In Havana, Festival Of The Antilles

In the iridescent gold and blue green plumage of the peacock, and the most delicate blue-lilac flower clusters of the water lily, the eye that cares for life in the tropics, with its essential shapes and colors, holds sway.

The eye of the sun that refracts and proliferates in the lively water to reproduce one of the constellations of the southern sky.

It is not the implacable whiteness of the lotus, but the blue of the sea and sky that surrounds and covers the

rustic island green. It is the purple light, the impressionistic light of the torrid zone. It is the innocent

yellow of fruit that ripens slowly. It is the indigo purple, the demented and feverish golden tone that Picasso did not paint, that Gauguin’s wild eyes did not see The open tail of the peacock, rainbow, fan, resplendent

frieze of fireflies and flying fish; these are the Antilles that dazzle the eyes of the discoverer and incite the greed and profit of the conquistadors.

After the sudden bewilderment provoked by the giddy exuberance of the land of the Arawaks, Caribs, and Ciboneyes, they threw themselves into the voracious quest for gold.

Lands raped and pillaged, races martyred to the point of total extermination. Under the roots and matted floor of the forest, in the yellow scarlet shade of the fire tree, of the copious greenery of the rain tree and the evangelical bread tree, under the precise tracks of the majá snake, the iguana, and the jutía, the multi-colored flight of birds and insects, the ashes and bones of aboriginal peoples lie buried.

It is brown, a blackish brown, metallic grey, a saffron tint and its evanescent derivations up to a seminal, germinal almond tone—the colors of our soils which for centuries have been exploited by crops that impoverished its natural condition and the men who work in it.

From Christian Europe came the conquistador and in his train the cross, forced labor, old epidemics, torture, and death. He granted lands and took the legitimate owners of these islands into his domain.

An enslaved people with innocent hands, adept at finding food and minimal clothing.

They believe for certain that the land, like the sun and the water, is common to all, and that among them there should be no mine and yours.

Poor, simple, humble people, prone to rebellion or suicide.

What recollections of the love of beauty decorate your pots, ritual artifacts? What cowardly oracle hides from you the purpose of blood, screams and blood, silence and blood? Where does one find traces of him? Perhaps in the blue and grey spirals of tobacco smoke? By chance in our hands in a circle? In the unanimous beating of our feet and voices? In the cemí [Taino spirit], in the dujo [Taino chair], in the cojaba tree?

It is not the glacial whiteness of the albatross. It is the dark red of gushing blood, the scarlet of the Antillean ibis, the blood-like bark of the mastic tree, red clay, the purple orange of sunrises and sunsets, vermillion, amaranth, crimson flowers and feathers, the hard coral from underground. From the gold coast and the ivory coast, from Guinea, the Congo, Dahomey and Nigeria, from Loango and Angola, from the Cape of Good Hope east to Mozambique, piled in a heap, mixed in with chains, excrement, urine, exposed to the fierce rain and sun of the ocean. Those who survived as bone and flesh are thrown into the slave markets of the Antilles. Those who survived as blood and skin have to be subjected to the whip, the stocks, being tied face down, salt and vinegar in infected and gangrenous wounds. Those who survive with heart and mind will suffer rape and disgrace, out of rage or love, hate or faith.

The hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited by alcohol, stranded in the mud . . .

Three centuries of shame, but the master, the lord, is not ashamed. It is necessary to wait until his blood is mixed with that of the black concubine, slave or free, or true to the purity of the lineage is passed on to children who claim or demand the big house of the lands on which they were born. Because to be born here is an unnamable fiesta.

One must wait for the endemic flora and fauna, the murmurs of the water and earth, the breeze that comes down from the hills to the beach, to invade the innocent sleep of the newborn baby.

Anything flammable should cease to sleep, and let it organize our next steps!

Will those who go looking for themselves waste their time without finding the channel of their blood, the voice of their heart, their unbreakable bone? It has been a long struggle. Very long. Too long. Where does the cry of freedom begin? In the Bois Caïman? Or in the escape to the cimarrón mountains, the lonely death, the free death? Or earlier, much earlier when the indigenous people confront and struggle against the conquistador?

With the native people of these islands exterminated, what roots of love attach us to their soil? Are they the languages and beliefs of the whites? The blacks and their faith? Their myths and their history, their poverty and wealth? What and who are we as Antillean people? Old honey and salt that is also old, waters that blend with themselves, flower and root, joy and nostalgia, reality and delusion, innocence and malice.

We bring our traits to the definitive profile of America

So, comrades, here we are! We express our Antillean identity, we show it as clean as the light around us. Here are our battles and victories, the reverses and the glories. Gods, warriors, heroes; the hidden voice of the drum and the awakening bugle; the scales of the fish and of the custard apple tree; the majesty of the pineapple and the Cuban trogon; the kingdoms of the hummingbird, of the bird of paradise flower, the insect flower. We are what you see. As Manuel Couceiro, Ramón Haití, Clara Morera, Rogelio R. Cobas, Leonel Morales, Rafael Queneditt, Ever Fonseca, Arnaldo R. Larrinaga and Esteban Ayala all say: Here we are!

Here and living history: the past to make the present more human, and the future more beautiful and joyful. Of course they do not wander in search of the being lost in the sea at night, in the jungle, the mine, or the field. They do not imagine nor invent. They reproduce history, make it, and live it every day, by machete blows, slashing as in battle and in the cane fields. With blows of the hammer and chisel, powerful and firm strokes. But they still have in them the old flower that time does not diminish, and the budding flower that waits for the morning to give us its scent and its colors.

They are here and now, ready to begin the fiesta of the islands, the fiesta of the seas and of the man of sea and land. The Caribbean fiesta!

They are here and saying to us: We are the heirs of a rich ethnic legacy of diverse and syncretic cultures, so powerful and firm in rebellion, so determined to be free and equal. We are the heirs and successors of the work of L’Ouverture, Bolívar, Juárez, Martí, and Garvey.

Comrades our legacy is not perpetual drought!

Because, Our smile will break the dawn over the rivers and birds.

Pablo Armando Fernández (1979)