| Chapter I: | Essay I: Aesthetic Blackness in the Creative Literature of the Latin/Hispanic Reality |
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“If you are painting with love,” continues the poet, “why do you despise their color? You know that God also wants them in heaven.” However, as already noted, the deciding factor in who is embraced or rejected as the prototypical Latin or the representative native is a matter of physical features, not the sociocultural makeup of the individual. Eloy Blanco continues with his admonishment to remind the artist that he always seems to overlook little black angels in favor of “little pretty angels” [“Siempre…pintas angelitos bellos”]. Little pretty angels? Is this an uncontrollable parapraxis on the part of the poet, or the simple admission of a culturally controlled concept? It is clear that for the poet (or his Latin culture), black is a synonym for ugly and white is a synonym for pretty. This is unquestionably apparent as Andrés Eloy Blanco juxtaposes “angelitos negros” against “angelitos bellos.”
Where the acceptance of an Afro Latin identity is at the core, race relations in Latin America have always been confusing for the outsider and indeterminate for the native practitioner. Often a black or racially mixed person, on an individual basis, will be accepted and accorded the recognition and respect reserved principally for the Caucasoid-appearing person. Yet his ethnic group, identified as Afro- or African-related, neither advances socially nor benefits from the social merits acquired by the isolated member of the group. Simón Bolívar, the father of Venezuela's independence movement and the acclaimed liberator of South America, never hid the fact that his personality and character were formed by two black women who worked in his house—his wet nurse and a nanny, namely “la negra Hipólita” (1763–1835) and “la negra Matea” (1773–1886). Today both women, in an unofficial capacity, serve as national icons of abnegation and have been conferred the ultimate honor of being buried in the Bolívar crypt alongside the president's family.
To add to this confusion however, the converse is also found. It is no secret that Fulgencio Batista, Cuba's president prior to Fidel Castro, was