In MemoriamRoberto Fernández Retamar (1930–2019) Elzbieta Sklodowska Roberto Fernández Retamar (1930–2019) was a prolific poet, renowned essayist, and a controversial public figure whose creative and intellectual life was inextricably intertwined with the history of the Cuban Revolution. He was committed to the revolutionary cause to the point of embracing an austere lifestyle and an ongoing militant stance, but, in his writings and public statements, he was also thought-provoking to the point of provocation. At the core of Fernández Retamar’s contribution to the Latin American decolonization project was a nostalgia for and perhaps even an undying belief in a utopian ideal, something very few of us would dare to profess in the wake of the horrors and terrors of the long twentieth century. At no point did disillusionment seem to creep into his public persona, even when the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s plunged revolutionary Cuba into the deepest socio-economic crisis of its history, known as the Special Period in the Times of Peace, and later, during the hardly restrained protocapitalism of the “transition” that followed. A true believer rather than a turncoat, always marching in step with the Cuban Revolution—which, in its 60 years and counting, has had its own share of grave and seldom rectified missteps—Fernández Retamar could not evade the fiery darts of criticism hurled at him from every possible direction. Alongside the heartfelt lamentations that he had squandered his impressive erudition and significant poetic talent in the service of ideology, and a vast array of thoughtfully polemical papers, theses, lectures, and blogs, a few of Fernández Retamar’s detractors did not hesitate to descend into openly ad hominem strikes. Regrettably, and perhaps ironically, some of the most unforgiving attacks surfaced in the guise of obituaries after his passing in the summer of 2019 at the age of 89. In Calibán (1971), the signature essay for which he is both widely celebrated and mercilessly vilified, Fernández Retamar unshackled the fury of antiimperialist rhetoric and conjured the figure of Calibán to single-handedly defy (post)colonial epistemologies. Born in the heart of the Caribbean in response to a political crisis with far-reaching ramifications (the Padilla Case), this tempestuous manifesto resonated with a long legacy of Latin Americanist thought from writers as revered as José Martí, [End Page 817] José Enrique Rodó, Alfonso Reyes, and José Carlos Mariátegui. The grip of political urgency versus the utopian lure of an overarching continental poetics, the near-hubristic self-confidence of the frantic prose versus the wisdom of self-questioning, the torrent of eclectic ideas interspersed with nuggets of lyrical insight, all describe and obscure Calibán as much as they capture and mask the contradictions of the man, Fernández Retamar. Wrought with tensions between opposing forces, which the author refused to resolve in later translations, re-editions, and revisions, Calibán entered the bloodstream of Latin Americanism and has never ceased to ignite debates across the full range of discursive and ideological registers. Fernández Retamar’s enduring legacy as a literary critic and theorist extends beyond Calibán, of course, and encompasses authoritative studies on major Latin American writers (José Martí, Rubén Darío, Ernesto Cardenal) along with sweeping panoramas of Cuban poetry and Spanish American literary theory (La poesía contemporánea en Cuba 1927–1953; Para una teoría de la literatura hispanoamericana, to name just a few). Tireless in fulfilling his myriad roles, assignments, titles, and capacities, Fernández Retamar should be recognized as the co-founder of the journal Unión (1962), as well as the founder—and director until 1986—of Centro de Estudios Martianos and its journal, Anuario. But first and foremost, he will be remembered for his long leadership at the helm of Casa de las Américas (1986–2019), Cuba’s flagship cultural institution of hemispheric reach, whose eponymous journal he began editing in 1965. Under his guidance, Casa de las Américas was not only instrumental in encouraging Latin American(ist) artistic and intellectual endeavors through an impressive array of publications and prizes, but also helped promote Havana...