Cuban Counterpoint by
First published in 1940 and long out of print, Fernando Ortiz's classic work, Cuban Counterpoint is recognized as one of the most important books of Latin American and Caribbean intellectual history. Ortiz's examination of the impact of sugar and tobacco on Cuban society is unquestionably the cornerstone of Cuban studies and a key source for work on Caribbean culture generally. Though written over fifty years ago, Ortiz's study of the formation of a national culture in this region has significant implications for contemporary postcolonial studies. Ortiz presents his understanding of Cuban history in two complementary sections written in contrasting styles: a playful allegorical tale narrated as a counterpoint between tobacco and sugar and a historical analysis of their development as the central agricultural products of the Cuban economy. Treating tobacco and sugar both as agricultural commodities and as social characters in a historical process, he examines changes in their roles as the result of transculturation. His work shows how transculturation, a critical category Ortiz developed to grasp the complex transformation of cultures brought together in the crucible of colonial and imperial histories, can be used to illuminate not only the history of Cuba, but, more generally, that of America as well. This new edition includes an introductory essay by Fernando Coronil that provides a contrapuntal reading of the relationship between Ortiz's book and its original introduction by the renowned anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. Arguing for a distinction between theory production and canon formation, Coronil demonstrates the value of Ortiz's book for anthropology as well as Cuban, Caribbean, and Latin American studies, and shows Ortiz to be newly relevant to contemporary debates about modernity, postmodernism, and postcoloniality.
"Sugar cane workers needed to relax and express themselves creatively in an ordinarily harsh and backbreaking environment. The changüí genre of Guantánamo is one of the oldest styles of music we know, for the earliest references to changüí date to the mid-1800s. Changüí uses the tres, a guitar-like instrument with three pairs of strings, a marimbúla (large lamellaphone), guayo (metal scraper), maracas, and the bongó de monte (a local low-tuned bongó). Fiesta en Cecilia is about a party at a Sugar central on May 21, 1927 where cane workers who also played the Cuban tres frequently had informal musical competitions and parties for recreation. The four musicians mentioned in this song are Julio Nuñez, Mario Estrada, Montalvo, and Pedro Masó. Even though the protagonists described in these songs are no longer living these songs are still performed in Guantánamo today and this perpetuates community memory and local history. Many changüiseros are descendants of Haitians who have migrated to Eastern Cuba at various time in Cuban history."
The Architecture of Nineteenth-Century Cuban Sugar Mills: Creole Power and African Resistance in Late Colonial Cuba
This comprehensive and in-depth study of the architecture of nineteenth-century Cuban sugar mills, with a twofold aims: first, to examine how the Creole sugar planters designed and manipulated the architectural forms and spaces to convey order, power, and affluence, and to enforce slavery and racial difference; second, to analyze how African slaves countered Creole power through violent forms of resistance (intentional fires, collective protests) as well as non-violent ones (preservation of native customs, beliefs, music and dance) that involved subversive and transformative uses of architectural spaces. A study of socio-spatial negotiation, this dissertation traces the process by which an architectural setting designed for subjugation developed a distinctive architectural language.
Análisis de los cantos en tumba francesa de Guantánamo
El trabajo "Análisis de los cantos en tumba francesa de Guantánamo" propone un análisis de los cantos (textos) de la tumba francesa Pompadour Santa Catalina de Ricci, para determinar la funcionabilidad que alcanzan en el seno de la sociedad y su proyección fuera de ella. En el mismo aparece una relación de cantos de la Sociedad que muestran su relación con el medio, ya sea en la misma comunidad como en otros países. El material se estructura de manera lógica para dar cumplimiento al diseño de investigación. Se proponen dos momentos: el primero referido a las características generales de los cantos de la tumba francesa y el segundo para mostrar algunos ejemplos