9781422279762

Arts and Literature of Cuba

CUBA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

HAITI

PUERTO RICO (U.S.)

JAMAICA

Exploring Cuba Arts and Literature of Cuba

Cuba Under the Castros Cuba: Facts and Figures Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations The Culture and People of Cuba The Opening of Cuba, 2008-Present

Arts and Literature of Cuba

John Ziff

Mason Crest Philadelphia

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Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com ©2018 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

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on file at the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-1-4222-3809-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4222-7976-2 (ebook) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4222-3337-5 (hc) ISBN 978-1-4222-8622-7 (ebook)

1. Southwestern States—Juvenile literature. 2. Arizona—Juvenile literature. 3. California—Juvenile literature. 4. Nevada—Juvenile literature. I. Title. F785.7.L37 2015 979—dc23 2014050200

E XPLORING C UBA series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3808-0

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Table of Contents 1: Poetry ......................................................................7 2: Fiction ....................................................................25 3: Painting and Sculpture ........................................43 4: Voices from Exile ..................................................61 Series Glossary of Key Terms....................................70 Further Reading ........................................................74 Internet Resources ....................................................77 Index ..........................................................................78 Photo Credits/About the Author..............................80

Words to understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills.

Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowl- edge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments and much more!

Text-dependent questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there.

Research projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series glossary of key terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

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Statue of José Martí in the main square of Cienfuegos.

bestiary— a collection of moral fables containing depictions of real or imaginary animals. mulatto— a person of mixed white and black ancestry. political prisoner— a person imprisoned simply for criticizing a government or expressing political beliefs of which the government disapproves. Words to Understand in This Chapter

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Poetry C uba is not a large nation. But it has a rich artistic and literary heritage, which no single volume—much less a brief book like this one—can possibly cover in a comprehensive way. This book instead seeks to describe some key figures in several fields of creative endeavor, and to provide some context for their life and work. Only passing references are made to Cuba’s long colonial era. The book covers the peri- od from the late 1890s (when Cuba was fighting for indepen- dence from Spain) to the present. It’s hoped that readers will further investigate topics and figures that pique their interest. José Martí: Harbinger of “Modernismo” For his role in their country’s struggle to win independence, Cubans revere José Martí as a national hero. Martí was also

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one of the most important writers of his era. His essays and poetry in particular shaped modern Cuban literature—and were highly influential throughout Latin America. José Martí was born in Havana, the capital of what was then the Spanish colony of Cuba, in 1853. His parents were poor immigrants from Spain. Around the time Martí was beginning high school, Cuba’s first war for independence—known as the Ten Years’ War— broke out. Martí enthusiastically supported the cause and, at the age of 16, founded a newspaper devoted to promoting

Cuban revolutionaries wait in trenches for an attack by Spanish soldiers near Pinar del Río, 1890s.

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Arts and Literature of Cuba

Cuban independence. He was soon arrested. His sentence was harsh—six years at hard labor—but he was released after serving only a few months and deported to Spain. While in Spain, Martí pub- lished political essays. He also obtained a law degree and a doctorate in philosophy and the humanities.

Educational Video

Scan here for a tour of the house where José Martí was born, now a museum:

After a yearlong teaching stint in Guatemala, Martí returned to Cuba in September 1878. The following year, how- ever, another rebellion against Spanish rule broke out. Martí— now married and with a young son—was accused of sedition against Spain and again deported. By 1881, he and his family had settled in New York City. There Martí would spend most of the remainder of his life. He supported himself through journalism, serving as a correspon- dent for several Latin American newspapers and writing pieces for U.S. publications. But his literary output was prodigious and wide ranging. He wrote fiction, poetry, essays, and literary criticism. He published a magazine for children. The cause to which Martí dedicated his life, however, was Cuban independence. In 1892, he helped unite a diverse group of Cuban exiles to found the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Over the next several years, he organized support for another war for independence among exile communities in the United States, the Caribbean, and Central America. He envisioned a

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Cuba that was not only independent politically but also free from the racial divisions that characterized the Spanish colony. There needn’t be any racial hatred, he wrote, “because there are no races. . . . The soul, equal and eternal, emanates from bodies that are diverse in form and color.” In early 1895, the war for independence that Martí had tirelessly promoted began. Martí landed in eastern Cuba in April to join the fighting. He served as an aide to the rebel gen- eral Máximo Gómez. On May 19, Martí was killed charging the Spanish lines at the Battle of Dos Ríos. He was 42 years old. José Martí wrote just three volumes of poetry: Ismaelillo (1882), Versos sencillos (1891; Simple Verses ), and Versos libres ( Free Verses ), published posthumously in 1913. The influence of his work, though, was profound. Martí helped usher in a Latin American literary movement called modernismo . Poets of the modernismo movement sought to reinvigorate Spanish-language poetry, which throughout much of the 19th century had been dominated by romanticism. Spanish romantic poets emphasized, above all, the unbridled expression of human emotion. By contrast, modernismo stressed restraint and the perfection of poetic form. Often its practitioners sought to imbue their verse with a musical quali- ty, and they made abundant use of symbols. Though the move- ment itself was largely over by 1920, modernismo would influ- ence Latin American poetry throughout the 20th century. José Martí’s poetic style was simple yet flowing. His poems often contain vivid images, and common themes include friendship, love, justice, freedom, and death. Cuba and its peo- ple and plight were also frequent subjects of Martí’s poetry. He

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Arts and Literature of Cuba

Statue of José Martí in Havana’s Revolution Square.

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memorably expressed the pain he felt at Cuba’s subjugation by Spain in one of his most famous poems, “Dos patrias” (“Two Homelands”). The Nobel Prize–winning Mexican poet and critic Octavio Paz said that poem “condenses [the] whole move- ment [of modernismo ] and announces, too, the arrival of con- temporary poetry” (the excerpt here is translated by William Little of Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida):

I have two lands: Cuba and the night. Or are they only one? No sooner Does the long-veiled majestic sun set Holding a carnation in one hand than Does Cuba, like a widow, appear to me. I know what that blood-red carnation is That’s trembling in its hand. It is empty, My chest is destroyed, and empty too Where my heart used to be. It’s time To begin dying. The night is good For saying good-bye.

Nicolás Guillén: Champion of Afro-Cubanism

One of the foremost representatives of a literary and cultural movement known as Afrocubanismo , or Afro-Cubanism, Nicolás Guillén would come to be regarded as the national poet of Cuba. He ranks among Latin America’s most celebrated writers.

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Arts and Literature of Cuba

Nicolás Guillén was born in Camagüey in 1902, the year Cuba officially became an independent republic. His parents were both mulattos of mixed Spanish and African ancestry. As he grew up, Guillén became fascinated by African folklore, leg- ends, and songs, elements of which he would later incorporate in his poetry. Guillén published his first volume of poems in 1930. It was titled Motivos de son (“Motifs of Son ”). In this case son (pro- nounced with a long “o”) refers to a style of music (and an associated dance) that combined Spanish and African influ-

Afro-Cuban slaves dance while accompanied by various percussion instruments in this illustration of island life during the Spanish colonial period.

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This Cuban stamp features a portrait of Nicolás Guillén. “Tengo lo que tenia que tener” is the last line of one of his best- known poems, “Tengo.” In English, this is translated as, “I have what I had to have.”

ences. The eight poems in the volume imitated the rhythms of son while focusing on themes related to the island’s poor black, or Afro-Cuban, people. The poems also employed speech pat- terns from that group. Cuba’s blacks were only two generations removed from the experience of slavery, which after more than three and a half centuries had finally been abolished on the island in 1886. Afro-Cubans and their culture were still widely looked down on, however. While Guillén was angered by the racism he saw and experienced, he wasn’t bitter. If Afrocubanismo for him involved honoring and elevating the black Cuban experience, it didn’t mean condemning Cuba’s whites. On the contrary, Guillén celebrated the interconnectedness of all his country’s people, whether they descended from African groups such as

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Arts and Literature of Cuba