By Julio Marcial Martínez Hidalgo.
What it means to be Cuban defies almost every definition, because its very core has been shaped by the coming together of disparate singularities, sometimes reluctant to be confined between lines on a page.
It is illuminated by a rainbow that has colored the centuries-old histories, not only since Columbus first set foot on these shores, but even before that, when the famous Account of the Admiral’s Voyage had not yet been written at the gates of this land: in the age of the areítos, rock engravings, and gathering rituals.
That period is as extensive as it is unknown, and its immense richness is no less unsuspected, immersed as it is, for all practical purposes, in the winding coils of forgotten memory, for lack of the written word to preserve and attest to it.
The emergence of the various expressions of Cuban culture, particularly literature, is closely intertwined with the process of forming a national consciousness. One early and telling expression of this consciousness was a statement uttered as far back as 1547 by Canon Miguel Velásquez, the son of an Indigenous woman and a Spaniard: “Sad is my land, a land tyrannized and ruled by lords!”
As Max Enríquez Ureña aptly recorded in his Historical Overview of Cuban Literature, “the literary history of Cuba, viewed through its most prominent figures, creates the impression of a battlefield in which irreconcilable political tendencies clash incessantly.”
How could we forget the echoes of Friar Bartolomé de las Casas’s denunciations of slavery; the patriotic epic of Silvestre de Balboa in our proto-poem Espejo de paciencia (Mirror of Patience); the voice of Bishop Morell de Santa Cruz against the English invaders; and the pioneering role José de la Luz y Caballero assumed in education?
Or the reforms in philosophical education undertaken by Father Varela, and Heredia’s literary verses:
“Fierce tyranny assails us, conspiring through treacherous betrayal, and Cuba’s star, eclipsed, is left to shine again only after a century of honor…”?
How could we fail to reflect on the forceful polemics of Saco, who demanded political freedoms for the Creoles, as well as on Domingo del Monte, that brilliant intellectual whom Martí regarded as “the most genuine and useful of the Cubans of his time”; or on the patriotic calling of José Jacinto Milanés?
Or on the anti-slavery sentiment woven into Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s novel Sab; Luaces’s devotion to his homeland; Mendive’s separatist ideal; Zenea’s persistent denunciations from exile in the metropolis; Zambrana’s revolutionary oratory; and Martí’s colossal political vision and extraordinary literary stature?
The national identity represents a fusion whose amalgam of signs, over the course of Cuban nationhood, became embedded in the making of a nation capable of embracing broad and varied essences, forming a cultural heritage in which the influence of a native identity—matured through multiple foundations of identification—takes precedence.
Hence the distinctive character of Cuban identity, so profoundly described by several eminent intellectuals at different moments in this country’s history: Villena, Mañach, Roa, Vitier, Fernández Retamar…
Drawing on the wealth of references that together shape the concept of “the national,” these and other figures articulated distinctive interpretations that set Cuba apart and cleared the way toward what is personal, indigenous, and authentically Cuban. Expressed in this way—and viewed from the broadest, most inclusive perspective—it can be found in Maceo’s thought and deeds, in a musical note by Ignacio Cervantes, or in one of Abela’s anti-government caricatures from the 1930s; in a painting by Lam, a stanza by Guillén, or an article by Carlos Rafael Rodríguez.
In Camilo’s popular dialogue, or in Fidel’s enduring discourse on sovereignty.
In the people’s enduring legacy embodied by the Commander-in-Chief.
In pursuit of its essences, the clear stream of our own murmurs beneath the surface, its sediment accumulated and made flesh in the ways this people and its leaders act and think. These are the very things we so urgently need to recall on this October 20, Cuban Culture Day.