The Cuban Connection

Abstract

Below is a quotation from Nicolás Guillén’s Prologue to Sóngoro Cosongo (translated from the original Spanish). Guillén was a political activist and well known on the island as Cuba’s national poet. Sóngoro Cosongo is a book of poems protesting racism and the treatment of blacks as second class citizens. “I should say finally that this is mulatto verse. The same elements are present as in the ethnic composition of Cuba, where we are all a little brown. Does that hurt? I don’t think so. It needs to be said regardless, lest we forget. The African injection in this land runs deep, and so many capillary currents cross and crisscross our well-watered social hydrography that it would take a miniaturist to unravel the hieroglyph. I therefore think that for us, creole poetry would not be complete without the black. The black, in my opinion, brings solid essence to our cocktail. And the two races that surface so distant one from the other on the island, throw out an underwater hook, like the deep tunnels secretly joining two continents. And, the spirit of Cuba is mulatto, and the definitive color will come one day from the spirit to the skin: ‘Cuban color”. “Cuba is an island of illusions”.