu. so swie, yu bitch! swier! seh yu no
heat ih, while yo nuo yu heat ih. an she lik doun wan-a di laim a-doti so,
warn! an di drai golli pomp op wata, kova di gal instep, de gal sah, mail puo
mi wan! a-whe me deh go-do tiday? him seh, swie! swie! yu bitch! an im lik
doun wan nedda laim so, warn, an di wata mount di gal to im knee, di gal seh
laad ooi! mi wily am ooi!
ih im sweethaat im de-kal

mi wilyam ooi!
puo mi wan ooi! peas ooi!
oo, mi dearess wilyam oo

rin doun peas oi ai! a rin doun!

oo, rin doun
u

There is also considerable metaphysical life and symbolic association

contained and hidden away in some of the folksongs and poems that have
been preserved, often accidentally. Take this French Creole song, for
instance, "Three Leaves, Three Roots," about change and timelessness:

Trois fé trois ci-tron oh

Trois fé trois ra-cine oh!

Moin dit, rwo, youn jour ou wa be-soin moin!

Trois fé trois ra-cine oh!

Moin dit oui, youn jour ou wa be-soin moin!

Gain'-yain bas-sin moin

trois ra-cine tom-bé la-dans

Quand ou wa 'bli-é

fau' ra-mas-sé chon-gé"

Similarly, there is a fragment of a charm, collected by the Jamaican histo-

rian, H. P. Jacobs, which reads:

Bear up, mi good tree, bear up!

Mi father alays cut a tree,
The green tree falls and the dry tree stands!
Shemo-limmo! mi toto! beng! beng! * 5
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 117

The paradox dry tree stands and green tree falls is yet another illustration
of the levels of expression possible within the folk tradition. This frag-
ment is especially interesting because the folk/metaphysical mind can be
seen working in concert with African symbolism. For Shemo-limmo,
57
which is the secret name of a bull in certain Afrojamaican folk stories, is
also connected to lemolemo, the Yoruba for "locomotive"; and the
locomotive has become one of the guises 58 of Shango, god of thunder and
creativity, in the New World. 59
There is very little in the written "educated" tradition which offers
anything approaching these insights into our collective psyche. Seldom do
our writers reach beyond descriptive rhetoric when they treat "hounfort-
happenings."

Most of the people on the veranda and some of those who squatted on the
stones in the front yard formed a group round the three women and waited
for Mother Johnson to make a statement. She asked for her bandana which
she wrapped round her right forearm. She knotted it. Everybody watched
her as she tucked in the loose ends and patted the bulky parts of the folds
into shape.
She said: "I hope everybody see how I just tie up the bandana?" There
was a chorus of muttered affirmatives. "Well," she continued, "I telling you,
now, that that is the same way that somebody tie up poor, innocent Doris
brain. That somebody is well beknown to all of us in St Thomas. That
somebody is a selfish, class-warring, sort of house-enemy. Is a person who
looking to destroy Miss T happiness and peace-a-mind." She paused for
breath. She again patted the bandana, and pointing to it, she continued: "As
the dead body of my husband, Dada Johnson, who everybody here did well
know and like as I telling you, once and for
a great prophet/' mongst us ...
all, that Miss T under a spell that she can't budge
gal pickney, Doris, is

from, without plenty working of the good Lawd work on her, to bring her
round again."
The gathering muttered: "Oh! Jehovah! Yes, Lawd!"
Mother Johnson cleared a space on the veranda steps, and sat down. 60

The descriptive/dramatic power of this passage is typical of the excel-

lence of A Quality of Violence, but as Salkey approaches the central and
most sacred experiences of the tonelle * his knowledge and involvement
falter, to be replaced by passages that ring more of melodramatic brass
than responsive silver:

Dada Johnson held a cutlass high above his head, sliced the air in wide
circular movements and threw it in front of the deputy. It landed blade first.
The deputy dropped the white rooster, grabbed the cutlass and also made

The tonelle is the inner area of the hounfort. On the floor or ground are to be found the
vévé (symbols) of the gods to be welcomed, and at the center of the tonelle the poteau-
mitan: stick, whip, or ladder of god.
118 Africa in Latin America

slicing movements in the air. The chanting sisters started to gyrate once
6I
more, pummelling their stomachs with clenched fists. . . .

No matter how apparently violent (and not all possessions are violent),
there is nothing in the choreography of Afro-Caribbean folk religion that

isuncontrolled: flung hounsis* are softly caught; no one, except them,

ever touches another, despite the complex movements and the limited
space; and there is never a pulled muscle or a cricked neck.
Salkey's verbs
— "grabbed,"
"gyrate," "pummel" are all suddenly —
wrong. Or, to put another way, the description of possession demands
it

of the writer a choice of words, of traditions. Salkey, in the heart of the

tonelle, opts for the Eurorational/descriptive and therefore fails to cele-

brate with his worshipers, which in turn leads to the alienation of "In one
action, they gathered up gowns, stooped lower to the body of
their calico
the deputy and urinated on him." b2 But such is the thirst of Salkey's
literary ear that fragments of litany, of powerful enigmatic metaphor soon
appear and give his work a new dimension in passages like the following
(which gains in power when we know that in vodun, and Afro-Creole
religion generally, the crippled [lame] god of the crossroads, Legba, is the
first to be praised in the hounfort):

The chanting sisters had stopped chanting but were still standing in front of
Dada Johnson who was saying a silent prayer. The deputy had crawled
under the meeting-table. Suddenly, the chanting sisters sprang back and
cried out: "And Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son that was lame of his feet!"
There was about five seconds' silence and the deputy crawled from under
the meeting-table. He stood erect and raised his right hand towards the
chanting sisters who screamed: "Him have the sacrifice in him hand! See
God dey.r The deputy sprang around and faced Dada Johnson who bowed
and snatched the white rooster out of his right hand. Dada Johnson said:
"Cock blood pour down like rain water! Cooking fowl is cloud! Cloud burst
open and blood bring ram/" 63

The surreal images here (italicized) could hardly have been conceived
outside the hounfort. And yet Salkey, like so many others caught up in the
tradition of the Master, remains ambivalent in his attitude to the African
presence in the Caribbean. 64 Vera Bell, in "Ancestor on the Auction
Block" 65 betrays an even more direct uncertainty of response:

Ancestor on the auction block

Across the years your eyes seek mine
Compelling me to look.
I see your shackled feet

*The hounsi are servitors, usually female, of the vodun complex. The religious leader
(invariably male) of the hounfort is the houngan, his chief female assistant, the mambo.
 s

The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 1 19

Your primitive black face

Isee your humiliation
And turn away
Ashamed.
Across the years your eyes seek mine
Compelling me to look
Is this mean creature that I see
Myself?

Philip Sherlock in "Pocomania" 66 betrays this psychic dichotomy in a

crucial choice of —
work namely, the use of grunt, instead of trump, to
describe the deep rhythmic intake/expulsion of breath which precedes
possession:

Black of night and white of gown,

White of altar, black of trees,
Swing de circle wide again,
Fall an' cry, me sister, now.
Let de spirit come again,
Fling away de flesh an' bone
Let de spirit have a home.

Grunting low and in the dark,

White of gown and circling dance.
Gone today and all control,
Here the dead are in control,
Power of the past returns,
Africa among the trees,
Asia with her mysteries. . . .

Earlier in the poem, the loss of "control" under these Afro-Asian mys-
teries (why "Asia" isn't clear) is even more pejoratively stated:

Black Long Mountain looking down

Sees the shepherd and his flock
Dance and sing and falls away
All the civilised today. . . .

No wonder Fola, the young Black educated sister in George Lamming'

Season of Adventure, was afraid to enter the hounfort But what is really 1

surprising, given the Caribbean psychocultural inheritance, is not really

the fear/avoidance response with regard to the African presence in the
New World, but the persistent attempts, at all levels, to deal with it. No
writer in the plantation New World can, in fact, ignore "Africa" for long,
though it is interesting to note that outside of literary negrismo circles,
there has been more active and public interest in this area of our culture
from historians, sociologists, and social anthropologists than from writers
and artists generally.
120 Africa in Latin America

Maroons*

One area of African survival and psychological marron-

is that of physical
age. From the moment New
World, the people of Africa
of arrival in the
were concerned with response: suicide, accommodation, escape, rebel-
lion. Escape/rebellion often led to the setting up of African communities
outside of and often in opposition to, the great Euro-Creole plantations.
In Suriname, for instance, the Njukka, Saramaccar and other groups,
usually blanketed under the term "Bush Negroes," established indepen-
dencies along the rivers and waterways of the forested Guyanese hinter-
land from the middle of the seventeenth century. In Jamaica, Maroons
quickly established themselves in five independent towns in the inaccessi-
ble Blue Mountains and Cockpit country, fighting the British almost to a
standstill in two highly organized guerrilla wars during the eighteenth
century. There are militant Black Caribs (Afro- Amerindians) in the Wind-
ward Islands, particularly St. Vincent, and significant Afro-Maroon
groups in most of the other slave islands, especially Saint Domingue
(Haiti). The most spectacular maroon community, however, was that
established at Palmares, in Brazil, in 1631, which was able to maintain its
independence (with ambassadors, traders, etc.) for over seventy years. 68
And yet there are only two novels in English, known to me, which at-
tempt to come to terms with even one aspect of this experience; and I
suspect that the story is very much the same in the rest of the region.
This, again, is a tribute to European brainwash. Many Caribbean writers
don't even know that these communities existed and that some still exist; 69
and the few who do are too cut off to conjure line or metaphor from this
matrix. Of the two Anglophones who have attempted imaginative fiction
in this field, one, Namba Roy, was himself a (Jamaican) Maroon. Unfortu-
70
nately, he did not attempt, in the only novel he ever wrote, more than a
romantic tale of "brave warriors" and internecine conflict. Wilson Harris,
on the other hand, uses in The Secret Ladder the presence of an ancient
Black chieftain of the swamps to initiate a whole series of perceptions into
the question of marronage, ancestry and filiation.

I feel I have stumbled here in the Canje [writes Fenwick, the persona
through whom we perceive the interests of "progress" in this novel] on an
abortive movement, the emotional and political germ of which has been
used in two centuries of history. What will you say when I tell you I
. . .

have come across the Grand Old Man of our history. ?

71
. .

But Harris' vision is too ecumenical for it to allow him to accept too easily
this celebratory gift of an ancestor.

*Maroons is a term springing from historical marronage to connote areas of African

cultural survival, or isolated resuscitation, resistant to the blandishments of the plantation.
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 121

To misconceive the African [Fenwick's letter continued] ... is to misunder-

stand and exploit him mercilessly and oneself as well. For there, in this
man with the European name, drawn out of the
creature Poseidon, the black
depths of time, is the emotional dynamic of liberation that happened a
century and a quarter ago. Something went tragically wrong then.
. . .

Something was misunderstood and frustrated, God alone knows why and
how. Maybe it was all too emotional, too blinding, this freedom that has
. . .

72
turned cruel, abortive, evasive, woolly, and wild everywhere almost. . . ,

It is a salutary caveat, although Harris is himself guilty of misconceiving

the African —certainly the Maroon. For the cruel abortion of freedom he
speaks about, the over-"emotional" negritude, was and is not only a func-
tion of maroonage, it was and
even more certainly the consequence of
is

opposition to the plantation. How else can we interpret the fate and
history of Haiti, the greatest and most successful Maroon polity of them
all? But Harris, ambivalent like most of us, finds "West Indian [protest]
73
politics and intellectualism" sterile, so that, as with the cultural pessim-
ists we referred to earlier, he concludes that the African slave, originator
and conditional body of Caribbean militance, must/could have come here
—
equipped with very little with very little to offer:

One must remember that breath is all the black man may have possessed at
a certain stage in the Americas. He had lost his tribal tongue, he had lost
everything except an abrupt area of space and lung: he possessed nothing
but the calamitous air of broken ties in the New World. 74

And yet, whereas with Naipaul, 75 Patterson, 76 even Derek Walcott, 77 this
nothing yields nothing, with Harris this ruin/vestige, shred of breath, vital
possession of the dispossessed, becomes the survival rhythm from which
transformation may proceed.

The Literature of African Expression

Limbo [is] a dance in which the participants have to move, with their bodies

thrown backwards and without any aid whatsoever, under a stick which is
lowered at every successfully completed passage under it, until the stick is
practically touching the ground. It is said to have originated a necessary —
therapy after the experience of the cramped conditions between the slave
decks of the Middle Passage. Now very popular as a performing act in
Caribbean night clubs. 78

And the limbo stick is the silence in front of me

limbo

limbo
limbo like me . . .
122 Africa in Latin America

long dark night is the silence in front of me

limbo
limbo like me

stick hit sound

and the ship like it ready

stick hit sound

and the ship like it ready

limbo
limbo like me. . . J9

Limbo then reflects a certain kind of gateway or threshold to a new world

—
and the dislocation of a chain of miles. It is in some ways the archetypal —
sea-change stemming from Old Worlds and it is legitimate, I feel, to pun on
limbo as a kind of shared phantom limb which has become a subconscious
variable in West Indian theatre. The emergence of formal West Indian
theatre was preceded, I suggest, by that phantom limb which manifested
itself on Boxing Day, when the ban on the "rowdy" bands was lifted for . . .

the festive season. ... I recall performances I witnessed as a boy in

Georgetown ... in the early 1930s. Some of the performers danced on high
stilts like elongated limbs while others performed spreadeagled on the

ground. In this way limbo spider and stilted pole of the gods were related to
the drums like grassroots and branches of lightning to the sound of thun-
80
der.

The power and progress of image in these quotations illustrate what I

mean by transformation. In terms of literary craftsmanship, they repre-

sent a shift from rhetoric to involvement. The beginning of this is evident,
for example, in the poem "Pocomania," by Philip Sherlock, which we
have already considered. Note its new rhythmic emphasis:

Black the stars, hide the sky,

Lift you' shoulder, blot the moon

and the appearance of dialect:

Swing de circle wide again,

Fall an' cry, me sister, now

The most significant factor in this process, however, is its connection

with the hounfort: the heart and signal of the African experience in the
Caribbean/New World. We have already witnessed the operation of this
in Salkey's A
Quality of Violence, and in the limbo quotations, above. But
the Caribbean writer who has been able to move fearlessly/innocently into
this enigmatic alternative world and has therefore been able to contribute
most to the literature of African expression is George Lamming. In Sea-

son of Adventure we watch a young girl dance toward the gods at a vodun
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 123

ceremony. As she dances, we become involved, until we find that Lam-

ming's language has become an image of the child's possession:

The was wide awake.

child The dance was an instinct which her feet
. . .

had learnt. The women's chant was broken by applause. The child heard
. . .

the voices competing in her praise. She became hysterical; wild, light as air
and other than human, like the night clouding her eyes. Her voice had cried
out: "Hair, hair! Give all, all, all, hair." And she clapped until there was no
feeling in her hands.
And the voices came nearer than her skin: "Dance, Liza, dance! Dance!
81
Dance! Liza, Liza, Liza, dance! Dance, Liza, dance."

The only time Lamming falters in this astonishing participation in Afro-

Caribbean worship is with the word/perception hysterical. It is similar
(and present for similar reasons) to the false notes already noted in Sal-
key, Bell, Brouard, and Sherlock. But the faltering is only momentary. As
Liza/Lamming dances to incarnation, Caribbean literature, through this
encounter with the loa, begins its transformation into a new species of
82
original art:

Fire of the spirits in her eyes, and no longer a child as she watched the
shadows strangled by her wish for hair blazing from the summit of the
bamboo pole! She trampled upon the circle of maize, exploding shapes like
toys under her feet, dancing the dust away. For the gods were descending to
the call of voices: "Come! Come! in O In O spirit of water come! Come!"
!

Now: gently, stage after gentle stage and feather-wise as if now orphaned
of all sound, the voices were dying, second by full measure of second: then
died on the gentlest of all sounds, "come, come, in O spirit of water come,
83
come, come. . . ,

Nommo
The process of transformation which Lamming so remarkably undertakes
here —the art of the hounfort into the art of the novel —has its roots in a
certain kind of concern for and attitude to the word, the atomic core of
language. This is something that is very much present in all folk cultures,
all Within such cultures, language was
preliterate, preindustrial societies.
and is a creative act in itself. Think of our love for the politician or the
word of the preacher. Indeed, it is one of the problems of our political life
how to separate the word and the meaning of the word.
The word {nommo or name) is held to contain secret power. Monk
Lewis, who was a novelist himself, visited Jamaica (where he had some
estates) in 1815-1816 and described this kind of attitude among his slaves:

The other day. a woman, who had a child sick in the hospital, begged
. .

me to change its name for any other which might please me best: she cared
124 Africa in Latin America

not what; but she was sure that it would never do well so long as it should be
84
called Lucia.

People feel a name is so important that a change in his name could trans-
form a person's life. In traditional society, in fact, people often try to hide
their names. That is why a Nigerian, for example, has so many names.
Not only is it difficult to remember them, it is difficult to know which is
the name that the man regards or identifies as his. If you call the wrong
name you can't damage him. 85 Rumpelstiltskin in the German fable and
Shemo-limmo in the Jamaican tale above are other examples of this. In
H. G. DeLisser's Jane's Career, there is an interesting variation in which
an earthquake, a natural divine phenomenon, becomes an aspect of
nommo:

many persons talked of the recent [1907] earthquake as something that

. . .

could hear what was said about it, and take action accordingly. To Sampson
and many others like him, the earthquake was a living, terrible force. * . . .

Aimé Césaire takes this a stage further with:

would recover the secret of epic speech and towering conflagrations. I

I

would say storm. I would say river. I would say tornado. I would say leaf. I
want to pronounce tree. I want to be soaked by all the falling rains, dam-
pened with all the dews. I would roll like frenzied blood in the slow current
of the eye of the word's mad horses' newly born formations of the fire. ." . .

This is a kind of conjuration/divination, or rather, it comes from the same

magical/miracle tradition as the conjure-man. Vibrations awake at the
center of words. From the pools of their nommo, onomatopoeia and
sound-symbols are born: banggarang, boolooloops and boonoonoonoos
(Jamaica); barrabbattabbattabba and bruggalungdung (Barbados); umk-
laklabidu ("thunderclap": Zulu); dabo-dabo ("duck"), munumm ("dark-
ness": Twi); pampam, primprim, prampalam (Bajan/Twi sounds of con-
tact/movement); patoo ("owl": Asante/Jamaican) ;fele le ("to blow in the
wind, to flutter": Yoruba). In Black America it lives in the preacher/sig-
nifying tradition and the dozens, and surfaces scribally in areas of Ralph
Ellison's Invisible Man and James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain.
It is apparent in Ishmael Reed's Yellow Back Radio Broke-down:

A thousand shivs he was who wasted whole herds, made

terrible cuss of a
the fruit black and wormy,
dried up the water holes and caused people's
88
eyes to grow from tiny black dots into slap-jacks wherever his feet fell. . . .

and in Imamu Baraka's (LeRoi Jones') "Black Art":

 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 125

Poems are bullshit unless they are

teeth or trees or lemons piled
on a step. Or black ladies dying
of men leaving nickel hearts
beating them down. Fuck poems
and they are useful, wd they shoot
come at you, love what you are,
breathe like wrestlers, or shudder
strangely after pissing. We want live
words of the hip world live flesh &
coursing blood. Hearts Brains
Souls splintering fire. We want poems
like fists beating niggers out of Jocks
or dagger poems in the slimy bellies
of the owner-jews
we want "poems that kill."
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
89
guns

Similarly, the Surinamese word see-er or seer Robert Ravales (Dobru)

tells us

write no words
write grenades
to eradicate poverty
write no sentences
write guns
90
to stop injustice

This concept and use of word is found throughout the entire Black/
African world. It is present in modern as well as traditional African litera-
91
ture. In the Americas, it reveals itself in our love of courtroom scenes
(both factual and fictional), the rhetoric of yard quarrels, 92 "word-
throwings," 93
tea-meetings, and preacher/political orations. 94 The whole
living tradition of the calypso 95
based on it. But it goes deeper than this,
is

as the metaphysical and symbolic qualities of some of the Afro-Carribean

fragments we have already discussed, indicates. Language, as we saw in
the discussion of names, may be conceived as having the power to affect
life. And again it is Lamming who exposes us to an interior view of the

process:

The words seemed to come like the echo of other voices from outside: "is
so, same so. ." Syllables changed their phrasing; words showed a length
. .

that had suffered by the roughness of an accent uttered in haste. Surfacing

slowly . . . [they] seemed uncertain of
At every stage of
their alliance.
awareness she could feel the change, until the rules of college speech gave
way completely to the private dialect of her own tongue at home: "is same
ever since and it been the same, same so ever since. ." % . .
126 Africa in Latin America

This way of using the word depends very much upon an understanding of
the folk tradition out of which it comes. This folk tradition has received
(not surprisingly) very little attention from scholars. There has been work
by Nina Rodrigues, Renato Mendoza, Arthur Ramos, and Donald Pierson
in Brazil; Fernando Ortiz in Cuba; for Jamaica there has been Martha
Beckwith and more recently Ivy Baxter; for Trinidad, Errol Hill and J. D.
Elder. For the Caribbean generally, there has been the work of the Hers-
97
kovitses and Roger Bastide. But even where these studies are com-
prehensive, they seldom attempt to describe the sociology of nation-
language. Few of them, certainly, attempt a critical/aesthetic appraisal of
the word, as found inits Creole context, or as illuminated in the work/

thought of say, Kagame, Ogotemméli, St. John of the Gospel, Father

Placied Tempels, or Jahnheinz Jahn, within the African "Great Tradi-
98
tion."

Techniques

In addition to sound-symbols, nation-language sets up certain tunes,

tones and rhythms which are characteristic of the folk tradition, and are
often essential features of its expression. The overall space/patterns of
this language, we
might say, are controlled by a groundation* tendency,
in which image/spirit is electrically conducted to earth like lightning or the
loa (the gods, spirits, powers, or divine horsemen of vodun):

Mr. Frank
my gentleman, de Lord know
is you dat did show de way
nourish we spirit
when we did nothin, nothin.
Like a fowlcock
early pon a morning
jooking in de straw
scratchin de rockstone
nastyin up e beak '

in de muddy gutter water. . .

."

Notice how, since what we see is in fact the speaking (seeking) voice,
pause and cadence become important:

'e eye ball sharpen

to catch de teeny weeny bit . . .

before it loss away

okra sauce slippin through de gullet

*Groundation or groundings (verb: to grounds) is a term for a rap session. But since the
word/idea (contributed by Rastafari) comes from the experience of religious possession, its
ripples of meaning reach further than the idea of simple, secular "grounding."
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 127

hot, quick gone 'long for ever/ /

.'""
An' is you dat did dey . .

Bongo Jerry's sound-system poetry is instinctively quicker — urban

—but the cadence/pauses are
ghetto still there, as in "Learning Rhymes":

I want to know the truth.

But they tell me to wait.
Wait till when?
Till I'm seventy.
Or eighty and eight.
I can/not/wait . . .

To them truth iswhen you don't tell lie or when you face
don't show it
Hoping that they could hide the truth and I would never
know it./ /

Demcold. 101

His poem, "Mabrak," is in itself, a brilliant example of groundation:

Mabrak:
NEWSFLASH!
"Babylon plans crash"
Thunder interrupt their programme to
announce:

BLACK ELECTRIC STORM

IS HERE
How long you feel "fair is fine
(WHITE)" would last?

Hog long calm in darkness

when out of BLACK
come forth LIGHT?
[the dry tree stands and the green tree falls]

Every knee
must bow
Every tongue
confess
Every language
express
W
O
R
D
W
O
R
K
S .02
 —

128 Africa in Latin America

Again, in the ballad tradition of Sparrow's "Dan is the Man in the Van"
and "Parables," or a Jamaican ska like "Salaman A Grundy," Jerry trans/
fuses weather forecasts, ("fair to fine"), Christian liturgy ("Every knee/
must bow"), and children's game songs ("ringing rings of roses") and
whatever other significant demotic of the moment he can find; (Babel-
land/Babylon into his African vision:

SILENCE BABEL TONGUES; recall and

BLACK SPEECH.
recollect

Cramp all double meaning

an' all that hiding language bar,
for that crossword speaking
when expressing feeling

is just English language contribution to increase confusion in

Babel-land tower
delusion, name changing, word rearranging
ringing rings of roses, pocket full of poses:
"SAR" instead of "RAS" 103

Improvisation

Some time ago, wrote an exploration into West Indian literature in

I
104
which I tried to use jazzas an aesthetic criterion for understanding what
certain of our writers were trying to do. My assumption was that all
African-influenced artists, whatever their individual styles, participated in
certain modes of expression, and that understanding the patterns of one
could lead to an understanding of how the work of all relates together in a
mutual continuum. 105 I also found in that study that just as a cardinal
element in jazz was improvisation (rhythmic and thematic), so were simi-
lar features clear in Black/ African literature. Bongo Jerry's "Mabrak,"
above, is one example of this. Nicolás Guillen's well-known
"Sensemayá" is another:

!Mayombe-bombe-mayombe
¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombe
¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombe
La culebra tien los ojos de vidrio
La culebra viene y se en reda en un palo
Con sus ojos de vidrio, en un palo
Con sus ojos de vidrio. . . .

The snake has eyes of glass

The snake appears and winds itself round the post
With eyes of glass round the post
With eyes of glass. ."* . .
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 129

The same strong rhythmic pulse, leading to variation, is present in

Césaire:

Au bout du petit matin

un grand galop de pollen
un grand galop d'un petit train de petites filies
un grand galop de colibris
un grand galop de dagues pour défoncer la poitrine de la
107
terre

and throughout the word play in Leon Damas' Pigments

Sans nom
sans lune
sans lune
sans nom
nuits sans lune
sans nom sans nom
ou le degout s'andre en moi. . . .
m

and in Jamal Ali:

Rocket up to the moon

Living up to the moon
Cost of living up to the moon
Death toll sky high, twisting, up to the moon 109

and in my own "Negus" which begins as a raindrip or drum beat and

develops into cross rhythms:

It

it

it

it is not

it

it

it

it is not

it is not
it is not
it is not enough

it is not enough to be free

of the red white and blue

of the drag, of the dragon

it is not
it is not
it is not enough
130 Africa in Latin America

it isnot enough to be free

of the whips, principalities and powers
where is your kingdom of the Word?

It is not enough
to tinkle to work on a bicycle bell
when hell
crackles and burns in the fourteen-inch screen of the Jap
of the Jap of the Japanese-constructed
United-Fruit-Company-imported
hard sell, tell tale tele-
vision set, rhinocerously knobbed, cancerously tubed. . .
."°

Call/Response

But rhythm is not the only feature of improvisation in the literature of the
African presence. It can also involve chantwell and chorus, as in spiritual,
secular soul-litany, gospel, and above all, worksong:

Cayman ah pull man,

timbakay,
Cayman ah pull man
timbakoo,
Cayman ah pull man,
timbakay,
Cayman ah pull man
timbakoo.
"Timber Man" (Traditional Guyana)

and in calinda calypso:

Sparrow: Well they playin bad,

They have me feeling sad;
Well they playin beast.
Why they run for police?
Ten criminals attack me outside of Miramar

Chorus: Ten to one is murder!

Sparrow: About ten in de night on de 5th of November

Chorus: Ten to one is murder!

Sparrow: Way down Henry Street by H. E. M. Walker

Chorus: Ten to one is murder!

Sparrow: Well the leader of the gang was hot like a pepper

Chorus: Ten to one is murder!

 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 131

Sparrow: And every man in de gang had a white handled razor

Chorus: Ten to one is murder!

Sparrow: They say I push de girl from Grenada

Chorus: Ten to one is murder!'"

Itwill be found in sermons like this Spiritual Baptist's from Silver Sands,
Barbados:

I can say what troubles .

have we seen . . .
132 Africa in Latin America

So they wouldn't let 'e talk! Da is true

Suppose he right though? Wuh da?
Suppose he right though? Da is true
Da is true" 3

Transformation

Improvisation can also invade and erode the shape/sense of the word as in
my "Mother Poem":

Muh
muh
mud
me mudda
coo
likeshe coo
likeshe cook
an she cumya to me pun de grounn

like she lik mih

like she me wid grease like she grease mih

lik
she cum to me years like de yess of a leaf
an she issper
she cum to me years an she purr like a puss an she essper

she lisper to me dat me name what me name

dat me name is me main an it am is me own an lion eye mane. . .
." 4

It is evident also in the "surrealism" of Césaire's:

that two plus two makes five

that the forest meows
that the tree gets the chestnut out of the fire
that the sky strokes its beard
etcetera etcetera" 5

and in the passage in George Lamming' s The Pleasures of Exile where a

plough/slave is transformed into a plough/sword, omen of revolt:

Imagine a plough in the field. Ordinary as ever, prongs and spine un-
changed, is simply there, stuck to its post beside the cane shoot. Then some
hand, identical with the routine of its work, reaches to lift this familiar
instrument. But the plough escapes contact. It refuses to surrender its pre-
sent position. There is a change in the relation between this plough and one
free hand. The crops wait and wonder what will happen next. More hands
arrive to confirm the extraordinary conduct of this plough; but no one can
explain the terror of those hands as they withdraw from the plough. Some
new sights as well as sense of language is required to bear witness to the
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 133

miracle. . . . For as those hands in unison move forward, the plough

achieves a somersault which reverses its traditional posture. Its head goes
into the ground, and the prongs, throat-near stand erect in the air, ten points
of steel announcing danger." 6

The Literature of Reconnection

The become an active and fairly widespread
literature of reconnection has
concern, particularly Black United States, since the Black Power
in the
Revolution of the mid-1960s. Writers and jazz musicians began leaving
their slave names and taking on African nommos and poets like Don Lee,
Marvin X, and Alicia Johnson, developed a certain concern with Africa,
at least as a source of inspiration/validation. Among the younger Ang-
lophone Caribbeans, Elizabeth Clarke's poem "Mudda Africa" and Tito
Jemmott's "A Tale" are indicative of this new orientation." 7 But the solid
work was really done before this phase, by poets like Melvin Toisón
(1898-1966)" 8 and Robert Hayden" 9 in North America; and by Guillen,
Roumain, Césaire, and Damas in the Caribbean. My own trilogy 120 is
another effort in this direction.
But the example I should like to close with is Paule Marshall's novel
The Chosen Place, The Timeless People. m I have developed my com-
ments on this remarkable piece of work in the Journal of Black Studies? 12
The following excerpts illustrate quite unequivocally what I mean by the
"literature of reconnection": a recognition of the African presence in our
—
society not as a static quality, but as root living, creative, and still part
of the main. Take, for instance, this passage describing the famous
Bathsheba coast. The people of Barbados know this coastline wild, At- —
lantic, and rocky. But how many, looking down on that surf, those reefs,
from Horse Hill and Hackleton, realized that there was nothing but ocean
and blue between themselves and the coast of Africa that Barbados, the —
most easterly of the West Indies, is in fact the nearest to Africa. Certainly
no major Barbados writer known to me had ever made the point. Mar-
shall, whose parents are Bajan and whose childhood was divided between
Barbados and Brooklyn, saw the connection immediately:

It was the Atlantic this side of the island, a wild-eyed, marauding sea the
color of slate, deep, full of dangerous currents, lined with row upon row of

barrier reefs, and with a sound like that of the combined voices of the
—
drowned raised in a loud unceasing lament all those, the nine million and
more it is said, who in their enforced exile, their Diaspora, had gone down
between this point and the homeland lying out of sight to the east. This sea
mourned them. Aggrieved, outraged, unappeased, it hurled itself upon each
of the reefs in turn and then upon the shingle beach, sending up the spume in
an angry froth which the wind took and drove in like smoke over the land. 123
 ——
134 Africa in Latin America

And from nature to the people who inhabit and inherit the landscape.
Paule Marshall uses the word, her words, not to say "it is so," but to say,

as the conjuror says, this is how

could/should be. So her Bajans become
it

more than Bajans: they develop historical depth and cultural possibility
Fergusson, the cane factory mechanic, for instance:

[A vociferous] strikingly tall, lean old man, whose gangling frame appeared
strung together by the veins and sinews, standing out in sharp relief beneath
his dark skin. . . . His face, his neck, his clean-shaven skull, had the
elongated intentionally distorted look to them of a Benin mask, or a sculpted
thirteenth century Ife head. With his long, stretched limbs he could have
been a Haitian Houngan man. 124

It is Fergusson who, like an Ashanti okyeame, kept the memory of the

ancestral dead alive with his interminable rehearsal of the tale of Cuffee
Ned, the slave rebel. Cuffee Ned becomes the ancestor of the whole
village,and it is his memory and the whole African tradition which de-
pends on it, that keeps these people inviolate under the pressures of
commercialization and progress.
Then there was the Ashanti chief himself, Delbert, the shopkeeper and
truck owner:

He was lying propped up on a makeshift bed amid the clutter behind the
counter, a broken white leg in a cast laid up stiffly in the bed. He was huge,
with massive limbs. ... He was the chief presiding over the nightly palaver-
ing in the men's house. The bed made of packing cases was the royal
palanquin. The colorful Harry Truman shirt he had on was his robe of office;
the battered Panama hat ... his chieftain's umbrella, and the bottle of white
rum he held within the great curve of his hand, the palm wine with which he
kept the palaver and made libation to the ancestral gods. 125

It is rhetorical, even romantic. But Paule Marshall's intention is crucial,

and in it she unquestionably succeeds: to transform the Afro-Bajan out of
his drab, materialistic setting with meaningful correlates of custom from
across the water in ancestral Africa.
Finally, at theend of the book, there is a carnival. It is not a particu-
Bajan happening, but Paule Marshall does not intend it to be.
larly typical
She links the Afro-Caribbean experience of Bajan (Chalky Mount) Ma-
roons with Trinidad carnival and Montserrat masquerades. 126 Every year
the people of Bournehills put on the same mas' the same pageant The—
Legend of Cuffee Ned. They will not change a single iota of their
metaphor. There is of course an outcry against this from other parts of the
island: "Oh you poor people from the slave days, every year you doing
the same thing." But Bournehills is making a point: until there is a change
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 135

in the system, we will always be slaves, and until there is change, we must
continue to celebrate our one, if brief, moment of rebel victory:

They had worked together! —and as if, had been the

in their eyes, this
greatest achievement, the thing of which they were proudest, the voices
rose to a stunning crescendo that visibly jarred the blue dome of the sky.
Under Cuffee, they sang, a man had not lived for himself alone, but for his
neighbour also. "If we had lived selfish, we couldn't have lived at all." They
half-spoke, half-sung the words. They had trusted one another, and set
aside their differences and stood as one against their enemies. They had
been a People! Their heads thrown back and the welded voices reaching
high above New Bristol's red-faded tin roofs, they informed the sun and
afternoon sky of what they, Bournehills People, had once been capable of.
Then abruptly, the voices dropped. They sung then in tones drained
. . .

of their former jubilance of the defeat that had eventually followed ... in
voices that would never cease to mourn ... for this too, as painful as it was,
127
was part of the story.

Notes

1. This is an edited transcript of a talk given at the Center for Multi-Racial

Studies, Cave Hill, Barbados, in February, 1970; revised and extended in October
and December, 1973.
2. Edward Brathwaite, Rights of Passage, Argo DA 101 (1968), sleevenote.

3. The most detailed examination of this possibility is the almost ignored

Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, 3 vols (Philadelphia: Innes and
Sons, 1922). More recently, there has been Harold G. Lawrence, "African Ex-
plorers of the New World." The Crisis (June-July 1962). For a useful bibliographi-
cal essay, see Floyd W. Hayes III, "The African Presence in America," Black
World, 22, No. 9 (July 1973), pp. 4-22.
4. The latest estimates/discussion are in Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave
Trade: A Census (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Walter
Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London and Dar-es-Salaam:
Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972), pp. 103-112.
5. See, for example, the work of E. Franklin Frazier in the United States,
Orlando Patterson in the Anglophone Caribbean. M. G. Smith's "The African
Heritage in the Caribbean," Caribbean Studies: A Symposium, ed. Vera Rubin
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), pp. 34-46, is perhaps typical.
6. See, for example, M. J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1941) and the work of the Herskovitses generally.
Then there are the works of W. R. Bascom, George E. Simpson, Alan Lomax (in
cantometrics), R. F. Thompson ("African Influence on the Art of the United
States"), Pierre Verger, Janheinz Jahn, and Maureen Warner (on the Yorubas in
Trinidad) to name a few, and my own The Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica
(London and Port-of-Spain: New Beacon Books, 1970). A summary of work and
ideas in the field appears in my Introduction to M. J. Herskovits' Life in a Haitian
 .

136 Africa in Latin America

Valley [1937] (New York: Doubleday. 1971), revised in African Studies Associa-
tion of the West Indies Bulletin No. 5 (Mona: 1972). A detailed consideration of
the entire question is the subject of my Africa in the Caribbean (forthcoming).
7. See, for example, Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London:
Macgibbon and Kee, 1967).
8. For more on this, see my review of Patterson's Sociology which appeared
in Race, 9, No. 3 (1968). My own position is set out in The Development of Creole
Society in Jamaica (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971).
9. Studies of African culture are now
so easily available and in such quantity
that a listing here would be like to draw attention to the follow-
pointless. I would
ing, however: M. J. Herskovits on Dahomey; R. S. Rattray on the Ashanti; M. J.
Field on the Ga; Afolabi Ojo on the Yoruba; John Mbiti, J. B. Danquah, Marcel
Griaule on African religion and philosophy; and the collection edited by S. and
P. Ottenberg, Cultures and Societies of Africa (New York: Random House, 1960).
The question of the unity of African culture, or at least of those areas of Africa
involved with or contingent upon the slave trade, is obviously one of the critical
assumptions of this paper, permitting me to speak of "Africa" instead of, say,
Senegal, the Gold Coast, Dahomey. For discussions on this point, see, among
others, Cheikh Anta Diop, L' Unite Culturelle de L'Afrique Noire (Paris: Presence
Africaine, 1959); Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, esp. Ch. 3;
and Alan Lomax, "Africanisms in New World Negro Music," Research and Re-
sources of Haiti (New York: Research Institute for the Study of Man, 1969).
10. "Appreciation for Cumfa," Evening Post (Guyana), August 29, 1972.

1 1 See George E. Simpson (for Trinidad) in Religious Cults of the Caribbean

(Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto
Rico, 1970), pp. 82-85. Until the advent of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, vodun in Haiti
also found itself under pretty regular attack from church and state, starting with
the Liberator himself, Toussaint L'Ouverture. See Simpson, pp. 254-256. The
news that Guyana was to abolish its obeah laws came in November of 1973. The
reverberations from church, press and other states (fear, ridicule, caution: when
Prime Minister Forbes Burnham of Guyana visited Jamaica soon afterwards, he
was met by at least one znú-obeah demonstration) indicate the revolutionary
depth of the announcement.
12. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1944).
13. Eric Williams, Some Historical Reflections on the Church in the Carib-
bean (Port-of-Spain: Public Relations Division, Office of the Prime Minister,
1973), p. 11.
14. During this "October Crisis," the entire Jamaican mass-media apparatus
came out against Rodney, Black Power, and "Cave Mona" (a punning editorial
pejorative for the University of the West Indies at Mona), and clearly had little
time for analysis or facts. The best and perhaps the only "Diary of Events" was
—
therefore the students' publication, Scope in the excitement, undated, but with a
picture of Dr. Rodney on the cover. Rodney's own comment is in The Groundings
with My Brothers (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1969), pp. 59-67. It is interesting
to note that the nonestablishment newspapers that appeared as a result of this
crisis carried Moko) or Amerindian (Tapia) names.
African (Abeng,
15. "Yoruba and Our African Heritage," Advocate-News (Barbados), August
20, 1973. In addition to Yoruba House in Barbados, mention might be made here
of Maureen Warner-Lewis' Omo Ajini (Children of Africa) at Mona. Mrs. Lewis
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 137

has been teaching her group Yoruba songs she recorded in Trinidad during her
research into the Yoruba presence there, and restoring them to life (movement
and setting), using Yoruba dances she learned while living in Nigeria. But it must
be borne in mind that before Yoruba and Omo Ajini, there were several folk/
survival groups, most of them ignored by the establishment.
16. Philip D. Curtin, Two Jamaicas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1955), esp. pp. 158-177.
17. W. H. Siebert, The Legacy of the American Revolution (Columbus: Ohio
State University Bulletin, April 1913); Curtin, Two Jamaicas, pp. 32 ff.; Brath-
waite, Creole Society, pp. 253-255 and passim.
18. For discussion, see Martha Beckwith, Black Roadways (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity ofNorth Carolina Press, 1929); Curtin, Two Jamaicas; and the F. G.
Cassidy/R. B. Le Page, Dictionary of Jamaican English (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1967), pp. 313-314.
19. For this and Afro-Aamaican religion generally, see J. C. Moore, "The
Religion of Jamaican Negroes ," Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University
. . .

(1953); Edward Seaga, "Cults in Jamaica," Jamaica Journal, 3, No. 2 (June 1969),
pp. 3-13; and Simpson, Religious Cults.
20. See, for instance, Sylvia Wynter's Jamaica's National Heroes (Kingston:
Jamaica National Trust Commission, 1971).
21. Facts and Documents Relating to the Alleged Rebellion in Jamaica
(Anonymous) (London: 1866), pp. 12, 13, 38, 57.
22. Curtin, Two Jamaicas, p. 174.
23. Noelle Chutkan, "The Administration of Justice ... as a Contributing
Factor [in] the Morant Bay Riot of 1865," unpublished History Seminar paper,
University of the West Indies, Mona, 1969.
24. The names of the churches are significant: First African Baptist Church
(Savannah), African Baptist Church (Lexington), Abyssinia Baptist Church (New
York), Free African Meeting House (Boston), etc. For full list, see St. Clair
Drake, The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion (Chicago and Atlanta: Third
World Press and Institute of the Black World, 1970), p. 26. Closely connected
—
with these were the "Back to Africa" movements militant under slave rebels;
religious/secular with people like Paul Cuffee, Martin Delany in the U.S., Albert
Thorne in Barbados, and George Alexander McGuire in Antigua, through Bishop
Henry Macneil Turner, Alfred Sam, Edward Blyden, DuBois, to Marcus Garvey
with the grito: "Africa for the Africans at home and abroad." For a discussion of
these see, among others, Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus (New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1969); Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, Africa and Unity: The
Evolution of Pan Africanism (London and Harlow: Longmans Green, 1969); and
St. Clair Drake, op. cit. The Garvey bibliography, needless to say, is an industry
in itself. In addition, there was the presence and influence of literate (slave)
Africans like Phyllis Wheatley, Ottobah Cugoano, and Ignatius Sancho, some of
whom, like Mahammedu Sisei, Mohammed Bath, Olaudah Equiano, actually re-
turned to Africa. See Paul Edwards' "Introduction" (p. lx) to Equiano's Travels
(London and Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 1967); Janheinz Jahn, A
History of Neo-African Literature (1966), trans. Oliver Coburn and Ursula Lehr-
burger (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), p. 40. Sisei and Mohammed Bath are
treated in unpublished papers by Carl Campbell, Dept. of History, University of
the West Indies, Mona, 1972-1973.
25. For a development of this point, see my "Foreword" in Savacou 3/4
(December 1970/March 1971).
138 Africa in Latin America

Jamaica Journal, 7, Nos. 1

26. Nicolás Guillen, "Interview with Keith Ellis,"
& 2(March/June 1973), p. 78.
27. The concept derives from M. G. Smith's classic, The Plural Society in the
British West Indies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965).
28. See, for instance, Abbé Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des
établissements et du commerce des européens dans les deux Indes (1770); and
Thomas Southey, Chronological History of the West Indies (1827). These works
are examined in Elsa Goveia's A Study on the Historiography of the British West
Indies to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Mexico: Instituto Panamericano de
Geografía y Historia, 1956). On the other hand, works like the anonymous
Jonathan Corncob (1787), J. B. Moretón, Manners and Customs (1790); and
Edward Long, History of Jamaica (1774), no matter what their other qualities,
were little more than travesties of Black reality. See my "Creative Literature of
the British West Indies During the Period of Slavery," Savacou, 1 (June 1970),
pp. 46-73.
probably written by an Englishman with some knowledge of
29. This novel,
the West discussed in detail in my "Creative Literature." The most
Indies, is

imaginative insight into slavery from the Anglophone Caribbean is perhaps James
Carnegie's unpublished novella. Wages Paid, a long extract of which appeared in
Savacou 3/4 (December 1970-March 1971), as "Circle."
DeLisser published ten novels in the period 1913-1958, including Jane's
30.
Career (Kingston: The Gleaner Co., 1913: London: Methuen & Co., 1914) and the
well-known, The White Witch of Rosehall (London: Ernest Benn, 1929). Jean
Rhys, who left the Caribbean c. 1912, when she was sixteen, and has never
returned, has written at least six novels, only one of which deals with the Carib-
bean: Wide Sargasso Sea (London: Andre Deutsch, 1966). Nicole, who also
makes his home
outside the Caribbean, has written many novels, including a
whole under a pseudonym. Among his books dealing with
series of detective tales
his native land are Off-White (London: Jarrolds, 1959) and White Boy (London:
Hutchinson, 1966). The contribution of the other writers listed in the text is as
follows: Mendes, Pitch Lake (1934), Black Fauns (1935); McDonald, The Hum-
ming-Bird Tree (1969); Emtage, Brown Sugar ( 1966); Drayton, Christopher (1959),
Zohara (1961); Allfrey, The Orchid House (1953). I have not included the work of
Roger Mais here, because his novels deal almost exclusively with the Black pro-
letariat and peasantry. See note 32.
31. Kenneth Ramchand, The West Indian Novel and Its Background (Lon-
don: Faber &
Faber, 1970), pp. 223-236.
32. "Jazz and the West Indian Novel," Bim, 44-45 (1967-1968).
33. Cuba and Puerto Rico were occupied by U.S. forces in 1898 as a conse-
quence of the Spanish-American War. The Dominican Republic and Haiti were
occupied during the First World War.
34. Juan Marinello, "Sobre una inquietud cubana," Revista de Avance (Feb-
ruary 1930); and Poética, ensayos en entusiasmo (Madrid: 1933), p. 142, quoted
and translated by G. R. Coulthard in his Race and Colour in Caribbean Literature
(London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 29. Coulthard's book is an invaluable
and still, after more than ten years, unique source of information about literature
in the French and Spanish Caribbean.
35. The first big "hit" was a song, delivered by a White American group, the
Andrews Sisters, called fittingly, "Rum and Coca-Cola."
36. "A tiger is not conscious of his stripes, he pounces." A statement, attrib-
uted to the Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, and indicative of a general Anglophone
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 139

reluctance to accept the theoretical apparatus of negritude. The term also suggests
something of the postcolonial difference between French and English-speaking
African writers: the former tended to be expatriate, the later lived and worked, on
the whole, in their own countries.
37. See my series of articles on Carifesta in the Sunday Advocate News
(Barbados) (October-December 1972).
38. Carl Brouard (Haiti), "La trouée," La Revue indigene (October 1927), my
translation.
Countee Cullen, "Heritage," Color (New York: Harper & Bros., 1925).
39.
"Jamaican Fisherman," Ten Poems (Georgetown, Guy-
40. Philip Sherlock,
ana: Miniature Poets Series, edited and published by A. J. Seymour and Kykov-
eral, 1953).
41. Jacques Roumain, "Guiñee," La Revue indigene (September 1927).
42. Louise Bennett, Jamaica Labrish (Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster's Book
Stores, 1966), p. 214.
43.

And no other
this despair, equal to
for taming, with words from France,
this heart which comes to me from Senegal
Laleau, "Trahison," Musique negre (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l'Etat, 1931)
trans. Coulthard, op. cit., p. 43.
44. Derek Walcott's preface to Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) and his play Dream on Monkey
Mountain are explicit explorations of this theme and "problem," memorably crys-
tallized in his poem, "A Far Cry from Africa," In a Green Night (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1962), p. 18.

I who am poisoned with the blood of both,

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
the drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this African and the English tongue I love?
45. Dantés Bellegarde, Haiti et ses problémes (Montreal: 1941), pp. 16-17,
quoted in Coulthard, op. cit., pp. 73-74.
46. Andrew Salkey, A Quality of Violence (London: New Authors Ltd.,
1959), p. 151.
"Son Numero 6," from El son entero (Buenos Aires:
47. Nicolás Guillen,
George Irish in Savacou 3/4 (1970/1971), p. 112.
Editorial Pleamar, 1947), trans.
48. In Alfred Métraux, Le vaudou haitien (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), trans.
Hugo Charteris as Voodoo in Haiti (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), pp. 152-
153.
49. Edward Brathwaite, Masks (London: Oxford University Press, 1968),
pp. 38-39, 68-69; Islands (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 51-53.
50. George Simpson, The Shango Cult in Trinidad (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico:
Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 1965), p. 45; reprinted
in hisReligious Cults of the Caribbean, p. 40.
Moore, op. cit., pp. 174-175, reprinted in Brathwaite, Creole Society,
51.
pp. 224-225, 329-331.
52. In Cuba and Brazil, Yemajaa, the Yoruba goddess of the sea, dominates
ceremony and dance. In Haiti, important customs surround Agwe, the saltwater
 .

140 Africa in Latin America

power, whose boat is annually sent drifting back to "Ibo." In folktales, fair-maids
and water-mammas play important roles. In songs originating from the hounfort,
we are always crossing the river, and the importance of the Baptists has already
been mentioned.
53. See "Jazz and the West Indian Novel," Bim, 45 (1967), p. 41
54. Adapted from R. B. Le Page and David De Camp, Jamaican Creole
(London: Macmillan, 1960).
55. In Harold Courlander, The Drum and the Hoe (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1960), p. 248.
56. "The Little Boy Who Avenged His Mother," in H. P. Jacobs, "An Early
Dialect Verse," Jamaican Historical Review, 1, No. 3 (December 1948), pp. 279-
281.
57. See Walter Jekyll, Jamaican Song and Story (1907; New York: Dover
Publications, 1966).
58. For an account of some of these, see Tony Harrison, "Shango the Shaky
Fairy," London Magazine, New Series, 10, No. (April 1970), pp. 5-27.
1

59. The "rock-and-roll" base of Black American music is another aspect of

Shango, as is "boogie-woogie" (piano imitation of the train), and the innumerable
spirituals and gospel songs that not only sing about trains, but become possessed
by them. Listen, for example, to use recent examples, to Aretha Franklin's "Pull-
in' " (Spirit in the Dark: Atlantic SD 8265) or the Staple Singers' "I'll Take You
There."
60. Salkey, A Quality of Violence, p. 109.
61. Ibid., p. 61.
62. Ibid., p. 66.
63. Ibid., pp. 60-61.
64. This applies not only to writers, but to Caribbean critics as well. See my
commentary on this in "Caribbean Critics," New World Quarterly, 5, Nos. 1-2
(1969), pp. 5-15; Critical Quarterly, 1 1, No. 3 (Autumn 1969), pp. 268-276. Salkey
and Sherlock particularly, however, significantly during the Black
have developed
Consciousness period of the 1960s. Salkey's collection of stories, Anancy's Score
(London: Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1973) is an especially fine example of
the new writing.
Vera Bell, "Ancestor on the Auction Block," The Independence Anthol-
65.
ogy of Jamaican Literature, ed. A. L. Hendriks and Cedric Lindo (Kingston,
Jamaica: The Arts Celebration Committee of the Ministry of Development and
Welfare, 1962), p. 85. For a detailed analysis of this poem, see George Lamming,
"Caribbean Literature: The Black Rock of Africa," African Forum, 1, No. 4
(Spring 1966), pp. 32-52.
66. Philip Sherlock, "Pocomania," Caribbean Quarterly (Federation Anthol-
ogy of Poetry), 5, No. 3 (1958), pp. 192-193.
67. George Lamming, Season of Adventure (London: Michael Joseph, 1960),
pp. 44-50.
68. For details of the various Maroon groups see, among others, Philip J. C.
Dark, Bush Negro Art (London: Alec Tiranti Ltd., 1954); Jean Huraul, Africains
de Guyane (Le Havre and Paris: Editions Mouton, 1970); R. C. Dallas, The
History of the Maroons [of Jamaica], 2 vols., (London 1803); Sir William Young,
An Account of the Black Charaibs in the Island of St. Vincent (London, 1795);
Douglas C. Taylor, The Black Carib of British Honduras (New York: Wenner-
Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1951); Edison Carneiro, Guerras
do los Palmares (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1946).
 —
The African Presence in Caribbean Literature ¡41

69. The Maroons of Jamaica, the Black Caribs of Honduras, and the
Suriname groups.
70. Namba Roy, Black Albino (London: New Literature Press, 1961).
71. Wilson Harris, The Secret Ladder (London: Faber and Faber, 1963),
p. 23.
72. Ibid., p. 39.
Wilson Harris, History, Fable and Myth in the Caribbean and Guianas
73.
(Georgetown, Guyana: National History and Arts Council, Ministry of Informa-
tion and Culture, 1970), p. 29.
74. Ibid., p. 28.
75. "History is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was
created in the West Indies," V. S. Naipaul, The Middle Passage (London: Andre
Deutsch, 1962), p. 29.
76. "This was a society ... in which all forms of refinements, of art, of
folkways were either absent or in a state of total disintegration," Orlando Patter-
son, The Sociology of Slavery, p. 9.
77.

those who remain fascinated,

in attitudes of prayer,
by the festering roses made from their fathers' manacles,
or upraise their silver chalices flecked with vomit . . .

crying, at least here

something happened
they will absolve us, perhaps, if we begin again,
from what we have always known, nothing . . .

while the silver-hammered charge of the marsh light

brings towards us, again and again, in beaten scrolls,
nothing, then nothing,
and then nothing.
From Another Life by Derek Walcott (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973),
p. 144-145.
78. Brathwaite, Islands, pp. ix-x.
79. Ibid., p. 37.
80. Harris, History, Fable, pp. 9-10.
81. Lamming, Season of Adventure, p. 29.
82. The only other Caribbean writer who has been able to enter the hounfort
in this seems to me, is Alejo Carpentier in El reino de este mundo (Mexico:
way, it

EDIAPSA, 1949). But Wilson Harris, in a remarkable passage in a public lecture,

demonstrates that he too (as one would expect) is fully aware of the implosive
links between vodun and the folk literature of the New World:

All conventional memory is erased and yet in this trance of overlapping

spheres of reflection a primordial or deeper function of memory begins to
exercise itself. . . .

That such a drama has indeed a close bearing on the language of fiction,
on the language of art, seems to me incontestable. The community the
writer shares with the primordial dancer is, as it were, the complemen-
tary halves of a broken stage. . . .

"The Writer and Society," Tradition, the Writer and Society (London and Port-of-
Spain: New Beacon Books, 1967), pp. 51-52.
142 Africa in Latin America

83. Lamming, Season of Adventure, pp. 29-30.

84. M. G. Lewis, Journal of a West Indian Proprietor (1834; London:
G. Routledge & Sons, 1929), p. 290.
85. For more on this, see Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (1946), trans.
Colin King from the 1952 French edition (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1959), pp. 69-
74.
86. DeLisser, Jane's Career, p. 120.
87. Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939; Paris: Presence
Africaine, 1956), p. 40, my translation.
88. Ishmael Reed, Yellow Back Radio Broke-down (1969; New York: Bantam
Books, 1972), p. 9.
89. LeRoi Jones, Black Magic Poetry (Indianapolis and New York: The
Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969), p. 116; which should be heard on Sonny's Time Now
Now (Jihad 663), with Sonny Murray (drums), Albert Ayler (tenor sax), Don
Cherry (trumpet), and Henry Grimes (bass).
90. R. Dobru, Flowers Must Not Grow Today (Paramaribo, Suriname: Afi-
Kofi, 1973).
91. The presence and use of nommo is too pervasive and evident in modern
African literature for us to do more than refer, among many others, to Gabriel
Okara's The Voice, Wole Soyinka's The Road; the plays by Robert Serumaga
(Renga Moi) and Duro Ladipo (for example, Oba koso), based closely on tradi-
tional ceremony; Cámara Laye's L enfant noir, the novels of Amos Tutuola and
the long poems of Okot p'Bitek. For traditional African literature and thought,
see, among others, William Bascom, ¡fa Divination (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1969); Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1970): S. A. Babalola, The Content and Form of Yoruba ¡jala
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1966); J. H. Nketia, Funeral Dirges of the Akan
People (Achitoma, 1955); Marcel Griaule, Dieu d'eau: entretiens avec Ogotem-
meli (Paris: Editions du Chéne, 1948); Tempels, Bantu Philosophy; and Chinua
Achebe "Foreword" to A Selection of African Prose, ed. W. H. Whiteley (Oxford:
The Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. vii-x.
92. See Minty Alley [1936] (London and Port-of-Spain: New Beacon Books
Ltd., 1971), pp. 21 and 23.
93. See DeLisser, Jane's Career (reprint London: Heinemann Educational
Books, 1972), p. 79.
94. Listen, for example, to Message to the Grass Roots from Malcolm X
(Afro Records, AA 1264); Martin Luther King (Mercury 20119). Writing about
oratory has not been particularly successful (c.f. Marcus H. Boulware, The Ora-
tory of Negro Leaders (Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1969). Al-
though Roger Abrahams' work on this aspect of Afro/New World folk art should
be specially mentioned: "The Shaping of Folklore Traditions in the British West
Indies," and "Traditions of Eloquence in Afro-American Committees," Journal of
¡nter- American Studies and World Affairs 9, pp. 456-480 and 12, pp. 505-527.
,

95. In this paper I have concentrated on the religious aspects of Caribbean

folk culture. There is, however, an important secular development, magnificently
expressed in the carnival and calypso of Trinidad especially. This secular aspect
of our culture is as comprehensive (life-centered) as the religious art-styles being
discussed. See Errol Hill, The Trinidad Carnival (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1972).
96. Lamming, Season of Adventure, p. 91.
97. From the work of the writers cited in this paragraph (themselves a selec-
 The African Presence in Caribbean Literature 143

tion), the following may be noted: Nina Rodrigues, Os Africanos no Brasil (1905;
Sao Paulo: Cia Editora Nacional, 1932); Renato Mendoza, A influenca Africana
portugesa do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: 1934); Fernando Ortiz, Hampa Afrocubana:
Los Negros Brujos (Madrid: Editorial-America, 1906); Arthur Ramos, O Negro
Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacáo Brasileira, 1934); Donald Pierson, Negroes
in Brazil (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); Ivy Baxter, The Arts of an
Island (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1970); Errol Hill, The Trinidad
Carnival; J. D. Elder, Evolution of the Traditional Calypso of Trinidad and To-
bago. . (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1966, 1970); Roger Bastide,
. .

Les Amériques noires (Paris: Payot, 1967).

98. See Alexis Kagame, La philosophic bantu-rw andáis e de Vetre (Brussels:
1956); Griaule, Dieu d'eau; Tempels, Bantoe-Filosofie; Jahn, Muntu (1958), trans.
Marjorie Grene (London: Faber and Faber, 1961) and A History of Neo-African
Literature. In the New World, studies of the African word in Creole speech
include Lorenzo Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect of the Southern United
States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949); J. J. Thomas, The Theory
and Practice of Creole Grammar [in Trinidad] (Port-of-Spain, 1869); F. G. Cas-
sidy and R. B. Le Page, Dictionary of Jamaican English; F. G. Cassidy, Jamaica
Talk (London: Macmillan, 1961); Mary Jo Willeford, "Africanism in the Bajan
Dialect," Bim, 46 (1968), pp. 90-97, and Fernando Ortiz, Glosario de Afro-
negrismos (Havana: 1923). But the really illuminating studies, often providing a
meaningful context for understanding the presence of the Word, are (among
others), Mervyn Alleyne, "The Linguistic Continuity of Africa in the Caribbean,"
Black Academy Review, 1, No. 4 (Winter 1970), pp. 3—16; LeRoi Jones, Blues
People (New York: Grove Press, 1972); Sylvia Wynter, "Jonkonnu in Jamaica,"
Jamaica Journal, 4, No. 2 (June 1970), pp. 34-48; and Jean Price-Mars, Ainsi
parla Toncle (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de Compiégne, 1928).
99. Monica Skeete, "To Frank Collymore on His Eightieth Birthday,"
Savacou 7/8 (January/June 1973), p. 122.
100. Ibid.; my notation.
101. Bongo Jerry, "The Youth," Savacou 3/4 (December 1970/March 1971),
p. 13. My notation.
102. Bongo Jerry, "Mabrak," Savacou 3/4, pp. 13-14.
103. Ibid., p. 15.
104. the West Indian Novel."
Edward Brathwaite, "Jazz and
105. have developed my ideas on this still further in my "Introduction" to
I

Roger Mais, Brother Man (1954; London: Heinemann Educational Books, forth-
coming in 1974).
106. Nicolás Guillen, "Sensemayá" from West Indies Ltd (1934), in El son
entero, pp. 60-61.
107. Césaire, Cahier (1956 ed.), p. 50.
108. Leon Damas, "II est des nuits," Pigments (Paris: Guy Levis Mano, 1937),
p. 24.
109. Jamil AH, "Dimensions of Confusion," Savacou 9/10 (forthcoming in
1974).
1 10. Brathwaite, Islands, pp. 65-66.
111. The Mighty Sparrow, "Ten to One is Murder," transcribed in his One
Hundred and Twenty Calypsoes to Remember (Port-of-Spain: National Recording
Co., 1963), p. 37. Errol Hill in The Trinidad Carnival, p. 70, comments on the
calinda-style performance as follows: "The form seems simple enough on paper,
but it is highly effective and dramatic in performance. The rapid alternation from
144 Africa in Latin America

solo voice to chorus creates a feeling of tension. Sometimes the leader will antici-
pate the end of the chorus line and come in over it; at another time he will appear
to drop behind the regular meter in starting his verse, then suddenly spring for-
ward on a syncopated beat. He improvises not only with his lyric but also with the
melody: he ornaments his short passagefs] in subtle ways, but is always con-
strained to return to the original tune by the insistent power of the chorus. It is as
though leader and chorus complement and contradict each other simultaneously."
Sparrow: Well I start to sweat,
An I soakin wet.
Mamma, so much threat,
That's a night I can never forget
Ten o' dem against me with fifty spectator
Chorus: Ten to one is murder!
112. Pastor Williams and Spiritual Baptist Congregation, Silver Sands, Bar-
bados. Transcription of cassette tape recording: October 15, 1972. We could also
refer to the second preacher in the Jamaican film. The Harder They Come, and
recordings such as the Reverend Kelsey (Brunswick OE 9256) for the United
States. Examples could also be cited for Haiti, Brazil, Africa.
113. Bruce St. John, "West Indian Litany." Savacou 3/4 (December 1970/
March 1971), p. 82.
114. Unpublished manuscript.
115. Césaire, Cahier (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1971 ed.), p. 72.
116. Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile (London: Michael Joseph, 1960), p.
121.
117. See Elizabeth Clarke, "Mudda Africa," New Writing in the Caribbean,
ed. A. Seymour (Georgetown: National History and Arts Council of Guyana,
J.

1972), p. 60-62; Tito Jemmott, "A Tale," Savacou 3/4, pp. 60-64.
118. Melvin Toisón, Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1953).
119. Robert Hayden, "Middle Passage," A Ballad of Remembrance (London:
Paul Breman, 1962), pp. 60-66.
120. Brathwaite, Rights of Passage (1967), Masks (1968), Islands (1969), pub-
lished under single cover as The Arrivants (London: Oxford University Press,
1973).
121. Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969).
122. Brathwaite, "West Indian History and Society in the Art of Paule Mar-
shall's Novel," Journal of Black Studies,1, No. 2 (December 1970), pp. 225-238.

123. Paule Marshall, Chosen Place, p. 106.

124. Ibid., p. 121.
125. Ibid., p. 123.
126. For the close connection between the Montserrat masquerade bands and
their counterparts in West Africa, see the articles by Simon Ottenberg, Phillips
Stevens, Jr. and John C. Messenger in African Arts, 6, No. 4 (Summer 1973),
pp. 32-35, 4(M3, 54-57.
127. Marshall, Chosen Place, p. 287.
 7
African Influence in Latin America:
Oral and Written Literature

Samuel Feijoo

Oral Literature

To understand, even superficially, the Black influence, its efficient de-

velopment as it permeated the complexities of Latin American culture, it
is necessary to know which were the dominant folk cultures brought to

America by the African groups, how they merged and mixed their folk-
lore, and how this mixture was later inserted into the general cultural
environment.
The following pages only attempt to analyze briefly one aspect of the
problem: the African influence on oral and written Latin American litera-
ture. Oral literature is a difficult subject to deal with because it is so
complex and because we still do not have sufficient live, accurate, and
clean texts on national variations and influences to permit us to make
deep and accurate judgments. Nevertheless, through existent research it
is possible to assert that the imprints of African oral literature are deep
and quite obvious in some countries, and that they are weaker in the
countries that have a lighter African demographic density.
What is known, for example, about the fate of African oral folk culture
in Mexico, its absorption and its transformation into the general Mexican
culture? There may still be folk tales, Mexican ones narrated by Whites or
Mestizos, as is the case, for example, of the amusing adventures of the
ingenious "Little Black Poet." However, this poem or Black myth has
barely influenced Mexican literature, and has practically disappeared
from it.
And the Black in Peru? Has the influence of the strong Black or
Negroid folk forms been analyzed in the general Peruvian literature or in
oral folk literature? What about Ecuador? In Colombia, where linguistic
research has been seriously conducted, cultural anthropology is becoming
more significant and folk researchers are conducting important studies in
Black areas, such as the Alto and Bajo Chocó, on the idiosyncratic cul-
tures, their variants, transculturation, etc.
In Argentina, where Black slaves lived primarily in Buenos Aires, they
had only a very scant influence on general Argentine folk poetry, stories,
refrains, and myths. There are caricatures of the newly imported slave in
the songs of the ancient carnival groups, made up of Whites, who imitated

145
146 Africa in Latin America

the songs of the candombe. These were Americanized songs that mock-
ingly used the neo-Spanish language of the Africans:

Candombe, candombe,
Candombe, candombe.
Candombe, candombe.
Candombe, candombe,
Buriay curumbamba
María Curumbé.
Hé,e,
Hé, e, he Maruay Curumbé.

It is way left its impression on

clear that the Black context in this
popular speech: but here imitation implied nonrecognition. Later
satirical
on the Black became a subject of Argentine literature, like the Black poet
in the national poem "Martin Fierro," who expresses himself like an
Argentine without maintaining any ties with the culture of his ancestors.
This Black improvisor is a symbol, he is a model of the Black born in

America; he and his American descendants are just like the gauchos.
They are completely Americanized.
The depth to which the oral elements of Black literature have in-
fluenced Venezuelan folklore is still unknown because of lack of research.
In Brazil the Black has left a deep musical and religious imprint. Many
important anthropological studies have been conducted by Nina Rodri-
gues, Arthur Ramos, Mario de Andrade and others; yet, we lack special-
ized texts on the literary heritage of the Black in Brazil. Nevertheless, in
the studies of Rodrigues, Ramos, and Andrade we find much oral African
or Neoafrican poetry in religious songs that have been collected. Some
examples follow. Ramos describes a ritual ceremony that contains Black
Brazilian songs:

The high priest begins the service by invoking the protecting saint. The
mediums are arranged in two lines, the women to the left, the men co the
right. The filhas de santo are dressed in a white cotton skirt and robe, the
men wear pants and shirts made of canvas of the same color. The umbanda,
standing before the altar, stretches his arms forward and utters an unintelli-
gibleprayer. Immediately he turns towards the audience and shouts:
"Ogún!" He appears in candombe, "pulls out" the songs and begins to sing:

Saint George is inour circle Está na ronda San Jorge

Because of his bravery Pela sua alta vanentía
Let us salute Ogún Vamos saudar Ogún
Ogún! Ogún!

The rhythm is marked through the clapping hands, percussion instru-

ments such as drums, tambourines, timbrels. The candombe continues,
accompanied by the chorus:
 African Influence in Latin America 147

Saravad Ogún Saravad Ogún

Ogún, my father, Ogún, meu pae
Oh George, oh George O Jorge, ó Jorge
Come from Luanda Vem da Loanda
Have mercy on your children Tern copaixdo de seus filhos
He overcame the demand Venceu a demanda
Ogún is Ogún-é
Ogún is macumba! Ogún macumba-é!

Enter the chorus:

Save Angola! Salva Angola!

Save the Congo! Salva Congo!
Save the Congo! Salva Congo!
Because Umbanda has arrived. Que Umbanda chegou.

Nina Rodrigues collected stories from Black descendants of Dahomans

in Bahia. In one of them, which narrates the adventures of a turtle, there
is an African style song that is very rhythmic and very closely related to

African stories and to the African stories of the Antilles:

Otavo otavo longozoe

ilá pono éfan

i ve pondereman
hoto ro men i eos
assenta ni ananá
ne so aroro ale nuxá
avun-cé, mababú,
avun-cé, nogo-e-zin
avun-cé, mababú,
avun-cé, nogo-zo
avun-cé, mababú
avun-cé, nogo-abo,
avun-cé, mababún,
avun-cé, aue-na
a son coticoló ke
babúm.

Another Congolese song was discovered by Mario de Andrade in a

Catholic ceremony in Rio Grande do Norte; it has a fetishist background:

Solo: Já mutum, já mutum, já mutum, gangulé!

Chorus: Eh, alelé, já mutum, gangulé!
The little Blacks are dancing for the White man to see!
Eh, alelé, já mutum, gangulé!
Blessed be he for whom we had the feast!
Eh, adélé, já mutum, gangulé!

Another is a Black Brazilian song to Obá, goddess of the Obá River in

Africa. This nostalgic song maintains its vigorous African rhythm, its

power, and its language in the New World:

148 Africa in Latin America

Xangó ole bondilé ó-la-lá

Con gon gon gondilá.
Xangó ole, gondilé, olé-olé
Con gon gon gondilé.
Con gon gon gondilé
Iemanjá otó bajoré
O yá otó bajoré
O remanjá otó bajoré
O ya otó bajoré o.

Blacks have also left their imprint on oral Latin- American folklore,
through what we could call the discriminatory folklore which makes fun
of the Black. This style already had its precedents in the "Black Wedding"
by the poet Quevedo, who wrote during the Golden Century of Spanish
literature. All this must be counted in the general context of Black in-
fluence in Latin America.

Americanization and the Colonial Context

The refrains, stories, myths, fables, and poetry of oral African and neo-
African literature reappear and expand throughout America, not to evoke
a feeling of nostalgia for Africa in the descendants of Africans, but to
become a more American element. Thus the Black or Mulatto uses im-
memorial sources and adds to them American variants, characters, vege-
tation, voices, and idiosyncracies. The Blacks born in America, the Mes-
tizos, have become a part of the general American style. Present-day
Blacks and Mulattoes, like Cubans, Haitians, and Brazilians, are living
parts of their respective homelands, and are linked to these homelands
like all other inhabitants: they are Blacks and Mulattoes who share a
general culture. However, in some countries, the United States for one,
they still from tremendous racial, social, and economic discrimina-
suffer
tion. Discrimination is less pronounced elsewhere, and is nonexistent in
Cuba, where it was decisively eliminated with the triumph of the revolu-
tion.Therefore a nostalgia for Africa appears only very rarely in the
writings of Blacks in the Americas, and Mulattoes. It is no longer an

important psychological factor in Creole Blacks or their descendants; nor

is it even a distant folk theme: it no longer exists, it has disappeared.

Blacks have become citizens, an original, cultural, telluric force, a crea-

tive part of each new nation where they live, maintaining their own music,
song, and dance in the face of poor living conditions, racial discrimina-
tion, and the lack of education that corresponds to their low social status.
This is why Blacks and Mulattoes who learned how to read and write
during the course of the nineteenth century did not write about their
ancestors or the folk literature of their forebears. They wrote instead in
the style of the dominant Spanish or Portuguese cultures, the contempo-
 African Influence in Latin America 149

rary style, with its colonial or nationalistic roots deriving from indepen-
dence from Spain or Portugal. A Black singing in the Pampas sang like a
gaucho; and the Cuban poet Plácido, writing in a country colonized by
Spain, wrote like a White poet, penning odes, the "Moorish romances"
that were in fashion, poems, and talented Spanish epigrams. The same
was true of the literate Black Cuban slave poet Juan Francisco Manzano;
he wrote sensitive, talented verses, in the style of contemporary White
poets, that fit into the dominant Spanish literary context.
However, Manzano left the world, in his autobiography, composed on
request, the most heartrending antislavery document ever written, por-
traying the inhumanity and the horrors of the slave system. It is the most
tragic autobiography, an incomparable human document, the most unique
accusation against slavery and the slave trade.
There are numerous examples of the writings of assimilated, literate
Blacks that we will not reproduce here, since they fall into a research,
rather than an analytical context. However, it would be helpful to provide
an example of how White folklore penetrated the Black communities and
was generally accepted by them: we refer to the inflammatory, "porfía"
poetry of Colombian Blacks in Chocó, collected by Rogerio Velazquez
during a recent trip to the fabulous Colombian Black region. These ag-
gressive couplets are part of the tradition of "troubadour" contests, be-
tween improvisatory poets that is strong in certain Latin- American coun-
tries like Cuba, Argentina, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Puerto
Rico, and Colombia. The form is Spanish, a combination of couplets and
rhyme. The images and stylistics are Colombian, accentuated here by the
African mode, its idiosyncratic expressions and concepts. Here are some
brief examples of a folk art of Americanized Blacks:

Yo soy el José Tomás I am

Joseph Thomas
de los ojos colorados, Of the red eyes
hasta los diablos me huyen even the devils flee from me
porque en el infierno he estado. because I have been in hell.

Quien vaya a cantar conmigo Whosoever will sing with me

que examine su memoria, should examine his memory
porque yo aprendí a cantar because I learned to sing
con angeles de la gloria. with the angels of glory.

El que va a cantar conmigo Whoever sings with me

beba primero la tonga, let him drink a round
first

me llamo José María, My name is José Maria

hijo de la negra conga. and I am the son of a Black Congol-
ese.

These are songs of Black American singers who suffered because their
Black skin set them apart, who were immersed in a Mestizo culture, often
in the process of becoming Mulattoes, but who were always discriminated
150 Africa in Latin America

against. This discrimination gave cultivated Black and Mulatto writers a

social, political,and cultural conscience, always expressed in sharpness,
satire, active protest, and a secret knowledge of the injustice committed
against a very important racial element that was crucial to the formation
of their country. It is always expressed in literature or in American song:
"There is as much difference between a Black Antillean and a citizen of
Dakar, as between a Brazilian and a person from Madrid."

Oral Neo-African Literature in the Antilles

In the Spanish Antilles,Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico,

Spanish style was always the aesthetic standard of "high" culture. This
was so even at a time when a nationalist conscience began to emerge,
when the desire for independence strengthened, even, in the Dominican
Republic, which had a very active Black folk culture due to its proximity
to Haiti. In Cuba the situation was different. By the time political
pseudoindependence was achieved in 1902, following the interventionist
war of the United States against Spain, the French aesthetic standards of
the "modernist" movement had already begun to dominate cultured
poetry.
In the Spanish Caribbean, as in other Latin-American areas, there is an
extensive folk literature based on Black themes. This literature does not
reflect an African or a Black influence, instead it reflects the inheritance of
slavery. Its favorite subject is ridicule of the Black, which indicates the
prejudice that originated with slavery. Two couplets from Puerto Rico
show this shameful attitude (there are similar examples in the Dominican
Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, etc.):

El negro no tiene sesos, The Black man has no brains,

ni huesos, ni coyunturas, no bones and no joints,
y para mayor vergüenza and what is even more shameful,
tiene la cabeza dura. he has a hard head.

El negro y el sinvergüenza The Black man and the scoundrel

nacieron de una barriga; were born from one belly;
el negro nació debajo the Black man was born at the bot-
tom
con el sinvergüenza arriba. with the scoundrel on top of him.

Naturally these couplets often brought a defensive reply from the

Black. The following replies were found in Puerto Rico:

El que me dijere negro Whoever calls me Black

es ponerme una corona Iscrowning me
porque de negro se visten because the three divine persons
las tres divinas personas. are all dressed in black
 African Influence in Latin America 151

Hay muchos negros aquí; There are many Blacks here;

al decirlo no me
escondo; while saying so I do not hide;
el que no tiene de congo whoever is not part Congo
tiene de carabalí. is part Carabalí.

Such folk expressions generally lack literary merit, but they are impor-
tant sociological documents. Puerto Rican folk culture is full of praise for
the female Mulatto, and so is the folklore of the rest of Latin America.
Although these folk songs seem complimentary, they are really reflections
of racial prejudice:

Una mulata que tenga A Mulatto woman who has

su nariz muy perfilada a very fine nose
y su frente desarrollada and a developed forehead
¿quien no suspira por ella? Who will not sigh for her?
Y si es simpática y bella And if she is charming and beautiful
pues vale mas que una blanca. she is worth more than a White
woman.

Cuba
Cuba and Brazil have examples not only of oral literature, but also of
written Black, Mulatto, and White literature influenced by general Black
culture or by the subject of African slaves and their descendants in Latin
America. In Cuba and in Brazil there exist very accomplished, beautiful,
and universally resonant music and dance with African references. In
Cuba the first antislavery novels were written by Whites. They described
the physical environment of the Africans and their descendants, in the
countryside and in the cities, mentioning the horrors to which the Blacks
were subjected. Examples include Francisco by Anselmo Suarez y Ro-
mero, and Cecilia Valdés, by Cirilo Villaverde. Cuba offers ample exam-
ples of the bold appearance of African culture on the island, its peculiar,
already Creole characteristics, displayed in folk and cultured poetry.
Cuba was the center of the development of a "Black Poetry" movement
that made its way into universal anthologies. Therefore, we will briefly
discuss Cuba in our description of the general awareness of Blacks, their
culture and their vivid contributions to America.
Following the genocide of the Cuban Indians there remained of their
culture, regardless of its status or conditions, only some beautiful words,

some lovely names, usually of places, and some of the obscure myths of
their cosmogony. Thus, when the African slaves arrived, their culture
only had to confront that of the White masters and the new culture of the
first White Creoles that was beginning to emerge in America in adaptation

to a novel and different medium conducive to new styles.

With the years, after the African cultures had mingled on the island,
the slaves and their Creole children still refused to assimilate the domi-
152 Africa in Latin America

nant culture of the White without distorting it. How could the slaves
survive in such a different, hostile, condescending, and cruel atmosphere
without secretly clinging to their folk culture? The first Africans and their
children were all a part of such a folk culture. The mass of slaves resisted,

for the sake of survival, all the foreign influences of their masters, search-
ing their inner being, their knowledge, and their beliefs in order to reject
this alien culture. The vitality of the African slave sought refuge in reli-

gion and in folk culture, legitimately resisting the power of the White
exploiter. Dances, songs, myths, voices, liturgies, foods, and medicines
were the more appreciated and the more unifying because they marked
the slaves' determination, from the very beginning, to resist the oppres-
sive culture into which they had been so violently inserted, to save the
rich inheritance of their own culture, even using it to transform and to add
gaiety to the culture of their oppressors.
By the third or fourth Black generation in Cuba, according to Cuban
scholar Julio Le Riverend, "The Black man rapidly lost the elements of
his culture, because his servile condition, besides mixing [different cul-
tures] together, imposed upon him a government, authorities, laws, and
constraints which made the survival of his own [cultural] creations impos-
sible. In some cases, however, he preserved with extreme faithfulness,
essential traits like religion and magic, music, folk tales, and the language
that survived slavery. It must be kept in mind that many of the Black
groups that came to America were by no means the barbarians described
by apologists for slavery and therefore, many of them not only preserved
elements of their own culture, but were even able to transmit them to
other Black slaves of different origins with whom they cohabited. They
even passed them on to some Whites."
The slave folk culture expanded, but was always looked at with suspi-
cion and contempt by the governing class and the high and small
bourgeoisie that was emerging in these countries. But people in general
enjoyed the Black music, dances, fables, sayings, and sense of humor, all
of which gave them real pleasure. One must not forget that there was a
time, in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, when the Black
Cuban population was the largest in the country. During that time Blacks
and Mulattoes preserved their folk culture, by then already in its mixed
form or somewhat changed, but still alive, beautiful, and attractive, and
despite its transculturation, no less powerful.
In the African-influenced oral literature one observes religious myths
and the glorification of the heroic feats of the gods. There are also animal
stories with monkeys and elephants, and once in a while a European bear
makes an appearance. There are stories filled with rhythmic songs and
swift adventures, sometimes followed by moral teachings, other times
told for the sake of pure enjoyment, containing a happy sense of humor
 African Influence in Latin America 153

and excellent narrative skills. Such is the nature of the tightly knit, attrac-
tive, simple fables set in the Antilles.
The power of African slave literature was passed on to their
pithy
children. A
number of refrains responding to the new condition of the
Black in America were generated. Some of these have been collected, and
it may be helpful to get to know them briefly. The following sayings were

taken from a collection put together by the researcher Lydia Cabrera in

the 1950s:

Head cannot go through ear.

The turtle tried to fly and broke its shell.
The same stick that will kill a White dog will also kill a Black dog.
A Black woman for a Black man, a White woman for a White man, yet both
of them are mothers.
All hearts are red.
If the ox is not born, the Black man must pull the cart.

Happiness has a skinny body.

The pan is used to having its bottom burned by the flame.
The mother of misfortune is poverty.
They can't stand a poor man with a large basket.
A gentleman may eat gold, but he shits filth.
Guilt always hangs over the Black.
On White man's fishing trip the Black man carries the nets.
Necessity is the father of the Mulatto.
From the bishop to the governor all equally bad.
In a chicken court, a cockroach has no vote.
A cockroach won't greet Mr. Rooster.
Give your clothes to a tiger, and he will break your neck.
The head gets its advice from the ear.
The peacock believes he is king: he better not look down at his legs.
Some day the spider may have to pay rent.

Rafael Roche compiled refrains in Ñañigo, revealing the persistence of

African language, by then part of the jargon, and its noticeable influence
on Cuban folk vocabulary:

Malárica bira guañañongo ecombre.

(Whitey, if you don't know, just keep out of it.)
Acua embore boroquí mangue.
(The goat is castrated just once).
Aseré abasillaberomo ita maribá endié ecruloró.
(When the sun rises, it rises for everyone.)
Chequedenque longosiremó.
(He who doesn't have a heart won't go to war.)
Efique, efique butón, etique, efique quenamiró aguana toitó.
(I am poor, but with my family I am rich.)
154 Africa in Latin America

White Influence of Blacks in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Despite the constant suspicion on Black culture, some colored men ex-
celled in nineteenth-century Cuban They were either truly
literature.
Black, sons of slaves, like Juan Francisco Manzano or Ambrosio
Echemendia, both of whom were slaves themselves until manumitted by
compassionate White literary figures who pitied them for their living con-
ditions; or they were Mulattoes like Gabriel de la Concepión Valdés
(Plácido), the son of a Spanish woman and a Mulatto. But these descend-
ants of Africans, we repeat, were dominated, in their style and their
subject matter, by Spanish usages; they were writers who had been in-
serted into the Spanish-dominated Antillean literature.
The following are brief examples of the neoclassical style of Plácido,
who wrote poems, romances, and epigrams with Cuban themes. Colonial
censorship did not allow for sharpness and strength of style, even though
Plácido was able to ridicule the censorship with great ability, as we will
show later on.
These are fragments of fashionable neoclassicism; they show His-
panicizedCuban peasants using rebecs that had never been used before
by Cubans;

Del céfiro halagados mis oídos In my ears flattered by zephyr

resonaba el rabel de los pastores, the rebec of the shepherds re-
sounded
que al alba festejaban divertidos they were merrily feasting at dawn
cantando por las selvas sus amores. singing their loves in the forests.

This is a strictly European Arcadia, since in Cuba shepherds did not

exist.The verses are purified through the neoclassical style of colonized

Mulattoes. What other types of poetry did the despotic colonial govern-
ment of Cuba permit?

Desde el manso Almendar la bella From the gentle Almendar the

ninfa beautiful nymph
Tu oriente ensalza entre tu clara praises the source of your clear wa-
linfa ters
De límpido cristal. of transparent crystal.
Su manto de zafir, su faz riente, Her sapphire mantle, her smiling
face,
De oro sus rizos, de jazmín su Her golden hair and jasmine
frente. forehead.
Su carro de coral. Her coral cart.
Su nevado cendal ciñen claveles, A snowy scarf encircled by carna-
tions
Orna su sien de auríferos laureles decorates her temples with golden
laurels
Con ademán gentil with gesture soft
 African Influence in Latin America 155

Y en tu natal las almas enajena And at your source enraptures the

spirits
Pulsando así con dedos de azucena plucking with lily-white fingers
Su plectro de marfil. Its ivory plectrum.
El Sueño (The Dream)

Plácido was shot during the terrible slave slaughter called the "Con-
spiracy of the Ladder," in which Blacks and Mulattoes were tortured with
a cruelty rarely seen in America. It is quite possible that some of his
poems brought about his death — possibly the antislavery poems, since
this sensitiveMulatto knew discrimination at close hand and used sym-
bolic means to attack slavery in Cuba:

Gran confusión se notaba There was great confusion

en los siervos de una finca, among the estate slaves
y ningún de su choza and no one from his shack
solo en la noche salía. would leave alone at night.
Súpolo el dueño, juntólos, The master knew of this and
gathered them together
y preguntó qué tenían. and asked them what was wrong.
Ellos dijeron que un bulto They said there was a shape
en la oscuridad se vía they had seen in the dark
que era como un tigre grande. thatwas much like a large tiger.
El amo dijo: magnífico The master said: Bless
anima mea! ¡la cruz!
. . . . . my soul! . . . the cross!
Más una negra ladina But a Black woman slave
contestó: señor, no es eso; answered: Sir, it is not that,
ese tigre es sin mentira this tiger is without a doubt
elalma del mayoral the soul of the overseer
que se murió el otro día. who died the other day.
La figura de un alma (The figure of a spirit)

The fame of Plácido was immense; he was the natural pride of dark-
skinned and Black people. His is the most important expression of
Mulatto poetry of the nineteenth century in Latin America. He even
ridiculed the racial boundaries set up by "pure" White men:

Siempre exclama Don Longino: Don Longino always exclaims:

soy de sangre noble y pura I am of noble and pure blood.

y con su rostro cetrino And

with his sallow face
que africana estirpe indica showing
his African extraction,
alucinado publica deluded, he proclaims
ser de excelsa parentela. his noble parentage.
Que se lo cuente a su abuela Let him tell that to his grand-
mother.
Que se lo cuente a su abuela (Let him tell that to his grandmother)
156 Africa in Latin America

He does even He suggests a liberation struggle, the war against the

more.
racist oppressor. To do this he employs the simple fable, "The Man and
the Canary." A man asks a canary:

Animada miniatura Animated miniature

¿por qué con tu suavidad why don't you, with your gentle-
ness
no entonas, y con dulzura, sweetly sing,
los trinos de libertad the trills of liberty
que aprendiste en la espesura? that you learned in the thickets?

Cuanto quieren enseñarte Whatever they wish to teach you

humilde, lo aprendes todo, humbly, you learn it all,
y puedes tanto olvidarte Do you forget yourself
de tí que no buscas modo to the point that you don't ever
search
ninguno de libertarte? for a way to seek freedom?

And the canary responds:

Lo que se me enseña canto, I sing what I am taught

porque con mis trinos bellos, because with my beautiful trills,

aunque vierta oculto llanto, even though I secretly cry
hago lo que mandan ellos I do what they want me to do

para no padecer tanto. so that I need not suffer too much.

Sé que no puedo quebrar I know that I can't break

estas varillas de alambre: these metal bars:

me dan vida por cantar, they let me live so I may sing
y si persisto en callar and, if I persist in keeping quiet,
me harán perecer de hambre. they will starve me to death.

Que le adulo en la apariencia My master thinks I adore

piensa me dueño,
y se hiochiza; his presence and he is bewitched;
mas, mirándolo en conciencia, but, looking at things honestly,
yo engaño al que me esclaviza I trick the one who enslaves me

por conservar mi existencia. to preserve my own existence.

Vivir, y hallar la ocasión To live and to search for the right

moment
de libertarse, es cordura. To become free, is to be sane.

The ex-slave, Juan Francisco Manzano, who wrote "Anacreónticas"

and "Odes" composed the famous sonnet in which one can feel the pain
suffered by the ex-slave expressed in the purified classical European
form, its rhythm and its restrictions. It is entitled "Thirty years":

Cuando miro el espacio que he cor- When I consider the distance that I

rido have run

desde la cuna hasta el presente día, From my eradle to the present day,
 African Influence in Latin America 157

tiemblo, y saludo la fortuna mía I tremble, and greet my fortune

más de terror que de atención moved more by terror than by at-
movido. tention.

Sorpréndeme la lucha que he I am surprised by the struggle that I

podido have
sostener contra suerta tan impía, sustained against bad luck,
si tal llamarse puede la porfía if Ican thus call this stubborn fight
de mi infelice ser, al mal nacido. for my unhappy existence, since I
was born to this ill fate.

Treinta años ha que conocí la For thirty years I have known this
tierra; earth
treinta años ha que en gemidor es- thirty years have gone by while in
tado my moaning state,
triste infortunio por doquier me sad misfortune assaults me from all

asalta. sides.

Mas nada para mi es la cruda But nothing to me is this crude war

guerra
que en vano suspirar he soportado that with vain sighs I have borne

si la calculo Oh Dios! con la que if I match it, Oh God, with what is

falta. yet to come.

The rhythm of the African musical dances and its voices, the revolu-
tionary awareness of the discriminated-against Black Cuban, reappears
many decades later, in the 1930s in "Black Poetry."

Black Influence on Cuban Writers of the Nineteenth Century

In response to its ugly manifestations, an antislavery sentiment began to

emerge among Cubans, which found expression in their literature. This
literature continued to employ the Spanish literary forms until the end of
the century, at which time slavery was abolished. As was mentioned
earlier, this awareness gave birth to some fine antislavery novels, such as
Cecilia Vaides by the anticolonialist patriot Cirilo Villaverde, and Fran-
cisco by the delicate, nature-loving Anselmo Suárez y Romero.
These works were instrumental in the development of a general con-
sciousness of the abuses of Spanish colonialism and of the vile nature of
the slave trade. Cecilia Vaides was Cuba's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The
Cuban novel was neither romantic nor "sweet," instead it was sober,
realistic, and powerful.
The subject of slavery was not a common one in colonial Cuban
poetry, since the topic was considered dangerous and was usually cen-
sored. We do, however, have a Cuban ballad by José Fornaris, a "White"
poet, famous for originating the anticolonial Siboney Movement of Cuban
poetry, which lead to his exile from Cuba. "The Sad Flute" is about a sad
African slave who sits up all night to guard his master's estate. To keep
himself awake he plays a "rustic" flute:
158 Africa in Latin America

Esa tosca flauta anuncia This rustic flute announces

al mayoral de la estancia to the overseer of the estate
que está velando el esclavo that the slave is alertly watching the
y alerto los camps guarda. fields.
Bien sabe que si se duerme For he knows that if he falls asleep
el mayoral se levanta the overseer will get up
y con el látigo horrible and with a horrible whip
lo azota y lo despedaza! he will beat him and tear him to
pieces.

The resounds with the "deep lament of the Ethiopian race." Tired,
flute
the slave is overcome by
sleep, and in his dreams he returns to his coun-
try, which the poet describes as Arcadian:

Soñó ver, lleno de gozo, He dreamed that he saw, with great

pleasure
las costas de Senegambia, the shores of Senegambia,
y al son de los atabales and to the beat of drums
volvió a divisar sus playas. he once again saw its beaches.
Soñó que a su pobre madre He dreamed that to his poor mother
un beso en la frente daba, he gave a kiss on the forehead
y que risueño corría and that with a smile he was run-
ning
ya en la fiesta, ya en la caza, at festivals or in the hunt,
o por la orilla del Niger along the shores of the Niger
en alegre caravana . . . in a happy caravan.

As soon as the overseer no longer hears the flute, he gets out of bed and
runs to whip the slave. The overseer's daughter intervenes and asks for
mercy for the slave. The overseer gives in to her demands. The daughter
kneels before a crucifix and exclaims:

Dios de los orbes, Dios mío! God of this earth, Oh my god!

Apiádate de esta raza: Have mercy on this race:
extiende tu mano, borra extend your hand and erase
el sello vil que la marca, the vile seal that marks them
y hazla sentar al banquete and let them sit at the banquet
de la gran familia humana! of the great human family!

It was not this type of poem that redeemed Cuban slaves. However,

when Carlos Manuel de Céspedes rebelled against Spanish colonial power

in 1868, he took his slaves with him and granted them their freedom. The
Blacks were great fighters during the Cuban insurrection, and prominent
leaders like Maceo, the Moneadas, the Crombrets, all had Black blood.
During the nineteenth century there was a significant Black influence
on the popular theater, known as the "bufo". The "negritos," a product of
the Spanish saínete, or one-act farce, were Cubanized, and became im-
portant characters in the most outrageous comedies, filled with Cuban
slang and Black slave language. These "negritos" were Whites with black-
 African Influence in Latin America 159

ened faces, like the Northamerican minstrels. They were always happy,
fullof snappy expressions, and they brought to the stage popular dances,
mixed with Black rhythms and songs. Rumbas and guarachas were
danced and sung, but they never expressed the misfortunes of the Black
social condition. What mattered was the acceptance of mixtures of
Mulatto-influenced rhythms, dances, and songs with guarachas and
"White" literary styles. Some, like "María Belén" were quite ironic:

La negra Maria Belén The Black woman María Belén

dice que fue seductora said she was seductive
y sin rival bailadora and an unrivaled dancer
de danzas y de minué. of dances and the minuet.

Refrain:
Y hoy vive desesperada And today she lives in desperation
porque ya no vale nada. because she is no longer worth any-
thing.

Al ponerse ella una bata And, when she put on a robe

y un pañolito en la sien, and a kerchief over her forehead,
era la negra más sata she was the most flirtatious Black
woman
la negra María Belén. the Black woman, Maria Belén.

There were others that were satires, like "Rice and Beans":

Un bianco con una negra A White man married a Black

woman
se casaron hace un mes: a month ago:
el marido tiene suegra the husband has a mother-in-law
y creo que bruja es. and I think that she is a witch.

Refrain:
Tiene tres bemoles They have great difficulties
pareja tal this couple,
Que arroz con frijoles that everyone calls
se suele llamar. rice and beans.

Como los dos se casaron How the two got married

yo no puedo comprender . I cannot understand
Sin duda que se avidriaron They must have become empty-
headed
para tal barbarie hacer. to do something so outrageous.

Other guarachas praised the Mulatto female:

Yo soy la reina de las mujeres I am the queen of women

en esta tierra de promisión; in this promised land;
yo soy de azúcar, yo soy de fuego, I am made of sugar and fire,
yo soy la llave del corazón. I am the key to the heart.

Refrain:
No sé lo que tengo aquí, I don't know what I have here
160 Africa in Latin America

ni lo que me da; nor what afflicts me

ay, ay, ay! ay, ay, ay!
No tiene cura mi enfermedad. there is no cure for my malady.

Yo soy la causa de que los hombres I am the reason why men

a las blanquitas no den amor, don't love their little White women,
porque se mueren por mis pedazos because they die for certain parts of
me
y los derrito con mi calor. and I melt them with my warmth.

Es mas dulce que el azúcar It is sweeter than sugar

cuando quiere una mulata, the love of a Mulatto girl

entre todas las mujeres among all women

sin duda es la flor y nata. she is undoubtedly the flower and
the cream.

Then, we also have the Black man Valentin, a showoff and a ruffian,
later to be used by the "Black Poetry" movement in a different manner:

Aquí ha llegado Candela, Candela has arrived

negrito de rompe y raja, a little black rough and tumble boy

que con el cuchillo vuela he is swift with his knife

y corta con la navaja. and he cuts with his razor.

Candela no se rebaja Candela will not lower himself

a ningún negro valiente; to any brave Black man
en sacando la navaja when he pulls out his knife
no hay nadie que se presente. there is no one who will challenge
him.

All this sensational tough talk,all this Creole jargon and rhymed coup-

lets, is accompanied by negroid rhythms which did not match the Spanish
style. To bring together Spanish style and Black rhythm was the fecund
success of later "Black Poetry."

The Black Poetry Movement in the Twentieth Century

Poetry with Black and Mulatto sounds, rhythms, and themes became
prominent in Cuba in the 1930s, as did its natural forerunners both folk
and cultured. This is not the place to dwell on this poetry, since whole
books have been written on its merits and on its great poets. We will give
a short summary of this movement, which gave the world a genuine Latin-
American expression based on the rhythms of Cuban Mulatto dances,
which passed into the rhythm of verses, creating something totally new.

Forerunners

Religious songs and the "Songs of the Cabildos" were the origins of this
movement. Voices and rhythms linked to percussion instruments opened
the path towards a new poetic language based on original forms. Lydia
 !

African Influence in Latin America 161

Cabrera, in her book The Forest, gathers sung prayers of Black mayom-
beros in which magic and religion are linked. The following are some
examples of this rhythmic style:

Casimba yeré Casimba yeré

Casimbangó Casimbangó
Yo salí de mi casa I left my house,
Casimbangó Casimbangó
yo salí de mi tierra, I left my land
Casimbangó Casimbangó
yo vengo a bucá . . . I come to look . . .

Dame sombra Ceibita, Give me shade little Ceiba tree,

Ceiba da yo sombra. Ceiba give (I) shade.
Dame sombra palo Cuaba Give me shade Cuaba tree
Dame sombra palo Yaba Give me shade Yaba tree
Dame sombra palo Caja Give me shade Caja tree
Dame sombra palo Tengue Give me shade Tengue tree
Dame sombra palo Grayúa Give me shade Grayúa tree
Dame sombra palo Wakibango Give me shade Wakibango tree
Dame sombra palo Caballero Give me shade Caballero tree
Yo vine a bucá . . . I came to look for . . .

There are verbal rhythms like those in the "Song to Lower a Palm Bag
By":

Patti patti patti

npémba simbico!
Patti patti patti
npémba simbico!

Ya e yá patimpolo
yá yá yá patimpolo
Que yamos a ver
Goya ya que patimpolo
Pa tolo mundo, simbico.
Yá yá yá, María Nganga
Lo simbico, que patimpolo
Mambé mambé dio!

Refrains and vocal rhythms follow the rhythm of the Black Cuban
numerous prayers and magic songs, such as the "Songs of
song. There are
the Cabildo," which have the rhythm of a new poetry:

Engó teramene!
Jabre cutu guiri mambo.
Engó teramene
Jabre cutu guiri mambo.
Engó teramene!
Jabre cutu guiri dinga.
Engó teramene!
 !

162 Africa in Latin America

To these we might add the carnival songs and the "Songs to Kill
Snakes," where the rhythm is dominant and the voices are a simple pre-
text for the dance rhythm:

Mamita mamita! Mammy, mammy

Yen, yen, yen. Yen, yen, yen,
Culebra me pica! A snake is biting me!
Yen, yen, yen. Yen, yen, yen.
Culebra me come! A snake is eating me!
Yen, yen, yen. Yen, yen, yen.
Me pica, me traga! It is biting, it is swallowing me!
Yen, yen, yen. Yen, yen, yen.

Culebra se muere The snake is dying

Sángala muleque! Sángala muleque!

Culebra se muere! The snake is dying
Sángala muleque Sángala muleque!
La culebra se murió! The snake is dead!
Calabasó-só-só! Calabasó-só-só!
Yo mimito mató! I myself killed it!

Calabasó-só-só! Calabasó-só-só!

All these songs and rhythms became more common during the
nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the cultured Cuban poets
found a splendid national treasure of sung and danced folklore, to which
they gave a unique and original dimension.

Black Poetry

"Black Poetry" began in Cuba with Black and Mulatto folk elements; later
it became fashionable, and finally it turned into a powerful literary move-
ment that traveled to the other Antilles and to Latin America in general.
In Europe there had already been studies on African myths, fables, and
statuary. When Lydia Cabrera edited her Black Cuban Stories there had
still been no systematic production of "Black Poetry" in Cuba despite

repeated admonitions, such as those of Domingo del Monte in the

nineteenth century: "The Blacks on the island of Cuba are the source of
our poetry, and there are no two ways about it. But not just the Blacks,
but the Blacks with the Whites, all mixed together, it is they who will

shape the tableau, the scenes. ." . .

In 1928, the magazine Atuei published José Z. Tallet's "Rumba" signal-

ing the dawn of "Black Poetry." The poem is based on the rhythm of the
rumba and describes the dance spectacle. Black dancers, described by a
blond White author, gripped by the rhythm of the dance. The following
are fragments:
 African Influence in Latin America 163

Zumba, mamá, la rumba y tambó! Zumba, mamá, rumba, and drum!

Mabimba, mabomba, mabomba, y Mabimba, mabomba, mabomba,
bombó! and bombó!

Zumba, mamá, la rumba y tambó! Zumba, mamá, la rumba and drum!

Mabimba, mabomba, mabomba, y Mabimba, mabomba, mabomba,
bombó! and bombó!

Como baila la rumba la negra To- How Black Tomasa dances the
masa! rumba!
Como baila la rumba José How José Encarnación dances it
Encarnación! too!

Ella mueve una nalga, ella mueve la She moves one buttock, she moves
otra, the other,
el se estira, se encoge, dispara la He stretches, he shrinks, he shoots
grupa, out his rump,
el vientre dispara, se agacha, He shoots out his belly, he bends
camina, down, walks
sobre el uno y el otro talón. on one heel and then the other.

Chaqui, chaqui, chaqui, charaqui! Chaqui, chaqui, chaqui, charaqui!

Chaqui, chaqui, chaqui, charaqui! Chaqui, chaqui, chaqui, charaqui!

Based on and onomatopoetics, the poem continues. It is in-

refrains
cluded of many famous Cuban actors, as well as foreign
in the repertoire
ones. It has even made it to Hollywood.
Another White poet who started out by writing in the same vein was
Ramón Guirao, a student of Black poetry and author of Órbita de la
Poesía Afrocubana, whose first poem was "Rumba Dancer," very sty-
lized, but always revolving around the spectacle of the dance. A fragment
follows:

Bailadora de guaguancó, Guaguancó dancer

pielnegra of black skin
tersura de bongó. as taut as a bongo.

Agita la maraca de su risa She shakes the rattle of her laughter

con los dedos de leche with the fingers of her milky
de sus dientes. white teeth.
Pañuelo rojo Red kerchief
-seda-, -silk-,
bata blanca white robe
-almidón-, -starch-
recorrer el trayecto to walk the path
de una cuerda of a rope
en un ritmo afrocubano in an Afro-Cuban rhythm
de of
guitarra guitars,
clave claves
y cajón. and cajón drums.
164 Africa in Latin America

The theme of comparsos, or carnival street dancers, with their imagi-

natively dressed musicians and dancers, tempted poets like Pichardo
Moya, a White man, Emilio Ballagas, another White man, and Marcelino
Arozarena, a Mulatto, to name a few of the most important ones. The
poems were based on the dance spectacle, creating a genre of poetry that
had never been heard before in the Spanish language:

Bailan las negras rumberas The Black rumba dancers are danc-
ing
con candela en las caderas with a fire on their hips
abren sus anchas narices, they open their wide nostrils
ventanas de par en par, like windows
a unpanorama sensual . . . to a sensuous panorama

La conga ronca se va The conga dancer goes away hoarse

alcompás del atabal. to the rhythm of the drum.

In 1930 Alejo Carpentier also published a Black poem, entitled "Litur-

gia," in the Revista de Avance:

La Potencia rompió The Power has started out

¡yamba ó! yamba ó!
Retumban las tumbas The drums rumble
en casa de Acué. in the house of Acué

A é, aé, A é, aé,
cencerro de latón, Brass bells
de paja la barba, beard of straw
de santo el bastón. staff of a saint
¡Tiembla congo! ¡Dale candela! Tremble Black man! Set him on
fire!

¡Chivo lo rompe! ¡Chivo lo pagó! Goat breaks drum! Goat paid for it!

Endoco endiminoco, Endoco endiminoco,

efimere bongó, efimere bongó.
Enkiko baragofia, Enkiko baragofia
¡yamba ó! yamba ó!

Nicolás Guillen

But the greatest of all was the real master of the movement, Nicolás
Guillen, a Mulatto born in 1902. By first dwelling on the spectacle, he
attained innermost parts faithfully depicting the Black, the Mulatto,
its

and even the White, in poetry of broad themes based on the rhythm of the
son, one of the strongest, most incisive forms of Cuban music. To accom-
plish his powerful poetic work, Guillen immersed himself into the most
authentic son music of his country, which he converted into Black poetry.
Though he also used classical forms, the basic element that can be heard
 African Influence in Latin America 165

in his work is the primary beat of the son. His general form of expression
had already been shared by the Spanish classicists, such as Góngora,
Quevedo, and Lope de Vega, who, during Spain's Golden Century, wrote
poems with words and rhythms of Black dances. Guillen employs the
purest and most appropriate Spanish language, yet his style is Cuban and
American.
Guillen collected Black themes and talked about the Black, the
Mulatto, and the Cuban people in his initial Motivos del Son (Motifs for
the "Son"). Here he refers to their flat noses, coppery, woolly hair, and
thick lips. At first his work was considered derisive and disrespectful by
"whitened" Cuban Blacks.
The rhythms of the son were faithfully caught, for the first time, in a
joyful language:

Sóngoro Cosongo
songo bé;
sóngoro cosongo
de mamey;
sóngoro, la negra
baila bien;
sóngoro de uno,
sóngoro de tré.
aé,
Bengan a bé;
aé
bamo pa bé;
bengan sóngoro cosongo,
sóngoro cosongo de mamey.
(Si tú supiera . . .)

(If you only knew . . .)

Guillen is who emerged out of Cuba's folk song and dance.

a poet
Guillen, born from a son, grew into its perfect exponent. He created a
special literature that was at once national and folkloric. It grew with its
creator, just as the anonymous music of the island emerged from the
virtuosity of the Cuban people and achieved its perfect artistic form. In
publishing his Motivos del Son a rite was established in Cuban and univer-
sal poetry that became known as "Black Poetry." With more than an
intuitive knowledge of folklore, Nicolás Guillen carried folklore within
him, and took it to its musical apex in the words he so naturally con-
quered; and, because he conquered them so well, he was able to use them
to conquer his people, since the son was their root, the taste and essence
of their creation. The son was a part of the people without the elaborate
form of expression that marks the cultured writings. It was a part of the
floating folklore that fills everything with a vivacious air and is always in
search of the natural artist who will conquer it. Nicolás Guillen took the
son that he was so intimately acquainted with, which he had chosen
166 Africa in Latin America

because it was good and beautiful, and developed it into a style that
became the center of his life and work.
The masterful command Nicolás Guillen had of Cuban folklore, and of
its purity, is essential to the universality and originality of his poetry.
Guillen's poetry is not just Mulatto poetry. It is the total understanding of
the musical rhythm of his country translated into verse form, expressed in
the melodic Cuban rhythm, the popular and the universal Cuban verbal
rhythm. The run-of-the-mill, fashionable poet hit upon the rhythm and the
accent of the Mulatto Cuban style and of Black literature, but never
progressed beyond it. Guillen entered the territory of son and made his
way triumphantly, because he penetrated it with his Creole and his per-
sonal joy and thus conquered it.

What was written during or after the fashion of the son (what is known
as "Black Poetry" because it uses the form of Black or Mulatto Cuban
poetry) was beautiful and was literature, but it was only words. The
ne gris mo of Ballagas, Carpentier, and even Tallet won the heart with its
poetry) since it was the life, the essence, and the style of the people. But
by incorporating himself into this major national style, Guillen did away
with the literary fashion, the artistic findings. Out went the fashionable
Black French prose. This is what Guillen had to say about the Black:

We bring our features to the definitive profile of America.

"The Arrival"

He describes the laughter, the speech, and the rhythms of Blacks:

Yambambó, yambambé! Yambambó, yambambé!

Repica el congo solongo, The solongo congo drum reverber-
ates
repica el negro bien negro; the Black, the real Black reverber-
ates
congo solongo songodel congo solongo of the songo
baila yambo sobre un pie. dance yambo on one foot.
Mamatomba, Mamatomba,
serembe curserembá. serembe curserembá.

El negro canta y se ajuma, The Black man sings and gets

drunk
el negro se ajuma y canta, The Black man gets drunk and
sings
elnegro canta y se va. The Black man sings and goes.
Acuérneme serembó, Acuérneme serembó,
aé; aé
Yambo, Yambo,
aé. aé.
"Yambambó"

In the "Ballad of the Two Grandfathers," Guillen points out his

Mulatto blood, referring to his White grandfather and his Black grand-
 African Influence in Latin America 167

father. He them to embrace for the sake of Cuba. That is why he

forces
White, thoughtless and corrupt politician, and the false
satirizes the false
Black. About the White he says:

Me río de tí porque hablas de aris- Ilaugh at you because you talk

tocracias puras about pure aristocracies
de ingenios florecientes y de arcas Of flowering sugar mills and of
llenas filled coffers.
"West Indies Ltd.

Of the "assimilated" Black he says:

Me río de tí, negro imitamicos, I laugh at you, monkey-aping

Black,
que abres los ojos ante el auto de You open your eyes to stare at the
los ricos, car of the rich
y que te avergüenzas de mirarte el and you are ashamed of looking at
pellejo oscuro your Black skin
cuando tienes el puño tan duro! even though you have such a hard
fist!

"West Indies Ltd.

This is how "Black Poetry" acquired, in Guillen, a social conscience

and a rebellious character. The following is his description of the Antilles:

El hambre va por los portales Hunger enters the portals

llenos de caras amarillas that are full of yellow faces
y de cuerpos fantasmales; and of ghostlike bodies
y estacionándose en las sillas and perching on chairs
de los parques municipales . . . of municipal parks

Hambre de las Antillas Hunger of the Antilles

dolor de las ingenuas Indias Oc- pain of the ingenuous West Indies
cidentales
"West Indies Ltd.
Para encontrar la butuba To find the chow
hay que trabajar caliente; you have to work in the heat;
para encontrar la butuba chow
to find the
hay que trabajar caliente; you have to work in the heat;
mejor que doblar el lomo rather than bending your back
tiene que doblar la frente. you have to bend your forehead.
De caña sale azúcar,
la From the cane comes the sugar,
azúcar para el café; sugar for coffee;
de la caña sale azúcar, from the cane comes the sugar,
azúcar para el café: sugar for coffee:
lo que ella endulza, me sabe Whatever it sweetens, tastes to me
como si le echara hiél. as if it were sweetened with bile.
"West Indies Ltd.
765 Africa in Latin America

The bile of a harassed and very poor life comes up again in Cuba, the
"sugar container of the world";

Mi patria es dulce por fuera My country is sweet from the out-

side
y muy amarga por dentro; and very bitter inside;
mi patria es dulce por fuera my country is sweet from the out-
side
con su verde primavera with its green spring
con su verde primavera with its green spring
y un sol de hiél en el centro and a sun of bile in the center
"Mi patria es dulce por fuera" ("My Country is Sweet on the Outside")

At that time, in 1943, Cuba was suffering from Northamerican

neocolonialism. Guillen reflects the popular rejection of this:

Aunque soy un pobre negro, Although I am a poor Black man

sé que el mundo no anda bien; I know that the world is not doing
O.K.
ay,yo conozco un mecánico Iknow a mechanic
que lo puede componer! who can repair it!
Quien los llamó? Who called you?
Cuando regresen when you return
a Nueva York, to New York
mándenme pobres send me poor people
como soy yo, like I am
como soy yo, like I am

como soy yo. like I am.

A ellos les daré la mano To them I will give my hand

y con ellos cantaré, and with them I will sing,

porque el canto que ellos saben because they sing a song
es el mismo que yo sé. that is the same one that I know.

Contemporary Black Poetry

"Black poetry" is the most original movement and among the strongest in
the Spanish language. It survives like a live current within Latin-
American poetry, even though its original stage was totally eliminated. It
was produced in Cuba because that is where the son survived, the Cuban
son that invaded the Antilles and America through orchestras, records,
and the radio. Black Cuban poetry expanded rapidly. It influenced the
great poet Palés Matos of Puerto Rico, where the national musical
rhythm, called la plena belongs to the same family as the son. It in-
fluenced Solano Trinidade in Brazil; the Uruguayans Virginia Brindis de
Salas and Paredo Valdes; the Ecuadorian poets Adalberto Ortiz and León
Damas; Carew and Carter in Guyana; the poets of Jamaica, etc. It is
impossible to enumerate all of its Latinamerican reverberations. The wide
 African Influence in Latin America 169

themes of Black poetry, as we have seen, were first based on the Black
and Mulatto musical rhythms, mixed with the first Spanish rhythms. To-
day it reaches the most daring lyrical forms while still maintaining its
rhythm.
It must be noted that in the other Antilles as well, Black cultural

consciousness spread dramatically. It was enhanced by forces from the

new, natural expression in the writings of Haitians, and of English-
speaking Antillean Black poets, particularly the more "cultured." Aimé
Césaire developed a concept of "negritude" that was rebellious and full of
protest. Sometimes, above all in the dominant British Antilles, there was
the Utopian theme of a return to Africa.
The influence of the words, euphonies, myths, proverbs, rhythms,
dances, and songs, of the tense personality of the Black African, inherited
and transformed by the descendants of those who had been slaves, is a
creative force in present-day Latin America. Its destiny is unpredictable,
since it is at the beginning of its history. Already conscious of its values
and its achievements, it is ready to create and to survive in the Latin-
American genre into which it has already been immersed, happily, and
decisively.
 8
Music and Dance in Cuba
Odilio Urfé

Introduction

With the conquest and colonization of Cuba, the island's small indigenous
population disappeared. We human, political, and
will not enter into the
demographic considerations that brought about this occurrence, which
has often been referred to as genocide. We only wish to stress that the
indigenous population hardly counted in Cuba from the seventeenth cen-
tury forward, and that its cultural influence was insignificant.
In the face of all historical and anthropological facts, the cultural and
artistic circles in Cuba in the 1920s witnessed the development of a tense
argument between Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes* and Fernando Ortiz**
on whether there were indigenous elements in Cuban music. Sánchez de
Fuentes, a brilliant musician, maintained that there was an indigenous
influence; Ortiz replied that ". Cuban music owes its identity to the
. .

integration of the African and Spanish roots, and contains no elements of

Cuban indigenous music."
The indigenous thesis was more political than scientific, since it tried to
hide what is known as the "Africanism of Cuban music." In a neocolonial
atmosphere, one deeply prejudiced against the Black population, the cul-
tural presence of an oppressed people disturbed the dominant class. The
African presence was so obvious that the indigenous thesis on Cuban
music would have been considered utterly ridiculous had it not had decul-
turation as its intent.
The truth of the matter is that the African slaves and their descendants,
who were progressively Cubanized Creoles, developed their musical and
dance activities within the constraints imposed upon them by their limited
setting. This can be witnessed barracón or semip-
in rural areas in the
risonlike habitat of the sugar plantations; in areas of agricultural work,
like the sugar cane fields, the coffee plantations, or the bush (where rites
and ceremonies were celebrated); in the batey where sugar was manufac-
tured; in the palenques (compounds); and, of course, in the llanos or
plains, the Cuban symbolic name given to the site of the great slave riots
and revolutionary struggles.

*Eduardo Sanchez de Fuentes (1874-1944): composer and Cuban musician, author of the
world famous habanera "Tú."
**Fernando Ortiz (1881-1961): well-known Cuban cultural anthropologist, author of Los
instrumentos de la música afro-cubana.

170
 Music and Dance in Cuba ¡71

However, it was the urban slaves —

who although fewer in number than
the rural slaves, but living under far more favorable conditions for cultural
expression —developed an art form kept alive through congregations,
fraternities, and cabildos, or through informally organized groups that
were hardly institutionalized. A particularly fascinating phenomenon is
that of the bellringers at Cuban Catholic churches, who were traditionally
Blacks, (usually Cuban-born), and either enslaved or freed Mulattoes.

The Cabildos of the Nation

The cabildos constitute an necessary reference for Cuban musical his-

toriography, to uncover the roots of Cuban dance and music. These cabil-
dos were organizations, usually of freed Blacks, Creoles, or Africans,
who helped each other and participated in collective recreational ac-
tivities. They usually maintained social cohesion among Africans of the

same ethnic group or "nation." The colonial governments sponsored them

as a useful divisionary tactic, to split the free Black population; however
the cabildos became real centers of conservation of the African traditions
and recreational activities corresponding to their original ethnic group.
These cabildos had gatherings to sing and dance in honor of Olofi,
Abasi, and N'Zambi, respectively the Supreme Deities of the Yorubas,
the Carabalis, and the Congos. We cannot really determine the degree of
purity of the rhythm and harmony, the rich sounds and African dance
heritage, of the songs that were performed at the cabildo festivities. We
must always keep in mind that we have no written music from the time the
Africans arrived in Cuba. Thus, any study of African influence comes to
us with an "original gap," since no one has heard original versions. A
comparison of what has been preserved by the cabildos with present-day
African music could be both interesting and useful, as long as one does
not believe that the current expressions are identical to those at the peak
of the slave trade. On the other hand, an experienced musicologist could
rapidly detect any European elements that have been incorporated into
the African musical expression preserved and transmitted through the
cabildos. But would it also be possible to detect any African elements
incorporated after the music had arrived in Cuba?
Until 1900, January 6 was a very significant day for the cabildos.
Among the Catholic saint festivities, this was the Day of the Epiphany or
of the Adoration of the Three Kings; and on that day the cabildos were
permitted to celebrate a special carnival. Although this essay will not
consider any social aspects unrelated to music, it is particularly interest-
ing to note that just like the classical European carnivals the "Black
Carnival" on the Day of the Kings was used by the colonial government as
a deliberate catharsis for the oppressed. On that day, in Cuba's main
cities, various dance groups from cabildos representing different ethnic
172 Africa in Latin America

groups that had arrived in Cuba as slaves came out to dance and to
compete with each other.
Written and graphic sources offer us a vivid image of these groups and
allow us to know in detail the types of instruments that were used. These
instruments were different from those used in private religious cere-
monies of a sacred nature (whether esoteric or not). When they arrived in
Cuba, the Africans had reconstructed both the objects and musical instru-
ments necessary for their liturgy, and those to be used for their profane
public activities. We have already identified the following musical instru-
ments generally used by cabildos on their Day of the Three Kings parties:
various types of drums, tambourines, marugas, multicolored maracas,
erikundis of Carabali origin, jingle bells, triangles, graters bells, güiros
(type of gourd), trumpets or horns, whistles, fotutos or conchs (strombus
giga, a large seashell), cattle bells, jugs, and bass drums. Obviously all the
instruments were not used by every cabildo on the island; however their
use was fairly generalized.
Incidentally, it must be pointed out that in the list of instruments just
mentioned, there is one that was also used by the Cuban Indians: the large
seashell called fotuto in Cuba, guamo or cobo, or simply seashell. This
seashell, carefully perforated at the base of its spiral and blown by a
trained player is the Cuban (or island) equivalent to the European
shepherd's horn. Until quite recently (the tradition survived until the
1920s) groups of youths and adolescents would run around the streets of
their villages on Christmas Day playing the fotuto and asking for tips, like
waifs. Naturally, in the case of the Black Africans and their descendants,
it must be determined whether the fotuto was taken over from the
still

Cuban indigenous population, or whether the Blacks, upon arriving on the

island, recreated in Cuba a tradition of islanders all over the world who
use seashells as musical instruments.
The erikundi is a sort of maraca that has been lined with cloth. It is an
instrument used exclusively by the Carabali efik cabildos, which is where
the secret abakuá society originated. The erikundi is widely used in the
western part of the island, although there is an eastern replica of the
instrument known as chachá.
The festivities of the Day of the Three Kings gave Cuba, through the
cabildos, four melodic rhythmic patterns: the marcha, the saludo, the
cuadros (quadrilles), and the tango.
The marching song has prosodic accents, spontaneously blended with
the polyrhythms set by the percussion instruments, to which the mass of
dancers moves. The cabildo marches are in an antiphonal mode, and
generally do not exceed four real measures. Few marching songs have
survived. A good example of this type of rhythm and song is found in El
Cocoyé, which helped to form, through a continuous evolutionary proc-
 Music and Dance in Cuba 1 73

ess, a variant of the cabildo march known today, both nationally and
internationally, as the conga.
The salutation song, or simply, el saludo (the greeting), was, as the
name implies, the song the cabildo used to greet the colonial authorities
waiting for the carnival groups to pass by at certain locations. In Havana,
the greeting took place in front of the Palace of the Captains General on
theMain Square (Plaza de Armas). The words, sung in halting Spanish,
were used to honor and to express good wishes to the authorities. No
examples of these greetings remain. According to verbal descriptions, we
know that percussion was reduced to a minimum so that the song, which
was quite long, could be understood, and so that it could have the re-
quired in vocational tone.
The cuadros or cuadrillas were a peculiar symbiosis of musical chore-
ography. They combined African beats and songs with choreographic
routines copied from European court dances and dances from southern
Spain, particularly those danced on the feast of Corpus Christi. The songs
and dances called tumba francesa (French drum) preserved in Santiago
de Cuba and Guantánamo are live examples of these cuadros.
The tango was one of the favorite musical forms of the festivities of the
Day of the Kings. Everything seems to point to its Congo origin. Because
of its importance in Cuban music, we will refer frequently to the Congo
tango in another part of this essay, when we discuss the rumba.
One of the most important people involved in the artistic direction, and
was the choreographer.
thus, in the public success of the cabildo dances,
The musical and terpsichorean creativity of some of these chore-
ographers, the manner in which they assimilated the European and the
Creole dances, gave them the opportunity to work as dancing masters in
the homes of upperclass families. Some even became teachers in dance
salons and to direct the complicated dances in the mansions of the power-
ful city gentry.
This dual function of the choreographers who worked simultaneously
at thetop and at the bottom of a stratified society stimulated the dialectic
play of the transculturation process and contributed to the formation and
affirmation of the nation's identity in its dance.

Ritual and Profane African Music and Dance in Cuba

We pointed out earlier the relationship between the music and dance of
Africans and their descendants and their restrictive environment. One
extraordinary example of the work song, created in the heart of the sugar
plantation,was collected by the Havana composer Eliseo Grenet (1893—
1950) and was incorporated, with a few necessary adjustments into Er-
nesto Lecuona's musical play Niña Rita. We refer to the Congo tango
174 Africa in Latin America

"Mamá Inés" that was traditionally sung on the first day of the sugar-

grinding season, that is, day of the sugar harvest.

the first

In Cuba, the musical art and dance of Africa was best expressed and
conveyed through religious activity. Much has been said about religion as
a means of conserving and defending the identity of an oppressed culture.
Since most of African religion and liturgy are expressed through music
and dance, it is clear that we find the greatest and most important artistic
contributions of Africa to Cuba in this area.
African studies indicate that the Yoruba people of Nigeria had a very
high culture in the sixteenth century, at the time when they were invaded
and colonized by the Europeans. During the nineteenth century, the
Yorubas constituted the largest African group living in Cuba. Because of
their polytheistic religion, which, according to Frobenius, was "richer and
more original and better preserved than any of the forms of classical
antiquity," it is understandable that this religious force generated the
complex beliefs popularly known in Cuba as santería. We will not discuss
the fascinating aspect of religious syncretism of santería, the psychologi-
cal mechanism that forced African believers to identify their orishás with
the Catholic saints in Cuba. Nor will we discuss the economic mecha-
nism, the domination and deculturation that induced the leaders of the
Catholic Church that were serving in the colonies to identify their saints
with Yoruba orishás. We shall limit our remarks to the musical aspects.
For each deity of the Yoruba-Lucumi-Catholic pantheon there are a
variety of songs, rhythms, and dances that constitute the richest mani-
festations of art and religion in Cuba. From the melodic viewpoint, the
songs of the lucumi cult, are characterized by their precise themes, their
modal sequences, the development within the framework of their anti-
phonal liturgy, and, above all, their deep spiritual and psychological
sense. The santería songs were sung in closed rooms, such as cabildo
houses, the private homes of the babalao, the santero, the santera, and
the ahijados (the initiated), or in the open (religious or funeral proces-
sions). The participants in the ritual were the interpreters of these songs.
They were directed by a cantor called the akpuón who initiated the songs
and controlled the antiphony with the chorus, called ankori, and its syn-
chronization with the instruments. Among the styles appearing in the
santería songs, the most important is the rezo, or prayer, which, for its

lyrical beauty and climax of sounds, is considered an artistic mani-

festation hard to duplicate.
The polyrhythmic mixture of lucumi music achieved through a variety
of instruments, all in perfect harmony with soloists, vocal choirs, and
dancers, has been noted by ethnomusicologists because of the complexity
of its infinite toques or beats and the integrity it achieves through its
melody, which shapes and identifies it. The basic group of instruments
used in santería consists of four types: three double-headed drums called
 Music and Dance in Cuba 1 75

bata; three güiros, aggües, or chekerés; a maraca or acheré; and the cow
bell or agogó.
The bata are the basic sacred instruments, which is why in every
ceremony their use expresses hierarchy. Says Fernando Ortiz: "The three
drums are of different sizes but of the same shape. To give them a precise
definition, we would say that they are closed, hour-glass-shaped boxes
made of wood kept permanently in tension by strips of animal hide. In-
side, the drummers enclose a magic secret known as aña that the instru-
ment builders, of course, do not wish to reveal." To Ortiz's description
we add that hemp is sometimes used to tighten and to tense the mem-
branes, but that drums with hemp tensors are known as judíos (jews).
Ortiz continues: "Each drum has the profane name of ilú. This type of
orchestra and its music are known as toque de bata. Each ilú also has its
own name. The smallest is called okónkolo or omelé and has the highest
pitch. The medium-sized drum is the itótele, used to give the key note.
The largest drum, which is in the center of the three-piece group is known
as iyá."
The chekerés, like the batas, are three in number. Their unmistakable
sound was the most typical element of the semireligious festivities known
as wemileres or bembés. Each chekeré has a different shape. The largest
of the three is called caja (box). They are made of dried güiros (gourds)
that are hollowed out and wrapped with a net whose cords are threaded
with dried seeds of various fruits. When the player hits or shakes the
chekeré, the seeds hit against the gourd and make a dry, rattling sound.
As a result of the revaluation of African cultural elements transplanted to
Cuba, the chekerés, once used exclusively for rituals, became an instru-
ment used by popular musical groups.
The terpsichorean richness of the lucumi cult runs parallel to its musi-
cal wealth. Let us not forget that the Yoruba lucumi pantheon has more
than four hundred gods, of which many appear in the Cuban santería.
Since each god has one or more lyrical and rhythmic identities, we are left
with a wealth of dances. Of these dances Fernando Ortiz has said: "...
They are a kind of pragmatic ballets, created by an artistic people, the
Yoruba, to whom we can attribute the best dance forms in Black Africa,
and who have the most dramatic mythology, full of happenings and com-
plexities, like that of the Greco-Romans. The allegorical movements are
so stylized that the uninitiated often cannot understand their meaning if it
is not explained."
Examples of the choreographic wealth can be seen in the dances of
Eleguá, a mischievous god whose evocation dance involves a dancer with
a small crooked stick or garabato that is moved from side to side, as

though it were pushing aside evil or opening up a path in the jungle. The
dances of Changó are erotic and warlike, the dance to Yemayá is the
dance of the waves and the dance of Ochun is the dance of the fountain.
176 Africa in Latin America

Many Cuban male and female slaves came from the Congo River basin.
Among them were the Bantu Congos who brought valuable musical and
dance expressions that were, however, of a development level far inferior
to the Yoruba Lucumi culture we have just described.
The music and dance imagery of the Congo culture in Cuba has been
preserved through a mythical religious system divided into two main
branches: the kimbisa rite and the mayombé rite. Zambia is the directing
deity or power for both cults and the palero or tata ganga is their supreme
priest. The Congo musical and dance legacy can be found in the following
present-day rhythms, dances, and instruments:

a. The Congolese originated the rhythm, instrumentation, and dance of

the rumba complex.
b. They shaped the variants of the rumba complex such as the Congo
tango, the taona (also tahona or tajona), the guaguancó, the Columbia,
and other minor variants;
c. The original Congo tango is the rhythmic base for such forms and

national genres as the contradanza, the habanera, the first danzones mu-
sicales by Miguel Failde, and the Afro son. On an international level the
Congos generated the Argentine milonga and tango, and the blues of the
Black American composer William Christopher Handy; all of these as-
similated the rhythm of the Afro-Cuban Congo tango.
d. With regard to instruments, the Congos have left us the conga drum,
also known as mambisa, tumba, or tumbadora; the bocú drum, typical of
the congas of the Santiago de Cuba carnivals; the bongo; the guayo
(according to Fernando Ortiz); the claves; the marimbula; etc.
e. Their contribution to dance has been the guaguancó rumba and the

Columbia. These dances, embellished with the steps and gestures of the
iremes, or little abakuá devils, are the original core of the Cuban rumba,
spread around the world by professional dancers. We must also include
the changüí, the more intricate forerunner of the Cuban son complex; the
mambo, a syncopated variant of its Bantu ancestor, introduced by com-
poser Orestes López into a danzón he called "Mambo," thus originating
the rhythm launched and popularized by Dámaso Perez Prado; finally, we
also have the world-renowned conga.

The Congo musical identity, both ritual and profane, is marked by a set
of formal musical elements which include conciseness, the brevity of its
melodies, isochronal rhythm patterns, martial tempi, and the loudness of
its phrases. Congo dances
are typified by vigorous steps and gestures and
jerky movements, keeping with the nature of the music.
in
Compared to the Yoruba lucumi group, the rhythmic units of the Con-
gos are few. The main beats can be found in the kimbisa and mayombé
liturgy, with its funereal sequences and its parallel expressions, such as
 Music and Dance in Cuba 1 77

the Congolese tango, the palo-mambo, the palo-monte, and the yuka.
Another outstanding example is the macuta (also the name of a drum and
a dance step.)
The beat or rhythmic unit of the makuta is martial and isochronal; the
drums and the bells are counterposed to accentuate the two beats of the
binary measure. The rhythmic pattern of the Congo tango has a basic
three-beat configuration; (a dotted eighth note attached to a sixteenth, for
the strong beat, and a sixteenth in the first half of the second beat of a
binary rhythm). The yuka beat is set by three drums and is more elaborate
with regard to rhythm and sound than the other forms.
The number of variants of original Bantu Congo instruments is rela-
tively large. We will list the names of instruments that are still actively
used in Cuban folklore, regardless of whether their African origin has
been proven or not:

— Yuka drums known as muía, and cachimbo.

caja,
—Ng ulero drums.
—Makuta drum.
—Kinfuiti drum (esoteric).
—Palo mumboma drum.
— Tumba called tumbadora, conga, or mambisa).
(also
— Tumbadera or tingo-talango.
—Bocú drum.
—Bongó.
—Kimbilia type of small hand marimbula).
(a
—Marimbula.
—Pianito, ginebra, or xylophone (derived from the Guiñean
balaphone).
—Claves xilofónicas (small hardwood beaten together).
sticks
—Palitos percutivos (Small percussion to play the koko, chiva,
sticks)
wawa, or muela beats on the yuka drums.
—Garabato or lungowa piece of a (a branch used tree beat the to
ground rhythmically).
—Nkembi (small maracas drummers place on
that their wrists).
—Guayo or sheet-metal food
(a tin grater)
— Sheet metal nkembi.
— Battery of metallic (consisting of machine parts and domes-
artifacts
tic utensils, etc., such as train wheels, pieces of a plow, bells,
spades, pans, etc.).

Both the ritualistic and the profane Congo dances have many elements
relating to myths and symbols. Following the triumph of the Cuban revo-
lution, the government's cultural departments were able to rescue many
of the choreographic elements of the Bantu Congo culture, working with
music that was based on authentic cultural components and presenting
178 Africa in Latin America

them for the first time in the history of Cuba as a public spectacle. This
rescue operation, combining the recreation and transmission of the Bantu
Congo music and dance legacy was accomplished with scientific and tech-
nical accuracy by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional.

Music and Dance of African Roots used in Ceremonies of Profane or

Semireligious Institutions.

The music and dance legacy of Dahoman Arará origins is far less
significant than the two influences we have just described. The reason is
quantitative. Forced migration of Dahoman Arará people, although
significant in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, was practically
nonexistent during the nineteenth century, which was precisely the cen-
tury of the largest immigration. Nevertheless, the cabildos of the nation of
Arará did achieve some importance and distinguished themselves by their
dance groups on the Day of the Three Kings. Few Arará musical traces
survive; most were lost during the deep transculturation process when
they were fused with European and African cultures dominant on the
island. Yet we are left with a beautiful collection of single-headed drums,
a tangible, physical proof of the Arará's lost world of sound, which has
been fused with so many other voices. Needless to say, the identification
of Arará instruments has been difficult. Agronika Babalú Ayé rite pre-
serves some Arará liturgy of direct African descent. This rite, according
to some very old informants, was apparently influenced by the Lucumi
culture.
We find some of the Dahoman Arará music and dance in the French
tumba societies that were established all over the island, although they
survived only in the eastern part. The violent revolutionary upheavals in
the French colony of Saint Domingue brought about the massive emigra-
tion to Cuba of coffee and sugar plantation owners as well as technical
and commercial classes. Many of them brought with them their slaves and
trusted servants. It was this group of Blacks transplanted to Cuba who
brought with them the music and dance of the French tumba, also known
as the French rhythm or the French beat. The French tumba took root in
Cuba: it was transmitted to slaves and Creole freedmen, was organized
into cabildos, some of which even had French names like Lafayette, and
it became a part of Cuban folklore.
The most typical tumba dances were: the masón, the cocoyé, the
manga silá, all of which are
fronte or de frente (front), the babul, and the
danced by couples forming part of a choreographic group; and the yubá
and the carabine, danced by male soloists. The dance style contrasts
sharply with the melodic nature of the songs and the rhythmic language of
the drums, the marugas, the cata and the largest drum, the redoblante.
The melodies of the tumbas are very brief and rarely exceed four mea-
 Music and Dance in Cuba 1 79

sures. The sounds of the refrains contain guttural inflections of unques-

tionable African origin. The composé is in charge of the choir, the
rhythm, and also of the lyrical repertoire.
There are three types of tumbas or drums that participate in this art
form. Generally they are of equal size. Their peg system and decorations
are proof of their distant Dahoman Arará origins. Traditionally, these
drums have always been engraved with Cuban and Haitian patriotic
names. They are named according to their function. The main drum or
tumba is known as premier and resounds freely within the framework of
the rigorous traditional style; the second is called second, the third is the
bula or bebé.
The French tumba s most interesting polyrhythmic aspect is the fre-
quency with which the tambuyé or first drummer rolls his drum in the
redublé. This routine has been handed down to the bayao or Dominican
merengue and the carnival conga of Santiago de Cuba. Also important is
the rhythmic unit known as cinquillo Cubano that is fundamental for the
danza and Cuban danzón rhythms. The cata intermittently marks the
cinquillo beat. In typical Cuban dance and danzón orchestras of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the cinquillo is performed by kettle
drummers or paile ros. At the time of the triumph of the Revolution (1959)
only two French tumbas survived in Cuba, one in Santiago de Cuba, the
other in Guantánamo.
Santiago de Cuba preserves another deeply rooted cultural group, the
Carabalí Izuama cabildo. Contrasting with the groups we have surveyed
so far, the songs of this group are sung in Spanish, although many of the
words are Carabalí, Congolese, or Yoruba. The melodic framework of the
songs is closer to Cuban standards than to Haitian ones. The dances are
ceremonious.
Aside from the chachá (a kind of erikundi ñañigo, but made of wicker-
work or basketry), the instruments of the Carabalí Izuama cabildo consist
of a group of double-headed drums played with mallets, sticks, metal
pins, an iron plowshare, a pair of sticks used for beating on the sides of
the wooden boxes of the drums, plus one or two pairs of chachas. The
undeniable influence of the drums of the European military bands is
proven in the system of tuning the drums with iron keys or pegs. These
percussion instruments have existed since the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury. The four basic Carabalí Izuama drums are the quinto (fifth), the
fondo (or J onde ador a), the respondedora and the bajo (bass). The mea-
sure of the CarabalíIzuama beat is 2A.
Almost everyone seems to agree that the Carabalí apapá dance music
unit, developed within the abakuá secret societies, also known as Ñañigo
Powers, is the most original and suggestive of those brought over by the
Afro-Cuban transculturation process. The history of abakuá societies is
the most involved and fascinating of all the African-based organizations
180 Africa in Latin America

that were established in Cuba and it is linked to fundamental social and

political events. Of course, the ruling class portrayed these societies in
the darkest of colors. Present-day historians and ethnologists, trained
after the Revolution, have begun to clarify the real past of the abakuá
societies, a task that is often difficult because of their secrecy. This essay
will only describe the abakuá dance-music legacy.
In & plante ñañigo (initiation ritual) music and dance operate as organic
elements, although during the course of the ceremony they only occur
occasionally or as interludes. The ñañigo drums, and therefore the drum-
mers, are very important. Some of the drums have only a symbolic or
ornamental function, while others are active sound emitters, among them
the sacred ékue.
To begin with the symbolic and ornamental ones, we have a group of
drums called eribó, sesé (or seseribó), enkríkamo, ekueñon and empegó.
The last three derive their names from the positions they occupy. These
drums are decorated with light brown feathers called beromo or
achecheré. The eribó has four beromos, the others have only one each.
The eribó is shaped like a chalice, which is not coincidental; it was a result
of the strong transculturation process which began in 1863, when Whites
began to be admitted to these societies.
The ékue is not only a musical instrument, it also has a highly symbolic
significance. Since it is sacred, it room belonging to the
is kept in a secret
Power, (a room batamú or butame), and within this room it
called fambá,
has its special place called fambayin. The ékue is played in a special way
called fragaya. For this a giiin, or very fine cane stalk, is rolled rapidly
from one side to the other of the drum head.
As the son septets became more popular in the 1920s, one could hear a
sound effect very similar to the fray ado or rubbing of the ékue when the
bass drummers did their glissé with their middle fingers on the drum
membrane. Some popular musicians even had trouble with members of
abakuá societies because of their use of the glissé on the bass drum.
Among the actively sounding instruments we have: the drums, the
ekón, and the erikundis. There are four drums; three are of similar size
and called obiapá, kuchi-yeremá and bin komé. The fourth is larger and is
called enchemí, bonkó-enchemi or enchemiyá. All of them share the
same cord and wood wedge system that fastens the drum head and tight-
ens it for tuning.
The ekón is a bell without a clapper. Its origins could be Bantu Congo.

with a wooden stick. This instrument is used for rhythm in a large

It is hit

variety of Afro-Cuban music, particularly in a %

meausre. Of course, its
pitch depends on its size, shape, and the thickness of its metal plate.
The melody of ñañigo liturgy has strong prosodical accents that are
very appropriate for the narrative style. Melismatic inflections abound in
the funereal songs. Although most ñañigo songs developed a short, anti-
 Music and Dance in Cuba 181

phonal style, there are also many that are noted for the length of their
melody. Some songs sound like elegies, although they are in a major key.
The funereal rites are rich in lyrical recitatives. From a rhythmic stand-
point we can observe two standards: the toque Efik and the toque Efo
(Efik and Efo beats) Both are strong and cohesive beats in a %
measure.
Ñañigo polyrhythms have infiltrated various genres, forms, and styles of
Cuban music: folk or popular, theater, symphonic, operatic, chamber,
and choral.

African presence in Cuban music and dance

The following is a very important historic process. For many years almost
all of the musical activity in Cuba (obviously we refer to music as a
profession, not as a private cultural event) was carried on by Blacks,
Mulattoes, and Creoles. Within a rigidly stratified society, the musical
standards of the elite were imposed upon the Black musicians. These
Blacks and Mulattoes, belonging to the lowest echelons of society,
learned to play European instruments and to adopt European patterns;
however, they were at the same time the transmitters of the patterns of
the oppressed class. This permitted them to be simultaneously the source
of and the vehicle for the creation of a new music.
The Spanish influence on this music was largely determined by the
artistic values of groups of Spanish workers and soldiers who came to
Cuba. The more developed and cultivated music and dance contributions
of the upper class were much smaller. Thus, music and dances like the
zapateado or tap dance, the fandango, the romance, children's songs,
seguidillas, polos, boleros, and zarabandas were fused with the artistic
expressions of the Africans who had been transplanted to Cuba. Of
course, the dominant Spanish culture assimilated only some of the Afri-
can elements. As we have seen, these African elements did not get lost,
but remained as a part of the oppressed culture that lay at the base of the
society, where they were preserved, recreated, diluted, or disappeared
every time a traditional performer passed away. However, they always
reemerged when the country was shaken by periods of social turbulence,
at which time new elements of the oppressed culture found their way into
the dominant culture. Thus, a new form with its own identity was created:
Cuban music.
Two musical developments illustrate this creative process. The first
was the Afro-Cubanization of the Spanish zapateado. In fact, the typical
orchestras or wind ensembles, formed exclusively of Blacks and Mulatto
Creoles, used the polyrhythmic formats of the wemilere or abakuá bembé
as the base for the Spanish tunes, within the frameworks of %
time. This
Afro-Cubanized version of tap dancing achieved its maximum intensity
and vigor during the performances of the so called chambelonas of the
 —
182 Africa in Latin America

Liberal Party and the congas of the Conservative Party, political "clam-
bakes" with a strong musical flavor. The author of this essay will never
forget the vibrant interpretation of the Cuban tap dance by the Cham-
belona of Madruga, which is his birthplace. This orchestra performed
most beautifully, paying attention to all details and to the rhythmic har-
mony of Afro origins.
An excellent example of Afro influence can be observed in the ringing
of bells. The job of bellringer in churches was always performed by Black
and Mulatto Africans or Creoles. There is ample information that
confirms that the bellringers, in pealing out hosannas or hallelujah would
use the rhythmic units of their own African religious liturgy. Maria Al-
varez Ríos, a noted Cuban composer and musician, claims that the bell-
ringer Joseato, who was Black, used to play the conga on his church bells
at Sancti Spiritus and at the Tuinicú sugarmill. We personally remember
the bell-ringing at the Madruga Church. It is possible that the basic rhyth-
mic unit of the "Danza de los Ñañigos" by Ernesto Lecuona is based on
the rumba-like beat of the bells of Madruga. To conclude we should not
forget that most of the slaves were brought to Cuba to work on the sugar
plantations and that each plantation had several bells. A complicated
sequence of changes called the slaves to work, another signalled the end
of the workday, a third called the White employees. Each White worker
had his own call which would vary with the degree of urgency. There
were peals for giving instructions to cart drivers, peals for cane cutters,
peals to signal danger, fire, an uprising, and peals to celebrate the begin-
ning and the conclusion of the sugar season. Plantation bellringers were
invariably Black slaves, so that, eventually, the sounds of bells had a
special, symbolic significance to the slaves. Bells on sugar plantations
were so important that the belfry at the Manacas plantation, near
Trinidad, is taller than that of the Havana Cathedral. All this helps to
explain the African influence on bellringing at churches.
The rumba complex originatedamong the Bantu Congo groups. With
regard to the origins of the word rumba as used in music, it is possible that
it referred to "the women of the rumbo" prostitutes linked to the dance
houses. The first variant of the rumba group is a danza called "El Yambú"
(the word danza is used here to refer to a specific Cuban dance form).
After "El Yambú," composed around 1850, we have the following ge-
neric-stylistic categories of rumbas:

(a) rumba estribillo

(b) rumba yambú;
(c) rumba guaguancó
(d) rumba of the bufo theater
(e) rumba guaguancó chorus
(f ) tahona rumba
 ——
Music and Dance in Cuba 183

(g>—Congo tango
(h) open rumba
(i) Columbia rumba.
According to this classification, which follows the chronological ap-
pearance of each variant, types (d) and (h) were recreated on the stage of
the bufo, the vernacular theaters. The others have folk roots. Each
variant has a basic style with tempo and melodic variations (for example
the guaguancó has a slow tempo and the columbio a fast one), as well as
different drum beats and different accents in the basic scheme. In every
case three Cuban drums of Congo ancestry and claves are used. All
variants, but particularly the guaguancó, have well-developed phrasing
and are marked by African liturgical cadences and modes; however, the
lyrical guidelines are undoubtedly Spanish. Choreographically, the rumba
complex presents four different, well-defined styles: the guaguancó, the
tahona, the Congo tango, and the Columbia.
The choreography of the guaguancó rumba, or, more accurately, the
refrain of the guaguancó song, since this is a genre for song, comes from
the yambú, although it has symbolic variants. The guaguancó dance is
very difficult to perform because of the economy of steps required by the
dancing couple. The vernacular theater, the cabaret, and the movies have
deformed the original version, by presenting it as a sensual and obscene
dance. The guaguancó dance has a greater Spanish (probably flamenco)
influence rather than it has African base.
The tahona variant was devised by the bakers of the Carraguao neigh-
borhood of Havana to which it owes its name. It is a combination of
martial movements and cabildo airs. The Congo tango is a Popular Creole
group dance, devoid of any symbolic religious meaning. The colonial
rumba is danced by only one person and represents a duel between the
dancer and the quinteador, the drum soloist.
The guaguancó rumba choirs were formed in the last two decades of
the nineteenth century at a time when Cuban Black activities were being
institutionalized. The choral structure of guaguancó choirs is similar to
that of the coros de clave. These consist of an Afrocuban assimilation of
the Catalan choral societies of Havana. The name coros de clave is a
corruption of the Anselmo Clavé choirs, named after the Catalán com-
poser. The choir consists of cantors, intoners, soloists, the censor, and a
mixed chorus, accompanied by instruments similar to those used in the
rumba yambú. Some of the choirs have up to 150 voices. The songs and
rhythms of every variant of the rumba complex are in 2A time, and all the
coros de clave are in a % time. Strangely enough there is no drum among
the instruments. There are two keyboard instruments and one viola, simi-
lar to a bass fiddle, but without strings, that is lightly tapped by the violist.
The fact that the choirs use claves has led some musicologists to errone-
184 Africa in Latin America

ously believe that the use of the sticks is the reason for the coros de clave
name.
The creation of carnival groups or comparsas, to succeed the role of
on the Three Kings Day is significant
the cabildos Cuban music. This
for
type of folk expression has three variants corresponding to the different
regions of Cuba. Between 1886 and 1914 there were six very important
comparsas Havana: "La culebra" (the snake), "El pajaro lindo" (beau-
in
tiful bird), "El gavilán" (the sparrow hawk), "El sapo" (the frog), "El

alacrán" (the scorpion) and "El alacrán chiquito" (the small scorpion).
The zoomorphic references relate to African ethnocultural elements. In
Cuban folklore we still have symbolic characters of Congo origin, like
Tata Cuñengue, or Cañengue, a magician who kills a snake, a scorpion,
and all bad animals; and we have the sun sun bird or pretty bird, a
hummingbird adored by the Congos. There were also dance groups with-
out zoomorphic themes that were popular in Cuba and internationally,
such as: "Mírala que linda viene" ("Look at how pretty she is"), "Quítate
de la acera" ("Get off the sidewalk"), "Tira si va a tira, mata si va a mata"
("Shoot if you are going to shoot, kill if you are going to kill").
As for choreography and rhythm, the comparsas are the creators of the
world-famous Cuban conga. This beat or rhythm comes from Matanzas
where it was first popularized by the "Los Turcos" ("the Turks") com-
parsa. Both "The Turks" and "Los Turcos de Regla" used the Turkish
bass drum, to which they owe their name. Cuban composer Eliseo Grenet
took the dance and the rhythm abroad, and Ernesto Lecuona was very
successful with his conga hits "Panama," "Por Corrientes va una conga"
("A Conga Is Going Through Corrientes"), and "Para Vigo me Voy" ("I
am going to Vigo").
Although the comparsas were forbidden by municipal legislation
around 1937, they were reinstated soon thereafter by demand of the most
noted members of the Cuban intelligentsia. In 1938, the comparsas were
triumphantly reborn, and "El alacrán," organized by folksinger Santos
Ramirez, known as "El Niño" (The kid), performed brilliantly. "El
alacrán" employed as its themes the main socioeconomic elements of the
Cuban past (some of which still exist). It showed slaves cutting cane,
slaves being transported in carts to the sugar plantations, and familiar
colonial characters such as the overseer, his assistant, the maroon boss,
and the lottery-ticket seller. The focus was on the terrifying but venerated
Tata Cuñengue. Various songs from this particular comparsa are interna-
tionally known, like the one that starts: "Listen, friend, don't get fright-
ened when you see. .". .

The most important comparsas include the parrandas villareñas of Los

Villas province.
Santiago de Cuba displays some Haitian ethnoculture, as well as some
Chinese elements (in the nineteenth century alone some 150,000 Chinese
 Music and Dance in Cuba 185

arrived in Cuba).The rhythm of the Santiago conga is quite different from

that of thecomparsas of the western parts of the island. Its percussion
instruments are the bocú drum, which has already been described, the
two-headed drum or pilonera, and the strident wheel or bell. The Santiago
carnival achieves its typical color through the corneta china (Chinese
cornet) called sona in Cantonese. While in Havana the people are merely
spectators, they participate actively in the Santiago carnival.
Finally we must mention a musical group that was very popular in the
first few decades of the twentieth century: la chambelona. The cham-
belonas served to brighten up political party gatherings. They were
known as chambelonas only when they participated in Liberal Party af-
fairs; they were known as congas when they played for the Conservative
Party. The instruments used were quite complex. Brass instruments con-
sisted of horns, trumpets, saxhorns, ophicleides, and tubas; among the
percussion instruments were claves, maracas, guayo, güiro, reja,
guataca, pans, gangarria, bells, bass drums, redoblante, cymbals, caja
and the Turkish bass drum; in addition there was a choir. Sometimes the
group had as many as a hundred men. This type of group emerged in the
cities of Remedios and Camajuani. As the music moved westward, the
brass section, with the exception of one or two horns, was dropped.

African Presence in Popular Cuban Music

Earlier we noted how Blacks and Mulattoes became practically the only
members of the popular Cuban orchestras of the nineteenth century. This
was such a common practice that when at one point a White orchestra
was formed, it became known as an extraordinary event. In our search for
distant historical precedents for Black musicians, we go to the musical
bands of the Pardo and Moreno (Black and Brown) batallions, which
became the source of musicians who were to fill the demand for musical
dance groups in the second half of the nineteenth century. This essay will
not explain the nature of these batallions. Suffice it to say that they were a
militia, organized by the Spanish colonial government, that was very
active in defending the empire during the eighteenth century and the first
two decades of the nineteenth. Once Cuba was transformed into a large
slave plantation, the batallions were dissolved, as the former defenders of
the empire were now a threat.
These musicians, who were taught by members of Spanish military
bands or by "conductors" who lived on the island, were the composers of
the first anonymous contradances, with Afro elements imitating the Saint
Domingue models. These composers shaped the popular national music
of Cuba by blending the rhythm of African music with Spanish and
French as well as other elements that had been transcultured into Cuba.
Juan de Dios Alfonso y Armenteros was typical. He was a distinguished
186 Africa in Latin America

composer of contradances and director and clarinetist of the "The Flower

of Cuba" orchestra. The contradance generated an instrumental group
called the "typical Cuban orchestra" or wind ensemble. The danza that
succeeded the contradance accentuated the Afro elements, both in the
music and in the dance. Raimundo Valenzuela (1848-1905) another con-
ductor and trombone player, was a well-known danza composer. And
Miguel Failde (1858-1921) created the danzón, a very Cubanized version
of a German dance fashionable in Cuba since the 1850s. The 2/4 tempo is
Cuban but its pace is slower than that of other groups, including the
dances performed by the comparsas and the cabildos.
Like Raimundo Valenzuela and Rafael Landa, Miguel Failde wrote
many danzones with African themes. This trend found a better expression
when José Urfé (1879-1957) included the style and rhythm of the son
oriental at the very end of Failde's danzón structure. Thus the A-B-A-C-
A-D-A-G scheme was developed (it lost its C part around 1920). José
Urfé's danzón, "El bombín de Barreto" (Barreto's bowler hat) was the
first to display this innovation; it advanced the absorption of African-style

songs and poly rhythmic units, particularly in the last part of this complex
Cuban musical form.
In its second stage, the Cuban danzón was taken up by Octavio "Tata"
Alfonso (1866-1960), who blended elements of Yoruba, Congo, and
abakuá liturgy and songs into his danzones and danzas. Antonio Maria
Romeu is responsible for the blossoming of the charanga cubana, an
orchestra made up of a five-keyed flute with a violin, a double bass, a
piano, and metal percussion pans (pailitas), Cuban timbalito drums, and a
güiro scraper made of half a gourd.
From their titles we can see that numerous danzones were inspired by
African themes, such as "Yayoé, "Yerefá Manilo," "Congos de Lubini,"
"El ñañigo," "Ohún," "Yemayá, "Africa speaks," "Ireme maco Ireme,"
'Treme, " "Bozambo," "Ñongo alive," "Africa alive," etc. Notably the
African influence in these danzones most marked towards the end.
is

As new danzón emerged, written by

the creative process continued, a
Orestes López, called "Mambo" (which means "to speak" in Congo),
which very much altered the interpretations of the danzones. The
mambo, popularized by the orchestra Arcano y sus maravillas (Arcano
and his Wonders), was an extraordinary hit. In the 1940s some arrangers
like Dámaso Pérez Prado, began writing mambos for jazz orchestras with
Cuban-style percussion. In short, the mambo was created by Orestes
López and the Arcano y sus maravillas orchestra, and Dámaso Perez
Prado, with his personal style, launched it abroad.
The creator of the chachachá undoubtedly was Enrique Jorrin, a com-
poser, violinist, and conductor of the orchestra that bore his name. His-
"La engañadora" ("The Deceiver") is considered the first
torically,
chachachá, even though Jorrin had already used some elements of his
 Music and Dance in Cuba 187

new danzón. Choreographically the mambo danzón, the

style in an earlier
mambo (as a structure that is independent from the danzón) and the
chachachá, owe their dance arrangements to popular creativity.
The vocal arrangements of popular music, including songs and sung
dances, took longer to acquire a national flavor. In the case of the son
complex, which is a very Cuban music and dance form, the national
character only appeared with commercial exploitation. The sixteen sty-
listic variants of the son include a number of works with an Afro in-

fluence. This is apparent in the following titles: "Clave Carabali," "Palo

mambo," "Papá Oggún," "Un toque de bembé," "Bilongo," "Chacum-
bele," "Bruca manigua," "Quimbombó que rebala," "Burundanga," etc.
Exceptional popular Cuban son musicians include Ignacio Pineiro, Miguel
Matamoros, Benny Moré, and the dance couple Rene and Estela. Nicolás
Guillen, Cuba's national poet, developed the son into an exceptional lyr-
ical form.
The vernacular theater also reflected Afro-Cuban musical inflections.
We cannot dwell upon musical theater; however, it is worth mentioning
that zarzuelas (operettas) like "The Wizard" (1896), "Maria the Mulatta"
(1896), and "The Funeral of Pachencho" contain numerous Congo tangos
and rumbas that were the great hits of that period. Jorge Ankerman was
the composer who left the deepest Afro-Cuban imprint on the repertoire
of the vernacular theater. He recreated folk forms with African content;
and his play "The Little Creole House" (1921) was a very important
contribution to the rise of the musical theater.
With the opening of "Niña Rita" (1927), musical theater in Cuba that
had an Afro-Cuban context took a definite step towards consolidation.
The play was written by Ernesto Lecuona; it included the famous tango
"Mamá Inés" by Elíseo Grenet, and it also marked the debut of actress
Rita Montaner. In addition to being an accomplished actress with an
excellent lyrical voice and remarkable stage presence, she was also a
great pianist. The people called her "La Unica" (the only one). Lecuona's
zarzuelas were set among Cuban working people, like "The Coffee Plan-
tation," "Maria la O," "Rosa the Chinese Woman" and "The Sugar Fac-
tory." Strangely enough, his one song dedicated to the extinct Cuban
indigenous population, the immortal "Siboney," is a Congo tango.
It would be impossible to speak about the Cuban musical theater with-

out mentioning Rodrigo Prats, who employed Afro-Cuban themes in his

plays "María Belén Chacón" and "Amalia Batista," or Gonzalo Roig,
whose "Cecilia Valdés" continues to be a hit of musical repertory theater.
Mises Simons is perhaps the most distinguished Cuban composer of
Afro-Cuban songs because of his perfect blend of musical language and
themes. Somewhat similar are the Eliseo and Emilio Grenet brothers,
Gilberto Valdés, Obdulio Morales, Margarita Lecuona, and Ignacio Villa,
"Bola de Nieve."
188 Africa in Latin America

The African Influence on Cuban Musical Nationalism

Cuban musical was formed among the popular stratum of Cuban
identity
society, solidifiedby musicians of the working class and of the Black and
Mulatto petty bourgeoisie. It was, however, the White middle class, or
whitened middle class, and the artists of the upper class who took this
music to the lyric theater and placed it the framework of so-called musical
nationalism.
Manuel Samuel y Reboredo (1817-1870) was the forerunner of Cuban
musical nationalism.A White musician with a petty bourgeois back-
ground, he lived the social life of the Creole upper bourgeoisie because of
his high artistic achievements. Using the contradance as his base, he
transcended its content through stylistic and rhythmic adornments of 2A
and %
time. Samuel and some of his disciples, like Nicolás Ruiz Espadero
(1832-1890) and Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905) limited their nationalist
work to the piano, an instrument that they employed with admirable skill.
José White was the first to attempt the transfer of musical nationalism to
the violin.
Except for a few passages from the work of the above-mentioned com-
posers, the African influence on Cuban musical nationalism did not be-
come apparent before the appearance of "La Compara," Ernesto
Lecuona's Afro-Cuban dance. Lecuona himself, then only 16 years old,
called this genre an "Afro-Cuban danza."
Ernesto Lecuona wrote a number of dances that overrode the tradi-
tional classical format of 32 measures, and that are also different because
of one or two rhythmic units played by the left hand. We attribute this
style to Lecuona's virtuosity at the keyboard and to his double role of
composer and musician.
Lecuona is the bridge that ties the Afro-Cubanist work of Alejandro
Garcia Caturla to that of Amadeo Roldan. Alejandro García Caturla
(1906-1940) who wrote three Afro-Cuban dances for the piano that were
later orchestrated, was a talented composer who had a deep knowledge of
the complexities of Afro-Cuban polyrhythms. Amadeo Roldan (1900-
1939) began his Afro-Cubanist phase with his "Overture on Afro-Cuban
Themes."
In addition to the artists we have already mentioned, Pedro San Juan of
Valencia, Angel Reyes Camejo, Félix Guerrero, Enrique González Man-
tici,Pablo Ruiz Castellanos, and Alfredo Diez Nieto have all contributed
or are still contributing to the strengthening of Cuban musical national-
ism. This nationalism consists of the merger of Spanish and African
sources, as well as, to a lesser degree, those of other cultures, a cultural
profile that differs from its roots without denying them, which is, in fact,
Cuban culture.
 9
Music and Dance in Continental Latin

America, with the Exception of Brazil

Isabel Aretz

Where and How African Music Is Preserved

To answer this question we must first be able to determine what we mean

by African music as a whole, since, from an anthropological viewpoint,
Africa has many cultures and each culture has various musical forms:
music for rituals, profane music, music for entertainment, martial music,
royal music, work songs, ceremonial songs, etc. We must also be able to
establish the musical traditions of the slaves who came to our continent,
for this would enable us to trace the path followed by African music, or,
to be more exact, the various types of African music, in America.
None of these questions can be answered to our complete satisfaction
since the science that studies oral and traditional music only developed in
the twentieth century, when we became equipped with tape recorders that
permitted us to capture music that had been orally transmitted. More-
over, we must assume that present-day African music is not the same as
the music that was played at the time of the slave trade; at least, it is
definitely not the same as that of the people who underwent the strongest
acculturation process, who are, of course, the ones that have been best
studied and who have therefore served as a point of comparison.
As regards the various musical forms performed in Latin America by
the more or less mixed descendants of slaves, these cannot possibly be
the same as the forms brought here by their forefathers, since their life-
styles have changed, as has their ability to perpetuate their rites and their
music.
Having thus outlined our problem we will analyze the music of the
Black population of continental Latin America, without including Brazil,
which will be the subject of a special study. We will refer here to musical
instruments, songs, instrumental music, and contemporary dances per-
formed by the descendants of slaves. We will begin with an analysis of the
different types of music that are being transmitted, comparing this music
with music of known European roots, and with identifiable Indian music
that has been preserved by groups surviving on the edges of our civiliza-
tion. We will have to separate the music, not by the skin color of its
interpreters, but by its cultural characteristics, its function, ritualistic or
profane, and by other anthropological elements.

189
190 Africa in Latin America

African slaves already began to lose their tribal identity during their
voyage to America. Later, the preservation of essential cultural traits,
and the consequently greater or lesser adaptation, depended on their
degree of isolation upon arrival. The adaptation took place initially with
regard to language, which in many cases led to a new cultural expression
known as Creole or criollo * The slaves ate a mixture of Amerindian and
African vegetables. Their homes were African in style, although some-
times they were built according to the models of their new environment.
Their social organization was a product of their new circumstances: few
women, plus the separation of the family and of tribal groups. In the midst
of all this they developed their music, its literature, its dances, and its
musical instruments, which acquired on American soil, with the passing
of years, a new life, new forms, and new functions. The same process
affected their religious beliefs and their gods, whose names are well
known in some countries where priests and magicians still abound; in
other countries they have been fused with Catholic saints and festivities
through a syncretism that, though at first forced, we see today in new
dimensions of music and musical instruments in countries like Venezuela.
Africans adapted their music and dance to the new circumstances in
the Americas, enriching American music by creating an Afro- American
music. With their extraordinary musical talents, Blacks also submitted to
their new masters by placing their talent at the service of the music of
European salons, which began to develop its own American characteris-
tics. For example, the contradance was transformed into the danza, the

danzón, and the merengue, to mention just one European genre and some
of its well-known American descendants. Similarly, we also find Euro-
pean-trained musicians borrowing melodic and rhythmic elements and
instruments from African musicians, which is the same thing Indian musi-
cians did when they came into contact with African groups. The marimba
isan outstanding example of this fusion; there is more than one American
country that claims credit for the invention of this instrument, which was
imported from Africa, name and all, as we shall see further on.

Rituals

The slaves attempted to continue their festivities to their divinities upon

arriving in the new lands. In many places their religion and rites have
survived to this day, with a few variants, but without losing their ancient
meaning. Thus, among the Boni of French Guiana a group of Black —
canoers and farmers descended from Blacks who fled the coastal planta-
tions in the eighteenth century —
the songs are meant for the worship of
ancestral gods and appear to be linked to ceremonies of possession and to

*In Latin America we also consider folk music with no African elements as "Creole."
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 191

funeral rites. These Blacks continue their secret cult to the Kromanti
jaguar gods using their apinti drums. But the God, their God, comes from
Africa, they say, and has followed the paths of their forefathers. (The
apinti drum is Bantu in origin and belongs to the Ashanti culture.)
Their songs are also, according to Herskovits, directed to Dagowe, a
serpent deity; to the apuku, the small, good spirits of the jungle, capable
of turning into demons when they get angry; to Aidowedo, the rainbow
serpent; to Wata-winti, the spirit of water; to G'a Obia, the great magic
Towenu,
spirit; to name" of the fat her god, a serpent divinity;
the "strong
to Zambi, the great god of the Loango Congo, also venerated by the
Saramaccans as Loango; and to the gods of the earth. They have ancestral
cult songs that include the Twins, considered holy in the jungles of
Suriname, just as the Yorka or spirits are sacred in certain regions of
Africa. Other songs, harder to classify, include those for the papa, or the
dead; secular dance songs like the susa, which is a pantomime dance
where men fight wth shields and spears, the saketi, the more popular river
dances, the sungi, which accompany the djuka dance; semireligious
dance songs like the asawa; and the banya, the alada, and the work
songs, sung as the Boni heave logs into the river.
Members of the San Basilio group in Cartagena, Colombia, still pre-
serve the lumbalú ritual to the dead, celebrated, as they say, because
death puts an end to all suffering. Thus, they cry at childbirth because the
infant is born to suffer; this was explained to us by Batata, their chief, in
1956. Aquiles Escalante gives us a vivid description of the lumbalú, which
we quote, since it is one of the few writings of this type to survive:

When a person who belonged to Lumbalú during his lifetime dies, his
family immediately announces the death to Batata, who convenes the
Cabildo by beating on a drum, an instrument that remains in the home of the
dead person for nine days. The drum is played and there is singing at various
times a day: at dawn, at noon, at 6 p.m. and in the early hours of the night,
for nine days.
Batata places himself at the door of the bedroom or living room, at the
head of the deceased, who remains in an uncovered coffin in the center of
one of the two rooms of the house; to his left or right is a person who plays
the yamaró. The head of the Cabildo sits at his drum and plays it. Some-
times a log is placed under the dead man's head to raise it. Between the head
of the corpse and the Batata are the old women of the Cabildo; in their midst
one of them dances with a Cabildo member. The women of the family of the
deceased sing and dance around the coffin. There is always an instructor
who initiates the songs, while other monitors and other participants form a
chorus that repeats a refrain. The old women remain standing most of the
time; they sit down once in a while, but only briefly to rest, and then they
resume their dance and their songs. While they dance around the corpse,
they touch each others' palms, turn, dance, moving their waists, and some-
192 Africa in Latin America

when they pass close by the corpse.

times they slightly pick up their skirts
At midnight, once the alcohol has animated them, Batata gets up with his
drum and leads the two lines of teachers in song and dance.
The meaning of many of these songs is unknown to the group members,
who learned the words from their ancestors by word of mouth, which is how
they were passed from generation to generation; the songs are very impor-
tant, however, because they preserve the language used by the first rebels
who broke away from slavery. The following is a group of songs:

Yantongo

Eee . . . mona mi pacasariáme

Mamujé
Yantongo, Yantongo
Mona mi pacasariáme
Mañane por la mañane
Me voy con mi compañera pacasariáme
Moña ñápete loquiparí
A gobbé cabecite

The following song is usually sung in the early hours of dawn:

Juan Gungú

Chiman Congo
Chi man luango
Chi man ri luango de Angola
Juan Gungú me ñamo yo
Juan Gungú me a re ñama
Cuando so ta caí mamé.

Sabangolé

Sabangolé, baile guiní cha Lora

Cuando cha Lora llega
Cu monéle ahi homblo
A tie fue baile di Sabangolé

The Cabildos

At first the Blacks would get together and dance in the streets, a matter
that was of some concern to the cabildo members (municipal authorities),
as is apparent from this page, dated August 13, 1563, reproduced by
Jiménez Borja in Lima:

At this Cabildo it was discussed that the Blacks dance and beat their
drums in the public streets of this city. As a result one cannot use the
streets, and horses are frightened, and other damages and inconveniences
occur. Itwould be more appropriate for them to gather in public plazas.
This is why we would like to have it publicly announced, that, from today
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 193

on, they should not dance or play their drums or other dance instruments,
unless it be in the public park of this city and in the Park of Nicolás de
Ribera El Mozo, or the Blacks will be punished with 200 lashes and their
drums be broken, and the constable
will who caught them shall receive one
peso for each Black man.

The Blacks then organized themselves into groups, but even so they
caused major disturbances in the celebration of their ceremonies. So
Viceroy Don Luis de Velasco, on September 18, 1598, signed a royal
ordinance forbidding these congregations. The third chapter of the ordi-
nance reads as follows:

No owner or tenant of a place will tolerate the dances and the playing of
drums by groups, nor any other kinds of parties by the aforementioned
people. The fine will be of 30 pesos for the first incident; and double for the
second, to be paid in thirds to the chamber of his Majesty, to the judge and
to the accusers; and the third time the same penalty will be paid, in addition
to which the locale will be confiscated.

In Buenos Aires and Montevideo the Blacks also took refuge in their
cofradías (fellowships), hermandades (brotherhoods), cabildos (councils
or chapters) and candomblés (a name arising in the earliest days of slav-
ery and also given to drum-accompanied dances). The most common
name, however, was cabildo. Cabildos were real mutual aid societies,
presided by a king and a queen, in charge of organizing the celebrations
according to the rituals of their country of origin. Fernando Assuc,áo
rightfully believes that it was the songs and dances that permitted the
slaves to survive even the most adverse conditions, since behind an inno-
cent facade they could hide

. . . pagan gods (sometimes transcultured to Christian saints); exorcisms;

war incantations that preserved the bellicose spirit of ancient warriors;
initiation rites; coronations or the rendering of homage to kings or chiefs;
magicians and witch doctors disguised behind a jolly masquerade . . . (1969—
1970, p. 16).

In Buenos Aires, two centuries after the Lima prohibitions, the

in 1770,
viceroy Juan José de Vertiz made a pronouncement against "those inde-
cent dances of the Blacks accompanied by their drums" (Grenon p. 37).
At that time each "nation" practiced its dances in different locations,
accompanied by "the instruments they play with which they strengthen
the beat of their lascivious songs" (in Vega, 1936, p. 61). In Montevideo,
in 1816, the cabildo also banned, within the city limits, the "dances known
by the name of tangos which are only permitted to be danced outside the
city walls on holiday afternoons until sunset" (Ayestarán, 1953, p. 69). In
¡94 Áfrico in Latin America

Paraguay, the procession of Blacks with their queen and banners was
suspended in 1786 (Carvalho, 1961, p. 363).
In Lima, in the Mercurio Peruano of 1791, there appears an article
entitled "A note on the Congregations of the newly arrived Blacks." We
can appreciate the impression these festivities must have made on out-
siders (and we can also see that the previous decrees had not been effec-
tive):

... it is admirable how rapidly the Blacks go from extreme sobriety to

shouting, noise and frenzy. Following their consultation hour, they begin to
dance, until 7:00 or 8:00 at night. All the walls of their rooms, especially the
inside ones, are painted with figures, that represent their original kings, their
battles and The sight of these grotesque images inflames and
their revelries.
stirs has often been observed that parties taking place outside of the
them. It

groups and far from their paintings are dull and short lived. The dances
really have nothing agreeable about them, and are, in fact, shocking to the
propriety of our customs. When one is most
person dances alone, which
common, he jumps indiscriminately in all and turns again
directions, turns
with violence and without looking anywhere. The ability of the dancer is
measured by his endurance, and the capacity to keep rhythm with his body,
while following the pauses of those who are singing around the circle. If two
or four dance at once, first the men will go by the women, contorting their
bodies in the most ridiculous manner and singing, then they turn their
backs, and little by little they separate; finally they all turn to the right at
once, and run, suddenly, to meet with the others face to face (navel to
navel). The resulting crash looks indecent to whoever thinks that the out-
ward behaviour of the Blacks has the same meaning as our own. This simple
and rude exercise is what they consider recreation, consisting in their dance
and their contradances, and has little rhyme or reason. But they do have a
good time, and once the party has ended, their revelry also comes to an end.
Hopefully our own delicate French, English and German dances will bring

us more than mere exhaustion and wasted time! have already

. . . We
expressed that the music of the slaves is very rough. The drum is their main
instrument: and the most common drum is one made from a cylindrical
container with a hollow stick inside. Those drums are not played with
sticks, but they are beaten with the hands. They have some small flutes that
they breathe into with their noses. They obtain a sort of musical noise by
beating the dried, fleshless jawbone of a horse or ass, with its rattling teeth:
they do the same thing by rubbing a smooth stick against another one with a
grooved surface. The only instrument that seems to have some semblance
of melody is the "marimba." It is made of long, narrow and thin strips of
wood, set at a distance of four lines above the mouths of some empty dried
gourds, all fastened to a wooden frame. It is played with two sticks, like
certain Bohemian psalteries.

In Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the Blacks also continued to practice

their candomblés despite prohibitions, while the authorities continued to
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 195

persecute them. In 1879 the chief of police of Montevideo published an

edict with the following articles:

1. All candomblé dancing with drums is forbidden in the center of the city;
only those located in front of the Southern wall may continue for the time
being.
2. The above mentioned candomblés with drums are only permitted to
gather on holidays and their dances must end at 9 p.m.

These were loosened during the siege of Montevideo. By the end

rules
of the Pereyra presidency, the Black kings of the nations and their ret-
inues, dressed in their colorful garbs, could display themselves. Later, in
1873, when Antonio Antuna, the Congo king of the Seven Flags died, the
funeral cortege that took him to the cemetery sang to the sounds of
African instruments.
Across the Plata River, Rosas revived the drums. "Black on red" is the
"impressionistic vision of the Federation," wrote José Luis Lanuza
(1937). Quesada (the Victor Gavez of The Memories of an Old Man)
describes "a great African feast in the shadows of the pyramids":

Before noon they began to gather in the neighorhood of the drums, and, at a
set time, the parade to the Plaza began, preceded by the kings and queens
and their chiefs, all dressed up. Each group brought its own musicians,
Blacks who had their originally-shaped drums. These drums consisted of a
type of large gourd that was held between their legs. Seated, holding short
sticks with a ball on one end, they would bang on a tighly stretched skin
extended over both ends of the gourd: the beats had a rhythm and served as
an accompaniment to the choirs that sang in their dialects. They were really
barbarous songs: their recitations resembled the sounds of animals, and the
choir would repeat each measure. These were dances with choirs, and I
think there were also bells and reed flutes, but I am not entirely sure of that.
To those feasts, the Black women wore their gala garbs, generally made
of muslin in light colors; colored beads were worn around their necks and on
their arms; they had low necklines and bare arms. The Black men wore
white, a red jacket and badges. They carried their flags and the banners of
each nation and marched in an orderly fashion, dancing and singing. The
plaza was filled with people and the drums thundered through the air. The
crowds came from everywhere, and on Don Miguel Riglos' balconies and at
the police headquarters there were men and women watching the spectacle.

In 1870 the drums died in Buenos Aires. In Montevideo, on the other

hand, they are carnival participants to this day, still bearing the name of
candomblé .

Today, in Venezuela, the "dance of the drums" is the dance practiced

by the Afro-Venezuelan population. Here Whites mix with Blacks in an
admirable cultural symbiosis; there are cofradías, but they are now dedi-
 —

196 Africa in Latin America

cated to a saint: San Benito, or San Juan Congo, or San Pedro. In

Venezuela, as in other countries, there existed at first a forced religious
syncretism; the Blacks could perpetuate their own rites and festivities,
but these were finally replaced by the Catholic saints. Time erased the
memory of their African divinities, giving place to what we now call "folk
religion," which mixes Catholicism or another official religion with indi-
genous or African beliefs and celebrations. As a final result, the music and
the instruments of African origin were introduced into the Catholic cere-
monial, as was observed by the historian Eugenio Pereira Salas in Chile.
In Panama, as in other countries, the Congo organization had a real and
functional existence. But in our days, as Zarate said, it is more of a
tradition and symbolism that is felt during the carnival activities: "But the
spirit of the group is maintained all year round furthermore, in his
. . .

'games,' the Panamanian 'Congo' can be credited with having linked his
African heritage to the basic events of national history" (Zarate, pp. 1 18

119).

Musical Expressions

The abolition of slavery did not necessarily mean the cultural integration
of Blacks with the dominant groups. Working in different jobs, the de-
scendants of the slaves remained on the margins of the rest of the popula-
tion isolatedby European and American racism, until the rise of antico-
lonialism brought an awareness of their culture, in which religion and
music are so very important. Here we will compare the music of different
Afro- American groups and the musical instruments they made on Ameri-
can soil, all of which constitute the survival of ancient traditions.
As is true in Africa, the musical group that accompanies dancing con-
sists of three essential elements: the musicians who play the instruments;
the singing in which soloists alternate with a choir; and the participation
of the spectators who clap their hands and shout. A fourth element can be
a recitation that precedes the song or that alternates with it to develop the
drama of the myth. One example is the song "to kill the snake," which
becomes a game in Venezuela, as we shall see later on.

Musical Instruments

On our continent slaves discovered materials similar to the ones they had
used in their own countries. They used them to make the instruments they
had been unable to bring along. Like artisans, they made them one by one
and always for a specific purpose. Their major instrumental wealth was in
percussion instruments, but they also used musical bows and some wind
instruments. Here we will look at the main instruments, since we consider
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 197

them to be the most faithful and most genuine documents in the study of
the survival of African culture in Latin American countries.

Idiophones

Among those instruments which produce sound by the vibration of their

own bodies, we can find having African ancestry those of percussion,
those that are used to hit each other, shaken, and rubbed. Almost all now
form part of the national heritage.

Bamboo tubes

The quitiplás ofVenezuela are four or more tubes that are banged to-
gether or on the floor. These tubes are also used on the Caribbean
hit
islands, and come from Africa, where they are often beautifully worked.
(In Nigeria they are used in pairs. The Badouma in the Gabor region of the
Congo also use them.*) The Venezuelan quitiplás are divided into "male"
or pujao, which is the largest one, and "female" or "prima," which is
smaller; the remaining pair are called quitiplás, just like the entire set.
Once they were employed Barlovento region in a dance similar to
in the
the tambor redondo (round drum) that we will talk about later.
Among the percussion idiophones, Romero describes the Peruvian te-
joletas, little boards or little sticks (p. 53). And also the cajón (big box or
drum) which is "one of the last remainders of the instruments brought
here by grandfather Congo" (p. 51). Among the players of the Creole harp
and sometimes the guitar, there can be a second musician who is said to
cajonear (play on the wood of his instrument), but we do not know to
what extent this is still related to the African cajón.
The palitos are little sticks though not as widely used as the Cuban
claves that people from Barlovento sometimes hit together. There was
once in Curiepe, Venezuela, a musician called "Tocapalitos" (player of
palitos), and every time he used to play people would take him for the
devil.
Within this group of instruments, but far more developed, is the Afri-
can marimba played by Blacks, Indians, and Whites, depending on the
region. The instrument's name even reveals its African origins: it is a
Bantu instrument. In Southern Africa, as in America, there are marimbas
with hoops, standing marimbas and hanging marimbas. Their construc-
tion technique came to America from Angola. In Mesoamerica, the In-
dian, the Ladino, and the Creole, in short, the "folk," adopted it to play
folk and popular music of a Creole-European nature.

This type of instrument is used outside the African continent, in Indonesia.

198 Africa in Latin America

The pianist Albert Friedenthal has given us a description of the marim-

bas that he saw in Guatemala in 1891, and remarks that "Creole music is
played on them, even though the players are Indians or Mestizos, because
the Blacks are only found on the coastal regions of Central America;
however, the presence of Zambos (a mixture of Blacks and Indians) in the
interior indicates that there must have been an abundant African popula-
tion there before." (Friedenthal, 1913, p. 79)
During a trip to Central America in 1966 we saw hoop marimbas and
standing marimbas with one or two sets of keys, sometimes even put
together in pairs. In the entire region, the instrument par excellence is the
marimba, yet no one remembers where it came from.* The hanging
marimba is used on the coast of Ecuador and in southern Colombia,
where it is played by the population of African descent. Strangely enough,
the marimba also appears among the Colorado Indians. At the Traversari
Museum there is a collection of various antique marimbas made from
bones and wood, but without vibrators, that belonged to the Colorado
Indians; and there are also table marimbas that give the impression of
being more developed.
The marimba was formerly used in Peru, as it was in other South
American countries, by groups of African origin. According to the Mer-
curio Peruano of 1791,

The instrument that helps to carry the melodic line is what they call the
marimba. It is made up of long, narrow strips of wood, set a few inches
above the apertures of dry, empty gourds, all fastened to a wooden
framework. It is played with two little sticks, like certain Bohemian zithers.
The decreasing diameters of the gourds make it possible to adapt them to
the notes of the scale (quoted by Jiménez Borja, op. cit., p. 50).

In Buenos Aires this instrument was still played during the Rosas
regime.
Another typically African idiophone used for a long time in America, is
the marimbola or marimbula (it is the mbira of the Congos, of the Zam-
beze Wandas, and of the Kaffirs). Israel Castellanos identifies it among
the African-born Blacks, citing Esteban Pichardo as his source. The
marimbula first appeared in the Antilles, and perhaps only recently ar-
rived in Venezuela; it has also been identified in Colombia. The instru-
ment is a big box or gourd upon which wood or metal strips are fastened;
they are played either directly with the fingers or with a piece of leather
placed on the playing finger in order to avoid injury.
Iron percussion instruments in the shape of small bells are common in
the Antilles and in Brazil. In our area of interest they are restricted to

*For a deeper understanding of the instrument see Chenoweth, Vida, The Marimba of
Guatemala (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. 1964).
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 199

Guyana. In Suriname, the Bush Negroes and those living on plantations

use the percussion of "iron against iron" or the felu-kon-felu.
Among African rattles we find maracas with handles, played both in
Africa and in America and used singly in rites or ceremonies, above all for
cures.The descendants of Africans in Venezuela shake them one at a time
to accompany the "songs of the drum," and they play them in pairs male —
and female to—accompany their folk music. In Ecuador, along with the
marimba, the bombo, and two drums, one maraca is used, as well as the
guasa, guacharaca, or alfondoque, which I observed on my trip to the
area. This instrument is made from a piece of bamboo cane, closed at
either end, pierced with nails made of hard wood; many seeds are placed
inside the tube, making the walls of the instrument emit a sound when
shaken. This instrument is usually played by women, while the marimbas
and drums are played only by men. The maracas are played one at a time
as among Venezuelan Blacks, and they are used to accompany singers.

Membranophones
In ancient days, drums resounded where there was a Black
in all places
population. On Sundays, according to Romero, a very "hot" drum "duel,"
a typically Congo game, announced the cofradía dances. Concolorcorvo,
in his Lazarillo de Ciegos Caminantes wrote that Peruvians used a hollow
log with a coarse skin at each end. "This drum is carried by a Black man
on his head; another follows, with two little sticks in his hand, he wears
stilts and beats on the leather end with his sticks ." (p. 326). African
. .

drums in America have a very specific function assigned to them in lay

ritualistic ceremonies, as well as in religious processions and feasts. Often
they are personalized. When we on the
visited Caraballeda, a village
Venezuelan coast, had driven over Burro Negro (black
in 1947, a truck
mule), as they called their large drum; the women mourned over it, and
the men buried it. There, each drum had its own name: the most sonor-
ous, for example, was called Campanita. However, the language of the
drum, as in Africa, is unknown; at the most, the drum "declares,"
"speaks," or "rings," but this is not related to drum talk itself.
The drums are generally played in groups of two to five or six, and each
has a specific function. Among the Bush Negroes of Suriname, for exam-
ple, the apinti is the main drum, the tenor drum, on which the most
intricate rhythms are played. The apinti calls the gods in the sky, the
powerful Kromanti spirits, the The tumaco is used to call on
ancestors.
the spirits of the jungle, and provides the medium accompaniment
rhythm. The agida is the bass drum of the Bush Negroes and the city
Blacks, and dominates the other percussion instruments with its persis-
tent rhythm. It is consecrated to the serpent gods and is used to call them.
200 Africa in Latin America

In the following paragraphs we will describe the main types of drums in

our area of interest.

Drums made of hollowed logs

These are present in the area we are studying either in the form of goblets
or in their natural log shape. The goblet-shaped drum is prevalent among
the Talamanca, the Chiriqui, and the Choco Indians, who play it with
their hands while holding the drum between their legs. (Since there are
also archaeological drums of a similar make in the Americas, it is quite
possible that the ancient inhabitants of America were familiar with this
type of instrument; some of them are exhibited at the Museum of Costa
Rica.) The Capaya Indians of Ecuador also have similar drums. But in
every case the Pre-Columbian drum had its head fastened to the body
with glue, with wooden nails, or with a rope rolled over the head; as far as
we know, tied ropes and wedges were never used.
Drums made of hollow logs (of the Loango type from the Congo) are
presently built in different sizes; they can be up to two or three meters in
length, and display fundamental variations in the method of affixing the
membrane: either iron nails are used, as in the case with the cumacos,
tamunangos etc. (in which case the drum is tuned by heating) or cord or
,

rope ties are preferred.* In this case there are different systems for attach-
ing the ropes: these can be attached either to small or to large wedges
incrusted in the body of the drum. (This first method was used in the
apinti drums of Suriname; the second, is that of the mina drum of Bar-
lovento, Venezuela, and markedly Dahoman in origin, and of the cur-
is

bata, a drum with legs, that is smaller, and that is used to give the rhyth-
mic base). The cords can be attached to a loop of rope that encircles the
log, and is tightened with wooden pegs, a system that is widely used
among descendants of slaves and that has passed into the world of folk
music particularly in Ecuador, Colombia,** Panama, and Venezuela. Or
else they form a net, fixed to the inside of the drum while other ropes are
threaded through some small holes in the bottom part of the log; this type
is used in Travesía, Puerto Cortés, and Honduras. The long drums with

their membrane nailed onto the log are played lying on their side in
Venezuela: the player is seated astride the log and taps the membrane
with his hands; two or three more players squat alongside the drum and

Today, logs are often replaced by barrels, because it is so hard to get wood. This is true
of the candomblés of Uruguay as well as of the coast of Venezuela.
**The Pechiche drum played at San Basilio for the lumbalú, was described by Escalante:
"The lumbalú or pechiche is a conical drum, 1.55 m high; the diameter of the upper mouth is
of 40 cm, and of the lower mouth, 25 cm: it only has one membrane made of goat skin (which
is played with the hands), five nails, and its body is made of balsa wood. In addition to the

lumbalú, the yamaro is used, also shaped like a conical trunk, has one membrane, wedges,
and is similar to the drum generally used along the Atlantic coast" (Escalante, p. 283).
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 201

hit it with sticks. The long drum, mina, on the other hand, is placed on
two crossed sticks; while the main player hits the membrane with his
hands, or at times with his fists, others stand at the sides and hit the log
with sticks.
Many of the instruments we have briefly described belong to sets of
two drums of various sizes to
to six percussion instruments, including
achieve different pitches, which can also be combined with a bass drum
(generally of European type) with two membranes held in place by rings
tied with a rope. With these combinations of drums the players produce
percussion patterns that may be poly rhythmic and even heterorhythmic,
always using as a base one drum beating a uniform rhythm. Because
different places on the membranes and on the wooden edges are hit, and
because drumsticks, thin sticks, the hand, and the fingers are all used, the
drummers achieve many sound combinations that enrich the beat and
avoid monotony. Some African tribes communicate through drums, using
elaborate codes. This practice was lost in America, but from it stems the
thought of Afro- Venezuelan drummers who say that their drums "de-
clare" or "ring."

Drums with Two Membranes

The group of "round drums" of Barlovento, which Juan Liscano, a
pioneer in Venezuelan musical research, found so well represented at the
Belgian Congo Museum in Brussels, is also frequently seen in the state of
Miranda in Venezuela. There are three drums of slightly different sizes
made out of very light logs, with membranes that are attached with zigzag
ties.
The Choco Indians of Colombia also have a small drum with two
membranes tied in the form of a net. Karl Gustav Izikowitz mentions
them in his valuable study of the Indian instruments of Latin America; he
considers this drum "hardly of African origin," an idea that I do not share.

String Instruments

The most developed string instruments came to us from Europe, as is well

known, and were adopted by Black musicians. From Africa, however,
came different musical bows, generally used for the vibration of gourds.
So far it has been impossible to establish whether the small musical bow
with a mouth resonator is Pre-Columbian or African. That is also the case
with the Peruvian rucumbo, a bow to which catgut is attached that is hit
with a little stick, as it is with the lunku, a long mouth bow used by the
Miskitos in Honduras and by Indians descended from slaves mixed with
the natives, especially the Tawira (Agerkop, 1975). In Colombia, in the
202 Africa in Latin America

of Bolivar, a long time ago the Black group members danced to the
district
rhythm of mouth marimbas, two drums, and a guacho. The mouth
marimba is a musical bow placed over the legs so that the cord takes
advantage of the musician's mouth as a resonating box. Vibrations are
achieved through a wooden stick (Escalante, p. 297).
In Brazil and in Uruguay (the latter having inherited it from Brazil) the

musical bow is called a urucungo, bobo, bucumba, or berimbau and has

half a gourd attached to it as a resonator. In Paraguay, the gualambau, a
bow pierced by a small resonating gourd, appears among the Guaraní
Indians. Max Boettner writes that the name is a "curious mutilation of
Mbarimbau or Berimbau," since the Guaraní have no r sound and change
it into an / (p. 31). These bows are thought to have come from the Bantu;

however, in our countries everyone uses them for folk music, with the
exception of the Guaraní.
In Venezuela and Colombia there is yet another type of musical bow,
called carángano in the first country. The carángano is placed on a tray
or a box to make it vibrate. This instrument is used by Creoles. The same
can be said of the caramba or quijongo of Central America, which has
been mentioned since colonial days. The Costa Rican type of bow that we
studied is strung with either vegetable fibers or metal strings. A saca-
guacal (the local name for a gourd or calabash of the Crescentia family) is
hung from its top to act as a resonator. The string is hit with a small stick,
and with the fingers of the other hand the mouth of the gourd is covered
and uncovered, while the big toe is used to keep time at the bottom part of
the instrument.

Wind Instruments
The Mercurio Peruano describes a nose flute used by the Blacks in Peru.
This type of wind instrument can be seen among the Chimban-
still

gueleros (Black dancers of San Benito, in some places of Zulia) of

Venezuela. The players call them "whistles" and they can also be blown
by mouth, as we saw on our trip to Shanga, Mali, in 1974.

Musical Phenomenology

Of the instruments we have described, the drums and rattles are still the
bases of the rhythm and timbre of Afro- American music, while the
marimba, the string instruments, and the wind instruments are isolated
units, generally not played by Africans, with the exception of the marim-
bas used on the Pacific Coast. These instruments are usually used for
different types of music.
With regard to the African characteristics of American music, the
analysis must begin with the documentation of sounds found in situ, and it
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 203

must be relatively technical in order to discover scales in the melodies,

preferences for certain intervals and ornamentations, independence of the
song from its accompaniment (often lost on account of the influence of
western music), and the use of particular structures. To these are added
what Carlos Vega called "the ways of doing it": responsorial songs,
voices, vocal ornamentation, and even the use of particular timbre, all of
which permit Zarate to write "little or nothing has been said about the
voices of the Black groups, their physiological and tonal characteristics,
which are quite different from those that appear in Hispanicized groups"
(1962, p. 78). All this, added to the varied rhythm and tone of the drums
and to the rhythm and timbre of the accompanying idiophones, forms
what we can scientifically classify as Afro-American music.
Taking function into account, we can now separate songs pertaining to
religious ceremonies from work songs, and recreational music. These
include dance-songs with portions that are sung and various representa-
tions that stem from the ancient candombes and are passed on to the
carnival, or used to accompany processions. Having begun as a product
of religious syncretism, they are today the authentic expression of folk
religion.

Ritual Music

Only in places where Blacks were the majority of the population or where
they were able to remain hidden or at least isolated were they able to
continue practicing ceremonies and rituals to their own gods. We have
already mentioned the San Basilio Palenque, the maroon stronghold of
the slaves who were by Benkos Bihojo in 1608. Here
led in their rebellion
the toque, the crying song, and the lumbalú dance were preserved (the
latter is repeated during the nine nights of mourning). The musical exam-
ple below (example 1) was taped by me in 1959 and was transcribed by
Ramón y Rivera, who has the ability and patience to capture the essential
characteristics, the rhythm and melody, as well as the expressiveness of
difficult pieces, without which any scientific analysis is impossible.
This example demonstrates a typical responsory song in which a so-
loist alternates with a choir. The melody is made up of combined modal
scales, and the pechiche and llamador drums specify the rhythms and
staccatos.

Solo
Hoy se acabaron las recetas Today the remedies have ended
Hoy se acabaron las novenas Today the novenas have ended
o le le le o le le le
ya ta fin de a nana ya ta fin de a nana
ji re na ji re na

le re le re i re e le re le re i re e
204 Africa in Latin America

y-PP gr^r^tj g
u i

« U i lc'„„.

Example 1. Lumbalú, 1959, Palenque de San Basilio, Dto. Bolívar, Colombia,

Aretz-Ramón y Rivera.

tu alma termina your soul ends

le a le i le le a le i le (women)
a ya ja le le o
le a le ya ja le le o
van a poner el (burro) They will place the burro
a e e le i le . . . a e e le i le . . .
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 205

Drum Beat: Solo Variation

Drum Solo: How played

Soloist:

tuu 2
r Ft
«-i-"
ccfLf
2
r rrtrrn
»-2-J 2
r ft
Example 2. Beat of the Drum, 1961, Guarenas, Edo. Miranda, Venezuela. Ramón
y Rivera, 1971, p. 157.

In Suriname there is a great wealth of basically African music, as some

of the Black groups still practice their ancestral forms of worship. How-
ever, so far it has been impossible to record the music of their secret

ceremonies, or at least the recordings have not been published. On the

other hand, the music of "open" services and lay songs, recorded and
published by the Herskovitses, transcribed and analyzed by Dr. Kolinski,
are well known, as are the songs of the Boni or Aluku of the Maroni River
206 Africa in Latin America

on the border between French Guiana and Suriname, taped by Hurault in

1957-1958. Recently Terri Agerkop of INIDEF did some research among
the Bush Negroes of the Suriname or Saramacca River, called Saramac-
cans after the river. Richard Price has also worked with the Saramaccans,
but we are still not familiar with the results of his studies.
The adaptation of Blacks to their new life engendered a new type of
accultured music, again without racial or color distinctions. The main
variable was their participation in the ritual, although the musicians,
drummers, and singers are mostly descendants of Africans. In Venezuela,
the "round drum toques and dances" and those of the "large drum" in
honor of San Juan in Barlovento, as well as the toque of the
chimbángueles of the Black San Benito in Zulia, are good examples of
this religious music. Our example 2 consists of a song and drum toque
recorded and annotated by Ramón y Rivera, in his book La Música af-
rovenezolana (Caracas: Imprenter Universitaria, U.C. de Venezuela,
1971) in which the author points out how a series of melodic elements, all
grouped together, not in isolation, constitute what we might call the Afri-
can melos.
The yancunú we taped in Puerto Cortés, Honduras in 1966,* is another
example of a dance song; it is sung by a group that maintains strong Afro
traits, even in its music. The yancunú is played between December 25 and

31, when members appear "masked like Africans" (at the end of the dance
the masks are given to the children, who destroy them.) The soloist alter-
nates with the chorus, and is accompanied by two drums, whose basic
rhythms we have transcribed (example 3).

Work Songs
Black men in America participated in three basic economic activities:
mining, agriculture, and industry. They were also porters, and even car-
ried pianos across the high Andes; today they load boats in many At-
lantic, Caribbean, and Pacific ports. In agriculture they worked in two
basic crops, tobacco and sugar. They also participated in the cacao har-
vest, a crop grown in the hot lands of Venezuela and Colombia. Later on
they worked with pickaxe and shovel, or else, as was the case in
Venezuela and Colombia, and earlier in Uruguay and Argentina, became
the blood brothers of the gaucho or the llanero who herded the cattle.
Their songs rang out in each activity, aiding them in their work and
soothing the animals.
Black women, on the other hand, were porters and wet nurses; they
nursed and soothed White children with their songs, and with every new

The trip was made possible by Guggenheim scholarships shared by Ramón y Rivera and
myself in 1966-1967, completed in 1968.
 —
Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 207

J= 152

^ I¡
Solo voice (free)
m.
t.Ttf
......
»
cJ r
T^g a
lip-
ia
J
a
n
ja na
J
tu i gui.
lámbtti» efc.

I
r
-j
f t
1)
lf lr
I 3
f f1
ir

^ m wp vv **
a ;a hi ¡ gut o la i
y
ti
é

ki
*w {$w
a tu i li«-
*

PP

^ n m ^^
Example 3. Yancunu, 1966, Puerto Cortés, Honduras. 1. Aretz-Ramón y Rivera.
generation the nurses became another family member, sometimes a sec-
ond mother. (The Liberator Bolivar's nurse was Black, and he decreed
the freedom of slaves.)
These work songs and lullabies show African traces in their melodies
and their forms of expression. They have come to us with Spanish words:
some of them are couplets from overseas, others are couplets that reflect
the feelings of Blacks. The example we offer is a unique rowing song that
208 Africa in Latin America

J 112

S< ña. U. eoTcl ma. jt. vo^ — ^ut ^a. Ho. ^ay c¿ut m«

''
j-fflT^o^ -J'-n^-
c_ir [i r n^cj
.« Qixc mi voy ya ay- ¿I JO ¿I jo qui «l CUI ÓX

¿^M^n-fi
tf
^nnn f^£
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 209

ay ay a i a mi el capitán ay ay a i a mi
pirata the pirate captain
a mi el capitán pirata me convidó Oh my! the pirate captain
a navegar has invited me to sail
para que fuera maestriar so that I can learn
lo que aseñalaba el mapa what the map says
que me voy I am going

que ya ha yay I am go-go-going

que me vaha I am go-go-going

que me voy I am going

ya ay dijo dijo que me cuidaría He said he would take care of you

a dijo que me cuidaría he said he would take care of me
a con mucha delicadeza with great delicacy
pagan de mi el mes cien pesos Paying me 100 pesos a month
y tres comidas al día and three meals a day
que me voy I am going

que ya yay que me vaya lao lei. I am going lao lei

Recreational Music

As Blacks entered popular life, they began to participate in the people's

folk culture as poets, singers, musicians, and dancers. They followed the
processions of saints, they danced cuecas, bambucos, tamboritors and ,

joropos.
Now the guitar or regional guitarrilla appeared, joining the drum in
some Panamanian and Colombian dances; however, with this change, one
can observe the tendency to "free" the vocal melody from the rigors of the
rhythm, and even from the accents of percussion (Zarate, p. 78). Thus we
note the entrance of the "chanty" style in the tamborito, together with
certain other vocal effects, that are neither European nor Indian in origin.
This style is also perceived in the Venezuelan joropo and in parts of the
tamunangue (chichivamos, juriminga, poco a poco and perrendenga), as
more "Creole" work songs; also in the fulias, that the Black
well as in the
man from Barlovento sings to the Cross, and which are very different
from the eastern fulias of Venezuela.
In Colombia, the cumbia, the mapale, the bullerengue, and the cur-
rulao all preserve typical musical characteristics and names that are not
Hispanic. The cumbia spread from Cartagena de Indias via the bajeros
and miners and became the central focus of popular festivities. Its instru-
ments are two drums, two Indian bagpipes, and two millet reeds, and the
relatively new European accordion, plus a European box drum and a
caña de lata or "tin can," a sheet metal instrument played by rubbing,
called a guacharaca (Zapata Olivella, p. 193). Octavio Marulanda says
that the cumbia rhythm is undoubtedly of African origin. I too, in analyz-
ing the music of an example I obtained in Cartagena de Indias, find
melodic ornamentations in thirds that are characteristic of Black music.
210 Africa in Latin America

The mapale is another "most typical example of Africanism," in which

"the song and the clapping of hands alternate, with drums acting as a
chorus, with the final objective of attaining a very rich and exuberant
choreography" (Marulanda, p. 87).
The bullerengue considered by Delia Zapata Olivella "as one of the
is

most important African legacies of the Atlantic Coast repertory." Zarate

has the same to say about the bullerengue of Darién: "the most typically
Black dance," within which "all the internal sap of sensuality is pre-
served." Of course Zapata and Zarate are referring to the choreography,
which we will discuss later. But it is absolutely true that the dance is
based on a music that determines its nature. One can also consider a
minuet or a contradance and observe the correspondence between dance
and music.
The marimba, two cununos or conical drums with one membrane, two
bass drums (male and female), and two guasas or tubular idiophones that
are shaken, are used to play the currulao of the Pacific Coast. "The choir,
generally of women, repeats verses, refrains and phonemes, following the
rhythm and permitting the melody of the song to dissolve without vocal
modulations" (Marulanda, p. 90).
On the coast of Ecuador, among Black groups a bambuco very differ-
ent from the well-known Creole Colombian bambuco is played and
danced. It appears together with the caramba, the torbellino, and the figa,
none of which are African names, but which, like so many other pieces,
consist of a mixture of African and European elements. That is, at least,
how Ramón y Rivera and I perceived it in San Lorenzo, in 1968, where we
recorded the piece transcribed as example 5 in this paper. Here we see the
typical song in thirds, that differs so dramatically from the European and
Creole duos in thirds. Another Afro-Ecuadorian element here is the poly-
rhythmic nature, noticeable when the singer expresses himself with free-
dom and a rhythmic counterplay takes place between the singer and the
music. The sound context is generally dissonant, with more or fewer
intervals, to which is added the harmony of the marimba, played by two
men, the tiplero and the bordonero. Ramón y Rivera analyzed the scale of
the sung portion at the very end of the piece, which shows a peculiar
similarity with the vidalitas that we recorded years ago in the provinces of
La Rioja and Catamarca in Argentina. We have also transcribed one of
these, having reached the conclusion that we are dealing with African
vestiges in that southern country, where, during colonial times, Black
slaves were taken to work on the sugar plantations of Tucumán. We
would never have discovered these vestiges had it not been for our
findings in Ecuador (Ramón y Rivera, 1967-1968, pp. 81-84).
In Suriname, assimilated Blacks today have a folk music known as
"Creole," wherein African traits survive side by side with European
traits. The songs are still responsorial, their construction following un-
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 211

Treble

W. Burden

fiass i
j ^^ P^f f PP
p(liirt)

^Treble J~l V JH2 y

Vujlj.
r
.J"ly JT. y cfc.

cont'd -»

complicated forms in which simple melodies are repeated with slight vari-
ations.

Dances, Dramas, and Comparsas

Whoever has witnessed African dances in Africa, or among descendants

of Africans in America, must be well aware that they do not at all resem-
212 Africa in Latin America

w&
Treble

I J
yjree)

i'
^

3
L %<g

m m #^m no voy

i
no voy.

iilGnf.en ztis'tuaTrrW

.¡n » i~n > a ji y nr

cont'd -»

ble our Creole dances, European dances, modern dances in or out of

fashion, like the shimmy, the conga, or others whose names escape me
for obvious reasons. Africans dance, above all, according to their beliefs,
to get closer to their gods and to participate in a rite that may well end in
possession by a god or a spirit. Even when this ritualistic reason disap-
pears, as in Venezuela, it would seem that a hidden mandate remains in
the background, and emerges in the drum dances. There is sometimes a
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 213

Scale
ÍCale L kk „

* =^N 0.rr.bito dt lot vox ajuda

tt O.^ H-S-^-g:
H 9 ll(«)
Í
Vidalita Santo. Blanca Qiral.

mixed chorus eavallc (Sol. I»«.btl drrtt)

ta bit qiu-ra

Example 5. Toque de Marimba, San Lorenzo, Ecuador. I. Aretz-Ramón y Rivera

(pp. 262-264).

certain differencebetween the dance of older people and that of youth.

However, most cases, the elders still pass down the traditions, and so
in
the character of the dance is perpetuated. I was able to observe this
recently in Venezuela, where I witnessed a drum dance in the town of
214 Africa in Latin America

Caraballeda, located on the coast, just across the mountains from

Caracas. The beat of the drums and the songs were practically the same as
those we had recorded in 1947. (In order to appreciate the real differ-
ences, a careful comparative study would have to be made.) But the
dance changed with the dancing style of each couple. Some of the young-
sters participated without much enthusiasm, almost mechanically, using
the steps and motions of loose modern dances that contrasted noticeably
with the dance style of the older people, or of the children who were being
instructed by their elders during the dance. If this is the case today, the
reaction of bishops and other authorities accustomed to the modest Euro-
pean salon dances of the period is easy to understand with regard to the
ritual and sex dances of the slaves, who were experiencing some degree of
freedom during their drum dances, whether it be the calenda, the bam-
bida, the chica, the candombe, or the tango, at least in the south.
Today, within the area we are studying, there are Afro dances that
—
maintain their original function in Suriname, where secret and open
sessions still take place, as in the cult of the Kromanti jaguar gods, which
we have already mentioned; or in Colombia, at the San Basilio Palenque
where the lumbahi or cult to the dead, is still practiced. In all other
countries there has been a cultural symbiosis, and it is only on account of
the strength of tradition, and the magnetism of the beat of drums, that
ancestral dances have survived. It is this fact that permits Zarate to say
that the bullerenge of Darién (Panama) is "the most genuinely black
dance," wherein:

the internal sap of sensuality is preserved. ... It is characterized, above

. . .

by the concentration and introspective attitude with which the woman

all,

moves. She slides rather than walks, her clockwise steps are tiny, she sets
down her entire foot at once and her feet are close together. Her legs are
closed, giving the impression of inaccessibility of the lustful forbidden fruit.

This movement is called "hacer plantillas" (to walk on the soles). This
seems to excite the male, who employs his energy in acrobatic gestures,
renditions and sensual provocations. The woman alternates the "plantillas"
with more open movements, and reaches a convulsive state when she
dances the "bosar," the typical movement of hips and belly, while her
partner, as if in a solitary trance, takes this as a form of consent, tries to
approach for the attack, but to no avail, because the woman dodges him and
makes fun of him, pushing him away and turning away herself. Another
female movement that is full of artfulness and charm occurs when the fe-
male dancer performs a sweeping backward motion, as the male approaches
again, this time executing an acrobatic bow all the way to the ground.
Acrobacy and sexual gestures of the male abound and heat up the dance and
the crowd. One of the peculiar incidents that reveals the endless resource-
fulness of the male dancer, is the test of the hat. When the woman is about
to escape, the man throws a hat into the center of the circle and the woman
stops her flight to perform "plantillas" in front of the hat. Then, the man,
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 215

coming from the opposite side, performs a stunt that can only be performed
by a few, select dancers. Without ceasing to dance, the male, gradually
opens his legs, holds up his pants, and with spasmodic backwards and
forwards movements of his hips, staring and pointing his chin at the female,
he slowly descends, until his rear end almost touches the ground; then,
gradually, he leans towards the hat, his hands placed on his thighs, then,
finally, with a brusque movement, he tries to catch, with his teeth, the wing
of the long desired hat, then, throwing it backwards, he places it on his
head. If he is successful, there is noisy rejoicing, the drums become louder
as do the voices, and the "impossible" lady seems to become humanized
and rewards with the gestures of a happy and amiable dance.

I have deliberately reproduced Zárate's entire vivid description, so

that the specialist can perhaps, sort out the various elements appearing in
this bullerengue — sometimes so African, at other times, so similar to
other Creole folk dances, even to Spanish dances, for example the part
where the man throws his hat at the feet of his partner for her to dance
around it.
The bunde, was, according to Zapata Olivella, and also to Zarate, "the
origin of all the drum dances of Colombia and Panama." But, in addition,
and now we quote Zapata Olivella, "It is quite evident that a series of
dances like the bunde, the mapale and the bullerengue evolved into the
cumbicT (Zarate, p. 147). Actually, the bunde described by Zarate per-
formed in Darién, has some similarities to our tamunangue although not ,

with regard to the slightly Afro figures of the same. But this could already
be a result of acculturation, in this case of the choreography and of the
music.
Marulanda mentions the abozao of the Colombian Choco region as
another rhythm and dance "displaying the relationship between the an-
cient 'belly' dances, the 'landos' that were danced by the slaves (frequent
accompany the abozao)" (p. 95).
cries
The Congo drums of the Black groups who live along a large part of the
coast of Colón, are also, like those of Darién, "the archetype of the
primitive or most ancient drum dances that were danced in Panama."
Zarate says that "They are also usually associated with a mime show,
concerning a variety of historical episodes about the infamous slave trade,
slavery, and the Black revolts that followed, during the days of the con-
quest and the colony" (p. 23).
Zarate gives us a graphic description of the drums that we have repro-
duced, and reminds us of scenes we witnessed in Kumasi and other
Ghanaian villages in Africa.
We must however ask ourselves to what degree Blacks also suffered
from acculturation over there? The African dramatized dance acquired
new characteristics in America, to the point of becoming a real folk thea-
ter in some countries, or degenerating into a carnival comparsa in others.
216 Africa in Latin America

In Venezuela, the sangalamule or sambarambule, first recorded by Juan

Liscano, is like a short farce with dramatic and humorous moments,
revolving around the ancient rite of the snake. Ramón y Rivera considers
its origins to be strictly African, an assertion corroborated by Fernando
Ortiz. This piece of popular theater has become a part of the carnival,
together with the blackface comparsas that were once very common all

over Venezuela.
In the southern part of the continent the candombes also survived due
to the carnival comparsas. According to Ayestarán:

There are three stages in the order of Afro-Uruguayan music. The first
was secret: the African dance rituals known only to the initiates, it had no
socializing function and it disappeared with the death of the last African
slave. The second was superficial. Superficial in the sense that it emerged
and spread so rapidly and is very colorful; in the eighteenth century it was
expressed by the comparsa that accompanied the Sacred Monstrance dur-
ing the Corpus Christi celebrations. Later it became organized into the
"calenda, " "tango," "candombe," "chicha," "bambula" or "semba" that
were danced between Christmas and the Day of the Kings, around 1800.
And finally it became transformed, at a third stage, into the carnival com-
parsas of Black societies, from 1870 to the present day.

That was when the "societies of Blacks" reappeared, and when, ac-
cording to the same author, the strange music of the comparsas appeared.
Strange because the Black societies went to Italian musicians living in
Montevideo to have their carnival music written. In Uruguay there are
still societies that preserve the candombe tradition, including its typical
instruments and dance forms. One of them, of the negros lubolos was
studied in great detail by Carvalho Neto, during his stay in Uruguay in
1954 (1963).
In the San Basilio Palenque of Colombia, the group members seem
very happy during their carnival, according to Escalante:

A very typical Carnival comparsa is that of the Carabali-Mondongo

Blacks, formed often to twelve men, one of whom is disguised as a woman.
Their pants are tucked up and held up by rope belts; they wear sandals, no
shirt, and their bodies are made to shine by a mixture of powdered coal and
honey. In their hand they hold a wooden sword, and their head is covered
with a decorated hat.
They begin their dance at the house of the police chief, and then go
through the village in two lines, headed by the drummer, the chief and the
person dressed up as a woman. The chief holds a large stick and a sword
that is larger than that of the other participants. The "negritos" dance from
home to home, and form a circle. The drummer places himself in the center
of the circle, so that each participant of the comparsa can dance with the
"Black woman."
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 217

The Chief is the soloist, the others form the choir. On this occasion the
palenqueros prove to be excellent improvisors, and this becomes the occa-
sion to criticize the most important events that have disrupted the daily
rhythm of the life of the community. In the following quartets we see the
reaction against mixing with persons who are palenqueros:

En la caya e la niña Mecce On young girl Mecce's street

Ay un niño cororao There is a colored child
Ni la niña Mecce sabe Not even young girl Mecce knows
Quien ej ec pae ec pelao Who is the child's father

Guillebmina ejtaba alegre Guillermina was happy

Pocque tiene mano blanco Because she had a White husband
Se la yeban se la yeban They are taking her, they are taking
her
Se la yeban pa ec Banco. They are taking her to the bank.
[Escalante, p. 295]

The name negrito refers today, in all of Latin America, to comparsas

that have White members and sometimes Indians who dress up in black-
face. Most of the time they appear during the carnival, but sometimes
they also come out for the celebration of their saint, as is the case with the
Paramero "negritos" of San Benito in Merida, or the Tundiques I filmed in
1942 accompanying the procession of our Lord of the Great Power in the
center of La Paz. These were Indians imitating the Blacks of Yungas.
Other Bolivian comparsas are called morenos (Blacks) and also parody
the Blacks. They wear masks, or paint their faces, and use wigs. They
play a wooden rattle or shake fish-shaped maracas, and are accompanied
by a band called "Amaikatatis," which in Aymara means "those who drag
along the dead" (information from Marta López, 1942). They dance alone
and independently.
In Peru the dancing "negritos" of Huanuco and of San Mateo, Depart-
ment of Lima, are well known, as is the "negrería" of Junín (Jiménez
Borja, p. 52). Also, on December 24 the Atajo de negritos {negrito group)
of El Carmen appears, which has been practicing since the month of
October. On that night, at the crossroads of "San Regis," groups of pallas
and negritos render their first homage to the patroness of the district and
to the Infant Jesus. After which they continue to dance until January 6.
Francisco Iriarte Brenner neglects to inform us whether these "negritos"
are Indians, painted Creoles, or real Blacks. We are satisfied to point out
that they are a comparsa remnant with the name "negritos" (Iriarte Bren-
ner, 1974).
In Ecuador, Carvalho Neto discovered that "Folklore is interested in
the Blacks for displaying certain masked figures ..." (1964, p. 313). We
found "negritos" in Central America in Santiago de la Conchagua, El
Salvador. In Guatemala, in Palin, for the celebration of Santa Teresa
218 Africa in Latin America

there is an entire folk show called "dance of the negritos" {Guatemalan

Traditions, 1974). And there are many others that we need not list here.

A la Mazoma no voy, no voy I am

not going to Mazoma, I am not
going
yaya porque no tengo ya ya, because I don't have,
Porque se me acabó la plata. Because I have run out of money.
Ay ya yay o yia o in o o ho ho Ay ya yay o yia o in o o ho ho
ha o ho ho ho ha o ho ho ho
Also
Scale
Chorus: Play of thirds in both
melodies
Range of the high voice

Vidalita

Mixed chorus:
Salí lucero brillante Come out bright morning star
salí si sabis querer Come out if you know how to love.

Example 5. Marimba Music, San Lorenzo, Ecuador. I. Aretz-Ramón y

Rivera (pp. 262-64).

Tangos

The name tango became synonymous with candombe in Uruguay and in

Buenos Aires around 1800. A century later, in Curiepe, Venezuela, the
most famous Black settlement of Barlovento, there lived a composer
called Juan Pablo Sojo R., who created a series of farces or street satires
that he called"Los negritos," as well as several tangos, some of which are
available in their original form. These are real farces, to be presented
during carnival season on Holy Innocents Day (December 28) and on
Candlemas, that have become a regular tradition. Sojo's characters, al-
though most of them were Black, would paint their faces with charcoal.
Both the traditionally sung music and the music annotated in Sojo's com-
positions has a tango or a tango-merengue rhythm. (The merengue
changes the Argentine tango's classical 2/4 accompaniment in 5/8). We
must point out, however, that neither these performances, nor those of
the southern candombes or tangos of 1800, are at all similar to the rich,
Argentine folk music later also known as tango.

Stories with Songs and Sung Stories

This type of literature with African roots, reminiscent of the griot still

existent in some parts of Africa, consists in an alternation between narra-

 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 219

tive and song. In Venezuela, we have heard narrations both in the Afro
region of Barlovento (such as "the typical story of the sword fish") and on
the plains from afamous singer, whom we taped in 1947. He narrated the
"Story of the Cows." The main character, the stranger, was called "The
Negrito," and was the personification of the devil. (This syncretism of the
Black man and the devil was not only used by this singer; it is quite
widespread. In Argentina, the famous triumphant minstrels were either
Blacks or morenos. Because of their magical powers they were identified
with the devil, to whom they had sold their soul, according to fearful
individuals hastily crossing themselves.) The tale of the cows was unique;
we never again heard development is very
anything like it. Its

Venezuelan, and typical of the llanos, the plains; the melody is a real
work song, with Afro ornamentations and forms of expression (example
6).

At the San Basilio Palenque I taped a "Story of the Mohán" or of

"María Catalina Luango," with a billingual text and a clearly African
melody.* This does not necessarily mean that the myth, well known
throughout the Tolima region, is African, although in many places the
protagonist is Black.
Song of the Story of the Cows

£or a quel ban cot sa • ba na »t ja st 0. s« '¡a. st a. at ¿x-

^ri "t* M co jo'cl pal -t» di* put» co jotl pan "ka le n

¿Ho ra co jt ti la» it **» pa raor dt ñar a $ar ion io.t ton

Example 6. Song of a Story, Parapara, Edo. Guárico, 1947, Venezuela. I. Aretz-

Ramón y Rivera.

*I call it African when no European or Indian characteristics can be observed.

220 Africa in Latin America

Por a quel banco e sabana On that bank and savannah

se pasea, se pasea, se pasea. is walking, is walking, is walking
La ra, la la ra, la la la la va la. Tra-la-tra-la-la-tra-la-la
Primero cojo el paltó First pick up the jacket
I

después cojo el pantalón then pick up the pants

I

ahora cojeré las tetas Now I will pick up the teats

para ordeñar a Garzón Garzón. to milk Garzón, Garzón.

The Black Folk Musician

The Blacks became enthralled with Creole instruments, such as guitars
and harps, as is shown in a notice published in the Gaceta de Caracas in
1809.

The priest, don Manuel Faxardo, of the Village of Santa Cruz del Es-
cobar, in the Aragua Valleys, has been missing a slave since the month of
January, 1807. He is a single Mulatto slave called Hermenegildo who can
play the harp, the guitar, he sings, and paints, and sculpts, but badly.
[Ramón y Rivera, 1953]

In Peru, Luis E. Valcárcel says that in the dance called marinera for no
apparent reason (known as cueca in Chile and Argentina) "the music of
guitars and drums, and the song and dance itself, achieve their best inter-
pretation, when the musicians are Blacks, or have some Black
blood . . .
."And he concludes: "The Black man is the most Spanish thing
we have left" (1942).
As a folk musician, the Black became a payador, a troubadour or
wandering minstrel. In Chile, don Javier de la Rosa sang with the Mulatto
Taguada in 1886.* José Hernandez also had his Martín Fierro singing with
a Black man. Santos Vega sings with the devil himself, who is Black,
because he represents the evils of society that triumph when the devil
defeats Santos Vega. Gabino Eseiza (1858-1916), the invincible payador
was Black. When he was a child, Creoles and Blacks would gather in the
neighborhood of San Telmo (Buenos Aires) to practice counterpoint,
which is how he learned his music (Moya, 1959, pp. 308 ss).

Integration of the Black Man in Latin America Musical Life

Since the beginnings of slavery, the masters recognized the musical abili-
tiesof the Blacks. In Buenos Aires, Vicente Gesualdo wrote about a
Black violinist called Josesito, who arrived around 1745 and was

*There is a reconstructed recording of this song at the University of Chile, 1969.

 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 221

the slave of a Buenos Aires family of the time. . . . Chronicles of that period
say that upon arriving in Buenos Aires on a slave boat, he already had a
remarkable knowledge of music. The praises of this Black musician reached
the ears ofGovernor Andonaegui, who wanted to hear him; thus, an audi-
tion was organized at the Cabildo, where, before all the high city officials,
Josesito, the Black man, played with admirable mastery, a prelude, a
gavotte, and a Corelli concert. [Gesualdo, 1, p. 105]

The Buenos Aires cathe-

director of the orchestra that performed at the
dral in 1777, Ignacio San Martin, was a "freed Black man." Teodoro
Hipólito Guzman, another "freed Black," was the violinist at the Buenos
Aires Cathedral, and later played in Chile. Pedro Contreras, another ex-
cellent freed Black violinist, played with Joseph Basurco (a freed Black
man) in 1780 (Gesualdo, op. cit., pp. 103-4).
In the nineteenth century, during the siege of Montevideo, one could
hear the voices of Black men singing songs of pain, but also of happiness,
because the Black man, in spite of his condition, could laugh and express
a fleeting happiness. Also, in Montevideo as in Buenos Aires and in other
places, the Black, because of his musical talents, begins to perform in
bands. Thus in Montevideo, "on quiet afternoons, when the siege seemed
to ease, their musical bands cheered the passing people" (Lanuza, 1938).
Blacks also formed the bands that accompanied General San Martin on
campaigns. It is said that he arrived in Chile with a band of
his liberation
African Blacks and Creoles wearing "Turkish" uniforms (Pereira Salas,
1941, p. 69).
Gesualdo mentions the African Domingo Lara, who "was the trumpe-
ter of San Martin's orders in Chacabuco and Maipo, and went along to
Peru and Ecuador." He died in Buenos Aires at the beginning of the
century. And "a Black man," Cayetano Alberto Silva (1868-1929) was
born in San Carlos (Uruguay), became the conductor of various Argentine
bands, and in 1902 wrote the famous "San Lorenzo March" (Gesualdo,
III, pp. 750 and 786.)

After the liberation of slaves in Buenos Aires, almost all piano teachers
were Blacks or Mulattoes, like Remigio Navarro and Roque Rivero, who
had very good manners, according to Wilde; and he adds that "all the little
Creole Blacks had an excellent ear and one could hear them whistling in
the streets at all hours whatever the bands were playing, even operatic
arias" (Wilde, p. 170).

Blacks in the Theater. Popular Music

With the appearance of "fake" Blacks on the stage, we witness the begin-
ning of an era of commercialization and deformation of African cultural
elements. Gesualdo cites a Spanish operetta and comedy troupe in the
222 Africa in Latin America

Argentine theater around the middle of the century that sang the "Ameri-
can Tango." Its actors, in blackface, "dance typically Black dances,"
while the "newspapers make reference to the acrobatics and jumps that
actors Ramos and Giménez perform on stage" (III, p. 851). In 1868,
according to the same historian, "the North American singer, Albert Phil-
lips, arrives in Buenos Aires, sings songs by Foster, accompanying him-

self with a banjo, an instrument typical of Blacks in the United States

South, and he ridicules their customs." Actors [in a U.S. troupe] "delight
the theater-going public of Buenos Aires with their perfect imitations of
Blacks" (Gesualdo, op. 851). The group also traveled to Chile, and
cit. p.

Eugenio Pereira Salas, having traced their prior appearance to 1860, tells
us that this was a White group, directed by E. P. Christy in New York,
where "the genre was deep-rooted," and he adds:

It consisted of a mixed spectacle of songs and dances, inspired by Black

melodies. In center stage, thefirst performers would form a semicircle. On

the ends were the drums and percussion instruments, while the "inter-
locutors" ingeniously presented a variety of acts. The program was put
together harmoniously. In the first portion they sang some "Spirituals" like
"Mother Dear," "I Am Thinking On," "Black Smoke," "Wasn't That a Pull
Back?" In the second part they dramatized scenes from celebration days at
the cotton plantations, interspersed with ballades accompanied by the
banjo. The bright program ended with merry dances, that we haven't been
able to classify. [Pereira Salas, 1957, p. 120]

This is the beginning of what later was to become quite common, the
performance by pseudofolk groups, of the art of a group that they do not
—
represent at all although sometimes, one must admit, they were fine
artists, able to recreate what they had learned from the people, or from
recordings, which is not an uncommon occurrence even in our days.
The case of the Black men who became composers and salon musi-
cians is the same, but in reverse. It is their spirit, or, to be more accurate,
their expressive talents and interpretations, that modify the insipid and
rigid music, of European contradances, transforming them into syn-
copated danzones, into 5/8 merengues and other well-known dances. This
is how the Black man expressed his rochelera happiness,* enriching its

rhythms, adding tones and ornamentation, and superimposing the rich-

ness of percussion onto the music that he received from the White man,
changing it into the "hot" music that is so popular with our youth today.
However, when the White man used the Black repertoire, he felt he had
to "square" the music, to "rationalize" it, as I once read in a paper pre-

Love for festivities and an attitude of "I don't care." expressed by this very Venezuelan
and Colombian term.
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 223

sented at a congress (whose author I do not know so I cannot tell whether

he was Black or White). Be this as it may, when Africans study in Europe
they can apply any White theory and are convinced that this is technical,
universal, academic, and the best way to become a part of the modern
world. So far I know of no White innovations in African music and dance,
with the exception of a few good jazz instrumentations.
On the other hand, I think that Black musicians had a very favorable
influence on the development of popular and folk music in America. Pian-
ist Albert Friedenthal, born in Pomerania, who traveled through Latin

America toward the end of the nineteenth century, was a careful compiler
of music and customs and made excellent observations about the in-
fluence of Black musicians. He even attributed to them the creation of the
Habanera, which he considers one of the most widespread musical forms
on the continent. Friedenthal claims that Blacks had their greatest in-
fluence in the Antilles, on the Caribbean coast, and in Brazil, but that,
even in areas where there were never any Blacks (sic), such as in the
Mexican highlands, in Argentina, in Chile, and on the Altiplano, we en-
counter the Habanera and songs that share its rhythm (Friedenthal, 1913,
p. 38).
In Colombia, the merengue synthesizes what Marulanda considers "a
regionalization of neo-African rhythms that spread along the coast of
South America with the coming and going of merchant vessels." This
music "shows no relationship to other themes of Colombia's Mulatto
regions," and now invades piano and violin orchestras (p. 99).
Popular Afro-Antillean music only arrived on the mainland a little over
fifty years ago, and in Venezuela it took root where its carriers settled, in

the mining town of El Callao, in the state of Bolivar, as well as in some

other eastern towns, where it generated what Ramón y Rivera calls in his
book La Música afrovenezolana, a neofolklore. It also took root on the
coast of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, creating some very par-
ticular songs that we taped during our 1966 trip. Yet, in these, no trace of
African music remains, just as there are no indications of African music in
the music played on the marimbas. Just the opposite is true in Suriname,
where saxophones and clarinets play a music called Kaseko, genuinely
"Creole"* in its Afro and other mixtures. This music is played for "old
dances" and it is even used in "city homes that are not Hindu" (a pub-
lished recording called Naks exists).
In Argentina, perhaps through the zarzuela (Spanish-type operetta),
some "Black urban" music and verses survived, like the ones I collected

*In countries with deep-seated Afro roots, this type of mixture is called "Creole." The
rest of Latin America refers to the local development of Spanish or European roots as
Creole; the existence of Indian or African elements is not a prerequisite.
224 Africa in Latin America

from a children's round thirty years ago in Tucumán, which seems to be

the last Black musical redoubt (which it is for African-based comparsas)
(Aretz, 1946, p. 414 —
see example 7). The lyrics, according to Ismael
Moya, were sung by "olive and corn soup vendors who walked the
Buenos Aires streets, advertising their merchandise in their Afro-Spanish
dialect" (Moya, Romancero, t. I, p. 341).

Yo soy el negrito fino I am the fine little Black boy

que siempre paso por acá, who always comes by

vendiendo escoba y plumero sellingbrooms and feather dusters
y nadie quiere comprar. thatno one wants to buy.
Lara lala lara lala. Lara lala lara lala.

Será porque soy tan negro Is it because I am so black

que a nadie le va a gustar; that no one likes me;
será porque soy finito is it because I am so polite
que me pongo colorado that I turn red.
Lara lala lara lala. Lara lala lara lala.

Señor de la concurrencia; Gentlemen here present

La fiesta ya se acabó; the party has ended already;
mande los hijos a su casa, send your children home,
y el negrito saludó. and the little Black boy has said
goodby.
Lara lala lara lala. Lara lala lara lala.

Example 7. Children's round, Siete de Abril, Tucumán, 1942, Isabel

Aretz.

Obviously, we are dealing with an imported text and perhaps even

music, of Spanish origin, based on a Black theme. To conclude, we will
mention the adaptations made by the Black to Hispanic poetry. There are
innumerable couplets, Spanish stanzas often octosyllabic lines, cielitos,
and other Spanish and Creole combinations, used by Blacks, such as the
beautiful example that Professor Zarate found in Panama, which depicts a
social situation:

Los blancos no van al cielo White men don't go to heaven

por una sólita maña forone little vice,
les gusta comer panela they like to eat brown sugar
sin haber sembrado cana. without having sowed the cane.
[1962:130]

Other cases involving Afro-American themes in Spain with regard to

text and music go beyond the framework of this essay; nor will we discuss
the return of Afro-American music to the African motherland.
 Music and Dance in Continental Latin America 225

Appendix: Incorporation of African Musical

Elements into Academic Music

Black music has little influence on the work of academic composers in

the area I have studied. This is largely the case because the heyday of the

Black ended in the last century in the southern countries and in the
Andean countries Indian and Western music seemed to establish itself
with greater vigor. The same occurred in Central America and Mexico,
where Afro music became diluted with Americanized versions of salon
music, where the marimba ruled supreme, and where Afro music did not
engender new types of music. Only in Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama
does African music preserve its individuality, and thus can exert some
influence on the works of academic composers. Nonetheless, I am not
familiar so far with that type of composition in Colombia. In Venezuela,
on the other hand, Antonio Lauro has composed an interesting sym-
phonic suite called "Giros negroides" ("Black Ornamentations"), consist-
ing of three movements in which he develops elements of Afro music.
Antonio Esteves in his "Creole Cantata" (although I do not believe he is
attempting to develop African themes), uses work songs that contain
Black melodic elements; but his work, as a whole, should be included
among the compositions of Creole inspiration. I, myself, am author of
"Tres Preludios Negros" ("Three Black Preludes") for piano (recorded by
Lia Cimaglia in Argentina); I have used African rhythms and instruments
for parts of my ballet "Movimientos de Percusión" ("Percussion Move-
ments"), and I have composed a cantata entitled "Simiente" ("Seed")
based on Juan Liscano's poem "Los Negros" ("The Blacks"), in which I
use three round Barlovento drums, with their typical form of percussion.
In several portions of the work, I use typical Afro- Venezuelan ornamen-
tations. In Panama, Roque Cordero, one of today's most important com-
posers (now living in the United States), projects a sense of nationalism in
his music. It would be interesting at some point to look at his score to
analyze the elements he uses and to establish to what degree these contain
an Afro influence.
In conclusion I would say that there is nothing further from the minds
of today's composers, who study ten or more years in musical conser-
vatories, than the study of ethnomusicology; yet without it they will never
be able to acquire an in-depth understanding of African musical tech-
niques, nor of any other oral music to incorporate into their creative
process. It would be different if a musician who had inherited the African
culture of one of our countries were to study composition and then create
within his or her ancestral style.
226 Africa in Latin America

DlSCOGRAPHY

Colombia-Ecuador
Whitten, Norman. Afro-Hispanic Music from Western Colombia and Ecuador.
Ethnic Folkways Library, FE 4376.
Chile
Contra-Punto de Tahuada, with don Javier de la Rosa, Antología del folklore
Chileno, Universidad de Chile, RCA, CM 2739.
Suriname
(Folk group) Naks: This is Suriname. (Duuwoort, R. F.) Omega International,
444-020.
Hurault, Jean. Musique Boni etWayana de Guyane. Enregistrements de Collec-
tion Musée de l'Homme, LVLX-290. D. Paris", 1968.
van Rouselaar, H. C. Suriname Song and Sound the World. Recording produced
with the cooperation of Phillips, 831-231 PY. Holland.
Venezuela
Aretz, Isabel; Ramón y Rivera, Luis Felipe; y Fernaud, Alvaro. Música folklórica
de Venezuela, International Folk Music Council, OCORA OCR 78.
Laffer, Barlovento. Vol. 1. Folklore de Venezuela, Vol. 5. 1971.

Liscano, Juan, and Lomax, Alan, Venezuelan Folk and Aboriginal Music. Edited
with notes by The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Vol.
X. SL-212.
Liscano, Juan, y Seeger, Charles. Folk Music of Venezuela. The Library of Con-
gress, AFS LI 5.
Ramón y Rivera, Luis Felipe. Autóctono: Auténtico folklore de Venezuela. 1967.
 10
Music of African Origin in Brazil

José Jorge de Carvalho

The first steps to be taken by any student of Afro- American culture are to

attempt to identify historically which ethnic groups were brought over

from Africa, and to discover what their cultural characteristics were upon
arrival in the New World.
Such knowledge would permit us to evaluate to what degree the social
norms (including music, dance, and ceremony) molded during the colonial
era under the social situation of slavery, reproduced, transformed, rein-
terpreted, or countered African rules of conduct and cultural standards.
We could then establish criteria that would help us understand African
influenceon the formation of present-day American society.
In our specific case, a close look at Brazil's most important musical
forms that originated in Africa will permit us on the one hand, to deter-
mine their traditional character, and, on the other, to place into perspec-
tive theirmain currents of development and transformation.
The usual procedure is to divide the slaves who arrived in Brazil into
two large groups identified by their linguistic roots: the Sudanese and the
Bantu. The Sudanese arrived mainly from the coastal regions of the Gulf
of Guinea, particularly the so-called Slave Coast and the Gold Coast in
West Africa. Among them, the most important in number and culture
were the Yorubas or Nagós of Nigeria, and the Géges (Ewes) of
Dahomey. They settled mainly in Bahia and in some northeastern states
like Alagoas and Pernambuco. In addition, in the very south of the coun-
try (Rio Grande do Sul), there was another nucleus of Yoruba culture,
possibly descendants from Africans who came from Oyo. The Yorubas of
Bahia are traditionally linked to the Kétu (Ibadan, capital of the Yoruba
kingdom) and Ijeshá regions. From Western Sudan came the Moslem
Blacks; their four main groups were the Hausas, the Tapas, the Mandin-
gas, and the Fulas. Although fewer in number than the Bantu, according
to some authors, the social institutions of the Sudanese were better pre-
served in Brazil.
The Bantu, who came from the Congo, Angola (Sao Paulo de Luanda,
Sao Jorge de Mina, Benguela), and East Africa (Mozambique) are usually
divided into the following groups: the Angolas, the Congos or Cabindas,
the Benguelas, the Macúas, Angicos, Cassanges, Quiloas, Minas, Bandas
and Igesis. Initially they spread into the states of Rio de Janeiro, Bahia,
Pernambuco, and Maranháo; from there they redistributed throughout the

227
228 Africa in Latin America

whole country to Rio Grande do Sul, Sao Paulo, Mato Grosso Goiás,
Minas Gerais, Alagoas, and Prá.
One must remember that this historical picture does not correspond,
by any means, to Brazil's present-day ethnocultural picture, since racial
mixture was always intense and varied in this country.
We will be using Roger Bastide's original theoretical framework, which
we think is more typical of Brazil than of any other country in our conti-
nent: "America offers us the extraordinary picture of the rupture between
ethnic groups and their culture." Thus we recognize African cultural
1

groups (Yorubas, Ewes, etc.) but not ethnic groups.

One of the first great problems that emerged in Afro-American studies
is that we only have a disorderly and clearly prejudiced mass of informa-

tion, from the days when there were still easily identifiable ethnic groups
and cultural groups. Some of the oldest reports on Black music in Brazil,
for example, are documents revealing colonial policy with regard to prohi-
2
bitions or control of slave dances and the playing of drums.
The second stage of Afro-American studies consisted of an attempt to
identify and to isolate cultural elements of the already mixing ethnic
groups in order to show how different they were from the official (Euro-
pean) culture of the republics. (This phase coincided historically with the
independence of the colonies and the formation of national republics ac-
cording to the imported model of the Old World.)
The third phase, which is barely beginning, must confront the problem
of Black acculturation. Obviously we shall be tracing its reflections in
music. Here the job of the student of culture would not be restricted to the
cataloguing of phenomena and characteristics, but would highlight the
significance and foreshadow the interplay of consequences, whereas for-
merly each thread was separated by its origin, be it Indian, African, or
European.
Through this last form of analysis, it follows that a study of African
contributions to New World cultures should not emphasize differences
viewed through a microscope, nor a vision of the phenomenon as a whole,
whose survival could possibly be explained as a mere accident. One
should understand instead the structure into which the African traits we
are pursuing were inserted. Thus, we will try to follow an analogous route
to that chosen by Andrew Pearse in his methodological treatment defining
musical typology according to social institution. 3 This type of reasoning
will try to prevent our study from becoming exclusively "an account of
selected aspects of Afro- Brazilian music." We realize that this path pre-
sents many risks, since the role of Blacks in Brazilian society was limited
mainly on account of slavery to restricted behavior within the social
structure imposed by the colonial government. Their social institutions
could only reestablish themselves in a fragmentary fashion within the
surroundings of the senzala, 4 where Blacks of the same ethnic back-
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 229

ground were not even permitted to get together. Attempts at flight by

slaves, who hid in the jungles, where they formed Black settlements or
5
communities (palenques) in Brasil called quilombos were foiled, unlike
,

those of the groups of Suriname and French Guiana maroons (Bosh or

Bush Negroes) 6 who survived the persecutions of the colonizers and
formed clans whose living patterns survive to this day.
We must also take into account that Africans arrived in America at the
very beginning of the formation of its nations. In Brazil, the first load of
slaves arrived in the captaincy of San Vicente (which today is Sao Paulo)
in 1538, at a time when the Portuguese population consisted of only a few
settlements along the coast; the prohibition of the slave trade took place
in 1850, which is to say that slavery thrived for over three centuries. It is
thus accurate to accept that Black cultural influence ran so deep that
many African elements were transformed to the point of nonrecognition.
At the same time it is also hard to isolate certain Portuguese elements
within Brazilian culture; they are the heritage of a society formed in the
New World.
This is exactly why it becomes so very difficult to analyze Black music
in Brazil, since its presence becomes apparent at such a deep level (al-
though at present it has not been studied in depth) as in the ritual music of
Yoruban orixás in Bahia that is still sung in African languages. It is also
evident in almost all traditional Brazilian musical forms, whether of Euro-
pean or of Indian origin, both of which, to a greater or a lesser degree,
have been colored by some aspect of African music.
We therefore have a very wide selection of criteria to choose from.
Some musical forms, like the vissungos, attract our attention because they
are among the few remaining archaisms. The Afro-Bahian cult music
exemplifies an entire repertory of songs within a body of coherent and
functional tradition, typifying what Bastide calls "preserved religions."
Umbanda displays the importance of syncretism, that is, the impossibility
of picking out only the Black element of an institution created in America
that is still in a state of flux.
Parallel to this breadth of cultural reference with regard to preserva-
tion, dissemination, and transformation, we also have various ways of
focusing on African contributions to traditional Brazilian music that vary
with the musicologists and anthropologists who work with them.
We realize that in an essay of this nature it is not to our advantage to
expand upon critical considerations, but instead to emphasize the factual
information and objective data; however, there are times when we find
that a pure phenomenon or musical trait that can be associated with
African music 7 becomes compromised during the determination of its

origin, depend on the author's conceptual position or

since this can
theoretical approach. Thus there are authors who will barely admit the
presence of African music in Brazil, perhaps because they give an exag-
230 Africa in Latin America

gerated importance to the tonality, which is evidently European, as a

musical trait. On the other hand there are others, like myself, who find
many African and Afro-American characteristics when analyzing the
8
same music.
Finally, we alert the reader to the question of methodology, since it is

not always enough to enumerate phenomena, forms, and musical types.

These enumerations are by themselves often insufficient to supply infor-
mation that can be interpreted in just one way, nor are they valid for a
comparative study, due to the presence of subjective elements in the
points of view of each author at the very moment of expounding them. 9
Generally we will be chosing types of music within Brazilian culture that
have a pronounced degree of "Africanism." Of course the study does not
claim to be exhaustive; our purpose is merely to offer examples.

Music of Afro-Brazilian Cults

Bahian Candomblés

Undoubtedly the most important displays of Afro-Brazilian culture al-

ways revolved around the complex structure of the candomblés. This

African term was first used to refer to the large annual religious feasts of
the Yorubas in the city of San Salvador, capital of Bahia, and later be-
came identified with all Afro-Bahian cult ceremonies. The Yorubas, in
successfully restructuring their religious-mythological system in America,
exerted great influence on other ethnic groups (Dahomans and Moslems)
among whom they lived, whether in their theology, their ceremonies, or
their main festivities. Thus the general structure of the Afro-Bahian cult
adopted the main traits of the rituals of the orixás (gods) of the tribes from
the Slave Coast of Africa.
This cultural dynamic occurred in various regions of Brazil, and the
syncretisms that resulted obviously varied, according to the composition
of the groups that came in touch with each other. Thus, we have struc-
tures analogous to those of the candomblés of the Nagó (a Fon term used
to identify Yorubas) both in the north and the south of the country:
Babassué (Para); Casa-das-minas w (Maranháo); Xangd (Pernambuco and
Alagoas); Candomblé (Bahia); Macumba (Rio de Janeiro and Espiritu
Santo); at present they are expanding through the south central part of the
country); and Batuque (Rio Grande do Sul). It is fair to assert that the
Yoruba cult is the best preserved in Brazil.
With regard to mythology and ritual practices, the contact of the
Yorubas with the Ewes, who also had a very complex religious symbol-
ism, resulted in a wide array of Brazilian orixás." These we will describe,
since the role of music cannot be understood without that information,
and few ethnomusicological studies offer a very complete description of
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 231

orixás. In addition, one can also compare the music of the Brazilian cult
to the Yoruba Afro-Cuban cult and the shangó
divinities with that of the
cult in Trinidad, both of the same Nigerian origin. The orixás are as
follows:
Oxalá (Orixalá or Obatalá): The most important orixá, symbolizes the
productive forces of nature. A bisexual divinity. Fetish: a lead ring,
cowrie shells (buzios).
Xango: Lightning and thunder orixá, one of the most popular African
divinities in Brazil; the name became the name of the cult in Pernambuco
and Alagoas. Male. Fetish: lightning stone, identified with Saint Jerome
and Saint Barbara.
Ogum: Masculine orixá of war, identified with Saint Anthony. Fetish:
iron, a spade, a hoe, and a machete.
Omulu (Xapanan) Obaluaié: Male god of the plague, particularly small-
pox. Associated with Saint Benedict and Saint Roque. Fetish: piacava
(palm fiber) and buzios.
Exú: The Elegbara of the Dahomans; Loba of the Gége Brazilians; Zumbí
or Cariapemba of the Bantu. Somehow associated with evil or the Chris-
tian devil. His fetish is mud, iron, and wood.
lemanjá, Mae d'agua (mother of the water), the sea. Identified with Our
Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Piety, and Our Lady of the Conception
of the Beach. Fetish: a seashell.
Oxum: The personification of fresh water. In Africa she is the goddess of
the River Oxum. She is identified with the Immaculate Conception and
Our Lady of the Candles.
Iansan: The orixá of the wind and the tempest and the wife of Xangó. She
is identified with Saint Barbara. Fetish: a meteorite.

Oxumaré or Oxum-manre: The rainbow. Fetish: a stone.

Ananburucu, Nananburucit or Nanan: The oldest of the mothers of the
water and the oldest orixá; she personifies rain and is identified with Saint
Anne. Fetish: a stone.
Obá: The goddess of the earth; the wife of Omulu.
These are the principal orixás. As for the music of the Bahian
candomblés, it became well known through the recordings made by Mel-
ville and Francis Herskovits in 1941-1942 that were studied by Alan Mer-
12
riam and Richard Waterman. In other states, no specific eth-
nomusicological study has been performed to this date on Black cults.
Depending on their ethnic composition, the candomblés are known by
their "nations"; at present we have the Kétu nation (with the largest
number of terreiros or cult houses), Ijeshá and Nagó, all three of Yoruba
roots; the Géges of the Dahoman Ewes; the Gége-Nagós, formed by
groups of Yorubas and Ewes, which, according to some authors, are
"totally" Brazilian; the Congo- Angolans; the Caboclo and Candomblé de
Caboclo, that include Amerindian divinities.
232 Africa in Latin America

Caboclo Candomblés

We know that these candomblés were formed more recently, and display
differences regarding the beings that are invoked and the cult music.
Tupinamba, Saint Juremeiro, Forte and Brave), Iara are
e Valente (Strong
some of the mythical candomblés. For musical accom-
figures oí caboclo
paniment the three atabaques (drums) and the agogó (rattle) of the
candomblés are no longer used; instead a large gourd and a chocalho or
maraca (reminiscent of the Indians) are substituted, and sometimes a
violáo (guitar) is played.
In the Caboclo candomblé, because of its spiritualist background, the
people who came from the Congo, Angola, and Mozambique were able to
revitalize ancestor worship, as well as worship of the gods of West Afri-
can rivers. Because these were not a part of a system like that of the
Blacks of the Slave Coast, there had been a tendency to lose this aspect
3
altogether.'
We caboclo candomblé in various northern states,
find variants of the
where the Indian elements are more predominant than the African. Such
candomblés include the cantimbó in the northeastern states, the tambor
de criólo in Maranháo and pagelanc a in Piaui, Para, and Amazonas.

Macumba
The macumba, the Afro-Brazilian cult of Rio de Janeiro, Espíritu Santo,
and Sao Paulo, is far harder to recognize and to interpret than the African
caboclo candomblé or the Indian pagelanca, in which the components
from the two races are juxtaposed. The fusion of fragments of institutions
and rites existent in the macumba does not always present a clear, func-
tional picture. According to Roger Bastide: "The Macumba of Rio and of
the State of Guanabara (now the state of Rio) is a crazy round, into which
eshús, orishás, bodyless souls and caboclos enter, responding without
rhyme or reason to the calls and trances of the faithful." Arthur Ramos 14

had already pointed out, without dwelling specifically on the role of

music, the formidable agglutinizing background of the macumba. 1 -

In a ponto de macumba without accompaniment that we transcribed

we noticed that Xangó is called John the Baptist, although in Bahia he is
16
identified with Saint Jerome.

The Umbanda
In no other type of Brazilian religious institution has there been so pro-
nounced a syncretism as in umbanda spiritism. This religion has de-
veloped in various states throughout the country over the past hundred
years. In it one can identify, although not without difficulty, certain traces
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 233

of Kardecism, of Bantu religions, the veneration of Catholic saints and

ancient Amerindian superstitions and animist cults. All of these could only
survive their own original social units, which had disintegrated through
increasing acculturation, by becoming attached to the African rituals.
For our own purposes the umbanda, like the macumba that derives
from it, is a Brazilian cult; for historic reasons, however, it has been

associated with Black rather than European culture, since its ritual con-
tinues to resemble that of the cults to the Yoruban orixás.
We simple description of umbanda: "The spirits of
will offer Bastide's
the dead, particularly the ancient Blacks who have died and the Caboclos,
constituting the spiritualized forces of nature, form enormous armies
called phalanges. At the head of each "phalanx" there is a general, an
orixá who bears an African or a corresponding Catholic name. Thus
Oxóssi leads the Urubatáo troops; Ararigboia (a famous Indian chief),
leads the caboclos of the Seven Crossroads, the legions of redskins, the
tamoios, and the Jurema Caboclos; Xangó or Saint Jerome leads the
legions of Intiasan, of the Sun, of the Moon, of the White Stone, of the
winds, of the waterfalls, of the tremble-tremble, and of the dead Kuen-
guele Blacks; Omulú, in his Quimbanda or Black magic phase of Um-
leads the troops of the souls, the skulls, the Nagós, the evils, the
17
banda,
Munurubi (Moslems), and of the Quimbanda caboclos, that is, the scum
18
of Indian warlocks, plus a mixed troop."
As for umbanda music, has not been much studied by Brazilian
so far it

ethnomusicologists; however, Black traits are not very hard to iden-

its

tify. The accompaniment of atabaque drums, the agogó bells, chocalho

and the reco-reco are similar to that of the samba. The use of response
singing is maintained, although the versification does not seem to display
an African influence. The melody develops within one tonality, thus the
juxtaposition of the rhythm and Black accompaniment to the European
melody satisfied those researchers who believed that the function of the
Black was "the job of adding color to the material that came from
Europe." However, a simple comparison of these melodies with well-
19

known Portuguese songs (modinhas, cantigas de ronda, fandangos) will

show that, actually, the tonality was due to the acculturation that oc-
curred when African music was being transmitted.

Musical Instruments of African Origin

To this day there has not been a satisfactory catalogue of African musical
instruments brought to Brazil, which represent about three-quarters of
the popularly used instruments in the country. On the one hand, the lack
of intensive collecting only permits us to guess how widespread certain
instruments are; 20 on the other hand, the comparison with African sources
is still incomplete and not very technical. Until recently the four main
234 Africa in Latin America

references for the study of Bantu dances and musical instruments in

Brazil were those written in Portugal during the course of this century and
their authors were not specialists.
21

We will try to present a provisional list that will group and organize the
material described in various places by specialists, since the study of
instruments very important for a comparative analysis. We are exclud-
is

ing instruments for which we do not have credible information regarding

their African origins; but we include those instruments that surely did
22
exist, although they are currently not in use.

Idiophones

Chocalhos. This generic term encompasses a variety of Afro-Brazilian

musical instruments, all of which are rattles or maracas. Some of them
also have in addition to the loose stones inside, a bead-strung net covering
the body of the instrument.
Caixixi, mucaxixi. A small, closed and elongated wicker basket, some-
times with a gourd bottom and full of seeds.It is used as an instrument at

candomblé rites, and together with the berimbau, it provides the musical
accompaniment for the game of capoeira.
Angóia. A type of chocalho used in the jongo dances of Rio de Janiero
and Sao Paulo, similar to the caxixi.
Guaia. A variant of the chocalho used in the Sao Paulo batuque dance.
Ganzá, canzá, xeque-xeque. A chocalho consisting of a small, closed, tin-
plated tube; it is the main instrument for all varieties of the coco dance,
typical of the northeast. It is common for coco singers to play the ganza.
Maraca, xére. A chocalho used in the Xangó cult, made of two brass
cones joined at their bases, with a handle.
Permanguma, prananguma. A variant of the ganzá used for the mozam-
bique dance of Sao Paulo. It consists of a round, flat, can with pieces of
lead inside; it has two handles that serve as a support for the instrument.
Piano-de-cuia, age, obe. A type of chocalho made of a gourd covered
with a cotton thread net, to which are attached, at the intersection of the
threads, small seashells or seeds known as cuentas or "tears of Our
Lady." There may be pebbles inside the gourd. Argeliers Leon 23 mentions
that the piano-de-cuia is an instrument also found in Cuba (chequeré,
obwe or güiro) and in Haiti (asón). In the Recife xangó, the obe is played
by hitting the base of the instrument against the palm of the hand or by
transferring it rhythmically from one hand to the other.
Paiás. The origin of this type of jingle bell has still not been well docu-
mented; 24 it is a shoulder strap with brass bells tied to it, or with a small,
cylindrical, closed tube containing little stones that is also tied to the
body. Apparently it is used by mozambique dancers. We have no infor-
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 235

mation about the corresponding dance, but it is interesting to compare the

paid with Ihejiuáua of the Angolan Lundas, described by Arthur Ramos:
"It consists of a wire thread that children wrap around their bodies, and
from which hang small strips of thin iron that clash against each other with
the movement of the dancers, marking the rhythm of the dance and of the
percussion instruments." 25
Agogó. An iron instrument consisting of a double bell with a handle
that the player hits with a stick of the same material. It is used by the
Bahian cults in Rio and Pernambuco as well as in the samba schools. This
double bell of iron is called longa in the Congo; among the Angolan
Lundas it is known as rumbeque. The gongue is a single bell agogó used
for the xango; it is also called adjá or ga in Bahian candomblés.
The marimba is another musical instrument that originated in Africa
and is widely used in America. Although it was very popular during the
last century in Brazil, it is now seldom seen, since its use is confined to
the Saint Sebastian and Caraguatatuba congadas (folk dramas) along the
southern coast of Sao Paulo. It consists of a series of wooden strips of
different sizes, placed over different sized gourds that operate as re-
sonators. The keys are hit with little sticks. In some places the instrument
can hang from the neck of the player by a cord tied to the ends of the base
of the boards. The Brazilian marimba came from Angola.
Another instrument, still widely used on the African continent but no
longer played in Brazil is the sansa or quincangue called quissanje by the
,

Lundas of Angola. It is made of a small wooden box (in Brazil they were
also made of a cuia, the longitudinal half of a gourd, or of the shell of the
jabuti, which
is a type of armadillo); its concave top portion has a series of

curved iron strips of different sizes that form a keyboard played with the
thumbs, while the other fingers hold the body of the instrument. Some
time back, in Pernambuco, a cuia made of iron strips called a matungo,
was used.
There are also historical references to a pair of African instruments,
the first of which consisted of a wooden box at the edge of which were

fastened, by means of small clasp, four little tongue-like pieces played by

hand. Another player would hold an eight-inch stick with a gourd at one
end, containing seeds that were rattled around. Meanwhile, the other end
would be hit against the box of the first instrument.

Membranophones
Atabaques. This term, whose origins may be Portuguese-Oriental (from
the Persian tablak or the Arabic word atal, meaning drum) refers to three
different drums used for Bantu dances (batuque, samba), at candomblés
or xangós. Generally the atabaque or tabaque is an oblong drum with
236 Africa in Latin America

only one skin, which employs tension wedges in the case of the Nagó and
Gégé people, and a set of cords extending from membrane to membrane
for the Angola or Congo nations.
The atabaques used by the first Yorubas in Bahia were made of large
gourds; their names used to be bata, ilú and batácoto (the war drum).
Nowadays their most common names are rum (large), rumpi (medium)
and lé (small). In addition there are giant atabaques more than two meters
long, which are only used on special occasions. In Nagó candomblés, the
atabaques are played with thick lianas called aghidavis (a Dahoman
term). The atabaque is called ronco in Caboclo candomblés.
Jongo drums. This Afro-Brazilian dance, the jongo, is accompanied by
four atabaques. The largest is the tambu; then comes the angona ocan-
dongueiro; a smaller one is called junior, and the smallest of them all is
the guzunga. The players straddle the first three drums; the guzunga
hangs by a leather strap from the shoulder of the musician. They are all
beaten with the hands.
Mina drums. In Maranháo three different drums are used for the batuque
dance: the largest or resingueiro rests on the floor and is tied around the
musician's waist with a rope; the meao or tucador and the perengue or
crivador also rest on the floor, but longitudinally, and the musician strad-
dles the drum. The African cults of Maranháo call the three drums by
their Dahoman names: hun, gunpli and humpli; the drumsticks are the
oghidavis also used in Bahia.
Quinjengue or mulemba. The batuque of Sao Paulo is played on the
tambu that we have already mentioned, and the quijengue, a closed, one-
membrane drum shaped like a funnel.
Samba drums made of Piqui. They preserve the generic name tambor
(drum), and they are three, carved out of the trunk of a piqui or jenipapo
tree. The large one and the socador (medium sized) are played with the
hands, and the quirimbador, which is the smallest is played with two
drumsticks.
Coxambu. A drum used in the states of Goiás and Rio de Janeiro to
accompany the dance of the same name.
Ilú. This is the general name given to the three drums that are used in
Afro-Pernambucan cults. They used to be made of a wooden barrel and
tensed by cords; today they are made of brass, and tension is achieved
through sere wed-in metal rods. They have two membranes. The largest is
the ilú-chefe, mestre, or inha; the medium-sized oneis the omele-ago or

mele-ankó and the small drum is the marcacáo, omele, or mele (the most
frequently used name). In Bahia, the Ijesha nation candomblés also call
their three atabaques ilús. This is a Yoruban term. The ilú played with
wooden drumsticks is called birro.
Batas. Yoruban term used for the three wooden drums with two skins,
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 237

played at the Nagó nation xangós of Recife. The drums hang from the
neck by a cord and are played with the hands.
Ingono, ingome. In Pernambuco and other northern states large, one-
membrane drums are given this name. They are the same as the ngomba
or angomba of the Congo and the angoma of the Lundas.
Zambé, zambe. A small, one-membrane drum used in the Xangós; in Rio
Grande do Norte this term refers to small drums played between the legs
for the dance known as bambelo. Zambe refers to a small drum in the
quimbundo language of Angola.
Cucumbi. A drum used for cucumbis, ancient Black rites of Bahia that
come from Congo, for which the participants decorate themselves
the
with feathers and animal pelts and bows and arrows.
Pererenga, mugangue, mangongu: Little research has been done on this
instrument; our only information is that the name was given to the small-
est of three Black drums.
Carimbó, curimbó. The only information we have on this instrument is
that it is found in the state of Para.
Mulungú. Large, flat, one-membrane drum, formerly used by the Blacks
in Alagoas.
Cuica, puita. A drumwith a wooden staff inside it attached to the
stretched skins. widely used in Afro-Brazilian music. When the mem-
It is

brane is rubbed with a wet hand or cloth, it vibrates and produces a type
of snoring sound. Its origin is Congo- Angolan (the name derives from
fuita in Ambundo, or from puita in the Angolan languages). It is typical of
the Rio de Janeiro samba schools. One variant of the cuica used in Minas
Gerais is the angono-puita, which accompanies the vissungos. In
Maranháo, Para and other northern states the cuica is referred to as
roncador, fungador, or socador.
Adufe. This is another Bantu membranophone, a type of large, square
pandeiro or tambourine, used in the boi-bumbá, a variant of the bumba-
meu-boi of Amazonas and Para. There is also an adufe without bells
around its body. An instrument of this type, but smaller in size, is used at
the samba school, and is called tamborín; its source may be the ndembo
of the Congo.

String Instuments

The only originally African string instrument we know of is the berimbau,

urucungo, gobo, bucumbumba, or gunga. It is a musical bow made of
wood, with a wire string. A small, globular gourd with a circular opening
is attached to one of its ends, or more towards the middle of the bow. The

instrument is held vertically with the left hand, which also modifies the
acoustics of the string by means of a coin or a small perforated disc held
238 Africa in Latin America

between the thumb and the index finger. The string is hit with a small rod
held in the right hand. The gourd acts as a resonator when placed over the
chest or the stomach of the player. The berimbau is usually accompanied,
especially when playing the Bahian copoeira, by a caixixi, which hangs
from the little finger of the left hand. The urucungo is a traditional Ango-
lan instrument found among the Bangalas and the Lundas; its Bantu name
is humbo or rucumbo.

Finally we will mention the afofie, a small reed flute, used by the
Blacks of Bahia, and the canga, which is made of cane, with its ends
closed off by the knots in the cane, and with holes. It was played last
century by the Pernambucan Blacks. These are the only known wind
instruments in Brazil that definitely have African roots.
From this list of musical instruments we can see that most have Bantu
roots (mainly from the Congo and from Angola). One may therefore won-
der at the absence of Nigerian and Dahoman instrumental contributions to
the New World, in contrast to the tremendous influence of the Bantu, and
of the Yorubas and the Ewes with regard to the structure and practice of
Brazilian festivities and religious rituals. In answer to this, we must bear
in mind that we always find relationships established between the sources
of our African traits and regions in Portuguese Africa, possibly because
material on these regions is what has been most accessible to Brazilian
researchers up to now. 26 Only a comparative study between Afro-
Brazilian instruments and those of the Sudanese tribes we have men-
tioned would give us complete certainty that the origins we have attrib-
uted to certain instruments are accurate.

Dances, Religious Plays, and Ceremonies

In the field of dance it is more difficult to recognize the African elements

and to place them in ethnomusicological perspective, since these have
become more fluid and partially disintegrated with regard to ritual or
communication. The fact is that in Brazil Portuguese dances become
Africanized, while African dances became more European; in addition,
where the Indian influence was strong, we find the product of a triple
contact. On the other hand, the music did not display much fusion be-
tween the Indian, the African, and the European. 27 It is quite apparent that
the first process took place in the medieval Iberian plays that were
brought to America, the Nau Catarineta, the chegancas de marujo (Por-
tuguese seafaring adventures), and the battles between Christians and
Moors, all now marked by a Black tint. Of the second process, the most
perfect examples are the batuque and the samba, both originally from
Angola. The samba (Angolan semba that came about when the batuque
dancers let their turn to dance go by), 28 is the most widespread dance in
the country. It was initially characterized by the pelvic contact of the
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 239

couples, called umbigada (navel touch), which had to be toned down in

Brazil to be danced by Blacks and Whites. Thus Edison Carneiro says:
"As long as the samba was the dance of the slaves, the real umbigada was
the rule; however, as it was passed on to other ethnic and social groups,
this figure, which was the most typical and unique trait of the dance, was
gradually replaced by equivalent gestures, like waving a handkerchief, a
mimicked invitation, a simple touch on the leg or the foot. ." 29 . .

With the change in the behavior of the colonizer, due to his ethical-
social attitudes, we achieve the first degree of transformation leading to
syncretism, later to attain a new, self-sufficient form. In fact, this is our

idea regarding a large part of those Brazilian festivities, dances, and plays
that still bear some African traits. On the other hand, the information we
have on many Afro-Brazilian dramatic and choreographic varieties are
30
relatively rare, incomplete, and above all, obsolete. Most of them were
described by Mario de Andrade, Luciano Gallet, Oneyda Alvarenga, and
other researchers of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Unfortunately, this first
round of interpretations remains virtually unchanged.
Of the third case we mentioned (the Euro- Afro- Amerindian fusion,
with the outward appearance leaning towards the Black), there is no
better example than the bumba-meu-boi. This is a very ancient religious
drama found all over the country, based on the resuscitation of a dead
totemic ox. There are regional variants of it with names such as boi-
bumbá in Amazonas and Para, bumba-meu-boi in the northeast, bo-de-
marnao in Santa Catarina, etc. It is a thorough synthesis of theater,
dance, and music, which, according to general opinion, is the most com-
plete example of this phenomenon in Brazil.
Edison Carneiro finds samples of the samba de umbigada with regional
differences in the following places: tambor de crioulo (Maranháo), tam-
bor (Piauí), mambelo (Rio Grande do Norte), coco (the entire northeast),
samba-de-rada (Bahia), samba (Rio de Janeiro), batuque and samba-
rural (Sao Paulo), jongo, a variant without the umbigada (Rio de Janeiro,
Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Espíritu Santo) and caxambu (Rio de
Janeiro).
We have yet to discuss the maracatú, a peculiar "dramatic dance"
reminiscent of the corteges and royal coronations of the Bantus; 31 today it
is almost exclusively restricted to the Pernambuco carnivals, especially to

that of the capital city, Recife. Formally related to the congos and con-
gadas* various characters participate in the maracatú —the king, the
queen, the ambassador, pages, and a dama-del-paso (the pace-setter),
who carries in her hands a black doll called calunga (sometimes catita), a
religious symbol undoubtedly of Congo and Angolan origins, as is its
name, whose symbolism is hard to determine. 33 A ceremony
religious
precedes the cortege, and this is the profane aspect of the drama. The
musical accompaniment of the maracatú includes gongues, gamas, bass
 .

240 Africa in Latin America

drums and the agogó. It was curious to observe in a maracatú text that
we transcribed, the use of the term kétu, originally Sudanese, right next to
Luanda, the legitimate source of the calunga, the boneca preta (black
doll).
There is also a rural version of the maracatú, restricted to sugar mills
and plantations, called the samba matute, where all references to Bantu
coronations are excluded.
The congos, congadas, reisados o Reis do Congo (Congo kings) pre-
sent an extensive cycle of entertainments that are found from Ceará to
Rio Grande do Sul, displaying noticeable variations of interpretation in
both choreography and music. At present the main performance is the
cortege of the king of the Congo. At first these popular dramas presented
an historical event: the ambassadors sent by the queen Ginga Bandi to the
Portuguese governor in Angola in the seventeenth century. The congadas
changed their nature dramatically as they were encouraged by slave-own-
ers (and may even have been recreated by them) as a means of dominating
34
their slave workers.
"In the days of slavery, the police initiated the custom of electing
governors and judges of the nation, who were responsible for the good
behavior of the slaves. Above these they instituted the Kings of the
Congo, crowned in ceremonies that included the participation of the
Catholic Church. Parades were organized to take them to be crowned in
the church." 35 "The kings were elected annually or preferably for life, and
were chosen by the Brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Rosary of the
Blacks." 36
Finally, to give an idea of the enormous Black contribution to dance
and popular ceremony in Brazil, we transcribe two lists prepared by
Luciano Gallet, 37 reproduced by Arthur Ramos and Flausino Rodriguez
Vale. 38 We only include in this list forms that have not been mentioned in
any other part of our essay. We must, however, warn the reader that a
portion of this material may have already fallen into disuse.

Dances
1 Sarambéque (Minas Gerais)
2. Sarambu (Minas Gerais)
3. Quimbete (Minas Gerais)
4. Sorongo (Minas Gerais and Bahia)
5. Aluja (fetishist)
6. Jeguedé (fetishist)
7. Caxambu (Minas Gerais)
8. Lundu (old-fashioned parlor dance)
9. Chiba (Rio de Janeiro)
10. Coco-de-zambe.
 . . s

Music of African Origin in Brazil 241

Ayres de Mata Machado Filho mentions the canjere, a dance of Afri-

can roots, found in the mining region of Minas Gerais.
Edison Carneiro 39 describes the macúlele, a. dance that includes a
rhythmic game with sticks that can still be found in Santo Amaro, in the
state of Bahia. The mo ambique of Sao Paulo is another dance that in-
cludes a stick game; formerly it was a part of the congadas, but now it has
become an independent dramatic dance. The same author also refers to
the catopes, groups of dancers about whom we have little information,
but who probably participated in the festivities of the Brotherhood of the
Rosary in the region of Diamantina, Minas Gerais, together with the
caboclos and the marujada.
José Ribeiro 40 describes the bangule, that was danced to the sounds of
the cuica, accompanied by the clapping of hands; the songs supposedly
contained "obscenities ad nauseum."
Maynard Araujo 41 studied the jongo in Sao Paulo, a round, with songs
improvised by singers in the form of a competition. The singers are known
as jongueiros

Festivities and ceremonies

1. Dances and festivities of the quicumbres and quilombos, dating
back to the days of the Palmares quilombo.
2. Festivities of the Holy King Balthazar, that were celebrated in Rio
de Janeiro until about 1740, for the coronation of the Cabunda
Kings.
3. Official dances of saddlers and carpenters, where participants
dressed up in Moorish attire.
4. Reign of the Congos, where the titles of king and queen were
disputed.
5. The magic soba, where participants disguised themselves as ani-
mals.
6. The twelve lions, who brought a Hercules as their guide.
7. Colastros, aubacás, and moleques, with twelve participants for
each group.
8. Dances of the negritos and malandritos (little hobos) of Angola.
9. Dances and songs of the taieiras at the festivities of Our Lady of
the Rosary.
10. The catupes.
1 1 Festivities and processions of Saint Benedict and Our Lady of the
Rosary attended by Black queens, Congos, and taieiras.
12. Jongo and samba rounds, circling fires, during the festivities of
Saint John Peter.
13. Festivities of the dead, where ceremonies were divided into three
parts: fasts and prayers; sacrifices; and banquets and dances. The
batuque and the coco-de-zambe would be danced for several days
242 Africa in Latin America

in a row to the sound of atabaques, puitos, ganzás, and tam-

bourines.
14. Dances and funeral festivities, on the occasion of the burial of
African kings.
15. Entrudo festivities, an archaic form of carnival.
16. Ceremonies and festivities at the plantations after the sugarcane
had been processed, at the end of the coffee harvest, at fetishist
ceremonies, etc.
17. Festivities in honor of Iemanjá, the Goddess of the Water, lasting
for fifteen days.

The Vissungos

In 1928 African songs using words in a Bantu dialect were discovered in a

Black community living in the interior of Minas Gerais. Their themes
were related to work in the diamond mines and to funerary rites. The
importance of these archaic forms of Congo- Angolan culture have already
been pointed out by their discoverer. 42 Dulce Martins Lamas has pointed
43
to the purely melodic nature of the vissungos and Correa de Azevedo
compares them to several South African songs. 44 Yet we still lack a deeper
analytical study of this valuable material.
"Generally the vissungos can be divided into the boiado, a solo by the
lead singer without accompaniment, and the dobrado, with a responsory
by the rest acting as chorus, sometimes accompanied by the noises
emitted by mining instruments. Some were particularly appropriate as
work songs and would be sung at certain phases of work in the mines.
Others seem to be religious songs that have been adapted to the occasion,
whether as a part of fetishist practices, or because their original meaning
had been forgotten. The Blacks used to sing all day while they worked.
They had special morning, noon, and afternoon songs." 45
Since the literary value of the vissungos is so significant, it is worth-
while tobecome familiar with some of their lyrics. In some portions the
dialect has remained isolated from the Portuguese; in others, the presence
of Portuguese words generates some very interesting poetic effects.
The following is the text of the second vissungo of the sixty-five that
areknown:

Pae Nosso ("Our Father," sung on the way to work)

Aüai! Ai!
Pade-nosso cum Ave-Maria,
qui ta Angananzambe-opungo
Ei! curíete
Ai ! ai ! ai ! ai !

Pade-Nosso cum Ave-Maria

Qui tá Angananzambe-opungo
Ei dundarie e.
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 243

Let us take a look at another vissungo, where the singer boasts of his
abilities:

XX
Eu memo é capicovite
Eu memo é cariocanga
Eu memo é candandumba serena.

It was forbidden to tell the researchers the "fundamento" (translation

into Portuguese) of certain vissungos, as their meaning was reserved ex-
clusively for initiates. The following is one of these, supposedly in pure
dialect:

Onuma aue, numa aue

re re a
numa tara pipoque,
numa tara angue reza

tue iá . . . tue iá
numa tara qui zombá,
tue, iá tue, iá,
numa tara angue reza,
tue, iá . . .

Final Observations

We believe that the critical and systematic bibliographical compilation

presented our essay gives a general idea of the current conditions of
in
African ethnomusicology in Brazil. As we mentioned earlier, there has
been no constant, increasing progress made to date in the field of Afro-
Brazilian musical studies. Neither has there been such progress in Afro-
Brazilian anthropology, and it is precisely in the appendices of anthropol-
ogical research that we find a large portion of the information on the
musical behavior of Blacks in this country.
The dynamic, syncretic, acculturating, or patchwork reality we find
today in the Afro-Brazilian cult groups has surpassed the possibilities of
the conceptual approach started by Nina Rodrigues at the beginning of the
century and developed by the Arthur Ramos school in the 1930s and 1940s
(where one can see the results of the comparative method, based on
tracing parallels with the African cultures from which Brazilian Blacks
originated). The continuity of these studies was provided by the deep
influence that the work and thoughts of Melville Herskovits had on the
anthropologists of the period, particularly with regard to the concepts of
cultural tenacity, cultural focus, and reinterpretations, etc. 46 This cycle,
as we might call it, ended approximately in the 1950s.
There is much less to say about Afro-Brazilian musical studies, since
the old studies of Luciano Gallet, Mario de Andrade, and Oneyda Al-
varenga were interrupted almost fifty years ago. One must still either
244 Africa in Latin America

confirm or correct, by comparing them to reality, the systems worked out

by these authors.
That is why we alerted the reader that certain terms employed in our
study should be viewed within the context of the time frame when they
were used. The term candomblés-de-caboclo, for example, is far less
definite today than it was thirty years ago.
In Pernambuco, the differences between the xangós of the Nations
(Nagó, Gégé, Kétu, Ijeshá, Shambá, Mozambique, Congo, and Angola)
are becoming increasingly less significant, at least from the point of view
of their music, and we are basically left with a Nagó complex, with slight
traces of the other nations. The dominating expansion of the Umbanda
throughout the country accounts for the fact that very few Recife xangós
are without mestre, caboclo, or jure ma rites; the ingeme, a drum that
belonged originally to the Shambá, Congo, and Angolan nations is already
used to set the beat for the caboclos; in many cult locations the lyrics of
the songs to the orixás or "saints" are now sung in Portuguese and many
popular urban musical elements have been introduced, mainly the samba-
style songs of Rio de Janeiro.
The fact that in the 1930s, texts and possibly also melodies of the songs
47
to the orixás of Bahia were found in Recife, was formerly explained by
the influence of Afro-Banian cults in Pernambuco, or by the possibility of
a cultural divergence in Africa itself, within the predominant cultures that
formed the Afro-Brazilian cults. Today this similarity is becoming in-
creasingly stronger, and can only be understood by employing conver-
gence as a criterion. This phenomenon is occurring due to the expansion
of the Umbanda, which serves as a point of acculturation between units of
the main groups of Afro-Brazilian cults in Rio Grande do Sul and Sao
Paulo, where they were recently formed, and in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia,
Recife, Sao Luis do Maranháo, Belem do Para.
There are books written by members of Umbanda sects wherein many
of the Afro-Brazilian rituals are codified (like catechisms), including lyrics
in Gégé, Nagó, Congo- Angolan, the names of the instruments that are
48
used, etc. Such manuals gather elements from all the converging lines.
There are also many recordings made by famous pais-de-santo (cult
leaders), particularly of the umbanda, which serve to spread the "Afro-
Brazilian religious songs that are the least orthodox," much like the
spreading of the popular music of certain isolated sectors, such as the
peasants.
It is not for us to evaluate these phenomena; they are merely the
characteristics of a new phase in the process of acculturation of African
music in Brazil.
In order to study them, one must elaborate new ethnomusicological
criteria that can deal with the complexity and the accelerated dynamics of
this stage of the process.
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 245

Notes

1.Roger Bastide, Las Americas Negras (Madrid: Alianza, 1967), p. 14.

2. Bastide, (ibid., p. 87) presents an analysis by the Count of Arcos showing
how dance was used to ease social tensions generated by slavery. It was through
this bread-and-circus imperial policy that a great part of African culture was
preserved in the New World.
3. AndrewPearse, "Aspects of change in Caribbean folk music," Interna-
tional Folk Music Journal 7 (1955), 29.
4. A building used for the collective housing of slaves in the hacienda patio.
See Gilberto Freyre, Casa Granda & Senzala (Rio de Janeiro: 1973).
5. Bantu term used for the "republics" of slaves who fled the plantations of
their masters. The Palmares quilombo in Alagoas became famous. Memories of
that quilombo survive in Alagoas through popular theater pieces dealing with the
Battle of Palmares. See Arthur Ramos, O folklore negro do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro:
1954), pp. 35-67.
6. These are the Saramaccan, Auca, Boni, Matawaai, Quinte Matawaai, and
Paramaccan tribes, who live in isolation in the jungle. Bastide, Americas Negras,
pp. 54-70; Arthur Ramos, As cultures negras no Novo Mundo (Rio de Janeiro:
Civilizagáo Brasileira, 1937), p. 238.
7. For a description of the characteristics of African music, see Richard
Waterman, "African influence on the music of the Americas," in Proceedings and
Selected Papers of the XXIXth International Congress of the Americanists,
(Chicago: 1949); Maria de Lourdes Borges Ribeiro, "A música africana," Revista
Brasileira de Folclore 12, no. 37 (1973); E. M. von Hornbostel, "La Música de los
negros africanos," Revista Musical Chilena, 17 (September 1952).
8. This seems to be the reasoning behind Luis Heitor Correa de Azevedo's
assertion that "Black music, on the other hand, of exclusive national formation as
we have seen, without apparent roots in the primitive songs of the African conti-
nent, is very docile in submitting to European tonalism and displays in its rigorous

musical tempo, although subtly divided by an apparent instability in the syncopa-

tion, its most typical and marked appearance." Música e músicas do Brasil (Rio
de Janeiro: 1950), p. 22.
9. Oneyda Alvarenga offers us a good example of a mistake caused by subjec-
tivity: "It is well known, for example, that African music employs only a short
melody, that its melodies generally evolve by degrees, that other intervals that are
found are short, and that the rhythm is usually fixed during the course of each
melody. These characteristics can be found in Brazilian popular music, but they
should not be attributed to African influence because they also appear in the rest
of the world. They are therefore universal characteristics of popular music." "A
influencia negra na música brasileira," Boletím Latinoamericano de Música 6 (Rio
de Janeiro: 1946), 358. Alvarenga mentions certain African traits, but classifies
them as non- African; what is important to the Brazilian is that these elements did
come from Africa and from no other place in the world.
It is interesting to note that this same methodological error (which is sometimes
ideological) even exists today, as we can observe in the following discussion by
Renato Almeida concerning the melodies of Afro-Brazilian cults: "Could the de-
fective scales characterize them? No, because we can also find them among the
primitives. The intervals? The tonality? The free discursive rhythm? None of
these are exclusively Brazilian, none of them are exclusively African, all of these
elements can also be found in other cultures." Vivencia e projecáo do folclore (Rio
246 Africa in Latin America

de Janeiro: 1971), p. 104. The mistake occurs again because of the incompatibility
between the concern for the origin and the neglect of the historical criterion.
10. The casa-das-minas shows strong
similarities to Haiti's vodú rada, be-
cause the Dahoman element
so strong in this candomblé variant: Bastide,
is

Americas Negras, pp. 127-128. One can assume that there are also similarities
between the casa-das-minas and the rada cult of Trinidad (see Andrew Carr, "A
Rada Community in Trinidad," Caribbean Quarterly 3, no. 1, 35-54 and Alan
Merriam, "Songs of a Rada Community in Trinidad," Anthropos 51 (1956), 157-
174. For a description see Octavio da Costa Eduardo, The Negro in Northern
Brazil (Seattle: 1966).
11. Mediating spirits or divinities of Olorum, a formless primordial entity,
accessible to men, for which there are special songs and dances that lead to
possession. Etienne Ignace, "Le fetichisme des negres du Brésil," Anthropos 3
(1908), 881-904.
12. Melville Herskovits, "Tambores e tamborileros no culto Afro-brasileiro,"
Boletím Latinoamericano de Música 6 (Rio de Janeiro: 1946), 99-1 12; Alan Mer-
riam, "Songs of the Ketú Cult of Bahia, Brazil," African Music 1, no. 3 (1956), and
no. 4 (1957); Alan Merriam, "Songs of the Gégé and Jesha Cults of Bahia, Brazil,"
Jahrbuchfiir musikalische Volk und Vólkerkunde 1 (1963); Richard Waterman and
Melville Herskovits, "Música de culto afrobahiana," Revista de Estudios Musi-
cales 64—127.
13. Bastide, Americas Negras, pp. 103-104.
14. Ibid., p. 85.
15. Ramos, As Culturas negras, p. 175.
16. It is really difficult to follow closely this correspondence. For a systematic
account of the orixás and their syncretisms with Catholic songs see Valdemar
Valente, Sincretismo religioso afrobrasileiro, (Rio de Janeiro, 1952), pp. 153-159.
17. Bastide does not clarify the difference between the two "lines" very well:
umbanda is the positive white magic; quimbanda is its black, negative side.
18. Bastide, Americas Negras, p. 85.

19. Alvarenga, "Influencia negra," p. 370, quoting Mario de Andrade, asserts

paternalistically, "No one can deny that they have colored it well."
20. We still are not very familiar, for example, with the instruments of African
origin used at the Porto Alegre dances (see M. Herskovits, "Os pontos mais
meridionals dos africanismos no Novo Mundo," Revista do Arquivo Municipal,
95, [1944], 94) or even in the north of the country (Piauí, Maranháo and Para), if
we compare what is known with the detailed informations we have on the
candomblé drums of Bahia or the xangds of Pernambuco.
21. Edison Carneiro, Folquedos tradicionais (Rio de Janeiro: 1974), p. 37.
22. To make up this list we consulted, in addition to the studies we have
already cited, the following works: Edison Carneiro, "Vocabularios negros de
Bahia," Revista do Arquivo Municipal, 99 (Sao Paulo: 1944), 45-62; Leopoldo
Bettial, O batuque na Umbanda (Rio de Janeiro: 1963); Pereira da Costa, Folclore
pernambucano (Recife: 1974); Rene Ribeiro, Cultos afrobrasileiros do Recife
(Recife: 1952); José Ribeiro, Candomblés no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: 1972); Oc-
tavio da Costa Eduardo, The Negro in Northern Brazil (Seattle: 1966); Gon^alves
Fernandez, Xangós do nordeste (Rio de Janeiro: 1937); Vicente Lima, Xangós
(Recife: 1937); Pierre Verger, Orixás (Salvador: 1951). We also rely on our own
research to correct certain mistakes or obsolete information as well as for addi-
tional information (as, for example, our knowledge of the Afro-Pernambucan
cults).
 Music of African Origin in Brazil 247

23. Leon, "Música popular de origen africano en America," America Indígena

39, no. 3 (Mexico: July 1969), 627-664.
24. There is a drawing of a paid in Alceu Maynard Araujo's Cultura Popular
brasileira (Sao Paulo: 1973), p. 137; see also Folclore Nacional 2, (Sao Paulo:
1967), 426.
25. Ramos, As Culturas negras, p. 142.
26. Edison Carneiro suggests the following explanation for this problem: "We
say that, of the African tribes that arrived in Brazil, only a few (Angolan, Congo,
and those from Mozambique) contributed to Brazilian folklore; and that, on the
other hand, the comparative study of these people can be accomplished very
easily, given the similarities of language, historical traditions, customs, and
habitat among them in Africa." A sabeduria popular (Rio de Janeiro: 1957), p. 86.
27. Richard Waterman, "African influence," p. 207, says that "there is a great
deal of similarity between Amerindian, African, and European music."
28. Edison Carneiro, A sabedoria popular, p. 36; also in Minas Gerais, in
Diamantina, the word semba is still in use (Ayres da Mata Machado Filho, O
negro e o garimpo em Minas Gerais (Rio de Janeiro: 1943), pp. 137-38.
29. Edison Carneiro, A sabedoria popular, p. 63.
30. See, for example, the interpretations of the candomblé dances by Arthur
Ramos (O negro brasileiro) based on Lévy-Bruhl's ideas of the emotional behav-
ior of primitive people; also the concept of the "dramatic dance" is developed by
Mario de Andrade (Boletím Latinoamericano de Música 6, Rio de Janeiro: 1949,
49-97), is seriously and rigorously criticized by Edison Carneiro, A sabedoria
popular, pp. 155-175.
31. According to Ascenso Ferreira, "O maracatú," Boletím Latinoamericano
de Música, pp. 130-132, and also Oneyda Alvarenga, Música popular Brasileña,
(Mexico: 1947), 364.
32. "In both cities (Recife and Salvador) the congadas and the corteges of the
Congolese king disappeared, they became profane, and turned into the Pernambu-
can maracatú and the Bahian afoxé," Carneiro, A sabedoria popular, p. 83.
33. Ayres da Mata Machado Filho, O negro e o garimpo, pp. 123-125, dis-
cusses the term at length. It can also be found in the so-called "Auto dos Congos."
34. Edison Carneiro, Dinámica do folclore (Rio de Janeiro: 1965), p. 38.
35. Edison Carneiro, A sabedoria popular, pp. 81-82.
36. Carneiro, Dinámica do folclore, p. 38.
37. Luciano Gallet, Estudos do folclore (Rio de Janeiro: 1934), p. 61.
38. Ramos, As Culturas negras, p. 126; Flausino Rodriguez Vale, Elementos
do folclore musical brasileiro (Sao Paulo: 1936), pp. 71-83.
39. Carneiro, A sabedoria popular, p. 84.
40. Ribeiro, Brasil no folclore (Rio de Janeiro: 1970), pp. 383-84. It must be
noted that this work deals almost exclusively with secondhand information that is
generally incomplete.
41. "Jongo," Revista do Arquivo Municipal 128 (1949), 45-54.
42. Ayres da Mata Machado Filho, O negro e o garimpo.
43. "Vissungos," Relacáo dos discos gravados no estado de Minas Gerais,
(Rio de Janeiro: 1956), 75-77.
44. Correa de Azevedo, "Vissungos," in Music in the Americas, Indiana Uni-
versity Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics (The Hague:
1967), pp. 64-67.
45. Ayres da Mata Machado Filho, O negro e o garimpo, p. 61.
248 Africa in Latin America

46. Mentioned in Rene Ribeiro, "Significado dos estudos afrobrasileiros," Re-

vista do Instituto Histórico de Alagoas, (Maceió: 1952), 7-16.
47. See, for example, in Gongalves Fernandez, Xangós do nordeste, pp. 103,
106, the lyrics to songs to Exú that were taped in Bahia by Herskovits. (The
transcription can be found in Waterman and Herskovits, "Música de culto af-
robahiana.")
48. As an example of umbanda "musical catechism" see N. A. Molina, 3777
Fon-cantados e riscados na Umbanda e na Quimbanda (Rio de Janeiro: undated);
for the Nagó texts of the songs to the orixás, see Ribeiro, Candomblé no Brasil.
Socialization and Development
 11

Hello and Goodbye to Negritude

Rene Depestre

Why did we choose such an ambivalent title for this essay? First of all we
must stress the ever-increasing imprecision of the connotations and the
content of the concept "negritude." This term initially referred to a form
of revolt of the spirit against the historic vilification and denaturalization
of a group of human beings, who, during the colonization process, were
baptized generically and pejoratively as "Negroes."
However, as it developed into an ideology, and even an ontology, the
concept of negritude began to adopt one or various meanings, all of them
ambiguous, until it presented the following paradox: formulated to
awaken and to encourage self-esteem and confidence in the strength of the
social groups that slavery had reduced to the status of beasts of burden,
negritude now makes them evaporate into a somatic metaphysics.
Far from arming their class-consciousness against the violence of
capitalism, negritude dissolves negroes and African negroes into an
its

essentialism that is perfectly inoffensive to a system that stripsmen and

women of their identity. Currently, the "negrologists" of negritude pre-
sent it in the form of an exclusively Black worldview within American or
African societies, independent of the position they occupy in production,
property, and the distribution of material and spiritual goods. We have, in
fact, a Weltanschauung of antiracist origins, which, retrieved by
neocolonialism, attempts in its shadow, and through sophistry, to sepa-
rate the oppressed Blacks from the conditions that would fertilize their
liberation struggle. Negritude, formerly a literary and artistic protest
movement, now transformed into an ideology of a colonial state, is not,
however, a spontaneously generated phenomenon. Negritude has a past:
it is, in effect, tightly linked to the history and to the social structures

shaped by the scandalous New World slave trade and the plantation sys-
tem.
It is therefore necessary to go back to the origins of negritude, to the

various paths that lead to it and to its equivalents in colonial society, in

order to show that, during its life, it has been, in literature and in art, the
modern equivalent of cultural marronage with which the masses of slaves
and their descendants opposed deculturation and assimilation to the colo-
nial West.

251
252 Africa in Latin America

Questions Regarding Method

The original sin of negritude and the misfortunes that debased it derive
from the fairy godmother that supported it at its baptismal font, namely
anthropology. The crisis that has shaken negritude coincides with the
winds that revolution has blown over the fields upon which anthropology,
be it cultural, social, applied, or structural (and with a Black or a White
mask) used to carry out its wise research. The first charge against the
various schools of anthropology is to have given preference to the Euro-
pean contribution in the analysis of cultural elements that specify the
metabolism of our societies. This contribution has always been the ideal
reference model, the measure, par excellence, of all ferment of culture or
civilization. This basic Eurocentrism even postulated an identity of divine
right between the typically colonial concept of "White" and that of the
universal human being. The creative expressions of Africans and their
descendants were isolated and became a heterogeneous heap of african-
isms, morbidly encased in the immaculate organism of the Americas.
Given this racist point of view, slave revolts, political and cultural mar-
ronage and the participation of Blacks in peasant struggles, were rarely
considered decisive contributions to the formation of societies and na-
tional cultures in Latin America.
In 1941, Melville J. Herskovits dedicated a famous study to the "Black
heritage" of the American continent, and devised a scale of "intensities of
African survival." He never worried about offering a correlative "scale of
the intensity of European survivals." African influences were me-
chanically juxtaposed to modes of feeling, thinking, and acting that were
supposedly inherited from the Christian West by the mixed, Creole na-
tions of our hemisphere. Herskovits and his disciples lost sight of the fact
that within the geographic and socioeconomic space between the south-
ern United States and the north of Brazil, even though there was an
historic rupture between ethnicity and culture, between infra- and super-
structure, such a dissociation was not exclusively characteristic of the
African heritage. It could be a double or even a triple rupture if we were to
include the Indian ethnic groups and cultures. The elements inherited
from Europe, Africa, and the Precolumbian world were restructured and
remetabolized (and not unilaterally reinterpreted by the Blacks), due to
the effects of material living conditions and of the emancipation struggles
that were the origins of our various national structures. More than a
quarter of a century after the Herskovits hypothesis, the influence of
Africa is still being studied as though it were a racial plankton, eternally
suspended in the waves of the national liberation process, of the sui
generis societies of America. When dealing with the problem of national-
ism, setting aside the singular experience of Haiti, it has only been in
analyses and studies performed in Cuba since 1959 that one can clearly
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 253

see the historical role of the descendants of African slaves, both during
the political emancipation movements and in the structure of sociocul-
tural values.
In their ethnocentric hunt for African "isms," anthropologists and eth-
nologists have not included the European heritage in their inventories,
when, actually, the mixture of races has equally conditioned private and
social behavior and the formation of a conscience and psyche of the
descendants of Europeans. There is no such thing as an ethnology of the
"White strata" of our population: their specifically Creole American rela-
tionship to work, religion (Latin American Catholicism), collective fes-
tivities (carnival), magic, culinary traditions, art, music, and body move-
— —
ment including their gait, dance, copulation and various other types of
behavior that display the reciprocity of the phenomena of syncretism and
transculturation. The African presence in the cultures of the New World
is talked about as though, before the slave trade, in addition to the
Amerindian cultures, there would have existed in America well-
structured Greco-Roman or Anglo-Saxon cultures, onto which, much
later, well or badly, the African savage was grafted. The scandalously
segregating, terrorist role that racial dogma exerts on our countries, be it
in its negrophobic form or under more refined disguises, has accustomed
people to consider the African contribution as a strident note in formerly
well-organized sociocultural groupings.
When one dynamic of our national cultures, there
studies the objective
is from the Caribbean to Brazil, the His-
a tradition of distinguishing,
panic, Iberian, Latin, Anglo, Gallic, Batavian, Indian, and Afro-
American cultures. This logic of separating and mechanically juxtaposing
our common heritage, far from being innocent, presents close ties of
cause and effect with the racist adventures of colonialism and imperial-
ism. There exists a sociohistoric determinism within the Western hemi-
sphere that, since the "discovery," within very particular economic, cul-
tural, religious, psychological, and ecological conditions, acts
dialectically upon the life of various social types that have molded,
through antagonisms of class and "race," our national realities. Historical
creativity has not been the exclusive privilege of one social group con-
sidered in isolation. America, unilaterally termed Latin or Anglo-Saxon,
arbitrarily proclaimed White or Black, is actually, the simultaneous social
creation of multiple ethnic groups, aboriginal or originating in various
African and European countries. It is the ethnohistoric result of a painful

process of racial mixture and of symbiosis, that has transformed or even

transmuted, with the rigor of a nutritional phenomenon, the original social
types, the multiple African, Indian, and European substances and contri-
butions, to produce absolutely novel ethnic groups and cultures within the
world history of civilizations.
Under the plantation system, and under the equally oppressive na-
254 Africa in Latin America

tional systems that succeeded it, what were initially Africanisms, Indian-
isms, and Europeanisms, have ended up, transmuted through the
metabolic confrontation of their own singularly vital elements, into a
heterogeneous Americanism that has been reciprocally advantageous for
all the people of our original family of societies. The value scales brought

from abroad and those that ruled locally, at levels that varied from one
society to another, have been the object of a universal process of Ameri-
can Creolization. The study of this dialectic development must break with
arbitrary cuts and ethnocentric classifications. This requires the revision
of postulates, methods, and conventional anthropological concepts,
which, since the eighteenth century, have been concerned with our iden-
tities.

In the first why should Africanology shed light on the mutations

place,
of identity of theEuropean and African heritage in the Americas? Within
the framework of an anthropology that would scientifically unify cultural
and political practices, we feel that there would be material for autono-
mous discipline that would simply and plainly be Americanology. Its
methods of analyzing our global societies should then omit generic de-
nominations, always loaded with racism or ethnoeurocentrism, which,
beneath the apparently innocent terms Hispanic, Iberian, Luso, Latin,
Anglo, Indian, Batavian, and Gallic, unilaterally prefix the description of
our intrinsic American identities.
Towards the end of his life, the eminent professor Roger Bastide pro-
posed methodological tools that were more appropriate for the evaluation
of our sociohistorical situations and junctures. He, however, considered
it useful to maintain the prefix Afro before the word Americanology. By

preserving Afro he rendered inevitable the correlative preservation of the

other erroneous meanings that the old, racist ethnocentrism traditionally
attributes to the form and content of our Americanness. Only plain
Americanology, without the prefixes of Afro, Indo, or Eurocentrism,
could free the analysis and reevaluation of our sociocultural phenomena
from the conceptual and methodological imperialism that has divided,
dismembered, fractured, "epidermized," and racialized our knowledge of
the laws of our history.
This having been said, one should not underestimate the research
findings on popular religion, familial ties, customs, musical expressions,
and folklore, all of which describe the originality of the popular cultures of
this continent. Some scientists, particularly Ortiz, Price-Mars, Arthur
Ramos, Alfred Metraux, Roger Bastide, Edison Carneiro, Aquiles Es-
calante, Acosta Saignes, Frazier, Leiris, Aguirre Beltrán, etc., who have
studied the African influence on the New World (some unilaterally as was
the case with Herskovits), have accumulated over more than half a cen-
tury a prodigious number of observations and analyses that will permit
scientific anthropology, once it has been liberated from all its ethnocen-
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 255

trism, to correctly identify our people within the history of the national
societies they have formed in this hemisphere.
The obvious ties between imperialism and anthropology are not always
direct ties. In the same manner the links between negritude and neo-
colonialism are not necessarily reciprocal expressions. There is, never-
theless, an overwhelming disproportion between the considerable knowl-
edge anthropology has harvested and the derisible tools of action it has
finally placed in the hands of those social groups that have been the
subjects of their field study.
In the first studies conducted by anthropologists (frequently of high
scientific value) one is struck by the scarce connection of the data to the
question of nationalism, that is, the liberation struggles that our people
were involved in, in order to unify democratically, for their exclusive
benefit, the historic components of their identity. There is no anthropol-
ogy that studies the original types of resistance to slavery, such as cul-
tural marronage, that was practiced on this continent by Africans and
their descendants. Neither are there, at present, field projects, which
would be highly significant, on mining societies, on the sugar industry,
fruit companies, coffee plantations, etc. Anthropology has wisely com-
partmentalized the map of the Caribbean and Latin America, without
bumping into the flamboyant imperialist installations on the way. In using
a fine-tooth comb to go over each nook and cranny of Latin America,
ethnology has frequently stopped to reveal, at times quite brilliantly, the
mythology, family ties, racial prejudices, oral literature, sexual and culi-
nary mores, musical and artistic creations, eternal folkore, without ever
adequately showing the historical relationship between capitalism and
this original and contradictory crucible of cultures and civilizations.
Where are the anthropologists or ethnologists who had the idea of taking
as their field of study the boards of management of neocolonial banks and
exchanges? Where is the anthropology of the military caste, of so-called
Inter- American economic and political institutions, of pseudolegal mech-
anisms, of "Papadocracies" and military dictatorships? To summarize:
How long should we continue to rule into squares the elementary struc-
tures of imperialist power, which, together with the indigenous oligar-
chies, continues to underdevelop our societies?

Origin of the American Social Types

The human essence of the Blacks, Whites, and Mulattoes within the
region of America that concerns us, encompasses, historically, all of the
social and from the sixteenth century to our day,
racial interactions
among and their descendants on this conti-
colonists, slaves, freed slaves,
nent. This slave society "epidermized," somatized, and deeply racialized
the production interrelationships, thus adding to the innate contradictions
256 Africa in Latin America

and alienations of capitalism a new type of class conflict that acquired its
own characteristics within the specific framework of the American col-
onies: namely passionate racial antagonism.
This racism or class egotism reduced the human essence of imported
labor from various African ethnic goups to a fantastic inferior Black es-
sence; and the human essence of the owners who came from various
European nations became a no less extravagant superior White essence.
This double mythological reduction on the one hand shaped the erroneous
good conscience of the colonizers who voluntarily left Christian and
"White" Europe, and on the other hand served to downgrade, deform,
and dismantle the social conscience of the slaves forcefully brought from
pagan "Black" Africa. Even though the racial problem is the psychologi-
cal aspect of the socioeconomic structures of colonialism, the secret of
"White" racism, as well as the antiracism or antiracist racism of the
"Blacks," must not be looked for in the psychological makeup of these
social types, but in the objective analysis of their interactions, as deter-
mined by slavery and colonization.
The "peculiar institution" of slavery, as a way of dominating both
economically and physically, shaped at the level of superstructural rela-
tions, aided by the dominant and deforming myth of "antagonistic races,"
a type of cultural aggression and terrorism that functioned efficiently,
although frequently with the help of a separate economic structure and
with the operational strength of a vital contradiction. Colonization locked
African labor into the double trap of economic and psychological vassal-
age, thus doubly alienating the consciousness of the plantation workers.
The African human being, thus submitted to this twofold deculturating
pressure, was transformed into an invisible man, a nameless bone in
history, exposed day and night to the peril of irreversibly losing the re-
mains of his human identity. Often the concept of alienation is used to
qualify the fantastic loss of identity inherent in slavery. This concept only
inadequately covers the sterilization that threatens the cultural personal-
ity of the colonized Black man. In this case the concept of
"zombification" is a more appropriate one. It is no coincidence that the
myth of the zombi, which originated in Haiti, is equally well known in
other American countries.
Within the many-sided irrational relations of slavery and colonization,
the fetishism of the merchandise served as a model for the genesis of the
racial dogma. Just as money and skin color became an abstract, passion-
ately powerful symbol, the color white became the universal symbol for
wealth, political power, beauty, and social well-being inherited from the
"Greco-Roman miracle"; the color black, became a symbol for poverty,
political impotence, physical and moral ugliness, the congenital charac-
teristics of "African barbarism and primitivism." The color of the human
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 257

beings dominated them, obsessed them, and miserably clouded their con-
sciousness and their perceptions, until color became a kind of generalized
equivalent, of a biological nature, to productive relations. Thus fetishism,
extrapolated from an essentially economic setting, was colored (and it is
important to use this term) with somatic, ethical, aesthetic, and ontolog-
ical meanings. The Black man as merchandise had his own intrinsic value,
with the sole difference that the African slave could not be valued like a
metal coin, because of his irreversible aging process. Nevertheless, in
addition to property, production tools, labor, and capital, African slaves
provided their European masters with supplementary "capital": the white
color of their skin, the mask and sign of proprietorship and political and
cultural power that accrued automatically to the colonizing class.
The African human being baptized as "Negro" by the triangular trade
pattern, turned into the "mineral man" who guaranteed primitive accumu-
lation within a capitalist economy. This absolute depersonalization inher-
ent in servile labor brought with it a complementary form of alienation,
the pure and simple assimilation of the colonized, the disappearance of
their psychological being, in short, their zombification. The colonial sys-
tem wished to transform the Africans and their descendants into Anglo-
Saxon and Latin subproducts of Europe in the Americas. The capitalist
West made sure that the dependent labor force would lose not only its
freedom but also its collective and imaginative memory that permits peo-
ple to transmit the truths and particular experiences of their social and
cultural vitality from generation to generation. In the case invented by the
plantation economy, the famous "Je est un autre" of Arthur Rimbaud,
became: "/ am an inferior model of the white European." "/" was a
production instrument, an exchange value, a value of usage, an animal
and motor work force, in short, a subhuman-biological-combustible,
transformed by external hostile powers into colonial merchandise, who,
in addition, before the use of electricity and steam, was also the creator of
wealth that unknowingly enabled the first industrial revolution of the
modern world. Thus colonization robbed the Africans who were deported
to America of their past, their history, their elemental confidence in them-
selves, their legends, their family patterns, their beliefs, and their art.
Even the beauty of their skin became an eternal source of frustration, an
unsurmountable obstacle between the prefabricated condition imposed
upon them and the taking of their rightful places in history and society.
Depersonalization and alienation surpassed the limits of the economic and
social course of servile labor, to penetrate through the pores of Blacks,
even the visceral structures of their demolished personality. This
threatening, deculturing pressure is responsible for the poor opinion "col-
ored" men and women of the Americas had, for a long time, of the role of
their bodies, their spirit, and their identity in the history of civilization.
258 Africa in Latin America

Cultural Marronage: Genesis of Negritude

How American descendants react

did the African slaves and their Creole
to the social and oppression that depersonalized their lives? What
racial
did they do to restructure the disembodied components of their historic
identity in this unfamiliar world? Marronage was the process by means of
which some slaves abandoned their plantation and sought refuge in the
mountains, to preserve, as best as possible, their identity. Analogously, in
the cultural area, it can be said that they attempted to escape the
hegemony of the colony, endowing it with their own values, "marronag-
ing" wherever possible the horrible deculturing and assimilating mecha-
nisms of the civilization imposed on them. The sociocultural history of the
downtrodden masses of the western hemisphere, is, in a global sense, the
history of ideological marronage that permitted them not just to reinter-
pret Europe with its sword, its cross, and its whip through their "African
mentality," but to demonstrate heroic creativity, in order to painfully
reprocess new ways of feeling, thinking, and acting. This prodigious effort
of self-defense became manifest in religion, magic, music, dance, and
popular medicine, in Creole jargon, cuisine, oral literature, sexual life, the
family, and other expressions of the wisdom and optimistic genius of
these people. With the exception of Haiti, the slave rebellion failed on the
political level. The majority of the heroic armed movements that marked
the history of slavery between 1519 and the end of the nineteenth century,
were sooner or later totally wiped out. From the Caribbean to Brazil (not
counting the groups of Bush Negroes of Guyana and the Jamaican ma-
roons), the palenques, cumbes, quilombos, or maroon republics, did not
evolve, as they did in Haiti, into a real liberation war and a nationally
independent society.
In its sociopolitical form, marronage, according to some sociologists,
was a very healthy collective self-defense mechanism. Also, on the cul-
tural level it proved to be healthy, for, by searching for the new truth of
their lives, the American slaves took from the anguish of their "Black
condition" its deepest dynamism to maintain and to stimulate in them the
universal feeling of liberty and human identity. This was the cognitive
process that in the popular plantation cultures often transformed the
existential drama from the status of servitude into a healthy creative
explosion.
In the case of religion and mythology the marronage of the slaves'
forceful evangelization program led to extraordinary results.
It created on plantations and in a clandestine and
maroon communities
fruitfulnetwork of correspondences and mythical and ritualistic interrela-
tionships between the representations and the gestures of Catholicism and
the African Yoruba, Fon, Fanti Ashanti, Bantu, Congo, etc. cults.
These mental and motor replies to a crisis situation that threatened to
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 259

destroy or to zombify their social consciousness, reveal a very sane at-

titude of the slaves, both in resisting and in creatively adapting to the
ferociously hostile conditions of the American socioeconomic scene. The
concrete demands of the struggle against slavery and colonization drove
the slave to an obstinate search for a new psychological and cultural
equilibrium. The marronage ofthe dominant values permitted them to
rework shredded African traditions. Thanks to the power of their
their
collective and imaginary memory they could create new rules of life in a
society that restructured their personality. This vital creativity could be
seen in the most varied areas, from methods of agriculture to matrimonial
and family standards, from religion to folklore, from language to modes of
cooking and eating, from funerary rituals to bodily expressions through
dance and copulation, from magic to popular remedies, from music to oral
literature and social games, from the manner of carrying children to fe-
male hair styles, and from mythology to armed resistance.
Marronage did not express itself with the same efficiency in all the
areas of culture and life. The language of the masters could not be ma-
rooned, even though there is a certain influence of African languages in
Latin- American Spanish and Portuguese. Aside from the Creole lan-
guages of Haiti, Guadalupe, and Martinique, the Papiamento spoken in
Curasao and Aruba, and the Antillean and Guyanese pidgins, marronage
of European languages was not very generalized. Nor did the legal tradi-
tions of West Africa; and the political and economic thought of the precol-
onial societies of the African continent disappear. In the same fashion, the
technology, iron work, spinning, statuary, and wood and ivory sculpture,
as well as other expressions of the creative intellect of the African people,
were submerged by the purely "socioeconomic" sensitivity of colonial
America. Marronage, a legitimate self-defense movement, contributed to
a limitation of the mental devastations. It saved from zombification all
that could be saved in religion, magic, plastic arts, dance, music, and of
course, the ability to resist oppression. Historically, marronage could not
conspire against the attitudes of "Uncle Tomism," the fear and shame of
being Black, the inhibition and cultural dualism, the replacing of being by
seeming, psychic bipolarism, the inferiority complex, compensating ag-
gression, the denial of the self, intellectual "Bovaryism," imitation, forms
of social ambivalence, and other psychological disorders that still charac-
terize the behavior of many Blacks and Mulattoes in our society. Slavery,
colonization, and imperialism with their triple impact on America have
seriously marked the social types. Stereotyped images, mythical portraits
that the descendants of Africans find of themselves in the "White mirror,"
as well as the narcissistic opinion that descendants of Europeans discover
in the "Black mirror" of their interrelationships, are echoes of racist
myths of the past. They are manifestations of the spiritual misery of the
various stages of the expansion of capitalism.
260 Africa in Latin America

The Twentieth Century in America: Identity Crisis with the Will to be

Born Again

The African heritage reevaluation and identification movements can be

traced directly to Haiti between 1791-1804 and the end of the nineteenth
century. These movements would find their way into the various social
sciences (history, sociology, ethnology, and anthropology) as well as
music, literature, and the visual arts. This general renovation of the op-
pressed spirits within the continent naturally had to distinguish itself and
to differentiate itself according to the national structures ofeach of our
Mestizo societies. The historic, exotic, and indigenous factors that have
led to a Cuban, a Haitian, a Jamaican, a Dominican, a Brazilian, and an
Antillean identity, as well as our common American or Caliban identity,
do not coincide with each other simply and plainly at any level. In Latin
America and the Caribbean there is no social awareness or a literary or
artistic sensitivity that constitutes an organized, homogeneous, uniformly
American bloc, without frontiers or peculiarities, that is interchangeable
or can be superimposed upon its expressions. One observes, instead, an
historical family, shaped by its people and its national cultures. People
and culture have been dialectically shaped, both by the diversity and the
harmony of the material and spiritual conditions of colonization and the
struggles that put an end to the colonial period. Even though our national
lineage globally experienced the same ethnohistorical adventures of an
antidevelopmental world capitalism, each nation that emerged from the
popular fight against the colonial conditions has its own very original
system of contradictions of class and race. In spite of a doubly common
origin and social situation, at the economic level (underdevelopment,
plantation system) and at the superstructural level (mutation of institu-
and Euro- African idiosyncracies), the four na-
tions, religions, traditions,
tional cultures of our insular and continental countries' linguistic groups
each present very precise characteristics upon analysis, due to the
sociohistoric sedimentation imposed by the economic and political
policies of seven different empires (six European powers, plus the as-
cending imperial United States). Among the islands, Cuba, Puerto Rico,
and the Dominican Republic speak Spanish; Jamaica, Trinidad-Tobago,
Barbados, Santa Lucia, etc. are English speaking; Haiti, Martinique, and
Guadalupe are Francophone; and Curasao and Aruba are Dutch speak-
ing. On the continent Brazil speaks Portuguese; Suriname, Dutch; Guy-
ana and Belize, English; French Guyana, French; and Venezuela, Colom-
bia, Panama, etc. are all Spanish speaking.
Of the colonizing countries, although they belong to the same western
civilization of Greco-Roman, Anglosaxon, Germanic, and Scandinavian
cultures, each has its own history and pronounced national traits, and
each has practiced its own colonization policies according to its level of
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 261

development and the expansionary tactics of its capitalism. All these

factors, be they of diversification or of association, in addition to the
intercolonial rivalriesand contradictions, determined the variety of his-
torical classand race relations in our societies. All these levels of differ-
entiation and heterogeneity, however, did not manage to destroy within
the insular and continental Caribbean the existence of a very real civiliza-
tion. Historical unity depends upon multiple sociological, anthropolog-
ical, psychological, linguistic, ecological, and geographic realities that

translate into similar behavior patterns within social groups; similarity

between the tough, past work experiences on the plantations as well as
present-day industrial and agricultural enterprises; similarities in popular
religious forms, psychological peculiarities, and types of alienation;
similarities of folklore, mythology, dance and song rhythms, games,
cooking, feelings, and movements expressed in the street, in the home, in
public festivities, and in intimate lovemaking. There are, in short, a va-
riety of Antillean and Latin American ways of "marooning" socioeco-
nomic oppression, cultural colonialism, and racism; there is an historical
similarity in our Calibanesque ways of dreaming, feeling, having fun,
thinking, acting, working to the south of the Rio Bravo. The diverse
conditions of social existence of our people before the slave trade and
during slavery, in national societies that only indigenized the methods and
values of colonization, have structured an intolerable lifestyle, serious
identity crises, that have reached a global scale, in the century of the great
socialist October Revolution and of decolonization, and have triggered a
general will to be reborn observable in syndical and political struggles as
well as in literary and artistic emancipation. This universal process of self-
determination in economics, politics, literature, music, and art that can
even be seen in the oppressed people, had various names after the First
World War. But behind the multiplicity of names, postulates, concepts,
schools and vanguardisms, we discover from a distance, a vast general
phenomenon of a search for an identity. Among the Blacks in the U.S.,
this identification process, initiated in 1895 by William E. B. DuBois, is
correctly known by the name — which is equally valid everywhere of —
renaissance. This concept, according to Littré, "is used upon occasions
to identify a supple mental movement, following a period of oppression."
Is this not exactly what occurred among the people of our hemisphere
and its political and literary intelligentsia, after centuries of slavery, col-
onization, and sociocultural hibernation? The first signs of this "supple
movement of the minds" began to show before this century in Haiti, with
Firmin, H. Price, Janvier, O. Durand, and others; in Cuba the eminently
synthetic genius of José Martí propelled it, with an intensity that had no
precedents, leaving an impact on the islands and on the continent linking
it tightly to the second independence struggle of America on a political,

literary, and anthropological level. In a much less visceral form, the reno-
262 Africa in Latin America

vation of intellectual and artistic activities in Latin America can be ob-

served of Rodó and Rubén Darío, and the modernists in
in the originality
general, such as Enrique José Varona, Justo Sierra, Manuel Díaz
Rodríguez, José Vasconcelos, Antonio Caso, Alfonso Reyes, B. Sanin
Cano, J. García Monje, and other intellectuals of the area within America
that concerns us. With the Mexican Revolution this new spirit was re-
vitalized both on the islands and on the continent with the work of essay-
ists, novelists, and poets of the country of Benito Juarez, and also,

significantly, by the great neo- Aztec muralists which Siqueiros has called
"the first artistic manifestation in Latin America that deserves a front-row
seat in the concert of universal culture." Also, during the 1920s and 1930s,
at least six vanguard movements, which suffered different fortunes and
vicissitudes, emerged on the literary and artistic scene of Latin America
and the Caribbean, some following the example of the European van-
guard, others surviving independently. Among this half dozen of isms,
which were discussed by our friend Oscar Collazo, we are missing one
ism: negrism, which has a legitimate right to a place in the sun of Ameri-
canisms "in search of our expression."
Negritude in the midst of this identity crisis?
Could it have been a mask of an American ism without a doctrine in the
midst of the effervescence of spirits?
Has it shown signs of a renaissance, like the "Black and White" van-
guards of the United States, of Mulatto Brazil, and of the rest of America
of "one color or another?"
We have followed the historic roads that lead to negritude, in order to
present it better, at this time when we are bidding it hello and goodbye, to

present it, alive or dead, flaming body of the future, or a celebrated

corpse, both in its structure and in its literary, artistic, and social func-
tion.

In Search of the Formula for "Americanism" or Americanness

The year 1928 symbolically witnessed the birth of Che Guevara and three
works that offer (just like the author of Man and Socialism in Cuba)
decisive points of reference within the "history of the spiritual organiza-
tion of our America." They are, Ainsi Parla VOncle, by the "Black"
Haitian Price-Mars; Seven Interpretive Essays of Peruvian Reality (Siete
ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana), by the Peruvian "In-
dian Mestizo" José Carlos Mariátegui; and Six Essays in Search of Our
Expression (Seis ensayos en busca de nuestra expression) by the "Creole
White man" of the Dominican Republic, Pedro Henriquez Ureña. These
three great works reflect the converging Creole aspects of the descend-
ants of Africans, Indians, and Europeans in Latin America.
I have purposely brought together these three great minds, all con-
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 263

nected to José Martí, to show the triple historical complexity of the road
taken by our people, sometimes in the midst of contradictions and sol-
itude, to arrive from Toussaint L'Ouverture to Fidel Castro, from Simón
Bolívar to Che Guevara, from Tupac Amaru to Salvador Allende, from
Tiradentes to Sandino, and to reach the level to which the Cuban Revolu-
tion has brought Latin American consciousness. In none of the great
books that we have just mentioned can we find the entirety of sociohis-
toric roots of our Americanness. In them we find, planted in parallel rows,
Mariátegui's "Indian" trunk, the "Black" trunk of Price-Mars, and the
"White Creole" trunk of Henriquez Ureña. In each one of three studies
the historically Creole unity of theAmerican trunk of our common iden-
tity was absent. It was through this trunk that the knowledge and the
tenderness of the creator of the idea "Our America" was supposed to be
grafted upon the knowledge of the world. The descendants of Africans,
who had become Creole and Americanized in the midst of the atrocious
conditions that we are already familiar with, could not in 1823, identify
with the Alocución a la poesía and other admirable Silvas americanas by
Andrés Bello; nor could they identify in 1845 with Domingo Sarmiento's
Facundo, or in 1872 with Martín Fierro, and in 1879 with La vuelta de
Martín Fierro by José Hernández; nor could they later identify with the
law-abiding, philanthropic and jocular negrism of Rubén Darío, the mod-
ernists and the postmodernists; or with José Enrique Rodó, whose Ameri-
canism was inclined more towards the aerial aestheticism of Ariel than
towards the solid reality of the people of Caliban. Of the six great names
mentioned in Henriquez Ureña's essay, Bello, Sarmiento, Montalvo,
Martí, Darío, and Rodó, the suns around which "the literary history of
Spanish America" turns, none, with the exception of José Martí, has
offered a definition of the self, an emancipation of the spirit and the
sensitivity, useful at once to all the social types that have emerged from
our common colonial tragedy.
The fact is that although the declarations of cultural independence
within the hemisphere between 1823 and 1928 were just, brilliant, and
well-received, they continued to be, with the exception of Haiti, unilat-
eral, Eurocentric, and always sacrificed one or two of the trunks of our
multinationality.
Since the 1920s, the wind of renaissance has begun to blow simulta-
neously in the spirits of the United States, the Caribbean, Brazil, and
Latin America in general. There was never a pan-negrism or a pan-
negritude as the sole vanguard, with manifestations of the romantic
school. The anthologies gave the illusion of such structures by amal-
gamating and superimposing the most diverse authors in the same books
under a generic racial title. In the francophone countries of the American
and African Third World, the vision of a "zionist" negritude began to
emerge, with the anthology by Leopold Sedar Senghor, with a famous
264 Africa in Latin America

prologue by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Black Orpheus" ("Orphée Noir"), and

during the 1950s and 1960s, with the writing of university theses destined
to recapture academically and politically, for the sake of neocolonialism,
the spiritual tempests and cyclones of Caliban. But our great brother
William Du Bois had already said it: "The Blacks do not have a Zion, nor
an ecumenical meeting point such as 'Next year in Dakar!' " These were
parallel movements without any type of linkages, which in each country
were molded to the national cultural contents and contours, as well as to
the diversity of class origins, talents, and individual tastes.
In the western hemisphere the first was the "Black Renaissance"
movement of the U.S., more precisely located in Harlem, which revolved
around the main figures of the new intelligentsia that included Frederick
Douglass, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, as well as
W. E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Claude McKay,
Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, and Sterling Brown.
The majority of these creators, particularly DuBois, Langston Hughes,
and Claude McKay came directly from the people, and from expressions
of cultural marronage like jazz, the blues, and Negro spirituals. This
"colored" intelligentsia took from the people the vitality and the innova-
tive beauty of their productions. The vanguard movement of these North
American intellectuals was not at all bourgeois, elitist, or aristocratic.
Although this essay does not concern itself with North America, it is

necessary to evoke for the sake of analogy the extraordinary reevaluation

effort of U.S. Blacks, their forms of cultural self-defense, fertilized by the
vanguard of poets, musicians, and essayists. This process of identification
became as or more valid than the renovation that took place in the
"White" arts and letters in the United States led by such brilliant men of
the "lost generation" as Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Tom Wolfe,
Dos Passos, etc.The "Black" Renaissance constitutes a prodigious "to-
morrow that —
shines like a flame" and an immense rainbow over the still
long road that the citizens of the country that produced John Brown and
Frederick Douglass, Gabriel Posser and Walt Whitman, Emerson and
DuBois, Faulkner and Bessie Smith, Hemingway and Langston Hughes,
must still cover together.
Jacques Roumain, in his work as a novelist, poet, essayist, ethnologist,
and political leader, maintained up to his premature death a very revolu-
tionary interpretation of the class and race issues in Haitian social history.
He was able to establish, as was done after his death by Jacques Stephen
Alexis and other heirs to his ideology, the real historical relation between
economic oppression and racial inequality. In 1939 Roumain published an
essay on the "Complaints of the Black Man" ("Quejas del Hombre
negro"), that seems to indicate that, had he not died prematurely at the
age of 37, he undoubtedly would have founded, upon rigorously Marxist
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 265

foundations, a scientific anthropology of the Caribbean, and perhaps of all

of Latin America. He writes:

The slogan of the protection of the White woman, the unavoidable inferior-
ity of the Black race, the mission of the White man, this mission that Kipling

used to call, with his imperturbable imperialist humor, a burden, the white
man's burden [Roumain's italics], hide the egotism of the rapacious and
unscrupulous class; and finally racial prejudice, which, directed at once like
a divisive instrument and a pushing aside, permits the domination of a wide
strata of the White population in the United States.

It is perhaps Roumain who has given the best definition of racial preju-
dice we know:

It is impossible to see in color prejudice something other than the ideolog-

ical expression of the antagonism of classes, which, at the same time reflects
the contradictions within the production system. It is this double overlap-
ping in the economic infrastructure that makes it difficult for the superficial
observer to analyse a phenomenon that, at first sight, seems to relate solely
to psychology.

At the end of this brilliant anthropological study, Roumain invited all

the oppressed, the Black and White peasant workers, to prepare together,
on top of the discriminatory ruins fomented by capitalism, a new Aboli-
tion of Slavery (racial and salaried) for the "reconstruction of the world."
That same year, 1939, so fruitful in the history of his spirit, he expressed
similar ideas in verse form, in a poem of epic dimensions entitled "Ebony
Wood." In this capital text, having lyrically reviewed the terrible adven-
ture of the slave trade and colonization, and having overcome the affec-
tive givens of the"Black condition," Roumain drops the bow and arrow of
the negritude of Philoctetes and Pyrrhus, to surpass the morbid enchant-
ment of a bad conscience, and to proclaim in body and in soul, to be of the
"universal race of the oppressed":

Africa, I have guarded your memory, Africa

you are within me

like a splinter in a wound,
like a tutelary fetish in the center of the village
make of me the stone for your slingshot
of my mouth, the lips of your sore
of my knees the broken columns of your humiliation.

HOWEVER
I only want to be of your race

peasant workers of all countries

As the contradiction of features

266 Africa in Latin America

results in the harmony of the face

we proclaim the unity of suffering
and of revolt
of all the people on the entire surface of the world
and we beat the mortar of fraternal times
into the dust of the idols.
(Brussels, June 1939)

Only the revolutionary fighter with a perfect understanding of the

dialectics of colonial history, could, in one of the most beautiful lyrical
expressions of the twentieth century, express and philosophically go be-
yond the racial concept. In one same gesture of pride and generosity,
Roumain was able to synthesize in "a song of all and for all" (Sartre) the
oppressed men of the world, the tragic class and racial experience that
international capitalism imposed upon the West Africans and their de-
scendants on the American continent.
These general considerations on Americanness as a triumphant move-
ment among the best authors of our world, lead us directly to the man who
has assumed, with the greatest precision and original grace, the Creole
essence within the Caribbean and Latin America: Nicolás Guillen. There
is no negrism in Guillen (as there is none in Martí). Fernández Retamar

was correct when he declared that the racial sentiment is integrated by

Guillen into the Cuban identity, into the historic essence of the country. It
is not a literary fashion, but a manner of being Cuban, Antillean, Ameri-

can. In fact, what pertains most precisely to the art of Nicolás is the
constant felicity with which he has been able to project into the orbit of
the social revolution a way in which to live fully, clearly, and lyrically the
radical values of our Americanness. At the level of great poetic creativity,
Guillen drew on the resources of Góngora and Lope de Vega, the secret
metabolism of the son, and the flavor and knowledge of popular genius.
Alfred Melon has called Guillen, the "poet of synthesis." In his work,
Melon has done a masterly job at understanding this sovereign poet. We
are dealing with an exceptional feat, quite extraordinary with regard to
Marxist criticism, and not easy to accomplish following the essays that
Marinello, Augier, Noel Salomon, Mirta Aguirre, E. Martinez Estrada,
Reemar, Claude Couffon, Robert Márquez and other critics have dedi-
cated to the work of Guillen. In 1931 Emilio Ballagas had the right idea:
"With the original, sincere, and strong poetry of Guillen, we began to be
America .
." Six years later, in 1937, Juan Marinello also arrived at the
.

essence of Guillen's poetry; "an American happening," par excellence:

"The poetry of Guillen fulfills this desire, it is part of our flesh because in
it we find our yesterday, our present, and our tomorrow. This poetry, this

strange and adjusted expression, is an American happening of the widest

significance because it is a definitive triumph of the 'mestizoized' Anti-
lles."
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 267

It is at this level that we must read and listen to the American words of
Guillen. In his case it is not a question of isms. Romanticism, modernism,
negrism are all transformed into the lyrical becoming of a Cuban identity.
The renewal brought by Guillen into the lyrical work of the continent can
only be compared, mutatis mutandis, to the profoundly innovative
Americanness of Neruda and Vallejo, of Carpentier, of Joáo Guimaraes
Rosa or of Gabriel García Márquez. Guillen himself is a "vanguardism," a
day and night school, to whom all the social types of Cuba and of the
Caribbean refer to quench their thirst for justice and beauty. The poetry
of Nicolás Guillen, beginning with the famous "Here we are!" from his
poem "Arrival," is an effort crowned with the success of rehabilitating the
body and the spirit of our America. Guillen was able to accomplish this
double transmutation of identity because he comes from the same country
as José Martí. In Guillen's motherland the Cuban quest for nationalism
followed a social process of transmutation of ethnic and cultural values
from mambismo between 1868-1895 to the worker's movement of Mella
and Martinez Villena, from Céspedes to Jesús Menéndez, from Máximo
Gomez to Lázaro Peña, from Antonio Maceo to Fidel Castro, despite one
hundred long years of vicissitude, until the decisively unifying action of
the present-day socialist revolution, wherein the people of Marti and
those of his continent have begun, not only at the level of poetry but also
in their real life, to "be America."

Negritude in the French-Speaking Antilles

The Martinican, Guadalupan, and Guyanese negritude movement, more

or less contemporaneous with the Haitian renaissance of 1928 that took
off with Ainsi parla Y onde and La Revue Indigene, constitutes a vanguar-
dism that does not, however, coincide with that of Haiti. This movement
was organically formed in Paris, where its initiators attended university.
They included Étienne Léro, Jules Monnerot, Rene Menil, Aimé Césaire,
Léon Damas, Leonard Sainville, Aristide Maugée, the Achule brothers
(the only Haitian of the Antillean group was Doctor Sajous of Cayes,
Haiti); these were joined, two years later, by the African students
Leopold Sedar Senghor, Osmane Sosé and Birago Diop, all from Senegal.
At the beginning, and possibly until its dismemberment by World War II,
this group was ideologically very heterogeneous, and included the strict
Marxist Rene Menil, a man of exemplary loyalty, and Jules Monnerot,
who was to lose himself in the desert of low-grade anticommunism. These
—
young intellectuals started aside from the Revue du monde noir, a bilin-
gual publication with Andrée Nardal and Sajous with the collaboration of
Price-Mars, A. Locke, C. McKay, Félix Eboué and Rene Maran two —
equally ephemeral publications: Legitime defense (1932) and L'Etudiant
noir (1934), which, with various arms (Marxism, surrealism, Freudianism,
268 Africa in Latin America

not counting the ethnology of Frobenius, Delafosse, George Hardy,

Robert Delavignette, Theodore Monod) opened heavy artillery fire on
both the "bourgeois, Christian, capitalist world and upon colonial oppres-
sion and racism." Facing the absurdity of a world where the fascism of
Benito Mussolini for ten years had villified the Italy of Dante, Giordano
Bruno, Leonardo, and Antonio Gramsci, and where Adolph Hitler was at
the verge of launching Nazi bestiality upon Germany and Europe, eight
young Martinican intellectuals published an explosive text, entitled The
Manifesto of Legitimate Defense, where they openly took a political and
cultural position.
This manifesto, easily traceable to the francophone colonized Carib-
bean, was rapidly stifled by the French police, but was to reemerge two
years later in L'Étudiant noir published by Césaire and Senghor.
Within this context, so well analyzed by André Lucréce (with the three
mortgages: ethnology, Freudianism, and surrealism, in which negritude
would be stuck until it reached a crisis within the confusingly paired
concepts of master/slave, White/Black, reason/emotion, class/race, cul-
ture/civilization, Prospero/Caliban, Senghor/Césaire), an Antillean and
African vanguardism would be articulated by the "racial" troika of Aimé
Césaire, Léon Damas and Leopold Sedar Senghor.
From where does the fortunate word-concept negritude come?
Césaire, who used it for the first time in L'Etudiant noir, answers:

Since the Antilleans were ashamed of being Negroes, they looked for some
kind of circumlocution with which to refer to a Negro. They talked about
"the man with the tanned skin" and other similar stupidities ... so we
adopted the word négre (Negro) as the challenge word. This was a name of
challenge. It was somewhat of a reaction of an angry young man. Since they
were ashamed of the word négre, we then decided to use the term négre. I
must confess that when we founded L'Étudiant noir, I really wanted to call
it L'Étudiant négre, but there was too much resistance in the Antilles. Some

considered the word négre too offensive, for this reason I took the liberty of
talking about negritude. There was within us a will to defiance, a violent
affirmation of the word négre and of the word negritude.

On another occasion, and in answer to the precise question of Lilyan

Kesteloot: "I would like to know what is your exact position with regard
to negritude?" Césaire subjected himself for the first time to public self-

criticism in which he was careful to dot all his fs:

. . . There is an obvious fact: negritude has brought with it certain

dangers. It has had the tendency to transform itself into a school, to trans-
form itself into a church, to transform itself into a theory and into an ideol-
ogy. I am in favor of negritude from a literary point of view and as a
personal ethic, but I am against an ideology based on negritude. I am posi-
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 269

live that negritude cannot resolve everything; I am particularly in agreement

with the viewpoint of those who criticise negritude because of certain ways
it has been used. When a theory, for example a literary theory, begins to
serve a certain policy, I believe it becomes very controversial ... On
whether negritude acts as a forecaster . . . well, not really, because I believe
there are other elements, that there are philosophical elements, etc., that
must define us. I absolutely reject that idyllic type of pan-negrism based on
confusionism; I tremble to think that it could be confused with neg-
ritude. . . .

One must also point to the work of Henri Bangou, a Guadalupan histo-
rian and essayist. The following are a few of his critical evaluations of
negritude:

It is absolutely impossible to separate the work of Cesaire and his ne-

gritude from a total compromise on the political level, both with regard to
decolonization in general and with the liberation of the oppressed people.
Fromthis point of view Senghor's negritude is totally different. It is formal
and mystical, and thus equally racist, since it makes one believe that there
are essential Black traits that are different from distinctive White traits. We
find nothing similar in Jacques Roumain or Price-Mars or Depestre. . . .

There is another misunderstanding that must be dissipated; Césaire' s ne-

gritude has nothing to do with masochistic self satisfaction, with that type of
beatific return to the past, that type of primitivism that would not hesitate to
make of the liberated people new victims of the developed world, if these
would have the time to sing to the Black soul and to primitive agrarian
communism.

Ideological Role of Negritude

In speaking about negritude and Sartre's Black Orpheus, let us make it

clear that it was not Sartre who originated all the misunderstandings we
have pointed out. It is not for nothing that Jean-Paul Sartre, in addition to
having written his famous preface to Senghor's "Anthology" and another
hundred well-known texts, was the author of a study entitled The Critique
of Dialectical Reasoning. In Black Orpheus, written in 1948, one could
already see, in spite of his serious struggles with historic materialism, that
there was nevertheless no incomplete or hasty understanding of Marxist
dialectics. Sartre's discourse was based upon three fundamental premises
that almost thirty years ago clarified the class content of the anthropolog-
ical notion of negritude, before its pure and simple retreival by Prospero
(as opposed to Caliban):

1. The Black man, just like the White worker, is the victim of the capitalist
structure of our society; this situation is revealed in his close solidarity,
that surpasses skin pigmentation, with certain classes of Europeans who
270 Africa in Latin America

are as oppressed as heis; he is encouraged to project a society without

privilegeswhere skin pigmentation is considered a simple accident. But

although oppression is only one, it is shaped by history and by geo-
graphical conditions: the Black man is the victim because he is black,
because he is a colonized native or a deported African. And because he is
oppressed on account of his race he must thus gain awareness of his
race. .Insulted, enslaved, he rises, he picks up the word "negro" that
. .

has been hurled at him like a stone, and he proudly becomes revindicated
as a "negro" before the White man.
2. In fact, negritude appears like the weak point within a dialectic progres-
sion: the theoretical and practical affirmation of the supremacy of the
White man is the thesis; the position of negritude is the antithesis. But
this negative moment is not sufficient in itself, and the negroes who use
it, know it very well; they know that it points to the preparation of the

synthesis or the realization of the human being within a society without

races. Therefore, negritude must be destroyed, it is a transition, not a
point of arrival, it is the middle and not the ultimate end.
3. What will happen if the "negro" casting aside his negritude in favor of
revolution only wishes to consider himself as master? What will happen
if he will only permit himself to be defined by his objective social condi-
tion? . . . Will the source of poetry stop? Or will the great black river
color, in spite of everything, the ocean into which it flows.

The truth of Jean-Paul Sartre's Black Orpheus revolves around three

axes. In discussing them in 1948, in aWest infected by racism, the author
of The Words expressed as well as his ideology would permit him to, the
historical drama of the West African ethnic groups and of their descend-
ants who had been dispersed throughout the Americas. He was right in
asserting that the achievement of class awareness and the solidarity of the
colonized people had been prepared ideologically from the 1920s to the
1940s by parallel identity movements of the cultural or political pan-
African conferences, which had given an important place to the notion of
race. Sartreshowed how the Black proletariat was doubly alienated: as
human whose work power is confiscated and as human beings
beings
whose pigmentation is viewed pejoratively, thus making color an object of
change of genetic history, a social essence of human rela-
fetish, an evil
tions. In reading the lyrical productions of the francophone descendants
of Africans, Sartre saw that the awareness of this double alienation and —
the obsessive preoccupation to overcome them with their dual class/race
—
aspects had fostered the creativity of the most important poets of
Leopold Sedar Senghor's Anthology. In 1948, wherever one looked in the
West, what could one see? Black workers taking the chestnuts destined
for the "White" colonial oligarchies out of the fire. Both in America and in
Africa, the vast majority of Blacks were cane cutters, cooks, street clean-
ers, fire tenders, agricultural workers, or factory laborers, whose arms
and muscles only counted for the services they rendered to the insolently
 Hello and Goodbye to Negritude 271

oppressive minorities. In 1948, save for Haiti and the United States, there
still weren't any bourgeois Blacks on the historic scene who were accom-

plices to the colonialist activities of the West. From reading the sixteen
poets whose work had been compiled by Senghor, Sartre concluded that
negritude would be called on sooner or later to make common cause with
the socialist October Revolution and the liberation movement of the col-
onized people. His study therefore had other merits. He accurately ana-
lyzed, for example, what Léon Laleau wanted to express in his poem
"Treason."

This obsessive heart that does not correspond

to my language or to my clothing
and on which bite, like on a hook,
sentiments and habits
borrowed from Europe. Do you feel the suffering
and this unequalled exasperation
to dominate with words from France
this heart that came to me from Senegal?

Thus Sartre offered an analysis acceptable by a Marxist, with regard to

the differencebetween Christian "pain," which invites the oppressed to
morose and masochistic resignation, and the suffering of the slaves of
America, which was dynamically incorporated into history through
voodoo, music, dance, which transformed the anguish of the "Black con-
dition" through a state of healthy and legitimate defense, into a creative
sociocultural factor. This we have humblycalled "sociocultural marron-
age." Sartre also understood the importance of the "colored" intelligent-
sia in the rehabilitation of black skin, the physical beauty of Blacks, and
the rationalization of the socioeconomic concept of race, which was ac-
complished by Roumain, Guillen, DuBois, .Langston Hughes, Fanon,
Césaire, Claude McKay, Paul Niger, Morisseau-Leroy, Damas, Regino
Pedroso, Gui Tirolien, Jean F. Brierre, Emilio Roumer, etc.*
Let us now briefly refer to Senghor' s negritude. Leopold Senghor, with
his vital, mystical, and neoromantic perspective, considered one of the

*Other very subtle aspects linked to the psychoaffective consequences of colonization

have been philosophically explained by Sartre. But this great text, Black Orpheus, contains
errors that are as glaring as its emeralds of truth. For example, for Sartre, the racial con-
sciousness formation "is differentiated by its nature (my italics) from that which Marxism
tries to awaken in the White man .... The awareness of race is thus fixed upon the Black
soul, or, better said, since the term recurs in the Anthology, on a common thought and
conduct of Blacks that is called "negritude." Here a Marxist cannot agree with Sartre. The
Africans who were deported to America were forced to form a racial consciousness not
because they had a "Black soul" or a negritude that was consubstantial to their nature, but
because of the specific colonial capitalist mode of production. The condition of enslaved
Africans has been defined by the American plantation system of production and the distribu-
tion of goods. Racial consciousness is imposed upon the plantation workers by strictly dated
circumstances.
272 Africa in Latin America

historic forms of alienation (racial dogma) that emerged out of the

bourgeois work ethic, out of the production and distribution of goods, as
an eternally intrinsic objectivation of the "Black African man" (at least
since Grimaldi's little negroid statuettes). He made of negritude a
timeless, a historical phenomenon headed for a passionate and irrational
return towards the vital, towards "Black emotion."
Historic circumstances have not selected, however, one sole nation or
one particular "race" to advance the New World renaissance. A univer-
salizing class, the proletariat, with its natural allies, is irreversibly on the
road towards this qualitative jump that Lenin and his people forced his-
tory to take in 1917. The passion and the sacrifices of the Blacks have
been consummated. Black and White, as well as all other "racial" catego-
ries of capitalism, are disappearing from the historic scene. The cursed
pair class/race will be erased more and more in the laws, constitutions,
customs, and ways of dreaming and acting of human beings. Black and
White, as social types of a bygone social structure, only maintain a mythi-
cal existence within the delirium of the Old South or within the colonial
insanity known as Apartheid.
Recently Cuban troops crossed the South Atlantic, following the in-
verse route of the slave trade and its slave boats. For the first time since
the fifteenth century, an African country, formerly plundered by the raid-
ers that fed upon the market of "pieces of ebony," witnessed the arrival
on its shores and the penetration in its air space of the caravelles that
came from the Caribbean. What did the Angolans discover onboard?
Raceless brothers, plain Cubans, of the type of José Martí, Antonio
Maceo, Mella, and Fidel, carriers of the good news of a well-armed sol-
idarity. The American brother did not come to pick up a knife or a rifle
against his African brother, but he came to help him expel from his in-
vaded home the agents of Prospero, traitors to his nation and to Africa.
This is no tempest in a literary glass of water, but an alliance of free men

that cuts off the arms of colonial violence. The route to Angola, consti-
tutes in 1976 a sea and air trip of sheer humanity, aware of its inter-
nationalist rights and duties; it is the crossing of a Caliban who can pilot
the modern boats and airplanes. It is a success without precedent in the
history of the African/American couple.
The fact is that there is no tomorrow not even on this
negritude of
December night. This morning, cocks of Havana, the
in rising before the
Black Orpheus of my youth has discovered a lifeless fairy between the
blue sheets of this essay. It is time to say hello to our Mother America and
to the revolution that it has started here. It is time for good Cuban coffee
and to say goodbye to negritude!
 12
Latin America in Africa

Pierre Verger

It was not the Latin Americans themselves who had an influence on

Africa, but instead, the old freed slaves and their descendants returning to
their original continent after having remained involuntarily in the
Americas for some time.
One exceptionto this generalization is the case of certain White Brazil-
ian families, who, during the anti-Portuguese movement that followed
Brazil's declaration of independence in 1822, left Pernambuco over a
period of several years and settled in Mossammedes. They took with
them all their belongings, including their African slaves, so that they
could rebuild large agricultural plantations, patriarchal in nature, similar
to the ones they had abandoned in Brazil. However, this phenomenon
1

comes closer to Portuguese colonization than to Latin American in-

fluence.
The real Latin American influence, transmitted via the freed slaves,
was a consequence of the slave trade. But this return movement of some
thousands of freed slaves did not arise in all Latin American countries. Its
point of departure was limited to Brazil, and Bahia in particular, within
the first few decades of the nineteenth century. It was not until the second
half of the century that the movement extended to Cuba. We know very
little about it with regard to other Latin American countries.

Likewise, the places they returned to were also limited, including cer-
tain regions along the coast of theGulf of Benin, such as Agoué, Ouidah,
Porto Novo, Badagry, and Lagos, which were then the main slave export
ports. The slave trade ended in Brazil around 1851, and some fifteen years
later it also ceased in Cuba.
In this study we will refer to the Brazilian influence along the Gulf of
Benin, since it is the most visible influence that still exists.
The ports that the Cuban and Brazilian freed slaves returned to are
located now in Nigeria and the People's Republic of Benin, the same
territories they had come from. But once they had returned, the repa-
triates could not return to their native inland villages without running the
risk of being imprisoned again and sent back as slaves, due to the war that
theDahoman King had been waging for many years with his neighbors,
and because of the intertribal conflicts that were devastating the Yoruba
nation.
This was the sad fortune of forty passengers aboard the Portuguese
ship General Rego, who, backed by a letter written by the British consul

273
274 Africa in Latin America

in Lagos on January 2, 1856, "Should be, according to the contract,

permitted to disembark Lagos with all of their goods. However, these
in
unfortunate people were forced to disembark in Ouidah, where their prop-
erty was embargoed, and, under the pretext that they were from Egbá (a
village in the interior of Abeokuta), they were sent back to the King of
Dahomey, who condemned the adults to death and saved the children as
slaves." 2
The king of Dahomey in was
vain tried to reconquer Abeokuta. This
the only village in the interior of the Yoruba country where numerous
slaves freed from the repressive slave trade by the British fleet had been
brought from Freetown, in Sierra Leone, to be regrouped under the in-
fluence of Protestant priests to form a society with a far stronger British
than Latin American influence.
On the other hand, the freed slaves who were returning from Brazil had
been strongly influenced by their long stay in that country. "They had no
ties with 'Africans' other than the fact that they had arrived as such in
Brazil," writes Gilberto Freyre. "Rather than Brazilians, one could say
that they were 'Brazilianized Africans' due to their contacts with nature,
the environment, and the culture of this part of America, which already
had a strong mestizo coloration. These Africans and descendants of Afri-
cans who had lived in Brazil, particularly in Bahia, returned to Africa
bringing along customs and habits that they had acquired in the foreign
land, and to which they were tied forever."
3

In fact, if they had been marked by the lifestyle imposed upon them in
the New World, they, too, impressed their own African influence on
Brazil. The contact of African slaves and freedmen with the Portuguese
who had come from Europe or who had been born in Brazil had generated
a double transculturation process that, according to Roger Bastide: "Pro-
duced at the same time Mulatto children and a Mestizo culture." The
more or less pronounced "de- Africanization" of Blacks brought about, on
the other hand, a certain Africanization of the White population.
The Africans imported by Brazil through the slave trade, their de-
scendants who had also been kept as slaves, and even those who had
succeeded in gaining their freedom, were members of the poorest class of
Brazilian society at the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, in
spite of their low social level, their influence on the culture of the country
is from insignificant.
far
"Bahia is becoming Africanized," wrote Luis Vianna Filho, "every-
where we find the Black man with his culture, his customs, and his uncon-
scious. It is as though he was unconsciously transmitting them to the new
society into which he had been forcibly integrated. And this society was
assimilating everything without perceiving that the Black slave was the
transmittor. Organized society, following Portuguese standards, was un-
aware of this transmission. This society did not consider it possible that
 Latin America in Africa 275

an influence generating from such base conditions and with such different
and far away roots could have an impact. Nevertheless, slowly and insidi-
ously, in a manner so much more efficient than if it had shown a concerted
and deliberate effort that would undoubtedly have provoked a strong
opposition, the Black influence made itself felt." 4
This influence was initiated during the tender infancy of the Whites,
who were nursed and taken care of by the Black wet nurse who would
rock them to sleep to the tunes of African lullabies, amused them with her
stories, and soothed or frightened them with African beliefs. Slowly they
would become conditioned to African cultural values. Roger Bastide
points out that on the large estates and sugar plantations the wife and
children of the master rarely left their mansion, where they lived sur-
rounded by a multitude of African and Creole slaves; they would work
together on their sewing and embroidery, singing songs from Portugal and
Africa, chatting together about African and Portuguese beliefs and super-
stitions, mixing the ideas, the proverbs, and the sayings that contained the
knowledge of the two cultures. The young boys ran around the fields with
Black peers who served as their scapegoats as well as being their play and
study mates. Thus they learned and acquired African reactions and forms
of behavior. Later they would have their first love experiences with Black
women who worked at their ancestral home or in the fields, mingling
elements of sexual attraction with understanding, in relationships with
those conventionally considered people of a different race.
But Brazilian society was dominated by Whites, their culture and their
religion. To advance in this environment, the freed slaves were obliged to
succumb to the standards established by their ancient masters, and in
order to be tolerated and to be admitted into the society, however margin-
ally, they had to adopt its lifestyle and manners and to follow, at least
outwardly, White principles.
Often, after they had been freed, they would form Catholic religious
brotherhoods, grouped according to their ethnic origins.
The Brazilian custom that permitted slaves to obtain their freedom if
they could repay their masters the amount for which they had been pur-
chased, resulted in the early liberation from their servile condition of
numerous slaves. Slaves working mines rarely had the
in the fields or in
opportunity to buy their freedom; but those who were
sent by their mas-
ters to make money in the streets, as porters, salespersons, street vend-
ors, errand boys, etc., and who had the right to keep a portion of the
money that exceeded the sum stipulated by their masters, could easily
gain their freedom.
In Bahia, once they were free, the Africans of Bantu origins, from the
Congo and from Angola, became members of the cofradía (society or
club) of Our Lady of the Rosary of colored people, established in the
church of the same name in the Pelourinho neighborhood. The Daho-
276 Africa in Latin America

mans, called Gégé in Brazil, gathered around Our Lord of Necessities and
Redemption in the Corpus Santo chapel in the lower part of the city; the
Nagó-Yorubas, got together in two cofradías in the little church of Barro-
quinha, in the heart of the city; the men gathered around Our Lord of the
Martyrs and the women around the Virgin of Good Death.
All this was part of the process of 'de-Africanization,' stronger in
appearance than in reality, for, among the members of the cofradía of
Barroquinha were the founders of the first terreiros (cult centers) or Afri-
can temples, where the cults to the various Nagó-Yoruba divinities have
been faithfully perpetuated to the present.
African slaves had all been baptized when they arrived in Brazil or in
Cuba, but some of them found it difficult to participate fully in the Catho-
lic religion, which had been taught to them in a language that was not their

own; in fact, most of them preserved their faith in the efficiency of the
control of the forces of nature by their traditional gods, and they believed
in the soothing protection offered to them by their ancestors.
Since these African religions had to be hidden behind the mask of the
religion of their masters, there resulted a syncretism between the African
gods and the Catholic saints. This syncretism was based on the degree of
approximation between the religious imagery of the latter to certain char-
acteristics of the former.
After some time, adherence to the religion of the masters became more
sincere. Among the descendants of Africans —Creole
Blacks born in
Brazil —
educated to equally respect the beliefs of their African ancestors
and the teachings of the Catholic Church that came from Portugal, the two
religions mixed and became confused without provoking major problems.
As we said earlier, the freed Brazilian and Cuban slaves, upon return-
ing to Africa, were often unable to reestablish themselves in their home
village in the heart of the continent and could therefore not become rein-
tegrated into their traditional milieu. Isolated from their families and liv-
ing in coastal villages, where they were considered strangers since they
were members of different ethnic groups, they formed a coherent Latin
American society; the cultural and religious traditions they had all ac-
quired in the New World was what tied them to each other. Thus they
formed a relatively small group inserted into an African world that was no
longer their world.
If in the New
World they had preserved their African peculiarities, it
was American originality, that they
their non- African side, their Latin
cultivated and tried to highlight upon returning to Africa.
In some cases their birthplaces had been destroyed by wars, and they
ran the risk of repeating the adventures of the freed Black of Bahia man
who had been found by John Duncan in deep in the
Adofobia in 1845,
heart of Africa: "Once he returns he finds that his birthplace had been
burned twice by the enemy and that it was largely inhabited by foreigners
 Latin America in Africa 277

of a far Now he was a stranger, looked at suspiciously, and

away country.
his land, thathe had desired to return to for so many years, was no more
than a desolate place. With a lonely heart, the old freedman took the long
journey back to the coast, so that he could return to Bahia, if that were
possible." 5
The importance of Bahia among the people who returned to the shores
is made obvious in a text published by Ely sée Réclus in 1887:
of Africa
"The name of the Brazilian city Bahia was the most important since they
eyes; it served to designate, in a general manner, all countries located
outside of Africa." 6
The same John Duncan, who observed the departure of a slave expedi-
"The freedmen who had arrived from
tion at Ouidah, wrote: Brazil had all
lined up watch the procession [of slaves who were about to embark on
to
a slave ship], which gave them a great feeling of satisfaction, in this
maintained that their happiest days were those that they had spent in
Bahia. I asked many why they had left such a pleasant place, and they
assured me that it was because of a revolt that had been organized by
some slaves in Bahia that had ruined many owners and large sugar planta-
tions, which meant that they could no longer be employed. However, in
all probability, these men had been among the revolutionaries and had
7
been expelled from the country."
The opinion expressed by this British traveler was perfectly sound.
There had been a series of slave and freedman revolts in Bahia between
1807 and 1835, on the inland plantations and in the city itself. The nature
of these revolts had not been understood by the government at the time.
This had not been a general revolt of Blacks against Whites like in Haiti,
but a Bahian repercussion of the jihad, or holy war, of the Fulanis, that
had been declared in Africa in 1804. The impact of the Islamic religion to
the north of the Yoruba country led to the arrival in Bahia of war prison-
ers of the fighting tribes: Fulanis, Haoussas, and Yorubas, some of these
recently converted to Islam. This holy war continued in Bahia in the form
of slave and freedman revolts, all by Moslems fighting against a world of
infidels. These attacks were also directed against their enslaved comrades
who were not Moslems, and against their White masters.
After the last revolt in 1835, the police had persecuted the freed slaves
without great discernment, not making any distinctions between Moslems
and Catholics; they had also conducted a series of inquiries that some-
times resulted in the expulsion of freed Catholic slaves who had not
participated in the seditious movements. These investigations, often con-
ducted without any sort of understanding, resulted in the return to their
homeland of many African Catholics, so that, paradoxically, as a conse-
quence of the jihad (the holy war that was to spread Islam throughout
Africa), the Catholic faith was expanded in Africa.
It was thus that, in 1835, a freed slave from the Azima family of the
278 Africa in Latin America

Hoko region in the country of Mahi, north of Abomey, returned to Africa

under the name of Joaquim de Almeida, after having spent many years in
Bahia as a servant of navy captain Manuel Joaquim de Almeida.
Having obtained his freedom, Joaquim de Almeida established himself
in Agoué, to become a slave trader! Being a good Catholic did not inhibit
him in his profession; in fact, with his own money, he was able to build
one of the first Catholic chapels in this coastal area of Africa, long before
the arrival of missionaries. He brought with him from Bahia a statue of
Our Lord of Necessities and of Redemption, similar to the figure in the
left nave of the present church of Corpus Santo in Bahia, which was the

meeting place of the Dahoman Gégé cofradía, of which Joaquim de Al-

meida was a member.
Although he was Catholic, Joaquim de Almeida had maintained the
African custom of polygamy, and displayed a remarkable desire to per-
petuate himself through a large number of descendants. He had a respect-
able number of concubines. His children were baptized in the chapel he
had built in Agoué, in groups of fifteen and twenty at a time, by Catholic
priests in transit to the island of Sao Thome.
The first Catholic missionaries, arriving in 1863 to successfully
evangelize this part of Africa, were surprised to find the presence of
Christians for over thirty years on the shores of present-day Dahomey
and Nigeria. But because they were not familiar with the flourishing syn-
cretism (which still exists) of Brazil, they expressed their indignation in
sharp terms.
The Reverend Father Francisco Borghero wrote in 1864: "We were
very sad to see those Portuguese Blacks and Whites, who called them-
selves Christians, for the most part living exactly like pagans. Their reli-

gion consisted of a monstrous amalgamation of paganism, Christian prac-

8
tices, and fetishist superstitions."
Abbot Laffite said in 1876: "Some of them never had more connection
with Christianity than their baptismal name, and they didn't feel guilty in
invoking Black gods." 9 And
he added: "Due to an innocent pride, these
Brazilians do not wantbe treated as Black." It is true that the Catholic
to
religion in those days tried to link the Whites, who had certain privileges,
to the faithful of other colors. The various professions of faith by "Brazil-
ians" and other Africans who had been recently converted sought more to
erase the disadvantages determined by social privileges than to show their
sincere and profound devotion to the dogmas of the Church.
Under the energetic direction of the missionaries, both Protestant and
Catholic, and motivated by their desire to climb the social ladder, they
had to give up their traditional religious practices. It was thus, in Africa
itself, that the returned Africans lost their African identity.
As for the "Brazilians" who had become Moslems in Brazil, they were
not always well received by their African coreligionists, who reproached
 Latin America in Africa 279

them for not being familiar with the teachings of the Koran. Many of the
conversions to Islam that had taken place in Bahia had been provoked by
rebellious sentiments against the White masters. These emotions had
been toned down and calmed after the return. Furthermore, almost all of
them had names related to Christianity, such as Cruz, Calvary,
Nacimiento (Birth), de las Llagas (of Thorns), la Concepción (Concep-
tion), etc., and displayed a greater tolerance and understanding of it, since
they felt closer to the Brazilian Catholic lifestyle than to African Mos-
lems, which is why they had closer ties with the "Brazilian" community.
To reinforce their "Latin American" from
social status, so different
and dress habits they had
that of the natives, they maintained the nutrition
acquired on the other side of the Atlantic, and built houses similar to
those that they or their masters had lived in. These were houses with
windows cut into small squares, surrounded by a white molding, contrast-
ing with the vividly colored African facades. In some cases, these houses
also had wrought-iron balconies that had been brought from Brazil. The
interior was furnished with seats, beds, and Jacaranda trunks.* The living
room had a glass case containing porcelain dishes and crystal glasses,
which were the pride of the homeowner. The walls were decorated with
family portraits and religious images; a picture of the Last Supper was
exhibited in the best location.
The furnishings also included, to the exasperation of Richard Burton,
music boxes. "These articles, he wrote, were one of the afflictions of the
West African. The Whites would honor a visitor by activating one of these
abominations, and the Blacks, who had a half dozen, would make them all
play at the same time." 10
A doorway decorated with lions, or a carved lintel, flanked the house
and gave access to an inside patio and the gardens that surrounded the
main building.
Everything was reminiscent of the home of the master, whom the
"Latin Americans" who had returned to Africa, had served for many
years in America.
According to Elysée Réclus, "the Brazilians" went into business as
intermediaries or as importers. They proved to be stiff competition for
European merchants, and because of their family ties with the natives,
they acquired an increasing advantage over the foreigners. Without any
state intervention, as in Sierra Leone, and without the presence of philan-
thropic societies, as in Liberia, the African coast was being peopled by
freed slaves and sons of slaves in this part of the Black continent, and the
results of this voluntary immigration did not seem inferior to that of the
British colonies or the North American companies.""

* Brazilian rose wood.

280 Africa in Latin America

The only possible line of business upon return was to join the slave
trade, which was what some of them did with great financial success.
Having been the merchandise they now became the merchants. Later on,
when the European markets opened up to cotton and palm oil imports, the
"Latin Americans" were able to become involved in more innocent com-
mercial activities.
Together with the old slave traders, who had sent them across the
now formed the wealthiest group of this Latinamerican
Atlantic, they
society.
They maintained a grand lifestyle. The Prince of Joinville, having
passed through Ouidah in 1843, referred to Francisco Félix de Souza,
known as "Chacha," in his memoires: "In the afternoon, I ate with him on
silver plates, lit by church candelabra and candlesticks. We toasted to the
king and to the queen, and to the prosperity of France. Each toast was
saluted by twenty-one cannon shots, since Chacha's factory was a verita-
ble fortress, protected by cannons. Chacha gave me a box of tobacco
from Havana, such as no king of Spain had ever smoked." 12

Forbes, who had been invited by the Souza family in 1850, declared
that during the course of a picnic "a tablecloth as white as milk had been
spread on the grass, covered with delicacies, French, Portuguese, Span-
ish and German wines, and all the china, from the coffee cups to the gravy
dishes, was of solid silver."
13

Relations with Brazil were very close, and the means of communica-
tion were plentiful: for some years, Ouidah and Bahia were tied by more
than a hundred trips, an average of one boat every three and a half days.
The children of the former slaves had studied in Brazil, and their slaves
had learned a profession.
"The slave trade was a very profitable investment," wrote John Dun-
can, "and the merchants were able to import all they needed from
14
Brazil."
The same traveler also wrote: "The countryside surrounding Ouidah is
very interesting. The land is good and many places are cultivated by the
people who came from Brazil. These are the most industrious people I
have encountered in a long time. All of their beautiful estates, six to seven
miles from Ouidah, are well cultivated. Their clean and comfortable
houses are located in the midst of the best one's imagination could ever
describe. It is really agreeable to unexpectedly find a home where one is
greeted in European style and invited to have a drink. Later, I always
15
found proof that these people had been slaves."
Various aspects of everyday Latin American life (particularly of Brazil
and especially of Bahia), are still visible in the villages along the coast of
the Gulf of Benin, as we pointed out earlier.
A mass is celebrated each year on the third Sunday of January in honor
 Latin America in Africa 281

of Senhor do Bomfin (Our Lord Bomfin), a very popular Bahian festivity

brought to the African coast by the Brazilians. After the religious cere-
monies a picnic is organized in a rural area in the vicinity of the city.
All the resources of Brazilian cuisine are conjured up in the preparation
of dishes such as: feijoada, cousido, carurú, mocoto, feijáo de leite,
cocada* and other delicacies cooked according to the recipes learned
long ago in Brazil.
After the meal, the Brazilians dance the Samba de Roda (Samba
round), where male and female dancers alternately display an orgy of
complicated steps, with frills and acrobatic skills, dancing alone in the
center of a circle of people who accompany their steps with the clapping
of hands and with Brazilian songs. 16

Samba eu quero samba Samba, I want samba

Cajueiro Cajuá Cashew nut tree, Cajua
Samba eu quero samba Samba I want samba
Eu vou ver minha Sinhá. I will go see my mistress.

Some of these songs express the feelings of nostalgia of these repatriate

Africans for the land to which they had been sent as slaves:

Corre meu cávalo Run my horse

Na maior alegría With the greatest happiness
Vai dizer meu Brazil Go tell my Brazil
Que nao se esqueja de mim. That it should not forget me.

or else the following, that humorously reflects religious prejudices:

Minha máe que me pariu My mother who gave me birth

Me bota tua bengáo Give me your blessing
Que eu vou na terra dos negros For I am going to the land of the
Blacks
Vou morrer sem confissáo. Where I will die without con-
fession.

Others refer to the feast of Senhor do Bomfin:

Papai eu quero casar FatherI want to marry

Mamáe eu quero casar Mother I want to marry

Hoje, hoje, hoje Today, today, today

*Feijoada: stew of black beans, dried meat, ham, sausages, pig's feet and tail
Cousido: a stew
Carurú: dish with okra, shrimp, fish, peppers and palm oil
Mocotó: ankle bones of pig or cow, the inside of which is eaten
Feijáo de leite: a white bean
Cocada: coconut sweet meat dish [translator's note]
282 Africa in Latin America

Na festa do Bomfin At the feast of Bomfin

Hoje, hoje, hoje Today, today, today
Domingo do Bomfin Sunday of Bomfin
Agora Deus vou me casar Now, God, will I marry
Agora Deus vou me casar. Now, God, will I marry.

Or else:

Éa festa do Bomfin It is the feast of Bomfin

Éo dia do Bomfin It is the day of Bomfin
Olélé prima Chiquinha Olele cousin Chiquinha
Vamos sambar Let us dance the samba
Na terra d'areia. On the sandy ground.

Themes of everyday life in Brazil are also evoked:

Papai cade minha máe Father, where's my

mother?
Tua máe foi na feira Your mother went market
to the
Foi na feira comprar quiabo She went to the market to buy okra
Para cozinhar para meninha To cook for the little girl

Para comer comida To eat food

Junto da minha filinha. Next to my little daughter.

or:

Acenda luz Maria Turn on the light Maria

Eu quero alumiar I want to light up

Agua de beber Water to drink

Goma de gomar Tapioca to eat
Acenda luz Maria Turn on the light, Maria.

and even more:

Suba na mangueira Climb up the mango tree

Ora suba na mangueira Now go up the mango tree
Nao jogue manga no chao Don't throw the mango on the
ground
La darriba respondeu The one at the top answered
Nao tem mais manga It has no more mangos

Nao tem It has none

Suba na mangueira Climb up the mango tree.

or this drinking song:

Carro nao puxa sem boi The cart does not get pulled with-
out an ox
Eu nao canto sem beber I don't sing without drinking

Quem tem só a boca fala Whoever only has a mouth will talk
Quem tem só oho vem ver. Whoever only has an eye comes to
see.
 Latin America in Africa 283

Or this one about the popular street in Bahia:

Vamos na Baixa dos Sapateiros Let us go to the Baixa dos

Sapateiros
Vamos rabaixar o colarinho Let us unbutton the collar
Do Sinhó Galinheiro. Of Master Chickencoop

This song was sung to me one day by Epifánio Olimpo, grandfather

last
of a former president of the Republic of Togo:

As creoulas da Bahia The female creóles of Bahia

Todas andam de cordáo All walk around with gold chains
Ai violáo, violáo, violáo Ai violin, violin, violin
Ai violáo, violáo, violáo. Ai violin, violin, violin.

On Christmas Eve and Epiphany, the Brazilian societies of these Afri-

can villages organized parties called burrinha, similar to the bumba meu
boi of Brazil. They included a horse, a cardboard ox, and various dis-
guised people, all of which are part of the folklore of the Brazilian north-
east:

Vem a ver, vem a gostar Come see, come have fun

A burrinha está na rua The little donkey is in the street
Vem a ver, vem a gostar. Come see, come have fun.

In cities like Lagos, where the British influence was felt in the homes of
the freed slaves who had come from Sierra Leone and who had been
converted to the various Protestant sects, the Latin American identity
was strengthened by belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, and by the
splendor of the baptismal, marriage, and funerary ceremonies.
In other essays we have published some comments on these practices:

The weddings were announced with simplicity or pomp depending on the

social position of the parents of the young couple and their attitude towards
the mundane.
The marriage of Mr. Julio Martins, who teaches at the Roman Catholic
school, to Miss Victoria Pinto, first daughter of Mrs. Felicidade Maria de
Jesus of Bamgbosche Street, on September 27, 1890, was celebrated at the
Roman Catholic Church with great pomp.
17

On October 8, in the same church, Mr. Ignacio Pinto was wed to Miss
Angela R. da Silva, daughter of Mr. F. R. da Silva. The ceremony was
officiated over by the Reverend Father Pied. The bride was given away by
her cousin, Mr. F. Medeiros.
On December 10:

The marriage ceremony of Miss Eugenia Margarita de Carvalho and Mr.

Jerónimo W. Medeiros, took place at the Roman Catholic Church; the
284 Africa in Latin America

Reverend Father Pelley officiated. The bride wore a thin, white, silk dress,
decorated with orange flowers, with a long, white, silk veil,held by two
beautifully dressed pages; each one carried a silver chainand medal, gifts of
the husband. After the ceremony all the guests went to Carvalho Hall, home
of the mother of the bride, where a buffet was served.
The couple left at
noon to spend their honeymoon at Victoria Beach. Best wishes for a long
life and happiness to the newlyweds.

On April 1, 1896, the Lagos Standard published the following notes:

In spite of its being Lent, the elegant season of Lagos is at its peak. At the
Roman Church of Santa Cruz, the wedding celebration of Mr. L. A. Car-
doso, the well-known merchant of Bamgbosche Street, to Miss Juana G.
Bastos, daughter of Mrs. Felicidade M. de la Concepción, has already taken
place. The young lady is without a doubt one of the most important people
of the Brazilian quarter.
In May, Miss Julia Campos, a young and very affable lady, will take as
her husband Mr. Maximilano A. Lino of Porto Novo. This wedding will
certainly be awedding that will attract a large number of attendants. Mr.
and Mrs. A. Campos are well known and well respected in the commu-
J.

nity. And furthermore, Mr. Lino de Porto Novo, is a friend of Mrs. W. W.

Lewis and of Mrs. George Smith of Carvalho Hall.

In other sections of the newspapers we can read that on April 8, 1896:

Miss Maria Francisca Ramos wishes to acknowledge that through their

and visits, they have helped her overcome her sadness due to the
letters
recent death of her mother, "Madame" Luiza Antonia de la Purificación.

There was a certain hostility between Protestants and Catholics in

Lagos (Anglo-Saxons versus Latin Americans), according to an article
that appeared in the Lagos Times on August 18, 1891:

The selection of Father Chausse as Bishop of the Yoruba diocese, recently

formed by the Pope, has been announced. The Protestants of the Yoruba
mission, who have faced grave difficulties with regard to the resurgence of
Mohammedanism and stubborn paganism, must also fight against the in-
vincible enemy, the aggressive Roman Catholic. Unless we stop being Prot-
estants, our attitude toward Roman Catholicism cannot be other than a
declared hostility.

This rigid and sectarian attitude was in total contrast with the spirit of
understanding that continues to exist, despite the strong position of
Catholic missionaries in Africa, among the "Latin Americans," freed
slaves who came from Brazil and Cuba, in whom religious syncretism had
produced an equal respect for the teachings of the Catholic Church and
the beliefs they had inherited from their African ancestors. This tendency
 Latin America in Africa 285

to accept various religions was so ingrained that it continues to this day.

Such was the case with the Bahians who attached themselves simulta-
18
neously, and with equal sincerity, to Catholicism and Islam. This same
juxtaposition of the two religions, intransigent and mutually exclusive, is
found again in the descendants of the "Latin Americans" who came from
Africa, where some families bear Brazilian names, and are in part Catho-
lic and part Moslem. Their children, at birth, were given names deriving

from both religions, and to these they themselves added names inspired
by their traditional beliefs, thus giving the world a lesson in wisdom and
tolerance.

Notes

1. Gilberto Freyre, Problemas brasileros de antropología (Río de Janeiro,

1959), p. 27.
2. Pierre Verger, "Influence du Brésil au Golfe du Bénin," Memoire de
L'IFAN, num. 27 (Dakar, 1953), p. 614.
3. Freyre, Em torno de alguns túmulos Afrocristáos (Bahía, 1960), p. 267.
4. Vianna, p. 105.
5. John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa (London, 1847), vol. 2, p. 176.
6. Elysée Réclus, Nouvelle geographie universelle (Paris, 1887), p. 470.
7. Duncan, vol. 1, p. 201.
8. Francisco Borghero, "Relations sur l'établissement des missions dans le
vicariat apostolique du Dahomey," Annates de la Propagation de la Foi (Lyons,
1864), p. 440.
9. Abbé Laffite, Le pays des négres, (Tours, 1876), p. 46.
10. Richard F. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King ofDahomé (London, 1864),
p. 72.
11. Réclus, p. 471.
12. Prince de Joinville, Vieux souvenirs, 1818-1848 (Paris, 1894), p. 345.
13. F. E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (London, 1851) vol. 1, p. 124.
14. Duncan, vol. 1, p. 137.
15. Duncan, p. 185, vol. 1.

16. Verger, "Influence du Bresil," pp. 25-27.

17. Verger, "Flux et reflux," p. 627.
18. Ibid., p. 520.
 13

Africa of Latin America:

An Unguarded Reflection

Sidney W. Mintz

Against the continuums of time and space, scientists and humanists alike
project their constructions of reality, dividing what is really indivisible,
and thereby labeling and freezing an elusive and particular truth with their
invented categories. We speak of "the Old World" and "the New World,"
of "feudalism" and "capitalism," of "free labor" and "slave labor," and of
"the past" and "the present." At the same time, we concede at the outset
the arbitrariness and artificiality of our procedures, seeking to employ
considered judgment in interpreting events, in the hope thereby of reveal-
ing more of a complex reality, rather than of concealing it. Our reifications
of that reality ought to make things clearer, precisely because we recog-
nize them as artifices, as stratagems of research. Interpretations of the
past and present of entire societies, economic systems, or cultures are, in
these terms, never complete or definitive, but only more or less useful, to
the extent that they make sense of "the facts" by establishing or demon-
strating relationships among those facts. Such, at any rate, is the perspec-
tive used in the following presentation.
To address general terms the theme of "Africa in Latin America" is
in
to confront one of the most massive, dramatic, and tortured chapters in
human history. Any serious attempt to summarize or to interpret this total
phenomenon, which involved millions of persons, whole continents, and
deeply disturbing economic, political, and social transformations affect-
ing hundreds of different societies, would be the work of many lifetimes.
The present paper does not pretend to more than a sketchy and personal
overview of certain limited aspects of this grand theme.'
Between the first years of the sixteenth century and the final abolition
of slavery in Cuba (1886) and Brazil (1888), an estimated 9,200,000 en-
slaved Africans (Curtin 1969: 268) and perhaps 50,000 free or emancipated
Africans (Laurence 1971: 14; Aimes 1907: 236-37) reached the New
World. The estimate of more than nine million imported African slaves is
based on Curtin's careful examination of available published sources; he
readily admits that all such figures are subject to substantial error, and he
expects them to be revised in the future, in accord with the findings of
other scholars. 2
This unimaginably vast movement of peoples across the Atlantic was
incident to one of the clearest turning-points in world history: the first of

286
 Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 287

the classic divisions with which the present article intends to deal. The so-
called "Discovery" of the New World is as much a benchmark in the
chronicle of humanity as was the control of fire, the domestication of
plants and animals, or the mastery of fossil fuel or nuclear power. When
López de Gomara, addressing himself to Charles V in 1552, asserted that,
after the Creation and the coming of Christ, the most important event in
history had been the discovery of the New World, he was only pro-
claiming what most informed Europeans of that epoch would have freely
conceded (Hanke 1959: 2-3, 124).
The incorporation of the New World into European consciousness
had, among many others, two major dimensions which require our notice
immediately. First of all, it marked the emergence of what Konetzke
(1946: 9) called "planetary" empires, spanning whole oceans, and a shift
from the "thalassic" (Mediterranean) orientation of Europe to the
"oceanic" (Atlantic) orientation that was to dominate the external expan-
sion from the European heartland for centuries after. Second, the Dis-
— —
covery coincided with indeed, facilitated the beginnings of what Wal-
lerstein (1974a) has aptly named "the modern world-economy." In
Wallerstein's formulation, it was not the political enlargement of the
European imperium that marked the change, so much as the emergence of
a single economic system that could exceed and transcend political
boundaries. That economic system was capitalism, and its appearance,
spread, and consolidation, beginning in the sixteenth century, has been a
many-sided and intricate phenomenon. It seems impossible to this writer
to discuss the meaning of Africa in the Americas without attending the
significance of these two dimensions, expressed both geographically and
historically upon an immense canvas, one that encompassed not only the
whole New World itself, but Europe and Africa as well (Mintz 1977).
The guiding institution embodied in the capture, sale, transportation,
and exploitation of more than nine million persons and their descendants,
stretching over nearly four centuries, was slavery, and the political, mili-
tary, and economic conditions for its institutionalization and perpetua-
tion. The relationship of the slaves to the means of production is easily
differentiated— at first glance —
from those relations of production con-
ventionally associated with the capitalist system. The existence of a labor
force with no access to the means of production other than by the sale of
labor — —
power a proletariat, in short is regarded as a keystone in any
adequate description of the capitalist mode of production. Marx himself
was very explicit on this point, and his view has been accepted by many
distinguished students of European history. The "secret" of primitive
accumulation consisted of ". nothing else than the historical process of
. .

divorcing the producer from the means of production" (Marx 1938 [1867]:
738).
But the expansion of European capitalism involved the assimilation to
288 Africa in Latin America

homeland objectives of societies and peoples not yet part of the capitalist
system, by a variety of techniques that do not fit easily within a definition
of the capitalist mode of production. Though his interest in the world
outside Europe was of necessity secondary to his objective of demystify-
ing and unmasking the evolution of capitalism in Europe itself, Marx was
aware of this problem:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslave-

ment and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning
of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a
warren for the commercial hunting of Black-skins, characterized the rosy
dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the
chief momenta of primitive accumulation. . . .

The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves

now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal,
Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the seventeenth
century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies,
the national debt, the modern mode of
taxation, and the protectionist sys-
tem. These methods depend on brute force, e.g., the colonial sys-
in part

tem. But they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and
organised force of society, to hasten, hothouse fashion, the process of trans-
formation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to
shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every society pregnant with a
new one. It is itself an economic power.
Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in England, it gave in
the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or
less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact,
the veiled slavery of the wage-workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal,
slavery pure and simple in the new world" (Marx 1938 [1867]: 775-785,
passim).

The slavery of Africans New World, then, was neither a harking-

in the
back to Rome or Carthage,
nor merely "slave society" (Genovese 1965) or
"plantation economy" (Mandle 1972). In the present writer's view, it was
an essential, intrinsic component of European capitalism:

The point is that the "relations of production" that define a system are the
"relations of production" of the whole system, and the system at this point
intime [the sixteenth century] is the European world-economy. Free labor
isindeed a defining feature of capitalism, but not free labor throughout the
productive enterprises. Free labor is the form of labor control used for
skilled work in core countries whereas coerced labor is used for less skilled
work in peripheral areas. The combination thereof is the essence of capital-
ism. [Wallerstein 1974b: 127]
 Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 289

Such an assertion, with which the present writer finds himself in substan-
tial agreement, derives some justification textually in Marx:
Freedom and slavery constitute an antagonism. . . . We are not dealing with
indirect slavery, the slavery of the proletariat, but with direct slavery, the
slavery of the black races in Surinam, in Brazil, in the Southern States in
North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot of our industrialism
today as machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery, no cotton; without cotton
no modern industry. Slavery has given their value to the colonies; the
colonies have created world trade; world trade is the necessary condition of
large-scale machine industry. Before the traffic in Negroes began, the col-
onies only supplied the Old World with very few products and made no
visible change in the face of the earth. Slavery is thus an economic category
of the highest importance. [1968 (1846): 675]

But if was indeed an economic category of the highest impor-

slavery
tance; world trade is the necessary condition of large-scale machine
if

industry; then what is the origin, within capitalism, of a subsystem of

production typified by forced, rather than "free" and proletarianized
labor? The answer to this question lies in the peculiar form of relationship
between the New World colonies, where slavery would flourish, and the
European metropolises. That relationship grew upon the basis of the land-
labor ratio particularly typical of the subtropical, coastal regions of the
New World. 3

Students of comparative slavery institutions have sought the origins of

slavery in the nature of the land-labor ratio (e.g., Nieboer 1900, Thomp-
son 1932). Other scholars have asserted with reason that this ratio does
not explain the origins or presence of slavery, so much as reveal a basic
relationship within which slavery could constitute a "solution" (Domar
1970, Engerman 1973). In the case of those parts of the New World of
preliminary concern to us here —the Atlantic coast from Mexico to Brazil,
the Antillean islands, and also the southern colonies of North America, in
particular —pioneer settlement by the Europeans occurred under condi-
tions either of sparse aboriginal populations, or of the swift genocide of
the aborigines. Production by slaves was not an inevitable consequence of
the low land-labor ratio, but of that ratio in situations where (1) an effec-
tive closure of the frontier to pioneer settlement by free persons was not
feasible; (2) police power adequate to the legal-military containment of
population was unavailable; and (3) "surplus" population for labor power
was obtainable at an acceptable market price elsewhere.
Under different conditions, the European entrepreneur had been able
to employ free but needful and landless workers as wage earners in order
to garner a profit; or to purchase and resell commodities produced by
peasant cultivators at a profit, by turning the terms of trade against the
peasantry; or to rent or to lend at interest scarce resources (land, capital,
 — .

290 Áfrico in Latin America

tools, etc.) to independent producers, both agricultural and nonagricul-

tural. But these entrepreneurial alternatives ultimately depend upon
either an effective artificial scarcity of needed resources, such as land; the
real scarcity of such resources, due to a prior primary accumulation of
mind that "capital" ultimately is ".
capital in the region itself (keeping in . .

between persons, established through the

not a thing, but a social relation
instrumentality of things" (Marx 1938 [1867]: 791); and/or the presence of
a large landless and free population competing in the sale of its labor. It is
in the presence of the conditions enumerated in the preceding paragraph,
and in the absence of the conditions just mentioned, that slavery may
become a "natural" or "expectable" solution for the capitalist investor (cf
Mintz 1977).
Though enslaved Africans and their descendants were employed in a
very wide spectrum of activities in the New World situation, the primary
use made of their labor was in the production of basic commodities for
European consumer markets. It is in the nature of those commodities, and
in the classic form of agrosocial organization by which they were pro-
duced, that the intimate linkage between urban European factory prole-
tarians and rural American plantation slaves is to be found. The growth
and expansion of the plantation system was unmistakably linked, from the
very first moments of its establishment in the New World, to mass Euro-
pean markets. To take but a single illustration, both the prices and the
absolute quantities of sugar produced in the colonies of the Americas by
slave labor between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries reveal the
transformation of sugar from a medicine and preservative of European
royalty into a fundamental food substitute of the European masses (Mintz
1966, 1979). Sugar, however, was but one such item; a full list would
certainly include tobacco, rum, cocoa, and coffee. It is no accident that
sugar from the Antilles, the Guianas, and Brazil, as well as elsewhere in
Latin America, should have become combined with tea from India in the
"food" par excellence of British factory workers and miners; they were
chained to their machines and their coal pits as firmly as the Indian tea-
pickers to their tea-groves, and the Latin American and Antillean slaves
to their canefields and sugar mills. Between 1700 and 1809, the per capita
consumption of sugar in the United Kingdom rose from four pounds to
eighteen pounds (Deerr 1950 [II]: 532), even while its population was
increasing by nearly two thirds. During almost the identical period
—
1700-1800 tea consumption in the United Kingdom rose from 167,000
pounds to more than 23 million pounds (Sheridan 1974: 21)! To note that
neither of these productions, one in the New World and the other in the
Old, was accomplished with proletarian laborers should not permit us to
ignore that they were consumed by proletarian laborers, and that the
profits from such production helped to fuel in many different ways the
engines of capitalism in the European heartland. 4
A backward glance at Europe of the fifteenth century reveals, how-
 Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 291

New World innovation, so

ever, that the plantation system itself was not a
much as part of theuntrammeled expansion of a form of production
already tested and proved in the European periphery. Malowist (1969), in
an excellent study of the Portuguese sugar plantations of Sao Tomé, off
the Guinea Coast, demonstrates that these enterprises embodied all of the
essential characteristics (as well as many of the ancillary features) of the
New World plantation economy: European capital, seized or ceded land,
substantial estates, enslaved African labor, European processing technol-
ogy and management, monoculture, iron control of the slave population,
and production destined for European consumer markets.
The plantation system, and slavery with it, went through a progression
of developmental stages in the Americas; and while the system as a
— —
whole and even slavery itself may be treated as homogeneous, undif-
ferentiated phenomena, particularistic historical studies {e.g., Mintz
1953, Stein 1957, Moreno Fraginals 1964) reveal considerable diversity,
both in time and in space. Among those many attempts to analyze differ-
ences among slave systems, some special attention may be given in pass-
ing to the now-famous Tannenbaum thesis (1947) that Catholicism, unlike
Protestantism, granted a moral personality to the slave. The Tannenbaum
argument rested upon ideological and institutional constraints, which
were believed to have protected the slaves in the colonies of the Catholic
5
powers. His critics have often seen the major differences, however, in
terms of the varying levels of capitalistic development of the metropolitan
powers (and, accordingly, in different epochs, of their colonies), cor-
related with differing intensities of the slave systems themselves. The
present writer's view is embodied in the following citation from earlier
work:

Especially important is mode of slavery is

the degree to which a particular
primarily economic, or embedded within a code of behavior such that the
economic rationale is submerged or secondary. All slavery may be slavery,
but not all slaveries are the same, economically or culturally.
Through slavery, human beings, their labor, their lives —that is, their
production and reproduction —are transformed into things. In capitalistic
societies these things are commodities; in part-capitalistic societies they are
part-commodities. Where the kind of social and technical organization is
such that it is not possible readily to appropriate a worthwhile portion of the
product of others by enslavement, the goals of slavery, when it occurs, will
not be directed to the maximization of profit. Where servitude is total, the
kind and degree of appropriation will vary, according to what the level of
technical development and accompanying institutional apparatus, including
the economic system, make possible. [Mintz 1961: 580]. 6

Each New World colony in which the labor of enslaved Africans

figured importantly was tied politically and economically to a European
society, in particular to sectors of its capitalist classes. After the Haitian
292 Africa in Latin America

and North American revolutions, such ties continued to influence sig-

nificantly the nature of productive relations even in those New World
societies; only Haiti —and by a long and tortuous process—was able to
eliminate coerced labor before the legal abolition of slavery itself. The
slave trade was abolished by Denmark in 1802, by England in 1808, by
Sweden in 1813, by Holland and France in 1814, and by Spain in 1820; it
continued "illegally" until after the middle of the nineteenth century.
Slavery itself ended by revolution in Haiti, 1791-1804 (though plantation
production on European-owned estates continued until substantially
later); in the British colonies in 1834-1838; in the French islands in 1848;
in the Dutch islands in 1863; in Puerto Rico in 1873-1876; in Cuba in 1882-

1886; and in Brazil in 1888.

It would be premature and misleading to claim that the various slavery

systems of these and other New World colonies can either be analyzed
best by treating them merely as variants of a single definable institution,
or by asserting that the differences among systems are so great as to
preclude any effort to generalize about their functioning. In fact, it is not
difficult to identify significant differences in the slavery institution at dif-
ferent periods in the history of a single colony; or among different slave
groups in the same colony at one point in time. A presentation of the sort
attempted here can do no more than point to some of the generalizations
which, while commonly proposed, usually appear to crumble when tested
against historical particulars. It no longer seems useful, for instance, to
divide slavery systems into "Catholic" and "Protestant," or "North Euro-
pean" and "South European," categories (cf., for instance, Mintz 1961). It
does not appear to follow that so-called "benign" slaveries necessarily led
to enlightened race relations after emancipation, nor that so-called
"malign" slaveries led to difficult race relations after emancipation (cf.,
for instance, Hoetink 1973). While the relative proportions of enslaved
Africans and free Europeans undoubtedly influenced significantly the par-
ticular forms taken by slavery in specific colonies, the nature of that
significance is not yet fully understood (Mórner 1973). In fact, most
generalizations of these kinds must still be tested against historical par-
ticulars, and it may be expected that this will eventually result in sweep-
ing revisions of nearly all such generalizations.
The slave trade had its heaviest impact in Africa itself on the peoples
and societies of West Africa, broadly defined. But both the volume and
the locus of the trade shifted, according to the policies of the slave-trading
powers, the waxing and waning of particular plantation colonies, and the
diplomacy of the trade itself. Immense difficulties face that scholar of the
slave trade and of slavery in the Americas who is interested in cultural
continuities and discontinuities. Earlier and more general interpretations
of continuities of the African tradition, which held that particular New
World colonies and societies could be linked unmistakably to specific
 Africa oí Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 293

African civilizations, have not been easy to sustain. In the case of Saint
Domingue, for instance, it has often been contended that Dahoman cul-
ture formed a core around which Haitian culture took on its characteristic
shape (Herskovits 1937: 25 et seq., Hall 1971, Hurbon 1972), while
Jamaican culture has sometimes been seen primarily as a rendering of
Akan-Ashanti civilization, merely reordered in a new form.
Such tribal-specific attributions constitute a questionable solution to
the problems of Afro- American culture growth (Mintz and Price 1970),
and seem to suffer from two principal difficulties. First, they tend to be
ahistorical, to the extent that they contain an implicit assumption that
African cultures of the twentieth century have not changed significantly
since the heyday of the slave trade, such that similarities revealed by
comparisons between contemporary Afro-American and African societies
can be treated as certain evidence of historical connection. Second, they
pay too little attention to the processes of culture change, to the immense
importance of the innovativeness and adaptability of enslaved Africans in
the New World, and to the special challenges posed by enslavement,
transportation, and the needs for adjustment to completely unfamiliar
settings.
An alternative approach to the problems of Afro-American culture
growth, rather than imputing culture-specific continuities between Afri-
can and Afro- American societies, takes as its starting point the concept of
a common (West African) cultural substratum (Herskovits 1941), upon
which the specific cultural manifestations of any particular African people
— —
or nation Dahomey, Ashanti, or whatever may be seen as a local
variant built upon deep common unity or, as Herskovits himself once put
it (1941: 81), that there is a genuine analogy between the "similarities in
the grammar of language over the entire West African region [and] . . .

what may be termed the grammar of cultures." If we are prepared to

assume that significant but nonetheless subtle, even unconscious, com-
mon patterning of values and beliefs underlay the cultures of the majority
of those millions of enslaved Africans brought to the New World, then the
task of retrieving those patterns for analysis and comparison is a serious
and important one. It is made even more serious because the presence of
easily apprehendable links between an African and an Afro-American
culture —as use in Haitian culture of unmistakably African lexical
in the
items, such as marassa, akasan, afiba, etc.; tribal and place names, such
as Congo and Guiñee; and gods' names (Shango, Legba, Damballa,
etc.) —
may predispose the scholar to pass over or ignore features that are
at once more fundamental, but more disguised and more difficult to elicit.
To offer but one illustration, Price and Price (1972) have demonstrated in
the case of Afro-American naming systems that surface manifestations
{e.g., specific "African" names, such as Cudjoe, Quashie, or Quaco) and
subsurface manifestations {e.g., the use of names to epitomize events,
294 Africa in Latin America

character and values) may both be attributable to the African past, but do
not necessarily travel together in a single Afro- American culture. Their
argument is relevant enough to deserve quotation at some length:

... it may be necessary to stress that a system with a relatively high

proportion of "African" names can be less similar to West African systems
on a fundamental level than a system which retains fewer such names. We
would argue that even the Gullah [Georgia and South Carolina] system, in
which locally used names are "nearly always a word of African origin"
(Turner 1949: 40), may be an important sense than the
less "African" in
Saramaka [Suriname] system, which only about one-sixth of names are
in
lexically African. Might it not be that the dynamism and creativity of a
cultural tradition developed with minimal Western influence have allowed
the Saramaka to be mildly prodigal with their gradually declining pool of
lexically African names, yet more faithful to West African naming principles
at a deeper level? [Price and Price 1972: 362]

It is the determination of those "deeper" principles that poses for the

student of Afro- American civilizations one of the most difficult problems
in methodology and in theory. Surface manifestations of African origins
are no less African by virtue of being obvious. But they have too often
been used as the only measures of the degree of "African-ness" or as
sufficient evidence in themselves that deeper-lying and more fundamental
features were necessarily present. In fact, surface manifestations (such as
the presence of provably African lexemes) may or may not be the "most
African" of surviving features; their absence may distract scholars from
the presence of much more fundamental, but subtler, materials of African
origin.
As
Price and Price have pointed out, this line of argument resembles
thatadvanced by Bastide (1967: 133-135), in dividing Afro- American reli-
gions into those he calls "en conserve" (such as candomblé and santería)
and those he calls vivants (such as Haitian vodü). The former seem to
involve a commitment to the total preservation of some African cultural
segment, for fear that any change may destroy the integration of the
subsystem; the latter leaves room for greater modification, without fear
that progressive changes will erode the more fundamental African orien-
tation of the subsystem as a whole. Price and Price conclude (1972: 362-
63):

If students of the African heritage in the Americas were to turn their

attention more fully to the delineation of higher-level cultural rules or
deeper structure, it might be found that the more dynamic, "African" sys-
tems generate forms in some domains which are less readily traceable to
specific West African sources than do the more defensive, retentive ones.
But, of course, the identification of such "rules" has barely begun.
 —
Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 295

Thus the question of Africanisms, though it has long attracted the atten-
tion of scholars of Afro-America, is now
being reopened on a new and
more sophisticated level of discourse. The "obviously African" may even-
tually turn out to demonstrate less about the retention of tradition than the
more modified and less immediately identifiable aspects of culture. As in
the case of names and religious usages, Afro-American language study is
entering a new phase as well. Creole languages, once regarded as mere
"simplifications" of European idioms (as revealed in their metropolitan
labels, such as Sklavensprachen, petit-négre, "jargon," and Kauder-
welsch), with some concession to the possible presence of some African
syntactic forms, are now being reexamined with much more care and
reflection and, in some clear instances, the presence of even more telling
features of African provenance than words being demonstrated (e.g.,
is

Taylor 1956, Allsopp 1970, Hymes 1971, Alleyne 1980).

These research trends attest to the innovative vitality, the creativity
and strength of the African past. What they add to previous studies of the
Afro-American heritage is a deeper respect for care and prudence in
research, a more conscious historical orientation, and an understanding of
the importance of the comparative approach in reconstructive analysis.
They also add a fuller understanding of the toughness and intelligence of
those millions of enslaved people who built their new ways of life under
conditions of almost unremitting repression.
We who are Americans in the hemispheric sense rarely experience our
common destiny, as contrasted to Old World peoples. But we of this
hemisphere are peoples whose ways of life share the common quality of a
foreign past (Mintz 1974a). We and bear cultures whose
live in societies
origins are elsewhere, transformed by the migrations of our ancestors and
by the novel challenges imposed upon them by a world which became, in
complete ethnocentric innocence, "new" in 1492. Today, the conse-
quences of transplantation and of adjustment during nearly five full cen-
turies define us, even those of us who are descended from Native Ameri-
cans.
But the special meaning of being American has never united all of the
peoples of the Americas. Instead, other priorities of consciousness of —
region, of nation, of language, of "race," of religion, of class have al- —
ways laid first claim upon our identities. A major distinction that has
consistently intruded upon any generalized American identity is that be-
tween what is called "Latin America" and what may be called for conve-
— —
nience only "Anglo America" or "Anglo-Saxon America." For conve-
—
nience only, because there is no convincing criterion even geography
according to which we can confidently refer to Jamaica or Haiti, for
instance, as parts of either "Anglo-Saxon America" or "Latin America."
In fact, the major basis for dividing the Americas in two is economic and
296 Africa in Latin America

political, not social and cultural: since the start of the nineteenth century,
the grossest division has been between the United States on the one hand,
and the Americas on the other.
rest of the
It has been the habit of some North American historians of Latin

America to view the history of that culture sphere as consisting of four

periods: the aboriginal or preconquest period; the conquest and colonial
period; the so-called republican period; and the modern period. Con-
tained within this deceptively commonsensical formulation, however, is
an important feature of the North American bias. If Wallerstein's concep-
tion of the world-economy is accepted, then the so-called "colonial" pe-
riod is differentiated from the so-called "republican" period by the fact
that North American political and economic power made their most tell-
ing penetrations into Latin American life after political independence was
achieved in Latin America. The retreat of Spain (and, to a lesser degree,
of her European competitors) from Latin America was not the unex-
pected creation of a vacuum of power, but rather the yielding of the
weakened European metropolises to North American expansionist pres-
sures. That these pressures were not fully felt until after the Civil War in
the United States does not alter the fact that the Monroe Doctrine, which
underlined North American claims on the hemisphere, was promulgated
within twenty-five years of the founding of the North American republic.
Accordingly, the study of any aspect of Latin American history and cul-
ture must involve a recognition of the satellite geopolitical status of most
of Latin America. More tellingly demonstrated in the Caribbean region
than elsewhere, perhaps, the overwhelming presence of the United States
has been felt by her neighbors throughout the hemisphere for two hundred
7
years.
But the North American presence is simply a background feature of the
Latin American cultural landscape. The place of Afro- Americans is not
defined by that presence, so much as by the particular social and eco-
nomic histories of the societies within which they live. The present
character of hemispheric Afro-America represents the end-product of
lengthy centuries of sociocultural change, in which Afro-Americans were
not simply the unwitting and passive subjects of external processes, but
often, and instead, active agents of change themselves. We have already
stressed the creative character of the evolution of Afro-American cul-
tures. In the study of Creole languages, syncretic religions, or other cul-
tural subsystems, too little attention has been paid to the analysis of
specific processes of change, and rather too much to a simplistic
identification of the historical origins of particular elements. What is in-

trinsically more interesting scientifically (and perhaps aesthetically, as

well) than the "blending" of African and European elements in Afro-
Cuban belief, for instance, is the system of underlying values and percep-
 Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 297

tions, and the particular local conditions, according to which that particu-
lar "mixture," rather than some other, took on its characteristic form. The
same may be true of studies of material culture, art, folklore, and all else
that is definably Afro-American.
Such an emphasis may be judged ahistorical or even anti-African, in
seeming to put more weight upon the mechanisms of change than upon
cultural continuity. Such a judgment, however, misses the point of in-
quiry. Social groups the members of which define themselves as Afro-
American, or who are so perceived by others in the same society, may be
allocated socially according to physical traits, cultural features (including
linguistic features), or both physical and cultural traits, seen either as
interlocked or as separate. The particular position of such groups within
any New World society is an historical product; in some cases, their
members may be arranged within a socioeconomic subsystem that is
parallel to —and may overlap with —the subsystems for European and
other groups of the same society. But we are still far from being able to
identify common or differentiating characteristics among these different
whole systems. Hence, the attempt to describe the socioracial structures
—
of American societies as belonging to a single class as in claiming that
economic features take precedence over physical traits, making a "Black"
—
person White and a "White" person Black appears to be a fundamental
misunderstanding of the variety, changing character, and symbolic com-
plexity of systems of social allocation.
Much as the origins of Afro-American culture cannot be properly
studied without attending to the particular integration of its elements and
the symbolic significance of cultural content in each case, so the position
of Afro-American groups within American societies cannot be grasped
without specifying the characteristic features of each social system, and
the peculiar symbolic integration of such features for those concerned. In
spite of the broad common characteristics that we may interpret as char-
acteristically Latin American, each Latin American society has its dis-
tinctive identity. In much the same way, the groups that might be called
Afro-Latin within Latin America express in each instance something of
the national socioracial structure within which they are located. Little
useful purpose is served by ignoring their distinctive characteristics in
order to posit generalities which, however great their breadth, quite lack
historical depth. The same distinctiveness and peculiarity typifies, of
course, the United States and its Afro-American citizens. Hence an ob-

jection advanced here of the sort that was earlier raised against the
is

blanket distinction between slaveholding Catholic and Protestant powers.

While that distinction has a preliminary classificatory utility, and indeed
may express a deeper difference, it is probably best laid aside for the
moment, in order better to examine specific historical periods. The chang-
298 Africa in Latin America

ing position of Afro-Americans in Mexico or Cuba, over

a society such as
time, reveals more of social process than does any assertion about the
common character of Afro-American culture.
Whatever the details in particular historical periods and in particular
American societies, the discriminatory exclusion of persons of African
origin from the mainstream of national life has been a depressingly con-
sistent theme in the history of the New World. The recognition by social
scientists and writers alike of this exclusion has led, over time, to the
development of a theory of marginalization, which seeks to take into
account the adaptation of Afro-Americans to continuous discrimination
(e.g., Whitten and Szwed 1970, and the essays in Grábener 1971). That
persons and groups of African origin are the targets of discrimination,
subtle or overt, throughout the Americas, hardly needs to be proved; the
theory of marginalization seeks to deal with this discrimination as a part
of social reality.
But it is perhaps worth stressing that some risk is run in viewing the
position of Afro- American peoples as defined by their marginality. Such
peoples are marginal from the point of view of their access to full partici-

pation in society, or to the benefits of citizenship. They are not, however,

marginal from the point of view of their contribution to the economic
order. In fact, their marginality as citizens is a function of racist politics;
their disproportionate economic contribution to their societies is a func-
tion of the very same politics. The role of Afro-American peoples in
providing shamefully cheap labor (for instance, the bulk of plantation
labor and of domestic labor) to others of greater privilege represents an
enormous saving to members of other classes in the same society. Their
confinement in manual labor makes available many better jobs for others.
In these and in other ways, the role of the poor Afro-American is not in
the slightest marginal, but is instead an important, at times even essential,
feature of the economic organization of racist societies.
No better illustration of this thesis can be provided than the immense
migration of Caribbean peoples to the urban centers of North America in
recent decades. The development of an international, "portable" supply
of cheap labor has accompanied the growth of relatively inexpensive air
transportation. In fact, this labor now pays for its own transportation. The
movement of Haitians, Jamaicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, etc. to the
mainland United States has simultaneously intensified the struggle for
work in that country, while reducing the overall average cost of labor at
the lowest levels of skill. That many of the migrants are "illegal" entries
increases their accessibility and defenselessness, and lowers their price.
The same process (though usually less extreme) can be seen in many
Latin American countries; and the same rules which apply to Afro-
American persons in one country may be applied equally well to persons
of Amerindian (or other non- White) origin in another.
 —
Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 299

It is for these reasons that the concept of marginalization deserves to

be employed with some care. The assertion that persons of African origin
in the United States are of little economic value to that economy
predicated on the movement of Afro- Americans to the cities, their pres-
—
ence on the relief rolls, their fecundity, etc. while usually advanced with
an air of compassion, should not be permitted to conceal the intense
economic exploitation of which these same persons are the prime targets.
Anthropologists and sociologists in particular need to remember that mar-
ginalization has not meant the exclusion of Afro-Americans from their
role either as victims or as creators of surplus value.
This essay has sought to enumerate several characteristics of the his-
tory and study of Afro-American peoples that have not always been taken
into account. Though impressionistic in character, it may indicate some
research directions of use to others. The study of Africa in Latin America,
and of Latin America, forms an important part of the saga of the modern
world, with particular reference to the creation of planetary empires, the
expansion of Europe, and the appearance and maturation of capitalism as
an economic system transcending national boundaries. The principal mo-
tive force behind the enslavement and transportation of African peoples
—
while by no means the only such force was the development of the
plantation system in the American colonies for the production of staples
for the mass consumer markets of Europe. A central problem in the study
of the role of Afro-American peoples in this development is that of the
relationship between European overseas enterprise based on forced
labor, and the heartland of European capitalism.
Afro-American peoples were forced to reconstitute their social forms
—
and their cultures for the most part though not always while living as —
forced laborers. 8 The role of the African past is that reconstruction was
and remains — But a simplistic tracing of elements of
vitally important.
African origin, or a mere reasoning by analogy with the cultures of con-
temporary African societies, is less important scientifically than the study
of the particular integrations and symbolic forms developed by New
World peoples in the consolidation of new societies.
Africa in Latin America, and of Latin America, has taken on its differ-

entiated and complex character in the shadow of North American power.

What is more, Afro-American peoples have always had to cope with the
particular disadvantages imposed upon them by local codes of discrimina-
tion and exclusion. At the same time, this exclusion has not diminished,
but has instead increased, the proportionate economic contribution they
have perforce made to the well-being and wealth of the racist societies of
which they have been a part. Indeed, Afro- American peoples have had to
adapt themselves to their oppression; but this has neither meant that their
role as a source of profit has declined, nor that their creativity has reduced
their oppression. In the modern era, the countries of Latin America, like
300 Africa in Latin America

those of Africa and Asia, have increased their contribution to the de-
veloped world by migrating to its centers. Thus, in New York as in Paris,
London, and Amsterdam, the poorest segments of the colonial social
structure are now contributing anew and more immediately to the ease-
ment of life for others in the metropolis.
The ultimate political implications of this demographic movement, now
assuming substantial proportions, 9 are not yet fully grasped, and cannot
be wholly predicted. Nonetheless, in the case of Afro-American peoples,
it is already clear that the United States is undergoing a process of urban
"Afro-Latinization" on a substantial scale, with no indication of a reversal
of the trend in the near future. This subject, however, exceeds the con-
cerns of the present paper. It is hoped that students of Africa in Latin
America will keep in mind, however, that the cultures of those whom they
study are vibrant, inexhaustible phenomena; if five centuries of direct
oppression have not crushed them, it will take more than the modern
world to erase their distinctive character.

Notes

1. Among the works essential to the study of this subject, one can mention

Herskovits 1941, Ramos 1943, Franco 1961 and 1968, Bastide 1961, Davis 1966,
and Price 1973. Papers by Herskovits 1930, Bastien 1969, Mintz 1970b and 1971,
and Unesco 1970, throw some additional general light upon the problems of the
study of Africa in Latin America, as does Mintz and Price 1976. It is not feasible,
however, to include more than occasional bibliographical references of this kind
in the present paper.
2. Of the risks of such calculations, Curtin (1969: xviii) writes:

One danger in stating numbers is to find them quoted later with a

degree of certitude that was never intended. This is particularly true
when the percentages are carried to tenths of 1 percent, whereas in fact
the hoped-for range of accuracy may be plus or minus 20 percent of
actuality. Let it be said at the outset, then, that most of the quantities
that follow are wrong. They are not intended to be precise as given, only
approximations where a result falling within 20 percent of actuality is a
—
"right" answer that is, a successful result, given the quality of the
underlying data. It should be also understood that some estimates will
not even reach that standard of accuracy. They are given only as the
most probable figures at the present state of knowledge" [italics added].
To which we may only say that this issue, like many to be raised in this paper, has
an important political coefficient. Curtin suggests that the scholar whose estimates
he finds most persuasive (Deerr 1949) was seriously overestimating importations
to the United States. Deerr believed that the total importation was 2,920,000;
Curtin thinks it was 399,000; for the period 1800-1861, Deerr estimated one mil-
lion, while Curtin believes it was 54,000! We may be sure that Curtin's downward
revisions will be employed for political objectives at least as eagerly as were many
 Africa of Latin America: An Unguarded Reflection 301

earlierand much higher estimates, and this in spite of Curtin's own very great
caution (Mintz 1972).
3. I am stressing
In this interpretation, —
and perhaps exaggerating the ex- —
tent to which the institution of slavery in the New World, which had its post-
Columbian origins in Europe itself, was revealed in particular relationship to the
development of the plantation system in the Americas. As we shall see, African
slaves and their descendants were employed in many other ways, for many other
purposes, and not solely in commercial agriculture. Nonetheless, the basic, essen-
tial and most important goals of the enslavement of Africans had to do with the

development of that agriculture, to which even the use of slaves in mining enter-
prises, militias, as personal servants, as subalterns to the conquistadores, etc.,
were secondary. The institution of slavery was perfected in the core area
all
stretching from the south of what became the United States through what is today
northern Brazil. Its expressions in other forms, and elsewhere in the hemisphere,
while very important, were nonetheless peripheral, in my view, to this de-
velopment.
4. This is not the place to review the now-lengthy and voluminous con-
troversy concerning the specific contribution of the colonies to the economic
development of the metropolises. The argument goes back to Smith 1937 [1776],
Merivale 1841, Wakefield 1914 [1849], and Marx 1938 [1867], among others. Re-
cent contributors have included Williams 1944 and, even more recently, Sheridan
1974, Anstey 1975, and Engerman 1972. While the direct contribution of the
plantation economy to European economic growth may have been as modest as
Engerman contends, it is not possible at this time to evaluate convincingly the
indirect contribution {e.g., through reinvestment, the freeing-up of the labor sup-
ply in nonplantation areas, etc.), nor to refute the argument I am presenting here:
that plantation slave labor provided high-energy, low-cost, food substitutes to the
European proletariat, and thus constituted an immense saving to European
capitalism.
5. Like many other issues, this cannot be treated with the seriousness it
deserves in a paper of this sort. Interested readers may wish to examine some part
of the substantial literature that has accumulated concerning the relative impor-
tance of "ideological" and "economic" factors in affecting the treatment of slaves
and freedmen. Among the most thought-provoking books and articles, we may
mention Genovese 1967 and 1968, Harris 1964, Davis 1966, and Lane et al. 1971.
6. This formulation has been received with varying degrees of enthusiasm or
criticism.Genovese (1968) is attracted; though a more extreme rendering by me
elsewhere (Mintz 1974a) has made him more critical (Genovese 1975). Tolentino,
—
who cites this passage (Tolentino 1974: 143), inclines to the view at least by
—
implication that "systems" can be either capitalistic or not. But it is not clear
from his interpretation, however, how the problems of transition from one mode
of production to another are to be handled conceptually, nor how to interpret
Marx's construction of a "dominant" mode of production. Bagú (1969) takes a
position that this writer finds somewhat simplistic, but more congenial; see also
Williams 1944, Wolf 1966, and Frank 1966.
7. Bryce Wood writes:
On no less than twenty separate occasions between 1898 and 1920,
United States Marines or soldiers entered the territory of states in the
Caribbean area. It should not be surprising that a certain sense of the
normality, and even of the propriety of calling on the Marines, should
have persisted beyond 1920, independently of the nature of the formal
justification for such action; it was an habitual, nearly automatic re-
302 Africa in Latin America

sponse to "disturbed conditions" or "utter chaos" in a Caribbean coun-

try. [Wood 1961:5]
To which one can add only that the situation can hardly be said to have improved
significantly since 1920 — with the very important exception that
socialist Cuba has
withstood repeated attempts to subvert its government by force.
8. Because no sketch of this kind can deal with many different themes, the
whole issue of resistance by Afro-Latin peoples has been omitted, even though it
is of course extremely important. The author has dealt with this theme at substan-

tial length elsewhere (Mintz 1971 and 1974a). The literature on runaway slave

communities and on slave revolts has been growing rapidly. Especially useful for
an overview of the maroon saga is Price 1973.
9. Relatively little of an anlytical kind has been published on the movement of
non-White Latin Americans to the United States, but cf. Bryce-Laporte 1972. For
a useful contemporary summary on non- White Caribbean migrants, cf.
Domínguez 1975; the theme is touched upon as well in Mintz 1974b.

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 14
A Case Study: The Problems of Slavery
and the Colonization of Haiti
Jean Casimir

To understand how Haitians have resolved or confronted the problems

resultingfrom slavery and colonization, we will attempt to establish ties
between, on the one hand, the cultural picture, with its African roots, that
has determined Haiti's political patterns, and, on the other hand, the
material conditions that explain the persistence of these patterns.
We will thus present a theory of Haitian society. Ours is an effort to
build a model that attempts to establish relationships among the greatest
possible number of events. It runs the risk of being rejected as new
historical elements are taken into account or are discovered, although it

does offer the advantage of dealing with empirical data.

We must warn the reader that, given the objectives of the present
study — that is, to research the responses to certain problems within the
—
framework of the "African" presence in Haiti we will only be focusing
on one aspect of the country's national history: the presence of slaves and
maroons in colonial society, and the appearance of a peasantry as of 1804.
Thus, we will barely make reference to the relationships that the great
powers imposed upon the country.

The "Counterplantation" as a Response to the Slavery Problem

The fact that a western cultural heritage took root within the societies of
the American continent is easily explained. The logical expressions of
behavioral norms, along with their original source, present serious prob-
lems, since the American social and economic scheme was designed in
theWest and was adapted to the peculiar transatlantic conditions.
The presence of African culture in colonial society is undeniable, al-
though the subject merits some thought. A culture does not flourish in a
vacuum, without material support, that is, without a group of relation-
ships that determine these ideological expressions and are guided by it. It

is how the African perceptions of the world are

thus essential to ask
incorporated in a medium that revolves around a capitalist production
mode, and, in addition, to inquire how Africans of various origins could
create a relatively unified vision of the world.
If we consider the coercive migration characteristics of Africans to the

306
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 307

colony of Saint Domingue, we must recognize that the expression of a

particularly Black society constitutes an exceptional example of social
harmony. The behavioral patterns which the transplanted African brought
along were unhinged from the environment where they originated, and
without which these behavioral patterns lack meaning. If we accept that
each adult is a microcosm in whom the fragments of relationships and
ideological contents that define a given culture are reflected, the Black
immigrants can be seen as anthologies of isolated and diverse histories
launched into a new harmony. Each individual curriculum vitae has to
give under the strain of orientation and other colonial components.
Every African cultural reconstruction in America will only be African
with regard to a series of potentials encompassed within the logic of how
individual behavior deals with a new reality. The unity of such a recon-
struction will not, from then on, be classified as African other than by
virtue of those logical potentials that served as raw material. For the
Black immigrant, the newcomer, this is a new empirical/reality that is
born and restructured as he reconstructs and/or adopts the cultural uni-
verse.
Thus, for the recreation of "Africa in Latin America," that is, for the
external reality (social or other) to acquire an African meaning, it is cru-
cial for the material, existential conditions to permit the total de-
velopment of the latent norms that determine the individual practices and
behaviors of the immigrants. It is vital for the formation of an African-
style consensus to have certain basic social relations.
Africa was not recreated in America, except in areas where the planta-
tion system permitted modifications based on the institutionalization of
new customs and the formation of new habits regarding food, the family,
religion, and others, as well as and
legal relationships in the case
political
of a breakdown of the plantation system. In a general way, the material
conditions of existence in the plantation system and the means of sociali-
zation tended to reduce the range of behavior based on an African con-
ceptualization of things; and, with each new generation some elements of
identification with the ancestral land are disappearing. Thus, we witness
the break between Creoles and new arrivals.
There are two types of "African" presence in America: one consists of
fragmentary and isolated traits, and the other consists of total and inte-
grated cultural groups. The presence of African cultural traits in the heart
of the plantation society can only be explained by the persistence, in the
private life of Blacks, of certain traits that were able to survive under the
protection of Western socialization. It is legitimate to study this survival
of cultural traits; but we do not have the right to talk about adaptation,
unless we can prove that the conduct of political and economic affairs
within the development of a society is as important as are culinary mat-
ters.
308 Africa in Latin America

The colonial political and ideological structures all corresponded to the

main production cell: the plantation. All social or individual behavior that
escaped this pattern is not important for the analysis and understanding of
a colony as a territorial, organizational system.
The culture that emerged from the plantation system (referred to as
Creole culture English-speaking Caribbean), was for the proper
in the
functioning and the perpetuation of the system based on metropolitan
norms and values. The colony followed a European scheme that main-
tained its purity because of its successful execution. It is based on this
principle that we must analyze the socialization process of people of
African origin, prisoners of a configuration of fixed relationships, that was
a function of the preservation and the development of plantations.
There is an ideological continuity that goes from the Creole slave who
worked in the fields or as a domestic servant all the way to the "colored"
planter. They both viewed and lived their lives according to the same
rules, although their means of expression may have varied, but not with
regard to the meaning and the direction of their behavior. It is unneces-
sary to add that we refer to the Creoles as a social category, not as
individuals. We shall see that two Creoles, Toussaint and Dessalines,
came up with development projects that corresponded, in the case of the
first, to the ideological framework of the plantation, and for the second, to

village society.
The African cultural traits that were inserted in the functional and
developed cosmic vision of the plantation (Creole culture), were by no
means a reconstruction of the African ones in America, since we are
dealing with isolated and fragmented elements.
There are two ways in which the plantation as a basic production unit
could disappear: either the plantation gives way to more complex, capital-
ist forms, or it is destroyed. The latter was the road followed by the

Haitian revolution. In analyzing its process of destruction we will dis-

cover the explanation of the vitality of African culture in this country, a
vitality that originated precisely from the fact that it formed a complete,
cultural complex.
If, during the colonial period, what was African survived only as a
,,
substratum, the organizational process of the "counterplantation was
essential so that Africanism could surface to a more significant level. The
"counterplantation" was the maroon society of Saint Domingue that con-
tinued in the form of a village society as of 1804. Research on Haitian
maroon which were the equivalent of the Cuban palenques, the
societies,
Brazilian quilombos, the Jamaican "free villages," and the "Bush
societies" of Guyana, was born from a logical imperative, since, in con-
trast to the above-mentioned societies, no special name was even created
to refer to them. As far as we know, this fact has never been the subject of
systematic research. Recent studies by Jean Fouchard add strength to this
 "

The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 309

logical imperative, but the author is unable to perceive the structure of the
.

"counterplantation
Maroon society on the Island predated the plantation economy. Chief
Henri, who lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century, deserves the
title of founder of a maroon society. Historical evidence seems to indicate
that the maroons had liberated a vast stretch of land prior to the unrest
that led to independence. Two facts point to the quantitative importance
of these maroons. In the midst of the crisis, while the French armies were
being defeated by the joint British and Spanish forces, the general decla-
ration of freedom, although also directed at the slaves, basically ad-
dressed itself to " Africans." The lengthy proclamation of Polveral, of
October 13, 1793, serves as an excellent illustration of this fact. It con-
tains an appeal to the new arrivals, maroons and potential maroons. The
problem is that today many historians continue to consider the fugitive
slave as a regular slave.
The importance of the maroon societies was also noticeable in the
demographic makeup of the island at the time of independence. As has
been pointed out, the French plantation of Saint Domingue lacked an
internal reproduction dynamic for the work force. The high proportion of
males, and thus, the absence of family units, made for a negative repro-
duction rate. However, the balance of percentages of each sex was never
considered a problem during the nineteenth century in Haiti, and the
mortality rate of males during the wars, which varied in degree through-
out the country, was not significant enough to explain this phenomenon.
Maroon society was an immediate negation of the plantation system but in
no case did it offer a solution to the contradictions inherent in the latter.
Its economic organization was very simple, as we shall see when we talk
about Goman. Plantation and village society were parallel forms of pro-
duction, and their members kept up a constant state of warfare.
Thus, contrary to the traditional version, what we call Saint Domingue
did not constitute one social formation, but two or more. Those who lived
in an organized milieu as maroons were not a part of the colony. The
colonists referred to them as fugitives, but, unless we acknowledge a right
of property of French society over these maroons, there is no reason for
us not to consider them as members of independent nations. The fact that
the state that controlled these nations was not Western is not to the point.
We cannot doubt its African roots. But, in view of the circumstances that
led to its creation and its reproduction and survival mechanisms, these
states are local creations, as is their culture and their economic system.
It is this point that leads us to the ambiguity of the revolutionary

processes that brought about the early independence of Haiti. Even the
most superficial comparison between these processes and those that fol-
lowed in the rest of America, highlights some significant differences. In
Haiti, neither the manumission of slaves nor the declaration of indepen-
310 Africa in Latin America

dence were the work of a small commercial bourgeoisie with industrial

aspirations. There was no political compromise between the rebels on the
one hand and the planters and port merchants of France on the other.
Therefore Napoleon had given his brother-in-law Leclerc instructions to
exterminate the island's population and to repopulate it with new Afri-
cans, in order to ensure the normal operation of a slave economy.
It is essential to distinguish two currents within the independence

wars. The maroon liberation wars, crowned with partial victories, of

which the village societies that predate 1804 were a legacy; and the par-
ticipation of "colored" planters in (1) the civil wars occasioned by the
colonists' disregard for city orders; (2) rivalry and insubordination wars
among them; (3) defensive wars against the British and Spanish invaders.
The Creole movement took off directly from the French Revolution.
However, it only had the external traits of the bourgeois revolution that
originated in the center, precisely because Saint Domingue was a colony
that served as a jumping board, or route towards France's industrial
capitalism. Thus, the coming of Napoleon Bonaparte to power, and the
recovery of power by the port merchants, the slavers, and the Antillean
planters, immediately led to the reversal of the favorable emancipation
orders. Consequently, the colored planters and other Creoles faced a
difficult situation. Abandoned by Bonaparte's policies and isolated from
the mass of new freedmen, they had to fight the battle for their political
rights totally on their own.
Their options were civil war or to maneuver within the new context
created by the proconsul. To fight against France was the Creole's last
recourse. Toussaint was aware of this as can be seen by the chronological
development of battles. The Creoles' armed confrontation for emancipa-
tion occurred in two stages; in the first, Toussaint and Rigaud were promi-
nent. Toussaint beat Rigaud, but was himself defeated by Napoleon's
armies. The second stage was a last-minute change of mind in October of
1802, when both agreed to join the August rioters against Leclerc's policy
of restoring slavery.
Both in the first uprising (August 1791), and in the second (August
1802), the Creoles played a secondary role, either because Toussaint
thought it best to offer the front ranks to Boukman, Jn. Francois, and
Blassou, or because Dessalines, and, mainly, his staff, joined the rebel
forces three months late. clear that the revolutionary torch remained
It is

lit among the new from Africa, whether they were maroons or
arrivals
not, and that the ease with which the Creoles capitalized on this revolt
was due to international complications produced by the independence
process. The Creoles tried to gain a gradual political independence with-
out being isolated, and without regressing towards simpler forms of eco-
nomic organization. The policies of Toussaint and Christophe (who had a
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 311

firmer strategic position than Petion or Boyer) show that the greatest
effort was made to create a "modern" state.
It is not our purpose to determine who was wrong and who was right,

whether the new arrivals or the Creoles. However, it can be determined

that the only social groups that emerged victorious from the independence
wars were those who were a part of, or at least potentially a part of
—
maroon societies namely, the maroons themselves and the "new arriv-
als" portion of the army. Later we will see how the "colored" planters
who did not flee the island witnessed what we could euphemistically call a
socially descending movement.

Expansion of Village Society: Independence and Isolation

The Transition

No "father of the country" emerged out of village society. The gang

leaders who came from the villages were replaced by Creole leaders, and
were thus eliminated from the ranks of illustrious men. Why this society
spawned numerous nationally prominent personalities as of 1804, such as
Dessalines, Acaau, Soulouque, Salomon, Nord Alexis, Antoine Simon,
Rosal vo Bobo, Charlemagne Peralte, and became the predominant eco-
nomic organization, is a process we will discuss. We can divide the years
between 1804 and 1915 into two periods. The first half of the century, until
approximately 1860, was the expansion period of village society. The
second stage was one of violent struggles between the rural and the urban
population, between merchants and agricultural producers. The first of
these two periods was one where village production expanded, and where
African culture provided the ideological framework; the second looked
towards a new dominant class, one that was responsible for the relation-
ship between this production mode and imperialist capitalism.
To prove that Haitian social and economic development of the
nineteenth century revolved around village production, we must look at
the Toussaint-Dessalines opposition. After praising the former, Jean
Price-Mars observed that the ruling class during his regime was formed of
White and Black planters and former Black slaves. He then added the
following paragraph on the subject of the "enslaved," which we transcribe
in its entirety since it illustrates what we could call bourgeois and Creole
development policies:

The L'Ouvertourian reform had divided the Saint Domingue population into
two different categories: the one we have just described that formed the
ruling class and the one made up of the large rural masses, the majority
class of slaves upon which rested the economic structure of the new soci-
 s

312 Africa in Latin America

ety.The daily life of this class of rural workers was carefully legislated by a
work code that was strangely reminiscent of the projects designed by vari-
ous urban representatives following the solemn freeing of slaves. In fact,
they were declared "free" with the condition that these "new freed men"
would be obligated to work on the properties of their old masters for a
ridiculous salary, to be paid in kind.The L'Ouverturian code thus super-
seded its predecessors. It provided, among other things, for the worker to
remain on the property of his former master for a period of five consecutive
years, instead of the three years decreed by General Hedouville. The
worker had no right to leave his obligatory residence for any reason what-
soever without the authorization of a pass, signed by his boss. If he was
found outside the property without the above-mentioned authorization, he
could be whipped and jailed.

From this text by Price-Mars it becomes apparent that the Toussaint

scheme was based on the presence of a dominant planter class, unable to
execute its development plans without the use of physical violence. There
was no social cohesion based on a dominant ideology. We can thus under-
stand T. Lepowsi's discovery which serves as proof of what we have just
said: under the government of Toussaint, the number of maroons was
larger than under preceding governments. Toussaint' s strategy achieved
only partial success, as the repressive apparatus was formed, in large
part, of newly imported slaves.
Following independence, Dessalines, without rejecting Toussaint'
policies, decided to distribute the land of the former owners to their
respective slaves. This resulted in a land reform rather than in a reform of
the labor system. What is truly interesting is not that the "rulers," the
same ones (with the exception of the White planters) who had surrounded
Toussaint, assassinated Dessalines, but that his body was mutilated by
the people of Port-au-Prince, who had been domestic slaves (largely
Creole) and freedmen.
We must therefore take into account the implications of Dessalines'
urban development policies. In the first place, the Emperor moved the
capital to his estate at Marchand, on the Artibonite plains. He im-
mediately decided to reconstruct the coastal towns, including Port-au-
Prince. This urban policy was unlike Boyer's idea of founding Petionville
some miles from Port-au-Prince. Dessalines' idea was to displace the
urban center to the Derance plantation, located in the heart of the most
inaccessible mountains of the western region of the island, which owes its
name to Lamour Derance, a former gang leader who was the scourge of
the planters of the Cul-de-Sac plains. These urban and rural development
plans disguised a concept that we could call "the least possible foreign
trade," which we will return to later.
We must now ask ourselves which social force the Emperor relied
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 313

upon to confront the other "leaders." It seems as though only the former
rural slaves, who had held on to the ideology of new arrivals, forced into
village societies or eager to consolidate themselves in towns, could have
benefited from the Dessalinean strategy and would therefore have given it
their support. It was between the government of Toussaint and the Des-
salines regime that the victory of the revolutionary forces and the destruc-
tion of the planter class took place.
If the dismemberment of the plantations, abandoned by expatriate or
massacred colonialists, could not be achieved by following Dessalines'
plans, and if village society lacked the importance that we attribute to it in
this study, once the author of this socially unpopular strategy had been
physically eliminated, one would have expected that nothing could have
prevented the rebirth of the plantation system. In this hypothetical case,
the ruling class would have had in its hands all that would have been
necessary to reorganize the land according to its own interests in order to
arrive at least to Toussaint's formula.
In the southern and western departments this was not attempted. The
Toussaint formula was revalidated in the north, a region that was not
dominated by the Mulatto planters, the eventual heirs of the plantations
that had been abandoned by their fathers. King Christophe created a class
that could have become an agrarian bourgeoisie. "The fall of Christophe
... in Autumn of 1820, was caused not only by the hate professed by a
considerable majority towards the dictatorship and despotism. It was a
rebellion of the army that originated from the agricultural class as well as
from the peasantry, to which a number of dignitaries from the kingdom's
aristocracy attached themselves. It is significant that work on the large
plantations ceased almost immediately. ... It is also typical that the
king's model plantation, Duplaa, was destroyed by the peasants during
the rebellion against Christophe." We can thus legitimately conclude that
the plantation economy was bankrupted by the simple, mercantile pro-
duction system. "Separate the plantations from the slaves, and, until the
slaves engage in some other activity, no type of economy will survive."

The Peasantry and the Soldiers

At this point we should analyze the production means within the heart of
village society, as well as the characteristics of the social classes to whom
the dynamics of this type of production can be attributed. We will not
describe here all the strata and classes of Haitian society of the nineteenth
century, we just wish
to establish the relatively stable framework within
which developed an apparently anarchic political and economic practice.
Since the contemporary interpretations of the sociology of Haitian
development have not highlighted our current thesis, we will base our
314 Africa in Latin America

subsequent thoughts on numerous quotes, in an attempt to prove that our

thesis present in the writings of the majority of the intellectuals of the
is

period we are dealing with.

In his references to the division of Haitian society into social classes,
Madiou wrote the following text that has never been refuted but has
frequently been omitted. In writing about the government of Emperor
Dessalines, he said:

The citizens were divided into two classes: workers and soldiers. The for-
mer, who had given the signal for the independence war, had been concen-
trated on the large estates: they kept their arms and were militarily orga-
nized, they were always ready to obey government orders. The latter,

recruited in the fields and the cities, performed a more active service. Civil
servants such as administrative and customs employees, made up this sec-
ond and were responsible to the armed groups
class, to which they had to
attach themselves if their country was in danger.

These social groups did not disappear with Dessalines, since it was not
a policy that had been devised by the Emperor. In order to become
convinced that this was so, it suffices to recall the organization of the
villagers under Goman, "this man who had spent a part of his life in the
mountains as a maroon."

Goman [organized] his followers into two classes: one class waged war, the
other cultivated the land to obtain the necessary products for clandestine
interchanges and for the maintenance of the troops. It is impossible to

imagine the order that was thus established: he [Goman] had in fact created
a small state in the mountains where he was the absolute monarch. Thus it
was so easy for him to resist for thirteen consecutive years, not with great
gains, but at least without having to submit."

This social structure lasted until 1915, according to S. Vincent: "We

cannot escape our essentially military and peasant origins with regard to
the organization of our government. ... All of our constitutions, between
1805 and 1888, established and confirmed the military system as an essen-
tial governing mechanism. They dictate that all Haitians between the ages

of 18 and 50 (inclusive) who are not members of the active army, must
belong to the national guard, which was to become integrated with the
army in case of mobilization." Thus, "the peasant is condemned in per-
petuity, to render horrible military service, and only returns to his land
from time to time, depending on the good will of some general or other. In
the cities and towns, Haitians who are not civil or military functionaries,
await their turn to join. . .
."

Consequently, continuing our analysis at the production level, and

using the restricted sense of the term, that is, production and distribution
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 315

means, we can conclude that the peasants, or, to be more exact, the
maroons who had been organized into village societies (the only struc-
tured social unit to survive the 1804 revolution) constitute a unique unit,
from which will emerge the structure of the national economic and social
classes. The presence of farmers, their power and the role they played
within the political structure were an obstacle, until 1915, for the power of
the state (and the power within the state) to be employed directly and in a
manner compatible with capitalist evolution during the nineteenth cen-
tury.
We can understand one of the elements of peasant presence in the
political fieldby observing the mobility within the military heirarchy
superimposed upon the recruitment process mentioned by Madiou.
Spencer St. John refers to this fact in his book Haiti or the Black Repub-
lic, but quotes Vincent on this matter: the latter, however, cannot avoid

the expression of the prejudices and of the impotence of the Haitian elite.
These prejudices and impotence in fact obscure the perception of the
control mechanisms of the government apparatus:

Insome brave peasants, the rank incentive and the ambition of command,
sometimes triggered such acts of valor that in themselves helped in the
success of their actions. They were compensated with military honors.
They were given money. They easily attained the highest ranks. As they
received honors they aspired to even higher ones, and soon they became
division generals of the army of the Republic. Thus, one would suddenly
hear about a general who was unknown only yesterday, who had performed
wonders in some important battle, or of a general Z who had taken some
unconquerable villages. They became municipal commanders, district com-
manders and everything else. These ordinary people were assigned to rule
communities often, twenty, and thirty thousand souls. They imposed their
whims, their grossest fantasies, and terrorized without mercy in order to
show and to enforce their recently acquired and irresponsible authority.
How many Exaus and Pierrimes, coming from the plains or the mountains,
totally illiterate, superstitious, and violent, guided above all by their in-
stincts, won the booty they deserved for a rapid military action or a more
difficult campaign in which they became involved by invitation of the city
dwellers or of a neighboring town. And it is thus that we gradually became a
country of generals.

This army that emerged out of village society could only maintain its
by ensuring the reproduction of the society.
institutional characteristics
The resulting measures that were taken, independent of the good or evil
intentions of the officers, all led to the same purpose: the defense of
village society. This does not mean that its role was to provide for the

well-being of each peasant and for the transition of village economies into
more complex and efficient production means. On the contrary, it can be
observed that the position of the army, as a depository of state power, and
316 Africa in Latin America

its organization as a government arm, would have decayed if the peas-

antry had lost its formed of independent and autono-
particular structure,
mous units. The army would guard, to the very end, this isolation and this
autonomy, as a base for its dominant role within the state. It is with the
purpose of such vigilance that the army began to control the peasantry
through oppression, and ensured its reproduction as a social class.
Louis Joseph Janvier, in his treatise Du Gouvernement Civil en Haiti,
has the following thought that is the key to the country's political struc-
ture: "The Haitian nation has been exclusively governed by the mili-
tary. . Many of the military attained power without having received any
. .

form of civilian culture, and consequently, without having the vaguest

idea about the existence of totally civilian governments." From this fact
to the despotic production means within the village there is only one step.
Compare the following paragraphs by George Sylvain and Frederick En-
gels. In 1904 Sylvain wrote: "Quite on the contrary, there are few people
who displayed such tolerant, such simple, and such amiable customs as
our own. However, it is undeniable that certain acts within our public
. . .

life display a total absence of interest in the preservation of the human

being. This is basically due to our conception of political power." Engels

states: "This absolute isolation among the various communities, that has
created equal but not common interests, constitutes the natural base for
oriental despotism."
The army and public administration are paid for with the excess, dis-
counted from the payment of peasants, as we shall see later. Further-
more, these peasants are subject to personal loans. The nature of ren-
dering personal services implied such arbitrariness and such obligations
that one intellectual defined them as "earthly forced labor for the inno-
cent." The peasant could be forced either to repair a road or to clean the
stables of an important leader. Spencer St. John also writes: "The depart-
ment general or the district general are the officers who have all the
power, and generally have the absolute mandate over their respective
regions." At the lowest level, the peasant has contact with the "section
chief," who also has an "almost absolute authority." The relations be-
tween the city residents and the police remained under the same scheme,
and whoever became a prisoner, particularly for political reasons, would
never be able to forget.
One can therefore understand how M. Bird and J. B. Dehoux in 1867
were able to pose the following questions, and why they did not hesitate
to come up with answers: "What does (the presence of) an army rationally
show? Are they afraid of being attacked by foreigners? If this is not the
case, we have the right to assume that their objective is to oppress the
people. Certainly, protests against the military system have been frequent
in Haiti, but they have invariably failed and attempts to overthrow the
military have only managed to make it stronger."
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 317

This contradiction between the peasantry and the army explains the
dynamics of Haitian society of the nineteenth century, or, to phrase it
more accurately, its immutability. It is not a matter of rediscovering the
phenomenon: "If the nation is indifferent to the State, we can say that the
State is acting against the nation, since the individual (the national) is not
guaranteed the necessary freedom to develop his faculties to accomplish
his own destiny This occurred for one hundred years. The State does
. . .

not fulfill any of its functions. The most essential security function is left

to chance. ... In general, the rulers have no confidence whatsoever in the

governed and vice versa. A totally abnormal situation emerges from this:
the Haitian rulers are isolated from the nation."
Within this easy to understand the relationship that bound
context it is

They confirmed their loyalty to the

the civil servants to the chief of state.
Emperor Dessalines by swearing this oath that many presidents could
have used to their advantage: "We swear to blindly obey the laws issued
by his authority, which is the only authority that we recognize. We give
him the right to make peace, war, and to name his successor." Price-Mars
believes the chiefs of state who succeeded each other after 1804 to have
been monarchs.

The Dissolution of Village Society: The Road towards Occupation

Village society declined around the 1860s with the opening of the country
to international life. The lack of communications phenomenon ended,

thanks to the deep transformations that modified the international system.

The former Haitian attempts to establish external contacts had failed
miserably, without even producing changes within the internal structures
on the economic, political, or ideological levels. We can thus affirm that it
is not Haiti that drew closer to the international system, but that the

international system penetrated Haiti, in spite of the resistance of village

society. In large part, the roads, the means, and the consequences of the
capitalist, imperialist penetration into the country can be explained
through this resistance.
To understand the peculiarities of the retreat of village society when
faced with the imperialist push, it is necessary to analyze the characteris-
tics of the beginnings of commerce in Haiti; or, more accurately, the
process by means of which the merchants became the dominant class. We
are talking about a two-dimensional process that asserted itself during the
second half of the nineteenth century. The two dimensions should not be
confused. The first of these dimensions penetrated the dynamics of village
society; we are referring to the background and the bankruptcy of Haitian
merchants, who, as a fraction of a class, did not become differentiated as
a unique village unit. The second dimension penetrated the course of
318 Africa in Latin America

international economics and concerned the history and success of foreign

merchants established in Haiti.
We thus maintain that the Haitian merchants were a mere fraction of
the class in charge of the economic structures and practices. The ideolog-
ical rupture we can observe between the rest of the population and this
fraction of a class, whose expressions and pronouncements were ar-
ticulated within a French frame of reference, gave it an importance that it
did not really merit. Returning to the words of R. T. Smith, "They just
cannot live that old life anymore." Commerce became the refuge of the
"colored" people and particularly of those who during colonial times
owned slaves and plantations.
The odyssey of Haitian merchants was inscribed, so to speak, in the
conditions this fraction created under Alexandre Petion. The political
economy of this statesman, and particularly, his successive land distribu-
tions, took place within the framework of a village economy, as can be
inferred from the work of L. F. Manigat. This historian analyzed, among
other things, the structural causes for Petion's policies. We can highlight,
among others, the problem of the disappearance of the main source of
private wealth. Thus Manigat cites the following phrase by one of the
main representatives of the former freedmen: "As agriculture became less
profitable for those who could not cultivate or administrate their proper-
ties themselves, commerce became a refuge for all industries: everywhere
one could see stores, in the towns, the villages, the important road cross-
ings, even the plantations were filled with stores."
The use of the attached lands by the former planters was no different
from the use the small owners had for their plots. The former planters had
not set aside their lifestyle and love of wealth, but they could not recreate
the plantation system. S. St. John wrote at the beginning of the second
half of the nineteenth century: "The prejudice against sugar-making is still
strong ... A friend of mine tried to persuade one of his cultivators to aid
him in a sugar-making project, but the man answered sulkily Moue pas
k

esclave' ('I am not a slave')." Further along, with regard to cotton, the
same author wrote: "Field hands, however, were scarce, and in order to
get in their crops the proprietorshad to offer half the amount to those who
would come and gather it for them."
Generally, scholars readily accept the fact that the large landowners
subjected the peasants to the yoke of partnership. With regard to this, one
would have to ask oneself who, in the nineteenth century, would impose
partnership on whom (as suggested by the quote from S. St. John with
regard to cotton). The production of this commodity increased from
689,000 pounds to 4,000,000 pounds between 1860 and 1865 because of
the Civil War in the United States. It would be difficult to show that, if the
planters had been able to establish acceptable salaries, they would have
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 319

preferred partnership. And if this was the case in the 1860s, what could be
said of the Petion orBoyer years? We can conclude that the "large planta-
tions" of the plains rapidly became territorial wealth because of the re-
quirements deriving from the establishment of a village society, and that
commercial activity did not derive from the growth of an economic sur-
plus destined for the marketplace, but due to an adjustment within the
structure of social relations among members of a destitute class.
The habit of referring to a "national bourgeoisie" and of generating
polemics with regard to this class is so great that one is naturally driven to
research this class within the Haitian context. However, the meager infor-
mation we have seems to point to the fact that Haiti never had a national
bourgeoisie until the second half of the twentieth century. We will see
how it originated.
A large group of Haitian merchants thrived under Boyer. But shortly
thereafter, under the long reign of the peasant Emperor Faustin I, Simi-
lien was incharge of assassinating the Mulattoes who lived in the capital,
among them, the merchants. The historian Benoit Joachin observed:
"This merchant bourgeoisie was profoundly antinational, above all be-
cause of its cosmopolitan nature. The names that decorated the facades of
the most important stores of the port were British, German, French, and
North American. The Haitian establishments only seemed more numer-
ous (70 out of 125 in 1853-1856) if one did not differentiate between the
retail stores, the large stores belonging to wholesalers, and the coffee
export stores."
Under Geffrard commerce witnessed a remarkable expansion. And,
although some Haitians were able to make their fortune, this fortune did
not survive the three years of the Salnave government. Salnave decreed
the embargo of all internal and external commerce in favor of the state.
The government imported priority products and sold them through its
own distribution chain, at a "price that was lower than half the commer-
cial price." The government also had the monopoly of foreign trade for
the major exports, such as coffee and cotton. Under these conditions,
private merchants had no other option than to abandon their businesses.
To leave no doubt as to his intentions of controlling commerce, Salnave
ordered that if any merchants "be it out of fear, or with the intention of
obstructing the progress of things, were to keep his store closed, he would
be considered an enemy of the government, and would be treated as
such."
During the last quarter of the century, the Haitian merchants were
becoming progressively scarcer. Armand Thoby pointed out that "around
1880, Port-au-Prince did not have one important Haitian merchant.
Around 1903, small-scale business had also escaped Haitian hands. The
foreigner who for many years owned the only bank of Haiti, then con-
320 Africa in Latin America

trolled all the financial resources. . .

." Stenio Vincent goes even further;
according to him, almost all the nonagricultural activities were controlled
by foreigners.
It is difficult to find Haitians during that period to a who belonged
category above that of mere retailers. They were
such a degree stifled to
within urban society that the governments, which best defended business
interests, did not dare to clearly advocate a policy of annexation to a large
power, as could be observed in other republics within the Antilles. We are
not trying to praise them for it, nor to reprimand those who sighed later
for a North American invasion, but are merely trying to establish the
situation within which they developed. Drowned by the urban masses,
they did not have enough strength to successfully accomplish an annexa-
tion policy. Neither they nor the intellectual elite that represented the
interests of the peasantry (the "nationals") were in a position to ade-
quately organize, be it the defense of the nation or the less violent pene-
tration of imperialism upon Haitian affairs. The possibility of an interven-
tion was already forseeable as of 1873: "... I wish for my fellow citizens
to understand that, if the country does not initiate its road towards pros-
perity, it will soon be exposed to the greatest of dangers. This is a fact
that is obvious to every thinking man And we must know that the
. . .

enemies of our nationalism blame us for the current lack of productivity of

our soil in order to deny us our autonomy and to question our ability for
self government."
As is well known, monopoly of the tertiary sector by foreigners was
not accomplished without the aid of gunboats, all bearing the flags of "our
friends." remains to be seen, however, how it was possible for the
It

such importance within a village economy for it

tertiary sector to achieve
to serve as a jumping board for foreign penetration, particularly because
such an economy is not open to investments. In the following paragraphs
we will set out to describe this mechanism, which was also responsible for
the creation of a dominant social class in charge of ensuring the participa-
tion of Haiti within the concert of modern nations.
In a society of the type we government apparatus
are analyzing, the
lives off the "nation,"and the functionaries, by some means or another,
absorb a part of village production. Within the Haitian context, it was
soon necessary for this portion of production to be transformed into
money. With the beginning of the isolation period, under the Petion gov-
ernment, the State was the largest landowner on the island, thus the
executive paid its employees by appropriating a portion of the national
patrimony for this purpose. And there was more; public employees were
compensated by being paid directly in land. That is, currency was no
longer necessary to cover their salaries.
However, under Boyer, the Haitian merchants who emerged within the
above-mentioned structural framework played two separate cards in their
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 321

and autonomous position with regard to the

efforts to establish a different
village masses. They became involved in the negotiations aimed at gaining
the recognition of Haitian independence by France, and they encouraged
a policy of monetary recovery. On the one hand, Haiti reestablished its
foreign relations, since various European powers followed the French
example; on the other hand, since a good part of the lands were in the
hands of the state or of public employees, the only viable means of
financing the administration of the military sector was by levying export
and import taxes. In other words, as E. Paul would point out later, gov-
ernment revenues came almost exclusively from customs duties, meaning
that ultimately, it was the farmer who paid for all the official expenditures.
However, this strategy, particularly due to the vast expenditures
caused by the recognition of the country's independence, could not func-
tion unless foreign trade expanded. Otherwise, greater or lesser crisis
conditions would emerge, depending on internal conflicts affecting the
balance of the village system. L. F. Manigat shows an interesting correla-
tion between the political crises of nineteenth-century Haiti and the drop
of coffee on the international market. Between 1842 and 1846
in the price
prices went down; there were peasant wars and general Faustin Sou-
louque came to power. This was the date of the first massacre of the
embryonic Haitian bourgeoisie. It was accompanied by large issues of
paper currency and an inflation that was accelerated by the abundance of
false notes.
There followed a remarkable growth of trade between the end of
Soulouque's rule and under the Geffrard regime. However, in 1865-1869,
there was another fall in export prices, new civil wars, and the assassina-
tions and pillagings of the S. Salnave regime. The devaluation of the
currency at that time, reached unprecedented levels, stimulated by the
work of forgers. The Haitian merchants in particular bore the brunt of
popular outrage. No institutions protected them, while consulates and
warships came to the defense of the foreign merchants.
At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a new price drop,
with prices reaching their lowest level in 1909-1911. Popular fury was
even more violent. To the political conflicts that followed one must add
the rivalries among the different groups of foreign merchants, the Haitian
version of the struggle between the great empires. Furthermore, the Hai-
tian elite formulated its own diagnosis of the causes for the backwardness
of the country. Measures were taken to deport the entire Syrian colony,
among whom there were numerous Mideastemers who had become natu-
ralized North Americans. Financial disorder increased progressively until
the landing of the Marines.
This degradation process revealed an important fact. As political insta-
bility and civil wars grew, there were more peasants enlisted in the war-
ring armies; there were more governors and "revolutionaries" in need of
322 Africa in Latin America

currency, who were therefore printing it; there were currency forgers
with freedom of action; and the position of foreign merchants and their
consulates grew progressively stronger. Thus, intervention in Haitian
commerce became more and more blatant. This process and its relation-
ships with the commercial and financial sector did not escape the intellec-
tuals of the period. In 1892, Edmond Paul wrote:

The government is mortgaging itself on short term to the usurious interest

rates of private individuals, or for the purpose of giving equivalent benefits.
Thus, little by little, the millions of a floating debt concentrated in foreign

hands build up and uncertainty increases in these disastrous days during

which some cannot control their desires to confiscate our land as a guaran-
tee. . Although the Republic has a Bank and a national currency that is so
. .

costly to print, the rate of the currency on the market has been so unstable
that the exchange rate has fluctuated in price between 20, 30, and 50%,
which impoverishes and disorients our national commerce.
Thereby, the merchants of all nationalities serve as intermediaries in the
process through which peasants pay the salaries of soldiers. They perform
this role without hurting their mercantile activities, which certainly also
helps to increase their control over the administration.

While rivalries between the large powers were not defined in favor of
one nation or the other on the international level, disorder and anarchy
prevailed in Haiti. Order was reestablished, and maintained, in large part,
up to our days, as soon as the United States consolidated its hegemony
over the Americas (World War I) and when, within the country, the First
National City Bank displaced all of its competitors with intermediary
roles between the soldier administrators who had now become bureau-
crats and the peasants.
In fact, from the point of view that interests us now, the achievements
of the occupation resulted in ensuring the gradual acquisition by foreign
merchants of a Haitian citizenship card. To this Haitianization of what we
call "le bord de mer" (the port), one must add the formation of some
plantations; we are thus left with a total absence of productive capital that
could have multiplied and achieved some type of integration of the
peasantry into contemporary trade. Since the productive means in the
hands of peasants were not an inexhaustible resource, migration to towns
or the urbanization process accelerated, as did the emigration to neigh-
boring countries; is, depopulation was occurring. During the
that
nineteenth century was impossible to find a single social group formed
it

of salaried employees. Today a large market for inexpensive labor is

attracted to Haiti by the light assembly industry, which produces exclu-
sively for export.
The most powerful Haitian class between 1915 and the present con-
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 323

tinues to be that of Haitian merchants of foreign origins. We must there-

fore remember Dobb's phrase:

Even though a dominant class can originate from

commerce or can establish
links with merchants, improbable that a merchant class, that has as its
it is

main activity that of being an intermediary between producer and con-

sumer, could become a dominant class in a radical and exclusive sense . . .

With their fortunes [the merchants] will tend to attach themselves to the
existing production mode. It is more likely that they will feel compelled to
preserve this production mode without transforming it, and it is likely that
they will fight to become a part of the existing means of obtaining the
surplus productive value of labor, but that they do not attempt to change the
structure.

We can also add the words of Fleury Féquiere: "We cannot be surprised
that the Haitian capitalists have always disdained agricultural and indus-
trial enterprises, displaying their preference for incredible trans-
actions. . .
."

Conclusion

The people of the colony of Saint Domingue resolved their problems of

slavery by starting from the basic principles within their cultural and
ideological framework. They created a "counterplantation," a village so-
ciety formed by a majority of new from Africa and an indetermi-
arrivals
nate number of maroons. who wanted indepen-
In other words, those
dence in 1804 were an overwhelming majority of former Black slaves who
had not been imbued with Creole culture, and freedmen who lived outside
of the socializing reach of the plantation system. At the beginning, the
country witnessed a period of real political and economic independence,
at which time village society and the African culture were consolidated.
Gradually the country, like all other societies at that time, was attracted
into the orbit of the world capitalist economy, towards the end of the
nineteenth century. The commercial and financial sectors served as the
link. The country never had a national bourgeoisie or an industrial
bourgeoisie, nor did it have a social force that was able to alter the
unchangeable village society.
To prove the above-mentioned points, we have put aside all references
as to why African groups were brought to Saint Domingue. We ignored
the goings-on between the colony and the center. We did not mention the
policies thatwere implemented by the large powers once the adventure of
the slaves and maroons was crowned by success nor the unfavorable
trade relationships between the new country and the capitalist world. We
324 Africa in Latin America

barely referred to the interimperialist struggles, and if we did mention the

United States occupation, we did not question why it occurred.

Haiti did not choose to become isolated. As an American country
populated by Blacks who had been slaves, it could only evolve in isolation
during the nineteenth century. However, this isolation of rural society
broke at the beginning of this century on account of the United States
occupation. How this occurred, that is, how the economic, political, and
ideological structures corresponding to the development of capitalist mo-
nopolies were created, is particularly significant for the understanding of
the subject matter we are analyzing.
As the newly arrived Africans were seeking refuge in the mountains to
create and to defend a non-European life style, they could not forsee the
difficulties caused by the French Revolution and the changes that had
occurred at the heart of British capitalism, which would eventually make
for favorable conditions for political and economic independence in the
Caribbean. Likewise, at the turn of the century, there was no way that the
armed peasants could have guessed that the North Americans would fall
upon them. Therefore, the prolific warnings by groups of intellectuals
during these turbulent times produced no effect, as they themselves con-
fessed. Their views were not inscribed within the basic framework of
peasant thought, which was not built upon a series of structural ex-
changes with the capitalist world. This is the essential point in under-
standing the role of African culture and in the formulation of a response to
the problems that once confronted and still face the country.
After the North American occupation, in the mid 1930s, when Hers-
kovits visited Haiti to work on his well-known book Life in a Haitian
Valley, he wrote that at that time "the second independence" of the coun-
try was being celebrated, in commemoration of the day when the Marines
left our country. Today the anniversary of the day of the departure of the

Marines is known as "army day." And let it be known that this army,
trained by the Marines themselves, did not participate in the conquest of
the second independence.
It thus happened that the isolation of the maroon peasant society,

which was at first an endogenous defensive condition, became, after inde-

pendence, an exogenous condition, imposed during the nineteenth cen-
tury by the current powers. Later, once the structures of dependency had
been formed, isolation turned into a condition mediated by certain Creole
social classes.
If, during this project, we have on internal condi-
insisted exclusively
it is because a
tions to explain the vitality of the African culture in Haiti,
culture lives and develops by "looking inward" towards its productive and
reproductive conditions. The question we have tried to answer is how a
culture of African origin could develop while the problems presented by
slavery and colonization were being resolved. We maintained that the
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 325

Haitian case is explained by the expression of a despotic, village pro-

duction mode, with its roots going back to eras that predate the plantation
system.
In view of the characteristics of the political system and the despotic
village production system, and the position of the country's intellectuals
with regard to its we must conclude that those intel-
ideological structure,
lectuals never gave their full and sincere support to the lifestyle inherited
from the African maroons. They were never able to formulate a strategy
that would ensure the participation of the peasantry within a politically
viable system. Jean Price-Mars wrote:

Therefore, given that the Haitian nation does exist, it so happens that it is

infantile,which prevents it from displaying its political existence. It is not

just for the North American to judge this state by calling us: 'an inarticulate
people' Inarticulate people, a term
! that would indicate a people unable
. . .

to express their thoughts, deprived of the ability to articulate their will and
to assert it, thus reduced to be nothing more defined than a 'confused heap
of individuals,' stultified by ignorance, a flock ready to follow the orders of a
leader, no matter who he is, just so he is clever enough to assert himself.
That was the situation between 1870-1880, which, by the way, has not
changed much since then. . . .

This case study, in a way, goes back to the concept of "inarticulate

people," by defining the organization of the Haitian nation as a juxtaposi-
tion of villages. From here we derive a similar conclusion to that of Price-
Mars, namely, the inability of the peasantry to express its own idea or
political will, and consequently, its versatility in facing national and inter-
national conditions. Therefore, in a book on "Africa in Latin America,"
we thought it appropriate to describe an array of relationships that would
explain the vitality and persistence of African culture. In our day, when
research on ethnic identity is at the base of social struggles in a large
number of countries, this type of study is very important. It permits us to
show that the culture of African origins involves a conception of politics
and economics that can be empirically observed.
The despotic village production system, which confers its uniqueness
and longevity to African culture, is devoid of an internal dynamic of
economic development. Thus, its ideological baggage is unable to ad-
vance towards a greater understanding and a superior control of assy-
metrical relationships wherein the position of production that remains in
the hands of the transmitters of this production system is determined. The
culture of village society is an oppressed culture, that is, an assemblage of
norms and values articulated around a system with little knowledge,
created and dispersed by isolated parochial institutions that remain sepa-
rated from the rest of the world.
It is under these conditions that we find an "Africa in Haiti," a Haitian
326 Africa in Latin America

version of Africa, involved in itself, unable to express itself and to de-

mand its place under the sun; nevertheless its vitality and its universality
are undeniable. It is a national culture that is not official, in the same way
that its national language is not official either and that Haiti's religion is

not official.
We have tried to show in this essay that a number of Haitian intellectu-
als in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century
have formulated in-depth analyses of the country's situation which made
it easy to consolidate their interpretations into a coherent model. Among

the names we have mentioned, and taking into account only their analy-
sis, it would be impossible to separate the defenders of the peasantry from

the artful advocates of annexation to the United States. One can say that
within the framework of the dominant Creole culture, such as it was
expressed before the North American occupation, problems that faced
village society have been researched, although with varying success; and
that it is at the level of development projects that we can catalogue the
intellectuals.
In view of the of the peasantry, it would be neces-
political versatility
sary, some day, an end to the distinctions between the national and
to put
the official spheres; one must thereby resolve not only the problem of the
dialogue with the peasants and of their participation in the political arena
that seems to have been relatively easy in the past, but one must also
resolve the problem of participation and of a dialogue in the exclusive
defense of the interests of the country.
It is at this level that "Africa in Haiti" has, not withstanding the limita-
tions typical of oppressed cultures, a very important place in the future
all

of the country. Because of the efforts of deculturation that occurred

throughout the entire history of public instruction in Haiti, which for more
than a hundred years became confused in large part with a "religious"
history that did not retreat in light of open persecution, there are few
spokespeople capable of ensuring a dialogue in the sense that we men-
tioned earlier.
Therefore, the problems inherited from colonization, problems of polit-
ical relationships between Haiti and the outside world, have not been
resolved, given the structure of the state in a village society. The power
from the types of solutions found for
relationships in Haiti derive directly
the problems of slavery. They are radical solutions based on a rupture
between slave society and peasant society. Given the radical nature of
this rupture, the Creole unit, with bourgeois potential, was never able to
develop, so that one of the main legacies of colonialism, namely the
distinction between new Black arrivals and Creoles, remained alive. This
dichotomy was apparent in many ways during the course of the country's
history and according to various points of view: in the division between
the countryside and the city, between voodoo and Christianity, between
 The Problems of Slavery and Colonization of Haiti 327

those who can read and write and those who cannot, between those who
speak French and those who do not, between those who can discharge the
functions of representatives and those who cannot, between the national
and the official sphere.
Beyond the response that has been given to colonization and slavery,
the problem today hinges upon the response given to the presence of
"Africa in Haiti." It is here that one can make a distinction between those
who respect and those who do not respect their own country and their
ancestors.
 About the Contributors

Allsopp, Richard
Guyanese philologist (b. 1923). Studied at the University of London. Author of
numerous linguistic essays on Caribbean speech, such as: Some Problems
Facing the Lexicography of Caribbean English, 1971; Caribbean English and
the Problem of Communication, 1969; Expression of State and Action in the
Dialect of English Used in the Georgetown Area of British Guyana, 1962;
Pronomial Forms in the Dialect Used in Georgetown and its Environs by
People Engaged in Non-Clerical Occupations, 1958. Professor at the Univer-
sity of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.
Aretz de Ramón y Rivera, Isabel
Argentine/Venezuelan ethnomusicologist, folklorist, and composer, (b. Bue-
nos Aires, 1913). Graduate of the National Conservatory of Buenos Aires,
doctorate in musicology. Main writings: Música tradicional Argentina, 1946;
El folklore musical argentino, 1952; Música tradicional de La Rioja, 1967;
Cantos navideños en el folklore venezolano, 1962; Instrumentos musicales de
Venezuela, 1967; El tamunanque, 1970. Principal musical works: "Simiente,"
1965; "Yekuana," 1972; "Argentino hasta la muerte," 1975. Director and foun-
der of the Instituto Interamericano de Etnomusicología y Folklore (INIDEF),
of Venezuela.
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau
Barbadian poet, critic, and historian (b. Bridgetown, Barbados, 1930). Princi-
pal works: Rights of Passage, 1967; Masks, 1968; Islands, 1969; Folk Culture
of the Slaves in Jamaica, 1970; The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica
1770-1820, 1971; The Arrivants, 1973; Other Exiles, 1975; Our Ancestral Heri-
tage, 1976. Studied at Cambridge, and later lived in Ghana. He is a professor at
the University of the West Indies, founder of the Caribbean Artist Movement
and of the magazine issued by this movement, called Savacou. Member of the
editorial board of the magazine Bim. In 1976 he received the Casa de las
Americas prize for his work Black & Blues.
de Carvalho, José Jorge
Brazilian musician (b. Ipanema, Minas Gerais, 1950). Degree in musical com-
position at, and director of the orchestra of the University of Brasilia. He later
studied ethnomusicology at the Instituto Interamericano de Etnomusicología y
Folklore (INIDEF). He conducted research of narrative musical forms in the
Northeast of Brazil. He is now working as a researcher for the Consejo
Científico y Humanístico of the Universidad Central de Venezuela.
Carrera Damas, Germán
Venezuelan historian (b. Cumaná, 1930). Main writings: La dimensión
histórica en el presente de América Latina y Venezuela, 1972; El culto a
Bolivar, 1970; Boves, aspectos socioeconómicos, 1968; Historiografía marx-
ista venezolana y otros temas, 1967; Temas de historia social y de las ideas,
1969. Professor of history at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He is
currently coordinating, within the framework of the Departamento de Inves-
tigaciones Sociales del Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo (CENDES), a pre-
diagnostic sociohistoric study of Venezuela.
Casimir, Jean
Haitian sociologist and historian (b. Port-au-Prince, 1938). Main writings: De la

329
330 Africa in Latin America

sociología regional a la acción política, 1970; Los bozales: el supuesto de una

cultura oprimida en Haiti, 1973; Professor of sociology of development, and of
geopolitics at the Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales of the Universidad
Nacional Autónoma of Mexico (UNAM). He is currently living in Trinidad,
where he is responsible for social affairs for ECLA.
Depestre, Rene
Haitian poet (b. Jacmel, 1926). Studied at the Instituí de Sciences Politique s of
the University of Paris, at the Sorbonne, and at the Louvre Museum. Main
writings: Etincelles, 1945; Vegetation de ciarte, 1951; Traduit du grand large,
1952; Mineral negro, 1962; Journal d'un animal marin, 1964; Un aracoiris para
el occidente cristiano, 1967; Pour la poésie, pour la revolution, 1968; Poete a
Cuba, 1972; El palo ensebado, 1975. His poems and essays have appeared in
various American, African, and European publications. At present he lives in
Paris, where he works at UNESCO.
Dos Santos, Deoscóredes Maximiliano
Specialist in religious studies. Brazilian (b. Bahia, 1917). Main writings:
Yoruba, qual sefala, 1950; Contos negros de Bahia, 1961 Axé Opó Afonjá,
tal ;

1962; Contos de Nagó, 1963; Porque Oxalá usa Edodidé, 1966 (with Juana
Elbein Dos Santos). He was initiated in the Nagó religion at age 7, and is
currently asogbá (high priest) of the cult of Obaluaiye in the traditional com-
munity of Axé Opó Afonjá; and also alápini, (high priest) of the ancestral cult
of Egún. He has carried out field work in Brazil, Nigeria, Dahomey, Togo, and
Ghana.
Dos Santos, Juana Elbein
Argentine/Brazilian ethnologist (b. Buenos Aires, 1928), wife of the above. She
has written numerous articles in her field and has coauthored with Deoscoredes
Maximiliano Dos Santos West African Rituals and Sacred Art in Brazil, 1967;
La religión Nagó, 1972; Esú Bara Láróyé, 1971. She received her doctorate in
ethnology from the Faculté de Sciences Humaines at the Sorbonne. She has
done research and field work in Brazil, the Caribbean, Mexico, the United
States, Dahomey, Nigeria, and Ghana.
Feijoo, Samuel
Cuban poet, essayist, and painter (b. Las Villas, 1914). Main writings: La
alcancía del artesano, 1958; Diario de viajes, 1960; Diario abierto, 1960; El
pájaro de las soledades, 1961; Caminante montes, 1962; El girasol sediento,
1963; Ser fiel, 1964; Juan Quinquín en Pueblo Mocho, 1964; Sobre los
movimientos por una poesía cubana, 1966. He was managing editor of the
magazine Islands of the Universidad Central de Las Villas for several years.
He is presently editor of Signos, a Cuban literary magazine.
Ianni, Octavio
Brazilian sociologist and ethnologist (b. Itu, Sao Paulo, 1926). Main writings:
As metamorfoses do escravo, 1962; Racas e classes sociais no Brazil, 1966;
Estado e capitalismo, 1965; O colapso do populismo no Brasil, 1968; Im-
perialismo y cultura de la violencia en América Latina, 1970; Imperialismo na
América Latina, 1974; Esclavitud y capitalismo, 1976. For thirteen years he
was professor of philosophy at the Universidade de Sao Paulo. Since 1969 he
has been a member of the Centro Brasileiro de Analise a Planejamento and
visiting professor at the Universities of Columbia, Oxford, and Mexico
(UNAM).
Mintz, Sidney W.
U.S. ethnologist and anthropologist (b. Dover, N.J., 1922). Main writings:
 About the Contributors 331

Worker in the Cane, 1960; Caribbean Transformations 1974; The People of

,

Puerto Rico, 1956 (coauthor). Ph.D., Columbia University (anthropology),

M.A., Yale. He has taught at Columbia and Yale Universities and at the École
Practique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He is currently teaching anthropology at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Moreno Fraginals, Manuel
Cuban historian and economist (b. Havana, 1920). Main writings: El ingenio.
El complejo económico social cubano del azúcar, 1964-1976 (3 vols.); José
Antonio Saco: estudio y bibliografía, 1960; Misiones cubanas en archivos
europeos, 1953; La Habana, 1963. He has simultaneously conducted research
in social science and has done practical work as a marketing and business
analyst. He is professor and lecturer at the universities of La Habana, Las
Villas, Caracas, Maracaibo, Los Andes, Mexico, Madrid, Oxford, Ibadan, etc.
In 1981 he was awarded the Clarence H. Haring Prize of the American Histor-
ical Association. He has been visiting professor at Columbia, Johns Hopkins
and the University of Florida, and a Fellow of the Wilson Center for Scholars
in Washington, D.C. He is currently an advisor to the Ministry of Culture in
Cuba.
Urfé, Odilo
Cuban musicologist, pianist, flutist, and conductor of a popular Cuban band (b.
Madruga, 1921). In 1949 he founded the Instituto Musical de Investigaciones
Folklóricas (IMIF), the most important center of musical classification and of
popular and folk music in Cuba. He has organized festivals of popular Cuban
music. Currently, among numerous other assignments, he is professor of his-
tory and of Cuban musical appreciation at the Instituto Superior de Arte,
director and pianist of the Charanga Nacional de Conciertos, and executive
secretary of the Comité Nacional Cubano of the International Music Council
(IMC).
Verger, Pierre
French/Brazilian historian and ethnologist (b. 1913). Main writings: Fiestas y
danzas en el Cuzco y los Andes, 1945; O fumo da Bahia e o tráfico dos escravos
do Golfo de Benim, 1966; Flux et reflux de la traite des négres entre le Golfe de
Bénin et Bahía de Todos os Santos, du XVII au XIX siecle, 1968. For many
years he lived in Bahía where he has studied the folklore and the ethnology.
Currently he is doing research in Africa, particularly in Ghana and Nigeria.
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 Index

Acaau, 311 65, 126, 228, 229, 232, 233, 254, 274,
Achule, 267 275, 294
Acosta Saignes, Miguel, 37, 254 Basurco, Joseph, 221
Agerkop, Terri, 201, 206 Batata, 191
Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo, 254 Baxter, Ivy, 126
Aimes, Hubert H. S., 286 Beckwith, Martha, 126
Alexis, Jacques Stephen, 264 Bell, 118-19, 123
Alexis, Nord, 311 Bellegarde, Dantes, 114
Alfonso, Octavio "Tata", 186 Bello, Andrés, 263
Alfonso y Armenteros, Juan de Dios, Bennett, Louise, 113
185-86 Benoist, Jean, 21
Ali, Jamal, 129 Berry, J., 96-98
Allende, Salvador, 263 Bihojo, Benkos, 203
Alleyn, Marvin, 87, 295 Bird, M., 316
Allfrey, Phyllis Shand, 110 Blassou, 310
Allsopp, Richard, 295 Bobo, Rosal vo, 311
Almeida, Joaquín de, 278 Boettner, Juan Max, 202
Almeida, Manuel Joaquín de, 278 Bogle, Paul, 108
Alvarenga, Oneyda, 239, 243 Bolívar,Simón, 33, 263
Álvarez Ríos, María, 182 Borghero, Francisco, 278
Andrade, Mario de, 146, 147, 239, 243 Boukman, 310
Ankerman, Jorge, 187 Boyer, Jean Pierre, 310, 311, 312, 319,
Antuña, Antonio, 195 320
Arango y Parreño, Francisco de, 29-30 Brathwaite, Edward K., 62
Aretz, Isabel, 207, 208, 213, 218, 219, Brierre, Jean F, 271
224 Brindis, Virginia, 168
Arozarena, Marcelino, 164 Broca, Paul, 21
Assucjio, Fernando, 193 Brouard, Carl, 112-13, 123
Augier, Roy, 266 Brown, John, 264
Ayestarán, Lauro, 193, 216 Brown, Sterling, 264
Bruno, Giordano, 268
Bailey, B. L.,93 Burton, Richard F, 279
Baker, Moses, 108 Bussa, 108
Baldwin, James, 124
Ballagas, Emilio, 164, 166, 266 Cabrera, Lydia, 84, 153, 160-61
Bangou, Henri, 269 Campbell, George, 113
Baraka, Imamu (LeRoi Jones), 124-25 Carew, 168
Bastide, Roger, 39, 44, 47-48, 49, 64, Carneiro, Edison, 239, 241, 254

337
338 Africa in Latin America

Carpentier, Alejo, 31, 164, 166, 267 Domar, E., 289

Carter, 168 Dos Passos, John, 264
Carvalho Neto, Paulo de, 194, 217 Douglass, Frederick, 264
Caso, Antonio, 262 Drayton, Geoffrey, 110
Cassidy, F. G., 88, 89-90, 96 Du Bois, William E. B., 261, 264, 271
Castellanos, Israel, 198 Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 264
Castro, Fidel, 263, 267, 272 Dumont, Henri, 14
Cervantes, Ignacio, 188 Duncan, John, 276-77, 280
Césaire, Aimé, 124, 129, 132, 133, 169, Durand, O., 261
267,268-69,271
Céspedes, Carlos Manuel de, 158, 267 Eboué, Félix, 267
Chateauselins, Bernardo de, 14 Echemendía, Ambrosio, 154
Chenoweth, Vida, 198 Elder, J. D., 126
Christophe, Henri, 310-1 1, 313 Ellison, Ralph, 124
Christy, E. P., 222 Emerson, Ralph W., 264
Clarke, Elizabeth, 133 Emtage, J. B., 110
Clavé, Anselmo, 183 Engels, Friedrich, 316
Collazos, Óscar, 262 Engerman, Stanley, 289
Concolorcorvo, 199 Escalante, Aquiles, 191-92, 200, 202,
Contreras, Pedro, 221 216-17, 254
Cordero, Roque, 225 Eseiza, Gabino, 220
Correa de Azevedo, Luis Heitor, 242 Estela, 187
Couffon, Claude, 266 Esteves, Antonio, 225
Crombet, 158 Exaus, 315
Cuffee, 108
Cullen, Countee, 113,264 Failde, Miguel, 176, 186
Curtin, Philip D., 286 Fanon, Frantz, 110, 271
Faulkner, William, 264
Damas, León, 129, 133, 168, 267, 268, Féquiere, Fleury, 323
271 Ferguson, J. Halcro, 39

Darío, Rubén, 262, 263 Fernandes, Florestan, 39

Davis, David Brion, 39 Fernández Retamar, Roberto, 267
De Camp, 89 Firmin, 261
De la Rosa, Javier, 220 Fitzgerald, Francis Scott, 264
DeLisser, H. G., 110, 124 Focke, Hendrick, 93
Deerr, Noel, 290 Forbes, F. E., 280
Dehoux, J. B., 316 Fornaris, José, 157-58
Delafosse, 268 Foster,George M., 222
Delavignette, Robert, 268 Fouchard, Jean, 308
Depestre, Rene, 269 Francisco, Slinger, 106
Derance, Lamour, 312 Frazier, E. Franklin, 39, 254
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 108, 308, Freyre, Gilberto, 15, 39, 274
311,312-13,314 Friedenthal, Albert, 198, 223
Díaz Nieto, Alfredo, 188 Frobenius, 174, 268
Díaz Rodríguez, Manuel, 262
Diop, Birago, 267 Gallet, Luciano, 239, 240, 243
Dobb, Maurice, 323 Garcia Caturla, Alejandro, 188
 1

Index 339

García Márquez, Gabriel, 267 Hill, Errol, 126

García Monje, J., 262 Hippolyte, 111-12
Garvey, Marcus, 1 1 Hitler, Adolph, 268
Geffrard,319, 321 Hoenigswald, 95
Genovese, Eugene D., 39, 288 Hoetink, Harry, 39, 292
Gesualdo, Vicente, 220-21, 222 Hughes, Langston, 264, 271
Giedion, Siegfried, 19 Hurault, Jean, 206
Giménez, 222 Hurbon, Laénnec, 293
Goilo, E.,93 Hymes, Dell, 295
Goman, 314
Gómez, Máximo, 267 Iriarte Brenner, Francisco, 217
Góngora, Luis de, 165, 266 Izikowitz, Karl Gustav, 201
González Mántici, Enrique, 188
Gordon, George William, 108
Jacobs, H. R, 116
Grábener, Jürgen, 298
Jahn, Janheinz, 126
Gramsci, Antonio, 268
Janvier, Louis Joseph, 261, 316
Greenberg, J., 90
Jardel, J. P., 94
Grenet, Elíseo, 173, 184, 187
Jemmot, Tito, 133
Grenet, Emilio, 187
Jerry, Bongo, 127-28
Grenon, R, 193
Jiménez Borja, 198, 217
Grimaldi, 272
Joachin, Benoit, 319
Guerrero, Félix, 188
Johnson, Alicia, 133
Guevara, Ernesto "Che," 262
Johnson, James Weldon, 264
Guillen, Nicolás, 109, 114, 128, 133,
Jones, LeRoi, see Baraka, Imamu
164-68, 187, 266, 267, 271
Jorrin Enrique, 186-87
Guimaráes Rosa, Joáo, 267
Joseato, 182
Guirao, Ramón, 163
Juárez, Benito, 262
Guzmán, Teodoro Hipólito, 221

Kagami, 126
Hall Robert, 85-86, 89, 293
Jr.,
Kennedy, James, 18
Hamy, Ernest Theodore, 21
Kesteloot, Lilyan, 268
Hancock, Ian, 88, 95
Kipling, Rudyard, 265
Handy, William Christopher, 176
Kolinski, 205
Hanke, Lewis, 287
Konetzke, Richard, 287
Hardy, George, 268
Harris, Marvin, 39
Harris, Wilson, 120 La Couture, Dutrone de, 17
Hayden, Robert, 133 Labov, William, 89
Hedouville, 312 Laffite, 278
Hemingway, Ernest, 264 Laleau, León, 114, 271
Henri, 309 Lamming, George, 119, 122-23, 125,
Henríquez Ureña, Pedro, 262, 263 132-33
Hernández, José, 220, 263 Landa, Rafael, 186
Herskovits, Francis S., 84, 231 Lanuza, José Luis, 195, 221
Herskovits, Melville J., 39, 40, 48-49, Lauro, Antonio, 225
84, 126, 191, 205, 231, 243, 252, 254, Le Riverend, Julio, 152
293, 324 Leclerc, 310
340 Africa in Latin America

Lecuona, Ernesto, 173, 182, 184, 187, Matos, Palés, 113, 168
188 Maugée, Aristide, 267
Lecuona, Margarita, 187 Maynard Araujo, Alceu, 241
Lee, Don, 133 McDonald, Ian, 110
Leiris, Michel, 254 McKay, Claude, 113, 264, 267, 271
Lenin, 272 Mella, 267, 272
León, Argeliers, 234 Melon, Alfred, 266
Leonardo da Vinci, 268 Mendes, Alfredo, 110
Lepowski, T., 312 Mendoza, Renato, 126
Léro, Étienne, 267 Menéndez, Jesús, 267
Lewis, Monk, 123-24 Menil, Rene, 267
Liebig, Justus von, 17 Merriam, Alan, 231
Liggins, J., 18 Métraux, Alfred, 254
Liscano, Juan, 201, 216, 225 Mintz, Sidney W., 6, 22, 39, 45, 62,
Littré, 261 287, 290, 291-95
Locke, Alain, 264, 267 Moneada, 158
López, Casto Fulgencio, 39 Monnerot, Jules, 267
López, Marta, 217 Monot, Theodore, 268
López, Orestes, 176, 186 Montalvo, José R., 14, 263
López de Gomara, 287 Montané Dardé, Luis, 14, 21
L'Ouverture, Toussaint, 104, 263, 308, Montaner, Rita, 187
310-11,312,313 Mopoil, 76
Lucréce, André, 268 Morales, Obdulio, 187
Moré, Benny, 187
Maceo, Antonio, 21, 158, 267, 272 Moreno Fraginals, Manuel, 27, 29, 291
Machado Filho, Ayres da Mata, 241 Morisseau-Leroy, 271
Madiou, 314, 315 Mórner, Magnus, 292
Mais, Roger, 110 Moya, Ismael, 220, 224
Malowist, 291 Moya, Pichardo, 164
Mandel, Jay, 288 Mussolini, Benito, 268
Manigat, L. F., 318, 321
Manzano, Juan Francisco, 149, 154,
Naipaul, V. S., 121
156-57
Napoleon Bonaparte, 104, 310
Marán, Rene, 267
Nardal, Andrée, 267
Mariátegui, José Carlos, 263
Navarro, Remigio, 221
Marinello, Juan, 111, 266
Navarro Tomás, Tomás, 87
Márquez, Robert, 266
Nazario, M. A., 86
Marshall, Paule, 133-34
Neruda, Pablo, 267
Martí, José, 112, 261, 263, 266, 267,
Nicole, Christopher, 110
272
Nieboer, Herman J., 289
Martínez-Alier, Verena, 39
Niger, Paul, 271
Martínez Estrada, E., 266
Martínez Villena, 267
Martins Lamas, Dulce, 242 Ogotemmli, 126
Marulanda, Octavio, 209, 210, 215, 223 Olimpo, Epifanio, 283
Marvin X, 133 Ortiz, Adalberto, 168
Marx, Karl, 287, 289, 290 Ortiz, Fernando, 39, 83, 126, 170, 175,
Matamoros, Miguel, 187 176,216,254
 1

Index 34 i

Patterson, 121 Roach, E. M., 113

Paul, Edmond, 321, 322 Roche, Rafael, 153
Pearse, Andrew, 228 Rodó, José Enrique, 262, 263
Pedro, don, 69 Rodrigues, Nina, 126, 146, 147, 243
Pedroso, Regino, 271 Rodriguez Vale, Flausino, 240
Peña, Lázaro, 267 Roldan, Amadeo, 188
Peralte, Charlemagne, 311 Romero, Fernando, 197, 199
Pereira Salas, Eugenio, 196, 221, 222 Romeu, Antonio María, 186
Pérez, Prado, Dámaso, 176, 186 Rosas, Juan Manuel, 198
Pétion, Alexandre, 311, 318, 319, 320 Roumain, Jacques, 112, 113, 133, 264-
Phillips, Albert, 222 66, 269, 271
Pichardo, Esteban, 198 Roumer, Emilio, 271
Picornell, Juan Bautista, 31 Roy, Namba, 120
Pierrime, 315 Ruiz Castellanos, Pablo, 188
Pier son, Donald, 126 Ruiz Espadero, Nicolás, 188
Pineiro, Ignacio, 187
Plácido (Gabriel de la Concepción Val- Sainville, Leonard, 267
dés), 149, 154, 155 St. John, Bruce, 131
Posser, Gabriel, 264 St. John, Spencer, 314, 316, 318
Prats, Rodrigo, 187 Sajous, 267
Price, H., 261 Salkey, Andrew, 114, 117-18, 122
Price, Richard, 206, 293-94 Salnave,319, 321
Price, Sally, 293, 294 Salomon, Lysius, 31
Price-Mars, Jean, 111, 254, 262, 263, Salomon, Noel, 266
267,269,311-12,317,325 San Juan, Pedro, 188
San Martín, Ignacio, 221
Quesada, 195 Sánchez de Fuentes, Eduardo, 170
Quevedo, Francisco de, 148, 165 Sandino, Augusto César, 263
Sanin Cano, B., 262
Ramchand, Kenneth, 110 Sarmiento, Domingo, 263
Ramirez, Santos, 184 Sartre, Jean Paul, 264, 266, 269-71
Ramón y Rivera, Luis Felipe, 203-10, Saumel y Reboredo, Manuel, 188
213,216,219,223 Senghor, Leopold Sedar, 263, 267, 268,
Ramos, Arthur, 126, 146, 222, 232, 269, 270, 271-72
235, 240, 243, 254 Senna, Nelson de, 83
Ravales, Robert, 125 Sharpe, Sam, 108
Reclus, Ely see, 277, 279 Sheridan, Richard, 290
Reed, Ishmael, 124 Sherlock, Philip, 113, 119, 122
Reemar, 266 Sierra, Justo, 262
Rene, 187 Silva, Cayetano, Alberto, 221
Reyes, Alfonso, 262 Similien, 319
Reyes Camejo, Angel, 188 Simon, Antoine, 311
Rhys, Jean, 110 Simons, Mises, 187
Ribeiro, Joáo, 83, 86,99 Smith, Adam, 17
Ribeiro, José, 241 Smith, Bessie, 264
Rigaud, 310 Smith, R. T., 318
Rimbaud, Arthur, 257 SojoR., Juan Pablo, 218
Rivero, Roque, 221 Sosé, Osmane, 267
342 Africa in Latin America

Soulouque, Faustin, 311, 321 Valdman, Alberto, 92

Souza, Francisco Félix de ("Chachá"), Valentín, 160
280 Valenzuela, Raimundo, 186
Sparrow, 128 Vallejo, César, 267
Stein, Stanley J., 291 Vargas, Getúlio, 53
Stewart, W. A..90 Varona, José, 262
Suárez y Romero, Anselmo, 151, 157 Vasconcelos, José, 262
Sylvain, George, 316 Vega, Carlos, 193, 203
Szwed, JohnF, 298 Vega, Lope de, 165, 266
Velasco, Luis de, 193
Tallet, JoséZ., 162-63, 166 Velazquez Rogerio, 149
Tannenbaum, Frank, 39, 291 Vértiz, Juan José de, 193
Taylor, Douglas, 88, 89, 92-93, 95, 295 Vianna Filho, Luis, 274
Tempels, Placied, 126 Villa, Ignacio "Bola de Nieve", 187
Thaly, Daniel, 113 Villaverde, Cirilo, 151, 157
Thoby, Armand, 319 Vincent, Sténio, 315, 320
Thompson, Edgar T, 289 Voorhoeve, Jan, 84-85, 90
Thompson, Virgil, 66
Tiradentes, 263 Walcott, Derek, 114, 121
Tirolien, Gui, 271 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 287, 288, 297
Toisón, Melvin, 133 Washington, Booker T, 264
Toomer, Jean, 264 Waterman, Richard, 231
Trinidade, Solano, 168 Weinreich, U., 89,92
Tupac Amaru, 263 White, José, 188
Turner, Lorenzo D., 85, 294 Whitman, Walt, 264
Turner, Nat, 108 Whitten, Norman E., 298
Whorf, 95
Urdermann, J., 14 Wilde, José Antonio, 221
Urfé, José, 186 Williams, Eric, 106-7
Wolfe, Tom, 264
Valcárcel, Luis E., 220
Valdés, Gilberto, 187 Zapata Olivella, Delia, 209, 210, 215
Valdés, Paredo, 168 Zarate, 196, 203, 209, 210, 214-15, 224