A Brief Overview of the Development of Afro-Male Literary Expression in Latin America
DISCLAIMER: This article is based on my dissertation, Defining Black Masculinities: Intersectional Analyses of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Caribbean and Latin American Literature, 1955 to Present.
Blacks in early to mid-19th Century Latin American Literature
As early as the 17th century, Afro-descendant male characterization was present in the writings of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. 19th-century literary representations of this character begin to enrich the contemporary development of outward aspects (corporeal depiction) and internal elements (psychological/intellectual representations). Independence movements occurring in the region and questioning the institution of slavery increased the visibility of Black literary representation in the 1800’s. Most of this century’s literature in Hispanic America involving Afro-male characterization resides in the Romanticism movement. Antislavery rhetoric appears as early as 1816 with Mexican writer José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi’s novel El Periquillo Sarniento [The Mangy Parrot] and his subsequent two-act play El Negro Sensible [The Sensible Black] (1825). Cuba constitutes a strong example of Abolitionist literature, spearheaded by Autobiografía de un esclavo [Autobiography of a Slave] (1830) by Juan Francisco Manzano, an Afro-Cuban author who wrote the first slave narrative in Latin America. The impact and legacy of Sab (1841) by Cuban writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda as an abolitionist novel is an undeniable reality; in fact, the Cuban novel was published more than a decade before another significant U.S. abolitionist novel that is sometimes compared to Sab: Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Biografía de un cimarrón [Biography of a Runaway Slave] (1963), written by Miguel Barnet and Esteban Montejo in collaboration, is included in this 19th-century overview because of the first-hand accounts of Esteban immediately before and after Cuba’s official abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, Montejo’s unique perspectives are not comparable to the lack of independent expressiveness that is encountered in the central Black male (the eponymous slave) in Francisco: El Ingenio o las delicias del campo [Francisco: The Sugar Mill and the Delights of the Countryside] (1838) by Anselmo Suárez y Romero and El negro Francisco [Francisco the Black Man] (1873) by Antonio Zambrana y Vázquez due to the benefits of narrating during the Cuban Revolution.
Scientific racism in Latin American/Caribbean literature
Directly after the official ending of slavery in countries such as Puerto Rico (1873), Cuba (1886), and Brazil (1888), Black representation in literature remains strictly descriptive and essential. This coincides with societal shifts internationally towards a more positivistic and race-based scientific philosophy concerning so-called “inferior” races; as a result, stereotyping in anthropology, social sciences, literature, and arts becomes commonplace. José Martí’s seminal essay entitled “Nuestra América” [Our America] (1891) expresses a desire to integrate Blacks into Cuban society in the name of progress, independence, and liberalism. Still, it discredits the struggle of Afro-Cubans five years removed from the institution of slavery at the time of publication. Slavery is over, but the menial labor did not cease, and the socioeconomic position of Blacks remains abysmal. Montejo confirms this idea in Biografía de un cimarrón when he states unequivocally, “En esos ingenios después de la abolición siguieron existiendo barrancones” (60). (In those sugar mills after abolition, the barracks remained). Nevertheless, the literature on Afro-descendant males between 1890 and 1935 in Latin America is predominantly in the form of manifestos, essays, and cultural/social studies (anthropology). Essays of this variety encompass the likes of Los negros brujos (The Black Sorcerers) (1906) by Fernando Ortiz, José Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica (The Cosmic Race) (1925), Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Big House and the Slave Quarters) (1933), Monteiro Lobato’s science fiction novel O negro presidente (The Black President) (1926) and Fernando Ortiz’s Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Cuban Counterpoint, Tobacco and Sugar) (1940). These five works portray Blacks in essential and racist ways, arguing biological stances to prove their worth to society but elaborate on how Blacks substantially differ from Whites and inhibit any discussion of their psychological and intellectual capacity. Continuing the literary approaches towards the Black male subject during the Vanguardism period in Latin America, Alejo Carpentier’s Écue-Yamba-Ó (Praised Be God) (1933) epitomizes the Negrismo movement, representative of predominantly White male Caribbean writers describing the experiences of Afro-descendant people. Writers such as Puerto Rican poet Luis Palés Matos and Cuban poet Emilio Ballagas come to mind. Nicolás Guillen’s poetry collections Motivos de son (Motifs of Son) (1930) and Sóngoro consongo (1931) are also included in the Negrismo movement. Écue-Yamba-Ó , considered the first novel of Negrismo because of the extensive incorporation of rhythmic language associated with Afro-Cuban music and onomatopoetic descriptions in relationship to describing Blackness, contributed to some of the first valorizations of Afro-descendants in Hispanic America on a widespread scale albeit based on exaggerated stereotypes.
Anke Birkenmaier views the representation of the Black male in the novel in these regards, “In Ecue-Yamba-O, the Afro-Cubans have a quasi-criminal mentality; they are described with an array of clichés about Black sensuality, instinct, superstition, etc.” (63). One can see from a racist perspective how the Black male is designed and designed to perform manual labor because of his uncanny physical attributes and musculature. Pedro Barreda alludes to this dehumanization in The Black protagonist in the Cuban novel, “But from these descriptions, one does not get an authentic or distinctive characterization of the individual: Menegildo Cué is not a person; he is a species” (145). Parallel to the Vanguardist literary currents in Hispanic America, a so-called “literature of the land” predominates. Novels such as Doña Bárbara (Lady Bárbara) (1929) by Rómulo Gallegos, Don Goyo (1933) by Ecuadorian Demetrio Aguilera Malta, Risaralda (1935) by Colombian novelist Bernardo Arias Trujillo, Pobre negro (Poor Black) (1937) by the aforementioned Venezuelan writer Gallegos and Cocorí (1947) by Costa Rican author Joaquín Gutiérrez consistently portray Black and Indigenous characters as vestiges of barbarity and struggling to discover themselves in a modern world. Consistent with the criticisms and anthropologists such as Freyre and Ortiz, the concerns revolve around nation-building projects and a nation's representative citizens.
Négritude: a literary and cultural phenomenon
During the first half of the 20th century, there was still a struggle to find independent liberating thought in the central Black male in the Latin American narrative, except in Haiti and the Francophone Caribbean. Historically, these regions have produced high levels of sophistication of Afro-descendant literary representation. Writers and theorists that come to mind are Jean Price-Mars: Ainsi parla l’oncle (So spoke the uncle) (1928), Jacques Roumain (Gouverneurs de la Rosée (Masters of the Dew) (1944), Aimé Césaire (Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land) (1939) and Jacques Stéphen Alexis (Compère Général Soleil (General Sun My Brother) (1955). Inspired or, at the very least, associated with the Négritude movement in Francophone countries, these writers made conscious efforts in their writings and theories to maximize their central male characters' psychological and intellectual components. Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal), Léon Damas (French Guiana), and Aimé Césaire (Martinique) are considered the founders of Négritude. Initiated by L’Estudiant Noir’s (The Black Student) publications in Paris, France, and partly inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, Négritude offered a view into the “Black’s man’s world” as a thinker, innovator, and philosopher of his purpose in life and offered an alternative to white colonialism (Jackson 21). As one progresses into the middle parts of the 20th century in Latin America and onward, the evidence of Black consciousness begins to reflect more in the writings and works of Afro-Brazilian playwright and philosopher Abdias do Nascimento, Costa Rican writer and theorist Quince Duncan, Dominican poet Blas Jiménez, and Panamanian writer Carlos Guillermo Wilson known by his pen name Cubena.
WORKS CITED
Barreda, Pedro. The Black protagonist in the Cuban novel. U of Massachusetts P, 1979.
Birkenmaier, Anke. Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina. Iberoamericana, 2006.
Jackson, Richard L. Black Literature and Humanism in Latin America. U of Georgia P, 1988.
Montejo, Esteban and Miguel Barnet. Biografía de un cimarrón. Ediciones Ariel, 1968.
Dr. Jerry Eugene Scruggs Jr. is originally from Franklin, Tennessee. He graduated with his first Master's degree in Teaching Foreign Languages (with a concentration in Spanish) at Middle Tennessee State University in 2007. He was an adjunct professor of Spanish for ten years at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee. Jerry also taught for multiple semesters at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville. He obtained his second Master's degree in Spanish at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2014. He completed his Ph.D. in Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures with a Major in Spanish and a second concentration in Latin American Studies in August of 2022. Jerry focuses on race, gender, sexuality, nation-building, LGBTQIA+ identities, and masculinities/femininities in Caribbean and Latin American Literature. His specific area of current research is related to Black masculinities and the characterization of the black male protagonist in contemporary 20th and 21st-century Latin American Literature, focusing on Haiti, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. His exclusive YouTube channel is Kiko’s Freethinker’s Forum.