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Epilogue Carnival and Cultural Essence Es cierto que el arte y la literatura del Caribe han dado al mundo magníficas muestras. Pero también es cierto que las más importantes expresiones de la región son la música y la danza. Es natural, la mejor expresión de lo Caribe ño es exhibicionista, densa, excesiva y transgresora, y no hay nada en el mundo que tenga la capacidad de mostrar estas propiedades como el cuerpo humano—o el carnaval, esa abigarrada aglomeración de cuerpos travestistas en movimiento, la metáfora más plena que hallo para imaginarme lo Caribeño. [It is true that Caribbean art and literature have provided the world with magnificent works. But it is also true that the most important expressions from the region are music and dance. It is natural, the best expression of Caribbeanness is exhibitionist, compact, excessive and transgressive, and there is nothing in the world that has the capacity to demonstrate these properties better than the human body—or the carnival, that multicolored conglomeration of transvestite bodies in movement, the most complete metaphor that I can find to imagine Caribbeanness.] Antonio Benítez-Rojo, “Música y nación” The initial inspiration for this project came from my classes on Hispanic Caribbean literature and culture, in which I routinely dedicate considerable time to the poetry of Afrocubanismo. In preparation for my lectures I have read many books and essays on the poetry of this important artistic movement, and have been struck by certain themes and topics of discussion—the image of the Caribbean woman of color, the rumba, son, and other traditional musical genres, Afro-Cuban religious experience, etcetera—that have captured the attention of so many modern critics. One of the first images that struck me in my earliest experiences with this poetry was that of the Afro-Cuban comparsa, a spectacle that I first came to know through Felipe Pichardo Moya’s “La comparsa” and Emilio Ballagas’s “Comparsa habanera.” Moved by personal interest, but also by 254 · Epilogue a desire to add some continuity to my lectures and class discussions, it occurred to me to seek out other “comparsa poems,” and to teach them as a related group of texts bound together not just by common formal and thematic elements and recurring imagery, but also by a shared history of controversy and debate. I eventually came up with a dozen or so poems, all written by literary figures—some better known then others—associated with Afrocubanismo . Ten of those poems are studied in depth in the eight chapters that make up the bulk of the present study. Most are obvious choices whose very titles—“La comparsa del majá,” “Comparsa habanera,” or “La conga prohibida”—suggest their intimate relationship with and evocation of Afro-Cuban carnival traditions. At first glance some of the other poems—“Sensemayá,” “Juego santo,” and “Quintín Barahona”—seem less relevant, but they too deal in varying ways with traditional Afro-Cuban carnival ensembles and the national controversies and debates that surrounded them throughout the early decades of the Cuban Republic. Though I may have covered the majority of carnival poems that were written by the major figures of Afrocubanismo, it is important to point out that there are other poems associated with this cultural movement that poeticize Cuba’s rich and varied carnival traditions, but either for reasons of space or continuity I have chosen not to discuss at length in this book. In Ramón Guirao’s indispensable anthology of poems on Afro-Cuban themes, for example, there are a number of carnival-related texts that merit further study. For example, though they are not poems in the strictest sense of the term, the anonymous “cantos de comparsa” that Guirao includes are essential precursors in terms of their obvious influence on some of the poems studied here—most notably Nicolás Guillén’s “Sensemay á” and Marcelino Arozarena’s “La comparsa del majá.” But these “folkloric antecedents,” as Guirao refers to them, are also interesting as literary texts in their own right. Several other poems in Guirao’s anthology touch on the topic of AfroCuban carnival ensembles. For example, one of Guirao’s well-known décimas is a poetic representation of a traditional Afro-Cuban conga. This brief text begins with a stereotypical homage to the swaying hips and sensual backsides of the female participants in the carnival procession: “Porque al ritmo de la conga / se muevan nubes de...

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