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Published in In and out of Africa: Exploring Afro-Hispanic, Luso-Brazilian and Latin-American Connections. Ed. Joanna Boampong. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 58-84.

REPRESENTING THE BLACK “OTHER” IN THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH POETRY OF EUROPE, AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA FROM THE 15TH TO THE 20TH CENTURIES

Nelson González-Ortega, University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract: This paper proposes to study African and Caribbean poetry written in Portuguese and Spanish within the cultural frameworks of “Negrism”, “Negritude” and ‘Mulatez’ as first expressed by Aimé Cesaire and Leopold Sédar-Sengor, and later integrated in the global theory of post-colonialism under the concept of hybridity. Both hybridity and post-colonialism constitute the main theoretical frame of the present paper. Thus: the paper sets to trace the representations of the images of Africans from Renaissance to modern times as a backdrop to the construction and transformation of these images in colonial and post-colonial discourses. In a broader context, the paper also examines the literary devices by which Spanish-, Luso-African and Afro-Caribbean poetry represents African peoples and their cultures and interrogates the representation of the black “other” by white, black and mulatto poets from Portugal, Spain, São Tomé, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil and Cuba writing in Portuguese and Spanish.

The contact of Europeans, Africans and indigenous groups with one another on the recently discovered American continent created a new ethnicity and identity. This new reality resulted in part from a dual process: "transculturation" (the cultural transference from the White Europeans and Black Africans to the Native Americans), and later "acculturation" (the adoption of aspects of the European culture by Africans1 and Indios or indigenous people living in the Americas) through a form of syncretism2 seen in the fusion of European, African and indigenous religious beliefs.

In this essay, I shall examine the representation of “negrism”, “negritude”, “mulatez”, “mulatez poética”, “exoticism”, and “tropicalism” in African and Caribbean poetry written in Portuguese and Spanish within the theoretical frameworks of post-colonialism and its central concept Hybridity.3 The paper sets to trace the representations of the images of Africans from Renaissance to modern times as a backdrop to the construction and transformation of these images in colonial and post-colonial discourses.4 In a broader context, the paper also examines the literary devices by which Spanish-, Luso-

1 The term "negro" in Spanish it is often used to describe people of African descent. However, since there are shades of meaning inherent in the Spanish term which are not always captured in an English translation, the Spanish /Portuguese word "negro" will be used throughout this essay in the relevant language contexts. However, I use "African" and "Black" almost interchangeably in English. Since the term "Afro-American" has an established meaning in United States: ie. Americans of African descent, I will apply the term “Afro-Latin Americans” to refer to Brazilian and Cuban poets who adopt the usage of African strategies and devices in poetry --real or imagined-- in order to convey a feeling for African life and culture.

2 For various anthropological meanings of ‘”syncretism” see Ezequiel Ander-Egg's Diccionario del trabajo social. Bogotá: Plaza y Janés, 1986.

3 Hybridity is a concept first used in biology and horticulture and later used in human sciences and literary theory. The mixture of ethnicities, cultures and languages (ethnical, cultural and linguistic hibridity) as a social phenomenon is as old as the origin of mankind, nevertheless its conceptualization has occurred only during the twentieth century. In fact, the concept of “hibridity” stems from the Spanish and Portuguese terms “hibridación/hibridez”, “procesos de hibridación” that were coined by Spanish and Portuguese speaking intellectuals (ie. Fernando Ortiz [1940] 1980 18; Darcy Ribeiro 1969, Vol II: 112-37) long before the post-colonial critics mainly from India and United States begun to use the terms in the 1960s. “One of the most widely employed and most disputed terms in post-colonial theory, hibridity commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within contact zone produced by colonization. […] The idea of hybridity also underlies other attempts to stress the mutuality of cultures in the colonial and post-colonial process in expression of syncreticity, cultural synergy and transculturization” (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 118, 119).

4 In this essay, I emphasize the thematic analysis of Luso-African poetry since, as Manuel Ferreira points out: "é difícil ao poeta africano com raízes acentuadas na cultura negra. preso a hábitos, costumes, ritos, isto é, a uma substancial tradição tribal, preocupar-se apenas com exercícios literários (no melhor sentido da expressão) tão exigente é a voz da sua consciência atormentada" (No reino de Caliban: Antología panorámica da poesía africana de expressão portuguesa, Tomos I, II, III, Lisboa, 1975: 39). (Is difficult for the African poet with deep roots in black culture; hostage to habits, customs, rites --with a strong tribal tradition-- to only be concerned with literary exercises (in the full sense of these words) so demanding is the voice of his tormented conscience"). All translations from

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African and Afro-Caribbean poetry represents African peoples and their cultures and interrogates the representation of the black “other”5 by white, black and mulato poets from Portugal, Spain, São Tomé, Angola, Mozambique, Brazil and Cuba writing in Portuguese and Spanish.6 In order to trace the poetic representations of the black “other” in the Portuguese and Spanish poetry of Europe, Africa and Latin-America from Renaissance to the 20 th century, I wish first to define and contextualize the cultural terms “negrismo”, “negritud”, “negritude”, “mulatez”, “mulatez poética”, “exoticism”, “tropicalism”.

All these terms are considered here more in a cultural than a racial dimension. Therefore, these concepts overlap chronologically. There is no exact English equivalent for the first three terms, "negrismo", "negritud" and "mulatez", thus: the term "negrismo" is used here to study the Portuguese and Spanish poetic texts from before the decade of the 1920s, when Blacks were presented as comic and picturesque caricatures. I give the Gallicism "négritude" the Spanish meaning of “Negritud” to signify the cultural phenomenon through which, beginning in 1920, the textual conception of the Black and the mulatto in the cultural discourse of Europe, of Portuguese-speaking Africa, and Franco / Luso-Spanish America begins to transform itself. From being the passive object of poetic creation, the Black and the mulatto become acting subjects or characters with their own literary personality.

In the case of “negritud” it is only similar to, but not the equivalent of, the French term "négritude" -- this latter defined by Léopold Sédar Senghor as the "sum total of the cultural values of the Black race." It should be noted that I use the French-derived term "negritud" as a global category which contains poetry with social content written in Portuguese in Africa and America, principally, at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth.7 In a parallel fashion, I use the French word "négritude" to refer, in particular, to the artistic and theoretical movement regarding the revindication of African culture which began in Europe in the 1920s and whose principal leaders were the Antillean intellectual Aimas Usaire, the Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Sengor, and the French Guianese poet, Uon Damas. Additionally, Europeans such as the artists Picasso, Matisse, and Bracque, also played a role in encouraging Western interest in African culture. Later on, the German intellectual Jahnheinz Jahn would devote much of his scholarship to explaining and defending négritude, by then under heavy attack, especially from Anglophone Africans.

Likewise I adopt the terms “mulatez” and “mulatez poética” as well as the topics of "exoticism" and "tropicalism" to indicate the textual reference to the fusion and confusion of European, African, and Latin American cultural values in the Portuguese-language poetry written by Blacks, Whites and mulattos in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “Mulatez” in general, and “mulatez poética”, and poetic “exoticism" and "tropicalism” as their literary manifestations, can be considered here as theoretical and cultural terms that inform the crucial concept of “hybridity”, defined generally by post-colonial theory as “the creation of new transcultural forms whitin the contact zone produced by colonization” (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 118).

"Mulatez", as a part of the poscolonial concept of hybridity, has many shades of meaning. The one most important and relevant for this study -- because it effects the production and reception of literature -- is the racial and cultural affiliation of the poet and of his/her discourse. Generally speaking, poetry implies or presumes a poet who produces it, a text which may or may not have a geographical, ethnological, or sociocultural reference, and a reader who judges, justifies, or disapproves the poetic text. The writer of African poetry in Portuguese who is being examined within our present parameters is a poet of mulatto cultural affiliation -- a person who is racially White, Black, or mulatto who lives in a setting where autochthonous and foreign cultures are mixed. As a result, the term "mulatto poetry" alludes not only to the racial features of the poet, but above all to the cultural atmosphere of Africa and of the Atlantic shores of the Americas, where African poetry was manifested in the Portuguese and Spanish languages.

As for the definition of “exoticism”, as a key concept of post-colonial theory, it should be pointed out that “the word exotic was first used in 1599 to mean alien, introduced from abroad, not indigenous’. By 1651, its meaning has been extended to includes ‘an exotic and foreign territory’, ‘an exotic habit and demeanor’ (OED).” And “[d]uring the nineteen century, however, the exotic, the foreign, increasingly gained, throughout the empire, the connotation of stimulating or exciting difference, something with which the dommestic could be (safely) spiced” (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 94). The Analysis of the topic of exoticism as an important aspect of Luso-African poetry assumes an understanding of the etymology of the word "topic." "Topic," derived from the Greek topos, is used literally to describe a "geographic location" (i.e., topography) and, in a literary context, it serves specifically to indicate a "common place" or the recurrence of an idea in a poetic, dramatic or narrative text. In Luso-African poetry, "exotic" is a double topic. Topography refers to

Portuguese and Spanish into English are mine unless otherwise stated.5 Generally the “other” is the person-s which is-are considered different to oneself, at, for instance, the ethnic (ie. Black – White)

and gender (ie. man – woman) levels as well as the socioeconomical (ie. rich – poor) and the local, national or continental (ie. Europeans – Africans) levels, etc. For a post-colonial definition of the term “other” and “othering”, see Ashcroft et al. 1998: 169-73.

6 “Luso-African” here refers to those countries in Africa where Portuguese is the official and majority language of the population: Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé e Principe, and Guinea Bissau. Similarly, Luso-Hispanic America includes those Latin American countries where Spanish is the principal language, as well as Brazil where Portuguese is the official language.

7 Negritud as poetics of revindication during the second part of the twentieth century will be further discussed in the last section of this essay.

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the description of fauna, flora and ethnography found in Cabo Verde, Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé e Principe, Guinea, Bissau and Brazil, all of which were unfamiliar to Europeans. At the literary level, it refers to the ideas or picturesque preconceptions which the terms "savage" and "primitive" suggested.

“Tropicalism” as a cultural and literary concept is closed associated with “exoticism” from which it derives. Critics of Luso-African poetry use the cultural category of "tropicalism" to denote a style of poetry which goes beyond exoticism or simple African folklore without reaching the lyrical-political tone of denunciation and social protest implicit in the poetry of "negritud" (see the last section of this essay).

The African in the late Middle-Ages and Renaissance Literatures of Portugal and Spain The first literary representations of Blacks in Luso-Hispanic cultures dates back to the formation of Spanish and Portuguese as majority languages on the Iberian Peninsula, and predates 1492, the year Columbus’s voyage to the the American continent brings the latter into the European cultural reality. In fact, the Black as a literary character had already appeared in the Portuguese literature of the Late Middle Ages. In the farce 0 clérigo de Beira by Gil Vicente (1465-1536), for example, the Black is introduced as a comical character who expresses himself in a "deformed" Portuguese:

Gonçalo.Dize, negro, es da corte? Neg. Qu'esso? Gon. S'es da corte? Neg. Ja a mi forro, nam sacativo. Boso conhece maracote? Corregidor Tibão he.Elle comprai mi primeiro; Quando ja paga a rinheiro, Daita a mi fero na pé.8

(GonzaloSay, black, do you belong to the king’s court?Blk. What’s that? Gon. If you belong to the court?Blk. Already my pidgin, I’m captive!Do you know Maracote?Judge. Tibao he.He bought me first;After he paid the money,He put his iron on my foot.)

Later, in the Spanish Golden Age poetry of Félix Lope de Vega (1562-1635) the Black is represented as a comic figure who similarly "deforms" the Spanish language: "Ya a bailar venimo / de Tumbucutu / a Santo Tomé" (Quoted by Fernández and Pamies 1973: 62) (We came to dance / from Tumbucutu / to Santo Tomé"). Other writers from the Spanish Golden Age, such as Góngora, Quevedo, and Cervantes, also use Blacks as poetic objects of caricature. In the colonial period of Luso-Spanish America, Blacks as slaves were considered inferior to the white colonizer, the "mestizo" (a person of mixed ancestry) and the Indio. Consequently, just as in the metropolis, colonial American literature only includes Blacks in order to contrast them unfavorably with Whites, thus emphasizing their assumed inferiority. In addition to highlighting their "deformed" speech (in contrast to the careful and "proper" language of the European upper class), the authors of that period textualized the Africans' fascination with music and dance as manifestations of their "primitiveness” and “savageness."

This is how Blacks came to represent the savage, the comical, and the caricaturesque in the epic and colonial religious poetry of America (for example, in Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga's [1533-1594] La Araucana) and in the baroque poem "Villancico dedicado a San Pedro Nolasco" by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695). At the same time in colonial Brazil there began to appear writers such as Gregorio de Matos (1633-1696) who found in these characterizations, models of caricaturesque representation of blacks, as in the poem (Moisës 1973: 45). "The blacks’ procession in Pernambuco": "A slim black wearing a very tight sufolié [An African cotton suit], [...] / six walkers showing no reverence at all; / A red cotton banner from Tijuco;”

It should be point out here however, that in Colonial Brazil there were well-known poets such as Father Antonio Vieira (1608-1697) who oposed slavery in his famous sermons (Sermões 1679-1748), and Luiz Gama (1830-1882) who

8 Barreto Feio, José Victorino, and J. G. Monteiro, eds. Obras completas de Gil Vicente. 3 Vols. Hamburg: Na Officina Typographica de Lanffioff, 1834. Vol. 3: 443.

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during the brazilian pre-abolitionist era started to portray blacks no only as themes and objects, but also as subjects protesting racial oppresion, as in his poem, “Saudades do escravo”:

Escravo – não, não morriNos ferros da escravitud […]Escravo – não, não ainda vivo,Inda espero a morte ali:Sou livre embora cativo,Sou livre, inda não morri!Meu coraçao bate ainda.Neste bater que não finda; Seu homem – Deus o diráDeste corpo desgraçadoMeu espirito soltado Nao partiu – ficou-me lá!(Poesia negra brasileira. Antología. Bernd 1992: 23, 25).

(Slave - no, not yet deadIn the slavery irons [...]Slave - no, no, I’m still alive,Still hoping to die there:I am free though captiveI am free, not dead yet!My heart still beats.This beat that does not end;Am I man - God is my witnessFrom this wretched bodyMy mind detachedNot gone - I remained there!).

During the nineteenth century, when abolition of slavery became an economic problem for the West, the Black literary figure was resurrected. Poets such as Longfellow and Whitman from the United States, Martí from Cuba, and Castro Alves from Brazil wrote romantic verses extolling the noble virtues of Blacks and denouncing the institution of slavery. For these poets Blacks were treated as a symbol of what they were attacking: the lack of liberty, but not as human beings.

In Luso-Spanish America Black slave writers like the Cubans Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de Concepción VaIdés also depicted the Black figure in similar Romantic terms even though their works did not represent the Africanized culture of the Americas, nor allude to the socio-cultural problems of Blacks and mulattos. Not even very empathetic nineteenth century Brazilian poets like Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis and the Black poet João da Cruz de Sousa (a central figure in Portuguese symbolism whom Rubén Darío admired) could deviate from perpetuating the literary convention of depicting Blacks as caricatures devoid of self-identity.

At the end of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth, the focus of some poets began to shift on to geographical, ethnic, and cultural aspects of Africa and Brazil. In their poems, the attention was turned from “picturesque” to the search for the "exotic" and “fascinating” to the European reader and the "Europeanized" African writer. In the Portuguese-language poetry, the "mulatez poétic" became the new trend.

Racial and Poetic "Mulatez"The ambivalence expressed by the racial and cultural uncertainty experienced by Blacks who had been influenced by

both European and African cultures is clearly articulated in the poem "Canção do mestiço'' by the São Torné poet, Francisco José Tenreiro:

Mestiço! Nasci do negro e do branco e quem olhar para mim é como se olhasse para um tableiro de xadrez: a vista passando depressa fica baralhando côr no olho alumbrado de quem me vê... Mestiço!

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Quando amo a branca sou branco... Quando amo a negra sou negroPois é... (Antología, 1, 56)9

(Mestizo! [of mixed ancestry!]I was born of black and white [parents]And that who would look at me Is as if he would be looking at a chess board:Gazing quicklyColor is shufflingLighting the eye of the one who sees meMestizo! When I love a white woman I am whiteWhen I love a black woman I am blackSo...).

The lyric voice of the poem "Canção do mestiço'' expresses the very modern idea that cultural identity is not an steady matter, but on the contrary, it is either subject to constant change or bound to be negotiated according to emotional, socioecconomical an political circumstances and solidarities: “Mestizo! [of mixed ancestry!] / When I love a white woman I am white / When I love a black woman I am black / So...” (Antología, 1, 56). The cultural identity in this poem is perceived to be incomplete: an unfinished business, as it is expressed by the Portuguese conjunction and the suspensive points: “pois e...”. In fact, the title and contents of the poem "Canção do mestiço'' reveals an ethno-racial and cultural identity constituted by a mixture of people of different skin (complexion) colors; different cultures and traditions, and different voices. Thus, Francisco José Tenreiro’s poem articulates not only the uncertain cultural identity produced by dialogical voices and multicultural traditions, but also portrays an African subject immersed in his moveable globality: the African Diaspora, acknowledged by twentieth-century historians and literary critics.

The incomplete identity, the cultural dilemma and the will of solidarity between peoples of different ethnic backgrounds expressed by the African poet in the above poem is explained by the critic Manuel Ferreira, in his preface to the book, No reino de Caliban: Antología panorámica da poesía africana de expressão portuguesa (Lisbon, 1975), as follows:

Mercê do fenómeno de aculturação ... E evidente que cada poeta vive ou sente ou tenta compreender e sentir a realidade em que sua experiência se inscreve. Mas no caso presente quem sâo os poetas? Pretos, mestiços, brancos, brancos nascidos em Africa, brancos nascidos em Portugal e radicados temporária ou definitivamente em Africa. E foi pela participação de todos eles que se ergueu, pouco e pouco, o edificio de que pretendemos agora dar uma imagem. Quer dizer: a poesía africana de expressão portuguesa não é feita apenas por africanos. Nela interferem também euro-africanos (brancos nascidos em Africa) e ainda também metropolitanos radicados ... Como quer que seja pressupõe uma adesão cultural, um esforço de compreensão, um esforço do integração, quando não mesmo aculturativo. (Antología, 1, 22-23).

(Thanks to the phenomenon of acculturation ... It is evident that every poet lives or feels or tries to understand and feel the reality in which his experience written. But in this case who are the poets? Blacks, mestizos, whites, whites born in Africa, whites born in Portugal and settled temporarily or permanently in Africa. And it was the participation of all them that built, little by little, the edifice that we now want to get an image of. I mean: the Portuguese-speaking African poetry is not only written by Africans. In it also participate Euro-Africans (whites born in Africa), and also even metropolitans rooted [there] ... In any event, it presupposes a cultural affiliation, an effort of understanding, an effort of integration, if not acculturation).

One can infer that various cultures, traditions and voices converge in the type of poet to whom Ferreira alludes. Therefore, the poetry written in Africa and in Europe lyrically elaborates the cultural excision in which African poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found themselves.

In his poem "Adeus, irmão branco," the Angolan mulatto poet Geraldo Bessa Victor proposes a literary answer to the dilemma of cultural "mulatez" through a fraternal racial relationship between Whites and Blacks: "Adeus, meu irmão branco! Lá na Europa, / quando falar da tropical paisagem, / não se esqueça da alma do negro. / Adeus, meu irmão branco, boa viagem!" (Antología, 11, 60). "Farewell, my white brother! There in Europe, / when you speak of tropical landscape, / do not forget the soul of blacks. / Farewell, my white brother, bon voyage.

9 Manuel Ferreira, No reino de Caliban: Antología panorámica da poesía africana de expressão portuguesa (Lisboa, 1975). From this point on, I will only indicate in parentheses Antología followed by the volume number and page.

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In the same manner, the poetry of Felipe Moura Coutinho, a White Portuguese poet living in Africa, advocates a world without racial barriers as in the poem "Um igual a Um":

Conheci hoje o negro que ha em mim E que vive em meu peito ignorado sob uma pele branca de eurupeu..... Nós podemo-nos de novo abraçar; pelo canto que nos guia o negro não e mais cão pelo canto que nos guia Hoje o negro é meu irmão. (Antología, Ill, 164)

I met today the black who is in meAnd who lives in my heart ignoredunder a white skin of the European ...We may embrace again;By the corner where it leads usNot, the black is dog no moreBy the corner where it leads usToday, the black is my brother).

In these poems, it is clear that "mulatez," is not only part of the cultural category of hybridity, but also is a crucial part of the poetic discourse in Portuguese-speaking Africa from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. The question is not only that of the racial and cultural identity of the African poet or Blacks, but also about framing a relationship of solidarity that needs to exist among peoples of different races/ethnicities and cultures.10

Exoticism in Luso-African Poetry"Exoticism" in poetry refers to unauthentic African cultural values seen from "tourist's" perspective or an "outsider’s"

vision of the African reality. Such is the case in poems by Ant6nio de Navarro, Fernanda de Castro, and Luis Palés Matos. In her poem "Africa raíz," Fernanda de Castro, uses an accentuated local color" to "paint" an African environment replete with real fruits which have paradisiacal scents and flavors:

0 Africa, flor negra, flor exótica,o teu perfumee alcool que embebeda e destroi como lume....A tua pele escura, lusidia,sabe a fruta madura ...Africa voluptuosa, aberta ao solcomo flor sem segredo! (52, 53)

(Oh! Africa, black flower, exotic flower,your perfumeis alcohol that intoxicate usand destroys like fire ....Oh! your dark skin, lusidia,tastes like ripe fruit ...Oh! voluptuous Africa, open to the sunas a flower without a secret!).

The use of literary clichés like "exotic flower," "intoxicating perfume," "rape fruit," and "flower without a secret", thus losing their aesthetic power and becoming the stereotypical metaphor referencing "voluptuous Africa", makes the poem "Africa raíz" appear more like a plastic palm displayed in a metropolitan shopping center than the symbols of the cultural roots of Africans, as the title of Castro’s poem seems to suggests.

10 This solidarity can be noted in the journal Présence Africaine, founded in 1947 by Alioune Diop and now edited by his wife, first gave a regular public voice to négritude. The first volume includes the following quote: "Esta revista não se coloca sob a obediência de nenhuma ideologia filosôfica ou política. Pretende abrir-se à colaboração de todos os hombres de boa vontade (brancos, amarelos ou negros), susceptíveis de os ajudar a definir a originalidade africana e de contribuir para a sua inserção no mundo moderno" (Antología, I, 38).

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In his poem "'Receita" (Receipe), Jorge Huet Bacelar parodies the literary techniques used in the kind of poetry associated with “exoticism”:

Um colar de missangas fica bemE um dongo na baia.Acácias rubras quanto baste.E uma negra Maria.Uma vóvó qualquer de preferénciaMuito velha e negrinha.Uma cor de materia pitorescaPintada com decência.Contratado também nao fica malE um poente vermelho sobre o mar.Benguela é indispensávelE um versito em quimbundu é magistral.Um ar contestador não sei de quêCom cores ao pirão e á sanzalaMarcar bem a distância complacenteda pessoa que fala.'Angolano' dizer como ArquimedesNo banho disse 'Eureka'Mas jamais englobar a descobertaNo sentido mais lato de africano.De cultura europeia nem falarDe cultura africana nem saber.Mas 'cultura angolana' com certeza.leva-se ao forno e dá-se a quem gostar.(Antología, 11, 370)

(A necklace of beads goes wellAnd a boat in the bay.Red acacia in abundance.And a black-Mary [as a woman].And anyone as a grandma, preferablyVery black and beautiful.A picturesque color materialPainted with decorum.A hired hand also goes wellAnd a red sunset over the sea.Benguela is essentialAnd a little verse in quimbundu is masterful.A challenging essence I do not know from whatWith colors to mush and with sanzalaMark very well the complacent distanceOf the person with whom it speaks.'Angolan', like ArchimedesIn the bath, shouted, 'Eureka'But he never encompassed the discoveryIn the broadest sense of an African man.about European culture, not even speak ofAbout African culture, not even knows it.But, about Angolan culture, 'for sure.Put it on the oven and give it to those who like it).

In this poetical parody, Huet Balcelar indicates that the African "exotic" poets have adopted in some popular poems from the Antilles the clichéd language and themes representing the candomblés and macumbas11 of Brazil to fashion a poetic language that suggests "exoticism" but is unauthentically African. Thus, the “exotic” in these poems are literary motifs that tell the story of a false Africa. In his poem “Receita” Huet Balcelar seems to recognize the semantic falseness of this type of poetry composed by, in my opinion, “versifiers” of African exoticism. In sum, Huet Bacelar’s effective

11 "Candomblé" pays homage to the gods of the Yoruba, but as time passed these rituals fused and intertwined with both Yoruba religion and Catholicism. For a standard study of the African pantheon in Brazil, see Arthur Ramos, 0 negro brasileiro (São Paulo, 1940: 45).

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parody of the exaggerated exotic aspect of the Luso-African poetry demonstrates the way in which the "vocabulary ingredients" have been capriciously chosen by "exotic" poets in order to develop the "recipe" of a false cultural vision that does not reflect the true African reality.

Tropicalism: Poetic Discourse of the Tropics?Manuel Ferreira describes the poetic idiosyncrasy of tropicalist poets in these terms:

São aqueles poetas que, não se preocupando compenetrar nas estructuras sociais retintamente africanas, não enjeitam no entanto a aprensão do dados que algurn modo ajudam a dimensionar urna realidade cultural em evolucão. Não será uma poesía de quem esta dentre, do auténtico processo social, mas tambêm nâo se pode afirmar que esteja de todo fora. Poesía que se encara do ponto de vista da totalidade afro-negra, se dirige não corpo vivo do Africa, mas a relacões digamos de superficie. Estariamos assim diante de outo aspecto de poesía construída no continente africano: o tropicalismo. (Antología, 1, 45).

([Tropicalists] are those poets who -- not wanting to permeate the quintessential African social structures – do not include however the data that in some ways help us to form an evolving cultural reality. This would not be a poetry from those from inside who would account for the authentic social process, but neither can be dismissed as a poetry written by absolute outsiders. Is a poetry that articulates the point of view of the entire black-Africa; a poetry that points not to the living body of Africa, but to the relationships, shall we say superficial. We would be confronting another aspect of poetry composed in the

African continent: that is, tropicalismo).

The majority of these critical commentaries are completely adequate for describing the tropicalist aspect of the poetry of, for example, Noémia de Sousa, the Mozambican poet whose poem "Samba" unfolds a poetic universe which includes the culture of Black Africa, North America and Brazil. 1 cite just a small fragment of "Samba":

E os vestidos brilhantes da civilização desapareceram e os corpos surgiram, victoriosos, sambando e chispando, dançando, dançando...Os ritmos fraternos do samba, trazendo o feitiço das macumbas, o cavo bater das marimbas gemendo lamentos despedaçados de escravo, oh ritmos fraternos do samba quente da Baía pegando fogo no sangue inflamável dos mulatos, fazendo gingar os quadris dengosos das mulheres...Oh ritmos fraternos do samba,acordando febres palustres no meu povoembotado das doses de quinino europeu...ritmos africanos do samba da Baía.

(Antología, 11, 85-86)

(And the bright dresses of civilization will disappearand bodies will arise, victorious,dancing samba and sparkling,dancing, dancing ...The fraternal rhythms of samba,bringing the spell of macumbas,digging the beat of marimbas moaningbroken laments of the slave,oh fraternal rhythms of the hot samba from the BahiaFiring up the flammable blood of the mulattoes,making sway the indecisive women hips ...Oh fraternal rhythms of samba,waking up swamp-fevers in my peopleblunted by doses of European quinine ...African rhythms of samba from the bahia).

In this fragment we find the principal themes and discursive elements of what in this essay I have called "poetic mulatez," which such critics as Florence White and Manuel Ferreira call "mulatto poetry."These themes are: negro music and musical instruments; negro dance; sexual relationships between Black men and women; the mulatta; allusions to

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European-African religious syncretism (especially with reference to santeria and "macumba" for instance); transculturation-acculturation; the evils inherent in slavery; forced emigration, "saudade," the concept of "mãe Africa and negative aspects of European colonization -- for example, the transfer of some European diseases, and the introduction of Western medicine.12

These themes are similar to those of other African poems written in Portuguese, such as "Meia noite na Quintanda" by Agostinho Neto; "Ritmo para a jóia daquela roca" by Francisco José Tenreiro; "0 tocador de Marimba" by Geraldo Bessa Victor; "Fogo e ritmo," "Quero ser tambor," and "Joe Louis nosso campedo" by José Craveirinha (Antología, 11: 15, 21, 441-442; Antología, III: 53, 173, 185, 188). They also appear in Caribbean poems like "Pueblo Negro" by the Puerto Rican negrista poet Luls Palés Matos (Fernández de la Vega, Miami 1973: 172). In this poem and others, the Puerto Rican writer uses "jitanjafóric" rhythmic resonance to demonstrate the most exotic aspects of what he assumes to be Black culture.13

The poetic modalities of tropicalism. and religious syncretism are seen more clearly in the poem "Xangô” by the Brazilian Jorge de Lima. This poem is interesting because it is the only one in the collection, Poemas negros, which deals with the theme of the African religion. In "Xangô we find the description of a ritual session among a group of slaves who invoke the three principal African gods -Xangô his wife Oxum, and Oxalá- as well as the Christian saints Sâo Marcos, Sâo Cosme, and Sâo Damiâ, so that they might help bring a little magic to the marriage between Sinhô and Sinhâ:14

Num sujo mocambo dos "Quatro recantos",quibundos, cabusos cabindas, mozambos mandiga, xangô.

Oxum! Oxalá. 0! E! Dois feios calungas-oxalá e taió rodeados de contas,

no centro o Oxum!Oxum! Oxalá. 0! E! […]

Mas chega o momento: Xangô sai do nichode contas redondas,

se encarna no corpo dos negros fetiches...a negra mais nova se espoja no chão.

Acode o mocambo,Xangô tinha entrado no ventre bojudo,subira pro, crânio da negra mais nova.

Num canto da sala Oxalá sorri.

Minhas almas santas benditas aquelas são do mesmo Senhor tôdas duas tôdas três tôdas nove o mal seja nela São Marcos, São Marços com o signo de Salomão com Ohum Chila na mão com três cruzes no surrão S. Cosme! S. Damião! Credo Oxum-Nila Amen. (Carpeaux, 96, 99)

12 Florence E. White, in her doctoral thesis, "Poesía negra in the works of Jorge de Lima. Nicolás Guillén and Jacques Roumain 1927-1947," establishes six prevalent themes in Black poetry: religion; folklore; the mulata or negra; scenes from the daily life of the Black; allusions to their social and economic problems; and, finally, the theme of social revindication of the Black.

13 "Jitanjafórica" is the adjective form of "jitanjáfora," a term coined by Alfonso Reyes to refer to "una manera de verso de pura sonoridad verbal apartada del sentido de los vocablos." This verbal musicality has been employed in the Antillean, French, and Spanish poetry of Jacques Roumain, Luis Palés Matos, and Nicolás Guillén.

14 Xangô is the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning. In Brazil this god coincides with Santa Barbara and San Jerónimo. In the Northeast, "Xangô" also designates any ritual that is performed for an African god or spirit. Oxum is the goddess of the African river of the same name, which flows into the Niger River. Oxalá or Obatalá is the grandfather of Xangô, and a major god in the Yoruba pantheon - the Creator God. Ogun is the god of iron, steel and earth. (Ramos 1940: 156, 318, 319).

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(In a dirty hovel of the ‘Four corners’:quibundos, cabusos Cabindans, mozambos                            mandiga, Xangô.Oshun! I hope. 0! E!Two ugly calungas and Taio-hopefully surrounded by all,Oshun in the center!Oxum! Oxalá. 0! E! [...]But the time comes: Xangô goes out of the nicheof round beads,is incarnated in the bodies of fetished blackmen ...the youngest black girl wallows on the ground.Acode the hovel,Xangô had entered the belly bulge,he will climb to the youngest black girl’s skull.In one corner of the sitting roomOxalá would smile.My soulsholy blessedthose belong tothe same Lordall twoall threeall nineevil be inside themSt. Markus, St. Marcuswith the sign of Solomonwith ohum Chila in his handwith three crosses on surrãoSt. Cosme! St. Damian!The CeedOshun-Nila

Amen).

At the formal level, the typographic disposition of this poem suggests rhythm, movement, and agglutination-dispersion. In a complementary fashion, at the thematic level, we find a syncretism between Christian and African religions. In fact, by using exotic sounding words and ritualistic evocations like "0! E!," Lima succeeds in creating the sensation of a mystical hypnosis that is supposedly characteristic of some African rituals. In the description of the sexual possession of the "negra nova" (new Black woman), we increase our feelings of hypnosis through the poet's use of choral voices that invoke the African gods and Christian saints. I am not sure that it does much for the credibility of the performers of the rituals.

As such, the poet does not succeed in capturing the participation of the reader in this ritual session. Perhaps this is because the lyrical speaker in the poem only describes the external, picturesque elements of the ceremony, and never manages to decrease the distance that separates him as an external observer from those participating in this ritual. However, at times he does manage to imbue his poetry with a powerful social message, such as the one he articulates in his poem "Rei é Oxalá, Rainha é Temonjá."

Although it is true that tropicalist poetry alludes to (without openly denouncing) the situation of racial and cultural inferiority in which the Africans found themselves prior to the twentieth century, it is also true that it is through tropicalism that the social injustice suffered by Blacks began to be revealed. It is for that reason that I believe that tropicalism is in a position of a transition between the poetry of exoticism and the poetry of "negritud," since the latter is a poetics of revindication (see last section in this essay)..

Negritud: A Cultural Product and an Aesthetics of Social RevindicationIn the previous pages I have discussed how in the poetry created in Hispanic-Portuguese and Lusophone African

cultural settings, from the Late Middle Ages to well into the twentieth century, a picturesque, exotic, and tropicalist vision or notion of African culture has prevailed. Now, I shall point out that, although this vision has not disappeared completely, it is apparent that in the first decades of the twentieth century, both in artistic and intellectual circles as well as in certain sectors of the European public, there emerged a great interest in knowing and appreciating the artistic products of Black Africa from a new perspective.

Indeed, during the period between the two world wars, artists like Picasso and Bracque reproduced the figure of the African (in their so-called "negro" period). Through painting and sculpture in different poses and attitudes, they created -

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in Fauvist and Cubist styles- small African statues in marble, wood, and bronze. In this manner, Europe witnessed the birth of a cult, which critics termed "primitive art." At the same time, writers like Apollinaire, André Gide, Jean Genet and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the German anthropologist Leo Frobenius, were creating texts in which the old European version of the African as a mere caricature was being replaced by a literary characterization which was much more in tune with modem times.

Those Black writers of the Antilles and Africa who, along with certain "White" European historians and anthropologists, became the creators and promoters of a new European/African aesthetic movement. They were all immersed --physically and psychologically-- in this Parisian atmosphere of the "African Renaissance." The term "négritude" was coined by the author Aimé Césaire of Martinique, and it was given general currency in his “Cahier d'un retour au pays natal” (Paris, 1939). Afterwards, the term was used to designate an artistic philosophy which has been elaborated theoretically and aesthetically by Césaire himself, and by the Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Sengor in Presence Africaine (Paris, 1956). Afterwards, the German critic, Jahnheinz Jahn, in his study, Muntu: An Outline of Neo-African Literature (London and New York, 1961), would continue the fierce defense of the aesthetics of "négritude."

"Négritude" is part of a general movement within modern art which includes Black painting, Black sculpture, Black music (like jazz), Black dance, Black religious rites, Black novels, poetry and drama, which all imply a new attitude or "la prise de conscience" regarding Africans. In the strictest sense, the theory and poetics associated with the cultural movement of "negritud" fiercely denounced the European cultural ethnocentricity of the period prior to 1920, that had relegated Africans to cultural inferiority.

At the same time, post-modern evaluations advocate a revaluation of African art and literature. The literary issues discussed by critic G. R. Coulthard in his article "Antecedentes de la negritud en la literatura hispanoamericana" (Mundo Nuevo, Paris, 11 May 1967), could be construed as a "manifesto" of Antillean "negritud." The central points of this "manifesto" (also stated in Coulthard's Race and Colour in the Caribbean) are:

1. La revaloración de la cultura negra en el contexto de sus propios valores y no en relación con los ajenos impuestos desde afuera, o sea, europeos;

2. Un énfasis en elementos rítmicos y la repetición rítmica;3. La fácil comprensión, es decir, una literatura que se dirige al mundo que tiene su origen en el sentimiento

colectivo de todo el pueblo, no que se escribe para una élite intelectual;4. La posesión (captación) de la realidad mediante la palabra, una especie de poder imaginativo, mágico e

hechicero;5. Una atracción fácil y especial para todos los pueblos de origen africano donde quiera que se hallen (Coulthard,

74).

1. (The re-evaluation of black culture in the context of their own values, and not in relation to those of others imposed from outside, or from Europe;

2. An emphasis on rhythmic elements and rhythmic repetition;3. A readily understandable literature. Thus: a literature that addresses the world that has its origin in the collective

sense of the whole people, and not a literature written only for an intellectual elite;4. The possession (capturing) of reality through words, a kind of imaginative, magic and bewitching power;5. An easy and special attraction for all peoples of African descent wherever they may be).

This cultural project proposes a radical change in the cultural discourse of Europe, of Portuguese-speaking Africa, and of Franco-, Luso-, and Spanish-America: the negro and mulatto become acting subjects rather than passive objects of poetic creation. The theoretic foundation of "négritude" provided by Césaire and his followers was useful not only because it encouraged artists and writers outside of Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century to establish cultural ties with "a mãe Africa," but also because it contributed to revealing those elements of African culture that had remained hidden or "confused" with the popular art of the Antilles and the Atlantic coast of the American continent.

In synthesis, the cultural movement of "négritude" is characterized by a writer or poet -White, Black, or mulatto- who adopts the role of historian and critic and recognizes the situation of cultural inferiority to which African culture has been relegated. Since it is beyond the scope of this study, I will not discuss Black and mulatto Franco-Antillean poetry, but instead I will analyze continental Afro-American poetry of "negritud" which can be considered the “mise en texte poetique” of the theory that developed from the "manifestos" of "négritude."

"Négritude" was a cultural movement which originated in Paris as an "artistic" and/or "literary" fashion, afterwards travelling to the French and Hispanic Antilles, thereby becoming a philosophy of art whose purpose was to aid in introducing African culture to the West. However, in countries like Cuba, even before the theoretic bases of "négritude" developed in 1939, Nicolás Guillén had already written poems with a Marxist ideology, denouncing the assumed racial

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and cultural superiority of Europe, as well as the racial discrimination and economic exploitation suffered by indigenous Africans and the Antilleans.

This poetry of protest is called "negrismo cubano" by some critics and "negrismo afro-cubano" by others, but in this study, it is associated with the poetry of "negritud" because I wish to demonstrate its relationship with the French-Antillean concept of "négritude," and because the subject and object of this poetic creation is a Black, "White" or mulatto, who writes from a plural Afro-Latin American cultural perspective, and includes the Atlantic shores of the Americas and not merely the Antilles or Cuba alone.

A highly representative "negritud" poet is the Brazilian Jorge de Lima. His poetry reflects European literary techniques, transcending race and culture. In his long poem "A minha America" the lyrical speaker evokes a poetic universe of solidarity among all its inhabitants:

Cidade de Cusco. Hace frio. lá vem a procissão do Senhor dos tremores da terra Viva el. señor de los temblores! Viva el Perú!o mesmo homem curvado sobre a terra, a mesmo garoto esfarrapado vigiando ovelhas e cabritos, ...

U.S.A. Indústrias gigantescas, trustes colossais, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pensilvania, Estados Unidos da America! ... Os Brasis, os Méxicos, as Patagónias desta America… não cantam os cantos bons que Marsden Hartleye Grace Hazard Conkling entoaram.

Aqui os mulatos substituiram os negros gigantes de Vachel Lindsay. Aqui não há os salvagens felizes de Mary Austin.

Negros, Salvagens, Amarelos,

-o arco-iris de tôdas as raças canta pela bôca de minha nova América do Sul,uma escala diferente da vossa escala,

Alfred Kreymborg,Whitman! (Carpeaux 1949: 59, 62, 64, 66)

(City of Cuzco. It is cold.here comes the procession of the Lord of earth tremorsLong live the Lord of earth tremors! Long live Peru!The same man bent over the earth,the same boy in ragswatching sheep and goats ...U.S.A.giant industries,colossal trusts,MassachusettsNew HampshireRhode IslandConnecticutPennsylvania,United States of America! ...The Brazils, the Mexicos, the Patagonias of this America ...Do not sing now the good songs that Marsden HartleyGrace Hazard Conkling sang.Here the mulattoeswill substitute Vachel Lindsay’s black giants.Here there are not Mary Austin’s happy savages.

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Black,Savages,Yellow,- The rainbow of all races sing through the mouthof my new South America,a different [musical] scale than your scale,Alfred Kreymborg,Whitman).In this poem, the author creates an extensive cultural geographical context and diverse themes which cover or

(dis)cover people and countries of different races and cultures. The poet denounces the economic exploitation of Black, mulatto, and "yellow" laborers by imperialist, multinational corporations at the beginning of the twentieth century. From this perspective, the poem is a testimony to raising social consciousness, and it reveals the leftist political position adopted by Lima. Here he uses an apparently simple poetic language to give a popular air to his poem.

As I have previously commented, continental Afro-American poetic discourse of the twentieth century has been characterized by its focus on social protest. On occasions, this militant poetry softens its belligerent tone by, moving from denunciation to the "desperate" desire for a change in the situations of the racially and socially oppressed Black and mulatto. This is the case with the poems "Confiança" and "Aspiração" by African poet Agustino Neto. The following is a fragment of the poem "Aspiração," in which the poet, with a tone that is much less belligerent than that of Lima, encourages Africans to fight for their social rights:

Ainda o meu canto dolente e a minha tristeza no Congo, na Georgia, no Amazonas....

E nas sanzalas bas; casas nos subúrbios das cidades

para lá das linhas nos recantos oscuros das casas ricas onde os negros murmuram: ainda 0 meu desejo transformado en força inspirando as consciências desesperadas. (Antología, 11, 32-33)

(Still my singing mournfuland my sorrowin Congo, in Georgia, in the Amazon ....And in the low-built sanzalas; in the housesof the city suburbsbeyond the linesin the dark corners of rich homeswhere blacks murmur: stillmy desiretransformed en forceinspiring the desperate).

In this poem, the revolutionary intention of the Black poet is to "infect" his brothers with a "desire-force" of social

revindication is clear, hoping that their desperation can be channelled into political action. After establishing the processes of social reform that had been initiated during the political revolutions of Cuba (1959), Angola (1975), and Mozambique (1975), and with the rejection of European cultural ethnocentricity supported by intellectuals from all parts of the world, it seems that the cultural revindication of continental Afro-Americans and, in general, of all ethnic minorities is now becoming a reality.

Analysis of these types of texts reveals that Afro-Latin American poets Lima and Neto share basically the same political beliefs. Lima, with his Marxist ideology, uses his poetry to reveal the exploitation of laborers who suffer physically and psychologically because they cannot satisfy their economic needs. Neto also has a Marxist ideology, yet he projects this ideology to a lesser degree in his poetry. Rather, he focuses on exposing the racial injustice suffered by Blacks in Africa and America. Because of their protest against the social and economic exploitation of human beings, and

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because they employ the literary techniques of the European vanguard, these two poets have become the foremost representatives15 of Afro-Latin American poetry of what I have termed “negritud.”

In summary, any comments concerning cultural "negrismo," "negritud," "mulatez" and exoticism/tropicalism in Luso-African and Luso-Spanish American poetry lead to the conclusion that the following elements of discourse distinguish Afro-Latin American poetry written in the Portuguese language:

a) The supernatural, which is revealed in the presence of magic and animism in mulatto poetry, and which is the result of the cultural syncretism produced by the blending of African and European religious rites;

b) The emotional, which is perceived in the poetic expression of the lyrical sentiment of "saudade";c) The exotic, which can be perceived in the presence of music, choruses, percussion, dances ("exótixmo") and in the

beginnings of a denunciation of the social and cultural situation in Africa and Portuguese-speaking America ("tropicalismo"); and

d) The revolutionary, which is manifest in the fact that "negritud" was, in addition to a poetic movement, a political attitude of cultural innovation. As the poets utilize one or the other, or shift backwards and forwards in their texts, they show clearly the ability of negritud to adapt itself to ever-changing new realities, and as they negotiate new spaces which address alterity, marginality and difference.

BibliographyAnder-Egg, Ezequiel. Diccionario de trabajo social. Bogotá: Editorial Plaza y Janés, 1986. Ashcroft, Bill, et al. Key Concepts in Poscolonial Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Augier, Angel, Ed. Nicolás Guillén: Nueva Antología. México: Editores Mexicanos Unidos, S.A., 1979. Barreto Feio, Joe Victorino. and J. G. Monteiro, Eds. Obras completas de Gil Vicente. 3 Vols. Hamburg: Na Offiçina

Typographica de Langhoff, 1834. Vol. 3.Bernd, Zilá. Poesía negra brasileira. Antologia. Enstituto Estadual do livro:Porto Alegre, Brasil, 1992. Carpeaux, Otto Maria, Ed. Jorge de Lima, Obra poética. Río de Janeiro: Editôra Getulio Costa, 1949. Castro, Fernanda de. Africa raíz. Lisbon: Tipografia A. Côndido Guerreir (herdeiros) Lda., 1946. Céssaire, Aimé. Cahier de retour au pays natal. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1971. Coulthard, G. R. "Antecedentes de la negritud en la literatura hispanoamericana" Mundo Nuevo. 11 (May, 1967): 73-77. Fernández de la Vega, Oscar and Alberto N. Pamies. Iniciación a la poesía afro-americana. Miami: Ediciones Universal,

1973. Ferreira, Manuel, Ed. No reino de Caliban: Antología panorámica da poesía africana de expressão portuguesa. 3 Vols.

Lisbon: Seara Nova, 1975. Jahn, Jahnheinz. Muntu, an Outline of Neo-African Culture. Trans. Margaret Green. New York: Grove Press, 1961. Moisës, Massaud. A literatura brasileira atraves dos textos. Editora Cultrix: Sao Paulo, 1976. Navarro, Antonio. Poema de Africa. Lisboa: Livraria Portugalia, 1941.Ortiz, Fernando: Contrapunto cubano del tabaco y el azúcar. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, [1940] 1978.Ramos, Arthur. 0 negro brasileiro. 2nd Ed. Series 5, Brasiliana. Vol. 188, São Paulo: Editôra Nacional, 1940. Ribeiro, Darcy. Las Américas y la civilización. Vol II. Los pueblos nuevos. Buenos Aires: Centro editor de América

Latina, 1969.Senghor, Léopold Sédar. "L'esprit de la civilisation ou les lois de la culture negro-africaine." Présence Africaine, 8-9-10

(1956): 51-65. Vieira Mendes, Margarida. Sermões do padre António Vieira. Editorial comunicaçao Seara Nova: Lisboa: 1982. White, Florence E. Poesía negra in the works of Jorge de Lima, Nicolás Guillén, and Jacques Roumain 1927 1947. 2

Vols. PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 1981.

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15 Another highly respected writer who represents the Afro-American poetry of negritud is the late Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén, who was racially and culturally a mulatto and ideologically Marxist. Using literary techniques associated with European surrealism, Guillén, like Lima, also articulates anti-imperialist political denunciation in his poetry. (See especially the poems in his West Indies LTD.)