Melting Pot

THE SPANIARDS CARRIED TO  the New World the blood of Celt and Iberian, Roman and Visigoth, Moor and Jew, Basque and Mauretanian. Conquest brought into the main stream the blood of the Siboneys: the people of eastern Cuba are still called Indios. During many decades of the last century, Mayan captives from Yucatan were sold by droves to the Cuban plantations at twenty-five pesos a head. The 30,000 French from Haiti at the end of the eighteenth century and others from Florida, at its transfer to American sovereignty, provided new ethnic ingredients. During the nineteenth century Chinese added to racial complexities. The Count of Pozos Dulces, writing of cheap labor in Cuba, remarked to the Junta de Informacion in1886: "To the African violently torn from the forests has succeeded the Asiatic, docilely contracted and added to the peasant proletariat of America."

Intermixture of all these on a large scale over centuries has created a color range from the blackest bozal through the "tobacco-leaf" complexion and the cetrino (vying with the citron in hue) to the blonds from Valencia and Asturias.

Out of this melting pot is emerging the true Cuban type, into whose hands the destinies of the island must ultimately come. Between these racial, economic, and cultural extremes is encountered the Cuban in the making—in this mestizo middle ground.

Here, more than anywhere else, is tradition less binding. The mestizos make Cuba seem a very parvenu country—agitated, shoving, casual, informal. If the Cuban has much in common with all tropical dwellers, to other Latin Americans and to those of the New World in general, his attributes nevertheless have an individualized cachet.

To disembark in Cuba is to drop into noisy pandemonium, docks full of shouting, gesticulating people. The hotel-runner, baggage man, taxi-driver jostle and shout in your ear even before you open your baggage in the customs and call you life-long friend with the ease of a boyhood chum. Jovial, full of camaraderie, they introduce you to a country of little false dignity, of gay comradeship, of reckless enjoyment, of hit-and-miss living, of real vitality.

The pandemonium of the docks continues within the city. A place of 600,000 inhabitants, Havana in normal times has five times the traffic and animation of Mexico City with its million. Its itinerant orchestras, the raucous shoe-shiners, peanut and lottery venders, have Neapolitan vehemence. The cafés are loud and garrulous. Havana ever presents the spectacle of bustle, of darting taxis, of hasty shouts. But it reminds one of flitting fish, its industriousness a bit meaningless, circle-chasing, not the ponderous onroll of Fifth Avenue nor the anarchic but purposeful whirlpool of Paris.

On my first visit to Cuba, I felt I had arrived in a tropical setting devoid of etiquette, gravity or perspectives, among a people of no circumspection. Like we Americans, hail-fellow-well-met—though in a much different way—the Cuban has a heart-on-the-sleeve friendliness. Essentially democratic, he ever tries to annul all social barriers. This, coupled with a dolce fa niente attitude, a sense of personal independence, a love of hedonism, brings resistance to all social subjection. Of delightful frankness, he likes his ordinary acts open to his neighbor's gaze. Among poorer classes, homes are wide to the streets, permit the stare of every curious passer-by. The heat itself defeats personal seclusion. Air is more valuable than privacy.

The dignified reserve, the polished courtesy of the Mexican toward all strangers, the careful watchfulness over the sensibilities of others, have no place with the average Cuban. Part of his natural breeziness, his apparent rudeness, so different from the hidalgo tradition, is merely confidence in his own ego. Just as he accepts himself as an independent functioning entity, so he expects the next man to feel the same, hence no need for exaggerated politeness. The Mexican (not the Indian elements), though equally an egotist, also has self-assurance; but it is jealous, suspicious, doubtful of itself, giving rise to ingrained brooding, a baffling interplay of arrogance and inferiority, so absent from the Cuban. The Mexican is the great introvert of the Americas; the Cubans and we Americans are the extroverts.

The Cuban's lightning cerebration is free of the intricacies of most allied peoples. If superficial, he is more alert. In both his lassitude or his violences, he is less sustained than the plateau Mexican. Eternal heat gives him a nervous jerky quality. Not persevering, he darts from activity to activity with gypsy gusto; ever is he avid for new sensations of a hardy, often brutal sort, the unique, the adventurous. But he is the surf, not the sea; and the patterns of his life are multiple and often beautiful, though inconsistent. Reckless of means, never conservative of energy, thought or money, all he has generously belongs to all. He is a delightful, stimulating companion.

Were it not for the Cuban's heartiness, honesty and sheer love of living, plus a decidedly invigorating skepticism. he would be stamped as shallow. For he simply refuses to take life seriously. The profound person is considered a bore; the consistent person, annoying.

The Cuban's irresponsibility may be ascribed in large part to the lack of balance and consistency in both his political and economic realms. His country has gone through cataclysmic shifts of prosperity and depression. Fickle Crown trade regulations no sooner promoted commerce than they as quickly destroyed it. During the War and post-War booms, Cuba rode on the crest of extravagance; in off years it has hit the nadir of misery. The popular saying is, "Cuba is a cork"—meaning it will always bob up again.

As a result, the Cuban too exclusively worships the god of chance. An inveterate gambler, he will spend his last copper for lottery tickets, though he knows dishonesty rules the drawing and that it sustains political tyranny. Usually hopelessly in debt, he is ever borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. But why worry? Tomorrow the wheel of fortune will turn. Convinced that life is but a series of violent ups and downs, he takes it as it comes with an easy shrug. Thus he is good-humored even in dire disaster. Penniless, he can still sing and dance.

The Spaniard—from Moor and Roman Catholic Church—has always been a fatalist. The Cuban's religion undoubtedly contributes to his idle hopefulness; he expects manna from heaven, not by the sweat of his brow or by sustained civic effort.

The political situation greatly contributes to this same psychological approach. The Cuban, aware that his country is a protectorate of the United States, that his government functions in a realm of unreality, that the final resort is American banking interests and our State Department, re fuses to get profoundly excited about politics. Rightly or wrongly he believes any solution answering basic Cuban needs can meet only failure. This has led to ever greater divorce of power from popular will, to constantly diminish ing honesty and efficiency in government.

This has engendered a thoroughgoing cynicism about all important public questions. No decent man can play a self respecting part because the final determination is outside of him, his group, and his country. The proud man can only throw monkey-wrenches, never assume responsibility. Solemn politics is reserved for the sycophants, petty tyrants and grafters.

Only recently has the bitter anti-Machado struggle aItered and deepened the attitude of the younger generation. But desperation is often as poor a counselor as indifference or iconoclasm. A few elements to-day in Cuba have staked their lives, their futures, upon the patriotic solution of Cuba's plight, their old devil-may-care attitude met amorphosed by the bloody facts of the present tyranny.

For the first time, as a native writer remarks, some Cubans are really coming to have souls. Slowly the realization is being born in that only through years of sacrifice, years of persistent struggle, can Cuba emerge from its present disastrous condition to attain any measure of freedom. Some thing of the fierce, deeply patriotic and fearless attitude of the Ten Years' War Cubans and the1895-98 patriots has been fanned into flame again. Those past years of struggle proved that a Cuban cannot be surpassed for valor, abnegation and determination.

 Choteo

Yet the keynote of the majority is still gay irresponsible insouciance—the Murad gesture, perhaps though but a mask for deeper values which frustration in personal and national life prevents him from realizing.

This contradictory attitude is best exemplified by chateo, an airy persiflage and conduct uniquely Cuban. To analyze this—and I turn in part to Jorge Mafiach's brilliant little study—is to illuminate very fundamental truths.

Choteo has considerable resemblance to the shrugging vacilada or flirtatious inconsistency of the Mexican of mixed blood, which I analyzed in Mexican Maze. But the Mexican inconsistency has deeper life-roots, a richer philosophical heritage, and represents more action than the Cuban conversational trait. Mexican vacilada—caricature tinged with paradox—is rooted in the intrinsic duality of existence, its impossible contrasts and juxtapositions—the goat's horns on a saint, egocentric hedonism and sorrow buffeted between extreme extravagances, a cactus growth of hybrid racial expression. More a non-organic fusion than a negation, it interweaves the ridiculous with the sublime, vulgarity with purity, quite in defiance of all European logic; always it is shot through with passionate mirth, a self-protective distortion. It reveals real desperation, a psychic dominant of bitter humor and passion, shaken like a fist in the face of God.

Cuban choteo is not so penetrating, more on the surface, less sophisticated, more childish. Not so instinct with life's complexities, its lower forms are merely impish; at best, express cynicism and resentment.

But it also is a decidedly hybrid product. "Choto" is Andalusian for "little goat."   "Chota" means "to suckle." Hence  choteo would mean etymologically "to act like a little goat," implying thereby a certain vulgar sexuality, intimacy with all procreative acts and subsequent nursing. The negro dialect, Lucumí, has the word "chot,"  "to talk," and the Pongué dialect, "chota,"  "to spy upon." All these suggest sex, intrigue and derision wrought into a burlesque of conversation. When choteo is merely airy persiflage, akin to Irish blarney, it is healthy, external, easy-going, though often connoting intellectual laziness. Its essential characteristic, however, is to take nothing seriously, to toss every thing nonchalantly to the winds.

Choteo is far more a Creole than a negro approach. Yet the negro does contribute primitive lackadaisicalness, laissez faire joy, perhaps the very ingredient that has caused Cuban Creole litmus to change color. For otherwise, the negro brings solemnity, seriousness, respect, and his joy is sensual, free of pessimism, a generous giving devoid of Creole frustration and selfishness. Choteo is a hybrid product.

Behind the Cuban's mask often is a soul as sensitive and credulous as a child's; but if on certain occasions the Mexican enjoys displaying his deepest emotions, the Cuban prefers ordinarily to appear flippant, to show disrespect, to ignore surrounding persons, ideas and objects—an exacerbation of the normal critical spirit of the Creole. Choteo demands that the user be "agin" all things without considering their intrinsic values, a sinister ingenuity to prove that nothing is worthy of respect. Patriotism, the home, culture, bring a sarcastic, often pointless remark, "sheer romanticism." Even though the speaker thinks differently it behooves him to deride—a socially obligatory approach.

Often the Cuban admires that which he most ridicules. He merely hides aborted volition, a disinclination to bend body or mentality to any defined goal. Hence he is really expressing resentment, impotence to achieve a desired end. Such invidiousness is quite European, but in the Cuban it quite disrupts the connection between interior appreciation and outer conduct.

The joke, however, is not an attribute of children, monkeys or dogs; it implies competence, mental agility and experience. But it is often a subterfuge to escape the strong, evasion permitting temporary escape from a difficult situation, an affirmation of one's own personality against that which is superior or reputedly equally powerful. This, too, finds much of its source in Cuba's general political dilemma.

Cubans have an unusually quick sense of the comic, a trait common to all peoples of extra-rapid mentality, but rather than attempting to plant barbed satire, they often merely irritate rather than amuse. Style, restraint, rhetoric, serious planned living increase the subtlety of humor; this is Why humor flourishes in England, not in Sevilla. It is likewise a manifestation of consciousness of superiority, discipline, assurance, the generosity of people strong enough to cede many things. "But in a small country," remarks Mañach, "the feeling that because of its weakness it is not respected, causes all within it to respect each other less, destroying the contrasts which invite humor."

For choteo, as the vulgar comic and a mere required social convention, is a very low form of joking. The perpetrator discovers things funny where no one else does, discovers the absurd in all authority when often none exists. Choteo does not attempt, as does humor—which has such far-reaching apperceptions of cause and effect and life's difficulties—to meet clever controversy by greater esprit, and failing, abandon the contest; but comes back, if necessary, with a desperate jocose insult. Not a species of dialectic but of attack, it belongs to the corner-grocery type of so-called humor, and although in no sense practical joking, it is decidedly mental slap-stick, amusing at the first blow, subsequently boring, its savoir faire quick to evaporate.

Choteo often becomes mere bad manners. For no reason at all in a public gathering at an impressive moment, someone gives a loud guffaw, an audible yawn, or shouts an offensive phrase. He is determined, for no intelligible reason, to run counter to the audience. Of a sudden he demands some artificial excitant, perhaps to defeat the leveling lethargy of the tropics—his resentment at the overwhelming fatigue of thin blood.

Reflex laughter usually results from some unexpected but not serious accident, but choteo does not restrict itself to accidents upsetting dignity; it is uproarious at any upset of disorder, however dangerous. The Cuban is ever de lighted at the overthrow of concord and hierarchy, for order is synonymous with command, discipline, obedience, external composure. In disorder the individual may ex press himself more freely, with less restraint. How much more comfortable one feels on entering a stranger's room slightly topsy-turvy! The Cuban's more vulgar humor expresses enmity toward any limitation whatsoever on the individual's expansion and whims. A spirit of extreme personal independence is always simmering in the dregs of Cuban banter—the word "caprice," like choteo, comes from cabra—"goat," i.e., to jump around like a goat.

Three escapes for individualism exist: rebellion or rational conformity or the achievement of personal power. Choteo is disguised rebellion inadequate to rebel. Our parlor radicals should take lessons.

Any studied application, any profound attitude toward any problem, any love of disciplined living, is a limitation upon irresponsibility. The Cuban, not wishing to be bound by even his own emotions, is therefore quick to render asunder his own sentiments as well as those of others. But did not Stirner point this out as the true road to the true ego? The Cuban solves it by subjecting the pathetic to an immediate guffaw, an ever alert denial of true feelings. 

A Cuban historian has stated that Cubans are only apparently obstinately frivolous; but because of their innate individualism, they have real difficulty to deliver them selves whole-heartedly to accepted attitudes or opinions or to devote all their powers to any given end. Unfortunately deeper implications, the more remote nexus, escapes them.

  Beefsteak Death

Mañach tells of a Cuban in a Paris crematory who shouted, as a body was thrust in, "Let me turn him over and over!" Instinctively he wanted to reduce the cadaver to a beefsteak category, to strip it of all sentimental attachments and dignity. Latins, in the company of death, must ease their terrific emotions by repartee and laughter. Mexicans assume an open camaraderie with their dead, which often they cannot assume toward living friends. This is sane—far superior to our horrible nerve-tacking Protestant ceremonies, but the Cuban carries this attitude to the point of burlesque. Though the black hearse will gleam with gold; the coachman wear scarlet coats trimmed with gold and black cock-hats on flaxen wigs; the horses be draped in black nets with golden tassels (he must have his theater, too) his jokes at a wake are notoriously disrespectful, perhaps a defiance of death, a desire to prove that the lost life-companion is still with the watchers.

The Spanish General Concha declared that Cuban happiness consisted of a "shrill little guitar, a little game cock, and a little deck of cards." The Cuban propensity for amusement and gambling reveals little regard for the day after tomorrow. They so want independence—but not the bold and brave sort demanding long sacrifice, only the placid, evasive sort—that they are content with not being bothered; for this immunity they will fight obstinately.

Yet all this psychological discussion is perhaps too much a picture of the uprooted city Cuban. The picture is not complete without the hardy, soil-wise poorer colonos, those lowlier white and mestizo cultivators of rural Cuba, still pathetically resisting disinheritance by foreign corporations and battling day by day with the elements and an economic situation that spells eternal defeat—almost. The "leading families" of a passing rural scheme, they struggle on the mountain slopes of Oriente and Pinar del Rio, harvest their citrous fruits in the Isle of Pines. They live simply, often in bohíos, but well-built, three or four of them hitched together, tightly thatched. The furniture is mostly home made and solid, chair-bottoms and backs of rawhide. An ornate saddle and other harness are stacked in the corners. If more prosperous, they have more solid quarters, a porch lined with colonial pillars and plants in tubs and tins covered with tissue paper and bows. Wherever the traveler goes, from laughing Sagua to haughty sad Santa Clara, from severe harsh Guantinamo to young bold Manzanillo, along the country roads, women leave their sewing machines by to stand in the door, curious and smiling, their long white calico dresses covering even their shabby country-made shoes.

The men are clad in light washable trousers, many tailored shirts, linen on holidays, with an ornate shirt-like. Gat split at the sides over the hips, pleated and with pearl buttons and an intricate embroidered monogram. Their Panama hats complete "Cuba's national costume."

All of this indicates a reciprocal influence between the character and experience of a people. Custom, modes of thought, differ with locale. And they have varied with the tips and downs of Cuba's prosperity. Out from the depths of national idiosyncrasy are called forth the situations and conduct most adequate for different situations. During the liberation wars, the Cuban revealed taciturnity and irony—flow garrulousness, frankness, bantering cynicism. These various attitudes are transitory, not anthropological characteristics. Now he is entering upon a new phase.

For another source of Cuban superficiality is not merely the unreality of foreign-controlled institutions, but lack of roots, due to his alienation from the soil and the tools of life, and equally the over-night establishment of the Republic—which we would up and set going. The American colonies had long prior training in self-government; Cuba, none. The noblest and most capable Cubans had been killed off. Yet a new government had to be knocked together with out prior experience. Schools had to be founded with teachers snatched from the very rim of the uneducated. Professionals had to be polished off in a day. Art and literature revealed hurried attempts to express something worthy of the new freedom. The new void had to be hastily filled with little or no training, with no comparative standards, every thing led to superficial improvisation. Lawyers and doctors with meaningless diplomas were able to achieve prestige easily. Politicians without antecedents sprang into the breach with empty pockets to fill them quickly. Newspapers sought to be witty and succeeded only in being pornographic or burlesque. Cubans were pressed into cultural activities in chain-gang style. Now, these opportunities hedged about, a deeper realization of the inadequacy of past efforts is entering Cuban consciousness.

For Cubans, "the hour has come," declares Mañach, "to be critically joyous, audaciously disciplined and consciously disrespectful." A new cross to bear, they, a reënslaved people, must now face their mature
needs.

TOP
comments and letters to comments@ipoaa.com