Carrying Africa in Their Bodies: Introductory Notes from the Editor

Click, click was the sound you would have heard had you been standing next to me. In rapid succession—click, click, click, click, like an automatic gun, but not as loud. I know it was not loud enough for the policemen nearby, keeping an eye on things, to hear and think of gunshots. It was the sound of my 35mm camera. That quick sound reminds me now of one of those camera scenes in Mahogany, when the Diana Ross character (called Tracy Chambers in the film) shifts poses before the camera of photographer Sean McAvoy (played by Anthony Perkins) as he worked desperately to put on paper the exact image he wanted of her. Click, click went my Nikon, snapping away in my amateur hands. Like McAvoy, I was determined to get the exact image I wanted of what must still be one of Havana's most important buildings, and neither the hot, late-November sunshine nor the throngs on their Sunday strolls in 2002 could keep me from the object of my photographic desire, el Gran Teatro de la Habana on el Paseo de Martí and San Rafael, facing el Parque Central to the north and beside the imposing Capitolio to the west.

Click, click, click. In this tense time when the world over we have allowed our fears and suspicions of terrorists and their monstrous plots to get the best of us, I could not resist thinking that not a few of the Cuban police would become interested in what I was doing. I was right. As I made rapid shots of that neobaroque edifice which houses the national ballet and the state opera, some four or five law enforcement officers patrolling the area slowly gathered together and moved—with inquiring looks, or so I thought—near the point where I was clicking away. I must have been shooting as if the grand ole building would move like Diana Ross in the movie, shifting about to her own desire. Apparently, the officers realized that I was neither a terrorist nor a fellow Cuban. A black man with an expensive camera fascinated by a building that, had I been "un Cubano," I must have walked past many times a year? Would a black Cuban own a camera of superior quality and high price? Where would he get it from, since very few have relatives living in economic splendor in Miami and New York? Most importantly, how many would wear foreign clothes and move with such un-Cuban body language? Whatever the case, those policemen realized that I was a tourist who would not be deterred, and they finally dispersed, supposedly moving off on their assigned beats, never knowing that, from the corner of my eye, I was also watching them the whole time. (As an African-American male, I long ago acquired the habit, in my native USA, of watching policemen everywhere with a third eye, since in my country they seldom prove to be the friends or protectors of black men—or black women. This, too, is a legacy of slavery which persists in Cuba.) But that Sunday afternoon those Cuban policemen did not keep me from trying to capture the images I wanted of that historic piece of architecture. Neither did those young men and [Begin Page 51] women—those ever-hawking Cubans with their gentle shouts of false affection. "Amigo, hombre Jamaicano," "amigo Africano," "my friend," or just plain "amigo."

On an ordinary day in Havana, I am partial to these young people, usually adults of African descent, who are largely educated but unemployed. (Again, Cuba, like the United States of America, still suffers from persisting legacies of slavery, including colorism and its pernicious regimes.) To earn a little money for themselves and their families, these young people often compete to hire themselves out to tourists as guides or helpful assistants of various kinds. While I have always been impressed by their enterprising efforts toward the...