New Atlantis : reflections on a possible archipielago

              D 0 S 5 I E R : ISLÍINDS
I can reineinber exactlv the vear in
wliich, apart froiii feeling Cuban, I also
began t;o feel West Indiaji. Il was in
1944. My stepfather liad been senl to
Puerto Rico to organise the installation
üf an autoinatic telephone service there.
As the ship bringing the new equipment
was torpedoed h\ a Cenrian submarine,
\ve had to stav in San Juan for alinost a
year and a half uiitil another ship could
be sent. As is natural in a thirteen-year-old
boy, I had at first opposed the idea
of leaving my neighbourhood and school
friends in Havana to go and live in San
Juan. However, within a very short time
I realised that Cuba and Puerto Rico
had a lot in common. San Juan, like
Havana, had its Castillo del Morro, oíd
cannons, colonial churches and plazas,
baroque balconies, beaches and palm
trees. The interiors of botli islaiids were
vei^' similar. There were sugar, banana,
and coffee plantations, and the country
people lived more or less in the same
way. The people were white, mulatto or
black, as in Cuba, and they also hked to
dance to music with a lively rhiiitlim, eat
tostones, orunges, frijoles, pork, and
chicken with rice, and to drink coffee,
beer and rum. I made new friends, and I
couldn't see much difference between
them and the friends I had left behind in
Cuba. When the news arrived that the
ship with the telephone equipment had
been torpedoed and 1 realised that we
wotild have to extend our stay I was veiy
happy - a n d inay those that died in the
disaster forgive me.
1 can also remember precisely
when, in addition to feeling Cuban and
West Indian, 1 felt Caribbean. It was in
the summer of 1979, on the occasion of
the CARIFESTA festival in Havana,
which had previously been lield in
Jamaica, Trinidad and Cuvana. This
festival sathered together miisicians and
New Adantis:
Reflections
on a Possible
Archípe^o
dance groups froin all the Caribbean
nations, and for days the theatres,
stadiums, plazas and streets of Havana
were the setting for cultural
presentations by the numerous countries
in the región. As I was a member of the
technical commission which organised
the event, I had the opportunity to meet
a number of writers, painters and artists
who were taking part in the festival.
However, it wasn't until I saw how each
country danced that my body realised
there was one common denomiiiator in
all our cultures: rhj'thm. And not just
that. The rhythm involved an action, a
representation, a performance, which
was extraordinarily similar to the
Cuban. Of course, this had been wrilten
about before. For example, at the end of
ihe 17th century, Father Labat had said:
You are all in the boat together,
sailing in the same uncertain sea..
...nationalily and race are not
importan!, jnst snuill and insignifican/
labels compared willi the tnessage which
ihe spiril c<u-ries lo me: (nid this is the
place and the predicament which history
has imposed on you... I saw it first in the
dance... the merengue in Haiti, the
beguine in Mcutinicpie. and today in my
oíd ears I can hear the echo oj the
calypsos of Trinidad, Jamaica, Santa
Lucía, Antigua, Dondnica and the
legendar)^ Guyana... It is not by
accident that the sea which sepárales
yonr lands does not make differences to
the rhythm ofyour bodies.
It is true that I had read this
passage. However, I had not felt it
personally, because until then 1 had not
been lucky enough to see cióse up and
successively the music and dance
performances of all the Caribbean
nations. When CARIFESTA finished I
had no doubt that I was also Caribbean.
Three years ago I was invited to
visit Tenerife by the Menéndez y Pelayo
International University, and later on by
the La Laguna University. I had never
visited the Canary Islands. Naturally, I
knew something of the history of these
islands, particularly Tenerife, for in my
book El mar de las lentejas (The Sea of
Leittils), I had told the story of the trade
cormection between the Ponte, Adeje y
Garachico, and Hawkings fainilies of
Plymouth. It is also true that I knew
about the extensive emigration from the
Canary Islands to Cuba, and that point
that the fountÜng work of Cuban
literature, Espejo de paciencia [Mirror of
Patience) was written at the beginning
of the 17th Centurv by Silvestre de
Balboa, born in Tenerife. Btit, touring
Tenerife and the other occurred in
Puerto Rico and CARIFESTA. To begin
with, the Spanish spoken was very
similar to that of Cuba; there were even
linguistic twists and words, like guagua,
which were used in botli (^uba and
Puerto Rico l)ut not in mainiaud Spain
or in the rest of Spanish America. There
(ENreo ATIANTICO DE ARTE MODERNO
were also beaches, palm trees, and
plantations, and the oíd architecture was
very reminiscent of certain Spanish
Caribbean cities and villages. Another
custom in common was that of eatíng
bananas and eatíng mojo in certain
dishes. It is true that there were no black
people, but I did observe people with
darker skins than those of mainland
Spain. Knowing as I did that sugar
plantatíons had existed on various
Cíinary islands along with African
slaves, I thought it was very possible
that part of the population had African
or Berber blood. And this, of coiu'se,
brought US closer together. But what
struck me most was the people's way of
behaving, which was very similar to that
of the Caribbean people. They had the
same generosity, spontaneity, and
smiling, open character [1]. It was then
that, besides feeling Cuban and West
Indian and Caribbean, I also began to
feel a little like a Canary Islander.
If 1 have recounted these personal
experiences, it is because, curiously
enough, they correspond to what has
happened to the discourse which we
nowadays cali Caribbean, and which I
propose to cali N.A. [2]. Naturally, at
first there only existed discourses which
had gene from Creóle to natíonal, which
is to say, a Haitian discourse, a Cuban,
Jamaican, and so on. At the end of the
19th Century, these discourses began to
group themselves into linguistíc blocks;
thus there appeared a Spanish West
Indian discourse, a West Indian
discourse, etc. Then, in our century
there aróse an overall West Indian
discourse which, shattering the oíd
colonial conceptíon, foUowed certain
models which were repeated within the
archipelago. Contributing to this effort
were, among others, the works of
Femando Ortiz, Jean Price-Mars,
Jacques Roumain, Jean-Stéphen Alexis,
C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, Luis Palés
Matos, Emilio Ballangas, Nicolás
Guillen, Alejo Carpentier, Lydia Cabrera
and others. Although at the beginning
this discourse had focused on the major
impact of the African diaspora in the
different island cidtures and societíes,
defining such concepts as
transculturatíon and miscegenation,
relatívely recently it expanded its base of
reference to include American territories
in the Caribbean, as weU as the global
study of the socio-cultural phenomenon
of the área within the concept of creole-ness.
This new idea now not only
referred to the encoimter of European
and Africfui people in the región, but
also included the contribution of other
groups, principaUy the Amerindians and
Asians. In a parallel way, the idea of the
Caribbean with characteristics of its
own, not only became universally
known, but gave rise to many historical,
economic, sociological and literary
works, among others those by Eric
Williams, Sidney Mintz, Manuel Moreno
Fraginals, Arturo Morales Carrión, Juan
Bosch and Franklin Knight. Moreover,
enterprises for economic co-operatíon
like CARIFESTA and later CARICOM
were established. The arts were
represented by the CARIFESTA festivals
of which I have aheady spoken. It was
during this period when the West Indian
discourse was becoming more widely
known that it took the ñame of the
Caribbean discourse. More recently, this
discourse has increased its points of
reference in a search for connecting Unks
with a large part of the world, especially
the Atlantic área, in accordance with
certain common principies. This
perspective can be seen in many works
of literary and cultural analysis, such as
the The Womb ofSpace: The Cross-
Cultural Imagination by Wilson Harris,
Poétique de la rélation by Edouard
Glissant, Eloge de la créolité, by Jean
Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseay and
Rapharl Confiant, and my own book La
isla que se repite: el Caribe y la
perspectiva posmodema [The Island
that Repeats Itself: The Caribbean and
the Post-modern Perspective^ [3].
For the sake of brevity, on making
this inventory I have had to summarise
£in enormous amount of Information
referring to the depth and extent of the
discourse which is now usually called
Caribbean and which, here today, I
propose to cali Atlantic or the discourse
of the New Atlantis [4]. For example,
study of the first stage, which is to say,
the stage of West Indian discourse,
would lead us to say that the most
pertinent attempts to define a common
cultiu-e began in the 1920s and reached
their highpoint in the 1930s and t940s.
They all shared the same wish: to
emphasise the importance of the African
heritage in the región. These efforts were
influenced by a number of events which
in the main took place outside the
Caribbetm, the globahsation of events,
as is the case today. Among them was
the popularity of African art in Europe;
the ideas of Leo Frobenius and Oswald
Spengler, the participatíon of black
troops in the First World WÍU"; the
upsurge of black natíonahsm in the
United States; the literatiu-e created by
the authors of what was called the
Harlem Renaissance; the Pan-African
agenda of Marcus Garvey -also
pioneered from Harlem- and finally the
impact of surtealism and the music of
Gershwin and Stravinsky. Among the
events exerting influence today are post-modern
art and thought. In the West
Indies, where the predominant
population has always been black and
mulatto, looking towards África served
many practical purposes. Firstly, it
helped free the black man from the
feeUng of cultural and social inferiority
which slavery had imposed on him,
providing him with a common
ethnological mother country beyond the
ocean (instrumental to this piupose was
the doctrine of the Jamaican, Marcus
Garvey called Back to África. Secondly,
the feeling of cultural pride helped the
black masses to emerge from the social
and poütical passivity imposed by
colonial domination (the most important
example of this is the Black movement
organised by Aimé Césaire of Martínique
together with Léopold Senghore of
Senegal). Thirdly, in the case of Haiti, it
aided in the reinterpretation of the
national culture, extolling the oíd
traditions tnaintained by the peasants
(in this the work bf Jean-Price Mars was
of vital importance). Fourthly, in the
Spanish West Indies, and above all in
Cuba, where the black minority suffered
discrimination, the new African
conscience led to the development of a
kind of modem nationahsm in which the
building of the nation was not seen as
the exclusive work of the Creóle whites
(here 1 should mention the Afro-Cuban
Femando Ortiz, and the black poetry of
Puerto Rican Luis Palés Matos, the
Cuban Nicolás Guillen, and Dominican
Manuel del Cabral, among others).
Speaking only of Cuba, 1 must mention
the emergence of a truly national
painting -ranging from Víctor Manuel to
Wilfredo Lam, and including the
sculpture of Teodoro Ramos-, the
literature of Lydia Cabrera and Alejo
Carpentier, the Afro-Cuban symphonic
music of Amadeo Roldan and Alejandro
García Caturla, the emergence of an
interracial national lyrical theatre -from
La niña Rita by Ernesto Lecuona and
Eliseo Grenet to Cecilia Valdés by
Gonzalo Roig-, and the popularisation
of what was then called black and
mulatto music: the rumba, conga, son,
and later, the mamba and the
chachachá.
Today, looking back on this
period, it must be concluded that the
West Indies discourse, although a
necessary forerunner in the organisation
of a Caribbean discourse, was fuU of
reductionist proposals. For example, in
general the discourse was centred only
on aspects related to África and Europe,
disregarding the socio-cultural
contributions of Indo-America, China,
India, Java and the Middle Eastem
nations. But, above all, it disregarded
the influence of North America on the
culture of the región. Another very
common error was considering the
numerous different African and
Eiu-opean cultures as if they were
homogeneous contrasting units, either
thinking, in the hght of Spengler's work,
that westem civiUsation had entered a
period of decadence, to be replaced by
African civilisation, or describing West
Indian culture as neo-African (a term
invented by the Germán Janheinz Jahn);
or else, from the most extreme position
of the black movement, manipulating
the ideas of race, culture and power; or
thinking that European and African
culture, in their West Indian interracial
dialectic, had crystaUised into a stable
synthesis - a mixed or midatto culture-,
an opinión held a one time by Guillen
among others.
The formative stage of the
Caribbeíin discourse, when the West
Indies discourse went beyond its
territorial references and dismantled the
Europe-Africa dual state so as to include
other ethnological components, came
with to the decolonisation process which
occurred after the Second World War,
and with the concept of the existence of
a Third World, an idea presented at the
Bandung Conference of 1955. It also
coincided with the highpoint of
structuralist thought in Europe and with
the critical theory of Teodoro Adorno
and the Circle of Frankfort, and above
all, with the triumph of the Marxist
revolution in Cuba tind the "New Left"
in Europe and the United States.
Although the dual Europe-Africa,
black-white, African culture-Westem
culture disappeared during this stage,
new dualities were constructed. For
example, anthropological discourse
-influenced by decolonisation, the
expansión of Marxist thought and
structuralist analysis- began to define
Caribbean culttu-e in terms of binary
oppositions such as dominant culture-subjugated
culture, popular culture-elitist
culture, dependent culture-sovereign
culture, etc., in which the
work of Frantz Fanón stood out.
Examples of a less radical position,
although with a duíJ undertone, are seen
in literature in the theory of magic
realism defended by the Haitian Jeein
Stéphen Alexis and Cuba's Alejo
Carpentier; in history, in the works of
the Trinidadian Eric Williams and the
Cuban Manuel Moreno Fraginales; in
cultural anthropology, in the work of the
Brazilian Darcy Ribeiro, who, inspired
by nationalism, understood the nations
of the Caribbean and Brazil to be "new
nations", disconnected from Europe and
África, as was their "new" culture.
About twenty years ago
structuralist thought went into a decline,
and was replaced by the so-called post-structuralist
thought and shortly after by
post-modemism. As we know, this new
situation corresponded with the decline
of Marxist ideology in the world, the end
of the cold war, and the coUapse of the
socialist bloc, the end of apartheid,
European unity and the so-called
process of globalisation, the development
of cybemetics, Communications and the
access to knowledge. It is true that there
are still some dualisms around, but I
think that some of them have some
reason for being, at least until the most
extreme cases of economic, racial, sexual
and cultural differences in the world can
be resolved peacefuUy.
However, in these last two decades
the Caribbean discourse, blown by the
winds of post-modemity, has reached a
new moment, characterised by a lesser
tendency to see things in black or white
and a greater consciousness of the
complexity of their own phenomenon.
To this end, the contributions made by
such historians as Braudel, Wallerstein
and White, as well as the philosophers
Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard and
Deleuze, and the mathematicians and
scientists Mandelbrot, Ruelle, Lorez and
Prigogine have helped today's
researchers to understand that the
Caribbean system is unusually complex.
In the region's economic and socio-cultural
discourse, for example, we can
observe how the dynamics of Caribbean
existence are historically linked to such
macro-factors as the exploration and
conquests arising from European
expansionism, the impact of the Atlantic
economy on the development of
capitalism, the consequences of military
and trade rivalries among European
empires, smuggling and piracy, the
development of the plantation economy,
the effects of African colonisation and
the import of African slaves, the hiring
of an Asian workforce, the influence of
European thought on civil and armed
battles for independence, the cultural
and political influence of the United
States, and others.
Naturally, this perspective has not
only led us to see the Caribbean as more
complex, but also as more extensive,
and at the same time less coherent and
stable, more diverse and fragmented. So
much so, that now if we wished to
speak of a West Indianhood or a
Caribbean-ness from the viewpoint of
structuralist thought, it would be
impossible, for our arguments would
seem to be products of arbitrary
reductionisms and simplifications. For
example, I have here a fact which was
not perceived by the first
Caribbeanists); really a rather
disquieting fact: it is impossible to
delimit the borders of the Caribbean. If
we begin from the physical geography,
the área would only include those
territories with coasts on the Caribbean
Sea, thus excluding those that give on to
the Gulf of México, such as the
Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos,
Barbados, Guyana, Cayenne and
Surinam, nations which are usually
considered to be part of the Caribbean;
on the other hand. Honduras,
Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panamá,
which are considered to be part of
Central America, would be included. If
we applied socio-economic criteria, the
Caribbean could be studied in terms of
the American plantation economy,
which is to say, of those parts of the
American continent where a plantation
slave economy was developed. However,
if this standard of judgement were
strictly adhered to, the Caribbean would
also include, besides the West Indies, a
large section of the United States and
Brazil, and the coastal regions of South
America and the ancient viceroyalty of
Perú, which give on to the Pacific. Even
if this criteria was discounted and the
Caribbean reduced to a more
manageable área, the West Indies let us
say, there would still exist very clear
contradictions. For example, if we tried
to identify the archipelago commencing
from a common nationalism, we would
see at once that the population of the
West Indies lacks a common
consciousness. For the immense
majority of the population of the
Caribbean, the región appears as
fragmented in linguistic blocs
representing the different colonial
powers which dominated the región,
among which were Spain, England,
France and HoUand. Neither is it
practical to try to discover an
ethnological pattem common to the
whole región. Although it is true that
people from America, Europe, África
and Asia converged on the islands, their
cultures were very different as was their
distribution throughout the región.
Moreover, the political pluralism to be
found in the West Indies could not be
more chaotic. According to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, the
Dominican Republic is a "multi-party
republic", Cuba is a "unitary and
socialist" republic, Puerto Rico is an
"associated free state" of the United
States, Curasao is a "non-metropolitan
territory of the Low Countries",
Martinique is an " overseas department
of France", the Virgin Isles are "non-incorporated
territories of the United
States", St. Kitts and Nevis comprise a
"federal republic", and Dominica is an
island "community" in the British
Commonwealth and whose form of
govemment is a constitutional
monarchy.
So, given the difficulty of
establishing accurately the geographic,
socio-economic, ethnological and
political borders of the área, terms like
"Caribbean culture", "Caribbean" and
"Caribbean-ness" should be taken as
constantly moving and changing,
unstable concepts. With this way of
thinking the question of identifying the
Caribbean borders a priori does not
constitute a serious problem. From this
new viewpoint, the Caribbean would
transcend the borders of both the
Caribbean Sea and the American
plantation, comprising an open macro-system
whose origins would be beyond
recovery, dispersed in time and space
through America, Europe, African and
Asia, that is to say, the world. Therefore,
the post-modem researcher tends to
study the Caribbean from the
observation of correlations and pattems
that are repeated here and there in a
group of cases whose universe he
considers to be unknown from the very
beginning. In addition, this hypothetical
researcher would reject certain models,
methods or interpretations coming from
European historicism (for example, the
works by Hegel and Marx), replacing
them with such narratives as the myth
and the novel (proposition of Wilson
Harris), thus compensating for the loss
of the past which affects the coUective
memory of the nations in the región. He
would also reject the ideas of "unity",
"centre", "homogeneity", "synthesis",
"stabihty", "coherence", etc. To sum up,
for the post-modem researcher the
Caribbean system would be non-central,
heteroclite, ambivalent when not
paradoxical, and it would be in a
constant state of change, or if you
prefer, in a continuous process of
unpredictable creohsation.
Above all, it would be a constant
camival. The researcher would naturally
spum the idea that the Caribbean is a
synthesis or an approach to it; that is, he
would be inchned to see the system as a
tempestuous interplay of differences
(suggested by Glissant). However,
although post-modem thought serves to
tear down oíd absolutes, such an
attitude also sets limits. For example,
the discourse of post-modemity poses as
scientifie, that is to say, ethnocentric, a
proposition it shares with modem
discourse. Thus, both exelude beliefs,
myths, musical, dance £md oral folklore,
and other popular traditions, which is to
say, they do not recognise the authority
of what Lyotard calis "narrative
knowledge", on which outlying societies
cultiu-ally depend to a large extent. My
ideas with regard to the subject under
discussion are simple and complex at the
same time: to study these societies it is
necessary to take into accoiuit,
simultaneously, these three paradigms of
knowledge, which are, the modem, the
post-modem, and the neurative, which I
prefer to caU the narrative of the Peoples
of the Sea. It is precisely here, where my
proposal comes into play, which is that
the discourse on the Caribbean should
stop calling itself that and form a more
widely based discourse, which, for want
of a better ñame, I have called the new-
Atlantic discourse.
Once again I will say that I shall
not repeat my ideas on the New Atlantis
here, for they can be found outlined in
the brief essay that appears in the
catalogue for the exhibition. But I wül
emphasise that there do exist points of
support with which to prepare this new
discourse. These points are to be found
scattered aroimd the Atlantic, and,
besides forming islands, they comprise a
network of complex nodules in which
Atlantic knowledge is concentrated, at
least since the age of discoveries and
island conquests, and the beginning of
the plantations. What is more, like all
networks, the New Atlantis archipelago
is connected to masses or forces that pulí
her, which in our case would be the
mainlands of Europe, África and
America. Up to now, it must be
concluded that the strongest tugs have
come from Europe. Fierre Chanu,
Braudel, and Wallerstein, for example,
examine oiu- great archipelago in their
excellent works on the Atlantic, but they
do it from the a European viewpoint,
and particularly with regard to trade
and the establishing of an Atlantic
economy, within what has come to be
called the "European world system" or
"world capitalist system". However, our
islands are not as Em-opean as even we
like to think -perhaps because this is
what we were taught in school. They
also contain much of America and África
which tends to be ignored. Moreover, it
must be concluded that without the
presence of this great archipelago that I
imagine -an archipelago of 270,000 km^
and 44,000,000 inhabitants- neither
Europe, ñor África, ñor
America would be what they are
today.
What exactly is my proposal?
Firstly, starting from the experience
gained in the study of the Caribbean, to
observe the pattems of differences that
repeat themselves in the Atlantic islands
here and there. There are comparable
phenomenon which being of public
domain could act as starting points, the
consumption of bantmas, let us say, or
the study of the growth of the
plantation, and even, nowadays, the in-depth
study of tourism. Even more, in
Cuba, for example, when I was a child,
the people spoke fearfuUy of the
witchcraft of the Canary Islands. Well,
what differences are there between the
Canary Islands beliefs or practices,
which I know nothing about, and those
of the Cape Verde Islands, Haiti, Cuba,
etc.? On the other hand, we already
know that the Canary Islands lament
influenced Cuban and Puerto Rican
folklore. But more serious research into
the question of rhythm is needed, and
this, in itself, would constitute a second
stage of study. I am not referring solely
to music and dance rhythms, but also
the rhythms to be seen in the visual arts,
in poetry, in the way of walking and
talking. These rhythms, in fact, stem
from intemal rhythms, secret structures
that we all carry within ourselves as
socio-cultural implants. If we visit
successively London and New York, for
example, it is made clear to us that each
vibrates with a rhythm of its own. Do
there exist island rhythms which bring
US closer together, rhythms which pick
up the play of the waves with the
Atlantic horizon? Intuitively, I would
say yes. But only research and
discourse can answer this question
properly.
T
I
C
A
IB
[1] Orlando, Cristina, Alicia.
[2] See catalogue text for a brief explanation.
[3] The idea has been presented but not
developed. Reunión.
[4] De allá para acá, de acá para allá [From
there to here , from here to there]. Juan
Manuel García Rana.