Volume 15, Issues 1 & 2
FRONT COVER: Adolfo Mexiac
LATINOAMÉRICA
Mexico
“I am not sure if I put the word “culture” in quotes because it is a neologism or because it is a foreign word.”
—Frantz Fanon
The stories, poems, play, essays and art work collected in this issue are, like the words of Frantz Fanon, a contemporary echo of the rebellious Antillean slave in Shakespeare’s final play whose metamorphosis and current importance as the symbol of Our America are so aptly synthesized in the essay by Roberto Fernández Retamar from which we take our title. They mirror—like Fanon’s words and the assumption of Caliban as symbol—a prise de conscience which the arrival of the conquistadors and their successors have made unavoidable and bear witness to the depth, complexity, and growing intensity of a struggle for liberation and cultural authenticity whose roots must be traced back, from Salvador Allende, Che Guevara, and Toussaint L’Ouverture, to the original revolts of indigenous Indians and Black slaves.
Combining modes and genres, these works are, simultaneously, participants in the formal experimentation, and revolutionary re-evaluation of culture, politics, and history in Our America: part of the challenge to a unilateral, complicitous, perception of our past and present reality. They are—and not incidentally—a dimension of the new and large search for a method in a world in which the Cartesian postulate, stripped of its metaphysics, must perforce be restated. Against the hegemonic europocentric, vision of the universe, the identity of the Caliban is direct function of his refusal to accept—on any level—that hegemony. In the words of René Depestre: “I make the revolution, therefore I am therefore we are; we cease to be the zombies of world history.” It is this premise which motivates J. E. Adoum’s Rumiñahui, René Marqués’ anonymous Taino, the rebirth of Benedetti’s protagonist, Osvald Puente, and so much else the reader will find here. This, then, the other face of the “boom” in the Arts of Our America, a fragment of the world-view of the victim, is the world of Caliban.
Robert Márquez
Table of Contents
Caliban: Notes Towards a Discussion of Culture in Our America, Non-Fiction by Roberto Fernández Retamar
Third World Poems: Citadel; The Visibility Trigger; Shango, Poetry by Edward Kamau Braithwaite
Latinoamérica, Solidarity with Cuban Revolution, Bread Market, Posada, Graphics by A. Mexiac, A. Quinteros, A. García Bustos, L. Méndez
Morning of the 2nd of May; Prosepoem for a Conference, Poetry by John La Rose
Three Men by the River, Fiction by René Marqués
Toward Independent Economic Development for the Betterment of Caribbean Peoples, Non-Fiction by George L. Beckford
The Heartache and Thousand Natural Shocks, Poetry by Juan Gelman, Translated by Robert Márquez
Four Paintings, by Simón Governeur
Delicate Silence, Poetry by Léon LaLeau, Translated by Norman R. Shapiro
The Irregular Armies, Fiction by Carlos María Gutiérrez, Translated by Margaret Randall
Mouth of Lights, Poetry by René Depestre, Translated by Susanna Lang and James Scully
Juan Angel’s Birthday, Poetry by Mario Benedetti, Translated by David A. McMurray
Carmen Serdán, Vietnam, Crown of Steel, Graphics by S. Jiménez, X. Iñiguez, J. Chávez Morado
The Political Situation in Puerto Rico, Non-Fiction by Manuel Maldonado Denis, Translated by Seymour Pollock
A Fable, Poetry by Igor Calvo, Translated by Robert Márquez
Like Karlena, Like Us; A Different Story; Progress Report, Poetry by Andrew Salkey
Four Portraits, Art by Pedro Alcántara
A Taste of Paradise, Fiction by Luis Rafael Sánchez
The American Occupation of Haiti (1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24), Non-Fiction by Suzy Castor, Translated by Lynn Garafola
No, I Wasn’t Always so Ugly, Poetry by Roque Dalton, Translated by Robert Márquez
The Bourgeoisie, Poetry by Nicolás Guillén, Translated by Robert Márquez
Cocktail, Poetry by R. Flores
LXXI, Fiction by Fernando Lamberg, Translated by David A. McMurray
Cuauhtemoc, The Fall of Tenochititlán, The Peasant’s Situation, Graphics by A. Bracho, L. Méndez
The Sun Trampled Beneath the Horses’ Hooves, Drama by Jorge Enrique Adoum, Translated by David A. McMurray and Robert Márquez
Wind-Change; The Victors; Straight Seeking, Poetry by Anthony McNeill
Brainteaser for Kissinger; Demerara Dream, Poetry by Cecil Rajendra
Proclamations Issued by the Chilean Military Junta, Non-Fiction by Anonymous Chilean
Contributors
Incorporating events and documents dating from the Conquest to the Second Declaration of Havana and the My Lai Massacre, Ecuadorian poet Jorge Enrique Adoum‘s play appears here in English for the first time.
Pedro Alcántara directs a Graphic Arts Workshop in collaboration with the Workers’ Union in Cali, Colombia.
An active member of the Chilean resistance now living in exile, our Anonymous Chilean poet conceives his “Proclamations” in the context of that movement.
George L. Beckford (Jamaica) is an economist at the University of the West Indies.
Literary critic, novelist, essayist and poet Mario Benedetti is on the staff of the Uruguayian weekly Marcha; El cumpleaños de Juan Angel, his most recent work, appears here in its first English translation.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados), whose critically acclaimed poetic trilogy The Rights of Passage, Masks, Islands, has just been reissued in one volume, has a sequel trilogy in hand.
Igor Calvo (Peru) published his first book of poems in 1969.
Suzy Castor‘s La ocupación norteamericana de Haíti y sus consecuencias will be followed shortly by a second study of her country.
Charles M. Cutler is on the faculty at Smith College.
Exiled from San Salvador, Roque Dalton now lives in Havana; his several books of verse include El turno del ofendido and La tabema y otros lugares.
Author of A Rainbow for the Christian West and several other books of verse and criticism, René Depestre (Haiti) recently published a chapter of his forthcoming novel.
The distinguished poet, essayist, and editor of Casa de Las Americas, Roberto Fernández Retamar teaches at the University of Havana.
The work of R. Flores appears in the Puerto Rican journal Zona: carga y descarga.
Freelance translator Lynn Garafola works out of Brooklyn, New York.
Juan Gelman (Argentina) is the author of more than eight books of poetry, among them Cólera buey and Los foemas de Sidney West.
Former director of the School of Fine Arts, Barquisimeto, Venezuela, artist Simón Governeur is on a visiting professorship at Hampshire College.
Cuba’s poet laureate Nicolás Guillén recently celebrated his 70th birthday with the publication of two new books.
Carlos María Gutiérrez (Uruguay), author of Diario del cuartel, centers his story on an actual guerrilla action carried out by Monica Ertl, of the Bolivian ELN, against torturer-turned-consul Roberto Quintanilla; the latter was the officer who had severed the hands from Che Guevara’s dead body.
Xavier Iñiguez (Mexico) is a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular.
Léon LaLeau was awarded the Prix Edgar Poe in 1962 and is the subject of a special homage volume of Conjonction.
Chilean poet Fernando Lamberg taught literature at the State Technical University until the recent coup.
Founder and director of New Beacon Books Ltd., John La Rose‘s (Trinidad) new book of poems will be appearing shortly.
Manuel Maldonado Denis, a frequent contributor to the pro-independence weekly Claridad, is Professor of Political Science at the University of Puerto Rico.
René Marqués‘ plays and short stories include several already considered classics of contemporary Puerto Rican literature.
Editor and translator Robert Márquez is on the faculty at Hampshire College.
David Arthur McMurray is with the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Edmonton, Alberta.
The poems of Anthony McNeill form part of his Reel from The Life Movie, with which the Jamaican journal Savacou inaugurated its New Poet Series.
Seymour Pollock teaches at Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts.
Cecil Rajendra, poet and musician by inclination, is a barrister by profession.
Margaret Randal, former co-editor of El corno emplumado, lives and works in Cuba.
Editor, novelist, and poet Andrew Salkey (Jamaica) has just published a new anthology of West Indian poets; it follows close upon his Havana Journal.
Playwright and short-story writer, Luis Rafael Sánchez (Puerto Rico) is at work on his first novel.
Norman R. Shapiro is on the faculty at Wesleyan University.
A NOTE ON THE ART INSERTS:
Pedro Alcántara‘s Homage to George Jackson and Your Dreams Will Never Have A Boundary courtesy of Acklyn and Marta Lynch.
Arturo García Bustos‘ Bread Market in Tlocolula, José Chávez Morado‘s Crown of Steel, Leopoldo Méndez‘ The Peasant’s Situation and José Guadalupe Posada courtesy of Paul Berney and Joyce Bailey. Sarah Jiménez’ Carmen Serdán, Angel Bracho‘s The Fall of Tenochititlán, Leopoldo Méndez‘ Cuauhtemoc, and Adolfo Quinteros‘ Mexican Solidarity with the Cuban Revolution courtesy of Bobbye Ortiz.