Critical Perspectives on Race and Revolution:

Abstract

Ethnographer, choreographer and poet Rogelio Martínez Furé (August 1937- October 2022), whose written and performed excavations of the idiosyncracies and fugitivities of interwoven African and Cuban cultural and spiritual tapestries is as timeless in acumen as unbounded in fecundity, leaves a legacy of emancipatory erudition. Zanj honors his memory by giving voice to those who, from the pulpits of scholarship to the archives of orality and the credos of everyday struggle, forage Cuban history for clues to the mysteries and palimpsests of identity. We are indebted to his patient disavowal of the shackles of epistemic colonialism, linguistic and disciplinary silos, and to his knowledge of sacred and profane Afro-diasporic storytelling. 2012 was the year of the bicentennial of the Yoruba-descended carpenter José Aponte’s planned rebellion for freedom against slavery, the centennial of the uprising and repression of the Independent Party of Color led by mambi veterans Evaristo Estenoz and Pedro Ivonnet, and the founding of the community-based Red Barrial Afrodescendiente (Afro-Descendant Neighborhood Network) in Cuba.