| 11 de julio del 2008 | |
The Cuban essence is taken inside |
|
By Hilario Rosete Silva |
|
The cubaness in the word and in the word the Cuban essence; and the Cubans in the word; it is so small, thin, ignorant of its weight. Then Alma Mater thought: «Maybe the word arise within the post-degree shop “The construction of Cuba in the cinema”, imparted by Rafael Hernandez, director of the magazine Topics (Temas).» And the professor would be a God with a word, a small God, pointing toward other humanists.
And Alma Mater reasoned: «It would be a Guillermo Rodriguez Rivera’s word», the also educator of the Faculty of Arts and Letters of Havana University, «it would come with the summer and his literary rehearse “On the way toward the sea”.» Then, Guillermo said about the Cuban dream and impregnancy (ingravidez): —That duality is expressed in two constants of our history; the first one is getting fun, the jeer, the mock (choteo); the other one, is the presence of the ideal that always returns when we already thought it was really dead. Choteo and ideal are the two sides of one currency. And Guillermo continued talking about the Family, the State and the Boss: —The centre of the Cuban family is the mother. There are scarce families where their members were not segregated as supporters and dissidents of the Revolution. That division was cancelled by the history. CULTURAL LOGIC —The Cuban essence is a Creole stew (ajiaco cubano) –said Torres-Cuevas evoking the erudite Fernando Ortiz–, and to cook it is necessary the fire, the passion of Prometheus. But this passion can cook something more, to conform a quality, a people, a new culture. The Cubanity is the fruit of diverse phases in our formation; it is the bottom that conditions the aspirations, attitudes, ways of being; it is the amalgam that conforms the deep bottom of our mentality. It is profane, very free, located in the limit of the limits. The Cubanity is also the necessity of being Cuban and it is the obligation of looking for its duty of being Cuban: Ortiz places not only as one of the most important features, the consciousness of the meaning of being Cuban but the will of being it. —The identification of our culture with the Ibero-American and Caribbean –came in Cintio Vitier– is an unavoidable consequence, and also it is the critic and the option in front of the cultural directions. We can confront the discussion of the polemic topics from the receptivity, but being unyielding in the war against the colonialism and the cultural neo-colonialism. NON RACES, BUT CULTURES —None of the relieves of the Indo-Cuban culture, that today survives –asserted in 1949 Don Fernando Ortiz– can be attributed to its primitive culture, which one was not but the foreword of the second Indian culture, the taína, the one that really left us words, traditions, heroes, technical. All the sacred of the Indians died, less a rite that is still a cubanity feature: smoking the tobacco. With Columbus, it was jumped from the stone age to the age of the Rebirth. In Cuba in only one day passed thousands «years-culture». With the impact, one of the two cultures perished. This is a curious social phenomenon, in which one, since the XVI century, the classes, the races and the cultures have been equally invaders. Men, economies, cultures and yearnings; everything here is felt strange. There are already here factors from the cubanity. Every Spanish man just for arriving in here was different; he was already by his own an Indian Spaniard. With the whites men, first from Spain, arrived the black ones, it was plenty of slaves and after came the whole Negroid (Nigricia). There wasn’t another human element in a deeper and more continuous transmigration. The Black cultural influence can be noticed mainly in the art, the religion and the tone of the collective emotiveness. To understand the Cuban soul it is not necessary to study the races but the cultures. «“LANGUAGE” THAT I LOVE YOU “LANGUAGE”» For the Spanish language in the Cuban territory of the XIX century, was more dangerous the French influence; but it gave it place to the English one which had bigger relevance after the intervention of the United States in the Cuban Hispanic War and the setting-up of the Republic. As the economic dependence of the American market got increased, also got strengthened the ways of Anglicism penetration. After the victory of the Revolution the panorama changed. All language depends on rules and norms related with the organization of the society that uses it. Studying it we can make ourselves an idea about the language and her culture. «The culture conforms, maintains and changes the lexicon according to its own evolution. The dictionary of a language is a culture treasure.» FROM INSIDE OR FROM OUTSIDE? —For me it has been essential to have a wide concept of what is the Cuban essence –confessed Emilio Cueto–. Obviously, it has to have a nexus with the island in order to be. A part of us, those that emigrated, has made contributions to the Cuban culture. I would prefer that existed more opening when we were to label the Cuban essence, what has been a little restricted because forgets the outside contribution. —The Cuban community of Miami –asserted Lisandro Perez–, who defines it self as a political exile, has a consciousness of her social identity. There, the mobilization usually gets around the political topic. The political culture of that identity is very important. Then, in Miami, has been created and reinforced the Cuban identity, even when in the second generation there has been a remarkable loss in the use of the Spanish language. —In the people identity –sentenced Rogelio Martinez Fure– it is vital as much the memory as its complement, the forgetfulness. People remembers what it wants to remember and it forgets what it needs to forget. Another fundamental shade is the assumed self-consciousness. There are Cuban people from birth, but they don’t want to be Cuban and they don’t assume their condition, they dream of being Swedish or Eskimos. —The identity cannot be decreed –Carolina de la Torre proclaimed–. Nobody, for theoretical neither ideological conceptions, can say that this people is in this or such a way, or that such element of its identity is important. People has its life experience, its memories, its perceives and its feelings, its identity where it feels it, it perceives it and it has its life experience but for ordinance it can’t be imposed. It is inherited and it is acquired. Each generation recreates her. —The identity is also built –Pedro Pablo Rodriguez revealed–. In the same way that we remake or we eliminate, on the contrary and, at the same time, we are including it. For that reason I would like to employ the metaphor with which Martinez Fure defines the identity, «it is as a river of renovated waters, that remains but, at the end it flushes to the humanity sea». Only this river is possible, because it is inheritance and tradition, it is present and past, and also future, meanwhile we look at it in all their wealth. MADE IN HOLLYWOOD —After the Spanish domain concluded, Cuba became a very different place. The North American movies saturated the market. The movie stars assumed superior dimensions to the life. The sale of its pictures became a business. The American movies suggested the change and it indicated different possibilities to the daily ones. The Cubans saw in the screen representations in alternative ways of existence, the possibility of new habits. The Cubans found in the movies comparison points to contemplate their lives. The means to present and to understand the reality were determined by American formulas. The movies of gangsters were popular, and they influenced in the Cuban style of political violence. In this way the films influenced in the patterns of personal aspect. The idealized beauty of the Cuban woman, Creole (criollita), of full and rounded forms and face, changed. The Cuban Institute of Physical Beauty proclaimed: «The thinness is the symbol of the true beauty.» The images were able to induce dissatisfaction with the Cuban condition. The American publicity has the capacity of forging a national character in function of the market; it effects were received in Cuba. The impact of the movies and the publicity was strong. The product was presented as a part of «the American way of life», condition to reach by whom consumed it. The facts had great repercussion in women. The idea was not to look different, but rather to behave different. Lines separating the races were marked deeper, because of the strongest of the racial discrimination in North Americans. The American residents practiced the discrimination in a very open and shameless way that would influence the Cubans. It doesn’t surprise that were looking just for single white employees in the Creole institutions. The American tourism increased and almost every- body was white. This contributed to make deeper the racial divisions. The prejudices went transplanted to the Cuban atmosphere and they served as rational element for the discrimination. The civilization and modernity concepts evoked a new boarding of the family: was needed to reject Africa when the concept of a Cuban were formulated. So, was rejected the rumba like representation, because it in fact evoked the blackness (negritude). The rumba implied the primitive thing, and the African thing. CUBANIZE THE WHOLE TIME —The students interpreted the question in three different ways. Some consigned how «we are» as Cubans; others, how «are the Cubans as them»; and, the third, how «we see each other» the Cubans. Were found more good features than bad ones: So, the Cubans are sensual, flavourful, sexual, cheerful, sympathetic, optimistic, decided, valiant, heroic, titanic, internationalist, solidarious, friendly, sociable, warm, intelligent, talkative, extraverted, cult, well instructed, well educated, emotive, vehement, creative, etc... Among the negative epithets they placed those of exaggerated, tremendous, hyperbolic, self-sufficient, boasters, blusterer, scandalous, tumultuous and riotous. From here to down, with less consent, appeared epithets such as mocking, fickle, jeerer, chauvinist, scamps, bugs, mischievous and others. It was as a small God with a word. And professor Rafael Hernandez finally concluded. —Don’t be desperate if comes the time when we don’t reach to any agreement. It is not the point making the self-consciousness a being part of the problem of the identity, but rather neither it drains it, neither it restricts its construction in the historical context of social relationships where it moves and it finds itself in exchange. We would find Havanan, whose mental representations are nearer to those Cuban outsiders, than to those fellows-countrymen, for example, in the municipality of Yaguajay, which neither their condition of Cuban deprive them, neither it makes them worse; so the question is how do they face it, how do they solve it or how do they live the problems of their daily life… You are like this, reader, also as a small God with a word, taking the Cuban essence inside. So, send us your personal trials, to publish them: Alma Mater waits for you. 1 Rodriguez Rivera, Guillermo. On the way toward the sea or Us the Cubans. Boloña’s Editions, Havana, 2006, p. 72. |
[…] No Cuban wanted to be an instrument of that corrupt mechanism that the State had put on since the beginning. Most of the people changed after the revolutionary victory and stood up at the service of the State. The fall of the wall of Berlin, the disappearance of the USSR and the socialist field, determined the appearance of the «special period». All of this made the Cuban people to reconsider their family bonds again.
[…] The Cuban has also been a commander (caudillista). His respect to the boss has been big enough, when he has deserved it. But it has been a respect under control confronted with a behaviour observed by the boss.
[…] Our paper is not only to be integrated regionally but contributing to the cultural and moral integration of the world. Marti’s and Dario’s Modernism is neither studied already, it has been supplanted by the «modernism» and the «postmodernism» (in English). The suplantation is serious: it removes us our bases of cultural sustentation. Other doctrines were also, each one in their day, products imported with which we made our culture. That transmutation indeed is in correspondence with our «cultural logic» and it was also the resultant of an anti-colonialist will that makes out of the best things of the Latin American and Caribbean culture a creation structurally revolutionary. All imported cultural product we convert it into its (our) nascent state. 
The Asian presence was minimum. Other immigrants were the Arabs. Also Jews emigrated to Cuba. There were migrations of Jamaicans and Haitian, but none was important.
The Spanish language is part of the Cuban culture, «it is the absolute marker of our socio-cultural identity». We are racially a heterogeneous people, but linguistically and culturally homogeneous. 
