Delgado, Martín Morúa (1856-1910)

Martin Morua Delgado with Daughters Arabella and Vestalina.
Image Courtesy of Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Born in 1856, Martín Morúa Delgado gained prominence as an Afro-Cuban writer and Cuba’s first black Senate president after the country’s war for independence against Spanish rule in the 1890s.  Son of an African-slave mother, Ines Delgado, and Spanish father, Francisco Morúa, Martín Morúa Delgado espoused both anti-slavery sentiments and exemplified ideas of success through meritocracy among Afro-Cubans.
Unable to obtain a formal education because of economic demands, Morúa Delgado was thrust into the work force and became a self-taught Cuban.  He became a prolific reader and was fluent in several languages.  Beginning his literary career in 1878, Morúa Delgado published a newspaper, El Pueblo.  Through it, he opposed slavery and sought the integration of blacks into mainstream Cuban society and culture.
In 1880, Delgado left Cuba for Key West, Florida in the United States where he spent the next ten years working as a literary critic and translator and publishing his magazine Revista Popular.  While in the United States he wrote the essays "Duty Calls" and "Cuba and the Colored Race."  While the former is a brief account of Cuba’s social history and call for revolution against the Spanish, the latter focuses on the historical plight of Afro-Cubans and their desire for freedom from slavery.
Upon returning to Cuba, Morúa Delgado published two novels, Sofia and The Unzuazu Family.  Again, he explored issues of the cruelty of slavery and its subsequent psychological impact not just on individual Afro-Cubans but also on Cuban society as a whole.   He focused especially on the complex interpersonal relationships among Cubans, which had been often built on a foundation of mixed-race relationships.
Becoming a major political figure in post-independence Cuba, Morúa Delgado was one of two men of color elected to the country’s constitutional assembly under United States occupation.  In 1901 he became the country’s first elected Afro-Cuban senator (1901).
As part of the Afro-Cuban intellectual/political elite, Delgado symbolized a social mobility that very few black Cubans were able to achieve because of social and legal barriers.  Although a believer in racial equality, Morúa Delgado opposed independent, black civil rights organizations.  Instead he worked through his political party, the Liberal Party, in establishing patronage networks among Afro-Cubans.  As the first black President of the Cuban Senate (1909), Morúa Delgado introduced a bill that banned black political parties because they discriminated against white Cubans.  The Morúa Amendment would later be cited as inciting Cuba’s “Race War of 1912.”  Morúa Delgado would go on to become Minister of Agriculture, passing away in 1910 while serving in that office.
Sources:
Jorge Cantera and Carolina Hospital, A Century of Cuban Writers in Florida: Selected Prose and Poetry (Sarasota: Pineapple Press, Inc., 1996); Aline Helg, “To be Black and to be Cuban: The Dilemma of Afro-Cubans in Post-independence Politics,” in Darien J. Davis, eds., Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007); http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/race/Delgado.htm.
Contributor(s):
Escamilla, Luis
University of Washington
- See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/gah/delgado-martin-morua-1856-1910#sthash.0X0zzdf6.dpuf

„The Rebellion of the Girls: Reflections for an Embodied Decolonization“

Nadia Celis

Die Literaturwissenschaftlerin Nadia Celis hielt im Rahmen des SoCaRe Nachwuchsworkshops am 23.03.2013 einen Keynote-Vortrag mit dem Titel „The Rebellion of the Girls: Reflections for an Embodied Decolonization“. In ihrem Vortrag ging Nadia Celis der Frage nach, wie die karibische Kolonialgeschichte als eine verkörperlichte Erfahrung verstanden werden kann. Widerstand und Körperbewusstsein, so ihre These, müssen in diesem Kontext jenseits eines Butler’Schen Symbolismus zusammengedacht werden.

Crossing Thresholds: Decoloniality and Gender in Caribbean Knowledge. Romanisches Seminar, Leibniz Universität Hannover; Gesellschaft für Karibikforschung/Society of Caribbean Research, 23.01.2013-25.01.2013.

Reviewed by Martina Urioste-Buschmann
Published on H-Soz-u-Kult (May, 2013)

Crossing Thresholds: Decoloniality and Gender in Caribbean Knowledge

Die Verknüpfung von Genderthematiken und Fragen der Dekolonialität ist in den Forschungen über die verschiedenen Sprachräume der Karibik unterschiedlich vorangeschritten. Jedoch spielt die Untersuchung von Geschlechterfragen innerhalb der interdisziplinären Karibikforschung seit mehreren Jahrzehnten generell eine große Rolle.

Der interdisziplinäre Nachwuchsworkshop „Crossing Thresholds“, zu dem das Romanische Seminar der Leibniz Universität Hannover und die Gesellschaft für Karibikforschung/Society of Caribbean Research - SoCaRe eingeladen hatten, widmete sich daher genderspezifischen dekolonialen Perspektiven im Bereich der Karibikforschung. Der Nachwuchsworkshop hatte zum Ziel, diese im sprachraumübergreifenden Kontext bisher wenig bearbeitete Schnittstelle sichtbar zu machen und Wege zu erkunden, wie sich diese künftig systematisch bearbeiten lässt.

In ihrem Einführungsvortrag diskutierte SABINE BROECK (Bremen) das epistemische Projekt Sylvia Wynters und deren Begriff des Humanen: Ausgehend von Wynters Aufsatz „Beyond Miranda’s Meanings; Unsilencing the ‚Demonic Ground of Caliban’s Woman’“ Sylvia Wynter, „Beyond Miranda’s Meanings: Un/silencing the ‚Demonic Ground’ of Caliban’s Woman’“ in: Out of the Kumbla. Caribbean Women and Literature, hrg. v. Carole Boyce Davies und Elaine Savory Fido (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990): S. 355-372. legte Broeck den Fokus auf Wynters Kritik am Gender-Konzept und zeigte dessen Grenzen auf. Am Beispiel der sozialen Position des schwarzen Sklaven Broeck bezog sich hierbei auf Orlando Pattersons Begriff vom ‚Social Death‘. Vgl. Orlando Patternson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, Cambridge 1982. führte Broeck die Diskussion auf den Ausgangspunkt der Moderne zurück und zeigte die problematischen Überlagerungen und Ausblendungen von Gender und Race im Ringen um den Subjektstatus: In der Unsichtbarkeit der schwarzen Sklavin zeige sich mit Wynter die Aporie der modernen Konzepte. Diese historische Perspektive führte Broeck zu einer Kritik des Konzepts der Intersektionalität, das einerseits wichtige Beiträge eines afroamerikanischen Feminismus ausblende und zugleich die problematischen Überschneidungen, Überlagerungen und Ausblendungen von Identitätspositionen nicht fassen könne. Broecks Plädoyer, die theoretischen Überlegungen und Analysen der karibisch-US-amerikanischen Theoretikerin Sylvia Wynter in die post- und dekoloniale Diskussion einzubringen, fand in den anschließenden Diskussionen Widerhall.

NADIA CELIS (Brunswick) ging in ihrem Einführungsvortrag der Frage nach, wie die karibische Kolonialgeschichte als eine verkörperlichte Erfahrung verstanden werden kann. Widerstand und Körperbewusstsein, so argumentierte sie, müssen in diesem Kontext jenseits des Symbolismus à la Judith Butler zusammengedacht werden. Am Beispiel verschiedener Erzähltexte von Mayra Santos-Febres, Fanny Buitrago, Marvel Moreno und Magali García Ramis verdeutlichte Celis, wie karibische Autorinnen weibliche Körperautonomien inszenieren, die auf einer materiellen Ebene Zugänge zu dekolonialen Denkformen lesbar machen.

The Curandera of Conquest Gloria Anzaldúa’s Decolonial Remedy

Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 35:1 Spring 2010 © University of California Regents 135

George Hartley

ABSTRACT: In this essay I argue that the primary role that Gloria Anzaldúa creates for herself as a writer and activist is that of the curandera of conquest, the healer of la herida abierta (the open wound) created by the borders imposed by capitalism, nationalism, imperialism, sexism, homophobia, and racism. After examining Anzaldúa’s Prietita and the Ghost Woman as both an illustration (in content) and an example (in enactment) of her practice as a curandera, I provide a brief overview of curanderismo and key developments in the theories of decolonization within global indigenous studies since the turn of the twenty-first century. I read Anzaldúa’s decolonizing work as a companion to this recent decolonization move within indigenous theory and practice.

In a 1991 interview concerning the Quincentennial celebrations, Gloria Anzaldúa defines her project of “spiritual activism” as a decolonizing countermovement to Euro-American glorifications of both conquests, the Spanish and the Anglo (2000, 177–94). She anchors her rejection of colonialism in what she calls the “New Tribalism,” grounded in her attention to the indigenous roots of mestizaje. Noting that the Conquest was enacted through writing (letters between Columbus and Isabella, chronicles written by the clergy, and, we could add, treaties between the U.S. government and hand-chosen tribal “representatives”), she argues for “reclaiming the agency of reinscribing, taking off their inscriptions and reinscribing ourselves” (189) as a step toward healing of the Earth (193). In this example we see Anzaldúa’s self-definition as a curandera of conquest, a healer of la herida abierta, the open wound created by the borders that neocolonialism has imposed—borders policing class, national, gender, sexual, racial, and religious divisions. Anzaldúa’s healing work in defining mestiza consciousness functions as a necessary precondition for liberation from below and as the embodiment of a concrete, historically embedded alternative to the colonizing Eurocentric rationality of modernity.1

Such healing work involves a diagnosis and a remedy. Anzaldúa situates her diagnosis within her chronicling of Anglo terrorism in the Southwest. The social forces of oppression that she identifies produce the illness: internalized colonialism. Having internalized the perspective of the colonizers, one sees oneself through the colonizers’ eyes and in terms of the colonizers’ values and, then, is rajada: sliced right down the middle by the inner conflict resulting from such internalization. This slice or cut—what Anzaldúa (1987, 67) refers to as la rajadura—manifests as the individual incorporation of the herida abierta of the border. The Chicana’s process of recognizing and purging herself of this internalized alien and constantly self-damning perspective and replacing it with a positive, re-indigenized self-orientation is the primary act of decolonizing that Anzaldúa’s writings make possible. In this way she provides the remedy for the root cause of the many symptoms of colonized selfhood.

I clarify my claim that Anzaldúa is the curandera of conquest first by examining her book Prietita and the Ghost Woman (2001). Next, I lay out the key elements of curanderismo. I provide a brief overview of key developments in the theories of decolonization within global indigenous studies since the turn of the twenty-first century, looking specifically at the work of Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith and that of two native North American activist-theoreticians, Waziyatawin Angela Wilson and Taiaiake Alfred. Finally, I show how Anzaldúa’s decolonizing work is already operating in terms similar to this recent decolonization move within indigenous theory and practice. As a gesture toward a kind of pan-tribal solidarity, I want to suggest a cross-reading of Anzaldúa within the terms of indigenous decolonization—and the reverse. Such a move might function as a bridgebetween global movements of indigenous decolonization and Anzaldúa’s militant Chicana critique of Spanish and Anglo colonialisms, which in turn raises important issues for cross-border indigenism and for peoples who have been detribalized through ethnic cleansing of various sorts.2

GEORGE HARTLEY, an associate professor in the Department of English and the Latin American Studies Program at Ohio University, is author of The Abyss of Representation: Marxism and the Postmodern Sublime (2003) and Textual Politics and the Language Poets (1989). He is currently writing a book manuscript titled “The Curandera of Conquest: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Decolonizing Consciousness.” He can be contacted at hartleyg@ohio.edu.

Anton de Kom: Wij Slaven van Suriname

4. = https://youtu.be/HMUuIRbfsNo

conflict and skin: the persistence of victorian design in namibian women’s fashion

Catherine mckinley, gallatin ma

MARCH 11TH – MARCH 27TH, 2016

Curatorial Statement

In 1884, present-day Namibia was annexed under German colonial rule as part of what was to become South West Africa. Within a decade, German imperial troops were installed to enforce state rule, provoking formidable resistance by the dominant Herero and Namaqua people. The German army responded with a campaign to remove the groups from their ancestral lands, marking the start of the German-Herero War (1904-1907). By the war’s end, an estimated eighty percent of the population, including Himba and other peoples, had been killed by the Germans. It was the first genocide of the twentieth century and a chilling rehearsal for later Nazi atrocities.
The German-Herero War centered on the enormous profitability of both human bodies and cattle skins. What played out on the “native” body through acts of labor exploitation and racial cleansing also deeply implicated sartorial, social-cultural, and traditional religious values of the Herero and Himba, in particular. The cow, the human body, and God were considered to be one and the same. “Herero-ness” and other clan identities, the sustaining of cattle wealth, and custom were expressed in large measure by a literal embodiment of the cow. Cow ownership, as well as a particular wearing of skins, and a feminine ideal of “walking like a cow,” were set off by sartorial forms that celebrated the cow’s form and bored majesty and its associated dowry wealth.
In Namibia, fashions of the Herero and their closely related clan cousins, the Himba, become monuments to the genocide which has otherwise been almost entirely erased. Both groups—summoning the body of the cow—whether with Western imported cloth and notions, skins, and “nakedness,” express radically different relationships to Victorian colonial legacies. They also express pleasure in Western and contemporary design and form, while marking a decided resistance to colonialism and the violence enacted on women’s bodies through genocide and racial cleansing.
Conflict and Skin exams the politics and colonial legacies of Namibian fashion, particularly as iterations of “national costume” and notions of “indigeneity” —the practice of indigenous culture despite colonial impositions.
How does the legacy of genocide explain the staying power of these radically different but kindred forms? How do they radicalize, vulgarize, and provide distance from the genocide?
Engaging the work of the late award-winning South African photographer Thabiso Sekgala and Ghanaian-American couture designer Mimi Plange’s Herero-inspired collection “Flower in the Desert” (Spring 2012), Conflict and Skin examines contemporary African photography and dressmaking, as well as images and costume from the archive. Through these dresses and fashion, I hope to show the legacy of colonialism and to demonstrate the resistance and trauma of the Herero people.

-Catherine Mckinley

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«Es gibt keine heile Welt, Herrgott nochmal!»

Mission 21
21.10.2014, 05:00 Uhr
Die Basler Mission wird 200 Jahre alt. Was tun Missionare heute noch? Und wie blicken sie auf das koloniale Erbe ihrer Missionen zurück? Das wollten wir von Al Imfeld wissen, dem Afrikakenner und kritischen Entwicklungsberater, der dem traditionellen Glauben schon lange abschwor. Und von Claudia Bandixen, Theologin und Direktorin der Mission 21. Von Samuel Schlaefli 

Wozu braucht es Missionen noch? Afrika-Spezialist Imfeld und Mission-21-Chefin Claudia Bandixen im Streitgespräch über Sinn und Zweck von christlich geprägter Entwicklungsarbeit. (Bild: Caspar Urban Weber)
Al Imfeld hat Claudia Bandixen und mich für das Gespräch in seine Wohnung nahe dem Bahnhof Zürich eingeladen. Seit er nicht mehr so gut zu Fuss ist, ist er froh, wenn die Welt zu ihm nach Hause kommt. Obschon sein Zuhause eigentlich die Welt ist. Während 50 Jahren vagabundierte er von Land zu Land, lebte zwischen Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tansania, Kenia, Nigeria, Kamerun, Deutschland und der Schweiz.
Im zweiten Stock des Altbaus, dort wo die Zeichnung eines afrikanischen Dorfes hängt, öffnet Al Imfeld die Türe. Neugierig schaut er über dicke Brillengläser; ein hölzernes Amulett mit kleinen Muscheln hängt um seinen Hals. Er bittet uns, im Wohnzimmer Platz zu nehmen, in Rattansesseln und -sofas, deren Polster und Kissen uneinheitlich und kunterbunt bezogen sind.
An den Wänden hängen afrikanische Holzmasken und die Hörner einer Gazelle. In der Ecke steht ein kleiner Büchertisch mit Imfelds Werken. Kaum haben wir Platz genommen, reicht der Autor ein Manuskript herum und erzählt von den vergangenen drei Jahren, während derer er im Büro im Nebenzimmer praktisch ununterbrochen über einem 800-seitigen Band mit Übersetzungen afrikanischer Gedichte gebrütet hat. Das Buch erscheint im Januar; es wird Imfelds Geschenk zu seinem eigenen 80. Geburtstag.