Black USA and Spain: Shared Memories in the 20th Century 9780367182724, 9780429060427

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Black USA and Spain

During the 20th century, Spaniards and African Americans shared significant cultural memories forged by the profound impact that various artistic and historical events had on each other. Addressing three crucial periods (the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age, the Spanish Civil War, and Franco’s dictatorship), this collection of essays explores the transnational bond and the intercultural exchanges between these two communities, using race as a fundamental critical category. The study of travelogues, memoirs, documentaries, interviews, press coverage, comics, literary works, music, and performances by iconic figures such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, and Ramón Gómez de la Serna, as well as the experiences of ordinary individuals such as African American nurse Salaria Kea, invite an examination of the ambiguities and paradoxes that underlie this relationship: among them, the questionable and, at times, surprising racial representations of blacks in Spanish avantgarde texts, and in the press during the years of Franco’s dictatorship; African Americans’ very unique view of the Spanish Civil War in light of their racial identity; and the oscillation between fascination and anxiety when these two communities look at each other. Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego received her PhD in Hispanic Literatures from Penn State University, and is currently a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Ottawa (Canada). She is the author of Entre mujeres. Política de la amistad y el deseo en la narrativa española contemporánea (Biblioteca Nueva, 2007) and the editor of the collection of essays, Memoria colonial e inmigración. La negritud en la España posfranquista (Bellaterra, 2007). She has also co-edited a 2010 special issue of the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos entitled “Queer Space” and the collection of essays Un hispanismo para el siglo XXI. Ensayos de crítica cultural (Biblioteca Nueva, 2011). Her research project on women intellectuals in the press during Spain’s transition to democracy was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Part of this project is her edition of writer Ana María Moix’s journalistic texts, Semblanzas e impertinencias (Laetoli, 2016). She was editor-in-chief of the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos (2014–2018).

Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature

53 Collage and Literature The Persistence of Vision Scarlett Higgins 54 Connecting Moments in Chinese and European Modernisms Chunjie Zhang 55 The Stability of Laughter The Problem of Joy in Modernist Literature James Nikopoulos 56 Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century Jake Poller 56 Henry James and the Media Arts of Modernity Commercial Cosmopolitanism June Hee Chung 57 Hermeneutic Ontology in Gadamer and Woolf The Being of Art and the Art of Being Adam Noland 58 Ukrainian Erotomaniac Fictions First Postindependence Wave Maryna Romanets 59 Black USA and Spain Shared Memories in the 20th Century Edited by Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge​.com

Black USA and Spain Shared Memories in the 20th Century

Edited by Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-18272-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-06042-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

For Laurence, continuing with our conversation…

Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments List of Contributors African Americans and Spaniards: “Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality”

ix xi xiii

1

Ro s a l í a C o r n ej o - Pa rr i e g o

Part I

All that Jazz: Translation, Fascination, and Anxiety

21

1 Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish: Translation, African American Culture, and the Spanish Avant-Garde

23

E v e ly n Sc a r a m e l l a

2 Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers: “Las Sinsombrero”

52

M . Ro c í o C o b o - P i ñ e ro

3 Josephine Baker in Spain: The Ambivalent Reception of an African American Female Superstar

73

L au r e n c e E . P r e s c o t t a n d Ro s a l í a C o r n ej o - Pa rr i e g o

Part II

Transnational Readings of the Spanish Civil War

95

4 “Not Valid for Spain”: Pan-Africanism, Sanctuary, and the Spanish Civil War

97

K a r e n W. M a rt i n

viii Contents 5 Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War: Memoirs of A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain

113

C a r m e n C a ñ e t e Q u e s a da

6 From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes: Diverging Perspectives on African Americans in the Spanish Civil War

134

N i c o l e D. P r i c e

7 “Negroes Were Not Strange to Spain”: Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”

153

Isa bel Soto

Part III

Gazing at Each Other in Franco’s Spain

173

8 Black Problems for White Travelers: The Representation of African Americans in Early Francoist New York Travel Narratives

175

Dav i d M i r a n da - B a rr e i ro

9 Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement: Time to Mend Fences or Time for Revenge?

194

Ro s a l í a C o r n ej o - Pa rr i e g o

10 Imagining Soul from Barcelona: Jordi Longarón and Friday Foster

216

A l b e rt o V i l l a m a n d o s

11 In Search of Chester Himes in Spain: Three Women, Three Landscapes

234

María Frías

Conclusion: Looking Ahead to the Next Chapters

275

Ro s a l í a C o r n ej o - Pa rr i e g o

Index

283

List of Figures

1.1 Cover art by Mauricio Amster Cats for Cock-tail negro. Courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL 28 1.2 Cover art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid 32 1.3 Cover art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid 34 1.4 Cover art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid 35 1.5 Cover art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid 36 1.6 Cover art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of New York University Library 40 1.7 Cover art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of NYU Library 41 1.8 Cover art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of NYU Library 42 1.9 Cover art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of NYU Library 43 2.1 Advertisement for “La Revista Negra” in La Voz, April 5, 1929. Courtesy of Biblioteca Nacional de España 55 2.2 Article on Josephine Baker in Nuevo Mundo, November 5, 1926. Courtesy of BNE 58 2.3 Article on Josephine Baker in Nuevo Mundo, August 12, 1927. Courtesy of BNE 59 9.1 Cartoon by José Luis Martín Mena, Arriba, September 8, 1967. Courtesy of BNE 203

x  List of Figures 9.2 Cartoon by Antonio Madrigal, Arriba, March 11, 1965. Courtesy of BNE 214 9.3 Cartoon by Antonio Madrigal, Arriba, March 24, 1965. Courtesy of BNE 214 9.4 Cartoon by José Luis Martín Mena, Arriba, March 18, 1965. Courtesy of BNE 215 11.1 Chester Himes’s headstone at Benissa cemetery. 250 @María Frías 11.2 Chester Himes’ memorial in Moraira. @María Frías 251 11.3 Lesley Himes at the Semana Negra (Gijón). Published in A Quemarropa, July 1, 1988 253 11.4 Juan Ivars Ronda in his barbershop. @María Frías 261 11.5 Juan Ivars Ronda with copy of El Primitivo. @María Frías 261 11.6 Chester and Lesley Himes in Moraira. Courtesy of 271 Jo Stott 11.7 Chester Himes’s first home, “Casa Griot,” in Pla del 271 Mar 13 (Moraira). @María Frías 11.8 Venta La Chata (Benissa). @María Frías 272 11.9 “Casa Deros,” Pla del Mar 15 (Moraira). @María Frías 272 11.10 Chester Himes loved their stay at the Hotel Miramar 272 (Jávea). @María Frías 11.11 Apartment towers (“Pili y Mili”) in Moraira where the 273 Himes temporarily lived in 1969. @María Frías 11.12 Lesley Himes’s home in Benitatchell. @María Frías 274 C.1 Program of the 2018 Conciencia Afro festival 280

Acknowledgments

While producing a book always demands a tremendous effort and a strong support network, this is even more the case when it has to be completed under challenging circumstances. That explains my special sense of gratitude toward the group of people who have made this collection of essays possible. First, I would like to acknowledge the contributors who so enthusiastically embraced this project. I have learned so much from each one of them, and, for that, I am profoundly grateful. Special thanks are owed to Michelle Salyga, Bryony Reece, and the whole team at Routledge for believing in the importance of this book, and to the anonymous readers for their valuable feedback. My appreciation goes also to the Sala de Prensa y Revistas de la Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, not only for their support while I was conducting research on site, but also later when I needed additional documentation, which they very graciously located for me. Not being a native speaker of English, I needed a person to revise the whole manuscript, and May Morpaw was an invaluable asset. She knows how to read my mind to find the most precise term. I thank her for her meticulous revisions and her desire to squeeze the possibilities out of language. I also wish to recognize Kara ­Cybanski, an exemplary undergraduate student, who assisted me with the editorial process, and was quick to detect missing information. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all my students, both past and present, for inspiring me daily to be the best “performer” I can be, and motivating me to explore and share with them new perspectives on culture. My parents, Victorio and Josefa, have always been the most devoted cheerleaders of their two daughters’ professional and personal accomplishments. They have been present during the joyful and also the most difficult moments of my life. So has my sister, Josefina. Muchas, muchas gracias. Thanks are due also to my friends on both side of the Atlantic (you know who you are), who every day make me feel tremendously privileged for having their friendship. Finally, I thank our New York family and friends for all we have shared together, and for our very own exciting and enriching USA-Spain connection. What a ride it has been.

xii Acknowledgments I trust that the younger generations in our family will continue to cherish the strong bonds that unite us. I dedicate this book to Laurence Prescott, to whom it owes so much in so many different ways. There are no words to convey your absence. I dearly miss sharing our intellectual and political passions, the unending conversations during our many long road trips, the fun and laughter with our children. Nevertheless, you continue to challenge, inspire, and spur me on. Let’s now celebrate our proudest joint achievements: brindemos por Alejandro y Andrea, y, cómo no, por Josephine B.

List of Contributors

Carmen Cañete Quesada is an associate professor of Spanish L ­ anguage and Literature at Florida Atlantic University. She obtained a BA in Spanish and English from the University of Córdoba (Spain), and holds an MA (University of Florida) and a PhD (Vanderbilt University) in Spanish. She is the author of El exilio español ante los programas de identidad cultural en el Caribe insular (1934–1954) (Vervuert/Iberoamericana, 2011). Dr. Cañete Quesada received a 2013–2014 Fulbright Scholar Award to teach and conduct research on an annotated anthology titled La nación y su escritura: Colección de voces dominicanas (1965–2017) (Academia Dominicana de la Lengua/Editorial Santuario, 2018). Her current research examines the participation of African Americans, Moroccans, and Gypsies in the Spanish Civil War, and explores a racial interpretation of the conflict. This project has received the support of The Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program. M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero is a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Department of English and North American Literature at the University of Seville, Spain. She holds an MA in African American Studies (University of Pennsylvania), an MA in Teaching Spanish as a S­ econd Language (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain), and a PhD in A ­ merican Studies (University of Seville/Universidade Federal do E ­ spírito Santo [Brazil]). She is currently a researcher in the Center for Migration Studies (University of Huelva / UNESCO Chair) and part of the international project “Bodies in Transit,” funded by Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Dr. Cobo-Piñero has published on the representations of black women in literature, music and film. She is the author of Sonidos de la diáspora. Blues y jazz en Toni Morrison, Alice Walker y Gayl Jones (Arcibel, 2015). Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego received her PhD in Hispanic Literatures from Penn State University, and is currently professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Ottawa (Canada). She is the author of Entre mujeres. Política de la amistad y el deseo en la narrativa española contemporánea (Biblioteca Nueva, 2007) and the editor of the collection

xiv  List of Contributors of essays, Memoria colonial e inmigración. La negritud en la España posfranquista (Bellaterra, 2007). She has also co-edited a 2010 special issue of the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos entitled “Queer Space” and the collection of essays Un hispanismo para el siglo XXI. Ensayos de crítica cultural (Biblioteca Nueva, 2011). Her research project on women intellectuals in the press during Spain’s transition to democracy was funded by the Social Sciences and ­Humanities Research Council of Canada. Part of this project is her edition of writer Ana María Moix’s journalistic texts, Semblanzas e impertinencias (Laetoli, 2016). She was the editor-in-chief of the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos (2014–2018). María Frías teaches American Literatures and Anglophone Postcolonial Literatures at the University of A Coruna (Spain). She received her PhD from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. She specializes in contemporary African American writers and writers of the ­A frican diaspora with an emphasis on women’s sexualized, ungendered, postcolonial, and diasporic bodies. She is the author of “Marriage Doesn’t Make Love”: El Discurso del matrimonio en la obra de Zora Neale Hurston, and her articles have been published in Callaloo, Wasafiri and Transition, among others. She has taught in the USA (Duke University) and in Ghana (University of Ghana, Legon), and was a fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University (2005–2006). Karen W. Martin is a professor of Languages at Union University, Jackson, Tennessee. She holds a DML in Contemporary Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies from Middlebury College, and an MA in Spanish from the University of Alabama. She has published numerous articles and reviews on contemporary Spanish-American and Latina narrative. She is the author of Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits Trilogy: Narrative Geographies (Tamesis, 2010), which was nominated for the Gloria F. Anzaldúa Award of the National Women’s Studies Association, the Modern Language Association Prize for the First Book, and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Studies Book Award. Her work on ethnicity in Isabel ­A llende’s Daughter of Fortune was awarded the Premio de Crítica Victoria Urbano by the Asociación Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica. Her current research focuses on haunting and spectrality in postwar Hispanic cultures. David Miranda-Barreiro  is a lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Bangor University and co-editor of Galicia 21: Journal of Contemporary Galician Studies. He specialises in travel writing, migration and exile in the Spanish and Galician contexts, and Galician comics. He has studied the representation of American society (New York City in

List of Contributors  xv particular) in early 20th century Spanish literature in Spanish New York Narratives. Modernization, Otherness and Nation  (Legenda, 2014). He coordinated the special issue “Galician Identity in Motion: Approaches to Displacement in the 20th Century” (2016–2017) for Galicia 21, and is currently co-editing the volume Here and Beyond. Narratives of Travel and Mobility in Contemporary Iberian Culture (LitVerlag, forthcoming). He has published in journals such as Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and European Comic Art, and contributed to the collective volume Galician Migrations: A Case of Emerging Super-Diversity (Springer, 2018). Laurence E. Prescott,  Professor Emeritus of Spanish and African ­A merican Studies at Penn State University, is the author of Candelario Obeso y la iniciación de la poesía negra en Colombia (Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1985) and Without Hatred or Fears: Jorge Artel and the Struggle for Black Literary Expression in Colombia (Wayne State UP, 2000). His articles have appeared in Revista Iberoamericana, Crítica Hispánica, Afro-Hispanic Review, and Callaloo, among others. Some of his articles are “Journeying through Jim Crow: Spanish American Travelers in the United States during the Age of Segregation” (Latin American Research Review, 2007), “Brother to Brother: The Friendship and Literary Correspondence of Manuel Zapata ­Olivella and Langston Hughes” (Afro-Hispanic Review, 2006), and “Yo también soy América: Latin American Receptions of Langston Hughes’s American Dream” (Critical Insights: Langston Hughes, ­Salem Press, 2012). Nicole D. Price is an associate professor of Spanish at Northern Arizona University where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses including Spanish, Latin American and Afro-Hispanic literatures, and Spanish cultures. She also served as a Master Teacher for the NEH Summer Institute (2008) “The Literature of Equatorial Guinea: A Pedagogical Perspective.” Her research interests include the narrative of the African Diaspora in Spain, Latin America and Africa, Twentieth/Twenty-first Century Latin American narrative, literature of the Spanish Civil War, Trans-Atlantic and Post-­Colonial Studies. Her publications have appeared in the Oxford Dictionary of African Biography, PALARA (Publication of the Afro-Latin ­American Research Association), Revista Iberoamericana and Zora Neale Hurston Forum. Evelyn Scaramella  is an associate professor of Spanish at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York. She is the co-editor with Dr. Regina Galasso of Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing (Bucknell UP, 2019). Her scholarly writing has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Translation Review, Revista

xvi  List of Contributors Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, among other journals. She recovered and edited four poems from Langston Hughes’s Spanish Civil War verse, which is forthcoming as an article in PMLA. She is currently working on a book manuscript, Translating the Spanish Civil War: The Avant-Garde, Anti-Fascism, and Literary History, that explores the literary and political history of translation practices between Hispanophone and Anglophone avant-garde writers during the Spanish Civil War. Isabel Soto  is external faculty at the Modern Languages Department at Spain’s Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. She has been Visiting Scholar at Vassar College, Honorary Fellow of the Schomburg Center for Black Research and Culture, and Associate Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. In 2000, she co-founded The Gateway Press, dedicated to publishing works on liminality and text. She has lectured and published widely on Langston Hughes. Her most recent publications include Western Fictions, Black Realities: Meanings of Blackness and Modernities (LitVerlag/Michigan State UP, 2011), “The Weight of Words: Writing about Race in the United States and Europe” (American Historical Review, 2014), and “‘I knew that Spain once belonged to the Moors:’ Langston Hughes, Race and the Spanish Civil War” (Research in ­African Literatures, 2014). She is currently working on a monograph on non-Anglophone constructions of the Black Atlantic and race tentatively titled: Narratives of Entanglement: Langston Hughes, Race, and Spain. Alberto Villamandos, associate professor at the University of Missouri-­ Kansas City, is the author of  El discreto encanto de la subversión. Una crítica cultural de la Gauche Divine  (Laetoli,  2011), and co-­ editor with Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego of  Un hispanismo para el siglo XXI. Ensayos de crítica cultural (Biblioteca Nueva,  2011). He has published articles in journals such as Hispanic Review, Revista ­C anadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Bulletin of Spanish Visual ­Studies, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos on immigration, Spanish urban studies, graphic fiction, and the role of the intellectual during Spain’ transition to democracy. He is currently working on a booklong project on neo-decadent Spanish literature of the 1980s and its revival of fin-de-siècle themes and icons, in the context of a renewed European identity.

African Americans and Spaniards “Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality”1 Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego In the 20th century, Black USA and Europe shared a fundamental and well-documented relationship. Scholars have analyzed, for example, the impact that the vibrant black North American culture that flourished during the Harlem Renaissance had on the European avant-garde, and acknowledged the undeniable transatlantic connection during the “Roaring Twenties.” It is, however, equally true that these influences have been studied mainly with regard to France. While the weight of African Americans on French society, particularly during the Jazz Age, has been well-established, the same cannot be said with respect to other nations. The need for a fuller exploration of the relationship between African Americans and contemporary European cultures has been raised by publications such as Blackening Europe (Ed. Heike Raphael-­ Hernández), a collection of essays that presents examples pertaining to several European countries, but includes only one chapter on Spain (Frías). More recent books, such as German and African Americans (Eds. Larry A. Greene and Anke Ortlepp), From Black to Schwarz (Eds. Maria I. Diedrich and Jürgen Heinrichs), and Beyond the Color Line and The Iron Curtain by Kate A. Baldwin, reveal the growing interest in country-specific studies that explore intercultural exchanges between black USA and European nations. These studies are, nevertheless, still scarce and insufficient. Scholarship focusing on the bonds between Spaniards and African Americans has been scant. Books such as Contra el olvido [Against Forgetting] (Eds. Sebastiaan Faber and Cristina Martínez Carazo), Ventanas sobre el Atlántico [Windows on the Atlantic], (Eds. Carlos X. Trabanco and Jorge Marí), and America the Beautiful (Ed. José Manuel del Pino), are some of the most recent examples of works that, while concentrating on the links between the US and Spain, fail to specifically address the presence of the African American community. It is irrefutable, however, that these two groups share significant cultural memories forged by the profound effect that various artistic and historical events have had on each of them. There exists, as Robert Reid-Pharr states, “a remarkably rich, if largely unexamined, archive centered on many decades of intimate interaction between African American and Spanish

2  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego intellectuals” (11). Although some publications on specific topics related to this archive do exist, with the exception of Reid-Pharr’s Archives of Flesh, there are no book-length studies that cast a collective look on the relationship between African Americans and Spaniards during different periods of the 20th century. Black USA and Spain does not pretend to be comprehensive, an impossible task in just one volume given the wealth of material. This collection of essays focuses instead on three crucial periods – the ­Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age, the Spanish Civil War, and Franco’s ­dictatorship – in order to explore the transnational bond and the intercultural exchanges between these two groups, using race as a fundamental critical category. Indeed, race is unavoidable not only because of the racial differences of these two communities but also because it is at the center of the cultural and political discourses of each of the historical periods under consideration. The study of travelogues, memoirs, documentaries, press coverage, comics, literary works, and performances by iconic figures such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, and Ramón Gómez de la Serna, as well as the experiences of ordinary individuals such as African American nurse Salaria Kea, invite an examination of the ambiguities and paradoxes that underlie this relationship, including the questionable racial representations of blacks in Spanish avant-garde texts and in the press during the years of Franco’s dictatorship; African Americans’ very unique view and experience of the Spanish Civil War in light of their racial identity; and the oscillation between fascination and anxiety when these two communities look at each other. Several aspects of this approach deserve clarification. The first one is what the term “Black USA” stands for in this volume. It is used to refer primarily to African Americans, that is, people of African descent born in the US. However, it is important to keep in mind the racial dynamics of the country, and acknowledge that other Afro-descendent people, particularly those of West Indian origin, began to identify as African Americans once they settled in the US and, above all, were perceived by society as such. This explains, for example, why Claude McKay, a man of Jamaican origin who eventually became a US citizen, is considered one of the leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance, or why Marcus Garvey, also of Jamaican origin, had such an influence on Harlem politics. 2 The same can be said of civil rights activists and performers such as Bahamian-born Sidney Poitier or Jamaican-born Harry Belafonte. The second element to take into account is that the interactions examined in this book occur both at the level of intellectual exchanges and popular culture, of high and low culture. This is unmistakably illustrated by the fact that the essays included in Black USA and Spain deal not only with writers, but also with entertainers, and that while some analyze canonical poetry, others study comic strips. Moreover, it

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  3 is important to point out that, as is often the case, the essays highlight the difficulty in separating the intellectual from the popular spheres, as the Harlem Renaissance, or the influence of jazz in Spain’s intellectual and creative production reveals (Chapter 2): popular culture nourishing elite culture has been a constant phenomenon throughout history, and it is evident in the works studied here. At the same time, the impossibility of disentangling politics from cultural production also becomes very apparent in these essays. What emerges as equally evident when one begins to delve into this subject is that examples of exchanges between African Americans and Spaniards abound during the 20th century and take on several forms: participation in political and cultural events, friendships, translations, creative influences, political inspiration, identification, solidarity. Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes embodies many of these dimensions, which explains his recurrent appearances in this book. Hughes traveled to Spain as a correspondent for the newspaper Baltimore Afro-American during the Spanish Civil War, reflected on race and colonialism in poems inspired by this conflict, and translated works by Federico García Lorca. He did not limit himself, however, to writing about the conflict, but also embraced a more direct form of political activism, as his participation in the 1937 Second Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers held in Valencia, Spain, demonstrates. During his visit, he was hosted by writer María Teresa León who shares her recollections of Hughes in Memoria de la melancolía [A  Memoir of ­Melancholy] (1970) (304). In addition, León and her husband, the poet Rafael Alberti, published several of the African American author’s poems in Octubre, the Marxist-inspired journal they had founded (Chapter 1). We also have instances, as demonstrated in the testimonials of several of the African American volunteers who participated in Spain’s Civil War, such as nurse Salaria Kea’s (Chapter 4), of a feeling of solidarity across class lines that breaches the racial divide. Often, this is the case upon discovering the social inequities and, particularly, the abysmal conditions of Spain’s rural population. León’s autobiography again echoes this as she describes her perception of Harlem during her 1934 trip to New York with Alberti. León, in fact, draws a parallel between Harlem and the Hurdes, an impoverished region of Spain, famously depicted by Luis Buñuel in his documentary Tierra sin pan (1932) (232–33). This linkage also highlights the ambivalence and the multiple meanings associated with Harlem: frequently portrayed and experienced as the black Mecca, a creative, real, or imagined locus of inspiration – especially during the Harlem Renaissance, when “Harlem was in vogue,” to borrow David L. Lewis’s title – it also represents the black ghetto, the site of poverty and discrimination, often subjected to ethnographic gazing (Cornejo-Parriego).

4  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego It is also worthwhile noting that, while African Americans such as Hughes and the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade made a conscious decision to participate in Spanish politics, others found themselves drawn unwillingly into the nation’s political situation. The dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939–1975), which followed the Civil War (1936–1939), had a tremendous bearing on Spain’s intellectual, literary, and cultural history, due to the strict censorship it imposed, and foreign writers were not immune to it. This intertwining of culture and politics during Francoism affected, among many other endeavors, the translation and publication of African American authors in Spain. Jordi Cornellá-Detrell’s study of the reception and censorship files of James Baldwin (1924–1987), held at the General Archives of the Administration (36), illustrates this very clearly. In spite of his participation in Spain’s cultural life – Baldwin was, for example, invited to be a member of the jury for the literary International Formentor Award in 1962 – he faced numerous difficulties in having his works translated and published in Spain. Notes on Another Country (1962) constituted the first attempt at translation, but his depiction of homosexuality led to its rejection. 3 When the iconic publisher Lumen sought permission to translate Nothing Personal to Castilian and Catalan (49), the report of one of the censors voiced a noteworthy concern regarding the USA’s questionable concept of freedom. This criticism of American democratic deficiencies, as well as the references to violence against blacks, is certainly surprising, but not unintended. As several chapters underline, this criticism needs to be understood in the context of both USA-Spain relations after the Second World War and Spain’s long-standing tradition of anti-Americanism. Ironically, even writers like Chester Himes who, in spite of living quite comfortably and being productive in Spain, expressed “his open disdain for the country” (Reid-Pharr 157), and, unlike other African American authors, remained silent on the question of the dictatorship and showed little interest in integrating into Spanish society, was dragged into the country’s politics, as censorship prevented the publication of some of his works (Chapter 11). Friendship and personal relations between Spaniards and A ­ frican Americans had also become sources of intellectual and poetic inspiration. A case in point is Baldwin and Catalan poet Jaime Gil de Biedma. During Baldwin’s aforementioned trip to Spain, the two met in B ­ arcelona, and the encounter would be so significant for Biedma that in his Dia­rio de ‘moralidades’ he writes that his life has been unsettled since meeting Baldwin. In addition, he includes several versions of the poem “En una despedida” [At a Farewell], dedicated to “Jimmy Baldwin” (474–78). Andreu Jaume, the editor of de Biedma’s Diarios (1956–1985), also mentions that the poet recommended the publication of Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie (1964) to Esther Tusquets who had just taken over Lumen, a small religious publisher that would become, under her

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  5 leadership, an emblematic publishing house (474n7). Tusquets’s interest in publishing Baldwin is not unexpected considering her knowledge of African American authors. In fact, only a couple of years later, she travelled to New York to interview, among other writers, African American Ralph Ellison. Tusquets is not an isolated case. The America of the 1960s and 1970s were a worldwide source of profound inspiration. Particularly the Black Civil Rights and associated emancipatory movements had a broad repercussion on Spanish youth, as their continuous presence in the press reveals. Not only political icons such as Angela Davis, gracing the cover of Vindicación Feminista in 1978, or the reports devoted to the Black Panthers in the emblematic leftist magazine Triunfo (Cornejo-Parriego) but also the paradoxical presence of the Civil Rights Movement in the Falangista newspaper Arriba (Chapter 9) illustrates this phenomenon. With the unstoppable development of mass media during the 20th century, and Hollywood’s international influence, exchanges become more and more pronounced, and a symbolic cartography of black America was further developed. As Lisa E. Davenport explains, “The world watched as blacks initiated boycotts, freedom rides, and marches,” witnessed violence against African Americans, urban problems of housing and segregation, and, above all, “a vast gap between ideology and practice in America” (284). Consequently, individuals and moments related to the emancipation struggles were etched in the global imaginary: actors and athletes such as Sidney Poitier and Muhammad Ali, unforgettable gestures such as the Black Power salute of African American medalists at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, not to mention the 1963 March on Washington, are just a few examples. Widely distributed, these images appealed to significant Spanish sectors that were eager to join the revolutions taking place beyond their national borders, in order to escape the political and cultural strictures imposed by a long-lasting dictatorship. Also significant is the shared musical memory that Spanish musician and author Santiago Auserón vividly relates. He remembers the arrival in the late 1950s and 1960s of black music, first, with the African American soldiers deployed at the US bases in Spain, and later through radio and television. Auserón’s father, who worked on one of these bases, would bring home records by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Harry Belafonte, among others (El ritmo 12). Music became for teenagers, according to Auserón, a way of sharing, before the political ideologies that the opposition to Francoism was beginning to organize clandestinely…. Electronics and the encounter between black and white cultures contributed to the attraction that brought us together…. We definitely inherited part of the collective feeling that derived from the US Civil Rights

6  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Movement…. Neither the jota or the bolero or the fandango from Huelva could aspire among us to anything more than existing alongside, perhaps, the music inherited from blacks. (El ritmo 23)4 In an environment that he describes as “a society demusicalized by caciquismo and the rural exodus” (La imagen 5), Spanish youth welcomed African American music, which constituted, in his view, an interracial experience (6). It is evident then that, when we talk about Black USA and Spain, we are not talking strictly about physical geography. While in some cases, for example, when referring to the African American brigadiers, travelogues written by Spanish writers, or Baker’s performances in Spanish cities, physical location is relevant, in others, it is a symbolic cartography, sometimes ambivalent and conflicting, whose intellectual, cultural, and political reverberations can be as powerful as the geographical ones. Spanish teenagers participating in the collective experience of consuming African American music demonstrate this. The Harlem Renaissance’s effect on the Spanish avant-garde is another clear instance: while some writers like Lorca traveled to New York, and Harlem became for him both an inspirational physical and symbolic space, others such as Gómez de la Serna never set foot in the city, and yet the Jazz Age still had a deep influence on his writings. Moreover, physical and symbolic cartography overlap in some cases, as travel narratives and press reports reveal: travelers and correspondents arrive at their destination with an imaginary often consisting of stereotypes – and this can be said of Spanish travelers to the USA, as well as African Americans to Spain. Baker’s reception in Spain and Europe was mediated to a great extent through colonial stereotypes (Chapters 2 and 3). At the same time, she also arrived with her own preconceived notions of Spanishness. In “Josefina Baker en ­Madrid,” published a few days after the artist’s debut in Madrid, José Montero Alonso reports that when he asked Baker her opinion of Spain, she expressed her disillusionment: while she was expecting majas, bullfighters, bandits, pasodobles, and crimes of passion, Madrid looked just like any other big city. She was looking for an Orientalized and exotic Spain that also had a long tradition. All of these are examples of the interconnectedness of culture, politics, inspiration, personal relationships, and collective imaginaries. Nevertheless, as we shall see, this interconnectedness also raises, at times, fundamental questions about the (racialized) representation and performance of the Other, and about cultural appropriation, or, as bell hooks puts it in “Eating the Other,” where to draw the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation (39). These preliminary remarks and examples are meant to illustrate different facets of the encounters between Spaniards and African ­Americans. Combining a diversity of methodological approaches (archival research,

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  7 in situ interviews, and close readings, among others) that echoe the interdisciplinary nature of the sources analyzed, the following eleven essays expand on some of these elements and point toward different ones, an indication of the richness and complexity of the subject. Black USA and Spain aims to achieve several goals: offer new perspectives on the cultural relationships between Spain and the USA, discover unexplored dimensions of Spain’s 20th century cultural and intellectual history, and study African American culture within a transnational and international frame of reference.

All that Jazz: Translation, Fascination, and Anxiety [J]azz was not simply a sound. It carried dense and complex socio-­ political baggage. (Bruce Johnson, Jazz and Totalitarianism 24) In the 1920s and 1930s, the US experienced an unprecedented cultural and social phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance that “forced America to confront the central question: What place does race have in the formation of American identity?” (Marks and Edkins 10). As Carole Marks and Diane Edkins state, the protagonists of this phenomenon “wrote and sang and played about ‘race matters,’ attempting to discover, examine, and explore the subject—within themselves, between black and white, everywhere and anywhere” (10). Combining race consciousness and artistic awakening the Negro Renaissance or the Alain Locke New Negro movement, as the Harlem Renaissance was also known, saw the emergence of religious, civic, and cultural organizations, of public rituals, newspapers and journals, and the ascent of leaders, which generated “a formidable black institutional community” (Price xii). 5 It also witnessed new ideas in political thought and groundbreaking artistic developments (Aberjhani and West xviii). The white intelligentsia, trying to escape stifling provincialism and conventionalism after the First World War, “welcomed them with open arms” (Marks and Edkins 11), leading to the interracialism that, according to Clement Alexander Price, was one of the major outcomes of the Harlem Renaissance. These exchanges across the color line did not mean, however, the elimination of inequality and exploitation in the production and consumption of black culture. Price acknowledges that this period “brought blacks and whites into contact as visual artists and art patrons, as entertainers and party goers, as jazz musicians and consumers of popular culture, and, always, as citizens of seemingly interminably unequal social status” (xviii). For some scholars, Price adds, “the interest in black people and their culture by white cosmopolitans grew out of a fascination with the new, the exotic, and their imaginings of blacks as New World primitives” (xiii).6 Due to its international repercussions and its connection to other Afro-­diasporic movements such as Négritude, the unique cross-cultural

8  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego and interracial dimension of the Harlem Renaissance was not limited to the US. Therefore, the questions that Price raises within the national context can also be formulated with regard to transnational readings and renderings of this cultural and racial awakening, as Evelyn Scaramella argues in Chapter 1. She first explores the fascination with ­Harlem, which was featured prominently in Spanish avant-garde literary magazines, and in the writings and performances of renowned author Gómez de la Serna. However, his appearance in blackface, as Scaramella notes, raises questions about the consumption of black culture and bodies dissociated from their historical contexts and turned into spectacle. In the second section, Scaramella points out that in spite of the interest in African American music and entertainment, there was no similar interest in translating Harlem Renaissance authors into Spanish. There are, however, exceptions, and Hughes’s friendship with Alberti and León proved very fruitful in setting into motion a culture of transnational readership with efforts to translate African American authors into Spanish, and, conversely, Spanish authors like Lorca into English. Focusing on the increasingly polarized society of the Spanish Republic prior to the Civil War and taking into account the politicization of the avant-garde movements of the 1930s, Scaramella analyzes some of the translations of Hughes’s work in the magazines Octubre and Nueva Cultura in order to determine how Peninsular writers connected with African American writing as a site of leftist internationalism. The creation of a shared transnational culture was also made possible through jazz, a musical genre inextricably linked to the Harlem Renaissance, a period, which, not coincidentally, is often referred to as the Jazz Age. In Jazz and Totalitarianism, Bruce Johnson describes jazz’s unprecedented speed of global circulation in comparison with other musical forms (24). The Jazz Age deeply transformed not only America but also postwar Europe, and profoundly altered the European image of the US. As Jed Rasula puts it, the European cult of modernity became indistinguishable from Americanism, and jazz symbolized modernity and America (17–18). Above all, it symbolized black America. Nonetheless, diasporic jazz, as Johnson explains, presents a double dimension: if on one side it “became the music of urban modernity” (26), on the other, it was perceived as “a threat to traditions of responsible citizenship” and, therefore, elicited “moral panic” (27). The blackness of this musical genre undoubtedly played a definitive role, and due to its association with primitivism, it was understood as “a repudiation of European civilised Enlightenment traditions” (27), and seen as contaminating European culture. Jazz, however, challenged power relations posing questions not only related to race but also to gender. Indeed, “[f]ew associations were so internationally recognised (and feared) as that between jazz and the modern woman” (Johnson 28). As we shall see in Chapters 2 and 3, when we talk about the modern black woman, this

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  9 “emancipative coding of diasporic jazz” (Johnson 28) takes on additional meanings and reactions. While the Jazz Age was unfolding, Spain saw the rise of Miguel Primo de Rivera. During his dictatorship (1923–1930), his goal was to stimulate the country’s industrialization, urbanization, and consumer culture, in order to achieve at least a partial modernization. Yet Spain was sharply divided along conservative and progressive lines, and the desire for modernity and the rejection of bourgeois values collided with traditional views on womanhood and national identity. The longing for change is very evident in artists such as painter Maruja Mallo and the female writers of the Generación del 27 who, for a long time, have been critically eclipsed by male members of this literary group, such as ­A lberti, Lorca, Pedro Salinas, and Luis Cernuda. In Chapter 2, M. Rocío Cobo Piñero focuses specifically on several of the women writers of that ­Generación – Concha Méndez, Ernestina de Champourcin, Lucía ­Sánchez Saornil, and Rosa Chacel – and examines the development of new female identities encouraged by the Jazz Age. In this context, le tumulte noir and the roaring success of Josephine Baker in Paris had a deep impact on these writers. It would lead, for instance, to emancipatory practices such as sinsombrerismo, the rejection of the mandatory hat always worn by the respectable women of the bourgeoisie. While these subversive performances tend to be related to the traditional image of the flappers as young, white British and US middle-class women, Cobo Piñero argues that African American artists played a crucial role and influenced the cultural and social construction of the flappers and inspired Spanish writers. Baker was, in this context, a key figure who played with her gendered and racialized identity, enabling young women to envision the possibility of change and freedom. Cobo Piñero also includes artists Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, and “Ma” Rainey among the precursors of female independence since they protested against social injustices, asserted women’s sexuality, and rebelled against social conventions. Inspired by them, the women of the Generación del 27 not only transformed traditional fashion codes, but also claimed their place in the public and intellectual spheres, and incorporated jazz, a genre typically associated with male writers, into their literature, to capture the ideas of female liberation, modernity, and vitality. In Chapter 3, Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego further analyze Baker’s significance for Spanish culture and society. Drawing on periodical sources, they examine her reception and representation in the press after she became a star in Paris and during her subsequent visit to Spain in 1930. Although generally recognizing Baker’s talent, Spanish journalists frequently resorted to colonial images in addition to clinical ones that pathologized not only black music and performers, but also European, and specifically French culture. Indeed, the contribution of Baker and African Americans to Paris’s cosmopolitan identity elicits

10  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego anxiety about transracial contagion and black colonization of Western identity. The press also captured the liminal space that the artist occupied in European culture: while blamed for the decline of white civilization, she had also become the symbol of European modernity. Particularly significant is the perception of Baker by female journalists who, in their writings, often confront racialized concepts of womanhood. If Cobo Piñero reflects on authors who saw African American performers as role models for their transgressions, Prescott and Cornejo-Parriego analyze texts by, among others, Margarita Nelken, that express a desire to affirm white female superiority. Indeed, Baker was an ambivalent figure among Spanish women: combining an Africanized with a modern New Woman persona, she was subjected to both scorn and imitation. Finally, Chapter 3 explores the only scandalized response to Baker in Spain, which took place in Pamplona. The Pamplona incidents mirrored the tensions that existed in a country deeply polarized along ideological and socioeconomic lines. Baker forced Europe to reflect on race, gender, and modernity, and in the specific case of Spain, she also unleashed some of the anxieties of a nation that was searching for a new collective identity and new concepts of womanhood within a European context.

Transnational Readings of the Spanish Civil War Happy the days of the war?… Yes, it was a marvel of fraternity, of communication, of equity in the face of danger. The defence of Madrid had begun. Attracted by our vital, poetic and political equilibrium, a few foreign writers came to accompany us in our wartime hours, including Langston Hughes…. (María Teresa León, Memoria de la melancolía 380–81)7 The Spanish Civil War, considered by historians a key political event of the 20th century, captured the attention and imagination of the global community, particularly of the Western world. As Sebastiaan Faber asserts, “the conflict’s cultural impact was as significant as its military and political dimensions…. and the public spheres of Europe and the Americas quickly turned into ideological battlefields” (4). It led to the mobilization of ordinary citizens, divided between those who supported and stood by the democratically elected Republican government, and those who backed the rebels led by Franco. Facing Fascism, edited by Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez, for example, provides graphic evidence of this transnational mobilization by focusing on ordinary New Yorkers and their support of both factions. It certainly impacted intellectuals worldwide who wrote profusely about the war – Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, and Ernest Hemingway come immediately to mind – with events such as the assassination of Lorca at the hands of the rebels, prompting an international outcry. As George Esenwein notes, some went to Spain

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  11 “to witness the fighting as writer tourists,” while others such as André Malraux and George Orwell “took up arms for the side they supported” (149). The geopolitical repercussions were expressed by the military assistance that Germany and Italy lent to Franco’s troops and the formation of the International Brigades, a multinational military coalition committed to the survival of the Republic. The Civil War also inspired both African American intellectuals and regular citizens who stood by the overthrown government, be it in their writings, fundraising activities, or enrolment in the International Brigades as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the first racially integrated fighting unit in the US. In spite of the official position of non-intervention in Spain’s Civil War, this did not deter some 3,000 Americans, including approximately ninety black Americans, from joining the Brigades. Their identity, however, contributed to a very particular view of the conflict that underscored the fact that race played an important role in the dynamics and discourse of the war, and highlighted some paradoxes. The first question that inevitably arises with regard to the participation of African American citizens in a conflict so far removed from their borders and, seemingly, from their own challenges, is that of their motives. This is the point of departure of Karen W. Martin, who, in Chapter 4, examines two main factors: first, the connection black brigadiers established between European Fascism and US white supremacy; second, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, which prompted a Pan-African commitment to fighting fascism in the African country. It was this desire to fight fascism out of a sense of shared Pan-African identity that led to forging a link between opposing Italian fascism in Ethiopia and combating the Francoist forces in Spain. Using memoirs and testimonials such as James Yates’s Mississippi to Madrid (1989), and the ones captured in the documentary Invisible Heroes (2014), Martin also examines the meaning of this war experience for black brigadiers. In their recollections, Spain is portrayed as a sanctuary that allowed them to enjoy a feeling of liberation from US racism. Moreover, being able to interact across racial and socioeconomic divides gave these soldiers a sense of purpose and solidarity with the global community. Before concluding her essay, Martin does, however, allude to the skepticism voiced by scholars such as Reid-Pharr regarding the unified nature of the racial narrative of these oral histories (29–71). Indeed, one of the questions raised is if African Americans erased racial tensions in their recollection of the conflict, and chose to present a portrait of complete harmony as a sharp contrast with their precarious situation at home. In Chapter 5, Carmen Cañete Quesada addresses this skepticism by focusing on several autobiographical accounts by Salaria Kea, a black nurse who served with the American Medical Bureau during the Spanish

12  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Civil War. She acknowledges the controversies surrounding the nurse: the alleged gaps and inconsistencies, the accusations of “self-­aggrandizing” her memoirs for the sake of publicity, and, therefore their validity as a historical document. She does, however, interpret these questionable aspects in light of some of the characteristics of testimonial narratives, particularly those of individuals belonging to underrepresented groups. Reflecting on the concepts of selective memory and collectivization of memory, Cañete Quesada admits that there is no straightforward explanation to some of the nurse’s more contested recollections of wartime episodes. Recognizing that personal narratives are often shaped with the intended audience in mind, it is plausible that the details included were the ones considered most effective to persuade African Americans citizens to mobilize against totalitarianism. Ultimately, the “truth” of her memories, Cañete Quesada argues, might fuse personal and collective recollections, and be nurtured by elements of communist and humanitarian groups propaganda, and by Kea’s growing iconic stature in the African American press and community. At the same time, she advocates for a comprehensive study of African American brigadiers’ testimonials to present a more accurate and thorough portrait of the Lincoln Brigade, especially in relation to its racial composition. Female participation in the war, such as Kea’s, is exceptional, foremost, because the concept of war has been inextricably linked to that of masculinity. While exercising some auxiliary functions, women have traditionally been excluded from the truly military aspects of the war such as serving in the combat units and at the battlefront. Owing to this connection of war and gender, African Americans’ role in the Spanish Civil War foregrounds notions of black masculinity, and, as the following chapters demonstrate, these notions oscillate between the reproduction and the challenge of stereotypes. Nicole D. Price examines in Chapter 6 the depiction of black brigadiers in two very different and chronologically separated works. The novel Juan, el Negro, written by Falangist author Domingo Manfredi Cano (1918–1998), constitutes a fictionalized account of the experience of an African American volunteer with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Given that the novel was published in 1974, a year before the death of Franco, it seems to be an effort to justify the Nationalists’ coup d’etat that unleashed the war and led to the defeat of the Second Republic and the establishment of a dictatorship that, after almost forty years, is drawing to an end. Interestingly, the author chooses an African American protagonist, who is clearly cast in an anti-heroic and immoral light, and used to ridicule the brigadiers’ ideals. Equally significant is the fact that, as Price explains, Juan introduces racism as an American ethical flaw, while highlighting Spain’s moral superiority, a recurrent argument throughout Franco’s regime that expressed a deep-seated a­ nti-Americanism (see Chapters 8 and 9). Ironically, Manfredi Cano’s own dehumanized and

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  13 stereotypical representation of the black protagonist contradicts the belief in the absence of Spanish racism. Martin compares Juan’s degrading depiction of African American brigadiers’ masculinity, to the one reflected in the previously mentioned Invisible Heroes. Four decades later, the documentary appears when Spain’s democratic system is firmly in place, although without having been able to eliminate unanswered questions about the past. The significance of these lingering questions and the desire to give voice to the victims of the Civil War are expressed unequivocally by the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, founded in 2000, and the 2007 Ley de la Memoria Histórica. They are also responsible for the so-called “memory boom,” an explosion of literary and cinematographic texts, personal testimonies, and public discourses. Invisible Heroes seeks to contribute to this project by introducing new voices and the question of race as well as gender in the war narrative. As Price explains, the documentary contextualizes the lives and commitments of the African American participants by reflecting on their circumstances at home. Furthermore, it establishes a very palpable link between colonialism, the Spanish Civil War, and the US Civil Rights Movement. Undoubtedly diverging from Juan, Invisible Heroes challenges stereotypes about black masculinity by portraying ­African Americans’ search for identity as full citizens, something that their participation in a global project enabled them to envision. The presence of the Spanish Civil War in the African American imaginary is further explored by Isabel Soto’s study of several of Hughes’s writings in Chapter 7. For this critic, Hughes’s writings constitute an invitation to reflect on Early Modern Spain’s racial protocols, their survival in the contemporary world, and the connection between modernity and race-making. Examining passages from The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956), as well as several poems and essays, Soto studies Hughes’s Civil War texts in relation to two other contexts: the “hot cabin” of a Spain- and African-bound merchant ship and the ­Soviet Union. In these writings, textual fluidity replicates the fluidity of racial and gender boundaries. Race, gender, and homoeroticism appear connected in a transnational paradigm that also expresses the author’s awareness of his racial liminality, which does not impede his own “racialization” of Spanishness. In addition, considering it an extension of the Jim Crow US, fascist Spain becomes for Hughes a locus where the notions of Europe and modernity are being tested. Underlining again the intersectionality of racial and male constructs, Soto affirms that Civil War Spain became the space where African American volunteers challenged white supremacist ideology, and enabled new representations of black masculinity associated now with military heroism and humanity. Without ignoring the racial paradoxes of the war, in Hughes’s works, the critic argues, “[t]he spatial politics of antiracism, antifascism and (black) masculinity intersect, becoming co-constitutive in the Spanish context (161).”

14  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego

Gazing at Each Other in Franco’s Spain After the Civil War, Spain was plunged into a dictatorship that led the country to political and cultural isolation and the official rejection of all foreign influences – particularly the American one – that could imperil the concept of Spanishness that the new regime was attempting to construct and impose. The relationships between the US and Spain, however, proved to be quite complex. Indeed, as the Second World War (1939–1945) progressed and the possibility of the Allies winning the war became more and more likely, Spain had to initiate a “defascisticization” process, distancing itself from the Axis powers that had lent their support to Franco’s Nationalists during the war, and change its foreign policy to ingratiate itself with the superpower in order to receive much needed financial aid. In this process and during the ensuing decades of the dictatorship, race again played a highly significant role in Spain’s politics and culture. Nevertheless, due to the length of Francoism, the interactions between both countries and the role played by “blackness” evolved throughout the postwar decades, as the following chapters demonstrate. Still, two elements proved to be persistent and crucial: Spain’s tenacious anti-American sentiments and the ideology of Hispanidad, which attempted to combine colonial and religious discourses in a shared nationalist project that included both Spain and its former American colonies. The complexity of US-Spain relations and how this affected the representation of African Americans is well illustrated in Spanish travelogues written in the 1940s. In Chapter 8, David Miranda-Barreiro examines travel writings by Gaspar Tato Cumming, Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, Agustín del Saz, and Diego Hidalgo. Miranda-Barreiro inserts his analysis, precisely, within the context of the evolving relations of the two countries, which explains why these travel writers attempted to distance themselves from previous discourses of “scientific racism” to circumvent associations with Nazism. They also eluded direct criticism of American society, including the discrimination faced by African Americans, to avoid jeopardizing Franco’s new international strategy. At the same time, as Miranda-Barreiro argues, colonialist stereotypes of “Otherness” that still dominated public discourse on Equatorial Guinea, a country that remained under Spanish rule until 1968, influenced the depiction of black Americans in these texts. Tato Cumming, for example, is unable to completely refute “biological” arguments of racial difference, and fear of racial contamination coexists with both exoticism and primitivism. Calvo Sotelo expresses his view of racial inequality as natural; and, in spite of his more sympathetic description of Harlem, del Saz is incapable of suppressing exoticizing overtones and, like Hidalgo, of avoiding a patronizing depiction of African Americans. As Miranda-­Barreiro concludes, the racist representation of blacks clearly collides with the

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  15 alleged Catholic principles of Hispanidad that defend racial equality. The contradictions also confirm, for this critic, “the internal dissonance of a dictatorship caught between its fascist foundations and the need to gain the support of Western democracies after the Second World War (189).” In Chapter 9, Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego addresses again the intertwining of anti-American and Hispanidad discourses, but at a later stage of Francoism. She explores the representation of the African American emancipation movement across a selection of articles published in the 1960s in the Falangist newspaper Arriba, the official voice of Francoism. Concentrating on the coverage between 1965 and 1968 of several crucial events – the Selma Movement and the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, the race riots during the summer of 1967, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 – she examines the interplay of religious discourse, the complex relationship between Washington and Franco’s regime, and Spain’s narrative of colonialism, in order to understand the seemingly paradoxical representation of events. Indeed, Arriba ironically expressed its strong support of the Civil Rights Movement condemning police brutality and the denial of basic democratic rights for African Americans. Moreover, it accused the US of hypocrisy for trying to impose its concept of democracy internationally while subjecting some of its citizens to a colonial regime at home. Cornejo-Parriego attributes these paradoxes first, to the fact that the movement was spearheaded by religious figures who, at times, framed their discourse (or it was framed by the media) within the black martyrdom paradigm. This also partially elucidates why Arriba could not endorse the Black Power Movement (BPM), which rejected discourses of victimhood in favor of black self-determination. While, as we have seen, anti-Americanism had to be mitigated, it never disappeared, and it reemerges in the 1960s in connection with the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, it is a striking coincidence that, while racial conflicts were ravaging the US, Equatorial Guinea was negotiating its independence from Spain, a coincidence that Franco’s government exploited to praise its own role as colonizer. In Arriba, Spanish colonialism and the American Civil Rights Movement, the US, Spain, and Equatorial Guinea are then discursively linked and tied to the feeling of humiliation by the US that was still very strong in some Spanish sectors. For Cornejo-Parriego, Arriba latched on to this feeling, and seized the black struggle as an excellent opportunity “to exact at least some small revenge by pointing out the profound moral bankruptcy of the U.S. and, consequently, its inferiority vis à vis Spain (207).” In spite of Arriba’s limited understanding of the BPM, it is undeniable that the revolutions taking place in Black America galvanized youth worldwide, and that the BPM, in particular, nourished the global imaginary with iconic figures, gestures, and aesthetics. The beginning of the publication of Friday Foster, the first syndicated comic strip with a black

16  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego heroine, in 1970 in The ­C hicago Tribune, and the fact that the authors were American writer Jim Lawrence and Catalan artist Jordi Longarón, attest to this transnational and cross-cultural mobilization. In Chapter 10, Alberto Villamandos analyzes a selection of episodes published between 1971 and 1972, and explores how a Spanish graphic artist contributed to a pioneering narrative of female blackness, published in a paper with a predominantly white readership, in the context of the American civil rights struggle and BPM. It certainly is pioneering because Friday Foster offers a sharp contrast with previous stereotypical representations of subaltern groups in comic art.8 The action takes place in different contexts, including the iconic locus Harlem, which is represented through well-known recurrent tropes of exoticism and threat, but also international destinations that construct the protagonist as a modern cosmopolitan woman who seems to have overcome race and class limitations. Friday Foster presents, nevertheless, several ideological ambivalences. With regard to the protagonist’s presence in Spain, set in the context of the country’s booming tourism industry, Villamandos observes that the authors combine stereotypical elements of Spanish culture with realistic depictions of rural and urban Southern Spain. Furthermore, the protagonist becomes a protector of the capitalist West precisely in Spain, which had gone to great lengths to present itself as a bastion against communism and keeper of Western essences during the Cold War. This sympathetic portrayal of Franco’s Spain is one of the notable paradoxes that appear in Friday Foster. Furthermore, while the comic strip engages very significantly with Pan-Africanism, it articulates this solidarity through traditional white colonialist images. In addition, black masculinity is linked to the ideology of “respectability.” The critic concludes that Friday Foster raises crucial questions about the limits of narratives of integration and assimilation, offering an ambivalent amalgamation of social criticism with hegemonic narratives such as the “American dream” and the Cold War, and of black empowerment narratives with commodification and fetishization of Black Power. In this context of “gazing at each other in Franco’s Spain,” as we have titled the last part of Black USA and Spain, Chester Himes occupies a distinct place, as María Frías examines in Chapter 11. The self-­expatriate lived in Spain from 1969 until his death in 1984, an experience that was intimately connected to Willa Thompson Trierweiler, Regine Fisher, and Lesley Packard, with whom he would eventually settle in Moraira, ­A licante. What emerges in this chapter is a recurrent pattern in the relationship between male writers and their female companions who, in their role of personal assistants, translators, editors, and interlocutors, play an integral part in the author’s productions, without receiving recognition for their contributions.9 In this regard, Frías affirms that the three women in the writer’s life assume a subordinate function, remaining both relatively silent and silenced in Himes’s writings.

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  17 In an attempt to retrace the author’s life in Spain, Frías not only analyzed his writings and letters, but also traveled to Moraira to interview some of the residents who had known Himes and his wife Lesley. She offers details that illustrate his daily life and sentimental and erotic relations, but also his relationship with Spain. Writing about Richard Wright’s controversial travelogue Pagan Spain (1957), Guy Reynolds alludes to the existence of “a specific literary genealogy: a chain of black American writers who found in Spain a fascinating cultural zone: a site of seduction and fascination, a space of contested cultural meanings” (488).10 Himes clearly departs from this genealogy: in spite of being the African A ­ merican writer who lived the longest in Spain, he refused to engage with the politics of a country that was still recovering from the trauma of a Civil War and a dictatorship. There are, however, references in his writings to Spaniards’ backwardness, to women’s lack of education and wasted sexuality, and the role played by the Church. Furthermore, Frías examines Himes’s frequent expressions of disdain for Spain and his frustrating process of adjustment, his complaints about the distractions owing to the increasing presence of tourists and the absence of cultural life, and about his “invisibility.” Paradoxically, in spite of his silence about Spanish politics, he could not escape them as the publication of his works had to contend with existing censorship. Both national and local news media reported on the writer’s death, and it certainly is ironic that Himes is the only African American writer to have been honored with a public monument in Spain.

Notes 1 I am borrowing from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” 2 Nonetheless, tensions sometimes arose between West Indians and African Americans, and personal conflicts like McKay’s stemmed from this duality. See Lewis 34–45; 50–51; 75–76. 3 A select minority of readers were able to access his works through the illegal distribution of South American editions (Cornellá-Detrell 42). 4 All translations are by May Morpaw. 5 “The term New Negro denoted a philosophy, movement, and book indicating a conscious effort on behalf of African Americans to destroy the public image of themselves as ex-slaves incapable of self-determination and to promote the public image of American blacks as industrious and independent… the New Negro would be intellectually informed, racially proud, creative, and individualistic” (Aberjhani and West 232). Howard University professor Alain Locke edited The New Negro anthology (1925), gathering materials by some of the most significant black intellectuals of the time. 6 According to Lewis, “white capital and influence were crucial, and the white presence, at least in the early years, hovered over the New Negro world of art and literature…” (98). Zora Neale Hurston coined the term “Negrotarians” to refer to “whites who specialized in Afro-American ­uplift. … There were Negrotarians who were earnest humanitarians, and those who were merely fascinated. … Some … were drawn to Harlem on the way to Paris because it seemed to answer a need for personal nourishment and to confirm their vision of cultural salvation coming from the margins of civilization” (Lewis 99).

18  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego 7 “¿Felices los días de la guerra?… Sí, era una maravilla de fraternidad, de comunicación, de paridad en los peligros. Había comenzado la defensa de ­Madrid. Atraídos por nuestro equilibro vital, poético y político, habían venido a acompañar nuestras horas de guerra algunos escritores extranjeros, entre ellos Langston Hughes…..” 8 The cultural and political significance of the representation of minority groups in comics and ensuing superhero films can be gauged by the recent blockbuster and cultural phenomenon Black Panther (2018), a film based on a Marvel comic character. 9 The couples Zenobia Camprubí and Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Gregorio Martínez Sierra and María Lejárraga are significant examples in the Hispanic context. 10 According to María C. Ramos: “Spain, at first, seems an unlikely subject for so many African American writers. It did not have the liberal appeal of France or the radical appeal of the Soviet Union, nor was it a recognizable diasporic site such as the Caribbean or South America. Yet Spain allowed these writers to rethink identity construction, particularly with respect to contested modern racial and national identities of the time. … The result is that Spain’s liminal position geographically (between Europe and Africa), historically and culturally (between West and East), and politically (between liberal secularism and a totalitarian religious state), permits challenges to the geopolitics of the early modern European mapping of the world and, therefore, the politics of identity that accompanies it” (180).

Works Cited Aberjhani and Sandra L. West. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Checkmark Books, 2003. Ardavín Trabanco, Carlos X. and Jorge Marí, eds. Ventanas sobre el Atlántico: Estados Unidos-España durante el postfranquismo (1975–2008). Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2011. Auserón, Santiago. El ritmo perdido. Sobre el influjo negro en la canción española. Barcelona: Península, 2012. ———. La imagen sonora. Notas para una nueva lectura filosófica de la nueva música popular. Valencia: Episteme, 1998. Baldwin, Kate A. Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain. Reading Encounters between Black and Red (1922–1963). Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Carroll, Peter N. and James D. Fernandez, eds. Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War. New York: Museum of the City of New York and NYU P, 2007. Cornejo Parriego, Rosalía. “Black is Beautiful. Cuerpos negros en Triunfo.” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 23.2 (2017): 157–73. Cornellá-Detrell, Jordi. “La obra de James Baldwin ante la censura franquista: el contrabando de libros, la conexión latinoamericana y la evolución del sector editorial peninsular.” Represura 1 (2015): 32–60. Davenport, Lisa E. “Jazz and the Cold War: Black Culture as an Instrument of American Foreign Policy.” Crossing Boundaries. Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora. Eds. Darlene Clark Hien and Jacqueline McLeod. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001. 282–315. Diedrich, Maria I. and Jürgen Heinrichs, eds. From Black to Schwarz. Cultural Crossovers between African America and Germany. East Lansing/Münster: Michigan State UP/LIT Verlag, 2011.

Caught in an Inescapable Network of Mutuality  19 Esenwein, George. “Seeing the Spanish Civil War through Foreign Eyes.” Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War. Ed. Noël Valis. New York: MLA, 2007. 147–59. Faber, Sebastiaan. Anglo-American Hispanists and the Spanish Civil War. Hispanophilia, Commitment, and Discipline. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Faber, Sebastiaan and Cristina Martínez Carazo, eds. Contra el olvido. El exilio español en Estados Unidos. Alcalá de Henares: Instituto Franklin de Estudios Norteamericanos/Universidad de Alcalá, 2009. Frías, María. “Nights of Flamenco and Blues in Spain. From Sorrow Songs to Soleá and Back.” Raphael-Hernández, 141–55. Gil de Biedma, Jaime. Diarios 1956–1985. Barcelona: Lumen, 2015. Greene, Larry A. and Anke Ortlepp, eds. German and African Americans. Two Centuries of Exchange. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2011. hooks, bell. “Eating the Other.” Black Looks. Race and Representation. ­Boston: South End Press, 1992. 21–39. Johnson, Bruce. “Introduction”. Jazz and Totalitarianism. Ed. Bruce Johnson. New York: Routledge, 2017. 1–27. King, Jr. Martin Luther. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” 16 Apr. 1963. Web. León, María Teresa. Memoria de la melancolía. Ed. Gregorio Torres Nebrera. Madrid: Castalia, 1998. Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. Marks, Carole and Diana Edkins. The Power of Pride. Stylemakers and Rulebreakers of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Crown Publishers, 1999. Montero Alonso, José. “Josefina Baker en Madrid.” Nuevo Mundo 14 Feb. 1930: 31–2. Pino, José Manuel del, ed. America the Beautiful. La presencia de Estados Unidos en la cultura española contemporánea. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2014. Price, Clement Alexander. “Foreword. Race, Blackness, and Modernism during the Harlem Renaissance.” Aberjhani and West, xi–xiv. Ramos, María C. “Global Positioning from Spain. Mapping Identity in African American Narratives of Travel.” Geocritical Explorations. Space, Place, and Mapping in Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed. Robert T. Tally Jr. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. 177–93. Raphael-Hernández, Heike, ed. Blackening Europe: The African-American Presence. New York: Routledge, 2004. Rasula, Jed. “Jazz as Decal for the European Avant-garde.” Raphael-­Hernández, 13–34. Reid-Pharr’s. Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique. New York: NYU P, 2016. Reynolds, Guy. “‘Sketches of Spain’: Richard Wright’s Pagan Spain and ­A frican-American Representations of the Hispanic.” Journal of American Studies 34.3 (2000): 487–502. Tusquets, Esther and Vida Ozores. “Ralph Ellison, la invisibilidad del negro y el pluralismo cultural.” Destino 18 Jan. 1969: 39.

Part I

All that Jazz Translation, Fascination, and Anxiety

1 Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish Translation, African American Culture, and the Spanish Avant-Garde Evelyn Scaramella In New York, the 1920s marked the rise of Alain Locke’s New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance. Harlem’s artistic production was soon popular globally with white as well as black writers (Lewis xv). This cultural interest in Harlem deeply influenced Négritude, the literary movement spearheaded by Francophone writers that sought to combat racism and unite the black diaspora across national and linguistic boundaries. Although the Harlem Renaissance was in vogue in Paris at that time, the influence of black Harlem on the Spanish avant-garde movement is considerably less studied than are its effects on the French and Francophone milieu. This chapter traces the literary history of several Spanish representations of African American performers, artists, and writers from the Harlem Renaissance in literary magazines circulating during the avantgarde period, prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. How did Spanish avant-garde intellectuals interpret and appropriate African American racial identity in the 1920s and 1930s? I examine whether their representations moved beyond restrictive stereotypes to fully acknowledge the complexities of African American culture as expressed in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. The first section of this chapter briefly surveys the presence of African American literature and art in print circulation in Spain, and how it fueled Spanish avantgarde aesthetic experimentation, generating complex literary representations. While many Spanish directors, filmmakers, and writers explored African American music and entertainment during this period, there was surprisingly little translation of the literature and testimonies of ­A frican American authors and entertainers into Spanish, or mention of the Harlem Renaissance writers whose work lay at the heart of literary experimentation with jazz, blues, and black culture. In the early 1930s, deeply interested in the political and artistic interconnections between jazz, Spanish cante jondo, and the Cuban son, Langston Hughes (1902–1967) began translating Spanish, Caribbean,

24  Evelyn Scaramella and Spanish American writers whose work showed a cultural kinship with African American music, literature, and performance. Hughes’s budding friendship with Spanish avant-garde intellectual couple Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León, whom he met in Mexico City in 1935, set into motion a transnational readership of African American literature, including efforts to translate the works of black American authors into Spanish, and, in turn, the works of Spanish authors like Federico García Lorca into English. For such writers, how did translation address questions of racial and national identity, and how did Spanish authors connect with Harlem as a transnational site? In the second section, this chapter surveys how some of these early attempts at translating African American literature reduced black culture to stereotypes. However, I also trace how, during the years of the Spanish Republic and increasing politicization of the literary left, some avant-garde writers of the Generation of 27 did move beyond superficial readings toward a more nuanced understanding of racial politics in the US through translation. I explore the radical political and cultural ramifications of their translations for a society on the verge of Civil War.1 I trace the literary history of translations of works by Hughes, the most well-known Harlem Renaissance writer in Spain during this time, as a means of determining how Spanish authors connected with African American writing as a politicized site of leftist internationalism. Prior to the Civil War, these rare attempts at developing a better understanding of African American culture through translations of Hughes’s poetry, while important to the avant-garde literary and political project, are still somewhat fraught in their representations.

Spanish Harlem: Transatlantic Modernism and the Performance of African American Culture With Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the first film with sound, jazz was further incorporated into European experimental avant-garde art and poetry. In Spain, Ernesto Giménez Caballero’s vanguard magazine La Gaceta Literaria captured the influence of Harlem’s stage shows on the most renowned Spanish writers. It published a photograph of the intellectual Ramón Gómez de la Serna in blackface at a meeting of Giménez Caballero’s Cine-club. This image highlights the problematic nature of avant-garde experimentation with jazz, and the way in which, for many writers, an interest in black culture soon bordered on racist appropriations. Although Gómez de la Serna and Giménez Caballero never traveled to Harlem, they imagined black life and interpreted it symbolically in their work, often perpetuating dangerous cultural stereotypes. In contrast, their colleague Lorca did travel to Harlem in the summer of 1929. There, Lorca met the esteemed African American writer Nella

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  25 Larsen and her friend, the Spanish teacher Dorothy Peterson, who guided him around the neighborhood’s social scene (Scaramella, “Liaisons”). A preeminent and eccentric novelist and critic, Gómez de la Serna invigorated Madrid’s literary tertulia scene at the Café Pombo. 2 When he appeared in blackface at the Cine-club to discuss The Jazz Singer, he mimed Jolson’s blackface and launched a discussion of black music full of stereotypical assumptions about race. His speech, later published as an essay titled “Jazbandismo” in La Gaceta Literaria, thrust jazz and black music into the vanguard of Spanish literary trends. In “Jazbandismo,” Gómez de la Serna outlined his theory about the creative importance of jazz to the vitality of modern life. He traced the history of jazz splashing onto European shores from Harlem, citing this music as a powerful admixture of different styles of dance. He characterized the dance as a rebellious mix of the primitive and the modern that seduces and even chases listeners with its nostalgia for the primitive world (6). Gómez de la Serna attributes the appeal of jazz to its ability to offer elite white consumers an entertaining escape from a fragmented and increasingly unstable modern world (6). The writer thus participated in what critics term the first wave of white “negrophilia” which ignored the history of colonized peoples of color in Harlem and beyond, in order to exploit the “otherness” or uniqueness of black life for aesthetic purposes (Straw). Many white European avant-garde writers and artists explored primitivism in their work and fetishized ­A frican artifacts, art, and music, which deliberately disassociated black art from the painful history of enslavement and prejudice that marked its creators (Sweeney). After the “Jazbandismo” article appeared, Giménez Caballero wrote an editorial examining why the film caused such a scandal, and asked Gómez de la Serna to reflect on the “emotional experience” of his time in blackface. In “Negras confesiones” [Black Confessions], Gómez de la Serna explained his use of blackface as a modernist experiment that would open “new boxes of surprises” for modern audiences (1). 3 For him, the mask and the spectacle of blackface engendered new and surprising pathways to free artistic expression. Gómez de la Serna upheld his eccentric exploitation of blackface using his classic satirical tone. His humor provided the best defense of his racist cultural analogies: I already knew that being black meant running the risk of being lynched, but being an intellectual the danger is the same as being black…. Perhaps I went a little overboard with the blackness, but it’s that I wanted to be from the central regions of “black-land,” the blackest of black places…. That afternoon I further endangered my acceptance into the Academy and my potential visit to North America, since when I arrive at customs in New York, they won’t

26  Evelyn Scaramella be able to forget that “I was black once,” just as for my friend, they didn’t forget that in his case he had been breastfed by a black wet nurse. (1)4 Like other white avant-garde European artists who reinforced problematic class and race differences, Gómez de la Serna’s foray into the cult of black art reified essentialized stereotypes of African A ­ merican culture. David Miranda-Barreiro claims that his “assessment of primitive art encapsulates the inherent contradiction of ‘primitivist modernism’: whereas black art is praised for its naturalness and raw expressivity, these qualities are explained by its ignorance and lack of civilization” (113). Goméz de la Serna’s racist impersonations of black culture contributed to the wide-ranging consumption of black bodies and art for avant-garde inspiration. For him and other European writers, African American culture was only a tourist stop in his literary imaginary. But what then can be said of the awareness and exploration of the ­H arlem Renaissance for those Spanish writers who actually visited New York in the 1920s and 1930s? Scholars have studied extensively several key Spanish modernist and avant-garde intellectuals who traveled to H ­ arlem and wrote about black life, most notably Juan Ramón Jiménez in Diario de un poeta recién casado [Diary of a Newlywed Poet] (1916), José Moreno Villa in Pruebas de Nueva York [Snapshots of New York] (1927), and the best known example, Lorca in his Poeta en Nueva York [Poet in New York] (composed in 1929, published posthumously in 1940). Lorca felt a thrill akin to experiencing cante jondo when he experienced jazz and blues in Harlem. A letter home to his parents revealed his fascination with the chaos and wonder that he feels when listening to a black singer at Peterson’s New York apartment. The unnamed jazz singer’s ability to let go echoes Lorca’s vision of duende as an ecstatic release into the spiritual and natural world. As he reflected on the nature of jazz and its cultural connection to the Spanish cante jondo, Lorca identified its power as stemming from intercultural and transnational movement. In America, he witnessed the artistic and spiritual complexity of jazz as part of New York City’s “multitude of different races and customs” (García Lorca, III 1114). 5 Although some critics argue that Lorca’s representation of blacks in Harlem is stereotypical and exoticized, others point to his desire to connect the music to cante jondo as part of a broader transnational impulse to defend the marginalized.6 While many Spanish writers imagined and experienced African ­A merican music and entertainment directly during this time, there was relatively little effort made to translate the literature and testimonials of African American authors into Spanish. Tracing translations

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  27 of Harlem Renaissance writers in Spain reveals that, although Harlem was featured prominently in popular literary and graphic magazines of the vanguard, black American writers were largely ignored. This lack of translation may well suggest a preference for the performance of black culture as a site of creative imagination, rather than a more nuanced cross-­cultural reading of African American artistic forms and shared cultural histories. Before the Spanish Civil War, the only novel from the Harlem Renaissance that had been translated in Spain was Jamaican-American Claude McKay’s controversial Home to Harlem (1928), which was published in 1931 as Cock-tail negro. McKay was already known in Spain because of the success of his novel, Banjo (1929), which was available in French (Rogers 174). A leading Harlem Renaissance figure, McKay traveled in Spain between 1933 and 1934, after Cock-tail negro was published. The novel’s Spanish title converts Home to Harlem from a detailed, albeit sordid, depiction of black nightlife to a more general fetishized and sexualized object, the cocktail, that stands as a synecdoche for the licentiousness of Harlem. Gayle Rogers briefly analyzes the role of literatura negra in Spain in relation to the translation of ­McKay’s Home to Harlem. He carefully examines the lexical choices in the novel, noting that it evinces the dilemmas that Spanish translators encountered when approaching the terms “Negro” and “nigger” and when moving between negro as adjective and noun. … Other terms abound—“morenito” for “darky” rather often—but when a line in the original includes both “Negro” and “nigger,” the translation freezes and uses “negro” for both, losing the stigma of the latter. (174–75) As Vera Kutzinski has also argued with respect to translations of Hughes’s work, the linguistic terms dealing with the complicated racial politics of the US became problematic when translated into foreign contexts. Rogers concludes that “flatten[ing] McKay’s phoneticized dialect into natural, idiomatic speech precludes itself from accounting for the racism within international black cultures, as McKay depicted it” (175). In addition to the technical translation issues, the cover art for Cocktail negro, by well-known Polish-Chilean typographer and graphic artist Mauricio Amster Cats, who also designed the cover for Lorca’s Poema del cante jondo, is a paratext that complicates the already tenuous translation of the novel by playing into stereotypes of black male bodies through caricature (Figure 1.1). The jarring cover image shows a large black male figure with an American flag in the background. The primitive depiction of a man with enlarged facial features resembles the debasing archetypes of the minstrel tradition.

Figure 1.1  Cover art by Mauricio Amster Cats for Cock-tail negro. Courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL.

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  29

From Black Internationalism to Anti-Fascism: Translating Langston Hughes in Spain, 1930–1936 The increasing politicization of the avant-garde movements in the 1930s tended towards more complex engagement with black cultures, particularly as black writers of the diaspora traveled and joined in solidarity to fight racism. Hughes was one such intellectual whose curiosity about other cultures and political commitment to equality for the disenfranchised took him on trips all over the world. While abroad, he became fluent in Spanish and French, and slipped seamlessly into literary circles, translating works by writers he met along his travels. Hughes’s reputation grew rapidly across Latin America and the Caribbean due to the publication of several of his poems in Spanish translations in journals in Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. He was widely translated and read across the region, as Kutzinski has shown in her groundbreaking study, The Worlds of Langston Hughes, which explores Hughes’s work as a Spanish translator and translations of his poems into Spanish. Kutzinski has demonstrated that Hughes’s translators reframed and refracted his poems through the lenses of “distinct regional and international discourses”: “There is strong evidence that translators, more often than not, appropriated Hughes’s poems for their own nationalist agendas rather than using them to spread the seeds of ‘black’ political awareness across Latin America” (“Yo también” 551). During a yearlong trip to Mexico in 1935, Hughes met Rafael Alberti. They were reunited when Hughes traveled to Spain in July of 1937 to join the Popular Front and serve as a political correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American during the Spanish Civil War (Scaramella, “Translating” 177). In Madrid, Hughes lived and worked at the Alianza de Intelectuales Antifascistas [Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals], the institute Alberti and his wife, the dramatist María Teresa León, headed in support of the revolutionary art of the Republican cause. It was there that Alberti gave Hughes a copy of Lorca’s poetry collection, the Romancero gitano [Gypsy Ballads] (1928). Lorca had recently become one of the early casualties of the war, murdered by Franco’s Nationalists in July 1936. Hughes immediately began translating the Romancero gitano under the careful eye of Alberti and the poet Manuel Altola­guirre. Alberti, likely working from French versions of Hughes’s poems, in turn translated four of them for the August 1937 issue of the Alliance’s literary magazine, El Mono Azul [The Blue Overalls] (Scaramella, “Translating;” Kutzinski, Worlds 88).7 But this was not the first time that readers in Spain saw translated versions of Hughes’s verse, although prior to his 1937 visit, they were not widely available in Spanish. Before the war, there were only two print translations of Hughes’s poems; they appeared in two Spanish vanguard magazines, first in Octubre: Escritores y

30  Evelyn Scaramella artistas revolucionarios [October: Revolutionary Writers and Artists] in 1933, and then Nueva Cultura [New Culture] in 1936. I will briefly examine how the communist and anti-fascist missions of both Octubre and Nueva Cultura used photographs, visual art, and translations to create complex, and, at times questionable, representations of African American writers and of US racial politics in the 1930s. It would require the combined efforts of Alberti and León to present the Spanish public with a more nuanced reading of anti-fascist and anti-­ imperialist politics in Octubre. Their decision to publish Hughes in translation in 1933 as part of a revolutionary communist magazine cannot be overlooked historically, especially considering their persistent efforts to forge transnational solidarity along political lines through translation, which they viewed as another vehicle for radical leftist political change. In La arboleda perdida [The Lost Grove], Alberti explains that Octubre followed in the footsteps of other proletarian literary projects like Lorca’s Republican theater troupe, La Barraca (21), although he longed for it to be even more radical and politically closer to the Soviet Union as well as the agitprop literature and art he had observed in Berlin and Moscow. Alberti founded Octubre with his wife León after traveling to Germany and the Soviet Union in 1932 and 1933, respectively. He wanted the journal to be the first of its kind to feature young revolutionary writers in Spain (Alberti 58). In the 1930s, many new experimental literary magazines such as Octubre and Nueva Cultura were launched in Spain with the mission of combining literature and politics, to create a new culture of art and political awareness. As Alberti describes in his memoir, not only were Octubre’s contributors drawn from Spain’s literary elite, such as Luis Cernuda, León, Antonio Machado, Emilio Prados, and Ramón J. Sender, but it also included other celebrated avant-garde writers from the US, the Soviet Union, Latin America, and Europe, including Waldo Frank, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Alejo Carpentier, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Louis Aragon, Bertolt Brecht, and Maxim Gorky. Octubre became a space for revolutionary and radical politics, art, and writing—a meeting ground on which communism in Spain became internationalized (Montero).8 Octubre was Alberti and León’s opportunity to connect Spanish revolutionary politics to other Marxist “proletariat” writers who were concerned about the dangers of imperialism, fascism, and racism spreading across the globe (Diego and Brihuega). It was through the active translation of pieces dedicated to these common themes that Alberti was able to disseminate this global perspective to a Spanish audience. The images used in Octubre “translated” the visual horrors of imperialism and war, and mapped them into a different time and place, making them applicable to the struggle against fascism in Spain. The photos and illustrations came largely from anonymous contributors, as did many of the literary translations, which contributed to creating the effect of

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  31 a homogenization of sources across disparate locations, as the pieces blended together in a complex web of visual and literary associations. The use of visual art that superimposed and complemented the journalistic and literary texts not only visually mirrored the chaos and fragmentation of the crises that these pieces described, but also jarred the reader. An analysis of the poetry, graphics, and other materials in Octubre can be useful in understanding how the discourses of racial oppression and anti-colonialism are represented, manipulated, and subsumed into communist politics and aesthetics. The editors curated aesthetic experimentations in social realism and avant-garde art for clear political purposes. The publication of Hughes’s poems in the August–September 1933 issue of Octubre marked the first time his verse appeared in a complete translation in Spain. Alberti had commissioned the Puerto Rican writer Emilio Delgado, who was then living in Spain, to translate the poems.9 The cover of the issue shows two photographs of slain peasants, one of whom is an indigenous man of undisclosed origin. The visual montage purposefully combines and equates similar struggles for racial and economic equality around the world. The left column reads, “Canciones de los negros de Norteamérica” [Negro Songs of North America], followed by eight different African American folksongs translated by Abel Plenn, the American journalist and author of Wind in the Olive Trees: Spain from the Inside (1947) (Figure 1.2). While Plenn’s translations maintain the specific cultural, geographic, and historic references to the oppressed conditions of African Americans in southern US cities, they fail to capture either the offensive nature of the N-word in the original, or the specificity of African American vernacular of “White folks eat de apple, Nigger wait fo’ core; White folks sleep on feather bed, Nigger on the flo’” (Gellert, in Conforth 62).10 In his critical note on the folk songs, Delgado explains that the poets Lawrence Gellert and Phillip Schatz collected blues and spiritual songs while on an excursion to the South. Segments of Schatz’s “Songs of the Negro Worker” and Gellert’s “Negro Songs of Protest” were published in New Masses, an American Marxist magazine, in 1930 and 1933, respectively, where Delgado had likely read the originals.11 Delgado chooses to keep the words “blues” and “spirituals” in the original English and in quotations in his summary. He also gives a detailed synopsis of the reasons why these songs were included and situates them within the political goals of the magazine’s mission, in addition to summarizing their content so that readers can understand the cultural context (“Nota;” in Montero 81). Despite Delgado’s attention to detail, accompanying the translations of the African American folk songs on the left column of the page is a series of cartoon illustrations of the violence inflicted on an archetypal black slave by his master along with the following caption: “While the black man is busy with the Bible and his prayers, whites are stealing all of his land./ The white man uses the whip./ The white man pulls

32  Evelyn Scaramella

Figure 1.2  Cover art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid.

the trigger / but it was Jesus and the Bible/ who made the black man a slave” (in Montero 62).12 The insertion of a dark-humored cartoon that blames religious belief for African American slavery and disenfranchisement, rather than white racism and violence, is a reductive and troubling

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  33 illustration of a simplistic propaganda trope: that the communist revolution would save African Americans from their economic and social conditions. These images undercut the messages in the folk songs and contradict the anti-colonial and anti-racist message that the translations surrounding them communicate. The folk songs run alongside another article, “De la revolución cubana: Retrato de un dictador” [From the Cuban Revolution: Portrait of a Dictator], Alejo Carpentier’s essay on the dictatorship of General Gerardo Machado in Cuba. By juxtaposing the items, the editors of Octubre invited the reader to connect the dictatorship in the Caribbean to slavery and segregation in the US. The visual image at the end of Carpentier’s essay is a black and white photograph of a lynching, which is also placed beside the translation of Hughes’s poem, “I, Too, Sing America,” translated as “Yo también” (in Montero 66) (Figure 1.3). The reader must assume that the lynching takes place in the Jim Crow South, but the photo is anonymous and does not specify the year or place. “I, Too, Sing America,” Hughes’s popular manifesto against racism in America, celebrates the speaker’s refusal to succumb to inequality, as African Americans struggle against segregation. Montero notes that this poem is assumed to be Delgado’s translation, but it is identical to the one Jorge Luis Borges published in the Argentinean literary magazine Sur (Montero xxi). Carpentier’s text, which ends just above Hughes’s poem, is accompanied by a biographical gloss that attempts to strategically situate and universalize his ethnographic texts about the Afro-Cuban diaspora within a general anti-colonial context of the “international proletariat” (in ­Montero 66). The placement of Hughes’s text and the African American folk songs next to the European-born, Cuban-bred Carpentier’s essay visually conflates these histories, broadening the scope of the communist message. Although Carpentier’s work was highly important in the study of Afro-Cuban traditions, the juxtaposition of the white Carpentier’s ethnographic writings on Cuba’s dictatorship with texts about the black experience tries to tie white and black experiences together across nations of the black diaspora.13 The racial, cultural, and national specificity of both Carpentier and Hughes merges into a common socialist goal of anti-discrimination, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism. On the pages of Octubre, the visual layout and the editorial design reflect its staunch communist mission. Despite their intention to expose the horrors of black discrimination and oppression across the globe, the editors have flattened out the historical references of each individual situation in an attempt to weave together a common political thread of a world free from all economic and racial oppression. A second Hughes poem, “Open Letter to the South,” appears a few pages later, translated into Spanish with a biographical postscript, both by Delgado (Figures 1.4 and 1.5). Hughes’s original poem, written in

34  Evelyn Scaramella

Figure 1.3  C  over art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid.

1932 and published in New Masses, expresses solidarity with the white workers of America’s poorest region in the hope that both blacks and poor whites can break free from the dominant forces holding them down: “Let us not forget what Booker T. said:/ ‘Separate as the fingers.’/ Let us become instead, you and I,/ One single hand/ That can united rise/… White worker,/ Here is my hand” (Hughes, Poems 147–49).14 Delgado’s new title, boldly splashed across the page as, “Carta a los

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  35

Figure 1.4  C  over art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid.

camaradas del Sur,” adds communist language to the poem, changing Hughes’s title from “Open Letter to the South,” to “A los camaradas del Sur” [“To the Comrades of the South”]. In the last stanza, he changes Hughes’s “white worker” to “camarada blanco” [“white comrade”]. The clear reference to communist “comrades” in the Delgado translation

36  Evelyn Scaramella

Figure 1.5  Cover art, photos, translations, and illustrations from the literary journal Octubre. Courtesy of Biblioteca Digital Memoria de Madrid.

limits the openness and ambiguity of the intended audience in Hughes’s original title, “Open Letter.” Throughout the 1930s, Hughes organized for justice, at home and abroad, often engaging with communist and other political organizations of the left, like the Communist Party of

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  37 the United States of America (CPUSA), the John Reed Club, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and the International Workers’ Order (Rampersad Life 236, 286, 355; Scott). But even though Hughes’s original text is a “utopian” call for blacks and whites to join hands and join the communist movement, as Jonathan Scott argues, Hughes’s American “multiethnic working class unity” comes more from a universal love of humanity embedded in African American spiritual traditions rather than any “party directive” (99). “Open Letter to the South” alternates between imperative commands, the use of capital letters, and direct exclamations, which call the reader to action: White workers of the South Miners, Farmers, Mechanics, Mill Hands, Shop girls, Railway men, Servants, Tobacco workers, Sharecroppers, GREETINGS! (Hughes, Poems 147)15 Delgado’s translation preserves the historical and geographic specificity of the US locations listed in the original poem: I am the black worker, Listen: That the land might be ours, And the mines and the factories and the office towers At Harlan, Richmond, Gastonia, Atlanta, New Orleans; That the plants and the roads and the tools of power Be ours. (Hughes, Poems 147)16 But despite these references, the translation inevitably “domesticates” the text with specific grammar choices.17 For example, Delgado consistently opts for the Castilian “vosotros” to appeal to the “informal you plural” of the white workers that the poem addresses (despite the fact that Delgado was Puerto Rican and probably used “ustedes,” he adjusted to a peninsular readership). While the translation is faithful to the content of Hughes’s original and is, in general, stylistically smooth, Delgado does not attempt to translate the loose internal rhyme scheme or the colloquial simplicity of Hughes’s original style and tone. Delgado does, however, try to maintain an important aspect of the original,

38  Evelyn Scaramella Hughes’s use of anaphora at key moments, to repeat the collective chants of the revolution: Let us become instead, you and I, One single hand That can rise To smash the old dead of dogmas past— To kill the lies of color That keep the rich enthroned …. (Hughes, Poems 147)18 Moreover, while his lyrics are inevitably longer, Delgado’s verse still maintains a simple and literal translation that respects the original flow. Although the literal nature of his lexical choices alone does not necessarily provide a geographic or cultural “flattening out” of the cultural and racial aspects of the original, the paratextual apparatus and editorial style that accompany the poem do.19 Furthermore, in his biographical introduction, Delgado included the oft-repeated line about Hughes’s various jobs from Carl Van Vechten’s introduction to The Weary Blues. But he adds a crucial political message that differs significantly from Van Vechten’s text. Delgado calls attention to the blatantly socialist message of Hughes’s original poem, which calls for a political “llamamiento fraternal” [“brotherly appeal”] and “solidaridad” [“solidarity”] between white and blacks through unionization, labor strikes, and the shared struggle for labor equality (Delgado, “Langston Hughes,” in Montero 75). His translation and ­A lberti’s inclusion of Hughes in his communist feature on revolutionary writers are historically significant because African American literature was not widely translated or critically discussed during this period in Spain. Hughes’s meeting with Alberti in Mexico City in 1935 came in the wake of a significant and prolonged stay in Russia in 1932–1933. 20 In Moscow, Hughes completed translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poems and began to translate work by French poet Louis Aragon. His own work appeared in the important communist periodical, International Literature, which was published in multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, and Russian (Rampersad 266). In ­Mexico City, Hughes was feverishly translating the work of radical Hispanic writers. Alberti wrote hastily to his friends in Spain on May 29, 1935, the day after it was reported in El Nacional that he had attended a farewell party for Hughes, who was returning to the US. The letters indicate that Hughes was planning to visit Spain in 1936 prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, due to his interest in learning more about Spanish culture and literature, on a Guggenheim fellowship. In each of the letters,

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  39 Alberti underlines his eagerness to introduce Hughes to his friends and to colleagues in his avant-garde group, as he wrote to Emilio Prados: Dear Emilio: This is Langston Hughes, the great poet that you already know from the magazine “October” and “International Literature.” He wants to see Malaga, so orient him in this part of the south that you know so well. We have become great friends in Mexico. And now he wants to be your friend. I won’t say anything more. María Teresa sends you a big hug and I send you ten. Rafael. (LHP)21 Alberti also wrote to other Hispanic colleagues who were living in Spain at the time, such as Pablo Neruda and Hughes’s translator, Emilio D ­ elgado, to whom he wrote, “he knows that you were his translator for our magazine.”22 In all of the letters, Alberti tells his friends that all of the writers of the Generation of 27 were already familiar with Hughes’s poetry due to its publication in translation in the 1933 issue of Octubre. This is significant because Hughes was becoming important to anti-­fascist and anti-colonialist movements in Latin America, as an emblem of the resistance to oppression and cross-cultural solidarity. But in Spain, prior to Delgado’s translations, there was no committed effort to anthologize or translate African American poetry. Alberti was trying to foster transnational connections through readership, connecting forms of ethnic folk art, such as gypsy culture in Spain (set in motion by Lorca’s immensely popular Romancero gitano), to the traditions of the black diaspora. Inspired by Hughes’s verse, Alberti even borrowed the opening line of “I, Too, Sing America” as title and epigraph to frame his own poem, “Yo también canto a América.” Composed during his and León’s 1935 travel to the Americas, it was published in 13 Bandas y 48 Estrellas [13 Stripes and 48 Stars] (1935). The couple’s tour was highlighted in the preface of the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura as a mission of “brotherly and universal harmony” between “languages” and “cultures” (“Nueva Cultura” 4). Launched in 1935 by Catalan graphic designer Josep Renau during the polarized years of the Second Spanish Republic, Nueva Cultura was an anti-fascist journal published in Valencia during the period surrounding the First International Writers’ Congress held in Paris in June of 1935 (Aznar Soler 384–85). Renau’s art for Nueva Cultura was just one example of how a number of artists were beginning to use photomontage as a new technique for political purposes (see Berman). The cover of the January issue, where Miguel Alejandro’s translations of Hughes’s poems appeared, presented  a striking image (Figure 1.6). The montage shows a noose placed around the neck of the celebrated African American singer and

40  Evelyn Scaramella

Figure 1.6   Cover art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of New York University Library.

actor Paul Robeson. Behind Robeson, juxtaposed with the noose, is the ironic image of America’s symbol par excellence, the Statue of Liberty. In bold red letters, the cover reads: “Hallo! America…?,” a question that calls to action and invites the reader to participate in the issue’s political and ethical mission. The reader can immediately grasp the themes that are suggested so forcefully by this striking image: America is not free when African Americans are brutalized, oppressed, and lynched.

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  41

Figure 1.7  Cover art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of NYU Library.

Alejandro, a Spanish writer about whom very little is known, wrote the opening essay on the African American experience, which is accompanied by a photo of a jovial Hughes on a beach with a dog (Figure 1.7). I will discuss the ways in which the content of this essay about Hughes, New York, and the history of African American enslavement and segregation are at odds with the translations that Alejandro completed for

42  Evelyn Scaramella

Figure 1.8  C  over art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of NYU Library.

the issue. For a biographical sketch of Hughes, Alejandro translated a fragment of Van Vechten’s often reproduced introduction to Hughes’s collection The Weary Blues. He also translated two important revolutionary poems, “Good Morning, Revolution,” and a fragment of “Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria” (Figures 1.8 and 1.9).

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  43

Figure 1.9  C  over art and translations of Langston Hughes from the January 1936 issue of Nueva Cultura. Courtesy of NYU Library.

Alejandro’s brief critical introduction strikes a clear anti-colonial and anti-racist stance. It summarized the abuse of African Americans in the US, and the long history of racial violence, using photographs intended to shock, such as an image of a white mob burning the body of a black man, a picture of the Scottsboro Boys, as well as an illustration of the

44  Evelyn Scaramella slave ship from the Middle Passage and the horrors of being abused as slaves. On the other hand, there are more uplifting images such as the liberation of plantation workers, a cabaret club featuring jazz musicians, a smiling topless cabaret dancer, Joe Louis’s historic win in the boxing ring, and a portrait of Ben Gold, who ran for president of New York’s Board of Aldermen as a representative of the CPUSA. This visual montage of the abuse, objectification, and resilience of the black community underlines how African Americans have suffered at the hands of white injustice, yet persevered. Alejandro’s introduction used translated citations taken from influential texts about race relations in the US, namely W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, which discussed the infamous “color line” in the US. He warns readers that US race relations have never been so dire for African Americans as in the age of Jim Crow segregation. Alejandro’s text is interspersed with references to critical studies on the history of black oppression by Magdalena Paz, which had been translated into Spanish a few years earlier. ­Alejandro criticizes certain simplistic statements by white critics that blacks have managed to achieve prosperity despite segregation. At times, he forcefully inserts his own statements of empathy for black suffering (6–8). Alejandro’s tone approaches sarcasm at the end of the piece, when he warns that the “pintoresco negro” [“picturesque black”] that Van Vechten described in his characterization of Hughes’s personality is not only romanticized but also damaging (6–8). For example, he cites H.L. Mencken’s list of stereotypes that whites have about blacks that contributed to the prevalence of racist attitudes. He is also acutely aware of the debate over Van Vechten’s infamous novel Nigger Heaven and its depiction of black nightlife, when he warns readers that the fetishized Harlem seen in many novels about New York City is not an accurate depiction. It was not uncommon to see the white Van Vechten’s novel mentioned as an important piece of literatura negra in articles of the period, without any critical awareness of the issues and scandals surrounding the N-word and the troubling vision of Harlem life it portrayed. The introduction ends with irony and dark humor, painting the picture of a white New York City that borders uncomfortably on black Harlem, “¿El pintoresquismo negro?” (Alejandro 8). 23 Alejandro questions if this representation of Harlem can be defended seriously given the horrific realities of racial injustice in the US. In the last line, to return to Rogers’s analysis of the N-word that was changed to “negro” in Cocktail negro, Alejandro chooses to leave the word untranslated, to stand as a pejorative contrast to the romanticized picture of Harlem’s escapist cabarets and clubs. Harlem is plagued by racism and “El pintoresco nigger” (Alejandro 8). Alejandro’s word choices beg the reader to question the essentialized impression that whites have of African Americans, in which they possess a primitive gaiety in spite of their sorrow and oppression. This is the same image that Hughes himself debated in the

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  45 poem “Our Land” (The Weary Blues), a fragment of which Alejandro also incorporated into his introduction. Furthermore, in the biographical note about Hughes, Alejandro does translate the majority of Van Vechten’s introduction, which depicts Hughes as a whimsical, even infantilized, adventurer. Despite the sad emotional content of The Weary Blues, Hughes, nevertheless, according to Van Vechten, lived a carefree “picturesque” and “picaresque” life (16– 18). Reid-Pharr takes issue with the inclusion of Van Vechten’s portrait as the biographical sketch, and for good reason—it perpetuated stereotypes that were then constantly repeated when Hughes’s work was rendered into Spanish, beginning with Cuban intellectual José ­Antonio Fernández de Castro’s introduction of Hughes (Reid-Pharr 143; ­Kutzinski). I quote the original English below and include the translation in Figures 1.8 and 1.9.24 Although Van Vechten’s conclusion fondly vouches for Hughes’s talent and tries to secure his reputation among the other giants of the Harlem Renaissance, his tone is still paternalistic. But the ending of ­Alejandro’s biography of Hughes suddenly diverges from Van Vechten, adding a warning of revolution to the latter’s simplified nostalgia, echoing the radical political message of “Good Morning, Revolution.” Alejandro asserts that he reads Hughes’s poetry as much more than racial primitivism: it furiously and bravely demands respect for civil rights (8–9). Given Alejandro’s empathy for the struggle for black freedom and his dedication to translating Hughes, the results of his efforts are disappointing, as Kutzinski also says of the segment of “Our Land” found in the introduction, calling its style “puzzling” (Worlds 105). It is possible that Alejandro underestimated the complex nature of the structure, style, and tone of Hughes’s poetry and focused instead on its social commentary. His translations do not “domesticate” or assimilate the original into a fluid Spanish, like Delgado’s. According to Venuti, “foreignization” is positive only if the strangeness of the translation carries the power to produce critical and cultural commentary (17–18). The “foreignization” of these translations—as seen in decisions such as leaving certain words like “Soviet” in English—confuses the reader with no larger purpose. Combined with the jumbled nature of the poem’s stanza structure, rhyme scheme, use of punctuation and capital letters, anaphora, and enjambment, the reader is indeed left puzzled. The original free verse poem “Good Morning, Revolution,” like many of Hughes’s poems, does not contain an internal rhyme scheme. This is intentional in order to reflect the seriousness of the message. The deceptive simplicity of the content, combined with the narrative voice speaking in African American vernacular, becomes overwrought and overcomplicated in the translation when Alejandro creates a rhyme scheme not in the original. This alters the forcefulness and directness of Hughes’s original call to his readers through a radio broadcast. As seen in Figures 1.8 and 1.9, the translation contains an unnecessary verbosity

46  Evelyn Scaramella and hyperbole to follow this invented rhyme scheme, which drastically changes the original enjambment of the poem. Moreover, Hughes plays with anaphora and punctuation such as exclamation points at key moments of the text as the anger builds to a crescendo with the final command, “Sign it” and “Say it, Revolution!” The key anaphoras in the poem stress the speaker’s desperation for a better life and equal wages: But me, I ain’t never had enough to eat. Me, I ain’t never been warm in winter. Me, I ain’t never known security— All my life, been livin’ hand to mouth Hand to mouth. Steel mills, coal mines, oil wells, gas, All the tools of production, (Great day in the morning!) Everything— And turn ’em over to the people who work. Rule and run ’em for us people who work. (Hughes, Poems 225) Alejandro does include several anaphoras in the translation, but they stress unimportant relative pronouns like “que” that bear no resemblance to the original. The chaotic enumerations in the original, that list the places and burdens of black people, are not as powerful without the imperative command to “Sign it.” Rather than provide a structural and tonal “flattening-out” (Kutzinski, Worlds 66), as in other Spanish translations of Hughes’s, Alejandro’s versions build a new structure and rhythm that clashes in tone with the source text. The fragment of a translation of Hughes’s “Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria” is equally heavy-handed and unnecessarily complicated in its vocabulary and lexical choices. Early translations of Hughes in Spain, as in South America and the Caribbean, were not without their shortcomings. But they broke new ground for an intertextuality and anti-fascist solidarity between Hughes, Alberti, and other members of the avant-garde from 1935 to 1936, through the Spanish Civil War, and beyond. Forging new paths in cross-cultural reading through translation was a difficult and complex cultural task. For that reason, Kutzinski is somewhat skeptical of the simple binaries in much of translation theory: The metaphor of the bridge, one of the key metaphors for translation, is highly suspect. The problem is that translation’s expected respect for differences among cultural codes obscures the fact that it posits, and relies on, the very separation of what it purports to bridge. As a result, an understanding of translation as an act of

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  47 bridging linguistic and cultural differences may well end up solidifying those very differences. … Translation need not, however, be confrontation; it can be, and often is, respectful, noncompetitive play. What I am after are more precise ways of talking about such mergings and more nuanced metaphors to articulate an idea and a practice of translation that is at once performative and transformative. (Worlds 2–3) The most important question again circles back to what is lost, and sometimes gained, in translation. As Kutzinski, Rogers, and Steven Lee have explained, the push to create new avenues of transnational communication in art and literature for political purpose meant that some translations erased specific signifiers of cultural identity such as race, religion, and nationality.25 This was certainly true in Spain as well, where in the 1920s and 1930s, translations dealing with African American traditions, histories, and texts did perpetuate stereotypes about black American culture. But translations of African American literature also became a productive way of creating a shared transnational cultural history and exploring political radicalism, however imperfect those efforts were at times.

Notes 1 Building on Brent Hayes Edwards’s work on translation, diaspora, and black internationalism in French-speaking contexts, recent studies (Kutzinski; Rogers; Reid-Pharr) have significantly illuminated the role that translation played in transnational modernism within the Anglophone and Hispanophone spheres in the 1930s. 2 See McCulloch’s and Miranda-Barreiro’s studies of Gómez de la Serna. 3 A photo of Gómez de la Serna in blackface is included with his “Negras confesiones” in La Gaceta Literaria. See the Hemeroteca Digital of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. 4 “Ya sabía yo que siendo negro se corría el peligro del linchamiento, pero siendo intelectual el peligro es el mismo que siendo negro. … Quizás me excedí un poco en las negruras, pero es que yo quería ser de las regiones centrales de la nigricia, del sitio más negro de los negros. … Aquella tarde comprometí más mi entrada en la Academia y mi posible viaje a Norteamérica, pues las aduanas de Nueva York no podrán olvidar que yo “fui negro una vez, así como en el caso de un amigo mío no olvidaron que había sido amamantado por un ama negra.” Translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine. 5 “cúmulo de razas y costumbres diferentes.” 6 See Frías; Anderson and Maurer; Kernan; Edwards, “Futures”; Rabassó and Rabassó; Scaramella, “Liaisons;” and Soto. 7 While Hughes published several of his translations from the Romancero gitano in 1938 in New Masses, the completed collection was not published until 1951 in the Beloit Poetry Journal (Hughes, Translations; Scaramella “Translating”). For more on the boom in anthologies and translations dedicated to the Republican cause during the war, see Nelson. 8 See Montero’s thorough critical introduction to the facsimile edition of Octubre.

48  Evelyn Scaramella 9 There is not much published on Delgado. He lived in Spain and fought in the Spanish Civil War before being exiled to New York City. See Mañá Delgado and Aznar Soler. 10 “el blanco come la manzana/ el negro espera la pepita … el blanco duerme en colchón de plumas,/ el negro en el suelo” (“Canciones,” in Montero 63–64). 11 On Gellert and African American folk songs in the political climate of the era, see Conforth. 12 “Mientras el negro está ocupado/ con la Biblia y sus oraciones, los blancos se están llevando toda esta tierra./ El blanco usa el látigo. / El blanco tira el gatillo/ pero fueron Jesús y la Biblia/ los que hicieron del negro un esclavo.” 13 For more on Latin American anthropology and race, see Birkenmaier. 14 I thank Harold Ober Associates, Inc., for permission to reprint lines from Hughes’s poetry. 15 “Trabajadores blancos del Sur:/ mineros,/ labradores,/ mecánicos/ hilanderas,/ muchachas de los talleres,/ ferroviarios,/ sirvientes,/ trabajadores de las plantaciones de Tabaco,/ campesinos pobres,/ ¡OS ENVÍO MI ­SALUDO!” (Delgado, “Carta,” in Montero 72). 16 “Yo soy un obrero negro./ Escuchadme:/ que la tierra toda sea nuestra,/ y las minas y las fábricas y las torres de las oficinas/ de Harlan, Richmond, Gastonia, Atlanta, Nueva Orleáns;/ que las plantas y los caminos y las herramientas que producen el trabajo/ sean nuestras” (Delgado, “Carta;” in Montero 72). 17 Lawrence Venuti has called the act of translation a power relationship of “domestification” which refers to the textual operations performed on the translated text that smoothly assimilate the translation into the target culture, but many times this assimilation involves erasing idioms, rearranging syntax, and taking away specific geographic and cultural references in the original (17–18). 18 “Seamos, sin embargo, tú y yo,/ Un solo brazo/ Que se levante iracundo/ Contra los viejos dogmas del pasado,/ Contra la mentira odiosa del color de la piel;/ eso que los magnates utilizan para hacerse poderosos” (Delgado, “Carta,” in Montero 72). 19 For Kutzinski, “This sort of structural and tonal flattening-out makes the translation static on the page, yielding a poem that is entirely bereft of intense racial conflict” (“Yo también” 555). 20 For more on Alberti’s stay in Mexico, see Marrast. 21 “Querido Emilio: Este es Langston Hughes, el gran poeta que tú ya conoces por la revista ‘Octubre’ y la ‘Literatura Internacional.’ Quiere ver Málaga, que tú le orientes en esa parte del sur que tan bien conoces. Nos hemos hecho grandes amigos en México. Y ahora quiere ser amigo tuyo. No te digo más. María Teresa te envía un fuerte abrazo y yo diez. Rafael” (The Langston Hughes Papers [LHP]). 22 “Él sabe que tú fuiste su traductor en nuestra revista.” 23 “Black picturesqueness?” 24 Van Vechten wrote: “At the moment I cannot recall the name of any other person whatever who, at the age of twenty-three, has enjoyed so picturesque and rambling an existence as Langston Hughes. Indeed, a complete account of his disorderly and delightfully fantastic career would make a fascinating picaresque romance which I hope this young Negro will write before so much more befalls him that he may find it difficult to capture all the salient episodes within the limits of a single volume. … I have merely sketched a primitive outline of a career as rich in adventures as a fruit-cake is full of raisins. I have already stated that I hope Langston Hughes may be persuaded to set it down on paper in the minutest detail,

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  49 for the bull-fights in Mexico, the drunken gaiety of the Grand Duc, the delicately exquisite grace of the little black girls at Burutu, the exotic languor of the Spanish women at Valencia, the barbaric jazz dances of the cabarets in New York’s own Harlem, the companionship of sailors of many races and nationalities, all have stamped an indelible impression on the highly sensitized, poetic imagination of this young Negro, an impression which has found its initial expression in the poems assembled in this book” (16–17). 5 See Lee’s analysis of Hughes’s own flawed translations of Mayakovsky: 2 Hughes too tended to romanticize Cuban and Spanish culture in his translations, and his political translations sometimes “white-washed” history as much as others did (78).

Works Cited Alberti, Rafael. La arboleda perdida: Tercero y cuarto libros, 1931–1987. ­Madrid: Alianza, 1998. Alejandro, Miguel. “Langston Hughes.” Nueva Cultura 10 (January 1936): 6–9. Anderson, Andrew A., and Christopher Maurer. Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana: Cartas y recuerdos. Barcelona: Galaxia ­Gutenberg, 2013. Aznar Soler, Manuel. República literaria y revolución (1920–1939). Seville: Editorial Nacimiento, 2010. Berman, Jessica. Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics, and Transnational Modernism. New York: Columbia UP, 2012. Birkenmaier, Anke. The Specter of Races: Latin American Anthropology and Literature between the Wars. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2016. Brihuega, Jaime. Las vanguardias artísticas en España, 1909–1936. Madrid: Ediciones ISTMO, 1981. Conforth, Bruce M. African American Folksong and American Cultural Politics: The Lawrence Gellert Story. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2013. Diego, Estrella de, and Jaime Brihuega. “Art and Politics in Spain, 1928–1936.” Art Journal 52.1 (1993): 55–60. Edwards, Brent Hayes. “Langston Hughes and the Futures of Diaspora.” ­A merican Literary History 19.3 (2007): 689–711. ———. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003. Frías, María. “Nights of Flamenco and Blues in Spain: From Sorrow Songs to Soleá and Back.” Blackening Europe: The African American Presence. Ed. Heike Raphael-Hernandez. New York: Routledge, 2004. 141–55. García Lorca, Federico. Obras completas III. Ed. Miguel García-Posada. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 1997. Gómez de la Serna, Ramón. “Jazbandismo.” La Gaceta Literaria 1 Feb. 1929: 6. ———. “Negras confesiones de Ramón.” La Gaceta Literaria 15 Feb. 1929: 1. Hughes, Langston. The Poems: 1921–1940. Ed. Arnold Rampersad. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2001. ———. The Translations: Federico García Lorca, Nicolás Guillén, and Jacques Roumain. Ed. Dellita Martin-Ogunsola. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2003. Kernan, Ryan James. “Lost and Found in Black Translation: Langston Hughes’s Translations of French- and Spanish-Language Poetry, His Hispanic and

50  Evelyn Scaramella Francophone Translators, and the Fashioning of Radical Black Subjectivities.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2007. Kutzinski, Vera M. The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2013. ———. “Yo también soy América: Langston Hughes Translated.” American Literary History 18.3 (2006): 551. Langston Hughes Papers. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Yale UP. Lee, Steven S. The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Mañá Delgado, Gemma, et al. La voz de los náufragos: La narrativa republicana entre 1936 y 1939. Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1997. Marrast, Robert. Rafael Alberti en México. Santander: Sur, 1984. McCulloch, John. Ramón Gómez de la Serna and the Spanish Modernist Novel. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. McKay, Claude. Cock-tail negro. Trans. A. Rodríguez de León and R. R. Fernández-Andés. Madrid: Editorial Ulises, 1931. ———. Home to Harlem. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1928. Miranda-Barreiro, David. Spanish New York Narratives: Modernization, Otherness and Nation. London: Legenda, 2014. Montero, Enrique. “Introducción.” Montero, ed. xi–xxxvi. Montero, Enrique, ed. Octubre: Escritores y artistas revolucionarios. Vaduz: Topos Verlag, 1977. Nelson, Cary. Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left. New York: Routledge, 2003. Rabassó, Carlos A., and Francisco Javier Rabassó. Federico García Lorca entre el flamenco, el jazz y el afrocubanismo. Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 1998. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I. New York: ­Oxford UP, 1986. Reid-Pharr, Robert F. Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-­ Humanist Critique. New York: NYU P 2016. Rogers, Gayle. Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 2016. Scaramella, Evelyn. “Literary Liaisons: Translating the Avant-Garde from Spain to Harlem.” Translation Review 81 (Spring 2011): 61–72. ———. “Translating the Spanish Civil War: Langston Hughes’s Transnational Poetics.” The Massachusetts Review 55.2 (2014): 177–88. Scott, Jonathan. Socialist Joy in the Writing of Langston Hughes. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2006. Soto, Isabel. “Crossing Over: Langston Hughes and Lorca.” A Place that is not a Place: Essays in Liminality and Text. Madrid: Gateway, 2000. ———. “‘To Hear Another Language’: Lifting the Veil between Langston Hughes and Federico García Lorca.” Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line. Ed. Ana María Manzanas. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 101–17. Sweeney, Carole. From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism, and Primitivism, 1919–1935. Westport: Praeger, 2004. Straw, Petrine Archer. Negrophilia: Avant-garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.

Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish  51 Van Vechten, Carl. “Introduction.” The Weary Blues. By Langston Hughes. New York: Knopf, 2015. 16–19. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge, 2018.

2 Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers “Las Sinsombrero” M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero

This essay examines the impact of jazz on the Spanish women writers who belonged to what is known as the Generation of 1927.1 Although their work has received limited critical attention compared to their male counterparts, these women played an active role in the cultural arena of 1920s Spain. 2 I will focus my analysis on Concha Méndez (1898– 1986), Ernestina de Champourcin (1905–1999), Lucía Sánchez Saornil (1895–1970), and Rosa Chacel (1898–1994). Méndez was one of the first Spanish artists of the 1920s who refused to wear the obligatory lady’s hat, a subversive feminist act that some of her female contemporaries in Madrid soon copied.3 I relate this disruptive performance to the image of flappers, traditionally associated with young, white, middle-class women in Britain and the United States who rebelled against gender conventions during the Jazz Age.4 However, influential black flappers like Josephine Baker, and blues singers such as Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, and “Ma” Rainey, also inspired these Spanish artists. The study begins with an overview of the emergence of jazz in the USA and how it was exported to Spain in the 1920s. The second part delves into the formation of new feminine identities and how these developed in Spain in tandem with the rise of jazz, dance halls, and black revues in Madrid. The final section analyzes the resonance of jazz in Méndez, Champourcin, Saornil, and Chacel, whose innovative literary techniques and rebellious personal attitudes connect them to vanguard movements and to the pioneering US black female vaudeville singers and dancers.

Jazz and Its Meanings: From the United States to Spain After its birth in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, jazz came to epitomize the rejection of cultural conservatism and urban modernity. Racial segregation and the lack of opportunities for black musicians at the time were important factors in the development of certain stereotypes identified with jazz. The few places where black performers could find long-term employment were the saloons, dance halls, and brothels

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  53 located in Storyville (the red-light district of New Orleans). 5 Ragtime, boogie-woogie, and stride pianists, who later became jazz musicians, were hired to entertain the clientele. This is one of the reasons why this secular music was commonly associated with sex and loose morals, and qualified by many as “the devil’s music” (Ogren 112).6 Not surprisingly, the police shut down the notorious quarter in 1917, and most of the musicians migrated north to New York and Chicago. The frivolity first attributed to jazz does not overshadow its innovative qualities, which incorporated distinct elements of African origin such as call-and-response, improvisation, syncopation, and polyphony. These formal techniques not only broke with European and classical music parameters, but also forged a black counterculture that symbolically subverted cultural and societal impositions. Alan J. Rice draws attention to this rupture by pointing out how jazz antiphony, also known as call-and-response, “breaks down the hierarchies existent in high art forms of music, where the composer and the conductor hold powerful sway over their orchestras, who are forced to play the note written by the former and communicated by the latter” (159).7 Another defining component that differs drastically from traditional European concert music arrangements is improvisation. This technique favors the creativity and individuality of each musician, who must build on solos in the heat of the moment and in a fluid environment, in order to produce a distinctive musical statement in conversation with the band. Despite its subversive origins, jazz fascinated many white New Yorkers; some were attracted to elements they considered exotic, while others were drawn to the syncopated rhythms.8 In Prohibition-Era New York, nightclub owners who were aware of the success of black shows among whites began to open establishments in Harlem where they served alcohol illegally (Collier 113–14).9 Exclusive nightclubs like the Cotton Club on Lenox Avenue, or Connie’s Inn on 135th Avenue, restricted entry to a white clientele, even though the musicians were black. However, a proliferation of small nightspots, which hosted all-night group improvisations, popularly called jam sessions, catered to blacks. The early years of jazz coincided with extensive artistic and commercial efforts to get black musical theater established on Broadway. Throughout the 1920s, jazz musicians, singers, and dancers worked together in nightclubs and cabarets and performed jointly in revues that traveled across the US and Europe. These variety shows landed in Spain almost at the same time as in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. As Jed Rasula points out, “[t]he enthusiasm with which jazz was received in Europe can be precisely correlated to the passion for primitivism fueling the avant-garde from cubism through surrealism” (14). The increased taxes levied on show businesses in France, in

54  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero order to reconstruct Paris after the end of the First World War, favored the expansion of jazz theater shows in Madrid and Barcelona. Higher taxes resulted in a shortage of artistic productions and pushed many African American musicians to try their luck in Spain, a country that maintained good diplomatic relations with France (Bardavío-Estevan and Iglesias 195). Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (1923–1930) coincided with remarkable demographic growth, industrialization, and urbanization, as well as the formation and expansion of mass culture, very much influenced by the US. Eduardo González Calleja calls this confluence of events “an enforced modernization,” explaining that the military government’s efforts to promote mass consumption were strategies designed to avoid “destabilizing fissures” among the population (280).10 Censorship was eased after 1926, and in Madrid, an average of 1,000 performances took place every month, 70% of which were musicals (Alonso 81).11 Jazz was heard and seen not only in the so-called “dancings” – later called cabarets – but also in the theaters. Musical theater was, from the 19th century onward, the most important cultural industry in Spain and a primary factor contributing to the popularity of jazz, even though it coexisted with other traditional Spanish dances like pasodoble or chotis. The spread of radio broadcasts (the first live transmission in Spain took place in 1924) and the cinema also helped make the syncopated rhythms fashionable. The term “jazz” appeared in print for the first time in January 1918, in an article by Antonio Zozaya, entitled “Notas gráficas de los Estados Unidos,” published in the newspaper Mundo gráfico. It referred to a new kind of dance that was, according to Zozaya, “somewhat more lively than foxtrot, more passionate than the five-step and, of course, much less complicated than the tango” (qtd. in García 205). Since its arrival in Spain, jazz was associated with dance: ragtime, cake-walk, foxtrot, shimmy, the Charleston, and black bottom were the most acclaimed. Ragtime and cake-walk, the forerunners of jazz dances, were popular in Madrid as early as 1880, when the Teatro Circo Price hosted a show featuring black spirituals and dances. The first accounts of foxtrot in Madrid date from July 1915 (García Martínez 17). These “black-rhythms” gradually shaped an emancipating discourse in which “frivolity, modernity and transgression intertwined, together with a new culture of the body and sex” (Alonso 79). Another general association of the word jazz was to drums or to an orchestra with wind instruments and drums, also called “jazz-band.” Iván Iglesias, in turn, reminds us that the word “jazz” was used in Spain to designate blues standards such as “St. Louis Blues” (“A contratiempo” 181), a 1925 song that I will refer to later in relation to the popularity of Bessie Smith. Two related phenomena carried black music to its peak in the Spanish capital between 1925 and 1930. The first was the arrival of black

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  55 revues from Paris, after the triumph of dancer Josephine Baker, and the subsequent blackening of Spanish musical theater; the second was the craze for the Charleston, which became a roaring success (García 205). In 1921, the pioneering musical jazz revue Shuffle Along “heralded a new era of black female presence” on stage in New York (Brown 196). It was the first black show to make it to Broadway, and an adolescent Josephine Baker was one of the chorus girls. Later, on October 2, 1925, this dancer from St. Louis, Missouri, stood on the stage of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris; her pelvic gyrations and her banana belt would captivate an enthralled audience, infatuated with her “Danse de Sauvage” (Mackrell 2).12 This famous show, called Revue Nègre, was an instant hit that catapulted Baker to stardom, while “catering to ­European sexual desires and fantasies of savage primitivism” (51–52), as Alicja Sowinska reminds us. The cast of twenty-five artists arrived in Paris from New York. Among them were jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet and choreographer Louis Douglas, who would become one of the most influential figures of the pre-Spanish Civil War jazz scene, as he traveled all over the country for several years, leading revues such as the Chocolate Kiddies, which was accompanied by the Sam Wooding jazz orchestra, the first major jazz ensemble to play in Spain in 1926 (García 207). Baker finally made her Madrid debut on February 10, 1930, at the Gran Teatro Metropolitano. The Spanish audience had had an opportunity to see her earlier, on screen, in the French film La sirène des tropiques (1927), which premiered in 1928. The craze for “Josefina Baker,” or “La Baker” as she was introduced in magazines and newspapers, would influence national variety shows that presented other female dancers as her “rivals” or “imitators” (Bardavío-Estevan and Iglesias 204). In 1926, Sevillian cabaret star Reyes Castillo (nicknamed the Yankee) brought to Spain the banana belt Charleston dance that Josephine Baker had popularized in Paris: “From that moment the black orchestras multiplied and the ­Charleston and its two variants (black-bottom and shimmy) became popular” (Alonso 84) (Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1  A  dvertisement for “La Revista Negra” in La Voz, April 5, 1929. Courtesy of Biblioteca Nacional de España.

56  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero

Modern Women, Flappers, and “Sinsombrero” The nascent 1920s image of the urban modern woman – also called flapper or garçonne – avoided the sentimental and the domestic, and was therefore alluring to the avant-garde female artists “committed to the playful self-referentiality of art” (Kirkpatrick, Mujer 26).13 The aim of these artists was, above all, to escape the limitations that circumscribed femininity and break with social taboos in order to claim intellectual and public social spaces, such as the streets and cafes, that had long been dominated by men. The cultural representation of the modern woman was visible in fashion, with bobbed hair and wearing looser and shorter dresses or skirts that allowed them to play sports, drive cars, and dance: “When flappers danced the Charleston, a provocative dance perfected by the black community in Harlem and then performed by young women around the nation, they rouged those exposed knees” (Boyer Sargent 2). In Spain, cinema, a new modern invention, as well as magazines like Blanco y Negro offered visual images of these women. Their representations of the flapper had a noticeable impact in Madrid and Barcelona: “Women partook of leisure as a symbol of a desire to partake of public activity and modernity. Spanish women positioned themselves publicly and culturally through new practices at the heart of popular culture” (Alonso 82). Social and legal changes also enhanced women’s rights in Spain: for example, after 1910, women had access to higher education.14 According to Carol Dyhouse, the word flapper had acquired numerous associations by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th: it suggested a young bird flapping its wings, learning to fly; tomboyishness; liveliness and spirit with suggestions of movement, dance, jazz, and frivolity. Some scholars also point out that by the end of the 19th century, in Britain, it had become slang for a young prostitute. The first time the word appeared in Spain was in 1919, when London journalist Tom Thumb’s chronicle entitled “Boys and Flappers” was published in the newspaper La Época. It compared the international flappers to the Spanish “tobilleras”: “the enchanting flappers or tobilleras as they are called in Spain, are free and independent women” (qtd. in Faulín ­Hidalgo 145). Luis Antonio de Villena traces the use of the colloquial word “tobillera” back to 1910, when some female teenagers daringly started hiking their skirts above the mandatory ankle-length (ankles are “tobillos” in Spanish). The newspaper La Libertad also printed a poem by Pablo Cases called “Lo que ve la luna” (“What the Moon Sees,” 1923), in which the brazen “tobillera” sunbathes half-naked in Biarritz and Busot (Faulín Hidalgo 146). This poem appeared in the section “Solos de Jazz Band,” further tying the erotized “tobilleras” to jazz. Black women also influenced the cultural and social construction of the flappers. Hence, Baker was a figure of the “ultra-modern, born and bred far away from ‘home’; she was a symbol of modern triumphs”

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  57 (Brown  256). Although in her early shows “the savage” and “the ­primitive” stand out, a progressive transformation of her public persona took place in the mid-1920s: “from the exotic savage to the sophisticated and liberated woman … But the banana skirt from the Folies Bergère— already a relic—would continue to overshadow Baker’s essential image for years to come and to mark the thin line between the flapper and the feline” (Jules-Rosette 147). However, there was also a parodic agency on stage that challenged stereotyped colonial fantasies of her body and racial essentialism through exaggeration and mocking, as she once claimed: “Since I personified the savage on the stage, I tried to be as civilized as possible in daily life” (qtd. in Borshuk 130). Baker’s dancing is remembered less for its choreographic precision than for its overwhelming energy. Its almost frenetic motion invoked “the specter of the restless modern engine” (Anlin Cheng 123). The unnamed Spanish journalist who reviewed Baker’s first show at the Gran Teatro Metropolitano in Madrid aptly called her “a representative postwar figure,” yet also included misleading and racist value judgments: “In her, the most refined snobbism of the rancid civilization from the Old World goes perfectly hand in hand with the naïve and carefree primitivism of other races, free from the oppression of history” (“Presentación” 5).15 Juan Ferragut emphasized that Baker signifies “the triumph of modernity,” because she is “the symbol of the new art … and the new idol of today’s Europe … jazz-band, strident sounds, a loose-limbed savagery. Josephine Baker is quite the symbol” (22).16 Others considered that Baker epitomized the “invasion of blackness”: “we have suffered the black-bottom, the shimmy and the Charleston; we have suffered the jazz-band and the singing of the saw; we have suffered the black invasion and the tyranny of Josefina Baker” (Blay 21).17 “Baker is not Baker, she is the black race” (7), declared A. Nuñez Alonso.18 Her shiny black hair and coffee-colored skin, the targets of so much abuse in the US, were harnessed to the marketing of French and ­Spanish beauty products: hair pomade and dye, soap, and walnut oil for faux summer tans. This commodification of the body and the interplay between a gendered and racialized self, together with the celebration of avant-garde trends, lie at the heart of a complex modernity. To some of the young women who watched her dance, Baker offered the possibility of their own transformation, in a decade that held out the promise of freedom. Spanish journalists called her “Reina negra” [Black Queen], “Estrella negra” [Black Star], “Venus negra” [Black Venus], “Eva de ébano” [Ebony Eve], or even “Dueña de París” [Owner of Paris] (Linares, “Por los teatros” 44). These designations created empowering images for other women, but at the same time objectified the black dancer’s body: “And when one is born black and with Josephine Baker’s waist, a woman can declare: ‘The world is mine’” (Insúa 14).19 (Figure 2.2.)

58  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero

Figure 2.2  A rticle on Josephine Baker in Nuevo Mundo, November 5, 1926. Courtesy of BNE.

In his 1927 article in Nuevo Mundo, Antonio de Linares echoed the publication of Baker’s memoirs in French, when she was twenty-one years old, calling her the “Queen of Europe” (“Las ‘Memorias’” 28). The journalist also recounts the first two things that Baker did for a fresh start once back in the US: she cut her hair short and left her

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  59

Figure 2.3  A  rticle on Josephine Baker in Nuevo Mundo, August 12, 1927. Courtesy of BNE.

family, two features that bring to mind the style of emancipated flappers. The caption for Paul Colin’s drawings (Figure 2.3) refers to the moment when Baker landed in Paris and “conquered the world,” including a description of her belongings:20 “when Miss Baker arrived in Paris, she just brought her camera, her binoculars and her Charleston” (Linares,

60  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero “Las ‘Memorias’” 28–29). 21 Linares ends his account with unexpected praise, not only for her talent but also for her intelligence and for having surpassed the boundaries of traditional femininity: Through her “Memoirs,” the black European queen who, as she puts it, blackens herself, coinciding with the moment in which the wellknown Bernelot Moens scientifically demonstrates that there are no inferior species in the human race, Josephine Baker corroborates the celebrated anthropologist’s affirmation, with an intelligence envied by white “stars” and with a sincerity that is completely unknown to them. To the German intellectuals, she is the incarnation of primitivism; to the French she is the Amazon of superrealism. In fact, she is simply a woman who has liberated herself from the affectations, primping and lies built around femininity throughout the centuries…. (Linares, “Las ‘Memorias’” 29)22 Other precursors of female independence and mobility were blues singers and vaudeville artists Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, and Ma Rainey. 23 In 1917, Waters composed, sang, and danced the “Shimme-sha-wabble” and boosted the shimmy dance, which would later become the rage in Spain. With her distinctive sense of humor and voice, Ma Rainey, who composed 70% of her singing repertoire, was the first artist to include black actors in her vaudeville shows. Thanks to her growing fame, the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) hired her in 1924 to go on tour to the major southern cities in the US. 24 Bessie Smith, “The Empress of the Blues,” was the first iconic black star in the 1920s US and the first black woman to star in a “talkie” or sound film. 25 Her physical presence was a crucial aspect of her power; the visual display of flapper dresses, furs, beaded necklaces, and “the sumptuous and desirable aspects of her body reclaimed female sexuality from being an objectification of male desire to a representation of female desire” (Carby 479). These women created a musical repertoire that expressed a feminist consciousness, and they became cultural symbols for raising their voices against social injustices, portraying women that asserted their sexuality and transcended the limits of social conventions. 26 For Spanish intellectuals, Baker and the black vaudeville stars created models of behavior that subverted conventional female roles. First, Concha Méndez, Ernestina de Champourcin, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, and Rosa Chacel claimed their place in the public sphere; second, they transformed traditional fashion codes following the flapper’s vogue; third, they incorporated jazz, music typically associated with male writers, into their literature. In a memoir dictated to her granddaughter, Méndez recalls that when she was young it was fashionable to dance jazz: “we went out dancing four times a week and the other days to the movies and to the Retiro Park”

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  61 (Ulacia Altolaguirre 39).27 Méndez adds that she learned the Charleston from a North American family summering in San Sebastian, and on her return to Madrid, “I danced the Charleston, a dance that I popularized in Madrid hotels” (Ulacia Altolaguirre 56).28 However, bars were off-limits for women, and Méndez also recounts how with painter Maruja Mallo, “we pressed our faces against the window, in protest, to see what was going on inside” (Ulacia Altolaguirre 51).29 Susan Kirkpatrick associates the legitimate conquest of public spaces by female artists with the modern flâneur, or flâneuses in the case of women, and the difficulties they encountered as opposed to their male counterparts (Mujer 227–28).30 Another event that garnered public visibility for women was the inauguration of the Lyceum Club, a cultural institution founded in 1926 by María Maetzu, director of the famed Residencia de señoritas, a residence hall for women. The Lyceum was organized into six different divisions that offered thematic activities and conferences: social issues, music, arts and industry, literature, sciences, and international affairs; later, Lyceum members added a seventh, the “Hispanic-American” section. 31 Méndez and Champourcin figured as two of the 500 members the institution attracted until dictator Francisco Franco’s regime shut it down in 1939. Emulating similar European and US institutions for women, the Lyceum Club was a place where educated women could meet, share their art, and organize sessions to discuss the lack of women’s civil and legal rights. It was “the first feminist association in Spain,” and its members were considered “criminals,” “eccentric,” “atheist,” and “unstable” (Mangini, “El Lyceum Club” 126). In fact, the renowned intellectual Jacinto Benavente claimed that he would not deliver a conference for “silly, crazy women” (Mangini, Las modernas 91).32 Another institution in Madrid that Méndez and Chacel joined was the famed Cineclub Español; according to Kirkpatrick, these women writers “were actively engaged with cinema as spectators, commentators and creators” (“Cinema” 68).33 Méndez even wrote a movie script titled Historia de un taxi (1927), and the essay “El cinema en España,” published in La Gaceta Literaria in 1928. No doubt the two women would have attended the second gathering of the Cine-club, at which Ramón Gómez de la Serna discussed the movie The Jazz Singer wearing blackface. His lecture “Jazbandismo,” first published in La Gaceta Literaria in 1929 and later included in his manifesto Ismos (1931), would have a tremendous impact on the Generation of 1927. Gómez de la Serna connects jazz with the values of modern life: What jazz knows how to do best is to adorn a melody with trills, arpeggios, variations, cadences and everything that the infrequency of rhythm allows and all that fills life with racket, with absurdity, with joy, with banality, with incoherence, with cabarets, mixing music and life like two seas merging in a wide strait. (“Jazbandismo” 6)34

62  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero He also associates the syncopated rhythms with social transgression: “Play jazz at a meeting of top hats and jazz will blow all the hats off” (“Jazbandismo. Continuación” 6).35 The image of jazz blowing away the hats can be connected to the performance Méndez refers to in her memoir. Together with painters Mallo and Margarita Manso, they were the first to refuse to wear a hat out in public, as was expected of respectable women: “we were walking down Castellana Street, all very well-dressed but without a hat” (Ulacia Altolaguirre 48).36 Mallo is more explicit about the scandal that this subversive act ignited among passers-by and remembers that poet Lorca and painter Salvador Dalí joined them in their first spontaneous “hat-less” appearance downtown at the Puerta del Sol: “People thought that we were totally immoral, they looked at us as if we wore no clothes, and we were almost attacked on the street” (qtd. in Kirkpatrick, Mujer 228). Hence, they were not only transgressing the limits of gender but also of social class. Tània Balló situates the date of this incident between 1923 and 1925. Later, in 1930, Gómez de la Serna would outline in the newspaper El Sol the basis of “sinsombrerismo,” a movement that illustrated modern tendencies and symbolized “the end of an epoch, as it had happened earlier when throwing away the white wigs” (“En, por, sin” 1).37 The national press would cover this defiant movement extensively yet tie it only to intellectual men like de la Serna and young male university students, who adopted this tendency as a gesture of rebellion throughout the 1930s.

The Resonance of Jazz in the Writings of Concha Méndez, Ernestina de Champourcin, Luisa Sánchez Saornil, and Rosa Chacel Méndez or “the muse with biceps” (Quance 109) – a designation that La Gaceta Literaria employed to present her book of poems Inquietudes (1926), highlighting her position as a modern woman – was a professional swimmer and gymnast, an active member of the Lyceum Club and Cineclub Español and the only woman of her generation involved in editorial work. Like a modern flapper, she was a regular at dances and jazz performances in cafes and hotels; such activities certainly influenced her early poetry. In “Jazz-Band” (1926), she describes the urban music, highlighting the “delirious chords,” “the exotic murmurs,” and the “cry of metals.” Jazz is also related to sex, freedom, alcohol, and the vibrant modern city: “Erotisms. / Exuberant liquors. / Children’s games … Jazz-band. ­Skyscrapers.”38 In “Cinelandesco” (1928), sound and image are fused, echoing Gómez de la Serna’s earlier “Jazbandismo”: “the cry of virgin horns, / of dislocated words; / Of street violins / Among the rhythm of steps; / (uncertain tunes of jazz-band / these strangled voices)” (Poemas 96–97).39 Méndez explicitly dedicates her poem “Dancing” (1930) to Chacel and to San Juan de la Luz, the northern sea town where she wrote it.

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  63 This time, jazz is linked to the bourgeoisie that spent their summers on the fashionable beaches of San Sebastian. The terraces, casinos, and night parties host the popular “dancings” (a designation used in ­Spanish): “The night, dressed in a tailcoat / goes to play roulette, / A star and a comet / dance fox, winners” (Poemas 168).40 In these verses, surrealism goes hand in hand with jazz. When she published her poetry collection Canciones de mar y tierra (1930), which included this poem, Méndez had just returned from Buenos Aires and London, where she had worked as a Spanish teacher and delivered conferences. Traveling alone was highly unusual for Spanish women in the 1920s and 1930s; for Méndez, these trips represented a highly desired escape (Mangini, Las modernas 173). Champourcin also captures the vitality of jazz in “Atardecer” (“Twilight”), published in La Gaceta Literaria in 1927. The poem contrasts a decadent older generation with a vibrant young modernity, represented by speed and sound: Silent neighborhood, swamped and sad; a grimy old man smokes the butt of the grey evening with his broken pipe. Butterfly girls, race in their Citroen to the dance At the Ritz.41 The phrase “butterfly girls” evokes the emancipated flapper, driving to the dance hall. The poem ends with a third stanza that offers contrasting images: the old man, “knitting the fog” with the smoke of his pipe, and the cars, chasing a “jazz that devours its own clamor.”42 The sound of music and the blares of automobiles break the silence and symbolically render the voice of the young women and of the poet herself, who was twenty-two years old when the poem was published. As the daughter of a prosperous family from Madrid, Champourcin was also rebelling against a fate of silence and discretion.43 Throughout her career, her poetic voice expresses the tension between the traditional ideal of femininity, with its main aspiration of finding romantic love, and the figure of a rebellious, independent, modern self (Dougherty 654). This contradiction is also present in a letter Champourcin addressed to her friend, the writer Carmen Conde, in 1928. In it, the poet refers to jazz in the following terms: “Because of stating ‘my truth,’ I have earned a reputation of being nuts around here. I dance to an inner music that nobody hears. How would they, if all they listen to is that incessant jazz band of vulgarity, which deafens them?” (Fernández Urtasun 154).44 “Danza en tres tiempos” [Dance in Three Beats] (1928) was first published, untitled, in La Gaceta Literaria and then in Champourcin’s collection Cántico inútil (1936). Dance is the metaphor that pervades the poem,

64  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero which is divided into three sections. The opening verse sets the avantgarde tone: “I dance red and without me!” In the meantime, “—the music of time / spins slightly, hesitantly / beneath my inebriated step” (Cántico 35).45 The second section expands on the contradictory images that communicate the tensions Champourcin was experiencing as a woman breaking with strict social codes: “I dance without moving, / standing outside of myself. / Dizzying stillness” (35).46 The poem concludes with a longer third section, fragmented in two parts, each beginning with the same verse: “I dance grey and tired.”47 Repetition is a feature of jazz and black music in general that establishes the rhythmic cadences of the music. The last verse alludes to the everlasting quality of the rhythm: “Outside of myself-now, forever-dances the eternal beat” (36).48 Another poet of their generation who identified jazz with the vanguard and experimentation was Sánchez Saornil, the only woman who managed to publish in the renowned literary magazine Ultra, using the masculine pseudonym Luciano de San-Saor.49 In 1936, together with Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch, she founded the feminist anarchist movement and magazine Mujeres libres (Fontanillas Borrás and Martínez Muñoz). “Espectáculo” [Spectacle] (1921), one of her poems that appeared in the Ultraist journal, is also filled with conflicting and paradoxical images, such as “muted bells” or “a fantastic ballet / dressed in mourning.” Like Champourcin’s “Danza en tres tiempos,” there is a playful use of punctuation, in tune with jazz: The urban night orchestrates its Jazz Band The cars unroll their symphonic ribbons in the avenues to tie up our feet. The bar sings a song water and crystal. 50 In addition to poetry, the women of the Generation of 1927 also wrote prose that was heavily influenced by jazz. Chacel published in the influential Revista de Occidente “Cocteau-Orfeo” (1928), a review of an adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus (1926) that the theater company Caracol had staged in Madrid. In her description, she uses complementary and, at times, divergent adjectives that portray the complexity of the piece in a syncopated prose: The Negroid rhythm of the tragedy Orpheus is like a piece of ivory, primitive and modern, vital, sensual, distant and intimate. Two irregular rhythms harmoniously and erotically intertwine, embracing and repelling one another, tripping over the syncope, oh what a discovery! Time encapsulated. (222)51

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  65 She also emphasizes the beauty of the dancing bodies and how the adaptation successfully depicted the “rhythm of humanity: yearning, dissatisfaction” and the “rhythm of the divine: temptation, promise, bliss” (222).52 This “harmony of psychic resonances” inflames the audience through sensuous imagery that Chacel invokes with lyricism: “we start to feel a burning sensation” (222). 53 In a later essay, Saturnal (1972), Chacel grapples with the nature of love’s effect on the psyche, the body, and the development of human relations, and also nostalgically highlights “the erotic freedom” that prevailed between the First and Second World Wars (Mangini, “Woman” 133). Chacel argues that jazz is “an aphrodisiac, it appeals to the senses” (145).54 It is “the most perfect expression” of the excitement and restlessness that followed the First World War, “and its most efficient vehicle” (146). In addition, “it challenges the Old norms, which extremely restricted pleasure but did so little to win over badness” (146). Jazz is identified with Eros, vitality, and happiness, which run up against the assembly line of modern industrial cities: the call for Eros is ever more desperate, because it is awful to contribute to the anthill, but we have to, it is inevitable. What we long for—while we march in line, bearing our burden—, is to burn for just a moment, to the masturbating beat of revved-up music, in close proximity to the races whose sexual potency has not withered away due to the exercise of reason, drunk on the fumes of alcohol. (150)55 In addition, the author claims that, “after the war of 1914, when the jazz craze took off,” the influence of this music and “its action” was ever-growing, “in crescendo … after so much suffering” (146). Saturnal was written between 1959 and 1960, when Chacel lived in New York, funded by a Guggenheim fellowship. She had the historical perspective and the cosmopolitan experience of a modern traveler to reflect on her 1920s generation living in Spain.56 The polyphony of voices and settings reconstructed here brought to the fore the multifaceted uses of jazz in Spain during the 1920s and 1930s, when the processes of modernization gained momentum. Jazz was the soundtrack of modernity, and Josephine Baker epitomized the complexities of the period, embodying the public’s fascination with her performances and the commodification of her blackness. Spain, like other European countries, was “blackened” during those decades through the influence of black rhythms and dances, which not only galvanized Madrid as a city, in its streets, dance halls, and cinemas, but also in its cultural production, very much fostered by the Spanish “flappers” Concha Méndez, E ­ rnestina de Champourcin, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, and Rosa Chacel. They improvised non-traditional roles for women, joining the groundbreaking ­Lyceum Club or the Cineclub and, of course, dancing and listening to jazz.

66  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero

Notes 1 It refers to a group of Spanish writers, mostly poets, who rose to prominence in the late 1920s. Among the most renowned members were Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre, and Dámaso Alonso. 2 I would like to thank Professor Francie Cate-Arries for her helpful editing. The recent publication of Tània Balló’s Las Sinsombrero (2016), a book that showcases the voices of ten women who belonged to this groundbreaking generation of artists, has inspired this study. Balló devotes a chapter to each of the following women: Margarita Manso, Marga Gil Roëset, Concha Méndez, Maruja Mallo, Ángeles Santos, María Zambrano, María Teresa León, Rosa Chacel, Ernestina de Champourcin, and Josefina de la Torre. 3 See Méndez’s testimony in the documentary Las Sinsombrero (2014). 4 It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who, in his essay “Echoes of the Jazz Age” (1931), first employed the term “Jazz Age” to define the “gay elements of society” (5) that, from his standpoint, pervaded the 1920s festive New York of the wealthy (white) elite. 5 One of the most renowned black musicians from New Orleans was pianist and composer Scott Joplin who, by the end of the 19th century, combined his knowledge of European classical music with African shouts, spirituals, and blues to create syncopated dance music for the piano called ragtime. 6 See Merriam and Garner for an in-depth study of the etymological origin of the word jazz. 7 Mervyn Cooke defines antiphony as the spatial contrast between groups of instruments with a different timber: wind-metal instruments versus windwood instruments (161). 8 Syncopation is the accentuation of normally unaccented beats. 9 Prohibition, also known as dry era, was a nationwide constitutional ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the US from 1920 to 1933 under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment. 10 González Calleja’s detailed historical analysis of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship devotes a chapter to the unprecedented growth of the urban population to 2.3 million people and the emergence of a new leisure culture (259–94). 11 See also Vilches de Frutos and Dougherty on theater productions in 1920s Madrid. 12 For an in-depth analysis of the discursive construction of Baker’s sexualized and racialized image, see Jules-Rosette, Sowinska, Dayal, and Chapter 3 in this volume. 13 All translations are mine. 14 See Ramos Palomo for the impact of education on the emergence of feminism, and Gómez Blesa for the inception of feminism in Spain. 15 “Baker es además una figura representativa de la posguerra. En ella se dan la mano en cadena sin fin el más refinado snobismo de la rancia civilización del viejo mundo con el primitivismo ingenuo y despreocupado de otras razas libres del yugo que la historia impuso.” 16 “El triunfo moderno … El nuevo arte …El nuevo ídolo de la Europa de hoy … jazz-band, estridencia, descoyuntamiento, salvajismo. Josefina Baker es todo un símbolo.” 17 “Hemos padecido el black-bottom, el shimmy y el chárleston; hemos padecido el jazz-band y el canto de la sierra; hemos padecido la invasión negra y la tiranía de Josefina Baker.” 18 “La Baker no es La Baker, es la raza negra.”

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  67 19 “Y cuando se nace negra y con la cintura de Josefina Baker, una mujer puede exclamar: ‘El mundo es mío.’” 20 In 1927, French artist Paul Colin created Le tumulte noir, a portfolio of hand-colored lithographs. 21 “Miss Baker al llegar a París, trayendo consigo su máquina fotográfica, sus prismáticos y el ‘chárleston.’” 22 “Tal como nos parece a través de sus ‘Memorias,’ la reina negra de Europa que, como ella dice, se ennegrece, en este momento, en que el ilustre Bernelot Moens demuestra científicamente que no existen, en la especie humana, razas inferiores, Josefina Baker viene a corroborar la afirmación del gran antropólogo, dando muestras de una inteligencia que para sí quisieran las ‘estrellas’ blancas, y de una sinceridad que les es completamente desconocida. Baker es la encarnación del primitivismo; para los franceses la amazona del superrealismo. Es sencillamente una mujer liberada de los amaneramientos, de los afeites, de las mentiras tejidas en torno a la feminidad, a través de siglos….” 23 Josep Pedro points out that the Spanish magazine Ritmo y Melodía dedicated sections to classic blues vocalists like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey, and Ethel Waters. 24 The T.O.B.A. circuit was a vaudeville tour aimed at black audiences and performers, popularly known as “Tough on Black Asses” due to the abusive labor conditions and racist white owners. For more information on the vaudeville circuits, see Abbot and Seroff. 25 St. Louis Blues (1929) was a two-reel short film that celebrated W.C. Handy’s 1925 blues composition of the same name, popularized by Bessie Smith. The international success of this blues classic, which became one of the most recorded songs in the history of music, might be due to its 16-bar “Spanish tinge” Habanero interlude. See Clark. 26 For more information on 1920s blues women, vaudeville, and emancipation, see Davis and Harrison. For their impact on literature, see Cobo Piñero. 27 “Cuatro veces por semana íbamos a bailar y los demás días al cine y al Retiro.” 28 “Volví a bailar el Charleston, que yo puse de moda en los hoteles de Madrid.” 29 “nosotras, para protestar, nos pegábamos en la ventana para ver lo que pasaba dentro.” 30 Kakie Urch analyzes the definitions of the 1920s flâneur, taking into account the politics of gender and cultural construction. If the French word flâneur is commonly associated with a male dandy, a flâneuse is connected with a “bad girl.” 31 On September 28, 2016, the Madrid City Council agreed to install a plaque commemorating the 90th anniversary of this pioneering institution on Calle de las Siete Chimeneas. 32 “A tontas y a locas” in the original. 33 A group of Spanish intellectuals and filmmakers like Buñuel founded the Cineclub on December 23, 1928, and held twenty-one film screenings until May 1931, each of which was preceded by an introductory presentation. The following names appeared on the initial list of members: Chacel, Alberti, Gómez de la Serna, Aleixandre, Mallo, and Méndez (Gubern 260–75). 34 “La sabiduría principal del jazz es la de adornar una melodía con trinos, arpegios, trémolos, variaciones, cadenzas, todo a lo que da tiempo la infrecuencia del ritmo, todo lo que llena la vida de chacota, de absurdo, de jolgorio, de banalidad, de incoherencia, de cabareterismo, mezclándose música y vida como dos mares a través de anchísimo estrecho.”

68  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero 35 “Tocad jazz en una reunión de sombreros de copa y el jazz soplará todos los sombreros.” 36 “Íbamos muy bien vestidas, pero sin sombrero, a caminar por el Paseo de la Castellana.” 37 “El sinsombrerismo es el final de una época, como lo fue de otra el quitarse las pelucas blancas.” In 1932, Gómez de la Serna published in Revista de Occidente “Las aventuras de un sinsombrerista,” an extended essay, in the form of a short story, about this defiant performance. 38 “Erotismos / Licores rebosantes / Juegos de niños / Acordes delirantes / Jazzband. Rascacielos.” 39 “Clamor de bocinas vírgenes, / De palabras dislocadas; / De violines callejeros / Entre un ritmo de pisadas; / (rumor de jazz-band incierto / estas voces recortadas).” 40 “Vestida de frac, la noche / va a jugar a la ruleta. / El fox bailan, campeones, / una estrella y un cometa.” 41 Barrio silencioso, encharcado y triste; / un vejete sucio / fuma la colilla de la tarde gris / con su pipa rota. / Niñas mariposas, vuelan en Citroen al baile / del Ritz.” 42 “que teje la niebla … un jazz que devora su propia estridencia.” 43 She was educated at home, learned French and English, and had access to her father’s well-stocked library. Champourcin’s relentless insistence led her family to eventually accept her active role in Madrid’s cultural life (Dougherty 653). Even though she was the only woman, along with Josefina de la Torre, who was included in Gerardo Diego’s landmark anthology of 1934, she has been marginalized from the official Spanish canon (Bellver 443). 4 4 “Por decir ‘mi verdad’ siempre a todos he ganado la fama de chiflada que por aquí tengo. Bailo al son de una música interior que nadie oye. ¿Cómo van a oírla también si no cesa nunca ese jazz-band de la vulgaridad, aturdiéndolos?” 45 “¡Danzo roja y sin mí!” “La música del tiempo / gira leve y pausada / bajo mi planta ebria” 46 “Danzo inmóvil, / parada al margen de mí misma. / Quietud vertiginosa” 47 “¡Danzo gris y cansada!” 48 “Fuera de mí-ya siempre-danza el compás eterno.” 49 Ultraism was imported from Paris and combined Dadaist, Futurist, and Creationist elements. The 1919 Ultraist manifesto was published in the journal Cervantes (Madrid) by a group of male poets, whose aim was to go beyond the 19th century literary conventions. 50 La noche ciudadana / orquesta su Jazz Band / Los autos desenrollan / sus cintas sinfónicas por las avenidas / atándonos los pies.” 51 “Negroide el ritmo de la tragedia Orfeo como puede serlo un marfil primigenio y moderno, vital, sensual, remoto, íntimo. Se entrelazan armónica, eróticamente dos ritmos entrecortados acogiéndose, repeliéndose al encontrarse, tropezando en la síncopa, ¡oh hallazgo! Comprimido de tiempo.” 52 “Ritmo humanidad: anhelo, insatisfacción. Ritmo divinidad: tentación, promesa, gozo.” 53 “Armonías de resonancias psíquicas”; “Y se empieza a sentir una inquietante quemazón.” 54 Mangini argues that Chacel and Virginia Woolf were the only European women who managed to successfully write and publish philosophical essays (Las modernas 156). 55 “la llamada al eros es cada día más desesperada, porque es penosísimo tener que contribuir al hormiguero, pero hay que contribuir, es inevitable. Y lo que se anhela—mientras se va en la larga procesión, con la carga que a cada

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  69 uno le corresponde—es arder un momento, por medio de la masturbación de cualquier música agitada, por la proximidad de las razas que no marchitaron todavía su potencia sexual con el ejercicio de la razón, por el efecto de cualquier alcohol.” 56 After the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Chacel fled to Paris in 1937, then to Greece and Geneva. She settled in Buenos Aires in 1940, frequently visiting Rio de Janeiro, where her son and husband resided.

Works Cited Abbot, Lynn, and Doug Seroff. Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows,“Coon Songs,” and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2007. Alonso, Celsa. “Aphrodite’s Necklace Was Not Only a Joke: Jazz, Parody and Feminism in Spanish Musical Theater (1900–1939).” Made in Spain. Studies in Popular Music. Eds. Silvia Martínez and Héctor Fouce. New York: Routledge, 2013. 78–89. Anlin Cheng, Anne. Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Balló, Tània. Las Sinsombrero. Madrid: Espasa, 2016. Bardavío-Estevan, Susana, and Iván Iglesias. “Jazz y vanguardia literaria en la España de los años veinte: un análisis pragmático-cultural.” Studi Ispanici 37 (2012): 193–210. Bellver, Catherine. “Ernestina de Champourcin: A Poet and Her Poetics.” Hispanic Review 69.4 (2001): 443–65. Blay, Max. “‘Five-O’Clock Cocktail.’ Borrachera elegante.” Nuevo Mundo 3 (May 1929): 20–21. Borshuk, Michael. “An Intelligence of the Body. Disruptive Parody through Dance in the Early Performances of Josephine Baker.” The Josephine Baker Critical Reader: Selected Writings on the Entertainer and Activist. Eds. Mae Henderson and Charlene Regester. Jefferson: McFarland, 2017. 128–40. Boyer Sargent, Kelly. Flappers: A Guide to an American Subculture. Santa ­Barbara: Greenwood, 2010. Brown, Jayna. Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Carby, Hazel V. “‘It Jus Be’s Dat Way Sometime’: The Sexual Politics of Women’s Blues.” O’Meally, 469–82. Clark, John. Experiencing Bessie Smith: A Listener’s Companion. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Cobo Piñero, María Rocío. Sonidos de la diáspora. Blues y jazz en Toni ­Morrison, Alice Walker y Gail Jones. Sevilla: Arcibel, 2015. Collier, James L. The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History. London: ­Papermac, 1981. Cooke, Mervyn. Jazz. Trans. Ferrán Esteve. Barcelona: Destino, 2000. Chacel, Rosa. “Cocteau-Orfeo.” La recepción de lo nuevo: antología de la Revista de Occidente (1923–1936). Revista de Occidente 146–147 (1993): 222–24. ———. Saturnal. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1972. Champourcin, Ernestina de. “Atardecer.” La Gaceta Literaria 7 (1927): 3.

70  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero ———. Cántico inútil. Madrid: Aguilar, 1936. Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. Dayal, Samir. “Blackness as Symptom: Josephine Baker and European Identity.” Raphael-Hernández, 35–52. Dougherty, Dru. “Una poética del zigzagueo: Ernestina de Champourcin (1926–1936).” Hispania 92.4 (2009): 653–63. Dyhouse, Carol. Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women. London: Zed Books, 2013. Faulín Hidalgo, Ignacio. ¡¡Bienvenido Mr. USA!! La música norteamericana en España antes del rock and roll (1865–1955). Lleida: Milenio, 2015. Fernández Urtasun, Rosa, ed. Ernestina de Champourcin, Carmen Conde. Epistolario (1927–1995). Madrid: Castalia, 2007. Ferragut, Juan. “El ídolo negro del triunfo, de la suntuosidad y del escándalo.” Nuevo Mundo 27 Apr. 1928: 21–22. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Echoes of the Jazz Age.” The Jazz Age. 1945. New York: New Directions, 1996. 1–15. Fontanillas Borrás, Antonia, and Pau Martínez Muñoz. Lucía Sánchez Saornil: Poeta, periodista y fundadora de mujeres libres. Madrid: La mala-testa, 2014. García, Jorge. “The Trail Blazed by Jazz in Spain.” El ruido alegre. Jazz en la BNE. Madrid: BNE, 2012. 201–38. García Martínez, José María. Del fox-trot al jazz flamenco. El jazz en España 1919–1996. Madrid: Alianza, 1996. Gómez Blesa, Mercedes. Modernas y vanguardistas. Mujer y democracia en la II República. Madrid: Laberinto, 2009. Gómez de la Serna, Ramón. “En, por, sin, sobre el sinsombrerismo.” El Sol 24 Aug. 1930: 1. ———. Ismos. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1931. 178–97. ———. “Jazbandismo. Continuación de la conferencia de Ramón Gómez de la Serna en el Cineclub.” La Gaceta literaria 52 (1929): 6. ———. “Jazbandismo.” La Gaceta literaria 1 Feb. 1929: 6. ———. “Las aventuras de un sinsombrerista.” Revista de Occidente 105 (1932): 282–307. González Calleja, Eduardo. La España de Primo de Rivera. La modernización autoritaria 1923–1930. Madrid: Alianza, 2005. Gubern, Ramón. Proyector de luna: la generación del 27 y el cine. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1999. Harrison, Daphne Duval. Black Pearls: Queens of the 1920s. 1988. New York: Rutgers UP, 2000. Iglesias, Iván. “A contratiempo: Una breve historia del jazz en España.” Jazz en español. Derivas hispanoamericanas. Ed. Julián Ruesga Bono. Valencia: Arte/facto, 2015. 179–215. Insúa, Alberto. “Una voz, un gesto, un acto.” Estampa 3 Jan. 1928: 14. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2007. Kirkpatrick, Susan. “Cinema, Modernity and the Women of ’27.” Anales de la literatura contemporánea 35.1 (2010): 63–68.

Jazz and the 1920s Spanish Flappers  71 ———. Mujer, modernismo y vanguardia en España (1898–1931). Madrid: Cátedra, 2003. Linares, Antonio de. “Las ‘Memorias’ de Josefina Baker.” Nuevo Mundo 12 Aug. 1927: 28–29. ———. “Por los teatros de París.” Nuevo Mundo 25 Mar. 1927: 44. Mackrell, Judith. Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Mangini, Shirley. “El Lyceum Club de Madrid: un refugio feminista en una capital hostil.” Asparkía 17 (2006): 125–40. ———. Las modernas de Madrid. Las grandes intelectuales españolas de la vanguardia. Barcelona: Península, 2001. ———. “Woman, Eros, and Culture.” Spanish Women Writers and the Essay: Gender, Politics, and the Self. Eds. Kathleen Glenn and Mercedes Mazquiarán de Rodríguez. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1998. 127–43. Méndez, Concha. Canciones de mar y tierra. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Argentinos, 1930. ———. “El cinema en España.” La Gaceta Literaria 1 Oct. 1928: 5. ———. Historia de un taxi: argumento cinematográfico. Madrid: Ed. Ducazcal H. González, 1927. ———. Poemas: 1926–1986. Madrid: Hiperión, 1996. Merriam, Allan P., and Fradley H. Garner. “Jazz-The Word.” O’Meally, 373–96. Nuñez Alonso, A. “En torno a Josephine Baker.” Muchas gracias 27 Jul. 1929: 7. Ogren, Kathy J. Jazz Revolution: Twenties America and the Meanings of Jazz. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. O’Meally, Robert G. The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. New York: ­Columbia UP, 1998 Pedro, Josep. “‘The Purest Essence of Jazz’: The Appropriation of Blues in Spain during Franco’s Dictatorship.” Jazz and Totalitaranism. Ed. Bruce Johnson. New York: Routledge, 2017. 174–90. “Presentación de Josefina Baker.” Heraldo de Madrid 11 Feb. 1930: 5. Quance, Roberta. “Hacia una nueva mujer.” Revista de Occidente 211 (1998): 103–14. Ramos Palomo, Dolores. “Feminismo laicista: Voces de autoridad, mediaciones y genealogías en el marco cultural del modernismo.” Feminismos y antifeminismos: culturas políticas e identidades de género en la España del siglo XX. Eds. Ana M. Aguado and Teresa Ortega López. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 2011. 21–44. Raphael-Hernández, Heike, ed. Blackening Europe: The African-American Presence. New York: Routledge, 2004. Rasula, Jed. “Jazz as Decal for the European Avant-Garde.” Raphael-­ Hernandez, 13–34. Rice, Alan J. ‘“It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing’: Jazz’s Many Uses for Toni Morrison.” Black Orpheus: Music in African-American Fiction from the Harlem Renaissance to Toni Morrison. Ed. Saadi A. Sinawe. New York: Garland, 2000. 153–80. Sánchez Saornil, Lucía. “Espectáculo.” Ultra 18 (1921): 3. Las Sinsombrero. Produced and directed by Tània Balló et al. Intropía Media, 2014.

72  M. Rocío Cobo-Piñero Sowinska, Alicja. “Dialectics of the Banana Skirt: The Ambiguities of Josephine Baker.” Michigan Feminist Studies 19 (2006): 51–72. Ulacia Altolaguirre, Paloma. Concha Méndez: Memorias habladas, memorias armadas. Madrid: Mondadori, 1990. Urch, Kakie. “The [Em] Space of Modernity and the Possibility of the Flâneuserie.” Modernism, Gender, and Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach. Ed. Lisa Rado. New York: Routledge, 2009: 17–46. Vilches de Frutos, María Francisca, and Dru Dougherty. La escena madrileña entre 1926 y 1931: un lustro de transición. Madrid: Fundamentos, 1997. Villena, Luis Antonio de. El ángel de la frivolidad y su máscara oscura: vida, literatura y tiempo de Álvaro Retana. Madrid: Pre-Textos, 1999.

3 Josephine Baker in Spain The Ambivalent Reception of an African American Female Superstar Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Baker’s passage through the modernized Madrid of the late twenties and early thirties was fleeting. The Gran Vía was already exhibiting the flashy architectural structures that recalled the bright lights of New York, and the skyscraper of the Telefónica enabled it to reach, for once, the ceiling of Europe. The subway seemed to be a technical marvel, and the streets were bustling. It was a Madrid in which Arniches’s characters and the most traditional verbena coexisted with the jazz that became the sound track to modernity. (Federico Ayala Sörenssen)1

On the evening of Monday, February 10, 1930, Josephine Baker ­(1906–1975), the internationally famous African American dancer, chanteuse, and actress, made her long-awaited debut in Madrid at the Teatro Metropolitano. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Baker had a difficult childhood during which she worked as domestic help in white homes. An enthusiastic dancer, in her teenage years she found employment in the chorus of a New York theatre company (“Shuffle Along”), where she stood out for her comic performances as well as her dancing talent which led to her being hired for another spectacle called “The Chocolate Dandies.” In 1925, Baker arrived in Paris as a member of La revue nègre, a company of African American dancers, singers, and musicians contracted to perform at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. With her entrance during the second half of the show, almost naked and lying on the back of Joe Alex, a robust black dancer and choreographer, Baker shook up the French capital, and was catapulted to international fame. Following her meteoric rise to stardom in Paris in La revue nègre and her subsequent triumph at the Folies Bergère (1926–1927), Baker performed in many European capitals, including Vienna, Budapest, The Hague, Stockholm, and Berlin (1928–1929), but did not visit Spain, reputedly the birthplace of either her paternal grandfather or her father (Jules-Rosette; J.F.), until 1930. 2 She was, however, already well known, since the Spanish press had assiduously followed and profusely reported on her travels, shows, and personal life. In fact, news of Baker’s 1925

74  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego performances reached Spain through correspondents and reporters assigned to Paris or to other foreign posts such as Berlin and New York. In addition, her autobiography, Mémoires de Joséphine Baker—illustrated by Paul Colin and published in Paris in 1927—was an instant hit, as its almost immediate translation to Spanish and other languages indicates. Edited first in ­Santiago, Chile, and then in Madrid, the Spanish version helped disseminate the image and success of the woman popularly known as the “Black Venus,” “Bronze Venus,” or “Ebony Venus.” When Baker finally traveled to Spain, audiences in Madrid, Barcelona, ­Huesca, Seville, Pamplona, Valencia, Granada, Córdoba, Valladolid, and Málaga were eager to see the sensual and exotic mulatta in her banana skirt, and filled the theaters wherever she appeared. Much has been written about the reception of Baker in France, ­Germany, and other European nations. Scholars have paid little attention, however, to her presence in Spain. For example, neither Benetta Jules-Rosette’s 2007 Josephine Baker in Art and Life nor Lynn Haney’s earlier book Naked at the Feast (1981) mentions Spain at all. 3 Adhering to Baker’s memoirs, Phyllis Rose’s biography, Jazz Cleopatra, merely lists Spanish cities where the singer performed (138). Although not a scholar of Baker’s life or work, Robert A. Davidson duly notes in his study of Barcelona’s Jazz Age that Baker performed at the Principal Palace in early 1930 and cites a contemporary review of the show (224n13). Beyond these two mentions, Davidson offers no further information on Baker’s presence in Spain. José María García Martínez does include in his useful study Del fox-trot al jazz flamenco several references to B ­ aker’s impact in Spain, although many of them are not fully documented. Given that Baker became a celebrity in France and made it her home, the scholarly focus on her time and activities there is understandable. Nevertheless, to better ascertain her global significance, it is important to examine her influence in other countries as well. Drawing on periodical sources, this study examines her reception and representation in the Spanish press after she became a star in Paris and during her 1930 visit to Spain. It will shed light on a neglected period in Baker’s storied career and thereby contribute to a deeper appreciation of her success as A ­ frican America’s first truly international star. It will also provide further insights into contemporary Spanish attitudes toward African American music, performers, and culture, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between blackness, modernity, and European identity. In addition, it will illustrate how this artist—who broke cultural and racial barriers while simultaneously reinforcing stereotypes about black sensuality and sex—captivated international audiences by confronting them with racial constructions in general, and with racialized womanhood in particular. Finally, we will explore how the ambivalent response to Baker in Spain exposes underlying tensions in a country that was itself at crossroads.

Josephine Baker in Spain  75

Josephine Baker’s Paris: When Black Was Beautiful and Europe’s Identity Was in Question At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a strong black presence in France, which had several major colonies in Africa and held territories in the Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana). Movement between France and these lands was constant. While black soldiers from several of these territories fought for France in the First World War (1914–1918), the black presence increased significantly after the war, with jazz playing a decisive role in this growth. As Davidson points out, “It is generally accepted that jazz music arrived in Europe when the United States entered the First World War” (13), with African American soldiers being primarily responsible for introducing this musical genre to France, and the French quickly adopting and imitating it. Jazz was so successful that the postwar “roaring twenties” were intimately associated with it and the period very quickly became known as the Jazz Age. With the influx of black performers as well as the Harlem Renaissance and négritude writers (Stovall 57; 65), the French capital “became a European rendezvous for black Americans and American bohemians” (Pieterse 145).4 According to Tyler Stovall, “Black Montmartre lay at the heart of what the French called le tumulte noir, the vogue for black music and culture that brought the La Revue Nègre to Paris in 1925” (60). In fact, Petrine Archer-Straw goes so far as to state that “Harlem may have popularized black culture, but it was Paris that nurtured and sustained it” (160). The fundamental role that Baker played in le tumulte noir has been widely acknowledged. For Olivia Lahs-Gonzales and Paul Reuter, she “helped jumpstart” this vogue (iv), while Jan Nederveen Pieterse categorically asserts: “Paris was the European epicenter of the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age, and Josephine Baker was its symbol” (142). In addition, Samir Dayal emphasizes the role that this African American performer played in the “blackening” of modern white European subjectivity (50). It is important to note, though, that negrophilia and the commodification of everything Negro was already part of the French avant-garde and culture even before the arrival of jazz (Archer-Straw 15). This explains the interest in African art and the discourse on primitivism and exoticism that had fueled the avant-garde as well as the enthusiasm with which American music was welcomed in Europe (Rasula 14). After its birth in France, the cultural revolution linking blackness, jazz, and modernity soon spread to the rest of Europe. Spain was not an exception in this regard, as its most renowned vanguardista, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, demonstrates in his lecture “Jazzbandism,” in which he could not overlook Baker. Circumstances were certainly perfect for Baker’s success. As Pieterse puts it: “So the stage was set for Josephine Baker to make her entrée … The role of the Vénus noire was tailor-made for her” (186).

76  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego What was indisputable was the fact that Paris, long considered a major center of European culture, had suffered a “blackening process” during the first decades of the 20th century. It makes it, therefore, easy to concur with García Martínez’s belief that the “Black is beautiful” motto, generally associated with the Black Power movement of the 1960s in the United States, can easily be applied to the 1920s and 1930s. In his words, “Black was already beautiful then, and had a sound made for dancing” (17). Blackness, according to this critic, brightened a wounded interwar period in Europe by changing its social mores and influencing youth across national borders (García Martínez 16). Baker was well aware of this. Spanish journalist Antonio G. de Linares quotes her, proclaiming with self-deprecating humor: “We blacks are in. Broadway has already blackened. Europe too is blackening. Soon everything will be so dark, that when you light a match you will have to immediately light another one to see if the first one is out” (29). 5 Nevertheless, if the Jazz Age deeply altered Europe’s cultural landscape, it also profoundly reshaped the European image of the US. The postwar European cult of modernity became indistinguishable from Americanism, and jazz meant America (Rasula 17–18) and, one might add, black America. As Rose pointedly notes, When Europeans thought of America, they thought of black musicians, black singers, and black dancers … Until the twenties, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, with a few picturesque exceptions like Buffalo Bill and Mark Twain, America had no culture. When it finally turned a face to Europe, that face was black. (80) There is, however, an additional layer, which interrogates racial constructions: African Americans, including Baker, performed Africanness, at times resorting to colonial stereotypes. Pieterse states quite bluntly: “While rebellions in Africa were being bloodily repressed … black Americans gained fame on European stages with their representations of ‘African’ dance and music” (144). This combination led to another paradox: “French listeners embraced jazz (and black Americans) as a symbol of both primitivism and hypermodernity, of both Africa and America” (Stovall 58) – a paradox that is captured by the emergence of the graphic metaphor of the “urban jungle” (Rasula 27), and by “the spirit of an Americanized Africa” (Rose 18) that Baker conveyed. The homogenization and conflation of Africans and African Americans is often evident in the media pieces under examination. If le tumulte noir and jazz were associated with modernity, Americanism, and colonial otherness, they were also linked with the “loosening up of social mores throughout Europe,” to which Baker’s erotic dances made a fundamental contribution (Davidson 14). In fact, what surrounds them is a constant ambivalence: although racist stereotypes  – such as

Josephine Baker in Spain  77 “primitive” and “savage” – persisted when referring to blacks, some viewed them as positive, because they allowed Europe to achieve a partial emancipation from Victorian Puritanism (Pieterse 143).6 For surrealists, European culture was in crisis, without energy, self-castrating, frigid, and, therefore, ready to succumb to the restorative and subversive capacity of jazz, which had seized on black vitality and sexuality and turned it into music (Blake 132). These beliefs had profound political implications since it meant that the Jazz Age was questioning the alleged inferiority of black culture. At an international level, nobody and no place embodied more deeply the spirit of liberation that characterized life and artistic culture in Europe and the Americas between the wars than Josephine Baker and Paris. The question now is: how did the Spanish press perceive this city engulfed in le tumulte noir and devoted to the African American dancer? In what follows, we will examine a selection of articles to assess the views of Spanish journalists on the transformation of French society and Baker’s decisive role in it. Spanish reporters were well aware of the changes. It is no coincidence, for example, that Ceferino R. Avecilla begins his 1925 article “Paris,” with the play on words “We are completely black” (14), acknowledging the dominance of African Americans in musical performances, and, at the same time, lamenting the revue’s turn toward exoticism.7 The same year, Avecilla writes another article for La Esfera about la revue nègre’s “irresistible exoticism” and “apotheosis of absurdity” (“París. Gemier descubre”13).8 Although the author recognizes Baker’s talent, he does not avoid colonial images, such as primitivism, animalization, and childishness (13), to describe black music and dances. In the same vein, the author of “Del ‘charlestón’ al ‘black-botton” [From ­Charleston to Black-Bottom], addressing Baker’s role in the blackening of Paris theaters and orchestras, describes “the horrific music” and the apelike jumping as a form of dance that led some spectators to abandon the theater in protest. Baker, nevertheless, is regarded as an exception, because the audience was able to feel the emotion in her art (5). Other journalists use clinical images – which, in some cases, overlap with animal ones – that pathologize both black dancers and Parisian and European culture. With characteristic humor, writer Wenceslao Fernández-Flórez describes his loss of romantic interest in a woman after watching her dance the Charleston. As a result of observing her grotesque movements, he will now always remember her as “knock-kneed” (“zamba”). This degrading dance that reminds the author of an ape looking for fleas is a “horrible, absurd dance of paranoid blacks (4).”9 Juan Brasa longs for a vaccine to save Europe from the “catastrophic epidemic” that he calls “charlestonitis” (44). Conflating African Americans with Africans, as is habitual, he confesses his belief that “the infectious epileptic seizure that our generation is suffering was brought to Europe by a black man who had escaped an African madhouse” (44).10

78  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego This association of the Charleston and other black dance forms with illness, particularly madness and epilepsy, is recurrent and also frequently used when referring to Baker.11 By contrast, Antonio Azpeitúa, writing in “La raza negra, la raza del ritmo” [The Black Race, the Race of Rhythm] published in Blanco y Negro in 1929, considers the views that highlight the extravagant and depraved nature of black music to be characteristic of ignorant people who do not take into account the history of suffering that the African diaspora has endured. Nonetheless, even though his point of departure is historical, he offers, like Avecilla, biological essentialist definitions linking music to blackness: “Blacks are nothing without rhythm, because rhythm is their soul” (10).12 Still, for Azpeitúa, black music represents the liberation of Afro-descendants and, concurrently, modernity, as the avant-garde imagery, with its preference for technological advances, reveals: “the sway of Baker’s hips are the supermodern metronomes of life. Without them, it would be impossible to calculate the times of an airplane engine” (12).13 This perception of blacks and of Baker as symbols of modernity was, nevertheless, not the predominant one in the Spanish press. Indeed, for some journalists, the black presence that was contributing to ­Paris’s cosmopolitan and multiracial society was simultaneously responsible for the loss of French identity. Álvaro Alcalá Galiano, for example, describes the Parisian transformations by resorting to the “cock-tail” image which, due to its blending of different elements, constitutes an excellent metaphor for this morphing society. It is evident that the reporter does not appreciate this modern and international Paris where tall buildings and billboards coexist with Cubist art, American fashion, black dances, communism, radio broadcasting, drugs, sports, easy divorce, gender equality, professional gigolos, and homosexuality in literature and theater. Due to its “grotesque” cosmopolitanism and race and class (con)fusion, Paris has become a vast Babylon, which prompts the following rhetorical question: “The enthusiasm for the disjointed dances of the black dancer Josephine Baker, the stridency of jazz bands, the monotonous rhythm of Argentinian tangos, the revues with artists from different countries. What is French about this Paris? Very little” (3).14 According to Alcalá Galiano, the internationalism that has taken hold of the French capital, embodied, among others, by Baker, is to be blamed for the demise of French identity. Alcalá Galiano’s elegiac tone contrasts with Azpeitúa’s welcoming appraisal. In fact, for the latter, Parisian society is witnessing the replacement of languid European dance forms like the waltz with the energetic Charleston, a transformation that goes far beyond the aesthetic realm. Azpeitúa hints at the significance of this phenomenon vis-à-vis historical discrimination, as the new music becomes an instrument of poetic justice and revenge by blacks who are imprisoning whites with it: “That is

Josephine Baker in Spain  79 why that black woman with the golden tooth laughs maliciously, and the other one, laughs her head off. She sticks her tongue out at whites who dance to music played by blacks” (14).15 Margarita Nelken, an author of German-Jewish origin who would become one of four female parliamentarians elected during Spain’s Second Republic (1931–1939), was in the late 20s a contributor to Blanco y Negro’s section “La mujer y la casa. Temas femeninos. La Vida y Nosotras.” In spite of her activism in Spain’s early Women’s Movement and the Socialist party, in this section she frequently displays class and race prejudices. She, too, although without Azpeitúa’s words of praise, deems the jazz-band vogue a matter of revenge by former slaves: “See how all its members laugh their heads off while they play; there are no musicians that are so happy, people who enjoy themselves so much entertaining others… Do you believe there could be a greater voluptuous feeling than that of the former slave consciously stupefying his old master?” [original emphasis] (“La vida y nosotras,” 7 July 1929, 97).16 She further adds that the final episode of the US Civil War (1861–1865), which led to the abolition of slavery, is being played out on the jazz stage, with the unfortunate consequence, in her opinion, of whites “acting black.” The white orchestra members who, with their screams and contortions, try to forget that they do not have ebony skin, clearly express this phenomenon, according to Nelken (“La vida y nosotras,” 7 July 1929, 97). Her observations also communicate the writer’s anxiety about transracial contagion. Nelken and Azpeitúa’s ideas, although they might seem, to a certain extent, tongue-in-cheek, were prevalent in Europe where they were seen as warning of an alleged menace. Marcel Sauvage, who would become Baker’s biographer, commented on negrophilia (which he called négrophatie, a significant term given its medical connotations) and the craze surrounding the African American artist, stating that her “success represented the final triumph of ‘la vomito nègre’ over the whites in Paris: white enslavement to jazz was sweet revenge for slavery” (­A rcher-Straw 120). Blake concurs: In the heated debate over the jazz craze and its implications for both Europe and Africa, the surrealists witnessed with satisfaction what others observed with horror. Not the least of these sights was that of descendants of empire builders, plantation owners, and missionaries ironically “conquered, enslaved,” and most of all “bedeviled” by African-American music and dance. (136) Jazz had acquired an obvious political dimension, and was understood as imperiling white supremacy. But, echoing Nelken’s concern about whites acting black, Jules-Rosette, reporting on Baker’s presence in Germany and Austria, avers that the artist represented more than a danger for ideals of racial purity: her threat “did not issue so much from her presence

80  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego among Europeans as it did from the desire of Europeans to imitate her” (Josephine Baker 166). Juan Ferragut publishes a highly telling piece in this regard where he pens a scathing portrayal of Baker, and chastises Europe for idolizing her: “Right now, Europe has its idol. Black idol, ebony Venus, endlessly contorted in the twists and turns of a savage dance: Josephine Baker…. African pupils, body of a snake, slanted and cynical mouth, almost androgynous, epileptic and suffering of exhibitionism” (20).17 He continues lambasting Paris for having succumbed to her charms instead of following the example of Vienna, which rebelled against Baker’s presence and turned it into a political issue (21). According to Ferragut, the authentic and tragic symbol of what Europe is experiencing is an impoverished singer from Vienna, who shot himself to protest the insulting success of the new art form. Baker was undoubtedly read as a threat to European civilization, and raised the fearful specter of black cultural hegemony. Whites were, therefore, urged to dominate— recolonize blacks—in order to avoid being colonized in turn (Rose 33). The idea of black colonization of European culture is also vividly described in Avecilla’s 1927 “La hora negra” [The Black Hour]. The article reports on the Liberian president’s trip to Paris and his visit to a neighborhood populated by low-income blacks, his meeting with Baker, and his tribute to the French Unknown Soldier. With the habitual amalgamation of African Americanness and Africanness, he writes: The entourage of the president of color under the Arc de Triomphe was really an unheard of spectacle. At that moment, more than the offering of a race to a French hero, it seemed more like the tribute of a representative hero to another hero, no less symbolic: the man of color. The only missing element, the jazz band of Liberia’s Republican Guard playing a Charleston, the anthem of the race. (1)18 For Avecilla, the heart of Paris has been transformed into a tribute to the black man, and the Charleston into the national anthem of the black race.19 But the Charleston, allegedly originating in the jungle (“the Charleston of the jungles”), is unmistakably, according to this journalist, the enemy that epitomizes the black threat (1). Through music, blackness is perceived as targeting the heart of Europe and the West, invading and contaminating it.

Josephine Baker’s Fascinating Body Exploring the long-standing European fascination with black bodies is inevitable when examining the response to Baker in Spain. In fact, cultural critic bell hooks sees a clear continuity between the exhibition of Sarah Bartmaan’s body in19th century Europe and that of Baker’s in the 20th century, noting that the artist herself profited from this fascination (63).20

Josephine Baker in Spain  81 According to Jules-Rosette, Baker used her racialized image and manipulated stereotypes to her advantage (“Inventing” ­10–12; Josephine Baker 129). Dayal agrees that she was aware that exoticized sexuality sells and was guilty of some degree of self-orientalization in her performances of Africanness (44; 48). Undeniably, the pragmatic “Bronze Venus” knew “both how to indulge and exploit white stereotypes of the black woman, at once desirable, repellent, and pathological” (Dayal 44). Indeed, engaging in a deliberate misrepresentation equating African American with African (Dayal 38), she played with colonial images of black primitivism that, as mentioned, had become in Europe, particularly in France, simultaneously, images of liberation. One could argue that, to a certain extent, she performed to an internalized spectator’s white gaze (­ Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker 153). At the same time, it is important to recognize the undisputable discrepancy between ­Europe and the US regarding the representation of black females, as Pieterse observes: “In American art and advertising black female beauty has rarely been depicted, while ­European artists painted black female nudes and European poets sang of the black Venus, Americans, although black women were obviously far more numerous in America than in Europe, did not” (178). This does not mean that European depictions were not racialized or colonialist, only that they were done in a different way. All of this explains the ambivalent portrayals of Baker in the Spanish press. Some journalists certainly viewed Baker through the lens of repellent stereotypes of black women. The frequent pathological references to epilepsy and madness encountered when referring to African American dances are also applied to Baker. Articles such as “Del ‘fox’ al ‘charleston’” [From Fox to Charleston] describe her “degrading” movements: Josephine Baker, the ebony Eve, as they call her, demonstrated in Paris a few years ago that you can give your legs a new, fast movement resembling an epileptic seizure, without dislocating them, and that you can for two or three hours, climb and descend on a man, in a continuous restless shivering, without having your mental faculties unhinged. That, which in any insane asylum is called “dangerous access” in a dance hall is simply called “Charleston.” (1)21 In 1929, novelist Francisco Ayala writes the following review of La Sirène des Tropiques (1927), a silent film starring the artist 22: And Josephine—blacks—a strange and violent scream, of the jungle; a scream from a Protestant chapel for people of color; a bloody scream; a red scream… Of course, Josephine is a fake black, a product from overseas diluted for export. Even so, the black dancer is an excellent representation of her race in the world of cinema.

82  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Blacks immediately sense—perhaps because of blacks’ inimitable flattery—that the lens provides them with a massive silhouette that stands out, which it usually denies white characters. If a white character is—on screen—a lily, a black one is an insect: a huge ant… Josephine is the black Judith, the Mermaid of the Tropics: a mermaid with almond-shaped eyes, with knife-like smiles, cute as a monkey, and able to make any operetta Holofernes lose his head. (40–41)23 Ayala employs typical primitivist images (jungle, blood linked to violence) and situates Baker in between Africans (the jungle) and African Americans (black Protestant chapels). The writer is well aware of B ­ aker’s “fakeness” and commodification of her image for white audiences through the performance of a palatable diluted “blackness,” which he juxtaposes with the authentic African blackness. In addition, his racialized perspective on film actors is expressed through significantly different metaphors: while the white actor is a lily, the black one is an insect, moreover, a huge ant. An animalizing and threatening representation of the actress further underscores the obviously contrasting connotations of these metaphors. Baker’s character is equated with the biblical Judith who beheaded the Assyrian general Holofernes. Her “knife-like smiles” enforce the duality of her treacherous appeal, and the simile of a “cute monkey” points to the media’s frequent references to Baker “as a ‘gracious animal’” (Pieterse 183). In keeping with the European tradition, Ayala characterizes the exotic and erotic black woman as both alluring and dangerous. Nevertheless, Baker’s ambivalence calls into question not only established notions of racialized womanhood, but also other concepts linked to gender. As Jules-Rosette points out, “Baker constructed and was associated with multiple images: the savage dancer, the Black Venus, the exotic Jazz-Age star, the liberated new woman, and the gender-bending cross-dresser” (“Inventing” 12). Indeed, by playing with androgyny and cross-dressing, she challenged existing gender definitions, and embodied fluctuating models of womanhood. 24 According to Lahs-Gonzales, “Baker’s body, which was athletic and almost boyish, enhanced her androgyny, which she sometimes exploited” (45). This was not lost on the Spanish press. Nelken, for example, comparing the “languid” French actress Sarah Bernhardt with Baker, who bursts out laughing—and here one has to remember that “proper” women were only expected to smile, not laugh—states that she was “very little woman and much ‘good boy’” (“Las dos épocas” 96). 25 Both nudity and cross-dressing clearly transgressed bourgeois conventions regarding femininity (Jules-Rosette, “Inventing” 20), and were seen as a form of empowerment. In that context, Linares refers to Baker as an icon of women’s emancipation, concluding: “she is, simply, a woman liberated from mannerisms, makeups, and the

Josephine Baker in Spain  83 lies woven around femininity throughout the centuries” (29). 26 Baker became, in fact, a personification of the New Woman and the flapper mentality: active, independent, with short hair and boyish looks, capable of separating sex and love, and with visible signs of independence like owning a car and getting her driver’s license at twenty-one (Lahs-­ Gonzales 32; Rose 108; 113). The press took notice of this, and, for instance, reported on the dancer’s arrival at an “elegance contest” driving her own car (“Concurso de elegancia” 29). Here it is important, again, to recognize, with Rose, another paradoxical facet of Baker: New women and flappers rebelled against bourgeois mentality, but Baker herself had never been bourgeois (108), making it, therefore, even more ironic that she became their symbol. Notions of class, gender, and race intersect clearly in the construction of this artist’s identity, and permeate the gaze on her body. 27 In spite of her iconic stature among New Women, in reading certain opinions, particularly those expressed in the women’s sections of Spanish publications, one cannot help but perceive a sense of competing concepts of womanhood and the desire to affirm white female supremacy. Condescension coexists with blatantly racist comments. Nelken, for instance, considers Baker’s dance a clear illustration of Darwinian theory (“El cambio” 88), which postulates different stages of human evolution. The patronizing and sarcastic tone, aided by hyperbole, is very evident in “Charlestón,” an article published in Blanco y negro’s section “Cartas sobre la elegancia,” where Matilde Muñoz comments on Baker’s celebrity status: And you, if you are not in on the secret, will ask me who is J­ osephine, and I will tell you, opening my eyes wide, surprised that her name has not yet reached some civilized ears: What? Josephine? It’s ­Josephine Baker, child… The Josephine par excellence among all Josephines. Who else could it be but her? (115)28 Furthermore, reflecting on modernity and its cult of speed, which has transformed dance from a sentimental into a gymnastic exercise, and led to the decline of elegance, Muñoz articulates a kind of ubi sunt that bemoans the degradation and loss of European dances due to the A ­ frican American genres that Baker has popularized (115–16). The writer adds that Baker’s eyes, which she knows how to squint in a funny way, hair that sticks to her skull with tar, and green feathers that she wears as a dress, constitute key elements for a brilliant retaliation against white stars (115). Still, her main concern is the fact that white women try to emulate Baker (115). There is the realization that female beauty and standards of behavior are evolving due to the influence of the black craze and its leading representative, and Nelken, once more, articulates her aversion to racial border crossing.

84  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego The artist’s color certainly drew the attention of the press. In her previously mentioned article, Muñoz writes that Baker is black, but not as black as shoe polish (115). Víctor Rizo specifies that she is “a beautiful black woman, whose color is fading a little every day. She is already almost white” (1). 29 Her supposed desire to whiten herself motivates Nelken to accuse Baker of being “a renegade black” (“negra renegada”) who wants to escape her blackness, and pass for white, something that is almost possible when she is alone on stage, but unfeasible when standing next to whites (“La esclavitud” 96). To prove her point, the future parliamentarian includes a photograph of the artist surrounded by whites, and forcefully affirms an essentialist and innate concept of race: “… even if she could whiten herself completely, even if you change her features, she could not escape her ingrained personality because she is black. She would simply be the black woman with white skin. And she would always be Josephine Baker” (“La esclavitud” 96). 30 The author acknowledges, however, that the most radical transformation of beauty standards at the time is related to color and attributes it to Baker. In a condescending tone, she contends that white women would be willing to do anything to acquire “the ‘post vacation’ skin color of the little mulatta of the bananas” (“El cambio” 88).31 Nelken is not the only one who considers the African American performer responsible for Spanish women’s desire to acquire a tan. In 1930, Gil de Escalante writes in the newspaper ABC that a deep tan has become every woman’s dream, and that the feminine summer ideal is that of a “black blonde” (“Baños” 19). Watching a “landscape of women laying under an unforgiving sun,” he exclaims: Sunbathing…!… But that a fine and white woman’s skin is tortured because of fashion imperatives, is not admirable… Eva offers her body to the sun in a voluntary sacrifice, that I deem stupid… Oh Josephine Baker, bronze Venus with mahogany colored hair…. all things considered, I believe you are to blame for all of this….Those who try to imitate you… are already legion. (“Baños” 19)32 Not only Baker’s skin tone, but even her hair is scrutinized in terms of its color – as in the previous excerpt – and style. Teresa de Escoriaza writes about new hairstyles that have traveled to “our civilized countries” from “the heart of Africa, where they seemingly exceed us in this art” (7).33 Moreover, she emphasizes that the performer’s head does not constitute a novelty, since African women use a special poultice and Baker has undoubtedly inherited the recipe (8). If Escoriaza plays in a patronizing manner with the civilization-barbarism binary in regards to an Africanized Baker, the author of “Josefina Baker, la artista negra de moda de París” [Josephine Baker, the Fashionable Black Artist of Paris] addresses a reverse influence: using different photographs of the artist, the article

Josephine Baker in Spain  85 highlights the gradual Europeanization and “Parisianization” of Baker’s face, and the hybridization represented by her chocolate skin adorned with European perfumes and jewelry and Parisian clothes (18). Taken together, the references to a “black blonde,” an Africanized Baker, and, at the same time, a Europeanized African American woman point toward a racial transcoding that the artist popularized. They constitute an indication of the global appeal that transformed her into an icon of modernity and, undoubtedly, a profitable marketing image. Her image was indeed used in the Spanish press to promote products such as Camomila Intea to obtain her lion-like highlights, the latest trend for elegant women all over the world (“Josefina Baker dice….;” “¿­Josefina Baker, rubia?”). In “La Baker, gourmand,” Gonzalo Avello provides two recipes: one for Baker’s hot cake syrup, and another from ­Gaston Deruys, a member of the Paris Academy of Gastronomy, for “Flan Joséphine Baker,” inspired, according to Deruys, by the famous banana belt dance (27). Nevertheless, in some cases, Baker’s marketing power is viciously attacked, for example, in a 1928 article published in Mundo gráfico, which combines black and Semitic stereotypes: Josephine Baker, the famous black dancer, is not content with accumulating fabulous sums of money from theater impresarios, with pillaging her numerous admirers of such dark tastes… she advertises her businesses, including her restaurant Chez Josephine, in the intermissions between her acts… One can really say that this opportunistic black woman has a white soul. That of a white Jew. (“Varia femenil” 9)34 Physical differences turn into a moral opposition that targets both the audience’s “dark tastes” and Baker’s “Jewishness.” Race and morality also appear in Carlos Esplá’s “El carnaval en París,” noting that it is the time of “naked girls and slutty blacks, like Josephine Baker” (17).35 And, decrying the blackening of musical performances, Avecilla states that white stars would not be allowed to replicate the African A ­ merican celebrity’s salaciousness (“París” 14). If 19th century medical discourse, as Sander Gilman has so eloquently elucidated, tried to explain the ­alleged promiscuity of black women through “scientific” analysis of their anatomy, some journalistic writings on Baker demonstrate how racialized constructions of womanhood are associated with very specific notions of morality.

Finally in Spain When Baker arrived in Spain, it was only a few days after the February 8, 1930, resignation of dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera who, while in power (1923–1930), had attempted to implant an “authoritarian

86  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego modernization” (see González Calleja), which, no doubt, sounds like an oxymoronic project. In a country deeply divided between conservative and progressive forces, the desire for modernity competed against traditional views on morality, womanhood, and collective identity. The younger generation, particularly the educated sector, was seeking different public mores, rejecting bourgeois values and conventions, and embracing new female models like the North American flappers, and foreign dances such as the tango and the Charleston (González Calleja 384–85). It was also a nation where, unlike Paris, the black presence was very limited. Spain had only two remaining African territories (Equatorial Guinea and the Protectorate in Morocco), and its few ­A frican residents were not really integrated into Spanish society and culture. There were Afro-descendants among Spanish American visitors, students and immigrants, as well as some African Americans, mainly performers (see Lucientes). However, members of the African diaspora by no means represented a critical mass, unlike the case in France. Nevertheless, with the exception of Pamplona, as we shall see, Baker was received in Spain without protest or scandal, and, in contrast with other international venues where she had appeared, the few demonstrations against her did not make international headlines. At the same time, the press reviews of her performances synthesize the questions and anxieties that had accompanied her since her debut in Paris and her spectacular rise to fame. The day of her Spanish debut, the Heraldo de Madrid published on a single page three texts that exemplify some of the different meanings attributed to Baker. For José Montero Alonso, she symbolizes the postwar desire to forget and the dichotomy that Europe had embraced: the dislocation, vertigo, and intoxication of modernity, combined with the return to what is natural and primitive (32). The second article, written in a lighter tone, underscores the fact that Baker sprawled on the floor when she dedicated her photographs to her admirers, a gesture that represented an eccentric and certainly unusual feminine image at the time (“Josefina Baker se echó”). At the same time, the subhead refers to her as the “little black girl” (“la negrita”), an infantilizing and patronizing diminutive frequently applied to her. In addition, this page features an advertisement for the artist’s show that captures her bedeviling and threatening allure: “Josephine Baker. The devil of color. The diabolic artist of the brilliant eccentricities at the Gran Metropolitano” (“Informaciones” 38).36 A few days after her appearance at the Gran Metropolitano, J.F. praises her grace and her musical and theatrical versatility, and mentions the numerous aristocratic spectators who attended the performance, as demonstrated by the hundreds of cars lined up on the avenue (5). He agrees with Montero Alonso that she represents postwar Europe, blending the refinement of the Old World with the naive and carefree primitivism of racial Others (5).

Josephine Baker in Spain  87 Some articles point to the parodic nature of Baker’s Africannesss – an issue already raised by Ayala in the film review previously mentioned. After complimenting the “great artist,” highlighting the attendance of a select audience, and summarizing the dance, an unnamed writer adds that the “savage dance” is not authentic, because “she dances how we imagine that savages dance” (“Presentación” 42), which explains her appeal for Spanish spectators.37 Indeed, if it were not for Baker – who had stylized the Charleston and provided it with elegance – this dance, which has confounded civilization, would remain a barbaric and vulgar “dance of blacks” (“baile de negros”). Finally, while the author refers to her animal-like movements, he also emphasizes her European/American evening gown (42). Talent, celebrity status, eccentricity, transgression of female conventions, allure combined with danger, and cultural symbols are all dimensions of the African American star compiled in these journalistic pieces. It becomes equally clear that the Spanish press captured Baker’s in-betweenness and the liminal space that she occupied in ­European culture. This liminality or border identity would be further accentuated by a notable coincidence: the performance of Russian prima ballerina Ana Pavlova in Spain the same week as Baker unavoidably provided an opportunity to compare and confront racialized and non-racialized concepts of womanhood. In “El hada, la mujer y el animalito” [The Fairy, the Woman, and the Little Animal], Federico García Sanchiz writes about Pavlova and Baker in strictly binary terms that attempt to establish the superiority of white femininity: “Ana Pavlova is the spirit. Baker, the body…. The idea, the abstract idea, Pavlova. Instinct, Josephine… Fairy, the first one. Little animal, the second one” (3). 38 Continuing with this short and categorical definition of the two artists that opposes spirit-body, idea-instinct, and fairy-animal, García Sanchiz constructs a dehumanized, animalistic, and threatening portrayal of Baker’s fragmented body during her performance: her fingernails have been replaced by teeth, she possesses snake-like arms, becomes a reptile swallowing her victim, and her legs are skis. He quickly corrects himself, however, deciding that the Alpine association is not accurate because Baker symbolizes the Tropics, most specifically, their fauna, as she demonstrates by walking on all fours with her head tilted like a monkey. At the same time, he admits that even naked, she no longer completely represents the jungle while she does not yet symbolize civilization, in spite of her Parisian clothing (3). Baker, an emblem of subordinate womanhood, is again depicted as a hybrid located at crossroads between civilization and barbarism. For García Sanchiz, this ambiguity extends to her gender based on her “indecisive anatomy of a boy or a girl.”39 This impossibility of clearly pinning Baker down is likewise evident in another article that also portrays Pavlova and Baker as opposites: while the Russian symbolizes the essence of European culture, the apex of white

88  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego civilization, the African American represents the emergence of “a black art that—on all fours—is taking over the world” (G.O. 3).40 Pavlova’s white civilization is being overtaken—a fear previously ­encountered—by a barbaric and inferior art (animal or lower on the scale of human evolution). Furthermore, the author employs the cocktail ­image – seen earlier to depict Paris’s new identity – in an attempt to define the artist (3). Again, we find ambiguity and paradox in the appreciation of the African American artist: while blamed for the decline of white E ­ uropean civilization, she has become the symbol of European modernity. Perhaps needing to highlight their cosmopolitanism, Madrid’s newspapers and audiences, for the most part, concentrated their praise or criticism on Baker’s performance and symbolism, and her shows did not attract protests. She received the same treatment in the other cities where she appeared. Pamplona, as mentioned, was the only exception with religious and conservative people up in arms and deeming her spectacle immoral. Her performance on April 8, 1930, in Pamplona’s Teatro Olimpia, was met with protests and with Catholic groups organizing prayer sessions to atone for the city’s sins (“Los católicos” 16). Several publications in the capital mocked Pamplona’s overreaction, which had backfired, providing the artist with free publicity (“Josefina Baker, en Pamplona;” “El reclamo”). Baker became, in fact, the subject and excuse for a heated confrontation between the capital and the province, conservatives and liberals. In the progressive publication El Sol, Heliófilo ridicules Pamplona’s protests and religious bigotry and prudery, and takes personal shots at religious figures. He specifically attacks Fray Junípero for allegedly having said that in Mexican villages you can find “much tastier little human chocolates” (1).41 Although Heliófilo despises Baker and, therefore, did not attend her Madrid shows, he confesses that he would have loved to see her in Pamplona where the artist had targeted the city’s obscurantism (1). Fray Junípero responds in the Catholic newspaper El Siglo Futuro, first, criticizing the liberal Heraldo de Madrid for its “clergyphobia,” and then Heliófilo, for his known defense of divorce, free love, contraception, and communism, and now for criticizing the actions of Pamplona’s Catholics against “Baker’s savage filthy acts” (1).42 What makes this exchange especially remarkable is that, while throwing verbal punches at each other, not even one of these journalists hesitates to dehumanize and degrade the African American star with epithets such as “the savage dances of the savage black Yankee” (Fray Junípero  1), “beautiful and sinful human quadruped,” “little mulatta troublemaker,” and “chocolate dummy” (Heliófilo 1).43 Upon her return to France, friends and admirers threw a welcoming party for Baker. Despite evidence of her success in Spain and her prominent presence in the press, Nelken sarcastically writes that this party should really be called a “reparation banquet,” because “the mestiza of the bananas has only been able to triumph in the gossip columns,”

Josephine Baker in Spain  89 and Spaniards did not enjoy what people in other countries raved about (“La Vida y Nosotras. 20 April 1930” 141).44 It is obvious that the Black Venus’s visit to Spain did not change Nelken’s views or her attitude. The previously noted condescending tone of this unmistakably trailblazing woman and pioneer in the Spanish Women’s Movement shows the difficulty of setting aside white superiority and escaping internalized racism. At the same time, although referring to French feminism, it confirms Brent Hayes Edwards’s assertion that “ideologies of gender in general were molded by notions of race in the very period when European colonialism was at its apex and Baker ‘set the pace’ of fashion for Parisian women” (130). Indeed, Baker was an ambivalent figure among women: combining an Africanized with a modern New Woman persona, she was subject to both scorn and imitation. As the epigraph reveals, the Jazz Age and Josephine Baker found Spain at crossroads and in a state of transition toward modernity, which explained the coexistence of traditional and new elements in Spanish culture and society. It was also a country strongly divided along political, ideological, and socioeconomic lines – often referred to as “the two Spains” – a fact that only a few years later would lead to a violent and tragic confrontation. Nevertheless, after battling its own exotic and Africanized image and stereotypes, Spain was eager to join a modern Europe, which, ironically, looked black.45 Baker’s presence in Spain and her treatment beforehand in the press constituted, therefore, more than a glamorous and trivial affair. The African American had become an international cultural icon that forced Europe to reflect on race, gender, and the ambiguities of modernity. More specifically in the case of Spain, the ambivalent reception of her racialized identity mirrored (and projected) some of the nation’s anxieties and fears in its search for new constructions of womanhood and a new collective identity among the changes taking place in the European context.

Notes 1 All translations are by May Morpaw. 2 In 1929, Baker also toured Latin America performing in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil. 3 It is worthwhile noting that Jules-Rosette includes a well-known photograph of the artist and her husband/manager Pepito Abatino holding a Baker doll (149). According to the caption, the photograph is from the 1930s. The same photograph, however, had already appeared in the Heraldo de Madrid in 1928. See “Josefina Baker y su marido.” 4 Among Montmartre’s blacks were former soldiers from Africa and the ­­Caribbean. The Caribbean club Bal Nègre was a place where African Americans and Caribbean blacks interacted (Archer-Straw 160–61). 5 “Los negros estamos de moda. Ya Broadway se ha ennegrecido por completo. También Europa se ennegrece. Pronto estará todo tan oscuro, que al encender una cerilla habrá que encender otra en seguida para ver si la primera se ha apagado.”

90  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego 6 “For whites, the negrophiliac relationship provided a space for rebellion against social norms. They naively considered blacks to be more vital, more passionate and more sexual” (Archer-Straw 15). 7 “Estamos completamente negros.” In colloquial Spanish, the expression “estar negro” (to be black) means to be angry or annoyed. 8 “irresistible exotismo;” “La apoteosis de lo absurdo.” 9 “esa horrible, esa absurda danza de negros paranoicos.” 10 “Yo creía que el contagioso ataque epiléptico que sufre nuestra generación lo había traído a Europa un negro fugado de cierto manicomio africano…” 11 For the image of the Charleston as a dance executed by blacks suffering an epileptic seizure, see also Gil de Escalante’s, “Monólogo.” 12 “Un negro no es nada sin ritmo, porque el ritmo es su propia alma.” 13 “el vaivén de las caderas de la Baker son metrónomos de la vida modernísimas. Sin ellos no se podrían calcular los tiempos de los motores de Aviación.” 14 “El entusiasmo por las danzas dislocadas de la bailarina negra Josephine Baker, las estridencias de los jazz-bands, el monótono ritmo de los tangos argentinos, las revistas de espectáculos con artistas de diversos países… ¿Qué tiene de francés este París? Bien poco.” 15 “Por eso se ríe maliciosamente esa negra que tiene un diente de oro, y a carcajada la otra. Saca la lengua a los blancos que bailan ahora al son que les tocan los negros.” 16 “Fijaos en que todos sus componentes se desternillan cuando tocan; no hay músicos tan alegres, gente que se divierta tanto haciendo divertir a los demás. … ¿Creéis que puede haber voluptuosidad mayor que la del antiguo esclavo embruteciendo a conciencia a su antiguo amo?” 17 “En la hora de ahora, Europa tiene su ídolo. Ídolo negro, Venus de ébano, contorsionada perennemente en los giros de una danza salvaje: Josefina Baker. … pupilas africanas, cuerpo de serpiente, boca rasgada y cínica, casi andrógina, epiléptica y enferma de exhibicionismo.” 18 “El cortejo del presidente de color, bajo el Arco del Triunfo, era un espectáculo realmente inaudito. En tal instante, más que la ofrenda de una raza a un héroe francés, pareció que tenía lugar el tributo del héroe representativo a otro héroe no menos simbólico: el hombre de color. Realmente faltó que el jazz-band de la Guardia Republicana de Liberia tocase un chárleston, himno de la raza.” It is worth remembering, though, that Liberia was established by former African American and Caribbean slaves who returned to Africa. 19 When reading this scene, one cannot help but recall a passage in Juan ­G oytisolo’s novel, Paisajes después de la batalla (1982), where the opening in Paris of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a search for his identity leads to the discovery that he was a black man. This novel also plays with the idea of Europe’s contamination by non-whites. 20 Baartman, a black South African woman, was toured around Europe “as a scientific spectacle” to assess Hottentot women. “[M]edical drawings and documentation claimed that Baartman’s buttocks and genitalia were a sign of deviant sexuality—Josephine’s modelling furthered these ideas” (Archer-Straw 122). See also Gilman. 21 “Josefina Baker, la eva de ébano, como la llaman, demostró en París hace unos años que se puede dar a las piernas un movimiento nuevo, rápido, como de ataque de epilepsia, sin descoyuntarlas, y que se puede estar dos, tres horas bajando un hombre y subiéndole, en un continuo temblor de azogado, sin tener perturbadas las facultades mentales. Eso, que en cualquier manicomio suele llamarse ‘acceso peligroso’, en un ‘dancing’ se llama sencilla, simplemente, el ‘charleston’.”

Josephine Baker in Spain  91 22 Spanish film director Luis Buñuel recalled his participation in this movie. He did not have fond memories of Baker’s “whims” (103). 23 “Y Josefina—los negros—un grito raro y violento, de selva; un grito de ­capilla protestante para gentes de color; un grito sangriento; un grito rojo… Claro está que Josefina es una falsa negra, un producto ultramarino rebajado para la exportación. Pero aun así la bailarina negra es una egregia representación de su raza en el mundo del cine. Los negros consiguen enseguida—tal vez por la inimitable zalamería de los ­negros—que el objetivo les conceda ese fuerte destaque de masa, de volumen, que suele negar a los personajes blancos. Si un personaje blanco es—en el écran—un lirio, otro negro es un insecto: una hormiga enorme… Josefina es la Judith negra, la Sirena de los Trópicos: una sirena con ojos de almendra, con sonrisas de cuchillo, coqueta como un mono y capaz de hacer perder la cabeza a cualquier Holofernes de opereta.” 24 See her famous photo dressed as a male bandleader in Jules-Rosette, “­I nventing” 21. 25 “muy poco de mujer y mucho de ‘buen chico’.” 26 “es sencillamente, una mujer liberada de los amaneramientos, de los afeites, de las mentiras tejidas en torno a la feminidad, a través de los siglos.” 27 See Cobo-Piñero’s essay in this volume. 28 “Usted, si no está en el secreto, me preguntará que quién es Josefina, y yo le diré a usted, abriendo mucho los ojos, asombrada de que su nombre no haya llegado aún a unos oídos civilizados: ¿Cómo? ¿Josefina? Pero se trata de ­Josefina Baker, criatura… La Josefina por excelencia entre todas las ­Josefinas. ¿Quién podía ser sino ella?” 29 “la artista casi negra;” “Josefina Baker es una negra guapa, que va destiñéndose un poco cada día. Ya es casi blanca.” 30 “Pero lo que ignora es que, aun cuando lograra blanquearse totalmente, aun cuando lograra con ello cambiar también sus facciones, no lograría evadirse de su personalidad conseguida por negra. Sería, simplemente, la negra que tenía la piel blanca. Y sería siempre Josefina Baker.” 31 “el tono ‘regreso de veraneo’ de la mulatita de los plátanos.” 32 “¡Panorama de mujeres tendidas bajo el sol implacable…! … ¡Baños de sol…! … . Pero que a una piel fina y blanca de mujer se la someta a tortura por imperativos de la moda, esto ya no me parece admirable. …Eva ofrece su cuerpo al sol en voluntario sacrificio, que a mí se me antoja estúpido. … ¡Ay Josefina Baker, Venus broncínea, con pelo teñido de color caoba…! Bien mirado, yo creo que tú tienes la culpa de todo. … Aquellas que tratan ahora de imitarte … forman ya legión.” 33 “Nuevas modas de corte de pelo y tocado llegan a nuestros civilizados países, procedentes del corazón de África, donde, al parecer, nos exceden en este arte.” 34 “Josefina Baker, la célebre bailarina negra, no se contenta con sumar sumas fabulosas de los empresarios de teatro, con saquear a sus innumerables admiradores de gusto tan obscuro … anuncia sus negocios, incluido su restaurante Chez Josephine en los intermedios de sus actos … Esta negra aprovechada sí que puede decirse que tiene el alma blanca. De judía blanca.” This article echoes the title of Alberto Insúa’s novel, El negro que tenía el alma blanca [The Black Man with the White Soul] (1922). In 1927, Benito Perojo directed the first film adaptation of this novel, with a white actor in blackface playing the protagonist. 35 “sus girls desnudas y las negras cachondas, como Josefina Baker.” 36 “Josefina Baker. El demonio de color. La diabólica artista de las geniales excentricidades en el Gran Metropolitano.”

92  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego 37 “baila como nosotros nos imaginamos que deben de bailar los salvajes.” 38 “Ana Paulowa es el espíritu. La Baker, el cuerpo. … Idea, abstracta idea, la Paulowa. Instinto, Josefina. … Hada, la primera. Animalito, la segunda.” 39 “con anatomía indecisa de muchacho o muchacha…” 40 “un arte negro que se adueña—a cuatro pies—del mundo.” Baker was aware of the comparison and expressed her dislike of Pavlova’s dance, which reminded her of stupid birds (G.O. 3). She did, however, imitate (or parody) her, as a 1932 picture, which “frames her in a hyper-feminine mode,” demonstrates (Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker 69). 41 “chocolatitos humanos bastante más sabrosos.” 42 “cochinadas salvajes de la Baker.” 43 “bailes salvajes de la salvaje negra yanqui;” “linda y pecaminosa cuadrumana,” “mulatita alborotadora,” “monigota de chocolate.” 4 4 “… donde la mestiza de los plátanos no ha logrado triunfar sino en las gacetillas.” 45 Due to its history, Spain was frequently Orientalized or Africanized. In her historical overview of this phenomenon, Susan Martin-Márquez quotes French author Victor Hugo’s claim: “Spain is still the Orient; Spain is half African” (22).

Works Cited Alcalá Galiano, Álvaro. “Van Dongen. La época del ‘cock-tail’.” ABC 27 Dec. 1928: 3. Archer-Straw, Petrine. Negrophilia. Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000. Avecilla, Ceferino R. “La hora negra”. La Voz 17 June 1927: 1. ———. “París.” Muchas gracias 24 Oct. 1925: 14. ———. “París. Gemier descubre a Josefina Baker y a sus amigos.” La Esfera 31 Oct. 1925: 617. Avello, Gonzalo. “La Baker, gourmand.” Ondas 1 Mar. 1930: 27. Ayala, Francisco. “Josefina Baker: la sirena de los Trópicos.” El escritor y el cine. Madrid: Cátedra, 1996. 40–41. Ayala Sörensen, Federico. “Josephine Baker en Madrid.” ABC 14 Feb. 2015. Azpeitúa, Antonio. “La raza negra, la raza del ritmo.” Blanco y Negro 11 Aug. 1929: 9–14. Baker, Josephine. Memorias de Josefina Baker. Ed. Marcel Sauvage. Santiago de Chile: Nascimento, 1928. ———. Memorias de Josefina Baker; vida, y secretos de una “estrella” negra.” Trans. Pedro Morante. Madrid: Prensa Moderna, 1929. Blake, Jody. Le Tumulte Noir. Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900–1930. University Park: The Pennsylvania State UP, 2003. Brasa, Juan. “Por los teatros de París.” Nuevo Mundo 25 Mar. 1927: 44. Buñuel, Luis. Mi último suspiro. Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2010. “Concurso de elegancia.” ABC 16 June 1935: 29. Davidson, Robert A. Jazz Age Barcelona. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2009. Dayal, Samir. “Blackness as Symptom: Josephine Baker and European Identity.” Raphael-Hernandez, 35–52.

Josephine Baker in Spain  93 “Del ‘charlestón’ al ‘black-botton’.” La Nación 29 Oct. 1926: 5. “Del ‘fox al ‘charleston’ y del ‘black botton’ a la ‘danza máquina’.”La Nación 29 Mar. 1927: 1. Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora. Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003. “El reclamo que han hecho gratis a la Baker los católicos de Pamplona.” El ­Liberal 9 Apr. 1930: 1. Escalante, Gil de. “Baños de sol.” ABC 13 Aug. 1930: 19. ———. “Monólogo de un aficionado al baile.” ABC 13 May 1926: 14. Escoriaza, Teresa de. “Páginas de la mujer”. Mundo gráfico 20 Feb. 1929: 7–8. Esplá, Carlos. “El carnaval en París.” Muchas gracias 18 Feb. 1927: 17. Fernández-Flórez, Wenceslao. “Lo imperdonable.” ABC 24 Nov. 1926: 3–4. Ferragut, Juan. “El ídolo negro del triunfo, de la suntuosidad y del escándalo.” Nuevo Mundo 27 Apr. 1928: 20–21. Fray Junípero. “Anécdota de ayer y de hoy.” El siglo futuro 10 Apr. 1930: 1. García Martínez, José María. Del fox-trot al jazz flamenco: el jazz en España 1919–1996. Madrid: Alianza, 1996. García Sanchiz, Federico. “El hada, la mujer y el animalito.” ABC 27 Feb. 1930: 3. Gilman, Sander. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of ­Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” “Race,” Writing, and Difference. Ed. Henry L. Gates, Jr. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986. 223–61. Gómez de la Serna, Ramón. “Jazzbandismo.” Ismos. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1975. 178–97. González Calleja, Eduardo. La España de Primo de Rivera. La modernización autoritaria 1923–1930. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2005. G.O. “La mulata friolenta que viene a beber un poco de sol a España.” Crónica 9 Feb. 1930: 3. Goytisolo, Juan. Paisajes después de la batalla. Barcelona: Montesinos, 1982. Haney, Lynn. Naked at the Feast: The Biography of Josephine Baker. London: Robson Books, 1981. Heliófilo. “Charlas al Sol. Cartas a las Lectoras.” El Sol 9 Apr. 1930: 1. hooks, bell. “Selling Hot Pussy. Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace.” Black Looks. Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. 61–77. “Informaciones de espectáculos, teatros, conciertos y circos. Gran Metropolitano.” ABC 14 Feb. 1930: 38. Insúa, Alberto. El negro que tenía el alma blanca. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1969. J.F. “Presentación de Josefina Baker.” Heraldo de Madrid 11 Feb. 1930: 5. “Josefina Baker dice…” Blanco y Negro 28 July 1929: 2. “Josefina Báker, en Pamplona.” La Voz 8 Apr.1930: 8. “Josefina Baker, la artista negra de moda de París.” Nuevo Mundo 5 Nov. 1926: 18. “¿Josefina Baker, rubia?” ABC 23 Jan. 1929: 38. “Josefina Baker y su marido, el conde Pepito.” Heraldo de Madrid 7 Dec. 1928: 1. “Josefina Baker se echó en el suelo de bruces para escribir la dedicatoria de sus retratos.” Heraldo de Madrid 11 Feb. 1930: 5.

94  Laurence E. Prescott and Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. Josephine Baker in Art and Life. The Icon and the Image. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2007. ———. “Josephine Baker: Inventing the Image and Preserving the Icon.” Lahs-Gonzales, ed. 3–29. Lahs-Gonzales, Olivia, ed. Josephine Baker: Image and Icon. St. Louis: Reedy Press, 2006.—. “Josephine Baker: Modern Woman.” Lahs-Gonzales, ed. 30–53. Lahs-Gonzales, Olivia, and Paul Reuter. Foreword. Lahs-Gonzales, ed. iv–vi. Linares, Antonio G. de. “París.” Nuevo Mundo 12 Aug. 1927: 28–29. “Los católicos de Pamplona se dedican a hacerle la ‘réclame’ a Josefina Baker.” Heraldo de Madrid 9 Apr. 1930: 16. Lucientes, Francisco. “La vida del negro en la tierra del blanco. En Madrid ­existe, feliz e independiente, una república negra.” Nuevo Mundo 4 Jan. 1929: 40–41. Martin-Márquez, Susan. Disorientations. Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Montero Alonso, José. “Josefina Baker en Madrid.” Nuevo Mundo 14 Feb. 1930: 32–33. Muñoz, Matilde. “Charleston.” Blanco y Negro 19 Dec. 1926: 115–16. Nelken, Margarita. “El cambio más radical.” Blanco y negro 10 Aug. 1930: 88. ———. “La esclavitud de la personalidad.” Blanco y Negro 12 Jan. 1930: 96. ———. “La Vida y Nosotras.” Blanco y Negro 7 July 1929: 96–98. ———. “La Vida y Nosotras.” Blanco y Negro 20 Apr. 1930: 115–16. ———. “Las dos épocas.” Blanco y Negro 16 June 1929: 95–96. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. White on Black. Images of Africa and Blacks in ­Western Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. “Presentación de Josefina Baker en el Gran Metropolitano.” ABC 11 Feb. 1930: 42. Raphael-Hernández, Heike, ed. Blackening Europe: The African-American Presence. New York: Routledge, 2004. Rizo, Victor. “La condesa negra”. Heraldo de Madrid 2 July 1927: 1. Rasula, Jed. “Jazz as Decal for the European Avant-Garde.” Raphael-­ Hernandez, 13–34. Rose, Phyllis. Jazz Cleopatra. Josephine Baker in her Time. New York: ­Doubleday, 1989. Stovall, Tyler. “Freedom, Community, and the Paris Jazz Age: Josephine Baker and the World of Black Montmartre.” Lahs-Gonzales, ed. 54–68. “Varia femenil.” Mundo gráfico 23 May 1928. 8–9.

Part II

Transnational Readings of the Spanish Civil War

4 “Not Valid for Spain” Pan-Africanism, Sanctuary, and the Spanish Civil War Karen W. Martin

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) is the subject of numerous academic studies as well as popular cultural mythology, given the vast literary and artistic production it generated and its role as a precursor to the Second World War. Despite its characterization as an internal conflict, the war took on international dimensions, with combatants and funding from at least twenty nations covertly entering Spain, either to defend the democratically elected government of the Second Republic, or to support Francisco Franco’s nationalist troops, who had initiated the war with the partial overthrow of the Republicans in 1936. While President ­Franklin Delano Roosevelt had declared the United States officially neutral in this three-year conflict, two-thirds of Americans supported the Republic, and approximately 3,000 Americans entered Spain illegally to join the fight against the Francoists.1 At least ninety of them were ­A frican Americans, including two women. “Not Valid for Travel to Spain” was stamped on American passports, prohibiting US citizens from entering Spain legally during the war (Carroll 13). Prior to 1937, Americans headed to the war under the pretense of a French vacation. After France closed its border with Spain, they continued to enter by crossing the Pyrenees under cover of darkness on the so-called red trains, due to the communist ideology of many of their passengers. These US forces, who became known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB), fought in the XV Brigade, a multiethnic, multinational, bilingual coalition of troops from the USA, Ireland, England, Canada, and Latin America.2 The ALB used the language of liberation that recognized both black and white revolutionaries in a way that was unheard of at home, designating companies in honor of abolitionists Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and President Lincoln. The Brigade constituted the first unsegregated US fighting force, led for a time by Oliver Law, the first black commander of an integrated US military unit.3 In total, over 35,000 volunteers participated on the Republican side in the war, primarily as part of the International Brigade or performing medical services. France, Germany, Poland, and Italy provided the largest numbers of anti-Fascist volunteers. African American involvement in the Spanish Civil War has received only minimal scholarly attention. While there exists extensive

98  Karen W. Martin scholarship on the role of intellectuals in this conflict, it has focused disproportionately on white male authors such as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, and comparatively little work has examined the ties between Harlem and Spain. My research in this area began as an effort to answer two questions: what precipitated the sense of solidarity that led African Americans to join in another country’s Civil War, one with a very high casualty rate? Why did the brigadiers, particularly black Americans, feel compelled to fight in the Iberian Peninsula, knowing that they would be blacklisted as communists by their own government, that their families would be subjected to harsh economic repercussions, and that they would be dependent on minimal supplies for their survival abroad? This paper is the product of research into the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) archives held at New York University, which include oral histories, war posters, pamphlets, and press clippings from the era; newspaper sources from Spain; and the work of prominent Harlem Renaissance authors, including Langston Hughes. Ruth Simms Hamilton’s study of African diaspora peoples provides a helpful foundation for understanding African American participation in a conflict that, on the surface, was not their own. However, my focus is aimed at print media and oral histories as primary means of accessing lived history. Three motivating factors emerge almost universally in these sources: the sense of Pan-African identity that tied Spain, Harlem, and North Africa together after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia; the drive to fight fascism abroad as a means of combating racism – described by many brigadiers as domestic fascism – in the US; and the awareness of shared destiny between Jews and blacks, as two populations targeted for genocide by Hitler’s mythical white German race. As Tennessean Vaughn Love, a brigadier from Harlem, pointed out, “I had read Hitler’s book … and I knew if the Jews weren’t going to be allowed to live, then certainly I knew the Negroes … would be at the top of the list” (Carroll, Odyssey 18). Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, an active fundraiser and war correspondent in Spain, made the connection between racism at home and the war abroad explicit in his poem “Love Letter from Spain,” which reads, “Fascists is Jim Crow people, honey” (201).4 Overwhelmingly, African American brigadiers’ oral histories reflect the fact that, although at home they were denied the right to vote, refused birth certificates, excluded from schools and public spaces, and often unable to secure employment, in Spain they were treated as equals. As one black soldier put it, “I would rather die here [in Spain] than be a slave [at home]” (“The War”). In the wake of the First World War, as the US and Europe began to determine the fate of Germany’s African colonies, and throughout the US economic and social unrest of the 1920s, prominent Harlem Renaissance figures such as Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Hughes, Claude McKay, and W.E.B. DuBois worked to construct a sense of Pan-African community identity. Their advocacy for social

“Not Valid for Spain”  99 justice skillfully challenged sociopolitical hierarchies so that questions of human rights and shared African heritage took precedence over political conflict, and volunteers with a broad range of political identities collaborated to defend democratic ideals against Europe’s fascist threat. Vital to this mobilization was the veterans’ conviction that, as black Americans, they had already experienced fascism at home, from slavery through Jim Crow policies and laws, and that, if European fascism spread across the Atlantic, blacks would be the most deeply affected group. First-person accounts underline the ties between black Americans, North Africa, and Spain that were inherent to the brigadiers’ sense of unity with the latter. African American identification with the war in Spain was anchored in two defining forces: a Pan-African commitment to fighting the advance of Mussolini’s fascism in Ethiopia and the conviction that the spread of fascism to the US would intensify racially motivated violence and discrimination. Robert F. Reid-Pharr’s valuable work on African Americans and Spain reinforces this thesis. He argues that The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the subsequent support of the Spanish rebels by both Mussolini and Hitler demonstrated conclusively that so-called European fascism was but the return home of the methods and ideologies that had long structured white supremacist projects of colonization and enslavement. (43) Reid-Pharr further describes the war as “for black militants both an escape and a return” from the long-entrenched structures of capitalism, slavery, and racism that were typical of both their experience at home and the narratives of “assault, exploitation, escape, and resistance” in the war abroad (44). 5 Hamilton’s analysis of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the Pan-African Congress held the same year is particularly relevant for understanding the efforts undertaken by Powell, McKay, and other Harlem leaders in the 1930s.6 Hamilton notes that when faced with the question of colonial claims after the First World War, “most black cultural workers and organizations coalesced” around the need for Africa to be ruled by Africans, “German colonies should not be returned to Germany,” and “Belgium should not be allowed to retain its African holdings” (“Transnational” 220). In his “Memorandum on the Future of Africa,” DuBois set out a plan for “a last great crusade for humanity” in which “educated blacks” would be governed by an international body and ­A frica would “represent not simply the white world, but the civilized Negro world” (Hamilton, “Transnational” 221). This project would rely on the “talented tenth,” an elite group of highly educated black leaders who would bring progress to Africa (Eyerman 164). Similarly, before a crowd of 5,000 people in New York City, Pan-Africanist and Universal

100  Karen W. Martin Negro Improvement Association founder Garvey also called for African self-determination, including “the eviction from Africa of all those who interfered with or violated African customs [and] equal representation of blacks in any scheme of world government” (Hamilton, “Transnational” 222). Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement united around the responsibility of black Americans to “restore pride and glory to blacks through redemption in the home country,” by liberating the African colonies, both culturally and politically (Eyerman 165). As Hamilton notes, these positions shared a classist approach that situated well-­educated or “civilized” members of the African diaspora above uneducated, non-­ Westernized Africans, and “reinforced the colonial ideology to civilize” Africa, but they also marked an important sociological shift by creating a consensus view of the need for transnational governance of and unity with Africa (“Transnational” 222). Questions of race and the preservation of African homelands were particularly meaningful for blacks both in Harlem and in the ­A merican South, given that the Paris Peace Conference and the Pan-African Congress took place only fifty-four years after the abolition of slavery in America. The US was still governed by the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson decision that purportedly maintained separate but equal schools and cultural lives for blacks and whites, but in fact preserved and perpetuated institutionalized racism. During the 1910s, as one million A ­ frican Americans migrated from the South to the North in search of employment, the Ku Klux Klan had strengthened its numbers through anti-Great Migration rhetoric. The film The Birth of a Nation (Dir. D.W. Griffith, 1915), which had glamorized the Klan, served as an effective recruiting tool for it and the repression of blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants. After the First World War, the Klan had experienced a resurgence as whites sought to upend the employment progress that black Americans had made during the war, as well as to extinguish any expectations of equality that black veterans might have held upon returning home. In the 1920s, the Klan expanded beyond the South and attracted as many as five million members, including at least three governors and the mayors of major cities such as Atlanta and Indianapolis (Jackson vi-vii). In 1925 and 1926, the Klan staged a number of marches on Washington, with 25,000 to 60,000 followers outfitted in white hoods and capes, with their faces bared, demonstrating on the National Mall (“The Klan”). As a counterforce to increasingly public displays of racist ideologies, the 1917 Russian Revolution had ignited a sense of possibility in many black American communities.7 Interest in the US Communist Party continued to grow during the Great Depression and, in particular, following the Scottsboro trial of 1932, after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the US Communist Party aided in the successful appeal of a guilty verdict against nine young

“Not Valid for Spain”  101 black men falsely accused of rape.8 Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and the subsequent failure of the League of Nations to intervene to defend its sovereignty, further rallied black allegiance to the leftist cause in Spain. This solidarity strengthened after a June 20, 1936 address to the League of Nations on the Italo-Abyssinian crisis, in which Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie cautioned, “‘It is us today, it will be you tomorrow’” (Whitman). The West’s refusal to support Ethiopia in its battle against Mussolini intensified the increasing sense of transnational kinship between North Africa and Spain. Extensive archival materials indicate that black brigadiers equated the situation in Ethiopia with the fascist uprising that occurred in Spain a month later. In his 1935 poem “Call of Ethiopia,” Hughes cries out for the freedom of all African diaspora peoples, opening with an invocation to “all Africa” to “arise” (Collected 184). Published later that year, his “Ethiopia Marches On” serves as a Pan-African call to unity, urging, “All you colored peoples /… / Say to Mussolini / No! You shall not pass!” (3). Additionally, Robin D.G. Kelley notes that brigadier Oscar Hunter’s short story “700 Calendar Days” includes “a wounded black soldier” who explains his participation in the Spanish Civil War as follows: “‘I wanted to go to Ethiopia and fight Mussolini … This ain’t Ethiopia, but it’ll do’” (5).9 Spanish journalist Mireia Sentís identifies the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia as the foundational event in solidifying a sense of Pan-­A fricanism among African American brigadiers. As she observes in a lengthy profile of these brigadiers, “fascism’s advance into ancient Abyssinia directly affected the African American community as a group (3).”10 Harlem’s ties to Ethiopia are made explicit in the name of the oldest African American church in New York City, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, founded in 1808, which became a primary center of fundraising for Ethiopia and later for Spain.11 Sentís points out that African Americans of diverse political affiliations, including black nationalists, socialists, and Pan-­ Africanists, were eager to enlist to defend Ethiopia after the League of Nations decided not to intervene. However, Emperor Selassie, fearing US repercussions, discouraged the involvement of foreign troops, and the US threatened to revoke the citizenship of any American who enlisted in a foreign army (Sentís 3). As a result, frustrated would-be volunteers focused on fundraising and gathering essential supplies for Ethiopia, including food and medications, but they were unable to ensure that the aid reached the intended parties. Fundraising, supply-gathering, and, in short order, illegal border crossings to Spain to fight the fascists there soon replaced Harlem’s frustrated Ethiopian efforts. A 1938 pamphlet published by the Negro Committee to Aid Spain highlights the organization’s construction of this sense of a shared diasporic identity that united Ethiopia with Spain (“Salaria Kea”). Primarily a biography of nurse Salaria Kea, the only African American woman in the ALB, the pamphlet depicts intervention in the Spanish

102  Karen W. Martin conflict as a means of supporting blacks worldwide. It opens with a series of questions: “What have Negroes to do with Spain? What has Spain for us? What about Ethiopia? Why should Negro men be fighting in Spain? What do we expect out of it?” The response is clear: by invading Ethiopia, Italy dealt “a terrible blow to Negroes throughout the world. Ethiopia represented the last outpost of Negro authority, of Negro self-government.” The pamphlet condemns a German-­ItalianJapanese alliance that “slaughter[ed]” Ethiopians and then advanced directly into Spain. In fact, Franco’s rebellion against Spain’s Republican government is never mentioned in the pamphlet, nor is he even named, leaving the uninformed reader to conclude that Mussolini had invaded Spain. Within this narrative framework, Ethiopia and Spain are presented as parallel nations, with the latter being “a second small nation” invaded by Italy, so that “Spain was now the battlefield on which Italian fascism might be defeated. And perhaps Italy defeated in Spain would be forced to withdraw from Ethiopia, Ethiopia’s only hope for recovery lies in Italy’s defeat. The place to defeat Italy now is in Spain” (“Salaria Kea”).12 The third element uniting Italy and Spain in this configuration is American racism, which the pamphlet immediately describes as fascism: The lynching of Negroes in America, discrimination in education and on jobs, lack of hospital facilities for Negroes in most cities and very poor ones in others, all this appeared to them [“the hundreds of Negro boys who had been prevented from going to Ethiopia”] as part of the picture of fascism: of a dominant group impoverishing and degrading a less powerful group. The open pronouncements of Germany and Italy against all non-Aryans is convincing evidence. Thinking thus, hundreds of Negro men went to Spain. Here in the international Brigade of Volunteers they found other Negroes. From Djibouti … From South Africa, from Cuba, from French Senegal, from Haiti, from the Cameroon’s [sic], Negroes came, stayed and fought. This passage suggests that African Americans were not only united with Ethiopia in the war effort, but their service in the brigade allowed them to experience a transnational African identification with the global community. Their African heritage, more than language and culture barriers, serves as the consolidating element for soldiers from Europe, North America, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. In addition, for black American soldiers, Spain frequently represents a type of sanctuary within war, as they find that their race ceases to be the primary focus of attention; they enjoy a sense of liberation and feel judged on their individual merits rather than denigrated by a white elite based on skin color, as they were in the US.

“Not Valid for Spain”  103 Hughes further articulated this position in his July 1937 address to the Second International Writers Congress in Paris.13 Declaring himself a representative of both the Negro and the poor and speaking on behalf of fifteen million poor American blacks, Hughes declared, We are the people who have long known in actual practice the meaning of the word Fascism—for the American attitude toward us has always been one of economic and social discrimination: in many states of our country Negroes are not permitted to vote or to hold political office … freedom of movement is greatly hindered … we know what it is to be refused admission to schools and colleges, to theaters and concert halls, to hotels and restaurants. We know jimcrow cars, race riots, lynchings, we know the sorrows of the nine Scottsboro boys …. Yes, we Negroes in America do not have to be told what Fascism is in action. We know. (“Too Much” 272) After vividly laying out the legacy of American racism and its fascist essence, Hughes immediately tied his experiences at home to the global fascist crisis, stressing, And now we know it on a world scale. Hitler in Germany … ­ ussolini in Italy with his banning of Negroes on the theater M stages and his expedition of slaughter in Ethiopia … and now Spain and Franco with his absurd cry of ‘¡Viva España!’ at the hands of ­Italians, Moors and Germans invited to help him achieve ‘Spanish Unity.’ (“Too Much” 272) Here Hughes helps set the precedent for linking the fight against Spanish Francoists with the battle against Mussolini and Hitler, within a context of diasporic unity and with Spain as a proxy battleground for the ­Ethiopian conflict. Kelley’s work also supports this construction of “radical internationalism” anchored in Pan-Africanism, pointing out: “The struggle in Spain was not simply another ‘white man’s war,’ but an extension of the Italo-Ethiopian conflict” (6). As Mike Wallace’s study of growing anti-fascist passions in New York City in the 1930s shows, Harlem nationalists saw Mussolini’s threats as an affront to blacks everywhere; street-corner soapboxers harangued passersby on the need for global black unity against fascist militarism; and young Negroes took to calling themselves “Afro-Americans” … Secular Pan-Africanists argued that the safety and well-being of African Americans was tied to the fate of Africa itself; and anti-imperialists insisted it was imperative to defend the one country that had maintained its independence as the continent got carved up. (26)

104  Karen W. Martin Three thousand people attended the first meeting of the Provisional Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia in March 1935 at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, and “nationalist street-corner orators” reported having “nearly a thousand” volunteers who were willing to enlist in the Ethiopian army to defend the nation against Mussolini (Wallace 26). Crawford Morgan, who was wounded at the Aragon front in 1937 and later served in the XV Brigade’s Transport Union until late 1938, testified before the Subversive Activities Control Board of the US Department of Justice in September 1954 as a defense witness attempting to prevent the VALB from being declared a subversive organization.14 His reasons for joining the battle in Spain align with those found in the Salaria Kea pamphlet. When asked if he understood the “issues” “connected to that war” prior to going to Spain, Morgan explicitly linked US racism, fascism, and Pan-Africanism as his reasons for enlisting: Being aware of what the Fascist Italian government did to the ­Ethiopians, and also the way that I and all the rest of the Negroes in this country have been treated ever since slavery, I figured I had a pretty good idea of what fascism was. We have quite a few fascist tendencies in this country … for the longest time Negroes have been getting lynched in this country by mobs, and that was fascism on a small scale… . But over there it was one whole big group against the other. It was the Franco group that didn’t like democracy. (qtd in Collum 175–76) Morgan’s testimony both ties his illegal participation in the Spanish Civil War to Pan-African unity with Ethiopia and further attacks the ­McCarthy-era anti-communist agendas by linking together Mussolini, Franco, and the US legacy of slavery, segregation, and violence against blacks as elements of fascism. Furthermore, he positions Franco as an anti-­ democratic caudillo, in opposition to the US, so that, as a patriot, M ­ organ was upholding American ideals of freedom by defending the Spanish Republic. Linking Hitler and Franco, he emphasized that “all my life I have been treated as a second-class citizen,” and “[w]ith Hitler on the march and fascism starting the fight in Spain, … I felt that if we cold [sic] lick the Fascists in Spain, … it would offset a bloodbath later” (qtd. in Collum 176). In this post-Second World War interview, Morgan, a “premature anti-Fascist,” as the brigadiers were described by the US government, articulately highlights the prescience of those who chose to combat the fascists for four years before their country intervened against Germany and Italy.15 In agreement with many other veterans, Morgan testified as follows: from the time I arrived in Spain, … for that period of my life, I felt like a human being, like a man … I was treated like all the rest of the people were treated, and when you have been … treated worse than

“Not Valid for Spain”  105 people treat their dogs, it is quite a nice feeling to go someplace and feel like a human being. (qtd. in Collum 176) While Sentís points out that the Ethiopian-Spanish parallel was not universally accepted, black intellectuals in Harlem and across the US generally embraced the notion of the Spanish Civil War as an extension of the Italo-Abyssinian conflict. As she writes, Black newspapers—The Courier, of Pittsburgh; The Afro-­American, of Baltimore; The Daily World, of Atlanta; The Defender, of ­Chicago; The Amsterdam News, of New York … —declared themselves supporters of the Spanish Republic. The collections and aid campaigns for Ethiopia were redirected to our country, and famous musicians—Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Count Basie, W.C. Handy, Eubie Blake—held benefit concerts. Paul Robeson even travelled to Spain in 1938, to motivate the troops who were already quite exhausted by that point. On the Spanish Revolution was the title of James Baldwin’s first text, written at only 12 years old, while Noam Chomsky, barely 10, conducted his own literary baptism with an article dedicated to the fall of Barcelona. (5)16 Hughes, who wrote for The Afro-American and Volunteer for Liberty, the International Brigade’s bulletin, was the most widely read Civil War correspondent in the US (Sentís 5). Fluent in Spanish after having spent time in Mexico with his father, he translated poetry by Nicolás Guillén, Federico García Lorca, and Rafael Alberti into English, as well as at least two of Lorca’s plays (Sentís 5; Scaramella 177). Many of his poems from Spain reveal a Pan-African focus, as well as his conviction that ­European powers feared the destabilizing effects of an egalitarian ­Spanish workers’ Republic. His epistolary poem “Letter from Spain,” narrated by Johnny, a fictional member of the Lincoln Battalion, addresses the black soldiers’ shock at capturing a “wounded Moor” who was fighting for the Francoists (Collected 201). The dying soldier manages to explain that he was taken from his home, presumably M ­ orocco, and forced to join a war that he didn’t understand, against an unknown enemy. The poem highlights the soldier’s hesitation while Johnny “look[s] across to Africa / and see[s] foundations shakin” (201). Not only does the soldier convey his resistance to conscription, but Hughes’s framing of the narrator looking across from Spain to Africa highlights the cultural and geographic proximity between Spain and Africa. Rather than being portrayed as a distant “dark continent,” Africa lies within sight of Europe, while Spain is uniquely connected to Africa through centuries of Moorish history on the peninsula. For Hughes, the foundations are shaking because the Republic’s win would entail the liberation of African colonies. The poetic voice, Johnny, explicitly

106  Karen W. Martin links fascism to colonialism in Africa, realizing that other European nations oppose the Spanish republic because empowering workers in Spain threatens to upend the continued enslavement and exploitation of Africans in ­European colonies (201). This poem combines then the three pillars of black brigadier involvement in Spain: Pan-Africanism, the global fight against fascism, and the racist oppression of blacks both at home and abroad. Sentís’s research further supports the sanctuary aspect of war for the black soldiers. As she writes, “although they awakened the native population’s curiosity everywhere they went, they were never treated differently than their white countrymen” (4). Sentís cites Vaughn Love’s encounter with a farmer to illustrate Spanish curiosity about the dark-skinned soldiers: Love recalled being offered a handkerchief so he could wipe his face, which a Spaniard had mistakenly presumed was dirt-stained. “When he explained that he was black, the campesino embraced him, saying, ‘Oh, yes, the black slaves! We’re just a step away from them’” (5).17 Kea, who had initially been rejected by the Red Cross because her race was seen as a complicating factor that would limit her effectiveness, also acknowledged being overwhelmed by a sense of solidarity with the poor in Spain, and the sudden awareness that poverty was not always linked to race. In an interview conducted in her Ohio home in 1975, Kea reflected on the liberating joy of her initial arrival in France, where she was free to choose any restaurant or hotel she desired without fear of segregation or racist reprisals. After crossing into Spain, however, she was stunned by the depth and ubiquity of rural poverty: I saw all the poor people, the shacks they lived in, … and I had never seen anything like it in all my life. They couldn’t read and they couldn’t write and the way they lived was to me unbelievable. My whole concept changed. I had had the feeling that in America only the Negroes suffered and that in other countries where there [were] no Negroes everything was lovely. (qtd in August) In other interviews, Kea recalled seeing the peasants so accepting of their assigned positions in life that even when wealthy people’s homes were vacant, the poor slept outside in the rain rather than invade a property that had belonged to someone of a higher social class than their own (“Salaria Kea” 3).18 DuBois, who moved to Spain a year after the brigadiers, felt similarly liberated from American race-based hierarchies. As he recalled, [In Spain] [m]y brown face attracts no attention. I am darker than my neighbors but they are dark. I become, quite to my own surprise, simply a man. I cease to be specially selected for attention either elaborately pleasant or ostentatiously contemptible. Forgetting myself I study others. I feel relieved. (qtd. in Bunk 3)

“Not Valid for Spain”  107 Moreover, Southerner James Yates, author of the highly regarded memoir Mississippi to Madrid (1989), struggled more than his Northern comrades in obtaining legal authorization to travel to Spain because “the State of Mississippi, in keeping with its Jim Crow policies, did not keep records of the birth of Black babies” (93). This lack of documentation led to significant difficulty in securing visas and a passport for international travel. When he reached France, Yates was too intimidated to walk into a cafe, as “my country had conditioned me to accept the status of ‘nigger’ and I just didn’t know if I would ever be able to overcome it” (99). He finally summoned up the courage to enter hotels and restaurants freely only after seeing another black brigadier walk into a prestigious hotel without incident. Decades after the war, Yates recalled another brigadier, Tom Page, telling him, “I remember how sometimes a whole town would turn out when they heard there was a Black man around” (99), because he was the first black man the Spaniards had seen. Much like Love’s incident, however, these encounters were depicted as stemming from curiosity rather than racism. According to Yates, Page realized that “‘Spain was the first place that I ever felt like a free man. If someone didn’t like you, they told you to your face. It had nothing to do with the color of your skin’” (99). Alfonso Domingo, co-director and co-screenwriter of Invisible ­Heroes (2014), has written movingly about the experiences of Yates, Kea, and other black brigadiers. While he does not refer specifically to Pan-­A fricanism or the diaspora, he does highlight the vital role the brigade played as a unit in developing a sense of refuge and potential among the black soldiers who had never experienced life outside the harsh parameters of American racism. He writes, For the African-American volunteers who fought in Spain, doing so in a unit like the Lincoln Brigade was very important. On one hand, they met up with a people who welcomed them with curiosity, with affection, who valued what they were doing, who loved them, and who were not racist. They could stay in any hotel they liked, eat anywhere they wanted, drink, dance with women without them pointing out their color difference. And that is something that drove them later, on returning to their country, to continue fighting for civil rights. They didn’t end the fight in Spain, they simply began it. Escaping the institutional racism of restrictive voting laws, segregated schools, whites-only establishments, the threat of lynching, and unjust courts was a transformative experience for both the black brigadiers and the whites who served alongside them. For both races, experiences such as shared meals were a new experience: Domingo describes the companies of the International Brigade as a sort of “laboratory and workshop in the midst of the war.”

108  Karen W. Martin United by their commitment to protecting the cause of liberty, not only in Spain but also in an imagined Africa and in their home countries, the soldiers forged permanent and life-changing relationships in the trenches. However, when they returned to the US, after Spain expelled the brigadiers in 1938 because their participation in the war violated international non-intervention agreements, the surviving soldiers faced new struggles. They were again stigmatized, frequently unemployed due to blacklisting, and subjected to extreme suspicion on the part of the government and much of mainstream society. Branded as communists, those who returned to Europe as soldiers during the Second World War found themselves marginalized and forced to prove their loyalty and earn their commanders’ trust, even though they were among the most experienced members of their units. Most had their passports revoked; Yates, for example, writes that he was unable to obtain a passport for over thirty years, finally traveling outside the US again in 1971 (163). The VALB formed a lifelong advocacy group and support system, which Sentís concludes was vital to their ability to endure the “intense harassment” (5) that they suffered during the communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era. The Veterans continued as a cohesive unit to promote human rights and liberal causes through the decades after the war: they maintained relationships with Spanish Republican political prisoners (who endured intense repercussions during the nearly forty years of the Francoist regime), opposed the Nazis, fought for civil rights, and opposed global injustices such as apartheid, US intervention in Latin America, and the war in Vietnam (Sentís 5). Kea, who became one of the most well-known brigadiers and devoted significant periods of time to speaking and writing for revolutionary causes after the war, captures the strengthened sense of solidarity that she and many other brigadiers gained from their work in Spain. Echoing Domingo’s observation that many soldiers experienced Spain as a laboratory in which soldiers interacted across racial divides, she emphasizes that in Spain, a transnational and cross-cultural sense of purpose transcended the limits of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Reflecting on her service in an improvised hospital in Villa Paz, where she treated patients from several countries, including “poor whites and Negroes from the Southern States of the United States,” she points out that “divisions of race and creed and religion and nationality lost significance when they met in Spain in a united effort to make Spain the tomb of fascism. The outcome of the struggle in Spain implies the death or the realization of the hopes of the minorities of the world” (“Salaria Kea”). Reid-Pharr expresses some skepticism about the unified nature of the oral histories’ racial narrative, noting that “they were effective emblems of the leftist propaganda machine” and fit “so neatly” the purposes of racial politics in the 1930s and the construction of the poised,

“Not Valid for Spain”  109 cosmopolitan “New Negro” who rejects Jim Crow policies (45). Despite this warranted suspicion, the veterans’ published memoirs and oral histories do share a vibrant and nearly omnipresent representation of hope and refuge in their nostalgia for wartime Spain, anchored in their pride at having made sacrifices in the defense of deeply held beliefs in liberation and solidarity. In addition to serving as a space of liberation from the strictures of the Jim Crow South and from open manifestations of racist contempt across the US, the Spanish Civil War appears to have also functioned as a place of agency and voluntary reconciliation within which diasporic communities created unity and self-determination. In light of Hamilton’s reminder that “[t]here is no country-specific ‘­A frican homeland,’” given the African diaspora’s roots in multiple sites and violence-rooted displacements, nostalgic references to Spain in the Civil War era indicate that engagement there created a sense of constructing a homeland, with the Spanish Republic functioning as a substitute or parallel for a free Ethiopia (“Rethinking” 19). As well as a sense of autonomy and belonging, the fight against fascists – despite the ultimate failure of the effort in Spain – provided the brigadiers with a launching pad of their own for their lifelong work as revolutionaries and liberators at home and abroad.

Notes 1 Franco’s Nationalists received support from Hitler’s Germany and M ­ ussolini’s Italy during the war as they used Spain as a training ground for strategies that would later be implemented against the Allies during the Second World War. The most notorious of these attacks is the 1937 bombing of Guernica, in which the Nazis’ Condor Legion killed nearly 2,000 civilians in a Franco-approved test of blitzkrieg (“lightning war”). 2 Peter Carroll notes that the ALB “named its unit after the president who also defended a legally elected government during a civil war” (14). 3 Law was killed in the 1937 Battle of Brunete. William Herrick, a brigadier who left the Communist Party in 1939, insisted in a highly polemical Village Voice interview in 1986 that Law had been killed by two of his own comrades, one of whom was black, for “incompetence and cowardice.” The VALB vehemently reject this claim (Gallagher). 4 Jim Crow refers to the numerous laws enacted in the late 19th century in the US, after the Reconstruction era, to enforce racial segregation, as well as to the practice of segregation itself. In the South, this practice was codified into law, but it was common in the North as well. “By the turn of the 20th century, every state in the South had laws on the books that disenfranchised blacks and discriminated against them in virtually every sphere of life, lending sanction to a racial ostracism that extended to schools, churches, housing, jobs, restrooms, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, orphanages, prisons, funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries” (Alexander  35). Civil Rights legislation adopted in 1964 and 1965 aimed to dismantle this system. 5 Reid-Pharr devotes significant attention to black soldiers’ roles in both the 1898 Spanish-American War and the Spanish Civil War.

110  Karen W. Martin 6 Both the post-First World War Peace Conference (January–May 1919) and the Pan-African Congress (February 1919) in Paris included “two … points of particular concern to black Americans: (1) free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, and (2) formation of an association of nations (League of Nations) to keep world peace, guided by specific covenants to afford mutual guarantees of political independence to both great and small states” (Hamilton, “Transnational” 220). The Pan-­ African Congress focused on African home rule. 7 Although black workers’ struggles had previously been treated as equivalent to those of whites within the communist movement, Robin D.G. Kelley notes that by 1920, Vladimir Lenin had begun identifying “American Negroes” as a group whose concerns must be addressed, chiding the movement “for neglecting the plight of African-American workers” (6). 8 Known as the Scottsboro boys, nine young black men were falsely accused but found guilty by all-white juries of having raped two white women on a train. Eight of the men were originally sentenced to death. The Communist Party and NAACP aided the men in appealing the case, which ultimately reached the US Supreme Court. This case led to the racial integration of US juries and inspired literary works such as Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). 9 This line has become a common reference point in studies of African ­American involvement in the Spanish Civil War. It serves as a titular element in Danny Duncan Collum’s African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War, “This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do,” and is also mentioned in Guttman. The short story cited here is published in Alvah Bessie’s The Heart of Spain. 10 All translations are mine. 11 The Abyssinian Baptist Church was founded by African Americans, including Ethiopian immigrants, who refused to accept segregated seating at the First Baptist Church. The name derives from the ancient name for Ethiopia, Abyssinia. By 1930, the church was the largest black congregation in New York City. Its renowned pastors include Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and his son Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a fourteen-term US Congressman. 12 According to Kelley, by 1937, “Ethiopia’s fate is at stake on the battlefields of Spain” had become the Communist International’s (Comintern’s) slogan, and aid for Ethiopia was shifted to Spain (18). The Comintern coordinated the International Brigade’s recruiting efforts in Paris. 13 In 1937, multilingual meetings, also known as the Second International Congress of Antifascist Writers, were held in Valencia, Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris in order to mobilize intellectuals against the spread of fascism in Western Europe. 14 Senator McCarthy was the infamous leader of the 1950s communist witch hunts in the US. The McCarthy era, at the peak of Cold War tensions between the US and the USSR, involved investigations of public figures for alleged complicity with communists and the blacklisting of suspected communists, who were often unable to find employment or housing as a result. 15 The VALB’s office traces the “earliest published example of the term” PA (premature antifascist) to April 1943 and attributes its first use to the US government in January 1945, during the Second World War, absurdly stigmatizing soldiers for having fought less than a decade earlier against the same forces with whom the US was now at war. 16 These black jazz musicians were some of the most famous entertainers in the US in the 1930s and 1940s. William James “Count” Basie was the first African American Grammy winner. Robeson, the son of an escaped

“Not Valid for Spain”  111 slave, graduated from Columbia University Law School and became a well-­ respected singer and actor as well as a civil rights activist. 17 “Cuando le explicó que era negro, el campesino le abrazó con estas palabras: ‘¡Ah, sí, los esclavos negros! Nosotros solo estamos a un paso de serlo.’” 18 Kea related one cruel—and highly plausible—racist encounter on the ship as she traveled to Spain. According to Reid-Pharr, this incident is frequently written out of her history or rejected by her biographers, seemingly because it mars the otherwise positive depictions of race relations documented in the VALB archives.

Works Cited “African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: Before Spain.” Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Web. “The War in Spain.” Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Web. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2012. August, Bob. “Salaria Kea and John O’Reilly: Volunteers Who Met and M ­ arried in Spain, 1938.” Cleveland Magazine 1975: n.p. Web. Bessie, Alvah, ed. The Heart of Spain; Anthology of Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry. New York: VALB, 1952. Bunk, Brian. “Spain and the Harlem Renaissance: To Be Simply a Man.” We’re History 20 Nov. 2014: n.p. Web. Carroll, Peter. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. Collum, Danny Duncan, ed. This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do: African-­ Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Waltham: Brandeis UP, 1992. Domingo, Alfonso. “La lucha de los negros por su libertad pasó por España.” Huffington Post 7 May 2015: n.p. Web. Eyerman, Ron. “The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of ­Memory.” Acta Sociologica 47.2 (2004): 159–69. Gallagher, Dorothy. “Fallen Comrade.” New York Times 30 May 1988: n.p. Guttman, Allen. The Wound in the Heart: America and the Spanish Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1962. Hamilton, Ruth Simms. “Rethinking the African Diaspora: Global Dynamics.” Routes of Passage. Ed. Ruth Simms Hamilton. Vol.1. Part 1. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2007. 1–39. ———. “Transnational Politics: A Note on Black Americans and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.” Routes of Passage. Ed. Ruth Simms Hamilton. Vol.1. Part 2. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2007: 219–38. Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Ed. Arnold Rampersad. New York: Vintage, 1994. 184. ———. “Ethiopia Marches On.” The Collecte Works of Langston Hughes: ­Gospel Plays, Operas, and Later Dramatic Works. Vol. 6. Ed. Leslie C. ­Sanders. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2004. 618–20. ———. “Love Letter from Spain: Addressed to Alabama.” The Daily Worker 23 Jan. 1938: 2. ———. “Too Much of Race.” The Crisis Sept. 1937: 272. Jackson, Kenneth T. The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930. 1967. Chicago: Elephant Paperback, 1992.

112  Karen W. Martin Kelley, Robin D. G. “‘This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do.’” Collum 5–57. Mack, Felicia. “Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York City (1808–).” BlackPast: n.p. Web. Reid-Pharr, Robert. F. Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain and Post-­ Humanist Critique. New York: NYU P, 2016. “Salaria Kea: A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain.” Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Web. Scaramella, Evelyn. “Translating the Spanish Civil War: Langston Hughes’s Transnational Poetics.” The Massachusetts Review 55.2 (2014): 177–88. Sentís, Mireia. “Afroamericanos estadounidenses en la Guerra Civil Española: Los brigadistas ocultos.” La Vanguardia. Cultural Supplement 7 Oct. 2009: 2–5. “The Klan Walks in Washington.” Literary Digest 22 Aug.1925: 7–8. Wallace, Mike. “New York and the World: The Global Context.” Facing ­Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War. Eds. Peter N. Carroll and James D. Fernandez. New York: Museum of the City of New York/NYU Press, 2007. 18–29. Whitman, Alden. “Haile Selassie of Ethiopia Dies at 83.” New York Times 28 Aug. 1975: n.p. Yates, James. Mississippi to Madrid: Memoir of a Black American in the ­Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Greensboro: Open Hand, 1989.

5 Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War Memoirs of A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain1 Carmen Cañete Quesada African Americans and the War in Spain The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) constitutes one of the most influential episodes in the history of 20th century Spain. The war left a tragic legacy marked by ambiguities, contradictions, and unanswered questions, some of which are still ignored or avoided by contemporary ­Spanish society. With the spread of fascist ideologies in Europe, and Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, black communities around the world rallied to the “Hands Off Ethiopia” movement, denouncing foreign interventions in colonial Africa. The armed conflict in Ethiopia was followed by an uprising in Spain, strongly supported by Italy, Germany, and ­Portugal, and just as strongly opposed by the Soviet Union, the Communist International (Comintern), and the International Brigades. After the resignation of dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera in January of 1930, and the exile of King Alfonso XIII immediately following the democratic elections of April 1931, the Second Spanish Republic ­(1931–1939) was proclaimed. During the three biennia of the Second Republic, with the left-wing and right-wing forces alternating in power, basic civil rights were provided for all sectors of the society. A cursory reading of the Constitution of the Second Republic is sufficient to observe the political, social, and economic innovations put in place by the end of 1931. Spain became “a democratic republic of workers of all classes, organized under a regime of Freedom and Justice,” and legal actions were taken to ensure principles of social equality and justice among the less privileged (Congreso de los Diputados). These unprecedented measures came to an end on July 18, 1936, when right-wing military forces staged a coup d’état, with the aim of restoring a centralized repressive regime. The Ley de Memoria Histórica [Historical Memory Law] enacted in 2007 and the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH) [Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory] founded seven years earlier, have both sought to heal and recognize the victims of Spain’s Civil War and of the regime of right-wing dictator, Francisco Franco (1939–1975). They have significantly increased the efforts directed at collecting bibliographical sources, interviews, and correspondence from witnesses of the period whose memory had been silenced. 2

114  Carmen Cañete Quesada These first-hand documents, the personal narratives of those who were defeated, have led to new areas for research and exploration of unknown or little-studied aspects of the Spanish conflict. As part of the recovery of this historical memory, the stories of some 40,000 foreign volunteers, who joined the International Brigades from more than fifty countries to risk their lives in the most altruistic way possible, warrant further investigation. Among these International Brigades, the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB) comprised approximately 3,000 men and women, the majority of them skilled industrial workers, sailors, farmers, or unemployed youth, most of them affected by the Great Depression and involved in left-wing movements in the United States, if not affiliated with the Communist Party. The diverse social and economic backgrounds within these US military units embraced a wide range of professions and occupations including students and educators, writers and artists, journalists and medical personnel. In racial terms, the Lincolns counted on a diverse ethnic background. Of the nearly 3,000 brigadiers, approximately ninety were African Americans. Although lesser in number, other ethnic minorities included Native Americans, Asians, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, as well as volunteers from around sixty different European nationalities. The Lincolns, as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) webpage describes them, “saw themselves as a self-­conscious melting-pot organization” (“Problems in Red”). It is important that this material be included as part of the study of contemporary Spanish history in order to increase awareness of the ­A frican American group, its motivations, experiences and struggles, and the ideals for which its members fought during the Spanish conflict.3 It is in this context of historical awareness, as well as of recovering alternative voices from historiographic sources, that I approach the memoirs of the only black female nurse who served in the ALB. The involvement of Salaria Kea (1917–1990) and other African Americans in Spain’s conflicts merits more than a line or a footnote in Spanish history books. In the US, the racial dimension of the Brigade was introduced to ­English-speaking audiences more than four decades after the conflict ended. With the publication of African Americans in the Spanish Civil War (1992), the former executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Archives at Brandeis University, Danny D. Collum, and previous archivist, Victor A. Berch, introduced relevant material on this particular aspect of the war using oral interviews and personal accounts of the black volunteers. In their preface, the editors underlined the importance of “uncovering and preserving the story of these almost-forgotten African-­A merican heroes” (ix), leaving the path open for future scholarship. In the book’s introduction, historian and specialist in US black radicalism, Robin D. G. Kelley, raised fundamental issues regarding African ­A mericans’ race relations within the Communist Party and other left-wing movements that had united for a common cause in Spain.

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  115 Kelley tackles the racist attitudes of Spaniards toward Franco’s North African army, the so-called Moorish troops, as well as the struggles of the small black minority, the Negro Lincolns, with their white comrades. In spite of the Lincoln Brigade being known for its racially integrated army, the image of the military unit untouched by racial tensions has waned in recent studies. Eric R. Smith (61–63) and Aelwen D. Wetherby (113) comment on racial prejudice in Spanish Republic aid organizations and among US volunteers, using archival material not discussed in previous works. With a similar approach, and more specifically in the case of Kea, Robert F. Reid-Pharr discusses the racist attitude of the physician in charge of the third unit of the American Medical Bureau (AMB), D ­ onald H. Pitts, who refused to sit at the same table with a “nigger” nurse in the dining room of the French ship that transported them to Europe (64–65). Kea’s testimonial, which I will examine later, leads Reid-Pharr to ask: “Could leftist partisans be as foolishly racist as the rest of white America?” (64). These and other historically compromising examples have garnered attention in recent years as scholars became more interested in studying first-hand accounts of different aspects of the war in Spain. The purpose of bringing to light hostile attitudes toward Kea and other Negro Brigadiers is not to question the many valuable expressions of altruism, courage, and integrity of members of the Lincoln Brigade, but rather to foster a better appreciation of the nature of the group, its difficulties and struggles, and how these tensions determined the day-today relationships and dynamics of the Lincoln community.

“Truth” in Salaria Kea’s Narratives Salaria Kea (a.k.a. Sarah L. Kee or by her married name of Salaria Kee O’Reilly) was one of the young black activists who helped raise funds for the Ethiopian cause. She went on to serve with the AMB in Spain’s base hospitals in support of the anti-fascist cause. My analysis of Kea’s memoirs proposes a nuanced interpretation of the Spanish Civil War from the perspective of a marginalized woman who confronted a racist and classbound society in Europe similar to the one she had experienced at home. This study is not focused on determining the level of objectivity in Kea’s narratives, or on ascertaining “the total and absolute truth” about the war, if it is ever possible to reconstruct such a truth. What is of interest here is the recovery of marginal voices associated with events that took place on Spanish soil, the factors that contributed to the outbreak of the war, and the way the circumstances of the time conditioned how facts were remembered. In this sense, and in spite of the well-known bias of personal autobiographies, Kea’s memoirs are informative as they illustrate an underrepresented voice as part of a collective marginalized group. Kea’s most relevant narratives of the war, including articles, interviews, letters, and autobiographical sketches, are archived in the Fredericka

116  Carmen Cañete Quesada Martin and the Frances Patai Papers located in ALBA, at New York University’s Tamiment Library. Shortly after Kea’s return from Spain in May 1938, a fourteen-page biographical booklet titled A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain came into print, sponsored by two humanitarian or­ merican ganizations: the Negro Committee to Aid Spain, as well as the A Medical Bureau and North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. In this brief account, a third-person voice reports the most significant episodes of racial prejudice during Kea’s childhood and college years, offering thereby a personal background to her involvement in the anti-Fascist cause, her humanitarian actions, and her duties as a military nurse. The pamphlet includes first-person quotations from what seems to be a previous personal narrative of Kea’s. This early memoir incorporated in the printed booklet has been identified as an undated forty-­fourpage typescript titled “While Passing Through” (Sharpe), also located at the Tamiment Library. There are, however, a few problems with this assertion. Whereas the pamphlet holds some hope that the Republic will win, the final lines from “While Passing Through” mention the conclusion of the war on April 1, 1939, when “Franco took over Spain” (44), which dates A ­Negro Nurse as an earlier text with different aspirations. Additionally, in both the pamphlet and “While Passing Through,” the third person (a reporter) and the “I” voice (Kea) appear to be seamless in as much as they join forces in a persuasive narrative meant to elicit humanitarian help for the Spanish anti-fascist cause. Both texts seem to have used Kea’s first-­ person account as the source of information. This suggests that the “I” voice quoted in both A Negro Nurse and “While Passing Through” corresponds to an earlier autobiographical text (Memoirs) that has not been identified, except for the four typewritten sheets (labeled as pages 6–9) located in London’s Marx Memorial Library. The black nurse is the only narrator of this brief account, and, unlike the other two, the text does not use indirect speech (a reporter).4 As surprising as it may seem, this testimonial material has remained largely unknown. Although Kea’s memoirs acquired a degree of popularity before the 1990s, critics were discouraged by the gaps and inconsistencies they encountered in her personal history. Some of her most committed biographers include Walter J. Lear, former staff member at the Institute of Social Medicine and Community Health in Philadelphia; Barbara Melosh, former curator of the National Museum of American History; and Frances Patai, former instructor at the City University of New York.5 None of their projects resulted in a publication, and all three accused Kea of “self-aggrandizing” her memoirs, using the third person to depersonalize the narrative, and seeking publicity. They also called into question the validity of her account as a “historical document.”6 I, in turn, interpret the possible variants in Kea’s testimonial narratives of the war as a way of focusing attention on the exclusion, silence,

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  117 and violence in the US society. With this in mind, this study examines aspects of autobiography, memory, and historicity, drawing on some of the premises in Philippe Lejeune’s “autobiographical pact” and James Olney’s “ontology of autobiography.” These concepts, among others, led me to interpret Kea’s historical revisions as manifestations of resistance and survival at the time when she narrated her past. Previous critics have questioned the notion of “truth” in Kea’s account, based on the allegedly hyperbolic description of her activities, which include her role in anti-racist protests and her skills as a resourceful nurse who saved many lives. This study instead considers the discrepancies in her war narratives as a strategy intended to displace the white-centered historiography of the crisis of the 1930s. In this sense, testimonial narratives help us understand how a retrospective interpretation of the past is influenced by the author’s place in the world when the accounts were written. Healing from the past and bringing forward another possible “truth” told from the margins are the focus of this essay; however, it will not ignore the pitfalls that memoirs, testimonials, interviews, and other first-person narratives or statements entail. Time, selective memory, what is said and what is omitted – intentionally or not – and the inclusion of others’ life experiences in the narrator’s account (collective memory) are all factors that come into play when remembering through narrative. Some scholars emphasize the literary aspect in autobiographical narratives.7 Autobiography is, in fact, the least reliable genre due to the frequent use of distortion and deception, if not manipulation, in the relationship between the narrator and the external world (Rosenblatt 169). In addition, personal accounts are also shaped with the intended audience in mind, and, in Kea’s case, this resulted in a narrative marked significantly by the social and racial dimensions of the war. Without a doubt, the memory from which this kind of discourse is created is, in most instances, “selective and partial” (Aguilar Fernández 45), but the same selection and distortion in the representation of reality applies to history books as well as to daily news coverage, for example, and these are not invalidated or completely discarded for that reason alone. The autobiographical genre offers a unique experience — “the American experience, the black experience, the female experience, the African experience” — hardly expressed in other written formats (Olney 13), and its exclusive ability to legitimately represent marginal groups silenced in the past has been recognized. How, then, do we interpret these memory traps as we salvage, for the benefit of history, the unreleased material of those who lost the war?

A Negro Nurse in Spain A number of discrepancies in Kea’s biography are yet to be resolved. Although sources differ, it seems that she was born in Milledgeville,

118  Carmen Cañete Quesada Georgia, on June 13, 1913. Kea remembered part of her youth in Akron, and some of her writings locate her birth in this small town in Ohio.8 Her father either lost his life in a tragic accident at the State Hospital for the Insane where he worked as a gardener, or died on a warship serving in the navy during the First World War.9 Her mother either died a few months after Salaria was born, or remarried and returned to Georgia, leaving her orphaned children in Ohio.10 In any event, both paternal and maternal care were absent from Kea’s childhood, although she often mentions her brothers Arthur and particularly Andrew, who often stood up for her at school. In spite of the pamphlet’s title, A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain, these memoirs are not limited to a simple recounting of Kea’s wartime experience in Spain. Half of the document relates her continuous exposure to challenging episodes of bigotry in the segregated town of Akron. According to University of Akron Professor Kathleen L. Endres, African Americans in the area were exposed to everyday discrimination. For example, since they were not allowed to swim in the same public pools as whites in Akron, they were forced to travel to Lorain (Walker 8). At an early age, Kea also faced a racist educational system. She remembers that only with the help of her brothers was she able to transfer from Akron’s Central High School to West High School, where she could participate in athletics. Sarah Lillie Kee, to use her legal name, was known in school as “Rodeo” and “SubKee.”11 Her former classmates still remembered this nickname forty years later at their class reunion in 1970. Her invitation read “Dear Sub,” highlighting how her athletic skills enabled her to “substitute” in any sport, including baseball, volleyball, tennis, and basketball.12 Kea was not only an excellent athlete but also a precocious student. In the West High School yearbook of 1930, she is identified as the class “valedictorian” (Wigginton 25). After being rejected by three nursing schools close to her hometown, Kea was finally accepted at the Harlem Hospital Training School in New York City (Reef 174), where she obtained a college degree. During her years as a nursing student, she was actively involved in the integration of Harlem Hospital’s dining room. One particular case of discrimination shows her commitment to confronting this form of racial injustice: one day, on being told that the only vacant table was reserved exclusively for white social workers, Kea and other black classmates stood up and overturned the table. After this incident, they made some basic demands of the college, and these were eventually implemented thanks to Kea’s role as chairperson of the committee to protest racial discrimination. This unpleasant altercation, described in detail in “While Passing Through” (8–12), was not overlooked in A Negro Nurse. The war pamphlet saw in this incident an opportunity to underscore not just the racial struggles of the African American community, but also Kea’s own battles as an independent black female in

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  119 search of her own sense of belonging. A third-person narrator reflects on Kea’s incident in the following way: That was Salaria’s first experience in group action, in organized, programmatic resistance to injustice. Previously her brothers had assisted her in each situation. Usually she was the only Negro involved. When one place did not concede they moved her on to another. Now she was learning to resist, to organize and change conditions. She emerged with a strong new feeling of group identity. This was 1933. (A Negro Nurse 5–6) This sense of common identity and rapport among the African American community led Kea to become more involved in civil rights movements and organizations, like the NAACP. After her graduation in 1934, working conditions were hopeless and limited for blacks at the two hospitals where she worked – first, at Sea View Hospital with tuberculosis patients, and then in the obstetrics division of Harlem Hospital. Only four hospitals out of twenty-six in New York accepted black nurses at that time; and they were usually hired to perform undesirable tasks in unsafe conditions.13 White supervisors refused to treat patients with terminal tuberculosis, and several African Americans nurses contracted the disease as a result of working on the ward. Kea denounced similar discrimination during her short time working at Harlem Hospital. Her description of the maternity ward provides a grievous record of negligence and abandonment, as well as of inequality and exploitation of African American health personnel, who worked in very precarious conditions. This racial inequality was the main motivation for Kea’s social and political activism at home and abroad. The African American community saw a link between racism in the US and the ethnocentric ideology prevalent in Europe’s fascist discourses, as exemplified primarily by Germany and Italy. In October 1935, Italian Prime Minister Mussolini declared war on Ethiopia under the pretext of protecting the Southern border of Somalia, an Italian protectorate at the time. A Negro Nurse describes the fraternal relations between the Ethiopian people at war and the black community of New York, including Kea, who collected money and medical supplies for a seventy-five-bed field hospital for their Ethiopian brothers (3; 7). Kea’s fight for Spanish democracy was intrinsically associated with her lifelong struggle for civil rights and racial equality in the US. A few months before her trip to Spain, she was eager to contribute to humanitarian aid at home, volunteering with the Red Cross during the 1936 Ohio River flood. The organization, however, rejected her volunteer services. In an interview with Kea and her husband John P. O’Reilly, the nurse states that “The Red Cross told me they were accepting no black nurses, that I would be more trouble than I was

120  Carmen Cañete Quesada worth” (81). Only in this context is it possible to understand the anti-­ fascist and anti-imperialist sentiments that prepared Kea for the battle against classist and totalitarian Spain. The nurse’s memoirs note that “By March 15, she had passed the necessary tests and examinations, measured up to requirements, resigned from the [Harlem] hospital and was ready to take up her tasks in Spain” (“While Passing” 15).

Kea’s Racial Interpretation of the War Offering a chronology of the war through A Negro Nurse and other Kea’s accounts is a difficult task. Her autobiographical texts offer extensive anecdotes from Spain, but it is difficult to trace the sites she visited or where she worked. It is well established that she was sent by the AMB to Aid Spanish Democracy, and left New York on March 27, 1937, with the rest of the third medical unit of brigadiers.14 The AMB, associated with the Communist Party and under the direction of Dr. Edward K. Barsky, organized the first expedition to Spain on January 16, 1937. A second unit left in February under the direction of Dr. Albert Byrne. Kea landed on April 3, in the Mediterranean waters of Port Bou (Gerona), and served as a nurse with other volunteers from the International Brigades in the so-called “Hospital Americano Nº 1” located in Villa Paz, a former palace of King Alfonso XIII located in Saelices (Cuenca). The nurse also mentions the Aragon frontlines and a base hospital in Teruel, asserting, in addition, that she was injured by a bomb in Barcelona before she was sent home; however, her specific itinerary is uncertain. Kea’s period in Villa Paz is the most documented part of her war experience. She was active in the medical unit and overcame adverse situations using her wits as a nurse. The only black nurse of the Lincoln Brigade, she soon gained popularity. Footage of her slim and seemingly fragile figure tending to injured soldiers made it into a few seconds of two renowned propaganda documentaries in support of the Republic: Heart of Spain (Dir. Herbert Kline 1937) and Victoire de la vie (Dir. Henri Cartier Bresson and Herbert Kline 1937), the latter known under the English title Return to Life. Langston Hughes, who was a correspondent in Spain for the Baltimore Afro-American in 1937, recalled in his memoirs a “slender chocolate-colored girl” (Autobiography 366), who managed to overcome the scarcities in the hospital for the benefit of the patients: from keeping surgery patients warm using hot-water bottles filled with soup when there was no heat, to boiling eggs in wine when the plumbing did not work (Autobiography 367). He also reported Kea’s civil wedding to Irish brigadier O’Reilly in a short 1937 note for the Baltimore Afro-American. This diligent nurse also made the headlines of other flagship newspapers advocating racial equality for African Americans, such as the New  York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier,

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  121 and Atlanta Daily World. The articles noted her captivating personality and described her as a courageous and confident woman, who was a source of pride for the African American community. Black US social worker and activist Thyra Edwards described Kea as a “heroic young black woman” (17). Anglo-American volunteer Milton Weiner, who was in charge of the press for the AMB, made positive remarks: “She is known to hundreds of American boys for her patience, smile, and wit. … She is considered by her colleagues to be very efficient and capable” (Associated Negro Press 3). British writer and activist Nancy Cunard praised her genuineness: “one of the most authentic, one of the nicest personalities I have met in a long time” (“Nurse” 12). These and other volunteers remarked on Kea’s distinctive and magnetic personality. Some US humanitarian aid organizations that supported the S­ panish Republic – the Negro People’s Committee to Aid Spain, the AMB, and the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy – raised awareness about the situation in Spain, encouraging US citizens to make contributions for medical equipment and supplies. The back cover of A Negro Nurse included a donation form for the AMB’s fund-raising initiative to send a “Negro ambulance” to Spain on an American Relief Ship. Kea’s testimonial was presented in such a way as to raise public awareness of the urgency of revoking the embargo, approved in January of 1937 and ratified with the Neutrality Law on May 1 of the same year (Lift the Embargo 2). Obviously, these organizations must have interpolated Kea’s most graphic details of the battle in order to persuade US citizens to mobilize for the fight against totalitarianism. The depiction of Kea as the center and sole heroine of the war in A Negro Nurse has been called into question, to the extent that some even came to believe that she was not a real person, but instead a political construct invented by the Negro Committee.15 The alternating between the third-person and the “I” voice in the pamphlet as well as in her unpublished memoirs “While Passing Through” makes it difficult to distinguish Kea’s voice from the politics and propaganda involved in fostering the myth of the black nurse. The newspapers and Kea’s narratives commented on another war episode that followed her posting at Villa Paz. It seems that her medical unit was being moved closer to the Aragon front, probably to a village called Puebla de Híjar (Teruel). Three days after it began moving out of Villa Paz, enemy planes bombed the zone. The wounded were treated in a small field hospital before being evacuated to a base hospital located in Urrea de Gaén. Kea described the attack as prolonged and intense, with the arrival at first of a few German aircrafts, soon to be joined by what she called “Government planes,” all of which were bombing the hospital unit. In the attack, Helen Freeman, a fellow nurse, was severely injured, and Bob Webster, an ambulance driver, was killed by a bomb (A Negro Nurse 12).16

122  Carmen Cañete Quesada Although the facts vary depending on the sources, it is possible that after the aerial bombardment, the medical unit advanced to Zaragoza, reached the region of the Ebro, and then crossed the river toward ­Barcelona. According to Kea, she became separated from the unit and continued her route hitchhiking. During this time, and according to newspaper reports, she was arrested and jailed after being mistaken for a Moorish woman, but once the misunderstanding was cleared, she was treated with respect (“Nurse Jailed;” “Wins Praise”). In these and other autobiographical passages, Kea weaves into her narration events that she did not witness but rather heard or read about from other brigadiers. Kea’s arrest after being mistaken for a member of the Moroccan army, an anecdote that has been questioned, should, in the event that it never happened, be interpreted from the perspective of what Paloma Aguilar Fernández calls “collective or social memories” (64). Through this collectivization of memory, often found in the autobiographical genre, “members of a specific group start putting together common stories about the past, based on the exchange of individual memories and information gathered about a specific event” (Aguilar Fernández 64).17 Being a black brigadier carried its risks, and precautions needed to be taken. It has been documented that African Americans were occasionally shot by their own side, the Loyalists or defenders of the Republic, due to the physical resemblance to members of ­Franco’s ­Moroccan army. For example, black brigadier Eluard Luchell M ­ cDaniels recalled: “When we went in a town, I was called upon to make a speech  … so they could see me. So I’m not a Moor. Black yes. Moor no. I’m a friend of theirs” (qtd. in Kelley 32). Likewise, the twenty-three-yearold dark-skinned Walter Cobbs, who possessed some knowledge of Spanish and French, was about to be taken for a Moor and made a prisoner when he was driving an enemy truck with the fascist insignia, until he managed to explain the situation: “Then they almost hugged me! But suppose I didn’t know enough Spanish? Looking like a Moor as I do, I might have been shot by my own side! It pays to habla español” (qtd. in Yeats 129). Kea’s account contains a number of remarkable scenes. While lost from the unit, somewhere near the city of Lérida, she was captured by German soldiers, pushed inside a car, and sent to a dungeon (“While Passing” 39). She remembered being forced to get up late at night to watch executions, and having to repeatedly witness the macabre spectacle for weeks until a British Battalion rescued her when the Republican army recaptured the town (Kea, “While Passing” 38–42; Kea and O’Reilly 82–83; Walker 7–8). These and other memories were reproduced in a report published by the Beacon Journal in 1991. Veteran Carl Geiser voiced his misgivings in a letter to Lear, where he accused the author of the article, Crystal W. Walker, and her source, Kea, of distorting the truth: “The article contained such preposterous statements that

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  123 I concluded she was fantasizing.” At the end of his letter, Geiser did not discard completely the possibility that Kea’s account could have taken place, due to a lack of evidence to the contrary; however, the following harsh statements illustrate his skepticism: I do not want to belittle Kea for as far as I know she served well as a nurse. I just want to suggest that you need to be careful in using her notes. I myself doubt that she was captured though I do not have proof that she was not. I hope that in your research you can verify whether or not she was captured. If she was, I want to include that in any revision I may make in my book. The majority of Kea’s wartime passages, especially the more uncertain episodes, have been questioned, if not scorned. There was some dispute whether the nurse was even serving with Dr. Barsky’s medical unit during the bombardment of Urrea de Gaén. New Orleans native and volunteer James Neugass spent more than twenty pages of his memoirs describing the hospital in Puebla de Híjar, the tank bombardment of Urrea de Gaén by the fascists, the critical wounding of Helen Freeman during the bombing raid, and the tragic outcome of ambulance driver Bob Webster and his mutilated body (259–82). Moisés Broggi, a Spanish military surgeon who saw a Condor Legion Junker and a Messerschmitt bombing the area (241), described in great detail Webster’s tragic death (242–43). Also, Jewish nurse Anne Taft recalled the same events in the documentary Into the Fire. All of this begs the question of whether the black nurse was really present in Urrea de Gaén when it was bombed. The answer is still not clear. Those who reported the bombardment did not mention the African American nurse; if she was there, this oversight could be interpreted as a lack of visibility among members of the medical unit, who were, by a significant majority, white comrades. On the other hand, Kea was aware of the importance of the myth that she embodied for the black community, and, as such, she could have appropriated these experiences– the exceptional cases – from other brigadiers that she had met or heard about. Nevertheless, her name does appear in a list of Dr. Barsky’s team on the battlefront with other US ­ reeman nurses, among them Fanny Golub, Grace Margolis, and also F and Taft. This list, located at the Tamiment Library, incorporates names of the US, English, and Australian nurses who were part of either Dr. Barsky’s or Dr. Broggi’s teams at the Aragon front. This, and a short article titled “Our Nurses at the Front,” published in the war magazine Ayuda Médica Internacional, suggest that the nurse could have been at the front. The AMI note includes a photo of Kea with Grace Margolis and an unidentified man.18 In contrast, and according to a passage included in Peter Wyden’s oral accounts of the war, nurse Rebecca Schulman traveled with Kea and other US volunteers on a train

124  Carmen Cañete Quesada that transported them to Barcelona after the retreat from Villa Paz. This evacuation occurred about a week after the aerial attack on Urrea de Gaén on March 10, and must have happened after March 17, the date that Schulman and a patient from Villa Paz, Ramón Durem, were married in Aranjuez (Wyden 441). This leaves the slight possibility of Kea being in both places: Puebla de Híjar and Urrea de Gaén at the time of the bombing, and approximately a week later on a train from Aranjuez to Barcelona after the evacuation from Villa Paz. Kea and others wounded during the Teruel offensive were sent by train to the hospital of Manresa (Barcelona). Several days later, she was reunited with her medical unit in Barcelona, where she again came under attack. Her memoirs “While Passing Through” and the pamphlet A Negro Nurse describe dramatic aspects of this later bombardment, with innocent people, including Kea, buried in rubble and surrounded by mutilated bodies. By April 22, 1938, according to other sources, she had to abandon her duties for health reasons. Diagnosed with acute amoebic dysentery and weighing ninety-five pounds, the nurse crossed the border by train, was hospitalized in Paris, and sent home two weeks later. She arrived in New York May 16, 1938.

Race Relations in the Lincoln Brigade Among all this uncertainty as to the degree of “truth” in Kea’s war accounts, it is worth revisiting the significant case of racial prejudice within the medical unit that could bring into disrepute the myth of the ALB as an example of tolerance and racial integration. As mentioned earlier, Kea recounted an incident she suffered at the hands of the physician in charge of the unit, Dr. Pitts.19 Having experienced similar discrimination in the past, she demanded to speak with the captain, who “came and removed Kea to his table where she remained throughout the voyage” (“While Passing” 18). The solidarity and respect shown by Republican supporters (both locals and foreigners) toward African Americans, and the other minorities that formed the Lincoln community, is an obligatory point of reference for anyone conducting research on the topic. A prime example of this racial equality was African American soldier Oliver Law, who was promoted to commander in the Lincoln Brigade by a committee of his fellow white American officers, and ruled an integrated army during the battle of Brunete, where he died. This perception of racial tolerance was supported by a number of African Americans who highlighted it in their testimonials, employing similar rhetorical tools to build racial awareness and support, while at the same time expressing their gratitude for the Spanish people’s hospitality. There was also an attempt by black ­A mericans to make the cause of the Spanish people, particularly in terms of social class, their own. As they gained more awareness of the situation

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  125 in Spain, “the Race people of America” came to identify more with that other democratic “race,” “the people of Republic[an] Spain” (Edwards 17), uniting their resources in the fight against injustice of all kinds: social, economic, and racial. Kea also interpreted the war from this perspective, especially after observing the subhuman conditions of peasants in Cuenca who frequently visited Villa Paz: This was Salaria’s first concrete example of discrimination where race was not a factor. Here it was peasantry versus nobility. The peasants had previously accepted the belief that nothing could be done about it just as Harlem nurses earlier accepted racial discrimination in their dining room. Like the Harlem nurses the peasants were now learning that something could be done about it. [If] one resisted, one fought, liberty could be a reality. There was nothing inviolable about the old prejudices. They could be changed and justice established. (A Negro Nurse 8) Once again, the use of the third person in Kea’s memoirs, in addition to lending objectivity to the accounts, which are perceived to be reported by an outsider, reinforces a vindicating voice – in this case an outside ­narrator – representative of a marginalized group. The following excerpt from A Negro Nurse illustrates the determination of the black community in joining the solidarity program promoted by the Spanish Republic:20 Salaria saw that her fate, the fate of the Negro Race, was inseparably tied up with their fate; that the Negro’s efforts must be allied with those of other minorities as the only insurance against an uncertain future. And in Spain she worked with freedom. Her services were recognized. For the first time she worked free of racial discrimination or limitations. (9) African Americans glossed over the racial tensions they encountered in the war effort, presenting publicly a Spanish society and military unit in complete harmony, in order to contrast this with their precarious situation at home. On the other hand, for similar reasons, communist propaganda, and other US left-wing and African American publications, contributed to the spread of principles in line with Spanish democratic values, especially during the war. However, even if it may be true that they were fully integrated, prejudice was nonetheless present, and the fact that Kea publicized her incident with Dr. Pitts, a common experience in the US but thought to be impossible in the progressive-minded ALB, was considered practically an act of treason by some proud ­Lincoln brigadiers. On December 7, 1990, Veteran Martin Balter warned Patai that Kea’s allegations about “the racist slurs by Dr. Pitts” could endanger the honor

126  Carmen Cañete Quesada of the military units. Speaking with the authority of someone who had witnessed that transatlantic journey, but also with the pride of a white veteran whose reputation is under attack, Balter denied the incident, assuring Patai that “we had eaten and socialized as a distinct group throughout our travel en route to Villa Paz.” In her response, Patai considered the claims “a figment of her imagination, as is her story of being captured and then escaping from the Germans,” although she ended the exchange with the following conciliatory message: However, the fact that Salaria may have confused fact with fiction does not in any way diminish her bravery, courage, nobility in volunteering. Nor does it lessen at all her truly radical political actions in integrating the dining room and staff at Harlem hospital—at considerable risk to her well-being and future. (Letter to Martin Balter) In light of Balter’s assertions and lack of evidence, it is tempting to infer that the incident with Dr. Pitts never happened; however, in this case, another member of the third medical unit corroborated Kea’s testimonial. In a 1980 interview conducted by John Gerassi, ambulance and truck driver Evelyn Hutchins recalled that “infamous Dr. Pitt[s] who kept making problems because Salaria was black and he was a doctor from the South. And I kept getting into fights with him, and they kept telling me not to rock the boat because they needed doctors” (66). Hutchins, a strong woman who reported that chauvinist attitudes were common among the medical unit, remembered that Dr. Pitts forced Kea to get tested because he was convinced that, “All niggers have syphilis” (Gerassi 113). 21 The informant’s complete intolerance toward unbearable racist attitudes among the medical personnel can be reflected in her own testimony archived in ALBA: “Solaria Key [sic] was in my group and Dr. Pitts heaven help him, I’m sure he’s gone to the middle of hell someplace. He was no good, from the word GO” (Hutchins, “Interview”). Other sources tell of Kea’s disagreements with head nurse Fredericka Martin, who was charged with racial discrimination by the young black nurse for trying to persuade her to postpone her interracial marriage (Wetherby 113). Were these racial tensions in the first US integrated military medical services units an isolated case in Spain? Certainly not, for, as much as the small group of African American brigadiers wanted to see a utopian racial harmony within the group, other testimonials that have not yet entered the public domain contradict this: on his visit to the battlefront, noted African American singer and activist Paul Robeson and his wife Eslanda heard from a white officer that some brigadiers, particularly white southern US and British volunteers, had to be “drastically educated” in order to eat at a table with colored brigadiers (Kelley 33–34). Frank Alexander recognized that in spite of the comradeship found in the

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  127 Lincoln division, racist attitudes of some of these same fellow comrades manifested themselves once they were removed from the pseudo-reality of the front lines (143). Volunteer Ramón (Ray) Durem, a light-skinned Seattle native with mixed lineage, recalled having witnessed racial hatred since his youth due to the fact that he could pass as a white man (Kelley 34). A group of James Yeats’s passengers, journalists Herbert Matthews, Ernest Hemingway, and Sefton Delmer, were having a passionate discussion about the war in his car, while the driver remained “as quiet as a mouse” (Mississippi to Madrid 147), and his opinion did not seem to count, regardless of his experience on the frontlines (Kelley 34). African American Oscar Hunter encountered similar contradictions among members of the communist party – mostly white – who insisted that they knew more about blacks than he did (Gerassi 66). The task of giving voice to the racially marginalized members of the ALB, both generally and in relation to the Spanish conflict, is one that requires more research into the oral histories that were collected and archived in the past, and need to be revisited and consulted for a better understanding of the Lincoln’s operation and war performance. To conclude, in recovering the memory of the Spanish Civil War related in Kea’s narratives, two important contexts must be balanced one against the other: the US Jim Crow era and Europe’s widespread fascism. Both provided this courageous nurse with the motivation for embarking on her transatlantic adventure. Her interpretation of the war offers insights into the contributions of African Americans to the Spanish Republican cause, and their identity as a marginal group in a foreign setting. When reading the narrations of her war experiences, the curated image of Kea as a racial and political icon often overshadows the more personal autobiographical narrative of a black woman who volunteered to fight injustice in a foreign land. Both dimensions, the legendary propagandizing image and the more human side, fuse in the memories of the nurse, leaving little space for discussion of the veracity of her accounts. In some cases, Kea’s writings may have been intertwined with a collective memory of the war, reporting in great detail vivid events that she heard or read about. The “history” that surrounds the myth of this Negro nurse, either nourished with communist propaganda, exalted by humanitarian groups, or glorified by the African American press, offers a window into real war situations that other brigadiers experienced almost simultaneously. This is the case with the evacuation of medical personnel from Villa Paz to Barcelona, and in the much recounted aerial attack on Urrea de Gaén. Placing a marginal figure such as Kea at the center of these and other critical moments of the war (solving the scarcities of the hospital, captured by the Nazis, mistaken by the Moors, buried by fascist bombs) gave prominence to the Negro community she represented and opened a space for discussion on the racial connotations of the war in Spain.

128  Carmen Cañete Quesada The African American brigadiers were part of a larger collectivity of comrades who had similar socioeconomic motivations for fighting, but not always the same inspiration regarding racial equality. It is true that, in contrast to the strictly segregated US society of the 1930s, the Lincoln volunteers exhibited a healthy racial and cultural coexistence; at least, this was among the ideals they fought for at home and abroad. However, this assumption deserves more attention. In order to better understand the war’s social and racial dimensions, a more comprehensive review of the African American testimonials in the ALBA and other archives is needed. Rather than depicting them as perfect heroes, the Lincolns as a group should rightly be admired for their altruism and integrity, yet their story needs to be told without altering the facts or overlooking certain aspects. It is in this context of historical review that Kea’s memoirs gain in importance vis-à-vis the more accepted versions of the Spanish conflict. The story of the Lincoln Brigade, beyond being, undoubtedly, a story of unselfish activism, should not ignore the challenges the Brigade faced in bringing together individuals of different backgrounds and origins. The greatest respect that can be paid to these volunteers is to demand that all their voices be heard, and the greatest egalitarianism is to accept their testimony on its own merits, as part of the many and varying accounts and oral histories of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Notes 1 Special thanks to the ALBA, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. Michael Koncewicz, ALBA Assistant Librarian and Cold War Collections Specialist, assisted me in locating documents held in the John Gerassi and the Edward K. Barsky Papers. Rachel Corr, Máximo Molina Gutiérrez, Ernesto Viñas, and Alan Warren read drafts of this work and offered valuable feedback. A visit on July 21, 2016, to the former Hospital Americano No.1 in Villa Paz, Saelices (Cuenca), was made possible, thanks to Viñas and one of the owners of the residence, Jaime Jordán. 2 Although there are numerous precedents for the recovery of memories of the Spanish Civil War, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, the micro-histories of the war and of Franco’s regime are more fully revealed in personal memoirs and other autobiographical sources, which have multiplied over the last few decades. The documentary genre has been critical in the dissemination of these oral histories and personal accounts. 3 See Carroll, and Collum and Berch’s important contributions. Among the most illustrative documentaries are The Good Fight (1983) and Into the Fire (2002). In Spain, the Lincoln Brigadiers were featured in two documentaries: Almas sin fronteras (2006) and Héroes invisibles (2015). Also worth mentioning is the quarterly magazine The Volunteer, founded by ALB Veterans. Co-editors Carroll (print edition) and Sebastiaan Faber (online edition) have contributed for decades to the sharing of knowledge on the topic, particularly in the US. In Spain, the subject has been highlighted by the Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales and its president Almudena Cros.

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  129 4 Two other significant first-person narratives are a typescript composed in her Bronx residence titled “May Every Knock Be a Boost,” and the testimonial “Hope: To Serve God and My Country. Reflection of my Life,” prepared for a Bible class at St. Bernard Catholic Church. The latter was written sometime after her 1974 move to Akron. A few interviews from the 1980s have also been of great value in this study. 5 Two more studies revisited the black nurse’s case: an MA thesis by Catherine E. Wigginton, undervalued and largely forgotten, in part because it is unpublished; and a brief but intriguing article by Emily R. Sharpe, which brought to light some of Kea’s contradictions and unanswered questions. See also Donlon and Reid-Pharr. 6 Lear’s purpose was to edit and publish “While Passing Through,” but in a letter to Patai, he questioned the historical accuracy of these memoirs and reinforced his doubts with the opinion of Berch, who was at the time the archivist of the ALB collection at Brandeis University. In a letter to Lear dated December 13, 1984, Melosh explained her intention of publishing the nurse’s autobiography in a university press with the collaboration of Sam Shepard: Parts of the autobiography (if that’s what it is) are somewhat self-­ aggrandizing; maybe she chose to write in third-person in order to make these claims more freely? In other discussions Shepard has remarked a couple of times that “Salaria loves publicity;” that she is a magnetic and forceful personality and likes to hold her audience’s attention. 7 This was theorized in the mid-1970s by Elizabeth W. Bruss and Philippe Lejeune (Olney 17). 8 According to Cristal W. Walker, Kea was the daughter of George and Vertia Kea, and was born in Milledgeville in 1910 (not in 1913). Her older brothers first moved to Akron in 1923–1924, “a time when many blacks were migrating from the South to the North,” and once they had settled, they took their sister with them when she was fourteen (Walker 10). After Kea’s return to the US, however, it became more common to see Ohio given as her birthplace (i.e., in the news during her rallies and campaigns in favor of the Spanish Republic, her application for the Army Nurse Corps, dated January 15, 1945). 9 According to “While Passing Through,” When Salaria was six months old her father was killed, while at work, by a patient. He was a horticulturalist by vocation and employed at the state institution for the mentally disturbed. Two of the patients became involved in an altercation and when Salaria’s father attempted to separate them he was accidentally stabbed in the heart with a pair of pruning shears. (2) The same version appears in A Negro Nurse. However, in 1980, Kea stated: “My father was killed in WWI. He was a merchant seaman and his ship got into international waters, blown up, and I was born July 13, 1913. He was killed in 1914. But I never knew him—never. And my mother died soon after, and I knew very little of my mother” (“Interview” 1). 10 Kea started her lecture at St. Bernard Church with the following words: At the early age of one year old my father was killed. At the age of three years old my mother died. I was the only girl and the last child. I had three older brothers. At the age of fourteen years my elder brother was married. At this time I had lived with eight difference [sic] foster parents. They were a blessing from heaven to me. (“Hope”) According to other sources, she was six months old when her father died. Her mother married a farmer and returned to Georgia (A Negro Nurse 4).

130  Carmen Cañete Quesada 11 She replaced her original name, Sarah, for the following reasons: “Racial prejudice so haunted her that while living in Spain in the 1930s she took the name Salaria because she resented being named after a white woman who was a friend of her mother” (Walker 8). 12 The Frances Patai and Fredericka Martin papers relay the invitation and Kea’s nicknames during school time in Akron. 13 This might have happened between the end of 1934 and the beginning of the following year. According to Kea’s memoirs, the only unsegregated hospitals in New York City were Harlem, Lincoln, Sea View, and Riverside (“While Passing” 13). 14 According to Patai, Kea left New York for France on March 13, 1937, with the third AMB unit. Creating some confusion, Kea reports that she traveled with the second AMB unit (“While Passing” 18; A Negro Nurse 7; “Interview” 8). 15 See Julia Newman’s statement, the director of the documentary Into the Fire, in her conversation with Dolorès Martin Moruno: “Sorry, Dolores, but Salaria was never captured nor wounded by a bomb… What you call her narrative is only a pamphlet, which was surely written by the Negro Committee. Salaria was a myth constructed to support the Negro cause” (6). 16 Puebla de Híjar is mistaken as “Pueblo de Canada,” and Urrea de Gaén is called “Pueblo de” (“While Passing” 35; A Negro Nurse 11). Some reports locate Kea in Puebla de Híjar (“Nurse Jailed;” “Race Nurse Back”). This location and Urrea de Gaén have been identified, thanks to Alan Warren, an expert in Aragon’s battlefront. The bombardment did not take place at the beginning of April, as Kea states, but on March 10, as other volunteers describe (Neugass 261). 17 See also Aguilar Fernández’s first chapter. In addition to collective and social memory, she identifies “individual memories” of the witnesses and participants of the events, and “institutional or official memories” which occupy a privileged space in the public sphere. 18 The note reports that both nurses “have worked during the fascist offensive on the Aragon front in the front hospital under the constant deadly menace of bombing planes an [sic] shells.” 19 “There were 12 of us. Doctors and nurses. And I was to sit with them. I went to the table and I had met some of the nurses, because I had known them, because we had—our paths had crossed—and we were all very happy—and Dr. Pitts, he was the top doctor, he was in charge of the unit. I was like the 5th person before sitting him. And he looked at me and he wouldn’t sit down. And we can’t sit down until our doctor, top person, sits down. So, when the waiter came and asked him if there was any problem, he says yes. He says, ‘I have never sat to the table with a n—wench and I’m not going to start now’” (Kea, “Interview”). 20 Kea made a similar statement in a mid-1970s interview: When I got to Spain, I saw the poor people, the shacks they lived in … and I had never seen anything like it in all my life. They couldn’t read and they couldn’t write and the way they lived was to me unbelievable. My whole concept changed. I had had the feeling that in America only the Negroes suffered and that in other countries where there are no ­Negroes everything was lovely. (Kea and O’Reilly) 21 I reproduce Hutchins’s entire statement: Salaria was still having trouble, because he now ordered her to get some kind of test on the grounds that she had syphilis. Dr. Pitts just assumed

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  131 she had syphilis. In fact he said “All niggers have syphilis.” Then, perhaps to cover it all up he said “All young women have syphilis” and ordered me to have a syphilis check as well. We didn’t have that kind of material yet, so I had to go up to Madrid to get myself tested. (qtd. in Gerassi 113)

Works Cited “African Americans in the Spanish Civil War.” Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Web. Aguilar Fernández, Paloma. Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política. Madrid: Alianza, 2008. Alexander, Frank. “Interview.” Collum 139–44. Almas sin fronteras. Dir. Alfonso Domingo and Anthony L. Geist. Diagrama Produciones, 2006. Associated Negro Press. “Harlem Nurse Marries Irish Soldier in Spanish Civil War.” Atlanta Daily World 13 Dec. 1937: 3. Balter, Martin. Letter to Frances Patai. 7 Dec. 1990. MS. Frances Patai Papers. Broggi, Moisés. Memorias de un cirujano (1908–1945). Barcelona: Península, 2001. Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. Collum, Danny D., ed. African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: “This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do.” New York: G.K. Hall, 1992. Congreso de los Diputados. “Constitución de la República Española del 9 de diciembre de 1931.” Web. Cunard, Nancy. “Salaria Kee Plays Hero Role in Spanish War.” Pittsburgh Courier 8 Jan. 1938: 12. ———. “Nurse in Heroic Role.” New York Amsterdam News 8 Jan. 1938: 12. Donlon, Anne, ed. Langston Hughes, Nancy Cunard, and Louise Thompson: Poetry, Politics, and Friendship in the Spanish Civil War. New York: CUNY, 2012. Edwards, Thyra. “Salaria Kee Returns from Spanish Front.” The Chicago ­Defender 4 June 1938: 17. Frances Patai Papers. ALBA. Tamiment Library & Wagner Labor Archives, NYU. Geiser, Carl. Letter to Walter J. Lear. 19 Feb. 1991. TS. Fredericka Martin ­Papers. ALBA. 001. Tamiment Library & Wagner Labor Archives, NYU. Gerassi, John. The Premature Antifascists: North American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. 1936–1939. An Oral History. New York: Praeger ­Publishers, 1986. The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Dir. Noel Buckner et al. Kino Videos, 1984. “Goes to Spain as Nurse.” Pittsburg Courier 12 Apr. 1937: 4. Heart of Spain. Dir. Herbert Kline and Charles Korvin. Brandon Films, 1937. “Here on Tour”. Chicago Defender. 18 June 1938: 24. Héroes invisibles: Afroamericanos en la guerra de España. Dir. Alfonso ­Domingo and Jordi Torrent. Argonauta Producciones / Duende Pictures, 2015. Hughes, Langston. Autobiography: I Wonder As I Wander. Ed. Joseph ­McLaren. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2003.

132  Carmen Cañete Quesada ———. “N.Y. Nurse Weds Irish Fighter in Spain’s War.” Essays on Art, Race, Politics and World Affair. Ed. Christopher C. De Santi. Columbia: U of ­M issouri P, 2002, 177–78. Hutchins, Evelyn. “Interview.” 1980. TS. John Gerassi Oral History ­Collection. ALBA A 18–092, Box: 1. Tamiment Library & Wagner Labor Archives, NYU. Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War. Dir. Julia Newman. First Run Features, 2002. Kea, Salaria. A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain. New York: The Negro Committee to Aid Spain, the Medical Bureau and the Medical Bureau and North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, 1938. ———. “Hope: To Serve God and My Country. Reflection of My Life.” MS. Frances Patai Papers. n.d. ———. “Interview.” 1980. TS. John Gerassi Oral History Collection. ALBA. 018. Tamiment Library & Wagner Labor Archives, NYU. ———. “May Every Knock Be a Boost.” TS. Frances Patai Papers. n.d. ———. Memoirs. TS. Marx Memorial Library. Box D-2: D/1. n.d. Kea, Salaria, and John O’Reilly. “Volunteers Who Met and Wed in Spain, 1938.” Interview by Bob August. Cleveland Magazine (1975): 80–83. Kelley, Robin D. G. “This Ain’t Ethiopia, But It’ll Do.” Collum 5–57. Lear, Walter J. Letter to Frances Patai. 10 Nov. 1989. TS. Frances Patai Papers. Lejeune, Philippe. “The Autobiographical Pact.” On Autobiography. Ed. Paul J. Eakin. Trans. Katherine Leary. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. 3–51. Martin Moruno, Dolorès. “Salaria Kea’s Memories from the Spanish Civil War.” Warriors without Weapons: Humanitarian Action During the ­Spanish Civil War and the Republican Exile. Conference. University of Geneva. ­27–28 Oct. 2016. Medical Bureau and North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. Lift the Embargo Against Spain: A Survey of the Facts. A Call to Action. New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1937. Melosh, Barbara. Letter to Walter J. Lear. 13 Dec. 1984. TS. Frances Patai Papers. “Negro Nurse Leaving for Spanish Service.” New York Amsterdam News 27 Mar. 1937: 7. Neugass, James. War is Beautiful. New York: New Press, 2008. “Nurse Jailed Then Feted by Loyalists.” Chicago Defender 17 May 1938: 3. Olney, James. “Autobiography and the Cultural Moment: A Thematic, ­Historical, and Bibliographical Introduction.” Olney 3–27. ———, ed. Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Princeton: ­Princeton UP, 1980. “Our Nurses at the Front.” Ayuda Médica Internacional 15 Apr. 1938: n.p. Patai, Frances. “Heroines of the Good Fight: Testimonies of U.S. Volunteer Nurses in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939.” Nursing History Review 3 (1995): 79–104. ———. Letter to Martin Balter. 7 Dec. 1990. TS. Frances Patai Papers. “Problems in Red and Black.” Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Web. “Race Nurse Back from Spanish War Front Says Fascists Won’t Win.” Chicago Defender 28 May 1938: 5.

Salaria Kea and the Spanish Civil War  133 Reef, Catherine. “O’Reilly, Salaria Kee.” African Americans in the Military. New York: Facts on File, 2010. 174–75. Reid-Pharr, Robert F. Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-­ Humanist Critique. New York: New York UP, 2016. Rosenblatt, Roger. “Black Autobiography: Life as the Death Weapon.” Olney, ed. 169–80. Sharpe, Emily R. “Salaria Kea’s Spanish Memoirs.” The Volunteer 4 Dec. 2011. Web. Smith, Eric R. American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2013. “Spain’s Woman Leader Praises Race Fighters.” Chicago Defender 12 Mar. 1938: 24. Victoire de la vie. Dir. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Herbert Kline. Ciné-Liberté, 1937. Walker, Crystal W. “On the Front Lines of History.” Beacon Journal 3 Feb. 1991: 7–8; 10; 14. Wetherby, Aelwen D. Private Aid, Political Activism: American Medical Relief to Spain and China, 1936–1949. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2017. Wigginton, Catherine E. “‘Where History Turned Another Page’: Salaria Kee, an African American Woman in the Spanish Civil War.” MA thesis. Coe College, 1999. “Wins Praise.” New York Amsterdam News 7 May 1938: 20. Wyden, Peter. The Passionate War: The Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983. Yates, James. Mississippi to Madrid: Memoir of a Black American in the ­Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Greensboro: Open Hand Publishing, 2007.

6 From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes Diverging Perspectives on African Americans in the Spanish Civil War Nicole D. Price Much has been documented about the extraordinary group of volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) in an effort to curtail the rise of fascism. The stories of men and women of the International Brigades, including those of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion (ALB) from the United States, have been told through narratives and films, in publications such as The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (Peter N. Carroll, 1994), Comrades and Commissars (Cecil D. Eby, 2007), Spain in Our Hearts (Adam Hochschild, 2016), and in the documentaries The Good Fight (Dirs. Sam Sills et al., 1984), Forever Activists (Dir. Judy Montell, 1990), and Souls without Borders (Dirs. Alfonso Domingo and Anthony L. Geist, 2006).1 These accounts explore not only the reasons why many of these men and women chose to participate in a foreign war but also the consequences of that decision on their lives after they returned to the USA. In addition, they highlight the historical significance of the ALB being the first US racially integrated armed force, in which almost 90 of the approximately 3,000 volunteers were African American, including Oliver Law, the first African American to command both white and black soldiers. These texts and documentaries now occupy an important place in US history. However, considering that the ALB fought for the Second Spanish Republic, how have its members, in particular the African Americans, been perceived by Spaniards? This chapter explores two different representations of African Americans who volunteered in the Spanish Civil War: first, in the novel Juan, el Negro (1974) by Falangist author Domingo Manfredi Cano (1918–1998), and second, in the film documentary Invisible Heroes: African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War (2015), directed by Alfonso Domingo and Jordi Torrent. A relatively unknown war narrative, Juan, el Negro follows the adventures of a protagonist, referred to only as el negro or Juan, el negro. Released almost forty years later, Invisible Heroes focuses on the contributions of ­A frican American soldiers, diligently attempting to make these invisible heroes visible. Taken together, these contradictory interpretations of the

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  135 African American role lend greater awareness to the question of race, a much-overlooked element of the discourse associated with the Spanish Civil War, which, as Michael Ugarte explains, “in all its complexity, both as a real marker of human existence and as a construction, played an immensely important role in the war” (108). 2 They present very different images of the African American soldier – moving from one with no identity in Juan, el Negro, to one possessing dignity and ideals in Invisible Heroes. On the surface, Juan, el Negro is a fictionalized account of an A ­ frican American volunteer’s experience with the ALB during the Spanish Civil War. It is an episodic narrative that intertwines historical fact with fiction. The historical context is well defined by Manfredi Cano’s incorporation of actual members of the Battalion such as Oliver Law, Milton Wolff, and Robert Merriman, known details of how the volunteers traveled to France and the harsh conditions they encountered crossing the Pyrenees from France into Spain, as well as many of the battles in which they fought, namely, Jarama, Brunete, Teruel, and the Ebro. He even includes the impromptu concert that Paul Robeson gave on the battlefront as one of the few positive images of blacks in the novel. 3 While many aspects of the novel are historically accurate, it falls within a group of fascist texts that “for the most part possess a low aesthetic quotient” but should still be considered “essential reading in a historical, cultural, and social analysis of a conflict that, by opposing two radically different conceptions of national life, changed the course of history” (Moreiras-Menor 117). Although Cristina Moreiras-Menor does not specifically mention this novel, despite its literary shortcomings, Juan, el Negro provides valuable insights into Manfredi Cano’s perception of the war and its participants. In addition, it is a curious novel because it highlights Manfredi Cano’s interest in African and US cultures.4 Since he had lived in Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Africa became a recurring theme in his work.5 At the same time, the novel reflects his knowledge of Southern US culture, acquired by translating authors such as William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. By combining these elements, the author creates a complex novel deceptively disguised as a simple war narrative. Given that Juan, el Negro was published in 1974, a year before the death of Francisco Franco and well after the Falange’s political influence had waned, Manfredi Cano is strategic in how he portrays his characters in order to subtly present his pro-fascist message during a less favorable era. By selecting the Spanish Civil War as the theme of his novel, he is able to focus on the events that thrust the Falange into power, thus allowing him to define the war in terms that validate the Francoist victory and reinforce the original Falangist ideals, even when “the old party style was dead and could not be revived” (Payne 438). First, he chooses to approach the war from the Republican rather than the Nationalist (or Falangist) point of view. As a Franco supporter, Manfredi Cano’s

136  Nicole D. Price giving “voice” to the Republican side is somewhat problematic because it grants the victors the authority to speak for those they defeated. By superimposing his voice on that of the Spanish Republicans, he is in essence “silencing” their voices, which accurately reflects the reality of the oppressive decades of the Franco regime. In his attempt to be subtle and appear objective, the author avoids this awkward position by distancing himself from his characters and using the perspective of an outsider, an American fighting in the war, instead of that of a Republican Spaniard. Second, he creates an African American protagonist, which suggests the desire to give voice to another oppressed group. However, his attempt to empower an exploited group fails due to one of the most revealing aspects of the novel: the negative portrayal of the protagonist and other black characters. Therefore, while the novel pretends to be told from the Republican perspective and repudiate fascism, in reality it cleverly reinforces the values of Franco and the Falangists and validates the defeat of the Republic. It undermines the entire effort of the International Brigades to stop the spread of fascism by describing it as a “pretentious allusion to democracy and freedom” (Manfredi Cano 292).6 Instead of the heroism and distinction that define these volunteers in other interpretations, here they are depicted as lacking the moral fortitude needed to warrant a victory. Ironically, in 1974, it is the Falange whose power is disappearing, and the novel is the author’s last chance to legitimize the cause. The novel begins with a violent scene as a white man viciously beats a black man, leaving him for dead in the streets of New Orleans. A guard who happens to pass by rescues the African American and leads him to a restaurant where the cleaning woman tends to his wounds. The guard’s Spanish descent is underlined in the text: Jesus Christ… The guard always cursed in Spanish, for better or worse: one of the things he was most proud of was the fact that his great-­grandfather, Casimiro Loureiro, had been a Spaniard until the day of his death, renouncing all opportunities that he had been given to change his nationality. The family continued to speak Spanish, somewhat secretly, because not everyone in the city liked their neighbors speaking Spanish. (10)7 After recovering from his injuries, the victim seeks revenge on his attacker, stabbing him to death: “The knife went right through to the heart and the black man was unable to remove it. The dead white fellow was left there with the knife stuck into him with only the tortoise shell of the hilt showing. And the black man disappeared into the city, where the workday had just begun” (15).8 The unnamed man flees to his mother’s home, confesses his crime, and plans his escape. He now owes his life

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  137 to a Spanish man as does his mother, “who bragged about having been freed from slavery by a Spaniard from Santa Fe, New Mexico” (15).9 The scenes in the first two chapters play an important role in defining the character of this man, who is later revealed to be the protagonist, as well as that of Spaniards. First, the novel highlights the racism that prevails in the Southern US, and which provides the protagonist with a reason to leave. It also portrays Spain and Spaniards in a favorable light. This positive depiction skillfully reinforces the idea of the superior “Spanish race,” a core element in Falangist discourse. As Moreiras-­Menor explains, “The themes of race and spirit (which are often interchangeable) are the structuring and organizing principles of the idea of Spain and its national history. Race permits the selection and conservation of the best, of the good Spaniards, who in turn are one and indivisible, that is, the nation” (125). By immediately introducing racism as an “American” problem, the author is able to lay the foundation for the Spanish “exceptionalism” that permeates the rest of the narrative. Two Spanish characters demonstrate their moral superiority by rescuing an African American man and his mother from their respective predicaments. The message conveyed is that the Americans are the racists, and therefore morally flawed.10 While Manfredi Cano advances the theory of Spanish exceptionalism, his depiction of the black characters communicates a completely different idea. The African American man remains nameless until the third chapter where he is finally revealed as Juan, the novel’s protagonist. He is essentially a “John Doe” who bears the generic first name of “Juan,” while the absence of a surname suggests that he has no ancestral or cultural identity, which ultimately means he is less worthy than the other characters. In fact, all of the secondary white characters have last names. While one could argue that this is because they represent actual ALB soldiers while Juan is fictional, it does not explain why the fictional Spanish characters are given last names. This omission in the case of the black protagonist is a manifestation of “the racist discourse of the Spanish Civil War rhetoric and poetics … seldom discussed in comparison with other aspects of the war” (Enjuto Rangel 163) that the Falangists perpetuated. In the novel, however, Manfredi Cano once again distances himself from his Falangist roots by portraying this discourse as that of a racist America. He shows that the protagonist has accepted his subordinated position in society, when a fellow American volunteer asks him his name: “What is your name? Joe Dallet … And you? Juan, but they call me Juan el Negro” (189).11 This brief exchange demonstrates that the protagonist himself understands that he is a second-class citizen in (American) society. Neither Juan nor the other characters question this representation, thereby implying that this is the established norm. Another element of the novel’s dehumanization of black characters surfaces in the physical and psychological descriptions. The language

138  Nicole D. Price that Manfredi Cano employs in these descriptions reflects the Falangist perspective even though the narrative is related from a Republican point of view. In A Time of Silence, Michael Richards examines the idea of purification in discourse, with race as a central element. While race in the Falangist sense was more closely associated with the concept of national spirit, it also valued “whiteness” as a facet of “purity,” and therefore perceived characteristics of all “non-white” races as inferior. Richards notes, for example, that “[t]he agricultural workers and migrants of the south, often referred to as ‘africanos,’ were particularly viewed as genetically inferior, as a lazy and degenerate caste apart from respectable society that could not compare with the ancient, but endangered, ‘stratified’ racial and spiritual essences found in the peasants of Castile” (48). Rooted in Spain’s Moorish past, which was perceived as a stain on its “Europeanness,” this view was coupled with the Falangist goal of “purifying” the nation by eliminating outside influences and allusions to the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Catholic monarchs, Isabel and Ferdinand.12 To vilify their opponents, including brigadistas from the US, the official discourse “conceptualise[d] the enemy as ‘inferior to animals’ or inhuman’” (48).13 Manfredi Cano incorporates this ideology into the physical representation of his black characters. For example, the protagonist’s mother is described as “a monstrously obese old lady” (15), and the doorman at the secret meeting place is “as big as a buffalo” (19).14 In a scene with a prostitute, Juan is also compared to several animals: he “…smelled like a fox” and has the “…chest of an orangutan” (59; 60).15 These vivid descriptions create an image that is pejorative, almost subhuman in nature. When referring to Juan’s behavior in various situations, Manfredi Cano also often portrays him as bestial. Merriman, the one white man Juan truly trusts, tells Juan, “Don’t be an animal, Goddamned nigger” (89) when he almost kills a man who insinuates that he and Merriman are homosexuals.16 While in this instance, Juan’s behavior is an overreaction, it is important to note that it is the black man who is unable to control himself, not Merriman, the white man, even though the insult was directed at both. The author’s representation of the African American protagonist underscores the Falangist ideology through “othering” as well as emphasizing some of the main stereotypes associated with black masculinity that were meticulously examined by Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon in his landmark work Black Skin, White Masks.17 One of these stereotypes is that of the out-of-control sexual nature of black men in the presence of a white woman. The image of the hypersexualized black male does “other” him by devaluing his humanity.18 There are two scenes in the novel where Manfredi Cano describes Juan in this manner. In the first one, Juan becomes involved with Teresa, a Spanish woman whom he marries in Spain. The couple meets at the home of a

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  139 doctor who is caring for Merriman after he is severely injured in a battle. The relationship begins as a purely sexual one: “Ancient and primitive legacies of the black race arose in Juan’s blood, as in other instances, and for one moment the furious desire to pounce on Teresa and bite her until she bled from her mouth to her feet crossed his mind” (132–33).19 The implication is that Juan is incapable of controlling his desires because it is inherent in his nature. Ironically, it is actually Teresa who initiates the sexual encounter, driven by her obsession to be with a black man: “Right there, crazed like a she-wolf in heat, Teresa possessed Juan, el Negro, as if she had uprooted him from the faraway jungle where in her mind all blacks in this world lived” (133). 20 The author not only objectifies Juan in the mind of Teresa, but also resorts to primitivism, suggesting that the protagonist as well as all blacks come from the jungle. Both images further debase him as a human being. Later in the novel, Manfredi Cano adds another scene that further reinforces the image of the hypersexualized black male by portraying Juan as a predator seeking out young white girls as victims. He poses a threat to society and should be feared. 21 After the battle of Teruel, Juan and Merriman find themselves in a small town that is celebrating the arrival of spring and trying to forget temporarily that the country is at war. After the festivities, a drunken Juan follows a young girl in what seems to be an attempt to violate her. When he covers her mouth to prevent her from screaming, she bites him and flees. Juan attempts to explain his actions, “I just lost it, that’s all” (256), but the townspeople and the white men in his battalion reject his justification and plan to lynch him. 22 Juan is saved by a rumor that the fascist troops are closing in and the town needs to defend itself. Once again, it is Merriman who reduces Juan to a savage: “I should hang you from a tree with a rope around your neck. You are a wild animal, just like your savage ancestors were, those that came from the African jungle … Merriman spoke to him in a rage. Juan, el Negro, looked at him in terror” (257). 23 When Juan tries to attack him, Merriman beats him almost to death while saying: “I will write to Teresa, so that she knows what kind of animal she married, and so that she kills that little black baby and prevents him from growing into a man who turns out to be a savage just like his father” (258). 24 Juan’s reaction is one of horror and shame. Merriman stops the beating when he remembers the lynching of a black man that he witnessed as a child. In disgust he tells Juan that he is an “[a]nimal, worse than an animal” (258), to which Juan’s response is to wrap his arms around Merriman’s legs and kiss his boots in a degrading act of submission. 25 In these scenes, Juan is represented as the victim of an essentialist stereotype that objectifies him and reduces him to a being that simply reacts and is not capable of forethought. The harshest criticism comes from Juan’s fellow brigadier, Merriman, and not from a Spanish character. Once again, Manfredi Cano distances himself (and other Falangists)

140  Nicole D. Price from this dehumanizing depiction of Juan, thus emphasizing that racism is a US rather than a Spanish problem. It seems that, in public, ­Merriman and the other white volunteers tolerate Juan’s presence, but their true racist sentiments surface when Juan behaves in an aggressive manner. At the same time, Juan is never portrayed as a man of reason or conviction but rather as someone who only lives in the present, never thinking about the consequences of his actions. He is simply a coward who flees his country in order to avoid going to prison for his crime. In the novel, the men in the ALB, and Juan in particular, appear to be more a projection of what the author and other Falangists perceive them to be than a reflection of reality. The protagonist’s representation is an important element in how the author frames the war and its participants. While much of Juan, el Negro focuses on the dehumanization of the protagonist, the end of the novel reveals that portrayal to be part of a much broader message. Toward the end of the novel, Juan and Teresa marry when she finds out that she is pregnant. Once the baby is born, the initial reaction to the child is negative: “He was a little black baby, and an expression of repugnance on the faces and in the glances of señora Matilde, the neighbor, the midwife, señor Lino and even Teresa did not go unnoticed by Juan” (235). 26 Careful not to insinuate that Spaniards are racists, the author quickly states that after a few days, everyone feels affection for the nameless baby who dies from malnutrition and a birth defect within the month. This death is symbolic on two levels. First, as the product of an interracial relationship, the child cannot survive. On the surface, the fact that Juan can legally marry Teresa in Spain may be intended as a comment on Spain’s cultural superiority, given that a legitimate interracial marriage would be impossible in the US in the 1930s. 27 However, allowing the offspring of a man who has been so dehumanized to live directly contradicts the Falangist “purification” discourse. The child cannot represent the “Spanish race and spirit.” Second, his death foreshadows the demise of the Republican side. For the baby to survive, there would have to be a place for him to be accepted, yet neither a ­Falangist Spain nor the US of the 1930s could provide that safe haven. The only logical outcome is death since the Republicans and their socialist ideas will be defeated. When the inevitable Republican defeat approaches, the International Brigades are ordered to return to their respective countries. 28 Even as they part, Juan and Teresa know that they are unlikely to see each other again. Juan promises to try to send for Teresa, but in light of the racial tensions in the US, he is conscious that he cannot bring a white wife to New Orleans. In the end, Teresa returns to her former life as if the interval with Juan had never happened: …she had returned to her hometown, ready to deny wherever and however that she had ever been married to a black American from

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  141 the International Brigades. If Juan, el Negro, was cutting all his ties to Europe, to Spain, to Teresa on the docks of El Harve as the ship sailed away, she too had cut them, without regret. The past was the past, like a nightmare. (306)29 Juan returns home where no one is looking to arrest him any longer. His life falls back into the same pattern it had before he went to Spain: “Juan, el Negro, had closed the circle and returned to his origins” (315). 30 He will take up his occupation as a shoe shine man and will probably marry his longtime girlfriend María and start a family. The only reminder he keeps of his time in Spain is a silkscreened bullfighting poster. The novel closes on a cliché with Juan thinking only about the future: “Tomorrow will be another day” (315). 31 Initially, this seems to be just an efficient way to conclude the novel. However, the underlying message is much more profound. With both Juan and Teresa returning to their previous lives as if the Spanish Civil War had never taken place suggests that its impact was minimal and that all the sacrifices made to fight fascism were in vain since, ultimately, fascism did triumph and became the prevailing sociopolitical environment until Franco’s death in 1975. Nor is there any indication that Juan, who represents the African American volunteers of the ALB, might become an activist fighting injustice against African Americans in the US. That is to say, Juan appears content to resume his former life, while the war in Spain was simply a diversion that enabled him to avoid going to prison. Although Juan is the protagonist, he is no hero. Unlike actual members of the ALB whose postwar lives included a political commitment, Juan is a failure. In the end, a novel that at first seems to provide a space for the vanquished to be heard, instead filters their “voice” through a fascist lens, thereby undermining everything for which they fought, and perpetuating the victors’ discourse. Forty-one years later, Invisible Heroes is a powerful and inspiring documentary that adds to the existing wealth of literary and audiovisual narratives about the Spanish Civil War. Spanish directors Alfonso ­Domingo and Jordi Torrent, and author and artist Mireia Sentís, along with US academics and historians, highlight these “new voices” and shed a different light on a war that reverberated throughout the 20th century.32 Invisible Heroes focuses on the individual and the personal rather than the “big picture” of the war. Background information such as dates, events, and statistics is used to encourage more discussion about how the events affected the individuals involved in them. Structurally, the documentary is a “compilation” that presents archival footage in the form of film and still photographs. While it is a work of non-fiction, as a documentary, it has different goals than other non-fiction films such as newsreels. According to Stella Bruzzi, “a documentary, a structured and motivated non-fiction film, does not aspire to convey in as pure a way as possible the real material at its core because this is what newsreel or

142  Nicole D. Price other comparable forms of amateur, accidental and non-narrative film do” (22). There are specific messages that the directors want to deliver. The documentary begins without a formal introduction to its themes; however, the opening montage of stills suggests that it will fill in the gaps of history. As each still appears, superimposed images of African ­A mericans replace the vacant spaces to “complete” the story told in the photo, thus playing on the title Invisible Heroes. Instead of having a single narrator unite the documentary and guide the viewer along a specific path, the film allows each participant, be they a scholar, a veteran of the war, or another interviewee, to share their information in their unique way. It presents itself as a conversation where no single contributor is perceived to have more authority than any other. This diversity of voices, in a way, ties into the characterization of the volunteers of the ALB. The individual stories in Invisible Heroes are counterhistorical in nature because they attempt to fill in historical blanks by including “history from below” (Gallagher and Greenblatt 53). Counterhistory challenges the accounts of “official” history, that is, the history written by those who hold power. In most cases, this excludes the vanquished or the oppressed. A growing trend in Spanish counterhistory over the last few decades is revisionist historical narration. With the “Recuperation of Historical Memory,” an explosion of all types of texts (fiction, non-fiction, film, etc.) began to give voice to the victims of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.33 Mercedes Yusta Rodrigo explains that “[t]he first years of the 21st century in Spain could be remembered as ‘the years of historical memory:’ a quick review of press coverage during the early years of the new century shows the degree to which the past formed a part of public debate in Spain” (24). During the dictatorship, especially its early years, no other perspective could be put forward publicly without some form of punishment ensuing because it was considered “unpatriotic.” By the beginning of the 21st century, given the passage of time, recovering “silenced” voices became a vital element in the rewriting of Spanish history. While the majority of this “historical revisionism” aimed to lend voice to those Spaniards who had fought against and lost to Franco, Invisible Heroes expands the revisionism to include other “lost” voices such as those of the African American volunteers in the ALB. Their individual stories enrich the broader and more “objective” narratives by providing “the touch of the real” (Gallagher and Greenblatt 49). More specifically, since this counterhistory focuses on the participation of African Americans in an international conflict, it could also be deemed a form of subaltern cosmopolitanism which, according to David Featherstone, “refer[s] to forms of worldliness, mobility, and geographies of connection crafted by marginal groups” (1408). As African Americans became aware of the suffering of other African peoples, a sense of solidarity developed because they understood that

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  143 the oppression they experienced in the US was not an isolated phenomenon. This is evident early in the documentary as historians Robin Kelley and David L. Lewis discuss Marcus Garvey’s influence in educating ­A frican Americans about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.34 [Kelley] … the Italian invasion was challenged directly by the whole black world. African Americans throughout the nation organized militias with the intention of going over to Ethiopia and fight the fascists there. In upstate New York, Garvey had organized 3,000 African Americans to drill in preparation to go over there… [Lewis] The invasion of Ethiopia begins about 1935 and it becomes an issue that electrifies the black press, engaged the imagination of African Americans. It was a kind of lodestar many people felt. This black nation, always independent, literate, its own special script, its own version of Christianity. What an operation and what is happening? Unfortunately, with the use of gas, something very much in the news today, the Italians quickly prevailed, horrendously so. (Invisible Heroes) According to the historians, the invasion ended before it could be prevented. However, because Ethiopia served as an important symbol of African independence and cultural dignity, the attack on Ethiopia felt personal to African Americans. It acted as a catalyst for the fight against fascism in Spain when it became apparent that Mussolini, the same person who had been responsible for the fall of Ethiopia, was now assisting Franco in his attempt to overthrow the democratically elected Second Spanish Republic.35 It also encouraged African Americans to continue to fight for their rights at home, as New York University professor James Fernández states: “The fight for civil rights goes back to the times of slavery, but what is often overlooked in the official history is the period of the 1920s and 1930s, the story of our African American volunteers who committed to the fight of Martin Luther King as soon as they returned from Spain” (subtitles – Invisible Heroes). The documentary demonstrates how fighting for the rights of others, in turn, gave them the tools to struggle for their own rights in the US. In addition to providing the historical context that drove African Americans to volunteer for the war, the film draws attention to the individuals who fought in Spain. While several veterans share their stories, the only African American veteran, and by far the dominant voice in this segment of the film, is James Yates, who not only shares his war experiences but who is also mentioned by other contributors.36 Yates’s recollections serve as a starting point that leads to introducing others whose stories are not as well known. Their personal memories provide insight into how fighting in the Spanish conflict made these soldiers feel respected in a way that they had never experienced at home. Although they

144  Nicole D. Price were combatting fascism on behalf of Spain’s democratically elected government, they were also struggling to find their own sense of identity as men in their own right, not merely as black men. The documentary challenges long-standing stereotypes about ­African Americans, presenting them as ordinary Americans excelling in extraordinary situations. These “real” stories highlight two of the hidden strengths of the ALB – its capacity to unite people from diverse backgrounds in a common cause and its ability to demonstrate that racial equality was achievable. The reality of people from various backgrounds working together did not go unnoticed by Spaniards either. Santiago Carrillo, the ex-Secretary General of Las Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas [The Young Unified Socialists], a Spanish youth political organization founded in 1936, observes that: The presence of colored people in the Lincoln Brigade and the presence of other volunteers of African descent as well as some Asians, helped to offer a visual image of solidarity, of racial equality that fitted (sic) very well the spirit and the morals of the Republican Army at that time. I mean, there was this feeling that we were fighting for a universal cause that concerned not only Spain but that would be also decisive to avoid the Second World War. (Invisible Heroes; subtitles) Although they did not return home victorious nor were their efforts able to prevent the Second World War, their ability to work with people different from themselves proved essential in their continued commitment to seeking civil rights for all US citizens. The true interaction and the unique camaraderie between whites and blacks in the Lincoln Battalion are captured in the words of historian Peter N. Carroll who noted that photographs often show a white man next to a black man and that blacks said: “if you kill the whites, you’re going to kill the blacks too. We’re all in this together” (Invisible Heroes). There was mutual respect among the members of the ALB because they shared the same goal – stopping fascism and promoting equality around the world. Race did not affect this shared objective. One of the most important messages of Invisible Heroes is how being members of the ALB and fighting in the Spanish Civil War enabled ­A frican Americans to envision themselves as full citizens. Yates states that “Spain was the first time as a black man, I felt a free man” (Invisible Heroes).37 Being judged for who they were instead of what they were translated into leadership positions in the International Brigades, something unheard of in the US military history before that time. Perhaps the most well-known African American leader in the Battalion was Oliver Law, the first black man to be placed in charge of white US troops. Professor Anthony L. Geist notes that this extraordinary decision would not be repeated until the US army was integrated at the end of the Second

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  145 World War. Underscoring just how unusual it was for Law to be promoted to the rank of commander, fellow combatant Charles Nusser underlines the stark contrast between this historical feat and the reality in the US at the time: When Oliver Law was named commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in 1937, in that same year in Mississippi two black men were lynched in the United States of America. We were the first, 161 years after the Declaration of Independence, we were integrated for 64 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. (Invisible Heroes) While Law’s command is notable, he was not the only African American to hold a leadership position. Ernesto Viñas, a Spanish historical expert on the battle of Brunete, identifies several lesser-known African Americans who acceded to the high ranks: Harry Haywood, adjunct commissar to the 15th Brigade; Morris Wickman, a commissar in the Washington Battalion, and Walter Garland. Viñas even acknowledges that Yates not only transported supplies to the frontlines but also served as a driver for well-known people such as reporters for The New York Times and the London Daily Express as well as writers Ernest Hemingway and Langston Hughes. In addition to the men who fought in the war, Invisible Heroes also highlights the service of the only African American female in the International Brigades, nurse Salaria Kea. Both Geist and Mireia Sentís highlight Kea’s humanitarian spirit, her activism in integrating the dining room of the Harlem Hospital, her rejection by the Red Cross during the First World War and her service in Spain. In short, the inclusive nature of Invisible Heroes is its underlying strength. Highlighting the little-known stories of people who played important roles in the Spanish Civil War enriches its significance. 38 While the war has often been seen as a practice run for the Second World War, it is now also viewed as an integral component of the US Civil Rights Movement.39 The image of diligent, politically and socially committed African Americans fighting for a greater cause is now recognized as a significant part of the permanent historical record. The Spanish Civil War occurred at a critical juncture in history. The First World War had left unresolved many issues that would ultimately lead the world into another global military crisis. New political ideas were challenging old ones. The world was suffering through what would become known as the Great Depression. At the same time, African Americans were leaving the South in the “Great Migration” in search of greater opportunity in the North. Some of these men and women became politically active in the hope of achieving equality in a country that had historically treated them as second-class citizens. Their political awareness took on an international dimension when they heard that Mussolini

146  Nicole D. Price and the fascists were invading the free African nation of Ethiopia. While the inability to come to the aid of their brothers in Africa was disappointing, “Ethiopia remained salient for Afro-Americans” (Plummer 56) and served as the catalyst that inspired them to help Republican Spain when it faced the same threat. Just as they saw fighting for Ethiopia as a continuation of the struggle for racial equality in the US, they considered the Spanish Civil War “an opportunity to oppose, literally to fight racial othering. That the othering was being practiced by European colonial powers, such as Italy and Spain, rather than upholders of Jim Crow legislation was a false distinction” (Soto 137). These African Americans understood that people of color were being victimized everywhere, whether it was Ethiopians suffering at the hands of Italy, Moroccan soldiers being exploited by Franco, or blacks in the US. Instead of allowing themselves to be perpetual victims, they adopted a proactive stance against oppression even though the outcome was not what they had envisioned.40 This group of African Americans proved themselves to be examples of American “exceptionalism” by joining thousands of other volunteers from the US and around the world to risk everything in defying their own government in order to fight for justice. Although the number of African American combatants was few, their decision to fight in Spain resonated for the rest of their lives and influenced many others to follow in their steps, yet their accomplishments lay buried deep in the annals of official history. Indeed, stereotypes about blacks continued to prevail as demonstrated in the novel Juan, el Negro. The novel perpetuates the negative image of African Americans through its protagonist. In spite of this, it still plays an important role: it provides insight into the Falangist perception of race, African Americans, and Americans in general in the Spanish Civil War. Published at the end of the Francoist dictatorship, its purpose was to preserve the Falangist rhetoric as the official discourse. In the more than forty years since its publication and the end of the Francoist regime, Spain’s official discourse has experienced significant change, becoming more diverse. In this sense, Manfredi Cano’s novel seems dated and somewhat irrelevant. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss it as obsolete since it offers a touchstone against which progress can be measured. Invisible Heroes constitutes an important milestone in this progress because it captures actual stories. It challenges the discriminatory discourse used to oppress African Americans by placing their achievements on par with those of white Americans and judging them as equals. By contesting the official historical discourse, this documentary alters our perception of history. Taken together, Juan, el Negro and Invisible Heroes illustrate the evolution in how African Americans who participated in the Spanish Civil War are portrayed. The documentary rescues them from historical obscurity and establishes their legitimate place in history. Their struggle for the recognition of their service in Spain has finally succeeded.

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  147

Notes 1 The majority of the US volunteers were initially assigned to the 15th International Brigade, which consisted of four battalions. In 1937, the first group of volunteers decided to call themselves the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Volunteers who arrived later joined other groups such as the George Washington Battalion or the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalions, which were also part of the 15th International Brigade. Upon returning to the US, the volunteers collectively referred to themselves as Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln ­Brigade (“About Us”). Because I am referring to the volunteers during the ­Spanish Civil War and not as veterans, I refer to the Abraham Lincoln Battalion instead of the more common designation of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 2 Although none of the works discussed in this chapter deal with the Moorish soldiers who fought on Franco’s side, it is important to note that race has been an important, if mainly hidden, element in studies of the Spanish Civil War. According to Brenda Plummer, one of the reasons the war sparked interest among African Americans was that: “A characteristically racial angle brought the Spanish Civil War, covered in mainstream metropolitan dailies, to the attention of a specifically black American readership” (60). It raised awareness of injustices outside the US and encouraged some to take action. For more information about the Moorish role in the war, see Balfour, Hakim, Madariaga, Price, and The Moroccan Labyrinth (2007), a film directed by Julio Sánchez Veiga. 3 Robeson famously participated in an anti-fascist rally in support of the Spanish Republic at the Royal Albert Hall in London in December of 1937. In order to further show his commitment to the cause, he traveled with his wife Essie to Spain in late January of 1938, where he gave several concerts, including one at a hospital for soldiers and another at a church that served as a meeting place for the American and British volunteers. The concert on the battlefield at Teruel was famous because “he used a loudspeaker system that forced rebels [Franco’s soldiers] to listen to him as well” (Boyle and Bunie 385). 4 Manfredi Cano was a journalism professor at the Universidad de la Laguna, Tenerife (1966–1968), and worked for Radio Nacional/Radio Televisión de España for most of his life. He was also a novelist, essayist, poet, and translator, publishing 196 works, according to records in Spain’s National Library. Some of his most notable works are the award-winning novels La rastra (1956, Premio Nacional de Literatura 1959) and Ischulla. La isla (1950, Premio África de Literatura). He also translated texts from world-­renowned authors including Americans John Steinbeck (To a God Unknown, 1933 [Atormentada tierra, 1963]), Pearl S. Buck (East Wind: West Wind, 1930 [Este y oeste, 1977]), William Faulkner (Mosquitoes, 1927 [Mosquitos, 1959]), and Erskine Caldwell (Trouble in July, 1940 [Disturbio en julio, 1971]). See Ayuntamiento de Aznalcázar. 5 These works include Ischulla, Tierra negra (1957), África en las navegaciones españolas (1958), and Los claveles negros de Mozambique (1975). 6 When asked why he joined the war, instead of using the ideas of democracy and freedom, Juan simply responds that he stabbed a man to death. Manfredi Cano portrays the protagonist as a coward who chooses to flee his country in order to avoid prison, instead of as a politically engaged volunteer fighting for his beliefs. 7 “—Por Cristo bendito… El guarda juraba siempre en español, para bien y para mal: uno de sus orgullos se cifraba en que un bisabuelo suyo, tío Casimiro Loureiro, había

148  Nicole D. Price sido español hasta su muerte, renunciando a todas las oportunidades que se le habían presentado para cambiar de nacionalidad. En familia se seguía hablando en castellano, un poco a escondidas, porque no a todo el mundo le gustaba en la ciudad que sus vecinos hablasen en español.” All translations are mine. 8 “El cuchillo le entró hasta el corazón y el Negro no pudo luego sacárselo. El blanco muerto se quedó allí con el cuchillo clavado hasta las cachas de carey. Y el Negro se perdió en la ciudad, que ya había empezado la jornada.” 9 “que se ufanaba de haber sido libertada de la esclavitud por un español de Santa Fe de Nuevo Méjico.” 10 Isolationism, self-sufficiency (autarky), and a dislike of the foreign were hallmarks of the early Franco dictatorship. Franco emphasized the importance of celebrating all things Spanish and disdaining all that was foreign: “…‘essence of the race.’ This essence could only be protected by shunning foreigness [sic] and had to be perpetuated through patriotism: a race could not exist without a Patria. Patriotism was maintained by the ‘racial spirit’” (Richards 60). Franco was particularly anti-American in the early years but softened his stance when he needed financial support from the U.S. For more examples of Franco’s contempt for the U.S, see Martín Gaite. 11 “– ¿Cómo te llamas? – Joe Dallet … ¿Y tú? – Juan, pero me dicen Juan, el Negro…”. 12 Richards also refers to regeneracionismo, a movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries dedicated to determining the cause of Spain’s national decline through scientific study, noting that “[r]egenerationists, like Joaquín Costa and Lucas Mallada had, some years earlier, compared the Spaniards to the indigenous peoples of Africa, as part of a racial schematization of decline” (48), thus perpetuating the negative image of Africa. 13 Richards states that this discourse used a “psycho-pathological language” (48) and lists some of the terms used to refer to the enemy: “‘turbio’ (restless, disturbed, as well as ‘sediment’ or ‘sludge’); ‘escoria’ (scum); ‘encenagado’ (depraved); ‘inmundo’ (foul); ‘hediondo’ (stinking); ‘sucio’ (dirty, filthy, vile)…” (48). 14 “una vieja monstruosamente gruesa” (15); “grande como un búfalo.” 15 “olía a zorruno;” “pecho de orangután.” 16 “No seas animal, negro del demonio.” 17 Fanon examines the harmful psychological effects of colonialism on colonized peoples and the colonizer. He challenges European ethno-­psychoanalysts and their findings about blacks’ inferiority. Some of the common stereotypes he highlights are: “…the black man is the missing link between the ape and man” (13), “The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is wicked, the Negro is ugly…” (93), “Negroes are savages, morons, and illiterates” (96). These representations show great similarity with the ones in Manfredi Cano’s novel. 18 Fanon addresses this myth in his analysis of the theories of French psychoanalyst Octave Mannoni. He criticizes his “Prospero complex,” a concept based on Shakespeare’s character in The Tempest: “Prospero adopts an attitude toward Caliban that the Americans in the South know only too well. Don’t they say that the niggers are just waiting for the chance to jump a white woman?” (87). Later, Fanon again targets this stereotype by commenting that in the dominant culture: “[a]s regards the black man everything in fact takes place at the genital level” (135); “As for the Negroes, they are sexually promiscuous. Not surprisingly, running around like that in the bush. Apparently they fornicate just about everywhere and at all times. They’re sexual beasts” (135).

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  149 19 “Viejas y atávicas herencias de la negritud subieron como otras veces a la sangre de Juan, y por un instante le cruzó por la imaginación el deseo furioso de abalanzarse sobre Teresa y morderla hasta hacerle sangre desde la boca a los pies.” 20 “Allí mismo, furiosa como una loba en celo, Teresa poseyó a Juan, el Negro, como si lo arrancara para ella de la lejana selva donde a su juicio vivían todos los negros del mundo.” Teresa’s desire to have sexual relations with Juan perpetuates the myth that he possesses extreme sexual powers. According to Fanon, “As for White women … they invariably see the black man at the intangible gate leading to the realm of mystic rites and orgies, bacchanals and hallucinating sexual sensations” (154). 21 The black man is a source of fear according to dominant white culture: “To have a phobia about black men is to be afraid of the biological, for the black man is nothing but biological…” (Fanon 143). 22 “Me puse como loco, eso es todo.” Once again, Fanon uses Mannoni’s findings as examples of prejudicial characterizations of black men: “In his urge to identify the anthropoid apes, Caliban, the Negroes … man reveals that there are sensitive spots in the human soul at a level where thought becomes confused and where sexual excitement is strangely linked with violence and aggressiveness’” (143). Applying this idea to the novel, Juan acts upon instinct, not reason, when he attacks the girl. 23 “– Debería colgarte de un árbol con una soga al cuello. Eres un animal salvaje, como eran salvajes tus abuelos, aquellos que vinieron desde la selva africana … Merriman le hablaba con rabia. Juan, el Negro le miraba con terror.” 24 “– Se lo escribiré a Teresa, para que sepa con qué clase de animal se ha casado, y para que mate al negrillo y evite así cuando sea hombre acabe siendo un salvaje como su padre.” 25 “Bestia, más que bestia.” 26 “Era un chiquillo negro, y a Juan no se lo escape un gesto como de repulsa en la cara y en la mirada de la señora Matilde, de la vecina, de la partera, del señor Lino y hasta de Teresa.” 27 Interracial marriage did not become legal in the United States until June of 1967, when the US Supreme Court’s ruling in the case Loving vs. Virginia declared that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional (“Interracial Relationships”). 28 On September 21, 1938, Spain’s Prime Minister Juan Negrín announced that all volunteers in the International Brigades would withdraw from Spanish territory. The Republic’s resources were severely limited due to the non-­intervention agreement signed by several Western democracies. The ­Republican side was also suffering major defeats. Negrín’s wish was to persuade the German and Italian governments, which supported Franco, to withdraw their troops as well (Carroll 200). 29 “…ella había regresado al pueblo, dispuesta a negar donde fuera y como fuera que hubiese estado casada jamás con un negro americano de las Brigadas Internacionales. Si Juan, el Negro, cortaba en el muelle de El Harve, mientras el barco despegaba del muelle, todas sus amarras con Europa, con España, con Teresa, ella las había cortado también, sin ninguna pena. Lo pasado, pasado, como una pesadilla.” 30 “Juan, el Negro, había cerrado su círculo y regresado al origen.” 31 “- Mañana será otro día….” 32 Domingo is a war journalist and writer as well as a prominent documentary producer. Two of his previous documentaries, Recovered Memory (2006), a five-part series about the Spanish Civil War, and Souls without

150  Nicole D. Price

33

34

35

36 37

38

39

Borders (2006), the story of the Lincoln Brigade, were broadcast on ­Spanish Public Television (TVE). Torrent, founder of Duende Pictures, a New Yorkbased media production company, has received numerous awards for his films, television programs, and documentaries. Sentís has a journalism background, having written for leading newspapers such as El País and La Vanguardia. She is also the founder and director of BAAM (Biblioteca Afro Americana Madrid), which has published works by African American authors such as Langston Hughes and James Yates, not previously translated into Spanish. It also houses a library open to the public. See “Biographies” and “Alfonso Domingo.” Founded in 2000, the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica is an organization dedicated to locating the remains of victims of repression during the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship. In 2007, the Spanish Parliament passed the Ley de la Memoria Histórica in order to recognize the victims of Franco and the Falange. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey headed the black nationalist movement and created the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which emphasized “unity, pride in the African cultural heritage, and complete autonomy” and “the eventual return to ­A frica of all people of African descent” (Van Leeuwen) that would ultimately result in “the establishment of a strong and powerful African empire for and governed by Africans, and put forward his person for the position of the eventual head of Africa” (Kroubo Dagnini 200). The importance of the invasion of Ethiopia for African Americans was that it “was the first great manifestation of Afro-American interest in foreign affairs” and “significantly elicited unprecedented mass involvement of ­A fro-Americans in a single foreign policy issue” (Plummer 37); indeed “Ethiopia had a particular symbolic resonance … because it was, along with Liberia, one of the two surviving independent states in Africa…” (Featherstone 1412). Much of Yates’s story has already been recounted in his memoir Mississippi to Madrid (1989). Yates corroborates this sentiment in his memoir when he describes how he had to overcome his fear of feeling like a second-class citizen when he first arrived in Paris and wanted to enter a streetside café. See Martin’s chapter in this volume. In a similar manner, in his memoir Yates makes it a point to mention Kea as well as other African Americans who fought with him and provides ample details about their lives. While many were acquaintances from his earlier time in Chicago and New York through political associations, others he met in Spain. He explains, for example, that a significant number of African American volunteers came from Ohio because of its historical link to the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railway (127). Later he mentions James Holt Peck and Paul Williams, both pilots in the Republican Air Force of Spain, whose aviation careers in the US had suffered due to discrimination (156). Yates also includes the names of medical volunteers who served in Spain, including Dr. Arnold Donawa, a dentist from Harlem who was in charge of the jaw surgery department at Vallacre. According to Steve Nelson, former commander of the ALB: The world hardly took notice at the time that among this group of people who came from the US to fight to preserve democracy in Spain there were Black people, and they were treated as equals, and advanced on the basis of their ability … We didn’t say much at the time, but it is important

From Juan, el Negro to Invisible Heroes  151 that we recognize now that it was an historic moment—a Black man was placed in charge of a largely white unit for the first time in US history. We want the world to share in the pride that we feel. (qtd. in Yates 174) 40 Referring to their exceptional character, Carroll states: Well they were an exceptional group of people. They were exceptional because they went to Spain. It almost didn’t matter what happened in Spain to them, or to Spain. But what matters is they went to Spain at a time when all opinion was opposed to US help for the Spanish Republic. They stood up and were counted and they went ahead and did this amazing thing. They paid an enormous price for it. So many people were killed, so many were wounded, every single survivor was scarred forever by the experience of Spain … And in a very peculiar way the volunteers who returned to America after 1939 saw themselves as having to take positions, outspoken positions, on many other political issues that weren’t popular. After all they had survived bullets on the battlefield…. (Invisible Heroes)

Works Cited “About Us – FAQs.” Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Web. “Alfonso Domingo.” Argonauta Producciones, 2016. Web. Ayuntamiento de Aznalacázar. “Centenario Manfredi. Aznalacázar, 2018.” Web. Balfour, Sebastian. Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. “Biographies. Invisible Heroes. African Americans in the Spanish Civil War.” Web. Boyle, Sheila T., and Andrew Bunie. Paul Robeson: The Years of Promise and Achievement. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2001. Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. Enjuto Rangel, Cecilia. Cities in Ruins: The Politics of Modern Poetics. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2010. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins, White Masks (1952). Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2008. Featherstone, David. “Black Internationalism, Subaltern Cosmopolitanism, and the Spatial Politics of Antifascism.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103.6 (2013): 1406–20. Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000. Hakim, Mohammad Ibn Azzuz. Actitud de los moros ante el Alzamiento: ­M arruecos 1936. Málaga: Editorial Algazara, 1997. “Interracial Relationships that Changed History.” PBS. Web. Invisible Heroes: African Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Dir. Alfonso Domingo and Jordi Torrent. Duende Pictures, 2015. Kroubo Dagnini, Jérémie. “Marcus Garvey: A Controversial Figure in the ­H istory of Pan-Africanism.” The Journal of Pan African Studies 2.3 (2008): 198–208.

152  Nicole D. Price Madariaga, María Rosa de. “The Intervention of Moroccan Troops in the Spanish Civil War: A Reconsideration.” European History Quarterly 22.1 (1992): 67–97. Manfredi Cano, Domingo. Juan, el Negro. Barcelona: Luis de Caralt, 1974. Martín Gaite, Carmen. Usos amorosos de la posguerra española. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1987. Moreiras-Menor, Cristina. “War, Postwar, and the Fascist Fabrication of Identity.” Valis 117–29. Payne, Stanley G. Fascism in Spain 1923–1977. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1999. Plummer, Brenda. Rising Wind. Black Americans and US Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1996. Price, Nicole D. “The Dark Side of Francoism – Revisionist History, Moroccan Voice and the Spanish Civil War.” PALARA 20 (Fall 2016): 113–40. Richards, Michael. A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Soto, Isabel. “‘I Knew that Spain Once Belonged to the Moors’: Langston Hughes, Race, and the Spanish Civil War.” Research in African Literatures 45.3 (2014): 130–46. The Moroccan Labyrinth. Dir. Julio Sánchez Veiga. Icarus Films, 2007. Ugarte, Michael. “The Question of Race in the Spanish Civil War.” Valis 108–16. Valis, Noël, ed. Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War. New York: MLA, 2007. Van Leeuwen, David. “Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.” National Humanities Center. Web. Yates, James. Mississippi to Madrid: Memoir of a Black American in the ­Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Seattle: Open Hand Publishing Inc., 1989. Yusta Rodrigo, Mercedes. “El pasado como trauma. Historia, memoria y ‘recuperación de la memoria histórica’ en España actual.” Pandora: revue d’éudes hispaniques 12 (2014): 23–41.

7 “Negroes Were Not Strange to Spain” Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context” Isabel Soto An Ahistorical Rendering of Modernity Over the last quarter century, Atlantic Studies has adopted a hemispherically richer and more diverse scholarly practice than an orthodox understanding of the term might suggest. Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic (1993) aimed an early and hugely influential critical salvo at certain interpretive orthodoxies surrounding Anglophone Atlantic history, while the alleged orthodoxies of his own reading of Afro-Atlantic history – ­A nglocentric, northern Atlantic – have given rise to vibrant and still ongoing debates. Within this evolving scholarly scenario, Atlantic Studies historiography has come to accommodate early modern Iberian colonial expansion as a precursor and future rival to ascendant northern European coloniality.1 What is typically overlooked, however, is a discussion of race and Spain’s role, whether as instigator or object of race-making. If race is a condition of modernity, then Spain’s part in this context is frequently consigned to the margins both of the modern era and the race-making process.2 ­Herman L. Bennett notes how critics of modernity “and prominent theorists of the black condition” such as C.L.R. James, Eric Williams or Aimé Césaire “have privileged the period that ended with the ascendancy of eighteenth-century England and France; they have rarely privileged sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain.” He concludes: “This perspective … can be described as both an ahistorical rendering of modernity and a denial of Spain’s experience of slavery and freedom” (15–16). María Elena Martínez observes that “racial thought” was part of European history long before differentiation based on limpieza de sangre, or blood purity, became a feature of New World systems. Cautioning against a myth of origins in which the “Castilian concept of blood purity was the first racial discourse produced by the West” (9), Martínez nevertheless acknowledges race-based thinking as central to the Iberian project at home and in the Americas, commenting wryly, “Thanks to its contribution to racism via the purity statutes and Inquisition, early modern Spain can finally make a claim to modernity” (9).3 The concept of purity of blood or raza-based taxonomies to justify unfreedom and discrimination came to underpin the organization of

154  Isabel Soto these principal peoples in Spanish-colonized territories in the Americas, and led to the creation of a sistema de castas, or racialized caste system, professedly reflective of an inherited share of Spanish, Indian, or African blood. Meanwhile, a coeval discourse – “a unique complex of pejoratives” (Weber, Spanish Frontier 336) – was being forged by northern European Protestants. What came to be known as the Black Legend reached its zenith among these rival polities, “where it had taken the form of propaganda against Spain’s militant Catholicism and its highly successful imperialism” (Weber, Spanish Frontier 336). If the sistema de castas went to considerable lengths to hierarchize and stabilize the various permutations of Spanish, indigenous, and African interracial intimacies in the post-Columbian Americas, Protestant colonial rivals on both sides of the Atlantic sought to disparage Spaniards by spreading the message that they were “unusually cruel, avaricious, treacherous, fanatical, superstitious, cowardly, corrupt, decadent, indolent, and authoritarian” (Weber, Spanish Frontier 336). Anglo-American antipathies were especially driven by perceptions of Spanish racial mixture (336). J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s “Sketch of a Contrast Between the Spanish and the English Colonies” from his Letters of an American Farmer (1782), famously indicting Spain’s American colonies on grounds of racial ­impurity – “the descendants of the ancient conquerors and conquered, of slaves and of such a variety of castes and shades, as never before were exhibited on any part of the earth” (Moore 308) – gained particularly wide currency (Elliott, Empires 403–404).

“Negroes Were Not Strange to Spain” Broadly speaking, if a gradual revision of Anglocentric Atlantic Studies historiography has emerged to include studies on Iberian coloniality, this is nevertheless more evident in the field of historical than of literary scholarship. One can nevertheless point to a growing number of studies that seek to excavate the unexamined literary and cultural connections between the Iberian Peninsula, Western racial protocols, and the African continent.4 María DeGuzmán’s and, more recently, Robert F. ­Reid-Pharr’s intense personal engagement with the subject of Spain, race, and Africans in America guided much of the thinking behind this essay. DeGuzmán’s focus is the racialization of Spanishness, arguing that such “blackening” – “the not-right-white or the off-white … figure of ‘the Spaniard’” – has served to “construct … Anglo-American identity as ‘American’ identity’” (4–5; original emphasis). Reid-Pharr’s “awkward pairing of Spanish and African American intellectualism” (13) explores the relationship between 20th century black American intellectuals and their Spanish counterparts which, he claims, remains understudied despite the “centrality of the Iberian Peninsula in the development of globalization and humanism” (11). While DeGuzmán’s

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  155 arguments turn on the historical denigration, both moral and epidermal, of the Spaniard, Reid-Pharr invokes the “promise and possibility” (11) assigned by African American intellectuals to dark Spanish skin— the “not yet properly defeated Spanish flesh” (12)—as a means to check “the vulgar fiction of white superiority” (11). It is with these two disruptive and urgent critical interventions in mind that I take up the writings of Langston Hughes on Spain. Hughes invites a reflection on early modern Spanish racial protocols, their role in the post-1492 European colonial expansion, and their entrenched survival in our contemporary world. In short, he gives fresh visibility to the historical twinning of modernity and race-making, in which Spain – for better or for worse – is a central player. His writings endorse Lewis R. Gordon’s observation that, while an African presence in the Americas predates the concepts of “America,” “Europe,” and “Africa,” “their convergence is, for the most part, a modern affair” (3–4). Hughes offers a distinctive perspective on the question of race on 20th century Spanish soil, cognizant of himself as black even as he projects a racialized construction onto Spaniards themselves. However, his engagement with the leyenda negra doctrine that Spaniards are epidermically darker than Anglo-Americans or other Europeans – “many [Spaniards] are quite dark” (338), he notes in I Wonder as I Wander (1956) – stops there: if Hughes unproblematically associates ­Spanishness or the Hispanic with non-whiteness, he challenges the exceptionalist typology of “the representation of Spaniards as figures of morally blackened alien whiteness or off-whiteness and doomed hybridity” (DeGuzmán xxiii). Indeed, his encounters with the Spanish-speaking world more than once lead Hughes to claim a lived commonality and refuse the assumptive racial logic of the Black Legend. Returning in 1918 from his second visit to his father’s Mexican ranch in Toluca, he acknowledges in The Big Sea (1940) the mutability of the color line, looming ever nearer in the form of the Mexico-United States border. On the train journey, he is taken by several “American whites” to be Mexican, “since I am of a copper-brown complexion, with black hair that can be made quite slick and shiny” (50). His competence in the Spanish language, too, allows him to breach racial boundaries – “some of [the white Americans] spoke to me in Spanish” – and co-­occupy racial space: in San Antonio, Texas, he enters the waiting room “as any ­Mexican would do, and [make] my sleeping-car reservations in Spanish” (Big Sea 50). If Hughes’s appearance hampers his passing into a white American world, he tellingly chooses to reveal, and celebrate, these and other instances in which he recognizes himself in the Hispanic and vice versa. The human spaces opened up by these encounters validate Reid-­ Pharr’s contention that the not-quite-white “Spanish flesh” remains “undefeated,” presenting “promise and possibility” for an African American intellectual such as Hughes, and allowing him to override the “racialist conceits” (11) of his birth culture.

156  Isabel Soto Almost twenty years later, Hughes once more hails Spaniards as fellow travelers, writing: “Negroes were not strange to Spain. … Most Spaniards had seen colored faces, and many are quite dark themselves” (I Wonder 351), observing elsewhere that he has seen “plenty of Spanish Spaniards who couldn’t possibly pass for white in the States—­except that their hair is usually straight” (“Organ Grinder’s Swing” 166). Hired by the Baltimore Afro-American to report on the participation of ­peoples of color in the Spanish Civil War, Hughes’s five-month sojourn in Spain in 1937 produces an extensive written opus animated by a striking receptiveness to the Spanish historical moment – what one might call an acceptance of coevalness. 5 A similar positioning is evident in Hughes’s accounts in The Big Sea of his earlier encounters in the 1920s with the Spanish-speaking world, from the Canary Islands to Toluca, Mexico. Through close readings of selections from Hughes’s writings on Spain, my discussion explores the ways in which race mediates his experiences within a Spanish context.6 My analysis adopts David Featherstone’s useful term “map of grievance,” that is, “the dynamic practices through which political activity makes sense of and brings into contestation spatially stretched relations of power” (1408). I take “stretched” to mean fluid, non-national projects of contestation. I also note passages in which matters of race intersect with those of gender, mindful of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s influential rallying call of nearly three decades ago to challenge “the problematic consequence of the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis” (139). My use of the term “context” throughout this essay is prompted by Elsa Barkley Brown’s argument that gender construction, “being a woman is … not extractable from context … that is, race, class, time, and place” (300). The evolving historiography on race-making has coincided with a reexamining of the role of women of color in the first decades of the 20th century. My readings of Hughes’s representations of women and gender in Spain, before and during the Civil War, owe a debt to this substantive recuperative scholarship and the premise that such representations deserve careful consideration for the light they shed on long overlooked women’s interventions, the insight they provide into the linkages between race and gender within a Spanish context, and on masculinist paradigms overall. One might ponder, along with Reid-­ Pharr, “what happens when female actors resist dominant ideological narratives” (56). The racialization of Spanishness allows for women to be included in such a reading, especially in one instance involving the loyalist gypsy flamenco artist, La Niña de los Peines. I also engage with Kate ­Baldwin’s germane analysis from her chapter “Between Harem and ­Harlem: Hughes and the Ways of the Veil” (86–148) in Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain. I argue that her attentive study of Hughes’s cross-gender sympathies brought to light during his 1932–1933 stay in the Soviet Union strikes rich parallels with his experiences in Spain and,

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  157 in one case, makes conspicuous use of the same language to describe a certain incident in war-torn Madrid. One might ultimately argue that Hughes’s awareness of race-gender intersectionalities accommodates an endorsement avant la lettre of the turn away from the default scholarly view of modernism as a predominantly Anglocentric, heteronormative, white masculinist mode.

A Breath of Spain In an early travel article originally published in Crisis, “Ships, Sea and Africa: Random Impressions of a Sailor on His First Trip Down the West Coast of the Motherland,” Hughes chronicles a reverse Middle Passage from the eastern seaboard of the USA to Africa, “the West Coast of the Motherland.” Among the “Random Impressions,” he includes those linked to the two former slaving empires of the I­ berian Peninsula, the Portuguese islands of the Azores and the ­Spanish ­Canary Islands where he catches his first “breath of Spain” (24). Anchoring first in the Portuguese city of Horta, Hughes observes the “scores of brown-white children begging for cigarettes and pennies” (24). Sailing on, he writes in The Big Sea account, “When we got to Teneriffe [sic],  … it was mid-­afternoon and very bright. The Canaries looked like fairy islands” (10). Thus was Hughes’s first encounter with Iberian territories in June 1923. It was not his first encounter with the Spanish-speaking world, however. The twenty-one-year-old Hughes, recently hired as a cabin boy on “a big merchant ship” (Big Sea 3), had already visited his father’s ranch in Toluca, Mexico, three times, the last just two years before joining the S.S. West Hesseltine, renamed the S.S. Malone in The Big Sea. On those trips, Hughes had become familiar with the Spanish language and seen performances of actress Margarita Xirgu and bullfighter Ignacio ­Sánchez Mejías, both prominent members of the coterie of doomed Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca.7 The encounters formed part of Hughes’s experiential baggage when he boarded at “ten o’clock, on a June night, … the S.S. West Malone” (Big Sea 5). He finds himself sharing a “hot cabin” (Big Sea 4) with two Afro-descended individuals, Ramón from Puerto Rico, and George from Kentucky. The former, who “didn’t understand more than every tenth word of George’s Kentucky vernacular,” pronounces just two words, “Largo viaje” in reference to their Atlantic voyage, while “colored boy” (Big Sea 5) George, whose only foreign language competence extends to pig-Latin, “lay stark naked in a lower bunk, talking and laughing and gaily waving his various appendages around” (4).8 We learn that he had previously worked for “a female impersonator” but quit as “he got tired of being [a] maid” (6) to his employer. The “chocolate-colored” (4) Ramón rarely spends his pay on women, for whom “he didn’t care much,” preferring silk stockings of which he buys a pair on reaching Africa “and slept with them

158  Isabel Soto under his pillow” (7). The “hot cabin” is animated by same-sex eroticism, unfixed gender identifications, linguistic difference, race, and all within the Spain- and Africa-bound merchant ship. The political work contained within this mobile maritime space recurs with varying emphases throughout Hughes’s engagement with Spain and the Spanish-­ speaking world. On occasion, it is gender that is foregrounded, on others it is race, and if sexuality remains moot, neither gender nor race is uncoupled from the other. Context – race, time, and place – is determinative, with Spain creating a material and imaginative locus for the exploration of these “categories of experience.” The space of the “hot cabin” can usefully be read as an early “map of grievance” in Hughes’s writings, accommodating a disruptive “subaltern cosmopolitanism” or “black internationalism from below” (Featherstone 1412).9 In both accounts of the passage from the eastern US to the west coast of Africa, contact with Iberian territories occupies the same narrative and experiential space as Hughes’s encounter with “My Africa, Motherland of the Negro peoples!” (Big Sea 10). The relationship is one of entanglement, summoning the presence, if not the very history, of race and coloniality. The mixed-race children of Horta and the Afro-­diasporic camaraderie of the “hot cabin” do not so much precede landfall on the African continent as become folded into Africa itself. A fluidity of racial contours, the consequence of European colonial expansion, is the corporeal narrative Hughes presents to the Senegalese and others: “The Africans looked at me and would not believe I was a Negro.” Two lines down he declares, “You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. … I am brown” (Big Sea 11). The rueful realization in Africa of his racial liminality, with tinges of comedic misrecognition, links to a history of race-making that problematizes Anglocentric routes/roots of enslavement and colonial encounters. If Hughes’s Crisis article is a reminder of the Iberian prequel to the Anglocentric enterprise, the opening sequence of The Big Sea that chronicles the same route splices the racial with gender and the Iberian, the latter trumping the Anglo. “Chocolate-colored” Ramón is given the moniker “Puerto Rico,” referencing his birth place and S­ panish colony until 1898, less than twenty-five years before Hughes’s voyage. Moreover, Ramón articulates just two words in the text – “Largo viaje” – ­unsettling the primary narrative environment in English and constructing the “hot cabin” as a space which “bring[s] to the fore the unexamined assumptions that all systems necessarily include, be they linguistic, literary, social, or political” (Kutzinski 26). One “unexamined assumption” affects gender, destabilized along with the racial within the confines of the “hot cabin,” and disguised (or “unexamined”) as a “heteronormative red herring” (38), in Vera Kutzinski’s felicitous phrase. While the homoerotics of the cabin are “withheld from representation” (Loftus 152), their intersection with the

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  159 racial is upheld: the homoerotic Ramón-George-Hughes triad not only comprises men of color but men of color. The remarkable cabin passage, embedded in the Africa-bound sequence, confirms the Hispanic as part of that race-gender intersectionality and extends the dynamic to accommodate transactional sex. Anchoring at the Gran Canaria capital of Las Palmas, a shore party of crew members including Hughes spends the night at a “white villa by the sea, called El Palacio de Amor” (Big Sea 10).10 “We kept thinking about the girls,” adds Hughes, “who were Spanish, and very young and pretty” (10). The experience provides the occasion for yet another textual version of that journey, the brief poem “To the Dark Mercedes of ‘El Palacio de Amor,’” possibly one of the “few poems” (Big Sea 201) Hughes brought back to the US a year later and which was included in his breakthrough collection, The Weary Blues (1926). The title of the poem, “To the Dark Mercedes,” and its association with the Africa sequence, interpellate a history of European enslavement, here in its Iberian articulation. The proximity of the African continent may be an accident of geography; the narrative contiguity of the Palacio de Amor episode and arrival in the “Motherland of Negro peoples” is not. Hughes acknowledges a common site in which race and gender are mutually constitutive, underwriting Crenshaw’s and also Barkley Brown’s assertion that gender construction is determined by “context,” and Spain is just such a context. The title “To the Dark Mercedes of ‘El Palacio de Amor’” activates three markers of identity – gender, race, linguistic variance – while the equivalence between Mercedes and a “jungle-lily” (Collected 99) in the opening line invokes the gender-race dyad. The Palacio de Amor of the poem’s title leaves no doubt as to where to locate Mercedes. Her function, to provide sexual services, is not named but represented instead “in terms of its economic implications” (Loftus 152). Thus, the speaker enjoins her to seek “gold” in places where she will be paid “well” (99). A twinned history of sexual exploitation of women and also of black women conjoins in Mercedes’s dark body and evokes a parallel narrative of the racialization or Africanization of the Hispanic. The specific circumstance of racial oppression in “To the Dark Mercedes” is articulated through gender, a pairing which Hughes sustains in the pages on Africa immediately following his account in The Big Sea of his visit to the Palacio de Amor. The extended sections on ­A frica (101–121) record a widespread rapacious appropriation by white merchants and their cohorts, from precious timber to African bodies. If young female bodies are the manifest victims of transactional sex, the resplendent physicality of the West African male inhabitants extends the homoerotics of the “hot cabin,” here juxtaposed to the white heteronormative gaze of the missionaries on board the S.S. West Hesseltine who “didn’t like all the excitement of a drunken crew … riotous nights, and a host of Africans … bathing nude … in plain sight” (Big Sea 111).11

160  Isabel Soto The description of the “very polite” Africans seeking to “respect … the missionaries” by “hid[ing] their sex between their legs,” only to have it visibly “[stick] out behind” (Big Sea 111), takes us right back to George from Kentucky “gaily waving his various appendages around” in his cabin bunk bed. For the narrator of The Big Sea, the Hispanic is a mediating category in the densely layered erotics of the “hot cabin” and Africa sequences. Observing “a dozen black Kru boys” load massive logs onto the boat, he experiences “the same feeling” he had had in Mexico “watching Sánchez Mejías turning his red cape so gracefully before a bull’s horns” (112). “It was beautiful and dangerous work,” he adds, “those black boys swimming there in the tossing waves among the iron chains and the great rolling logs” (112). The (homoerotic) linkage of race to the Spanish is not an isolated instance. On taking the subway to Harlem in 1921 after his third visit to the ranch in Toluca, Hughes writes, “Like the bullfights, I can never put on paper the thrill of that underground ride to Harlem” (81). Biographer Rampersad relates Hughes’s sexual education to his time as a cabin boy, divulging an initiatory homosexual encounter with “an aggressive crewman” (77), one assumes of the S.S. West Hesseltine. And in some extraordinary “hastily compiled notes on sex,” Rampersad discloses an instance in which homoerotics shift from withheld representation to unfiltered same-sex actualization (77). The telling prompt here is Hughes’s memory of his stopover in Tenerife, recalling “All those houses on the hills” (77). The brothel euphemism finds its cognate in the Palacio de Amor, the “death house” where Mercedes works, and also in the “vile houses of rotting women” in Lagos that Hughes describes in an unpublished autobiographical piece from 1925, “L’histoire de ma vie” (77). Hughes gives full expression to Barkley Brown’s observation that gender “is not extractable from the context [of] race, class, time, and place,” in these passages where sexual desire, heteronormative or otherwise, the African and the Spanish, converge and are mutually constitutive.

“The Spaniards Remind Us of Us” In 1937, Hughes brings fresh logic to the raging civil conflict. If in 1923 he located gender and race in a dynamic of reciprocity, nearly a ­decade-and-a-half later, Spain emerges as a crucial “map of grievance” of Western racialized and colonial systems. “To cover … the activities of Negroes in the International Brigades”: thus was the mission with which the Baltimore Afro-American tasked Hughes in 1937 (I Wonder 315). While honoring his brief to report on “the activities of Negroes,” Hughes also explicitly correlated US racial apartheid or Jim Crow with fascist supremacism. In fact, Europe itself, through the Spanish exemplum, is frequently re-scripted as not-Europe and more as an extension

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  161 of Jim Crow US: “Give Franco a hood and he would be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a kleagle” (“Soldiers” 181), he wrote in December 1937, just days after leaving Spain. If European soil is recast as a segregated and racialized US, then Spain itself is no longer portrayed as Western modernity’s internal other, fixed in an ahistorical pre-­Enlightenment moment, but the scenario wherein the very idea of Europe, indeed modernity itself, is being brutally tested.12 The Spanish “map of grievance” became moreover the space where the nearly one hundred African American volunteers could mount an epistemic challenge to white supremacist ideology, and open the door to representations of black masculinity configured in terms of military heroism and humanity.13 White masculinity no longer commanded military heroism. The spatial politics of anti-racism, anti-fascism, and (black) masculinity intersected, became co-constitutive in the Spanish context. The Civil War famously provided the occasion for the first racially integrated battalion of American combatants, led by African American Oliver Law, who died in the battle of Brunete in 1937 (I Wonder 356), a historical milestone that links the locational boundedness of the conflict to the extensiveness of its reverberations. Nor is Hughes blind to the racial ironies mobilized by the conflict, instigated in July 1936 by the Spanish Ejército de África (Army of ­A frica) stationed in Spain’s Moroccan protectorate. Hughes recognized the implications of the rebels’ use of Moroccan conscripts as cannon fodder against Republican loyalists. Thus, the well-known “Letter from Spain. Addressed to Alabama” (1937) opens by recalling the capture of a “wounded Moor” who is “just as dark” (Collected 202) as the speaker. Establishing spaces of commonality – Spain, Alabama, dark skin – the poetic voice addresses the ironies of a colonized community forced to enlist in “the fascist army” while he looks across to Africa and sees colonial “foundations shakin” (202), thanks to the loyalist struggle against the fascist rebels. A further, crucial layer was the racialized discourse and practices of the coup leaders, the africanistas, historically articulated within a colonial setting, and after the July Alzamiento or uprising transferred to Spanish loyalists, targeted for brutal “cleansing” (­Graham 29). In light of recent historiography’s recognition of the conflict’s racialized dimension, Hughes’s accounts from his five-month stay in Spain, from July through December 1937, can be considered prescient.14 Before Spain came the Soviet Union, however; the writings prompted by Hughes’s twelve-month sojourn bridge the opening pages of The Big Sea and his Spanish Civil War canon. In June 1932, Hughes traveled with twenty-one fellow African Americans to the Soviet Union, invited by the Meschrabpom Film Company to participate in a movie entitled Black and White that was never completed. During his stay, he traveled throughout the southern Soviet Union, and his experiences in the newly formed republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan

162  Isabel Soto convinced him of what he perceived to be the benefits of Soviet policies of desegregation and the overturning of Russian colonialism in the region (Essays 56–102; I Wonder 69–235; Rampersad 242–75). Hughes explains to his traveling companion, the fastidious and squeamish Arthur Koestler: “why I observed the changes in Soviet Asia with Negro eyes … To me [Turkmenistan] was a colored land moving into orbits hitherto reserved for whites” (I Wonder 116; original emphasis). Hughes came to relate the twin policies of desegregation and mandatory unveiling of Muslim women to “the inequities of the color line back in the United States” (Baldwin 89). Indeed, in all three contexts I examine – the “hot cabin,” the Soviet Union, and Spain – we find a radical internationalism linked to the construction and embracing of a space that accommodates the fluidity of human experience. If the “hot cabin” shared by Hughes with his dark-skinned companions animated a “subaltern cosmopolitanism” as well as unfixed racial and gender alliances, then the Spanish “map of grievance” in 1937 likewise endorses the concept of space as crucial to translocal identifications. The Soviet context similarly allows Hughes to forge linkages between gender, the racial, and the political. Baldwin’s persuasive reading of Hughes’s writings from his stay in the Soviet Union from June 1932 to June 1933 notes “the proximate relationship between the language Hughes used to describe his political and personal allegiances” (88).15 Baldwin seizes on the linguistic yoking of the political and the personal in Hughes, that is, his lexical iterations when describing seemingly unconnected spheres and experiences, here his political allegiances at the time and erotic preferences. The Soviet Union and Spain allow Hughes to reimagine and recast the racial and the political in terms of gender, mediated through a poetics of reciprocity rather than static taxonomies. Not the least cogent aspect of Baldwin’s reading, then, is her thesis that Hughes’s Soviet Union writings associate “the specific practice of female unveiling with racial emancipation in general” (89). Baldwin discusses how Hughes’s encounters with Uzbek boy dancers and the Soviet cultural policy of the social integration and unveiling of Muslim women also make possible a rewriting of the Du Boisian veil metaphor, traditionally read as a broad trope for the color line and black consciousness, to embrace a critique of (African American) heteronormative masculinity. She argues that the disruptive potential of Hughes’s internationalism at the time is thematized “through figures of femininity and sexual difference” and encourages a reimagining of liminal potential, what she terms “in-betweenness” and “a comfort with gender dislocation” (94). We see Baldwin’s thesis borne out in such pieces as “A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia” (1934), where Hughes projects Uzbek dances traditionally performed by boys as feminized choreographies, with “delicately patterned movements and graceful body-rhythms” (96). Similarly, the post-Revolution, newly unveiled leading dancer of the day, Tamara

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  163 Khanum, is described in both feminine and masculine terms, her movements “lithe and vigorous,” her dance “vibrant” (99). In “Tamara Khanum: Soviet Asia’s Greatest Dancer” (1934), Hughes further destabilizes gender, describing Khanum’s performance as “primitive and strong … neither male nor female” (123). The challenge to the collusion between sexual, gender, and racial taboos is underpinned by a restless aesthetics enabling Hughes to forge connections that are political and temporal, locational as well as formal. His writerly practice vexes boundaries by establishing thematic and formal linkages, notably through lexical and imagistic iteration, as well as by gesturing from within a single text to more than one genre, a boundary-­crossing poetics which can be read partly as a response to the exclusionary and systematizing racial violence sweeping Europe at the time. His war writings evidence tropes, vocabulary, and images that exceed the individual works themselves to reappear in others not historically connected to the conflict. Poems anticipate articles, prose sequences resonate with poems, and disparate histories and locations are experientially and representationally entangled. The examples I explore establish acoustic and visual reverberations, and also political concordances, whether internationalist, anti-fascist, or anti-Jim Crow. Hughes’s Soviet experiences are carried over and are linked to gender as well as to race, as in one of the last sequences I analyze, where the female flamenco artist, the gypsy La Niña de los Peines, is recursively bonded to the performance of male singers from Turkmenistan, in turn identified with African American blues singing. Such linkages endorse not only Hughes’s translocal political solidarities but also his overall personal agenda of entanglement. “With the Staccato rhythms of their singing,” Reid-Pharr declares, implicitly resonating with Hughes, “The Spaniards remind us of us” (42). The visibility bestowed on La Niña de los Peines in the final pages of I Wonder is matched in other instances where women seize the narrative and challenge the masculinist paradigms associated with war. If Hughes’s Civil War writings engage a traditionally masculinist idiom of conflict, the prima facie connection between combat and masculinity is subverted. It is no surprise to find war prosecuted to the sounds of battle and even the human voice, that is, through acoustic imagery. The trio dedicated to Spain’s major cities – “Air Raid: Barcelona,” “Madrid 1937,” and “Moonlight in Valencia: Civil War” (Collected) – co-invoke bullets, bombs, bomber planes, and wailing sirens as well as human cries of terror or resistance. In “Barcelona,” the refrain “the BOMBS fall!” (208) is repeated with variations throughout the poem, while the cities of “Madrid” and “Valencia” are hostage to the fascist air force, the former defiant “Beneath the bombing planes” (614), the latter aware that “The planes meant death” (306). Perhaps the most emotive sound of war is that of the human voice, merging with the din of combat. The air raid sirens are “Louder than a cry, / Worse than a scream” (“Barcelona” 207).

164  Isabel Soto The speaker is reduced to a blasphemous expletive, “Me caigo en la ostia!” (“Valencia” 306), or gathers his voice into a single, thrice-repeated syllable of resistance, “Madrid cries NO!” (“Madrid” 616).16 Hughes defamiliarizes the socially constructed masculinity of martial conflict through alternative stagings and experiences: Race intersects with (white) masculinist paradigms and engages other war scenarios, other “maps of grievance.” Hughes adumbrates the aforementioned war imagery in the poem “Air Raid over Harlem,” published in the leftist New Theatre in February 1936. The title and lines such as “AIR RAID OVER HARLEM,” “PLANES OVER HARLEM,” “Bombs over Harlem” (Collected 186–88), and the speaker’s vocal resistance portend the martial and acoustic imagery in the Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia poems. Reference to the war in Ethiopia – “GUGSA A TRAITOR TOO” (186) – where the invasion by Mussolini’s army in October 1935 had predated the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War by just nine-and-a-half months, creates a translocal “map of grievance” embracing Harlem, Spain, and the African nation. Finally, it is worth recalling once more that Spain provided the context for the first racially integrated American battalion of fighting men under the leadership of African American Oliver Law.

“Good Girls of Madrid” Hughes problematizes his own war rhetoric by including race and destabilizing gender protocols. The prose passages that occupy my closing analysis, take up the imagery and vocabulary we find in his Spanish Civil War poetry, repurpose them to jump cultures, places, and masculine/feminine borders, and reinscribe the gender of conflict itself. While much has been written about African American nurse Salaria Kee, the sole woman in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade though not the only ­A frican American woman in Spain at the time (Plummer 61–62), less note has been taken of the attention Hughes pays to women, generally in the Spanish conflict.17 My first example comes from I Wonder as I Wander. Spliced between his arrival in July 1937 in Valencia, the day after the death of Gerda Taro, pioneer war photojournalist and Robert Capa’s companion, and an encounter on the beach with an “ebony-dark young man” from the Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, Hughes recalls Elsie Roxborough, “the girl I was in love with then” (328). He also records that Taro died from being crushed between a tank and a truck at the war front in Brunete and that the local press “honored her as the first foreign newspaperwoman to die in battle during the war” (328). This gendered visibility, anchored in a specific circumstance and place, transitions in the next paragraph into the tragic story of Elsie Roxborough whom Hughes, in a characteristic liminalist gesture of cross-racial identification, likens to the local Valencian women – “ivory-white of skin with dark eyes and raven hair like a Levantine” (328) – and calls to

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  165 mind also the “skin like ivory” (“A Negro Looks” 82) of the newly liberated and unveiled former wife of the Emir of Bukhara, whom Hughes met during his Soviet trip. While in Spain, Hughes receives letters from Elsie informing him of her intention to break off the relationship and to pass: “Elsie disappeared into the white world” (I Wonder 329). The Roxborough story’s asynchronous and disruptive relation to the surrounding narrative – what is a reference to a thwarted long-distance relationship written years after the woman’s attempted racial reassignment doing amidst accounts of the Spanish Civil War? – draws attention to itself, underscoring a meandering and recursive poetics that exposes even as it elides differences between places, histories, and identities of race and gender. Hughes favored the epistolary form, the spoken register resonating elsewhere in his blues and vernacular poetry. More pertinently, the trope of the war-front soldier exchanging letters with his sweetheart back home foregrounds the thematic and discursive connections of the Roxborough story to a group of epistolary Civil War poems, characterized by an unaffected register specific to a racialized subaltern cosmopolitanism. In the section “Negroes in Spain,” Hughes reveals he received criticism from “Some of the Internationals” (378) at a reading of the Letters from Spain group of poems for their non-standard use of English. Defending his use of register as a way of demonstrating that even “the least privileged of Americans, the Southern Negroes” had joined the International Brigades to fight fascism, Hughes includes “the colonial Moors on Franco’s side” as transracial, if rival, brothers-inarms and targets of exclusionary practices resulting in “meager, if any, opportunities for education” (378). The mobility that characterizes the epistolary form also reconciles the cross-racial and cross-gender solidarities that Baldwin notes in Hughes’s Soviet Union writings as it does in those inspired by the Spanish Civil War. Finally, Hughes confers a tragic visibility upon Taro and Roxborough, deathbound sisters of Mercedes of the Palacio de Amor and the “rotting women” of the Lagos brothels, victims to a male-dominated context, whether martial, sexual, or racial. Graham notes that the military uprising that led to the Civil War “unleashed what was in effect a series of culture wars,” also including the confrontation between “traditional gender roles versus the ‘new woman’” (2). That Hughes takes note of the roaring sex trade in Valencia (“the few remaining prostitutes were making a fortune” [I Wonder 330]), the crowds awaiting service outside houses of pleasure, and the Madrid nighttime streetwalkers (I Wonder 330), attests to “traditional gender roles.” On other occasions, however, he draws attention to female actions and responses suggestive of emancipatory potential. I Wonder highlights the promise of transformative social processes affecting women under the Spanish Second Republic and which Hughes consistently juxtaposes with the struggle for racial emancipation.18 It is no accident that the Elsie Roxborough story, the gendered visibility bestowed on Gerda Taro and her

166  Isabel Soto death, and the beach conversation with the Guinean “ebony-dark young man” who had enlisted in the People’s Republican Army militia occupy the same two-page sequence (328–29). The “young African” declares to Hughes, “Franco’s side … [is] making the Africans fight against the Spanish republic—using Moors and my own people, too, to try to crush the Republic” (329). Hughes is ever attuned to the ironies of a historical moment in which an ideologically progressive, anti-fascist government is confronted on the battle field by combatants – “Moors” – who are at once conscripts and oppressed victims of fascist forces. The ironies of the battlefield spawn ironies in daily life for ordinary Spaniards, especially women, caught between the “traditional” and the “new.” Hughes recounts the “very sad story” of the “good girls of Madrid” (331) that exposes a paradoxical and troubling intersection of race and gender. In the early stages of the war when it was feared that Madrid would fall to the fascist rebels, Franco pledged “his Moorish legions” unfettered sexual access to “all the women in the city. This pleasure, without hindrance, Franco had promised them” (331). Erstwhile “good maidens” decided to “give themselves to their sweethearts” (331) and likely cannon fodder in the coming defense of the city, rather than lose their virginity to the Moorish Fuerzas Regulares Indígenas or Indigenous Regular Forces, known popularly as los regulares. That the city did not fall, nor the mass rape take place, nevertheless failed to protect these women from the widespread social “contempt” (331) resulting from their loss of virginity. Revealing the breach between “traditional” and “new” gender roles assigned to Spanish women, this anecdote also addresses forms of female resistance, here in uneasy tension with racial protocols. If the “good girls of Madrid” become agents of their own deflowering, their challenge to codes of masculine entitlement also entails a response to a racialized masculinity. Hughes’s radical politics in the interwar years leads him to place gender and race struggles in apposition; this example, however, not only uncovers the racial paradoxes mobilized by the Spanish conflict but also nods toward a history of racist fantasy wherein men of color are always already figured as potential rapists of white women. Franco’s authorization for Moorish conscripts to “rape all the women in the city” raises the specter of racist delusions regarding black masculinity as it does the fear of miscegenation, a compelling obsession to evoke amidst the ethnic absolutism sweeping Europe at the time. Hughes’s vexing of supremacist codes leads him to establish a discontinuity between the liberatory struggles espoused by “colored troops” in support of the loyalists and the rebel camp’s racist masculine protocols. “I could not find that the enemy’s use of these colored troops had brought about any increased color consciousness on the part of the people of Spain” (351), Hughes declares. Neither had international Negro combatants, he notes, emphasizing that “Negroes were not strange to Spain” (351), while he once more invokes a shared racial history

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  167 between Spaniards and North Africans: “Distinct traces of Moorish blood from the days of the Mohammedan conquest remain in the Iberian Peninsula” (351). Hughes may or may not be accurate in his reporting of a lack of increased racism – “color consciousness” – on the part of Spaniards. What is clear, however, is his construction of a counter-text, a corrective to the absolutist racial and gender codes of the Franco-led rebels.19 Hughes’s narrative of Spanish/African ­A merican commensurability finds echo in Reid-Pharr’s statement of self-­recognition: “the Spaniards remind us of us.” The “Mohammedan conquest” quotation immediately precedes mention of Spain’s historic internal “others,” the gypsies: “Copper-colored Gypsies like La Niña de los Peines are common” (351). My final examples unambiguously reinstate a positive intersectionality between race and gender, despite – or in defiance of – Francoist attempts to the contrary. The autumn of 1932 finds Hughes in the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan. He and Koestler attend a party given in their honor at a collective farm, the Kolhoz Aitakov, which was several hours drive from the ancient city of Merv. The highlight of the evening is a performance by Turkmenian “bakhshis” or male “favoured singers of the region” (I Wonder 124). The title of the section – “Turkmenian Flamenco” – prepares us for what comes next. Describing how the singing “had my hair standing on my head,” Hughes declares that “Spanish gypsy music at its wildest never surpassed theirs” (125). A singer utters “the loudest, longest, most spine-chilling cries I ever heard,” while the singing itself is a succession of antiphonal wails “interspersed with lesser wails … as someone else in the crowd would utter a similar musical howl” (125). It was, he writes, “utterly weird and bloodcurdling, a kind of cross between the Chinese scale at its strangest and gypsy flamenco at its wildest” (125). Five years later and newly arrived in Madrid, he attends a performance by the legendary woman flamenco singer and Republican loyalist, Pastora Pavón, La Niña de los Peines [the Girl with the Combs]. On entering the theater, he finds her rhythmically clapping her hands, while “someone else was singing” (332). Eventually she breaks into song, prompting “half the audience [to] cry aloud with her after the rise and fall of each phrase.” Her voice is “hard and harsh, wild” and could “make the hair rise on your head” just like “the moan of an air-raid siren did.” He finds the “strange, high, wild crying of her flamenco in some ways much like the primitive Negro blues of the deep South” (333). There are clear descriptive, not to say lexical, parallels between the two accounts: expressiveness through song; the call-and-response between singer and audience; each singing style is likened to a “wail,” a “moan,” a “howl,” its wildness making the listener’s hair stand on end on both occasions. Each performance transgresses its own limits, the one reaching out to the other across time, location, culture, and gender. Race, too, is evoked through the recording gaze of an African American and the desegregated space of a newly

168  Isabel Soto integrated and decolonized Turkmenistan, while the singing of La Niña de los Peines is intoned in “Gypsy Spanish” (332), a racialized idiom that reminds Hughes of the “Negro blues” of home.20 The Madrid sequence does further political work within the context of Europe and Spain in 1937. Hughes notes that unlike most other “actors and actresses and musicians” (332) who had flocked to the side of the fascist rebels, “the Girl with the Combs” had refused to leave Madrid. Hughes here re-genders the discourse of war, redirecting and rerouting what elsewhere he refers to as “the fantastic boastings and strutting of those grandiose generals on the rebel side” (“Alliance” 152); the “Gypsy Spanish” of Pavón is “vibrant with resistance to defeat” (333), her “moans” a response to the air-raid “moans” warning of fascist bombings persistently evoked in his poetry and other writings. The passage establishes transgender, transracial, and transgenre complicities – the lexicon clearly connects to that used by Hughes in his Civil War poetry – disrupting segregation and asserting the emancipatory possibilities of unsettling prescriptive borders, all congruent with Hughes’s internationalist sympathies at the time. The exemplary resistance of Pastora Pavón to the male rhetoric (“the fantastic boastings and strutting of those grandiose generals”) and practice of war reclaims a feminized space, reinscribing it as a response to masculinist proscription and violence, forcing us to rethink race, gender, and genre as well as their sites of convergence. The Spanish context is metonymically recast in La Niña de los Peines as an aspirational figuration wherein the national is decentered in favor of the international, the gender-specific is embraced by the gender-inclusive, and the racially static gives way to the racially fluid. Hughes’s mission to report on “the activities of Negroes” in the ­Spanish conflict leads him to focus attention on race, preempting modern interpretations of the war as a raced event. I have argued, however, that his writings are striking not only for their prescience, but also for their entanglement with the surrounding environment or context, to use Barkley Brown’s term. In his partaking of the Spanish (racial) reality and historical moment, Hughes is not complicit in what Johannes Fabian terms “the denial of coevalness,” effectively refusing the enduring ­A nglocentric historical response to the pre-Enlightenment Iberian superpower. Hughes reminds us that race-making and Western modernity are co-constitutive, his Civil War opus in particular transforming the Spanish context into one that is no longer marginal to modernity but compellingly, if fleetingly, central.

Notes 1 See McCoy et al.; Fradera and Schmidt-Nowara; Mancall; Elliott, Empires; Cañizares-Esguerra; and Weber, Bárbaros. 2 Lewis R. Gordon confirms “The tendency to see blackness as a modern phenomenon” (4), while the title of the opening chapter of Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic announces the race/modernity debate that occupies his seminal text

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  169 “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity” (1–40). See also Gilroy’s Against Race, especially Chapter 2. 3 The limpieza de sangre condition for holding public office, affecting primarily conversos or Catholics of Jewish origin, can be traced to Toledo in 1449 (Elliott, Imperial Spain 220). 4 See Martin-Márquez; Branche; Fuchs; Earle and Lowe; and McKnight and Garofalo. 5 Johannes Fabian’s phrase, “denial of coevalness,” refers to the Western anthropology’s strategy of “distancing those who are observed from the Time of the observer” (25). 6 Rampersad notes the “narrowly racial” (351) focus of Hughes’s misión, while Thurston argues that his coverage “presents the example Spain can set for race relations” (144). 7 Hughes had a significant and lifelong connection to the Spanish poet. See Soto, “Crossing Over;” “Langston Hughes;” and “‘To Hear Another Language’.” 8 This is only the first instance in which George is racialized, disproving Vera Kutzinski’s claim that he is “racially unmarked” (37) and “only implicitly racialized by the reference to his Harlem landlady” (267–71). According to Hughes, “George’s face was as African as Africa,” and “dark as he was, George always referred to himself as brownskin” (Big Sea 103). 9 Featherstone’s concept of “subaltern cosmopolitanism” refers to “forms of worldliness, mobility, and geographies of connection crafted by marginal groups” (1408). “Black internationalism from below” includes “subalternized black mobilities and experiences associated with maritime labor” (1412), especially those that emerged in response to the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia. 10 Co-editors of Hughes’s Collected Poems Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel mistakenly assign the Canary Islands to Portugal (633, note to p. 99). In further inaccuracies, Rampersad declares Civil Guards to have assassinated Lorca (Rampersad 345), when it has long been established that he was shot by a Falangist death squad under orders from the “almost mad new civil governor of Granada … and chief of the local falangist militia” (Thomas 267); Rampersad refers to Barcelona’s “Chinatown” (346), his translation presumably of “barrio chino,” which in Spain refers to the red-light district and not a district inhabited by ethnic Chinese; he also reproduces without comment Hughes’s incorrect spellings of Spanish expressions and place names throughout “Earthquake Weather,” the chapter covering the Spanish Civil War (341–72). Kutzinski is also guilty of errors related to Hughes and Spain, placing Lorca’s death “days before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War” (88) when it took place just one month after the July 18 uprising in 1936, either on August 18 or the night of August 18–19; prominent cultural Republican supporter Vicente Salas Viu is cited as a Chilean musicologist when in fact he was born in Madrid in 1912 and fled to Chile in 1939 after the rebels’ victory; lastly, Kutzinski misdates as 1935 the Second International Writers’ Conference in Paris that Hughes attended – giving his celebrated speech “Too Much of Race” (Rampersad 344; 433) – prior to traveling to Spain: the correct year is 1937. These errors notwithstanding, Rampersad and Kutzinski are required reading for Hughes scholars for the scope of their texts and their fine and frequently groundbreaking insights. 11 There is a particularly harrowing account of the gang rape of a young African girl on the ship’s deck (108). See Reid-Pharr (120–24) and Loftus (­152–53) for insightful, and sensitive, readings of the libidinal economics involved.

170  Isabel Soto 12 Helen Graham argues that Franco aspired to construct post-Civil War Spain “as a bulwark against the ‘sins’ of modernity epitomized by the Republic: enlightenment freethinking, the acceptance of levelling change, and a tolerance of cultural difference/heterogeneity” (133). 13 “[P]ractices of internationalism of [African American volunteers] were constituted through relations between violence and masculinity. [Black Abraham Lincoln Brigadier Jesse] Yates contended that in Spain he was able ‘to stand and fight—not flee’” (Featherstone 1417). 14 “As a European Civil War of culture, it was also a race war” (Graham 44). See also Balfour; Preston; Graham 120–23; and Soto, “I Knew that Spain.” 15 Baldwin is referencing Hughes’s 1953 testimony under interrogation by Roy Cohn before the House Un-American Activities Committee in which he distanced himself from his previous interwar radical leftist politics. 16 See Soto, “I Knew that Spain” for the various mistranslations of Hughes’s incorrect transcription of the Spanish blasphemous oath, me cago en la hostia (139). 17 See Hughes’ I Wonder 381–83; and Reid-Pharr 56–71. 18 Women gained the right to vote, had (limited) access to birth control, including abortion, and divorce and civil marriages became legal. See Enders and Radcliff. 19 The diversity of the International Brigades leads Graham to declare: “In racial and cultural as well as political terms, then, the heterogeneity of the Brigades made them a living form of opposition to the principles of purification and brutal categorization espoused by fascism and, above all, by Nazism” (44). 20 The pairing of flamenco and race songs as idioms of emancipation and resistance is a constant in I Wander. On his last night in Spain, Hughes and African American Lincoln Brigadier Bunny Rucker take refuge from the shells dropping on Madrid and enter a “wine shop” (392): “One husky hairy S­ paniard … threw back his head” (392) and starts to sing flamenco. Rucker joins in with Negro spirituals. The “hairy Spaniard” recalls also the “shaggy hatted” Turkmenian vocalist who likewise “threw back his head” (125) to sing.

Works Cited Andrews, William L., et al., eds. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Baldwin, Kate. Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963. Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Balfour, Sebastian. Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Bennett, Herman L. Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2009. Branche, Jerome C. Colonialism and Race in Luso-Hispanic Literature. ­Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2006. Brown, Elsa Barkley. “‘What Has Happened Here:’ The Politics of Difference in Women’s History and Feminist Politics.” Feminist Studies 18.2 (1992): 295–312. Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge. Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic 1550–1700. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2006. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 140 (1989): 139–67.

Langston Hughes and the Spanish “Context”  171 DeGuzmán, María. Spain’s Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2005. Earle, T. F., and K. J. P. Lowe, eds. Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Elliott, J. H. Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America. 1492–1830. New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. ———. Imperial Spain. 1469–1716. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. Enders, Victoria L., and Pamela B. Radcliff, eds. Constructing Spanish ­Womanhood: Female Identity in Modern Spain. Albany: SUNY P, 1999. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia UP, 1983. Featherstone, David. “Black Internationalism, Subaltern Cosmopolitanism, and the Spatial Politics of Antifascism.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103.6 (2013): 1406–20. Fradera, Josep M., and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, eds. Slavery & Antislavery in Spain’s-Atlantic Empire. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Fuchs, Barbara. Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2011. ———. Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. ———. Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2003. Gilroy, Paul. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. ———. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Gordon, Lewis R. “African-American Philosophy, Race and the Geography of Reason.” Not Only the Master’s Tools: African-American Studies in ­Theory and Practice. Eds. Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon. Abingdon: ­Routledge, 2016. 3–50. Graham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Hughes, Langston. “The Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals, Madrid.” 1937. Essays 149–52. ———. The Big Sea. An Autobiography. 1940. London: Pluto Press, 1986. ———. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Eds. Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel. New York: Vintage, 1995. ———. Essays on Art, Race, Politics, and World Affairs. Ed. Christopher de Santis. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2002. ———. I Wonder as I Wander. An Autobiographical Journey. 1956. New York: Hill and Yang, 1993. ———. “A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia.” 1934. Essays 71–102. ———. “‘Organ Grinder’s Swing’ Heard above Gunfire in Spain.” 1937. Essays 165–69. ———. “Ships, Sea, and Africa: Random Impressions of a Sailor on His First Trip Down the West Coast of the Motherland.” 1923. Essays 24–27. ———. “Soldiers from Many Lands United in Spanish Fight.” 1937. Essays 178–81. ———. “Tamara Khanum: Soviet Asia’s Greatest Dancer.” 1934. Essays 122–27.

172  Isabel Soto Kutzinski, Vera. The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2012. Loftus, Brian. “In/Verse Autobiography: Sexual (In)Difference and the Textual Backside of Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 15.1 (2014): 141–61. Mancall, Peter C., ed. The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2007. Martin-Márquez, Susan. Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Martínez, María Elena. Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008. McCoy, Alfred W., et  al., eds. Endless Empire: Spain’s Retreat, Europe’s Eclipse, America’s Decline. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2012. McKnight, Kathryn Joy, and Leo J. Garofalo, eds. Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812. ­I ndianapolis: Hackett, 2009. Moore, Dennis D., ed. More Letters from the American Farmer. An Edition of the Essays in English Left Unpublished by Crèvecoeur. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1995. Plummer, Brenda. Rising Wind. Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1996. Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust. Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-­C entury Spain. London: Harper, 2012. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. Vol. I: 1902–1941: I, Too, Sing America. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Reid-Pharr, Robert F. Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-­ Humanist Critique. New York: New York UP, 2016. Soto, Isabel. “Crossing Over: Langston Hughes and Lorca.” A Place That Is Not a Place: Essays in Liminality and Text. Ed. Isabel Soto. Madrid: The Gateway Press, 2000. 115–32. ———. “Langston Hughes and the Empowerment of Dislocation.” Montage of a Dream. The Art and Life of Langston Hughes. Eds. John E. Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2007, 169–80. ———. “‘I Knew that Spain Once Belonged to the Moors’: Langston Hughes, Race, and the Spanish Civil War.” Research in African Literatures 45.1 (2014): 130–36. ———. “‘To Hear Another Language’: Lifting the Veil between Langston Hughes and Federico García Lorca.” Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line. Ed. Ana María Manzanas. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 101–17. Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977. Thurston, Michael. “Bombed in Spain.” The Black Press: New Literary and Historical Essays. Ed. Todd Vogel. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2001. 140–58. Weber, David J. Bárbaros: Spaniards and their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment. New Haven: Yale UP, 2005. ———. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. Wheat, David. Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2016.

Part III

Gazing at Each Other in Franco’s Spain

8 Black Problems for White Travelers The Representation of African Americans in Early Francoist New York Travel Narratives David Miranda-Barreiro Since the end of the 19th century, a broad range of Spanish travel narratives have focused on the United States and on New York City in particular (Miranda-Barreiro, Spanish). However, after the publication of Pedro Segura’s Nueva York 1935: impresiones de un viaje a los Estados Unidos [New York 1935: Impressions of a Journey to the United States] (1935), New York disappeared from Spanish travel writing, until the mid-1940s witnessed a resurgence of publications about the city.1 ­Spanish exile Emilio González López confirms this reawakening: in recent years, especially after the Second World War, Spain has experienced a renewal of interest in the United States, and many books about North American life or its peoples have been published in ­Madrid and Barcelona. New York is, above all other North ­A merican cities, the one that most often captures the attention of the curious Spanish traveller. (295) Similarly, Joaquín Calvo Sotelo acknowledges the existing wealth of Spanish narratives about New York City and predicts that the genre will continue to flourish: “the bibliography on New York, which must be as substantial as a reinforced concrete statue of Napoleon, will undoubtedly increase, because New York is a diamond that reflects the light that it absorbs” (13). 2 One of the recurrent themes of Spanish travel writing about New York before the Spanish Civil War had been the presence of African ­A mericans in the city, often under chapters entitled “Negros” [Blacks], and including references to the so-called “problema negro” [“black problem”] (Miranda-Barreiro, “Primitivist”). This trend continued in the 1940s, as we will see in this chapter through the analysis of four Spanish travelogues published in this decade: Nueva York. Un español entre rascacielos (1945) [New York. A Spaniard among Skyscrapers] by Gaspar Tato Cumming; Nueva York en retales (1947) [New York in Remnants] by Joaquín Calvo Sotelo; Nueva York (1947) by Agustín del

176  David Miranda-Barreiro Saz; and Nueva York. Impresiones de un español del siglo XIX que no sabe inglés (1947) [New York. Impressions of a 19th-Century Spaniard Who Does Not Speak English] by Diego Hidalgo. My analysis will begin by highlighting two aspects of the historical context. First, it will consider the evolving nature of the relationship between Spain and the USA over this period. Whereas Francoism held a generally anti-American stance during most of the Second World War, from 1943 onwards, the regime modified its foreign policy in order to attract the good will of the US should the Allies win the war. Given the key roles played by race and racism in the Second World War, I will ­argue that Spanish travel writers distanced themselves – ­although not always successfully – from previous discourses on “scientific r­ acism” in order to avoid being associated with the racist ideology of Nazism. At the same time, most of these authors also omitted any direct criticism of American society (e.g., its discrimination toward blacks), in response to the censorship that Francoism imposed as part of its new international strategy. Second, I will suggest that the ideology of Hispanidad and the views on race that Francoism espoused in its former American colonies underlie the characterization of ­A frican Americans in these texts. Furthermore, colonialist discourses and s­ tereotypes of “Otherness” were still very much at play in the ­A frican territories that remained under Spanish authority. Pervasive racist ­attitudes and policies, especially in Spanish Guinea, significantly influenced the depiction of black Americans.

Race, Hispanidad, and Early Francoism’s Evolving View of the United States Although evident, it is important to emphasize that, to a great extent, Spanish travel writing about New York published after 1939 reflected the views of the Francoist regime with respect to the US and, more importantly for the purposes of this study, its views on race and racism both in that nation and in Spain. The position of the dictatorship shifted over the course of the Second World War, especially after the Allied victory. For example, as Daniel Fernández de Miguel has pointed out, during the war, both Catholic and Falangist factions in Spain had welcomed and disseminated Nazi propaganda, which condemned the US as a racist state, in particular for its discrimination of African Americans: in a quite surprising manner, the Nazis used racism as a weapon of propaganda against the U.S. But they did not employ it to criticize a society as ethnically heterogeneous as the American one, which in principle would have fit with the ideology of National Socialism, but, on the contrary … they accused the U.S. of being a racist country due to the degrading treatment meted out to blacks …

Black Problems for White Travelers  177 These arguments were well-received in Spain … a Catholic country which, in appearance at least, condemned any discrimination based on race. (164–66) However, even as the regime exhibited a clear and strong anti-American bias during most of the War – based on its rejection of values embodied by the US such as democracy and freedom, its identification with Protestantism, its increasing influence in Latin America, and even the memory of the 1898 Spanish-American War – , already by 1943 and throughout the 1940s, the tone adopted in the press, on the radio and in official speeches to refer to the U.S. had changed. Anti-Americanism began to wane and then disappear, but, instead of becoming extinct, it simply remained hidden—but very much alive—behind the regime’s ban on criticizing the powerful Republic. (Seregni 116) This change of heart was a direct response to a shift in the regime’s foreign policy. Alessandro Seregni argues that, although Franco still had faith in Hitler’s victory, in the second half of 1944 he launched a major campaign to normalize Spain’s relations with the US, now recognized as the most powerful nation on Earth (124). The regime’s strategy was to gradually discard Fascist rhetoric and imaginary (Payne 267) and place more importance on Catholicism as the hallmark of Francoism (­Fernández de Miguel 179). As a result, the new official doctrine emphasized that Spain was not a fascist country, but a Catholic one, and that it had only supported the Axis powers in their battle against Communism, not in their fight with the Allied Forces (Gil Pecharromán 145). The remodeling of Francoism’s façade to please the US, and thus deter any direct intervention in Spain if the Allies were ultimately to win the war, also led to a modification in the way that the Spanish press represented US race and racism. Consequently, an analysis of the depiction of African Americans in Spanish New York travel writing of this period must be contextualized within both the “ideological struggle” between the Axis powers and the Allied forces, in which race and racism played a pivotal role, and the impact of Francoism’s foreign policy shift on how these texts view black Americans. Moreover, in examining this particular corpus, it is necessary to keep in mind the persistence of racist discourses in Spain at that time, despite the regime’s efforts to conceal them in the name of Catholicism. Indeed, racism has played a pervasive role in Spanish history, to the extent that “historians have often identified Spain as the site in which racism first emerged” (Herzog 151). Tamar Herzog attributes this historical view to the 15th century “blood statutes” that discriminated against Jews, and “the elaboration and distillation of Muslim proto-racism that gradually distinguished Africans

178  David Miranda-Barreiro from ‘whites’,” as well as to the development of an Iberian racial way of thinking in the American continent “as a by-product of both colonialism and large scale dependence on African slaves” (151). At the core of nostalgic reformulations of Spanish identity after the loss of the last American colony in 1898 lay the regeneration of the ­Empire, both in terms of colonial expansion in Africa and as a cultural reconquest of the “lost” American territories in keeping with the ideology of Hispanidad (Balfour 233). Two of the major writers of the Generation of 98, Miguel de Unamuno and Ramiro de Maetzu, were central to the articulation of this ideology, which later formed a cornerstone of Francoism, especially in Maetzu’s version of it. Both polymath men emphasized the cultural bond between Spain and the Latin American republics, based on a common language and culture, and in the case of Maetzu, a shared religion. Although race was not, in principle, an element in their conceptualization of Hispanidad, it underpinned their views on non-white peoples. In the case of Unamuno, he rejected the idea of ethnic essentialism when it came to Spain’s relationship with the Amerindians; on the other hand, he did not adopt the same stance toward blacks, to the extent that he even sought to justify their enslavement (Domínguez Burdalo 330). Maetzu’s conception of Hispanidad proclaimed itself anti-­racist, since it was based on Catholic principles. However, his view of racial equality only worked on a “spiritual” level, as Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida explains: in Maetzu’s view, the traditional Catholic order is hierarchical and unequal, both in relation to class and social status, but also with regard to race. The white race is superior, but a white man can still be damned and an Indian or a black man saved … Maetzu shows a profound contempt towards non-European peoples … he stigmatizes … black Africans as savage cannibals, sexual degenerates and drug users. Only the white European race was truly civilized, and therefore superior. (111) In Maeztu’s conceptualization of Hispanidad, if race is not an “obstacle” to the salvation of non-white souls, skin color still works as a signifier of class and primitivism. This type of “missionary racism,” in the words of Álvarez Chillida, became Francoism’s official doctrine (112–13). It also extended to Spain’s African colonies, especially Spanish Guinea. Academic studies by Gustau Nerín, Susan Martin-Márquez, Benita Sampedro Vizcaya, and Álvarez Chillida, for example, have highlighted the articulation of an ideology of race in Spain’s colonization of what is now Equatorial Guinea. Nerín defines the ideologies that used to justify its colonial exploitation of African territories as Hispanotropicalismo. This theory postulated that due to the “African essence” found in its culture, Spain was more suited to colonizing Africa than other European

Black Problems for White Travelers  179 powers (Nerín 11–14). Still, in spite of Spain’s alleged cultural proximity to Africa and the Catholic principles that supposedly underpinned Francoist colonial endeavors, “until the late 1950s and early 1960s, the colony resembled an apartheid society” (Martín-Márquez 281). Indeed, because “the politics of Hispanidad were not in any way incompatible with the hierarchical organization and racial segregation between blacks and whites, which in some respects worsened during the first period of Francoism” (Álvarez Chillida 103). In fact, as my analysis will show, colonial stereotypes greatly influenced the representation of African ­A mericans in New York travel narratives of the early Francoist period. They are reflected, for example, in the traveler’s attitude toward the socalled “Negro problem,” referred to on several occasions by both Tato Cumming and playwright Calvo Sotelo, who in fact entitled a chapter of his travelogue “El problema negro.” The expression itself is, of course, not new in Spanish, European, or American texts. It appeared for the first time in Hollis Read’s The Negro Problem Solved (1864), which posed the “question” of what should be done with former black slaves freed after the American Civil War (Miranda-Barreiro, Spanish 120–21; 147). In 1944, a year before the publication of Tato Cumming’s travelogue, Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal’s study An American Dilemma examined the issue from an external perspective for the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Despite the discrimination that blacks faced, both their social position and the level of integration improved during the Second World War and in the immediate post-war years. African Americans made “remarkable economic gains,” “the result of an acute labor shortage that made it more difficult for employers to indulge in the luxury of refusing to hire qualified workers who had the ‘wrong’ skin color” (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 72). Furthermore, the “Second Great Migration” of black workers from the South to the North that began in this decade also meant “an enormous improvement in the kind of jobs held by African Americans and the incomes they earned” (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 81). 3 According to Myrdal, in the 1940s, the “Negro problem” constituted above all a moral issue with social, political, and economic ramifications. Relations between whites and blacks manifested a stark contradiction, or “dilemma” in the author’s words, between the Christian values at the core of American national identity and the treatment of blacks (lxxix). However, references to this “problem” in Spanish travel narratives remained anchored in colonialist views of the “Other,” thereby revealing the racist views that prevailed in early Francoist Spain, as I will show next.

African Americans in 1940s Spanish Travel Narratives Following a chronological order, Tato Cumming is the first of these writers to report an encounter with an African American person, while

180  David Miranda-Barreiro traveling by train from Chicago to New York: “each coach is staffed by a black man in a white jacket and a patent leather cap and he is always smiling at you due to his temperament and interest. This servant moves about tiresomely…” (25–26).4 This worker is described as a servant in an unproblematic way; although the author’s words hint at a possible criticism of his harsh working conditions, the black man is not considered an employee. As a “sirviente,” he is clearly a social inferior. The reference to his temperament as “smiley” also echoes colonial stereotypes of blacks as intellectually inferior to whites, and therefore “naturally” inclined to serve them. As Steve Fenton has shown, the discursive construction of racial difference paralleled the development of class ideologies in Europe. The combination of colonialism and racism responded to social divisions between those who were seen as “fit to govern and those fit to be ruled” (Fenton 83). In Tato Cumming’s initial approach, the black man smiles because he is happy to obey. The visual contrast between black and white (black man – white jacket – black cap) also seems to underline racial difference. This rhetorical device recurs several times throughout the chapter. It is used to describe the city’s geography: “New York is not only … the bright avenue of Broadway, or the black neighbourhood of Harlem” (31), and to allude to the “heterogeneous population” of New Amsterdam in 1660 as “extremely exotic and dangerous … vice and virtue, goodness and crime. Black slaves and white Dutch women, scared Indians and European thieves, escaped criminals from Virginia and New England, virgin maidens from Northern Europe” (37).5 Particularly in the second passage, black (slaves) and white (women) fall into a binary opposition between evil (vice, crime) and good (virtue, goodness) in which black slaves clearly belong to the former, echoing the “Manichean allegory,” to use Abdul R. JanMohamed’s’ phrase, deeply ingrained in the Western racial imaginary since first encounters between Europeans and Africans (Jordan 42). Several chapters later, Tato Cumming begins his description of ­Harlem by alluding to Charles Carroll’s pre-Adamite views, set out in The Negro a Beast (1900), of blacks as beasts with the power of speech at the service of their white masters. In this case, the writer rejects these ideas, declaring that he does not believe that all Americans share this view. He uses Carroll’s racist stand  – ­despite being formulated more than forty years earlier – to introduce a discussion on the racial connotations of the Second World War, which he describes as a conflict between races: “People against people! Race against race! A crisis caused by struggle and persecution. How long will this last, my Lord?” (199).6 Tato Cumming considers the emerging challenge to long-engrained ideas of nationalist racial homogeneity to be one of the main causes of the war in Europe, as well as an issue facing the US: “those white nations where the black cyst developed will say that it’s not possible to introduce ‘white virtue’ into the ‘black’ body. Pan-Slavism, Pan-Germanism,

Black Problems for White Travelers  181 Pan-Magyarism, Pan-Americanism … Is it true that those nations condemned to mixing their blood are irredeemably lost from a biological and intellectual point of view?” (199).7 The Spanish traveler’s ideas and choice of language fuse colonialist racist stereotypes (virtue as white) and the “scientific” racism that had been in vogue in both Europe and the US since the 19th century. However, and in tune with the ideology of Hispanidad that dominated early Francoist Spain, Tato Cumming rejects “scientific” racism in the name of Christian values, and even argues that miscegenation improves the species (199). On the other hand, his views on African Americans are contradictory, as they do not fully abandon a “biological” justification for racial difference. He suggests that the “well-known” intellectual inferiority of blacks might not stem from biology but the inhumane conditions of slavery (202). Nevertheless, adopting a form of colonialist paternalism, he also argues that ­A frican Americans have not been able to cope with freedom and have lost their moral compass, resulting in clashes with white American workers after the Great Migration (203). In effect, he ends up resorting to the same “biological” arguments he is trying to refute, stating that “it’s possible that black skin bears within itself such an inferiority complex … One thousand black Americans surrounding a white man ‘know’ that they are inferior to him. It might be something fundamentally biological, despite the countless exceptions” (203).8 The author also expresses concerns about racial regression by referring to the alleged case of Allan Tren, a young man from Virginia who suddenly and inexplicably “turned black”: “his brown skin grew gradually darker until it was completely black, his mouth became deformed, as his lips turned thick and fleshy; his straight hair curled; his whole world changed within a month, he lost his white girlfriend and was rejected by the Naval Academy” (204).9 Tato Cumming comments on the alleged existence of countless cases like Tren’s, which he describes as “backward steps,” in order to illustrate another “problem” in the US, namely, “that of the black-whites” (203).10 The Spanish traveler is tapping into a fear of “racial contamination” that surfaced in the US after the end of s­ lavery. “The notion that white could become black—the fear that white was not an essence—became a terrible reality in the minds of many whites,” and led to the creation of the figure of the “white nigger” (Dreisinger 21), a notion which Tato Cumming’s “negros-blancos” obviously echo. As Baz Dreisinger points out, “scientific” theories of race “amplified” these concerns at the end of the 19th century. If Charles Darwin’s theories argued that there were no “racial essences” but that species were instead constantly changing, “what was to stop white from turning black?” (Dreisinger 23–24). Tato Cumming’s rhetorical tug of war with biological justifications of racism reflects his uneasiness with an ideology that prevailed in Western countries until the Second World War. His struggle to dismiss it completely shows the strength of racist

182  David Miranda-Barreiro discourses at that time. He tries to move away from a worldview that had been discredited by the Allies’s fight for freedom against Nazism, despite their own internal contradictions regarding race, and from which the Francoist regime was also strategically distancing itself, in an effort to win favor with the US. This ambivalence leads to yet another contradiction in the travelogue: in what seems to be an attempt to present the US in a positive light, the text is sometimes at pains to justify its brand of racial discrimination. Tato Cumming argues that although the “color line” is reprehensible from a Christian point of view, he wonders whether it might acceptable as a “social need” (200). Nonetheless, he also praises civil rights activists such as Mary McLeod Bethune (206–07) and a 1943 speech by the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he contended that it was necessary to fight racial discrimination at home in the same way Americans were fighting for democracy in the war.11 Tato Cumming concludes that “wars are destructive, but they can also open up unanticipated ways of life, and on this occasion they might help to break the ‘color line’” (209).12 The writer also alludes to Howard University, the historically black private institution in Washington, D.C., and to the work of the NAACP. In addition, Harlem is positively described as a “city of blacks, ruled by blacks and inhabited by blacks … there are rich blacks and poor blacks, and there are restaurants, bars, dance halls, cinemas, theatres … banks … ­commercial offices owned by blacks for blacks” (215).13 Such an overall positive portrayal of the situation of African Americans in the US society and the mild criticism of segregation and discrimination, while reflecting the economic and social improvements that the war brought about, can also be construed as an echo of Francoist foreign policy toward the US at the time. Despite the author’s attempts to move away from racist discourses, even if they are sometimes unsuccessful, colonialist overtones do surface in his text. A case in point is his aforementioned theory of the “salto atrás.” This term was, in fact, used in the former Spanish-American colonies as part of the vocabulary of the prevailing caste system, together with categories such as mulato, moreno, ladino, prieto, tercerón, and cuarterón, which distinguished between different types or degrees of “blackness” (Antón et  al. 18). In applying a racial concept created in Spanish colonial territories to African Americans, Tato Cumming is drawing attention to the persistence of racial stereotypes in Spain, even if they were superficially rejected by theories of Hispanidad. Furthermore, his description of blacks is not devoid of a touch of the exoticism and primitivism that characterized the representation of ­A frican Americans in pre-1936 Spanish travel narratives (Miranda-­ Barreiro, “Primitivist” 54–55). Harlem, despite all its progress, is still seen as surrounded by “an air of magic, of witchcraft, of ‘animism’, the

Black Problems for White Travelers  183 cult of ‘totemism’, from which the black’s soul cannot be freed, no matter how much ‘jazz’ he dances and how much gin he drinks” (217).14 The writer also describes the religious ceremonies at which George Baker, better known as “Father Divine,” officiated as “aquelarres” or witches’ covens, where: the most horrendous and noticeable sensuality prevails. One would only need a few trees and a tom-tom to fall back into the jungles of Gabon, Guinea, Liberia … and this occurs in the shadow of the highest buildings that human intelligence and labor have been able to construct. There has been a leap from James Weldon and Eugene O’Neill’s subtle satire to Jupiter Hammon’s lunatic emotionalism to fall into the African “embueti” … From there to cannibalism requires just one more step. And a few minutes. (218)15 The image that Tato Cumming paints here condenses primitivist stereotypes of blacks as well as concerns about cultural regression. African Americans are characterized as essentially primitive, even if they inhabit the most modern urban setting created by “white intelligence.” Aside from Father Divine’s delusional claims to be God – which Tato Cumming, as a declared Christian, would perceive as heresy – his International Peace Mission movement provided economic support to ­A frican Americans during the Great Depression. Furthermore, his morally strict “belief system” prohibited the consumption of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco; demanded that his followers desist from violence and crime; and required sexual abstinence even between married couples ­(Aberjhani and West 107–09). The Spanish traveler’s recounting of sexual debauchery does not seem to coincide with the reality of Baker’s church. Moreover, Father Divine had moved to Philadelphia in 1942, three years before the publication of the travelogue. These incongruities suggest that Tato Cumming is projecting preconceived colonial discourses onto ­A frican Americans, instead of delivering an informed account of ­A frican ­A merican life. Once again, there are references to “regression” (“retroceder en un salto”), mixed with Spanish views on black Africans in their colonial territories. Apart from a direct mention of Guinea, the cryptic allusion to the so-called “embueti” also stems from Spanish colonial representations of blacks in this country. Carlos González Echegaray defines “embueti” as “a secret religious society, with a mixture of Christian and pagan rituals” (63). The 1944 Anuario Agrícola de los Territorios Españoles del Golfo de Guinea [Annual Agricultural Report of the Spanish Territories of the Gulf of Guinea] does, in fact, provide a definition that seems to correspond with Tato Cumming’s description of Father Divine’s rituals: “evangelical activities seem to have encountered a serious obstacle recently in a sect which originated in Gabon and has now spread across our colony along the coast and

184  David Miranda-Barreiro towards the interior. Usually called ‘Embueti,’ it includes lewd, vicious and cannibalistic practices” (213). In depicting Harlem partly through such primitivistic images, the writer is revealing the uneasiness within Francoism toward the black subjects of Spain’s own African colonies. The fear of regression expressed in the cultural “salto atrás,” from Harlem Renaissance writers Weldon and O’Neill to Jupiter Hammon, the first published black American poet, also reflects these anxieties. While Hammon advocated the abolition of slavery at the end of the 18th century, he did so from a conservative and deeply religious stance (Sernett 34), which contradicts Tato Cumming’s portrayal of the black poet as a “lunatic”; instead, this use of the adjective might suggest that the emancipation of African Americans without the supervision and authority of whites is “madness,” as even those living in urban settings could easily and swiftly regress to their primitive nature. This concern echoes the racial policies in place in Guinea at the time, where natives where treated as “legal minors” and “even venerable tribal elders were considered overgrown children, unable to sell land, testify in court, purchase alcohol, or carry firearms”; only after 1944 would it be possible for some Guineans to be emancipated, and only if they embraced Catholic values (Martin-Márquez 281). The “threat” of paganism that free African Americans such as Baker allegedly posed therefore suggests a warning for Spanish Guinea and reinforces the evangelizing view of Francoism through the ideology of Hispanidad and Hispanotropicalismo. Given his often contradictory assessments of blacks in New York, African Americans remain a “problem” for Tato Cumming, since they ­ frica. claim to be rightful citizens of the US who “refuse” to return to A Once again, however, the “problem” is downplayed, as the writer avoids deeper criticism of American racism by stating that “the problem remains dormant … and its solution is yet to be found, although, in fact, it doesn’t cause any serious headaches on either side of the ‘color line’” (219).16 The tension between the strength of colonial discourses in Francoist Spain and the need to distance itself from “scientific” racialism, together with avoiding any criticism of American society (for strategic purposes), permeates Tato Cumming’s views on African Americans throughout the whole chapter he devotes to Harlem. The “black problem” is also part of Joaquín Calvo Sotelo’s Nueva York en retales, where it is examined in less detail and from a rather peculiar perspective in the chapter titled “El problema negro” (169–71). The writer challenges those who “in a superficial way … foresee that the United States will be divided into two stripes of different colors in fifteen or sixteen years’ time” (169).17 On the contrary, Calvo Sotelo reformulates the issue by arguing that “the black problem exists because there are very few blacks and it is necessary, at all costs, that there be many more” (169).18 Although at first it might seem that the author’s

Black Problems for White Travelers  185 stance will favor the rights of African Americans, he quickly clarifies that blacks are needed because whites are increasingly disinterested in physically demanding work: the North American has returned from Europe with a definite dislike of certain occupations … there are specific tasks performed almost exclusively by blacks: cleaning, animal slaughter, loading and unloading, certain agricultural jobs, etc., and it is frightening to envisage the (white) North American’s fate … if one day he could no longer rely on the labor of both blacks and immigrants. (169–70)19 Calvo Sotelo’s assessment is a blatant overgeneralization, which does not reflect the reality of white working-class America at the time. The book was finished in July 1946, yet 1945 and 1946 had witnessed the largest labor strikes in American history, with millions of workers on strike in the automobile, steel, mining, oil, and rail industries (McNeese 37; see also Metzgar). Joanne Reitano points out that work stoppages kept New York “in constant turmoil” during these two years, as “building workers, painters, telegraph operators, truckers, dockworkers, tugboat operators, steelworkers and copper workers contributed to a national epidemic of strikes that involved almost 250,000 New York City workers in 1946” (200). Since it seems unlikely that the Spanish author was not aware of these events, his approach can be considered a parody. It is, in fact, reminiscent of the “humorous” tone of the New York travelogues of fellow conservatives and pro-Francoist writers Jacinto Miquelarena in Pero ellos no tienen bananas [But They Don’t Have Bananas] (1930), and ­Julio Camba in La ciudad automática [The Automatic City] (1932). While some of Calvo Sotelo’s chapters adopt similar “comical” rhetoric – one of them actually mentions a text by Camba – in some instances, he reveals a bitter side when he expresses his views on the Spanish Civil War and the US response to it. For example, the writer voices his anger at a headline in The New York Times which read, “In Spain the gutters ran with children’s blood” (84; English in the original), and concludes that the newspaper “is not a friend” of the current regime. In other sections, the text adopts a proselytizing tone, as the traveler explains the Spanish Civil War to several Americans. On one occasion, he outlines to a Mr. Perry “all the arguments that legitimized our civil war and made its outbreak sacred” (88).20 These words fit in the context of post-Second World War relations between Spain and the US. Even if the Francoist government had sought to “clean up” its international image and distance itself from the Axis powers, between 1945 and 1947, the American administration still viewed Franco’s regime with hostility, and as the last fascist dictatorship still standing (Gil Pecharromán 146). This led to Spain’s exclusion from the United Nations in ­December 1946, which, in turn, reawakened anti-American feelings in Spain (Seregni 181). The text reflects this growing tension.

186  David Miranda-Barreiro Moreover, the events that led to the Spanish Civil War had directly affected the author, as he explains in his travelogue (91): Republican policemen had assassinated his brother, monarchist politician José Calvo Sotelo, a few days before the 1936 coup d’état. The author’s time in New York coincided with the tenth anniversary of his brother’s murder, adding an emotional element to his musings about the US. In this light, it could be argued that his examination of the “black problem,” following a reductio ad absurdum argument, functions as a way of parodying the US without being openly critical about its racial issues. It is a way of manifesting his anger and discontent without contradicting the regime’s strategy to win US favor. However, the manner in which Calvo Sotelo executes his parody betrays racist and colonialist views toward black people. In contrast to the Catholic values that permeate the plays that made him famous in Spain (Schwartz 44), here he does not display any sign of Christian charity toward African Americans, who are seen as only fit to work for whites. In keeping with the cosmetic makeover of Francoism, the text tries to avoid the use of any terms or concepts that might be associated with “scientific” racism. Nevertheless, in some of the comments, a view of racial inequality as a natural state of affairs surfaces: in the meantime, blacks, whether they’re still resentful or bewildered by the overvaluation to which they are subjected, are about to go too far and trigger a violent reaction. Yesterday, by force of gold, an ebony beauty managed to acquire a new dress on Fifth Avenue. While she showed it off in front of the mirror, she was stricken by a touch of concern. “Aren’t you worried,” she asked the model, “that it makes me look a bit Jewish?” (171)21 Here, Calvo Sotelo not only betrays a patronizing view of African ­A mericans as being too emotional and lacking the intellectual ability to fully understand their social position but also perceives them as a threat, as shown by the choice of words “reacción violenta” and “a fuerza de oro.” The social and economic improvement of African Americans is considered unnatural, as they would cross the “color line,” something deemed abnormal in the same way that the black woman “acquires” her expensive dress by “force” (not by right), even if she has the means. Although not openly stated, this anecdote – which gives the impression of being fabricated – suggests a biological conception of class, in accordance with colonialist representations of natives as biologically, and therefore socially, inferior. This view is also hinted at in the chapter devoted to jazz, where Calvo Sotelo states: “I believe in the Darwinism of jazz. In the beginning there was the jungle, that is, the ‘drums’. The jungle with its ‘tom-toms’ … with its uncivilized and rough shrillness … Afterwards, came the rest. Rules were created for jazz and more noble instruments readied

Black Problems for White Travelers  187 themselves to serve it.”22 Resorting to Darwin’s theory of evolution, which also informed “scientific” arguments for class difference or “social Darwinism,” the author argues that jazz has evolved from primitivism to civilization. Significantly, this progress is deemed to occur under the influence of European “white” instruments, which become “tainted” by black music: “only the cello remained free from contamination. Elegant and lordly, it always resisted the move from Vienna to Harlem” (190). 23 The association of jazz with primitivism was already widespread in the pre-Second World War European avant-garde, which became fascinated with, and influenced by, Negro art. Modernist renditions of the “primitive” reproduced, nevertheless, existing Western views of its “Others” (Jervis 76). Despite avoiding open allusions to “scientific” concepts of race, Calvo Sotelo’s representation of African Americans still reflects earlier justifications of racial difference. This shows the extent to which, in spite of allegedly anti-racist Hispanidad/ Hispanotropicalismo, such perspectives were still prevalent in Spain after the Second World War. In contrast with Calvo Sotelo’s denigrating view of black Americans, Agustín del Saz’s travelogue Nueva York seems to offer a much more empathetic description. Published as part of the Seix Barral collection of Geographic Narratives, it provides a more objective look at the city, based on a wealth of historical and factual information. However, in Saz’s succinct report, which only devotes two pages to blacks, there are no references to US racism. His text projects a vision of New York as a city where people of different origins coexist peacefully: “such cosmopolitism is extraordinary, but even the most rebellious of races respect the laws of New York City so as not to jeopardize the restless yet calming benefit of living there” (70). 24 With regard to African Americans, the traveler reminds the reader that “freeing them from unjust slavery was the cause of the American Civil War,” and alludes to the arrival of the all-black Massachusetts 55th Regiment in Charleston, South Carolina, singing “John Brown’s Body,” as “one of the most moving moments” of the conflict (62–63). 25 From Saz’s depiction, it is possible to infer that segregation and discrimination had been completely eradicated from American society after 1865: “nowadays, they are free American citizens. In New York, their stages, music, dance, and actors have become famous” (63). 26 Harlem is described very positively as a place where children enjoy culture and education, and play happily in streets policed by black and always smiling officers (63–64). Diego Hidalgo, a former right-wing politician during the Second Republic, provides a similarly sympathetic view of Harlem in his travelogue, also published in 1947: Harlem’s black neighbourhood, located in the uppermost reaches of Manhattan, is very populous and picturesque. According to some naysayers, it is not wise to go there at certain hours, but

188  David Miranda-Barreiro I can’t help but confess my sympathy towards people of color. Nobody laughs with a more honest laugh than a black man; the chauffeurs and waiters are refined, well-mannered, polite, and respectful. (231)27 Nevertheless, both accounts bear traces of colonialist discourses. Hidalgo’s depiction of African Americans is somewhat patronizing and only portrays them working humbly and meekly in the service of whites. In addition, the use of the term “pintoresco” to describe Harlem suggests an exoticizing overtone. Saz also employs it: “they dress in the American way and they also chew gum … But their clubs are exotic and their fantastic parades are no less baroque than those of any sect” (63). 28 Although restrained, the insinuation is that blacks retain some of their alleged “primitivism,” even if they seem to have adapted to the American way of life. Significantly, in both travelogues, the references to African Americans are included in broader chapters about immigration: “Una ciudad de extranjeros” [A City of Foreigners] in Saz, and “Razas y nacionalidades” [Races and Nationalities] in Hidalgo. This suggests that these two writers do not think blacks are as American as whites. The juxtaposition of images of natives as both ingenious and threatening is characteristic of colonial discourse, which portrays the colonized “Other” as either childish and in need of protection or else as potentially violent and therefore needing to be controlled (Memmi 141–43). In fact, Saz had resorted to this sort of dichotomy in his travelogue Guinea ­E spañola (1944), found in the same Seix Barral collection. The writer, a school inspector in the colony, combined animalizing views of the Guineans, such as having “a monkey and snake-like smile,” with statements such as “the native soul is naïve and simple. It is naturally good” (qtd. in Álvarez Chillida 117). 29 The similarity of Saz’s approach, when referring to both Guineans and African Americans, confirms the influence of preexisting discourses deployed in the Spanish colonies on representations of US blacks. Nevertheless, in both Saz’s and Hidalgo’s depictions, racist images are toned down to a bare minimum, in all likelihood to avoid conveying a negative view of the US and at the same time enable the authors to distance themselves from Nazi racism. Their travelogues provide rather innocuous (in the case of Saz) and in parts laudatory (in the case of Hidalgo) accounts of New York. Hidalgo, who describes the US as the country where “civilization has reached its zenith … and the defence of people’s rights has also reached its highest degree of perfection,” criticizes Nazi racist ideology, without mentioning Germany directly, and praises the US for giving asylum to Jews, even before the war: “when that great nation saw that, from January 31, 1933 onwards, there was a country in Europe that persecuted honest men solely because of their race, it hastened to open its doors and its arms to them” (224). 30

Black Problems for White Travelers  189 Instead of mocking American racism like Calvo Sotelo, both Saz and Hidalgo provide a benevolent view of the US to the extent that they completely overlook issues of racial discrimination. In conclusion, the representations of African Americans in New York travel narratives of the early Francoist period underscore the existing tensions between Francoism’s strategy to alter international opinion about the regime and its ingrained anti-Americanism, combined with the persistence of racist discourses against blacks, especially with respect to its African colonies. Despite regime claims of espousing a more anti-racist approach through the ideology of Hispanidad, this analysis of a selection of travelogues written by pro-Francoist authors highlights the racist overtones of its ideology as well as the persistence of a belief in racial inequality stemming from colonialist discourses by those who were either close to or supported Franco’s dictatorship. While the need to project a positive image of the regime led these writers to avoid, and sometimes challenge, “scientific” justifications of racism associated with Nazism, the portrayal of African Americans in some of these texts still reflects visible traces of preexisting discourses that resorted to the alleged biological inferiority of blacks to explain their enduring social inequality. This attitude is reinforced by the reactions of some of the travelers to improvements in the social status of African Americans during and after the Second World War, which they considered unnatural or even a threat. Nonetheless, their efforts to provide a positive account of the US, in keeping with the regime’s strategy to regain American support in the international arena, highlight the contradiction of overlooking and, in some cases, justifying racial discrimination in the US. Whereas racism was theoretically excluded from Hispanidad because it went against the Catholic principles of the regime, these values are not always applied to the representation of African Americans in these travel books, confirming once again the internal dissonance of a dictatorship caught between its fascist foundations and the need to gain the support of Western democracies after the Second World War.

Notes 1 Although I may have overlooked other texts, a dearth of Spanish New York travel narratives between 1936 and 1945 seems plausible, given the difficulties that writers on both sides of the conflict experienced during the ­1936–1939 Spanish Civil War and Francoism’s support of the Axis powers during the Second World War. 2 “la bibliografía neoyorquina, que ha de ser copiosa como la de un Napoleón de hormigón armado, habrá de incrementarse, sin duda, porque Nueva York es un diamante que devuelve en reflejos las luces que le llegan.” All translations are mine. 3 In 1916, escaping from the segregation policies of the South and attracted by the job opportunities offered by Northern industry, around two million African Americans migrated to the cities of the North, West, and

190  David Miranda-Barreiro Midwest (Turner-Sadler 104). As result of this so-called “Great Migration,” New York grew into the American city with the highest black population. ­B etween 1940 and 1960, a Second Great Migration took place, “which was four times the size of the earlier Great Migration, though it has received much less attention from historians” (Thernstrom and Thernstrom 80). 4 “cada vagón tiene a su servicio un negro de blanca chaqueta y charolada gorra y siempre os sonríe por temperamento y por interés. Este sirviente es de una agobiante movilidad….” 5 “Nueva York no es solo … la luminosa vía del Broadway, ni el negro barrio del Harlem” / “extremadamente pintoresca y peligrosa … vicio y virtud, bondad y crimen. Esclavos negros y blancas holandesas, indios asustados y pillos europeos, criminales escapados de Virginia y Nueva Inglaterra, vírgenes doncellas del norte europeo.” 6 “¡Pueblo contra pueblo! ¡Raza contra raza! Crisis de lucha, de persecución. ¿Hasta cuándo, Señor?” 7 “aquellos pueblos blancos en los que le salió el quiste negro dirán que no hay forma de entrar la virtud ‘blanca’ en el cuerpo ‘negro’. Paneslavismo, pangermanismo, panmagiarismo, panamericanismo … ¿Es verdad que los pue-blos condenados a una mezcla de sangre se pierden irremisiblemente desde el punto de vista biológico e intelectual?” 8 “es posible que la piel negra lleve en sí este complejo de inferioridad … Mil negros norteamericanos rodeando a un blanco, ‘saben’ que son inferiores a él. Puede ser algo fundamentalmente biológico, a pesar de las incontables excepciones.” 9 “su piel morena se fue oscureciendo hasta hacerse completamente negra, su boca se deformó, hasta hacerse gruesos y carnosos sus labios; los cabellos lacios se ensortijaron; en un mes cambió de mundo, perdió la blanca novia y no pudo ingresar en la Academia Naval.” 10 “el de los negros-blancos.” 11 See “La acción de las Naciones Unidas.” 12 “las guerras, que además de destruir sirven para abrir insospechadas maneras de vivir, quizá sirva en esta ocasión para romper la ‘línea de color’” (209). 13 “ciudad de negros, regida por negros y habitada por negros … hay negros ricos y negros pobres y existen restaurantes, bares, bailes, cines, teatros … bancos … oficinas industriales de negros y para negros.” 14 “un vaho de magia, de hechicería, de ‘animismo’, el culto al ‘totemismo’, del que no puede desprenderse el alma del negro por mucho ‘jazz’ que baile y mucho ‘ginz’ [sic] que beba.” 15 “la sensualidad más destacada y horrenda tiene cabida. Sólo faltan unos árboles, un ‘tam-tam’ para retroceder en un salto a las selvas de Gabón, de Guinea, Liberia … y esto ocurre lindando con los más altos edificios que el trabajo y la inteligencia del hombre lograra construir. Se ha saltado de la sutil sátira negra de James Veldon [sic] y Eugenio O’Neill al sentimiento lunático de Júpiter Hammond [sic] para caer en el ‘embueti’ africano … De eso al canibalismo, hay un paso. Y en unos minutos.” 16 “el problema sigue latente … cuya solución está por resolver, sin que en ­realidad produzca enormes quebraderos de cabeza ni a un lado ni al otro de la ‘línea de color’.” 17 “de modo superficial … prevén para dentro de cincuenta o sesenta años poco menos que una división de Norteamérica en dos franjas de distinto color.” 18 “el problema negro está determinado porque allí hay muy pocos negros y es necesario a toda costa que haya muchos más.” 19 “el norteamericano ha regresado de Europa con una decidida repugnancia respecto de ciertos servicios … y es espantoso pensar cuál será la suerte del

Black Problems for White Travelers  191

20 21

22

23 24 25

26 27

28 29 30

norteamericano … si la mano que le echa el negro en unión de la que le echa el emigrante, le faltara un día.” “todos los argumentos que legitimaron nuestra guerra civil e hicieron santo su estallido.” “en el ínterin, el negro, si en unos casos resentido aun, en otros, ofuscado por la sobreestimación de que se siente objeto, está a punto de excederse y provocar una reacción violenta. Ayer, a fuerza de oro, una belleza de ébano logró adquirir un modelo en la Quinta Avenida. Mientras se pavoneaba con él frente al espejo, le asaltó un punto de inquietud.—¿No teme usted—­ preguntó a la maniquí—que me haga el aire un poco judío?” “yo creo en el darwinismo del jazz. En el principio fue la selva, o sea ‘la ­batería’. La selva con su ‘tamtam’ … con su estridencia incivilizada, áspera … Después, vino el resto. La preceptiva cayó sobre el jazz e instrumentos más nobles se aprestaron a servirlo” (190). “sólo el ‘cello’ quedó incontaminado. Elegante y señor, se resistió siempre a pasar de Viena a Harlem.” “este cosmopolitismo es extraordinario, pero aun las razas de naturaleza más rebelde respetan las leyes de Nueva York City para no exponerse a perder el bien inquieto y aquietador de vivirla.” “liberarlos de la injusta esclavitud fué [sic] causa de la Guerra civil americana;” “uno de los momentos más emocionantes.” The song “John Brown’s Body” originated during the American Civil War and celebrates the abolitionist John Brown (“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, / But his soul goes marching on”). See, for example, Stauffer and Soskis. “hoy son ciudadanos libres de América. En Nueva York sus teatros, su música, sus bailes y sus actores se han hecho famosos.” “el barrio negro de Harlem, situado en la parte más alta de Manhattan, es muy populoso y pintoresco. Malas lenguas dicen que no es prudente visitarlo a ciertas horas, pero yo no tengo más remedio que confesar la simpatía que me causa la gente de color. Nadie ríe con risa más franca que un negro; los chóferes y camareros son finos, amables, corteses y respetuosos.” “visten a la americana y también mastican goma … Pero en sus clubs hay pintoresquismo y sus fantásticas procesiones no tienen que envidiar por lo barrocas a las de ninguna secta.” “una sonrisa de mono y serpiente” / “el alma indígena es ingenua y sencilla. Su natural es bueno.” “la civilización ha llegado a su punto culminante … y la defensa de la persona humana llega también a su más alto grado de perfección;” “esa gran nación, cuando vió [sic] que, a partir del 31 de enero de 1933, había un país en Europa que perseguía a hombres honrados por el sólo hecho de pertenecer a una raza, se apresuró a abrir a esos hombres sus puertas y sus brazos.” According to Gil Pecharromán, during the Second World War, the Francoist regime took in around 37,000 Jews, and used this as “a trump card to get closer to the Allies” after the end of the conflict (120).

Works Cited Aberjhani, Sandra L. West. Encyclopedia of Harlem Renaissance. New York: Facts on File, 2003. Álvarez Chillida, Gonzalo. “Epígono de la Hispanidad. La españolización de la colonia de Guinea durante el primer franquismo.” Imaginarios y representaciones de España durante el franquismo. Eds. Stéphane Michonneau and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2014. 103–26.

192  David Miranda-Barreiro Anuario Agrícola de los Territorios Españoles del Golfo de Guinea. Dirección de Agricultura de los Territorios Españoles del Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: 1944. Balfour, Sebastian. The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898–1923. Oxford: ­Clarendon P, 1997. Calvo Sotelo, Joaquín. Nueva York en retales. Madrid: Dossat, 1947. Camba, Julio. La ciudad automática. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1960. Carroll, Charles. The Negro a Beast. St. Louis: American Book and Bible House, 1900. Domínguez Búrdalo, José. “Del ser (o no ser) hispano: Unamuno frente a la negritud.” Modern Language Notes 121.2 (2006): 322–42. Dreisinger, Baz. Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2008. Fenton, Steve. Ethnicity, Racism, Class and Culture. London: Macmillan, 1999. Fernández de Miguel, Daniel. El enemigo yanqui: las raíces conservadoras del antiamericanismo español. Zaragoza: Genueve Ediciones, 2012. García Sanchiz, Federico. Prólogo. Nueva York. Un español entre rascacielos. By Gaspar Tato Cumming. Madrid: Febo, 1945. 11–15. Gil Pecharromán, Julio. La política exterior del franquismo. Barcelona: Flor del Viento, 2008. González Echegaray, Carlos. Estudios guineos. Vol. 1. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas/Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1959. González López, Emilio. “Nueva York.” Review of Nueva York by Agustín del Saz. Revista Hispánica Moderna 13 (1947): 295. Grant Meyer, Stephen. As Long as They Don’t Move Next Door: Segregation and Radical Conflict in American Neighborhoods. Boston: Rowman & ­Littlefield, 2001. Herzog, Tamar. “Beyond Race. Exclusion in Early Modern Spain and in Spanish America.” Race and Blood in the Iberian World. Eds. Max Hering Torres et al. Zürich: Lit Verlag, 2012. 151–67. Hidalgo, Diego. Nueva York. Impresiones de un español del siglo XIX que no sabe inglés. Madrid: Aguilar, 1949. JanMohamed, Abdul R. “The Economy of the Manichean Allegory.” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. New York: Routledge, 2006. Jervis, John. Transgressing the Modern: Explorations in the Western Experience of Otherness. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Jordan, Winthrop. “First Impressions: Libidinous Blacks.” From Different Shores. Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. Ed. Ronald Takaki. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994, 41–51. “La acción de las Naciones Unidas. Roosevelt dice que los principios democráticos han de ser aplicados a todos los hombres.” ABC 29 Sept. 1943: 10. Martin-Márquez, Susan. Disorientations. Spanish Colonization in Africa and the Performance of Identity. London: Yale UP, 2008. McNeese, Tim. The Cold War and Postwar America 1946–1963. New York: Infobase, 2010. Memmi, Albert. Retrato del colonizado. Madrid: Cuadernos para el diálogo, 1974.

Black Problems for White Travelers  193 Metzgar, Jack. “The 1945–1946 Strike Wave.” The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History. Eds. Aaron Brenner et  al. London: Routledge, 2009. 216–25. Miranda-Barreiro, David. “Primitivist Modernism and Imperialist Colonialism: The View of African Americans in José Moreno Villa’s Pruebas de Nueva York and Julio Camba’s La ciudad automática.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 14.1 (2013): 52–69. ———. Spanish New York Narratives: Modernization, Otherness and Nation. London: Legenda, 2014. Miquelarena, Jacinto. …Pero ellos no tienen bananas: el viaje a Nueva York. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1930. Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma. The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Vol. 1. London: Transaction Publishers, 2009. Nerín, Gustau. Guinea Ecuatorial, historia en blanco y negro. Hombres blancos y mujeres negras en Guinea Ecuatorial (1843–1968). Barcelona: ­Península, 1998. Payne, Stanley G. “La política.” Franquismo. El juicio de la historia. Ed. José Luis García Delgado. Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2000. 233–85. Read, Hollis. The Negro Problem Solved, or, Africa as She Was, as She Is, and as She Shall Be: Her Curse and her Cure. New York: A. A. Constantine, 1864. Reitano, Joanne. New York State: Peoples, Places, and Priorities. A Concise History with Sources. London: Routledge, 2015. Sampedro Vizcaya, Benita. “Rethinking the Archive and the Colonial Library: Equatorial Guinea.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 9.3 (2008): 341–63. Saz, Agustín del. Nueva York. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1947. Segura, Pedro. Nueva York 1935: impresiones de un viaje a los Estados Unidos. Barcelona: Núñez, 1935. Schwartz, Kessel. “Some Recent Works of Joaquín Calvo-Sotelo.” Hispania 46.1 (1963): 44–48. Seregni, Alessandro. El antiamericanismo español. Madrid: Síntesis, 2007. Sernett, Milton C. African American Religious History: A Documentary ­Witness. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. Stauffer, John and Benjamin Soskis. The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A ­Biography of the Song That Marches On. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Tato Cumming, Gaspar. Nueva York. Un español entre rascacielos. Madrid: Febo, 1945. Thernstrom, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom. America in Black and White. One Nation, Indivisible. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Turner-Sadler, Joanne. African American History: An Introduction. New York: Peter Lang, 2009.

9 Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement Time to Mend Fences or Time for Revenge? Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Spain went to America, not seeking silver, but to tell the Indians that we are all brothers, black as well as white, all, because centuries ago, in distant lands, a Martyr shed his blood in sacrifice so that his blood would institute love and brotherhood among all of humanity. (José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Speech in Cáceres, February 4, 1934) We also feel like true friends of the American people, and though we are often unable to fully grasp their conduct and institutions, we consider and respect them. We believe that a country cannot be judged by what occurs in another. Character and customs are different, and institutions that are good for some, often yield poor results when transferred to another nation.1 (Francisco Franco to The New York Times, March 10, 1957)

Established in 1935 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the fascist party the Falange, the daily newspaper Arriba became, after the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939, part of the Prensa del Movimiento (Movement’s Press), the official voice of Franco’s regime. 2 Reversing the initial isolationism of the dictatorship, in the 1960s, Arriba developed a keen and visible interest in international affairs on which it reported widely. Although hardly surprising, the attention it paid to the United States stands out. With the Vietnam War (1959–1975) at its peak, and cultural revolutions and tragedies gripping the nation, Arriba could not escape the world’s fascination with the USA. 3 One phenomenon that particularly captivated audiences worldwide was the Black Civil Rights Movement (CRM).4 This movement, as I have pointed out elsewhere, revitalized European fascination with blackness and provided a unique opportunity not only for solidarity, but also for ethnographic gazing (Cornejo-Parriego). Without a doubt, the images of the era constituted an unprecedented audiovisual spectacle: crowds of African-Americans marching, convening in Washington (1963), attending funerals for assassinated leaders, being hosed down by police and attacked by dogs, Black Power gestures and Black Panther aesthetics, to give only a few examples, offered white audiences formidable black performances. The media did not overlook the visual impact of these events, which

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  195 provided compelling headlines accompanied by striking images. It is undeniable that the CRM, “[p]erhaps more than any previous movement in American history … was a media event” (Carson 232), and that it “benefited from the world-wide publicity given to racial violence in America” (Moses 215). It also absorbed Arriba, which, mainly thanks to its New York correspondent Guy Bueno, featured extensive coverage. Often on its front page, the newspaper regularly published chronicles, reports, opinion pieces, and even cartoons on the US racial question. Moreover, the paper clearly sided with the movement denouncing US racism and police brutality when African Americans were simply demanding basic democratic rights, such as the right to vote. This is all perplexing, to say the least, considering the fascist origins of Arriba and the fact that, under Franco, Spain’s own citizens lacked essential freedoms while political dissidence of any kind was not tolerated. In order to address these paradoxes, this chapter will explore the representation of the African American emancipation movement across a selection of articles published in Arriba in the 1960s, focusing particularly on the coverage between 1965 and 1968, a period that witnessed a number of crucial events in the US: the Selma Movement for voting rights and the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, the riots during the “long, hot summer” of 1967, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. 5 I will examine the role played by religious discourse, the complex relationship between Washington and Franco’s government, and Spain’s past and present colonialism in order to understand this seemingly paradoxical representation of events. Arriba was unequivocal in expressing its solidarity with the CRM, following in the footsteps of Spain’s progressive press, and that of the US, where, as Sasha Torres has noted, there was a clear alliance between the media and the movement (6). Arriba’s articles, particularly the ones by Bueno, demonstrate an explicit condemnation of ­American racism and the affirmation of the movement’s moral superiority. Bueno reports extensively on Selma defending the right to peaceful protests, and praising the fact that so many whites have joined African ­A merican protesters (“Indignación” 11). He also vehemently denounces the repeated use of excessive force, “the infinite police brutality” (“Optimismo” 14), offering as evidence very graphic and specific details of police aggression in sharp contrast with the non-violent marches: “members of the Police force and the State forces of order have interrupted with extraordinary brutality a peaceful demonstration by blacks  … With clubs, whips, firearms and tear gas, the ‘forces of order’ produced more than seventy wounded, some sixteen, gravely” (“Marcha” 13).6 Furthermore, he writes about the difficult examinations African Americans were required to pass in some states before being allowed to register to vote, and, finally, the Supreme Court’s elimination of these tests, a verdict that opened the door to the free exercise of constitutional rights (Bueno,

196  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego “Marcha” 13). For the journalist, these demonstrations in search of equality and dignity, organized by “pilgrims” who cross racial, generational, and income lines, constitute an unprecedented phenomenon in American history and a superior expression of human solidarity (“Optimismo” 14).7 The representation of the CRM in Bueno’s articles draws an obvious duality between peace and violence, justice and injustice, black and white. The fact that it was headed by religious figures undoubtedly played a decisive role in Arriba’s support. It is useful to recall that, founded in 1953, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a key organization within the movement, was led mainly by ministers, with Martin Luther King, Jr., as its first president. According to Wilson J. Moses, African Americans who joined King had a tradition of using “religion as a means of resistance” (180). Furthermore, taking into account his ability to manipulate mass opinion, Moses asserts that King “recognized that black messianism, if stripped of its implications of racial chauvinism, was potentially appealing to whites … he represented at once the militancy of black people and their willingness to get along with whites” (180). Albeit operating in a historical and political context without equal, Franco and the Falange also believed in the connection between religion and resistance, and even revolution. The dictator’s concept of Spanishness or Hispanidad and the construction of collective identity were firmly tied to his vision of Spain as a Catholic nation, which resulted in the non-­separation of Church and State, and the establishment of National Catholicism as the country’s political and ideological defining order. Moreover, for Franco, his coup d’état and the Civil War that ensued, with its thousands of victims, constituted an unprecedented revolutionary movement since, sustained by religion and the moral values of the Catholic faith, it defied the general belief that popular movements ought to be non-­religious (Franco, “Mensaje” 113). It is revealing in this regard that in 1967, one of Arriba’s headlines still read, “La catolicidad no sería lo que es sin los servicios de España” [Catholicism Would Not Be What It Is Without Spain’s Services] (12), confirming, once more, the Francoist messianic understanding of Spain as the savior of Western Christian civilization. As inconceivable – and outrageous –as it might seem today, this strategy of uniting religion and revolution was surely perceived as a common feature between African Americans and the Spaniards that won the war, and explains why Arriba repeatedly highlight the black movement’s religious dimension. Some pieces capture the visual impact of events, such as the following excerpt: “…in front of the official building, some four hundred young people of color stood in silence … About twenty or twenty-­five blacks knelt in prayer, prayed briefly, and afterwards, stood up and began to disperse, without incident” (“Marcha de ‘silencio’” 12).8 Others demonstrate a particular interest in underscoring the

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  197 participation of whites and Catholics in the protest marches. The presence of white priests, pastors, and nuns is often portrayed as an expression of solidarity among races: “The immense majority of the crowd was black. It is not without gratitude that among the human flow I saw a white nun submerged in the black tide; or a group of white priests, ­Catholic and Protestant, arm in arm with their brothers of color” (Bueno, “­Decid;” 6); “A group of blacks, led by four white nuns, marched from a church towards the Audience of the Dallas district” (“Tres religiosos” 14).9 On March 13, 1965, the newspaper featured a full-page picture of the body of James Reeb, a white pastor beaten to death by five white men on March 9, the day of the second failed attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery.10 Arriba also reported on a 1967 letter from Father ­A rrupe, the Superior of the Jesuits, offering US members of his religious order guidelines in these tumultuous times, and urging them to reject any hint of racial discrimination (“Carta” 7). In spite of the emphasis on Catholic participation, it is undeniable that the main leaders of the marches were African American Protestant ministers, and it is remarkable that anti-Protestantism, and the association of the US with the “Protestant threat,” so often espoused by Spanish conservatives (see Fernández de Miguel 370–418), are set aside in these circumstances. As mentioned earlier, Arriba chose to stress solidarity among races and religions, and unity around Christian values. The moral superiority of the black struggle and the Christian duty to support its innocent victims are then seen as overwhelmingly unequivocal in the articles published in Arriba during this period. Although referring to Germany, for Sabine Broeck, a long-held “fascination with the black embodiment of suffering” (128; original emphasis) might be a factor in this support. Fernando Frade seems to agree with this perspective when he writes in the Falange’s newspaper about the predominant portrayal in film and literature of the black individual as a martyr: All the events that take place in relation to blacks that fight for racial equality with whites, dominant in North America, wear an invisible halo that makes us think of or fear drama. Perhaps it is due to the number of books and films that present the problem in this way, with blacks invariably playing the role of martyrs. (12)11 In fact, it was precisely the admiration for African American pain and resilience that, to a great extent, lent the CRM its moral authority. As Moses points out in Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, “much of the rhetoric of black movements was based on the traditional Western religious belief in the redemptive power of suffering” (xi), and the concept of “suffering servanthood,” one of the central Christian tenets (12). According to Torres, King’s own understanding of the movement’s purpose consisted of persuading blacks “to embrace the redemptive promise

198  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego of suffering on their own behalf and on that of future generations” (4). It is noteworthy in this respect that the Falange’s newspaper did not fail to report on King’s urging the multitude to turn the other cheek (“Johnson condena” 1). Furthermore, inspired by this tradition, Arriba decries US racism, which had led to moral decay and political polarization, and engaged the nation in a fight between good and evil that was producing numerous innocent victims. In an article prompted by the 1967 summer riots, Bueno employs the black martyr imagery narrating the death of women and children, shot in their own homes, with “such waste of military resources” that it reminds him of the ­Vietnam War (“La lucha” 5).12 A similar representation of the disproportionate attacks on blacks appears in a piece on the Newark riots, where streets are “soaked in blood,” and “[e]ight-hundred national guards, three-hundred State police, Newark’s guards, have battled from dusk to dawn against a crowd of blacks—the majority young boys of eight, I repeat, eight to eighteen year olds…” (Bueno, “Disturbios” 5).13 In the same context and in a lyrical and apocalyptic tone, Jaime Campmany also highlights the suffering of innocent African Americans in “Negro y blanco” [Black and White], under a headline that emphasizes the nation’s polarization, and the statement: “It is whites who shoot to kill their black brothers (3).”14 F. Hernández Blasco, reporting on the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington, refers to the “procession of innocent victims” and the inequality and misery in a country “that deems itself democratic (10).”15 The concept of black victimhood reaches its peak – not its c­ onclusion  – with the assassination of King, who becomes the embodiment and symbol of the martyr par excellence. “El ‘boomerang’ de la violencia“ [The Boomerang of Violence], for example, refers to the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner as the “innocent victim of hate and violence” (2), and Bueno, in his description of King’s funeral, alludes to the “sixty thousand brothers who accompanied their martyr” (“Decid” 6).16 While, broadly speaking, there is empathy and understanding for the African American plight, a shift – sometimes slight, sometimes ­significant – occurs nevertheless in the reports on the protests that took place in major cities such as Detroit, Atlanta, and Newark over the summer of 1967, and on the ones that followed King’s assassination, a period that saw the rise of the Black Power and Black Panther movements. In articles such as “Continúan los incidentes raciales en Estados Unidos” [Racial Incidents Continue in the United States], “Rockefeller: ‘Los motines podrán destruir los fundamentos de la vida estadounidense’” [Rockefeller: The Riots Could Destroy the Foundations of American Life], J. L. Gómez Tello’’s “Guerra civil americana” [American Civil War], and “El ‘Black Power’ desencadena la violencia” [Black Power Unleashes Violence], there is a change in the representation of the ­A frican American emancipation battles. Considering Franco’s staunch anti-­communism,

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  199 the association of Black Power activists Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown with Communist leaders, the inspiration provided by the Cuban Revolution and their trips to Havana (“El dirigente” 8), admiration for Che Guevara, the support of guerrilla strategies (“El negro” 1), and the lack of religious expression are all elements that explain why Arriba would not endorse their struggle for civil rights.17 It is certainly interesting to observe how an article by Amador Marín juxtaposes the National Prayer Day for racial peace with Carmichael and Brown’s call for violence and pillage, and questions some of their more revolutionary assertions: “Blind rage, by some black extremist leaders, who proclaim that blacks need to see in each white person an enemy, and that if blacks built this country—a more than hyperbolic statement—they can also burn it down” [emphasis added] (“EE.UU” 1).18 Moreover, it is also telling that it is precisely during the 1967–1968 period that we find examples of colonialist imagery, and of what philosopher Étienne Balibar has termed “differential racism,” or a “racism without races,” which, rather than employing biological arguments, emphasizes “the insurmountability of cultural differences,” and “the harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of lifestyles and traditions” (21)19 José Ramón Alonso provides an explicit example of this type of racism: The black man is the white man’s brother, created like him by God, and his equal before the law, but unfortunately not before customs. Have you seen a black neighborhood in the North American South? Have you, on any night, penetrated the moral blackness—the other is the least of it—of New York’s Harlem? Have you visited the black neighborhoods of Washington, which, demographically, are 60% of color? … After having studied this subject and written a famous work about the U.S., it was André Siegfried who found the only formula that, like it or not, is still valid today: “The best solution, not only for whites, but also for blacks—he said—would be separation within equality.” (3)20 In fact, Alonso’s perception of insurmountable differences – in terms of customs and morals – leads him to praise segregation. Furthermore, comparing him to King’s assassin, Alonso proceeds to attack that “demented Carmichael,” which leads him to a passionate defense of white supremacy: Whoever the assassin was, his moral stature is comparable to that of the demented Carmichael who proclaims all over the world his doctrine that the white man ought to be exterminated from the planet, when the civilization in which blacks live and even Carmichael’s Marxist ideas, are a product of the white civilization that dominates the entire world…. (3)21

200  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego The fight for racial equality seems to be acceptable only if it falls within the discourse of martyrdom and black suffering, but not when it distances itself from that rhetoric. While the BPM, with its combination of revolution, youth, and aesthetics (it popularized the “Black is beautiful” slogan), galvanized youth worldwide, including important sectors of Spanish youth, who were eager for change and ready to participate, albeit from a distance, in the international cultural and political revolutions taking place in the 1960s (Cornejo-Parriego), it is obvious that it did not appeal to Arriba’s readers. Curiously, Muslim leader Malcolm X receives a respectful and sympathetic treatment from Bueno. Although an inspirational figure for the BPM, and often pitted against Martin Luther King, Jr., for advocating violence, Bueno does include Malcolm X in the discourse on African American victimhood. The journalist even shares memories of his own encounter with Malcolm X and offers a more intimate portrait emphasizing the leader’s politeness toward his interlocutors – black or white – providing details of his childhood and describing how he introduced him to boxer Muhammad Ali at the United Nations (“Malcolm X” 9). A few days after Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21, 1965, Bueno, in addition to reporting on the attacks on Black Muslims’ mosques and questioning the police for its passivity and for not having taken measures to protect him (“Estados Unidos” 1), also assesses the political impact of his death, stating that “[t]here is no doubt that Malcolm’s death represents the loss of a leader that might have become one of the principal figures of the emancipation movement in America’s black community” (“Malcolm X” 9). 22 In other writings, Bueno captures the leader’s growing global allure and visibility, citing as proof the words that Ghana’s president Kwane Nkrumah send to Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz, and the presence of foreign government representatives at his funeral (“Ayer” 1). More importantly, the journalist credits Malcolm X with having set in motion a transnational coalition between the African American community and the newly independent African nations: The seed planted by Malcolm X is evident: to associate the destiny of 20 million black Americans with that of the people born into independence in recent years in Africa, placing in this way the entire weight of the black continent behind the black communities of, for instance, Alabama or Mississippi. The seed has been planted. (“Ayer” 1; 11)23 Malcolm X’s role and the battle for Black Civil Rights is, then, linked to Africa’s decolonization and independence movements, and it is into this Black USA-Africa connection that Arriba tries to insert Spain. In order to address this issue, it is important to first remember the complex relationships that existed between the US and Spain. Since the 19th century, Spain’s view of the US had been shaped by tenacious

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  201 anti-American sentiments that were strongly supported during Franco’s dictatorship, especially by the Falange. 24 After the Civil War that led to the totalitarian regime, Spain became a pariah ostracized by the international community. As Julio Gil Pecharromán underscores, the Regime used this imposed isolation to promote a “victim nationalism” (155) that translated into affirming the superiority of Spain’s eternal spiritual values over US materialism. As Carmen Martín Gaite writes, according to the official discourse of the 1940s, the nation was engaged in a Crusade of spirit over matter (23), boasting of its “blessed backwardness” and rejection of foreign influences, particularly those originating in the US. The relationship was, however, ambivalent, “a mixture of fascination and repulsion” (Martín Gaite 29), where prejudice against North American economic progress coexisted with the awareness that it was its financial standing that would allow Spain to escape poverty (29). Proclaiming that Spain did not need “charity from atheists and freemasons, even if its people were dying of hunger” (Martín Gaite 29) was obviously not conducive to cordial relations, and the lack of caution in some of the articles is certainly surprising considering that the government was trying to ingratiate itself with the US. Indeed, the need to overcome international isolation, distance itself from its association with the Nazi and Fascist regimes, regain the favor of the Allies, above all of the US, while hoping to obtain economic assistance, eventually forced Spain to change its tone. Nevertheless, the US also had to modify its stance toward Spain after the Second World War and at the beginning of the Cold War due to the strategic location of the Iberian Peninsula. As Neal Moses Rosendorf notes, “[f]rom 1947 to 1950 the Truman administration slowly tipped away from an initially strong hostility toward Franco, toward a pragmatic policy of accommodation” (375). The Korean War (1950–1953) and the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union made it more urgent than before for Washington to normalize US-Spanish relations, although the argument used, as Boris N. Liedtke points out, was that “ostracising Spain had failed to weaken Franco’s regime” (269). The negotiations that followed resulted in the two countries signing agreements in 1953 and included the establishment of American military bases in Spain in exchange for military and economic aid (Liedtke 273–74). In spite of the changes, anti-Americanism, while it had to be mitigated, never really disappeared in Spain; this belief in its moral superiority that was so categorical in the official postwar rhetoric resurfaces in the 1960s in connection with the CRM. In fact, during this decade, at the same time as the American racially motivated events were unfolding, Spain was trying to renegotiate its economic and military agreements with the US, which made its subordinate and precarious position very obvious. As Javier Tusell explains, the pacts exposed “the glaring lack of equality in the treatment Spain received” (114), and although it did secure economic assistance, it was significantly less than what other European

202  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego countries reaped under the Marshall Plan. Notwithstanding what undoubtedly was perceived by many of Franco’s nationalists, and especially the Falange, as a humiliation, the Regime had to proceed with caution in expressing anti-American views. Nevertheless, African ­A mericans’ pursuit of racial equality presented an extraordinary opportunity to take the world’s superpower to task and Arriba jumped at it. Criticism of American racism might seem astonishing considering that ­anti-Semitism was an essential component of Francoist discourse, which constantly highlighted the threat of a global Jewish, communist, and F ­ reemason conspiracy. However, it might seem less extraordinary if one recalls that Hitler attacked the US for its discrimination toward blacks.25 The fact is that Arriba did not seem to acknowledge this lack of congruence within the Movimiento, instead repeatedly castigating the US for the fundamental contradiction between claiming leadership of the free world and its i­nability to solve the problem of racial inequality within its own borders. Headlines such as “Colonialismo USA en Estados Unidos” [USA ­Colonialism in the United States] and Bueno’s “Estados Unidos no logra imponer la libertad en su propio suelo” [United States Unable to Impose Freedom on its Own Soil] are meant to provoke a country that supports decolonization movements abroad while maintaining a homegrown colonialism: North America is considered today the country that fuels the winds of anticolonialism. It is, therefore, difficult, for a person of sound mind, to understand the colonialism that it allows within its own territory, denying people with black skin the most basic civil rights. 26 The paradox of espousing democracy while maintaining racial inequality also leads to sarcasm, whether in the captions accompanying images of forceful removal of black protesters, who are “kindly asked to leave” (“Los derechos”), or even in cartoons. An illustrative example is a cartoon by José Luis Martín Mena set in the context of Spain’s tourism industry that began to boom in the 1960s (Figure 9.1). As a way back “to America’s and the West’s good graces,” the Regime, as Rosendorf explains, promoted American tourism, wanting to “sell” an image of Spain “as a normal Western country and anti-Communist ally,” and because it “saw particular economic and political value in cultivating tourists from the world’s richest and most powerful nation” (369). In the Arriba cartoon we see two sunbathing American tourists: one is reading The New York Times, while the other says they had better be careful with their tanning to avoid racial problems when they return home. This jab – which is repeated in other cartoons (see Appendix) – is a clear indication that, despite its increased closeness to Washington, the dictatorship was unable to completely suppress anti-American feelings. The US, however, is mainly chastised for the imposition of its particular vision of democracy on other nations, while African Americans

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  203

Figure 9.1  Cartoon by José Luis Martín Mena, Arriba, September 8, 1967. Courtesy of BNE.

are denied their basic rights. It is not difficult to see how Arriba strives to counteract international, and particularly US, attacks on Spain’s totalitarian regime by pointing out the hypocrisy and lack of moral and political authority of its attackers. 27 Moreover, anti-Americanism becomes an opportunity to affirm European superiority. In a 1965 opinion piece titled “Negros made in USA,”

204  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Cendoya, alarmed by racial tensions in the US that were making international headlines, expresses his belief in European supremacy and calls on Europe to retake its position as world leader: If you are European you have an obligation to act. This means to thoroughly consider the responsibilities that this difficult position entails in today’s world. For some decades, in this century, ­Europeans happily abandoned this freedom to exercise their profession. The results are evident in any of the countless trouble spots on which Europe’s substitutes have laid their little silver hands in the name of that bubbly utopia called “the West” … the front pages these days unrelentingly remind us of the urgency for Europeans to reclaim and occupy their position. (2)28 Cendoya’s words unquestionably underscore the concept of “the white man’s burden,” which alludes to whites’ alleged civilizing mission and duty, the argument used to justify Europe’s imperial and colonial undertakings. The author’s Eurocentrism contrasts sharply with that of another Spanish journalist, Eduardo Haro Tecglen, who, in an article published in 1967 in Triunfo, notes Europe’s responsibility in the ­A merican tragedy and, echoing African American author James ­Baldwin, reminds the reader that the concept of white supremacy had been invented in Europe. In addition, this defense of European superiority, articulated in connection with the US inability to solve the racial question, leads to praising Spain as a colonizer. In fact, several articles state that, in spite of the Black Legend surrounding the colonization of Spanish America, Spain was always racially tolerant and, therefore, a superior colonial power (“Rockefeller” 12). 29 Arriba then links the US racial issue to Spain’s imperial history in the Americas. It does not seem like a coincidence to find, in 1965, a headline such as “La América hispana debe a ­E spaña verse libre hoy de problemas raciales” [­Spanish America Owes its Freedom from Racial Problems to Spain] to introduce an interview with Paraguayan historian Pedro ­Urbieta conducted by Nivio López Pellón. What makes it more telling, though, is that the problem captured in the headline does not appear in the body of the article. Nonetheless, if the colonization of the Americas belongs to a distant past, while the racial incidents were actually unfolding in North ­A merica, the Regime itself was dealing at that time with Equatorial Guinea, the African colony that remained under Spanish rule until its ­independence, which, not accidentally, was proclaimed on the Day of Hispanidad, October 12, 1968. In the context of Spanish-Guinean ­relations and coinciding with the summer race riots in the US, Arriba published a highly significant article, “Un negrito llamado Onésimo”

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  205 [A Little Black Boy Called Onésimo], written by Jesús Vasallo in 1967. In epistolary fashion, Vasallo addresses a Guinean newborn child called Onésimo, whose father is studying in Valladolid, Spain: You see, Onésimo. You came into the world with a face of colour. Your minuscule face is black, and of course, it is not your fault, nor is it reason for dishonor … This long, hot and bloody summer still drags on. There, in a far away, rich, arrogant and powerful country, rise the thick and almost indelible clouds of smoke from the fires produced by despair. Men of your race, buddy, feel hounded by hate … No one is another man’’s brother, but a wolf. Except here. Spain is different. For its own good, just as in so many other things. There is no distance because of pigmentation.30 It is not difficult to conclude that the letter serves not only as an excuse to attack “a distant, rich, arrogant and powerful country,” where this little boy would be discriminated against because of his skin color, but also as an opportunity to affirm Spain’s difference and superiority. In fact, the author appropriates the “Spain is different” slogan that the tourism discourse of the 1960s promoted in order to emphasize the country’s color-blindness. The article continues in a patronizing tone referring to Onésimo’s father, a teacher and a good and noble man who desires to improve himself through education, and who knows, contrary to Spain’s reputation, “that with Spaniards, he will always keep it, that nobody will take it from him or put obstacles in his way.”31 In addition, he mentions the beautiful Christian gestures of the father’s classmates who not only collected money to enable the mother and child to join their husband and father on the Peninsula, but also baptized the baby, giving him the name of fascist leader Onésimo Redondo, who is remembered in glowing terms: “He strove for justice and truth … he was killed treacherously by those who, with deaf ears, did not speak his language … you, little black Guinean boy, will be in the future a zealous defender of his memory.”32 As we can see, the US, Spain and Equatorial Guinea, Spanish colonialism, and the American CRM all merge together in Arriba, where an African colonial subject is called upon to keep alive the memory of the Falange, and to symbolize Spain’s moral superiority. The letter ends with another proud affirmation of the country’s difference, but also with a remarkable defense of its colonizing role as a religious mission: “Yes, Spain is different. And yet always the same. And I say it with pride. It does not change no matter what. It believes that love does not have a colour. It does not persecute blacks. It baptizes them.”33 When soon thereafter Guinea gains its independence, Arriba again emphasizes the idea that Spain is teaching the contemporary world a “wonderful lesson” because, always guided by the spirit that defined its “mission” in

206  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego the Americas, its only desire as a colonizer has been to ensure progress through culture, language, and religion: The only purpose of Spain’s presence in Guinea was to fulfill a civilizing mission, of progress and culture … Something of Spain—­ hispanidad—will always vibrate in it, in a people that is now born as attuned to its own Africanness as it is united to the religion, language, and culture that it has received from Spain.34 Arriba clearly espouses what Gustau Nerín has called Hispanotropicalism, Spain’s official discourse on colonial matters. To avoid international criticism and respond to the anti-colonial rules adopted by the United Nations, Spain argued that its African policies differed from that of the other European countries (Nerín 11). Moreover, according to this hispanotropicalist discourse, Spain had an innate ­A frican ­vocation  – which even led to the defense of an Ibero-African identity (15) – a missionary tendency, and a lack of racist attitudes, as was evident in the widespread miscegenation that proliferated in its colonies (12). Finally, this discourse emphasized Spain’s rejection of racist exploitation and the dominance of religious over economic goals in its colonial endeavors, due to the Catholic belief in the equality of all races, an idea supported with statements by Falange founder José Antonio (see epigraph). The nation’s generosity is then an integral component of this ethnocentric Christian rhetoric, as the following assertion illustrates: “For Spain, its territories outside the metropolis are not motivated by gain, but a means to carry out the spiritual action that is its destiny in this world” (qtd. in Nerín 21).35 What is particularly noteworthy is the fact that during the declaration of Guinean Independence, the US was very much present in the mind of the Regime: “In a time of unfortunate racial conflicts, Spain and Equatorial Guinea could together raise the banner of harmony among races” (qtd. in Nerín 41; emphasis added). 36 The implicit connection of the A ­ frican country’s independence to the African American plight once more demonstrates how Spain’s anti-Americanism is intertwined with the belief in its moral superiority. Arriba’s position was no doubt paradoxical: how could the official voice of a totalitarian regime, where citizens did not have the right to vote and where political dissidence was punished with imprisonment and/or death, dare to condemn police brutality and the lack of democratic rights in another country? How could it reconcile its attacks on the US for its homegrown colonialism with defending the intersection of egalitarian Christian rhetoric with colonialist ideology? Without questioning the apparently genuine Christian beliefs of some of the journalists writing in Arriba, as we have seen, these contradictions need to be situated in the context of the ongoing complex relations between the US and Franco’s Spain. Indeed, the persistent sense, particularly among Falange

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  207 militants, that Spain had been humiliated by the world’s superpower, a humiliation so well portrayed by Luis García Berlanga’s 1953 film Bienvenido Mr. Marshall, was crucial. However, as we know, the film also brilliantly captures some of the most common stereotypes that stemmed from anti-American sentiments. Located outside the fictional realm of cinema and immersed in contemporary transatlantic reality, Arriba connected with those feelings and seized them: the CRM provided an excellent opportunity to exact at least some small revenge by pointing out the profound moral bankruptcy of the US and, consequently, its inferiority vis-à-vis Spain. At the same time, the newspaper’s limited understanding of the BPM and the appeal it held for young people worldwide can only be read in conjunction with the Falange’s visible failure in indoctrinating Spain’s younger generation (Carr et  al. 167), clearly manifested in ­Arriba’s diminishing readership and progressive obsolescence.

Notes 1 “Nosotros nos sentimos también sinceros amigos del pueblo americano, y aunque muchas veces no acertemos a comprobar su proceder y sus instituciones, las consideramos y las respetamos. Creemos que no puede juzgarse un país por lo que pasa en otro. El carácter y las costumbres son diferentes, y las instituciones que para unos son buenas, dan muchas veces malos resultados trasladadas a otra nación” (Franco, “Declaraciones” 293). “España fue a América, no por plata, sino a decirles a los indios que todos eran hermanos, lo mismo los blancos que los negros, todos, puesto que siglos antes, en otras tierras lejanas, un Mártir había derramado su sangre en el sacrificio para que esa sangre estableciera el amor y la hermandad entre todos los hombres de la tierra” (Primo de Rivera 154). All translations are mine. 2 The Movimiento was the term used to refer to the unification of the different political factions or “families” that had supported Franco during the war. The Prensa del Movimiento resided, for the most part, in the hands of the Falange. For more information, see Seoane and Saiz 251–95, and Barrera. For the sometimes problematic relationship between Franco and the Falange, see Tusell 34–106. Despite being its official voice, Arriba also occasionally suffered censorship (de Diego González 355; 356). Franco wrote for Arriba under the pseudonym Jakim Booren (Seoane and Saiz 207). 3 This decade saw the assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Robert Kennedy (1968), and Martin Luther King Jr. (1968). 4 Broadly speaking, the Black CRM covers the years 1954–1965, spanning the period from the end of segregation to acquiring the right to vote (­Joseph 3). Key events were the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibited discrimination in housing, education, and employment, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The emergence in the 1960s of Black Power is considered the demise of this movement. The first movement is associated with the peaceful search for integration; the second, with economic and cultural independence, self-­determination, and, inspired by Malcolm X, the use of violence, if necessary. We agree, however, with studies like Joseph’s that question this polarization and emphasize the continuity and interconnectedness of both movements.

208  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego 5 Primarily a voting rights movement, the 1965 Selma (Alabama) Movement comprised three marches: March 7, also known as “Bloody Sunday,” due to Alabama state troopers attacking the marchers when they tried to peacefully cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery; March 9, the second attempt: when again confronted by troopers, marchers knelt in prayer and turned back to Selma; the third attempt beginning on March  21 was successful, and the marchers reached Montgomery on March 25. Selma had achieved its goal: President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The “long, hot summer” of 1967 saw the eruption of race riots across major US cities. Black rage was a consequence of police brutality against African Americans, pervasive discrimination, unemployment, and poverty. 6 “brutalidad infinita de la Policía….”. “miembros de las fuerzas de Policía y del orden del Estado han interrumpido con extraordinaria brutalidad una manifestación pacífica de negros … Con garrotes, látigos, armas de fuego y gases lacrimógenos, las ‘fuerzas del orden’ produjeron más de setenta heridos, unos dieciséis graves.” 7 Bueno demonstrates a broad awareness of different aspects that were at stake for American society. He mentions, for example, the increasing presence of blacks in advertising due to their potential as customers, and their emergence in theater roles not defined by their skin color (“Se afianza” 11). The same can be said about other journalists, like Francisco Ignacio de Cáceres who published a series of three articles on African Americans. In “Black Power (I),” he reflects on black self-awareness, the meaning of hair straightening, and experiments on race conducted with black and white children. 8 “…frente al inmueble oficial, los cuatrocientos muchachos de color permane­ cían parados y en silencio … Unos veinte o veinticinco negros se arrodillaron en actitud de rezo; oraron durante breves instantes y, posteriormente, se levantaron y comenzaron a dispersarse, sin que se produjera ningún incidente.” 9 “La inmensa mayoría de esa muchedumbre era negra. No es, pues, sin gratitud cómo entre la ríada humana vi a esa monja blanca, sumergida en la marea negra; o a ese grupo de sacerdotes blancos, católicos y protestantes, cogidos por el brazo de sus hermanos de color….;” “Un grupo de negros, dirigidos por cuatro monjas católicas blanca, salieron marchando desde una iglesia en dirección a la Audiencia del distrito de Dallas.” 10 Reeb’s killing merits several articles in Arriba (Bueno, “Indignación;” “Tres religiosos;” “Ha muerto”), a fact that might be read in the following light (although in the Spanish context): “It became painfully clear that Reeb’s death would awaken the conscience of more Americans than the recent murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black man” (Carson 291). 11 “Todos los acontecimientos que se suceden en relación con los negros que luchan por la igualdad racial con los blancos, dominantes en Norteamérica, tienen un aura invisible que nos hacen pensar o temer el drama. Quizá sea por la cantidad de libros y películas en que se presenta el problema de este modo, asumiendo invariablemente el negro la figura de mártir.” 12 “tan enorme despilfarro de medios bélicos.” 13 “[calzadas] encharcadas con la sangre;” “Ochocientos guardas nacionales, trescientas policías del Estado, los guardias de Newark, han librado batalla desde el ocaso hasta el amanecer contra una muchedumbre de negros—en su gran mayoría muchachitos de ocho, digo bien ocho, a dieciocho años de edad….” 14 “Son los blancos que disparan a muerte sobre sus hermanos los negros.” 15 “cortejo de víctimas inocentes;” “que se cree demócrata.”

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  209 16 “víctima inocente del odio y la violencia;” “los sesenta mil hermanos que acompañaron a su mártir….” 17 It is worth remembering that, when Fidel Castro visited the United Nations in 1960, he stayed at Harlem’s Hotel Theresa. This fortified the ties between the Cuban Revolution, and Third World and African American leaders, especially Black Power leaders (Joseph 13; Gómez Tello). 18 “Ira ciega, avivada por algunos dirigentes extremistas negros, que pregonan que el negro deber ver en cada blanco un enemigo, y que los negros construyeron el país—aserto más que hiperbólico—también pueden darle fuego.” 19 Note the colonialist imagery in Cristóbal Paez’s “Negro y trágico verano” where he writes about “…el tardío reenganche de sus ciudadanos de color a la tribalidad africana” and “la horda morena que, con regusto ancestral, se entrega al incendio y al pillaje” [the late reenlistment of its citizens of colour in African tribal life] and [the brown horde that, with a lingering ancestral aftertaste, devotes itself to arson and pillage]. 20 “El negro es hermano del blanco, creado como él por Dios, y su igual ante las leyes aunque por desgracia no ante las costumbres. ¿Han conocido ustedes un barrio negro del Sur Norteamericano? ¿Han penetrado alguna noche en la negrura moral—la otra es la de menos—del Harlem neoyorquino? ¿Han visitado las barriadas negras de Washington que es de color en el sesenta por ciento de su demografía? … Después de haber estudiado el tema algunos años y de escribir una obra famosa sobre Norteamérica, fue André Siegfried quien dio con la única fórmula que mal que nos pese sigue siendo válida hoy: ‘La mejor solución, no sólo para los blancos sino también para los negros— dijo—sería la separación dentro de la igualdad’.” 21 “Sea quien fuere el asesino, su talla moral es comparable a la de ese demente de Carmichael, que por todo el mundo proclama su doctrina de que el hombre blanco debe ser extirpado del planeta, cuando la civilización en que vive el negro e incluso las ideas marxistas de Carmichael, son un producto de la civilización blanca que domina en la tierra entera.” 22 “No puede dudarse de que con Malcolm ha muerto uno de los líderes que potencialmente hubiera podido convertirse en una de las figuras principales del movimiento de emancipación de la comunidad negra americana.” 23 “La semilla sembrada por Malcolm X es evidente: asociar el destino de 20 millones de negros americanos a la de los pueblos nacidos a la independencia en estos últimos años en África, para colocar así el peso entero del Continente negro tras las comunidades negras de, por ejemplo, Alabama o Mississippi. La semilla ha sido sembrada….” 24 According to Fernández de Miguel, Spain’s exclusion from the Marshall Plan created a lot of resentment among Falange members, who resorted to an aggressive anti-US discourse (217; 226). Some of the stereotypes about Americans were their materialism, ignorance, superficiality, and childishness (158). Additional reasons for disdain were the statement signed by various Americans religious groups praising the Republic for its declaration of religious liberty in Spain; the involvement of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, which led the Francoist belief that the US had supported the Loyalists more than Franco’s troops; the identification of the US with Jewish capital; the negative view of Hollywood for its pernicious influence, and the involvement of American artists (Joan Crawford, Charlie Chaplin, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, etc.) in helping Republican forces during the war; and the perceived masculinity (liberation) of American women (Fernández de Miguel 136–39; 226). For more on anti-­A mericanism, see Miranda-Barreiro in this volume.

210  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego 25 The example of the Ku Klux Klan was often used to lambast the US (Fernández de Miguel 169–70). It is worthwhile to remember that this organization’s hatred extended to Catholics. In addition, Arriba’s support of the CRM contradicts the opinion of a sector of the Spanish Army that saw racial diversity as a disadvantage for a nation’s military forces, and went as far as to refer to minorities in the US as human “detritus” (Fernández de Miguel 177–78). 26 “Norteamérica pasa hoy en el mundo por ser el país que sopla todos los vientos del anticolonialismo. Por eso no se entiende, con una mentalidad sana, el colonialismo que permite dentro de su propio territorio, al negar a unos hombres de piel negra los más mínimos derechos civiles.” Campmany sorrowfully juxtaposes the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty with events in Detroit. 27 It is also worth remembering Blas Piñar’s indictment in his article “Hipócritas,” published in 1962, on the coveted third page of ABC. Piñar, the director of the Institute of Hispanic Culture, wrote a full page listing examples of US hypocrisy. After the publication of this article, which was enthusiastically received by the Falange, Spain’s Foreign Minister apologized to the US government, and Piñar was fired from his position. 28 “Cuando uno es europeo tiene la obligación de ejercer. Esto significa plantearse a fondo las responsabilidades que en el mundo de hoy trae consigo este difícil cargo. Por unos decenios, en esta centuria, el europeo abandonó alegremente este ejercicio libre de su profesión. El resultado está bien a la vista en cualquiera de los innumerables puntos conflictivos donde los sustitutos de Europa han puesto sus manitas de plata en nombre de esa g­ aseosa utopía ­llamada ‘el Occidente’… las planas de estos días nos recuerdan insistentemente la urgencia de que el europeo vuelva a exigir y ocupar su puesto.” He further adds: “La Europa que ha sabido descolonizar, después de ­colonizar, y mantener a través del prestigioso ejemplo francés las auténticas tradiciones liberales … tiene algo que decir y decidir aquí. Porque en el negocio del mundo no puede dimitir hoy por hoy el europeísmo…” [The Europe that has known how to decolonize, after colonizing, and to maintain through the prestigious French example the authentic liberal traditions … has something to say and decide here. Because in the world’s business, at present, Europeanism cannot withdraw] (Cendoya 2). 29 The Black Legend, which views Spain as an intolerant and fanatic country, was the result of the Inquisition, the treatment of indigenous peoples in the Americas, and anti-Protestant policies in Early Modern Spain. 30 “Verás, Onésimo. Tú has venido al mundo con un rostro de color. Tu minúscula faz es negra y, por supuesto, ni tú tienes la culpa, ni eso es motivo alguno para el deshonor … Colea todavía este largo, cálido y sangriento verano. Allá, en un país lejano, rico, soberbio y poderoso se eleva al cielo la espesa y casi imborrable humareda de los incendios producidos por la desesperación. Los hombres de tu raza, chaval, se sienten acosados por el odio … Nadie es hermano del hombre, sino lobo. Excepto aquí. España es diferente. Para su bien, en esto como en tantas otras cosas. No hay distancias por la cuestión pigmento.” 31 “que con los españoles lo tendrá siempre; que nadie se lo arrebatará ni ha de ponerle impedimentos.” 32 “Se esforzó por la justicia y la verdad … lo mataron a traición quienes con oídos sordos no hablaban su lenguaje … tú, negrito guineano, serás en el futuro un celoso defensor de su memoria.” In 1931, Redondo founded a fascist group in Valladolid, la Junta Castellana de Actuación Hispánica, which later was absorbed by José Antonio’s Falange. He was imprisoned during

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  211

33 34

35 36

the war and later liberated by the rebel military leaders in 1936, but was ambushed and killed shortly afterwards (Southworth 36; 45). “Sí, España es diferente. Y siempre igual. A mucha honra. No muda a pesar de los pesares. Cree que para el amor no hay color. No persigue a los negros. Los bautiza.” “La presencia de España en Guinea no ha tenido otra finalidad que la de ­realizar una misión civilizadora, de progreso y de cultura … Algo de ­E spaña—hispanidad—vibrará para siempre ya en él, en ese pueblo que ahora nace tan vuelto hacia su misma africanidad como unido a la religión, la lengua y la cultura que ha recibido de España.” The colonization and independence of Guinea have taken place according to the best of the spirit that characterized Spain’s mission in America…” (“Guinea” 2). “Para España, sus territorios de fuera de la metrópoli no son motivo de lucro, sino medio de realizar la acción espiritual que le corresponde en el mundo.” “En una hora de lamentables conflictos raciales, España y Guinea Ecuatorial podrían alzar juntas la bandera de la harmonía [sic] entre razas.”

Works Cited Alonso, José Ramón. “La frontera del color.” Arriba 17 Apr. 1968: 3. Balibar, Étienne. “Is There a ‘Néo-racism’?” Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities. Ed. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein. London: Verso, 1991. 17–28. Barrera, Carlos. Periodismo y franquismo. De la censura a la apertura. Barcelona: Ediciones Internacionales Universitarias, 1995. Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall. Dir. Luis García Berlanga. Estudios CEA. 1953. Broeck, Sabine. “The Erotics of African American Endurance, Or: On the Right Side of History? White (West)-German Public Sentiment between Pornotroping and Civil Rights Solidarity.” German and African Americans. Two ­C enturies of Exchange. Eds. Larry A. Greene and Anke Ortlepp. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2011. 126–140. Bueno, Guy. “Ayer se celebraron los funerales y el entierro de Malcolm X.” Arriba 28 Feb. 1965: 1; 11. ———. “Decid que fui un tambor mayor de justicia y de paz.” Arriba 10 Apr. 1968: 6. ———. “Disturbios raciales en todo el país.” Arriba 15 July 1967: 5. ———. “Estados Unidos no logra imponer la libertad en su propio suelo.” ­Arriba 14 Feb. 1965: 14. ———. “Estados Unidos: Sangre y violencia.” Arriba 24 Feb. 1965: 1; 14. ———. “Indignación del pueblo norteamericano por los sucesos de Alabama.” Arriba 12 Mar. 1965: 11. ———. “Johnson da cuenta al congreso de la grave situación racial.” Arriba 16 Mar. 1965: 1; 16. ———. “La lucha racial se ha convertido en una guerra entre ‘dos naciones’.” Arriba 18 July 1967: 5. ———. “Los sucesos de Selma han despertado la conciencia del pueblo americano.” Arriba 17 Mar. 1965: 11. ———. “Malcolm X, asesinado a tiros en Nueva York.” Arriba 23 Feb. 1965: 1; 9.

212  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego ———. “‘Marcha de la libertad’ disuelta por la policía violentamente.” Arriba 9 Mar. 1965: 13. ———. “Matar a un negro es delito … incluso en Mississippi.” Arriba 21 Oct. 1967: 9. ———. “Optimismo de los integracionistas al avistar Montgomery.” Arriba 26 Mar. 1965: 14. ———. “Se afianza el triunfo de la comunidad negra en Estados Unidos.” ­Arriba 14 Mar. 1965: 1; 11. Cáceres, Francisco Ignacio de. “Black Power (I). El negro en los Estados Unidos.” Arriba 2 Aug. 1967: n.p. Campmany, Jaime. “Negro y blanco.” Arriba 26 July 1967: 3. Carr, Raymond, et al. 1939/1975. La época de Franco. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2007. “Carta del padre Arrupe sobre el problema racial.” Arriba 8 Nov. 1967: 7. Cendoya, “Negros made in USA.” Arriba 11 Mar. 1965: 2. “Colonialismo USA en Estados Unidos.” Arriba 13 Mar. 1965: n.p. “Continúan los incidentes raciales en Estados Unidos.” Arriba 19 Aug. 1967: 9. Cornejo Parriego, Rosalía. “Black is Beautiful: Cuerpos negros en Triunfo.” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 23.2 (2017): 157–73. Diego González, Álvaro de. “La lucha por el control de la prensa en el primer franquismo. La destitución del director de Arriba en enero de 1942.” Revista de Estudios Políticos 174 (Oct.–Nov. 2016): 331–59. Fernández de Miguel, Daniel. El enemigo yanqui. Las raíces conservadoras del antiamericanismo español. Zaragoza: Genueve Ediciones, 2012. Frade, Fernando. “Drama negro americano.” Arriba 27 Feb. 1965: 12. Franco, Francisco. “Declaraciones hechas al ‘The New York Times’.” Discursos y mensajes del Jefe del Estado 1951–1954. Madrid: Publicaciones españolas, 1960. 285–96. ———. “Mensaje de fin de año. 31 de diciembre de 1951.” Discursos y mensajes del Jefe del Estado 1951–1954. Madrid: Publicaciones españolas, 1955. 111–30. Gil Pecharromán, Julio. La política exterior del franquismo (1939–1975): ­Entre Hendaya y El Aiún. Barcelona: Flor del viento, 2008. Gómez Tello, J.L. “Guerra civil americana.” Arriba 29 July 1967: 5. “Guinea, en la Hispanidad.” Arriba 13 Oct. 1968: 2. “Ha muerto el reverendo James Reeb, que fue apaleado por cinco blancos.” Arriba 13 Mar. 1965: 1. Haro Tecglen, Eduardo. “Un grito en Washington.” Triunfo 7 Sept. 1967: 21–33. Hernández Blasco, F. “Washington, la ‘ciudad de la esperanza’.” Arriba 11 May 1968: 10. “Hoy terminará la ‘marcha de la libertad’ en Montgomery.” Arriba 25 Mar. 1965: 12. “Johnson condena la brutalidad de la policía de Alabama.” Arriba 10 Mar. 1965: 1; 10. Joseph, Peniel E. “Toward a Historiography of the Black Power Movement.” The Black Power Movement. Rethinking the Civil-Rights-Black Power Era. Ed. Peniel E. Joseph. New York: Routledge, 2006. 1–25. “El ‘Black Power’ desencadena la violencia.” Arriba 6 Apr. 1968: 1; 8–9.

Arriba and the Black Civil Rights Movement  213 “El ‘boomerang’ de la violencia.” Arriba 6 Apr. 1968: 2. “El dirigente negro Carmichael, en La Habana.” Arriba 26 July 1967: 8. “El largo y cálido verano negro.” Arriba 20 July 1967: n.p. “El negro destruirá el imperialismo yanqui.” Arriba 4 Aug. 1967: 1; 9. “La catolicidad no sería lo que es sin los servicios de España.” Arriba 8 July 1967: 12. Liedtke, Boris N. “Compromising with the Dictatorship: U.S.-Spanish Relations in the Late 1940s and Early 1950s.” Spain in an International Context, 1936–1959. Eds. Christian Leitz and David J. Dunthorn. New York: ­B erghahn Books, 1999. 265–75. López Pellón, Nivio. “La América hispana debe a España verse libre hoy de problemas raciales.” Arriba 24 Mar. 1965: 2. “Los derechos civiles en USA.” Arriba 17 Mar. 1967: n.p. “Marcha de ‘silencio’ sobre el Palacio de Justicia de Dallas.” Arriba 13 Feb. 1965: 12. Marín, Amador. “EE. UU.: Día nacional de oración a favor de la paz racial.” Arriba 29 July 1967: 1; 8. ———. “Rockefeller: Los motines podrían destruir los fundamentos de la vida estadounidense.” Arriba 25 July 1967: 12. Martín Gaite, Carmen. Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain. Trans. Margaret E. W. Jones. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2004. Moses, Wilson J. Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms. Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth. University Park: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1994. Nerín, Gustau. Guinea Ecuatorial, historia en blanco y negro. Hombres blancos y mujeres negras en Guinea Ecuatorial (1843–1968). Barcelona: ­Península, 1998. Paez, Cristóbal. “Negro y trágico verano.” Arriba 25 Aug. 1967: n.p. Piñar, Blas. “Hipócritas.” ABC 19 Jan. 1962: 3. Payne, Stanley G. Falange. Historia del fascismo español. Madrid: SARPE, 1985. Primo de Rivera, José Antonio. “Discurso pronunciado en Cáceres el 4 de febrero de 1934.” Textos de doctrina política. Madrid: Publicaciones españolas, 1952. 151–54. Rosendorf, Neal Moses. “Be El Caudillo’s Guest: The Franco Regime’s Quest for Rehabilitation and Dollars after World War II via the Promotion of U.S. Tourism to Spain.” Diplomatic History 30.3 (2006): 367–407. Seoane, María Cruz and María Dolores Saiz. Cuatro siglos de periodismo en España. De los avisos a los periódicos digitales. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2007. Southworth, Herbert Rutledge. “La Falange: un análisis de la herencia fascista española.” España en crisis: La evolución y la decadencia del régimen de Franco. Ed. Paul Preston. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1978. 29–60. Torres, Sasha. Black, White, and in Color. Television and Black Civil Rights. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. “Tres religiosos apaleados en Selma por un grupo de blancos.” Arriba 11 Mar. 1965: 14. Tusell, Javier. Spain: from Dictatorship to Democracy: 1939 to the Present. Trans. Rosemary Clark. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Vasallo, Jesús. “Un negrito llamado Onésimo.” Arriba 5 Sept. 1967: n.p.

Appendix

Figure 9.2  C  artoon by Antonio Madrigal, Arriba, March 11, 1965. Courtesy of BNE. “Deep down, I am an artist. If I lock them up, it’s so that they can sing spirituals with more feeling.”

Figure 9.3  Cartoon by Antonio Madrigal, Arriba, March 24, 1965. Courtesy of BNE. “It’s their fault, because they insist on being black.”

Figure 9.4  Cartoon by José Luis Martín Mena, Arriba, March 18, 1965. Courtesy of BNE.

10 Imagining Soul from Barcelona Jordi Longarón and Friday Foster Alberto Villamandos On January 18, 1970, The Chicago Tribune featured the first episode of Friday Foster, a syndicated comic strip written by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Spanish comic artist Jordi Longarón. Beautifully drawn in black and white during the week and printed in color on Sundays, the strip focused on Friday, a young modern woman in New York City trying to make her way up from her humble background to the world of fashion photography. In spite of the conventionally gendered and sentimental tone, seasoned with occasional mystery and humor, one particular aspect made Friday Foster a groundbreaking comic strip. For the first time, a black female character assumed the lead role. The comic, published in more than twenty-five newspapers across the country, became a success until its end in 1974, as a result of changing readership tastes and the difficulty of coordinating the international production team. The story and its main character found new life in a single-issue comic book published in 1972, and a 1975 Blaxploitation film starring the iconic Pam Grier.1 This essay reinterprets Friday Foster as a cultural text and examines how a well-known graphic artist in Spain contributed to a pioneering narrative of female blackness in the context of the ­A merican civil rights struggle. Friday Foster would introduce unexpected connections to the Iberian Peninsula where, even under Franco’s regime, Blaxploitation films and “Black” – disco, soul, and funk – music were popular. 2 Born in Barcelona, Jordi Longarón (1933–2019) started working as a comic artist at Ediciones Toray in the late 1940s, being part of the team that created Hazañas bélicas, a very popular Second World War comic book series published in Spain until the early 1970s (Guiral, Del tebeo 182).3 Like many other Spanish comic artists limited by the domestic market, Longarón sought Anglo-Saxon readers through Selecciones Ilustradas, an agency founded by Josep Toutain in Barcelona in 1953. In an interview with David Moreu in 2015, Longarón recalled his work in different comic genres such as romance for British magazines Valentine and Roxy as well as Westerns or thrillers for the French Pilote.4 Friday Foster would not be the only Longarón comic highlighting black roles: in 1976, he would create No importa qué y Cía, with

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  217 a script by well-known writer Víctor Mora. The story, included in a special issue from Chito publishing house, described a case of Western philanthropy and corruption in the newly independent fictitious African republic of Cuamboro. 5 A year earlier, in response to a request from Pilote, ­Longarón drew “Ronde de Nuit,” a comic written by François Truchaud. In its action story involving a black police officer in crime-­ ridden Harlem, the dark ambiance and violent scenes resemble the novels of Chester Himes, which were popular in Europe at the time.6 The two comics also confirm the status of Harlem and Black America as cultural icons articulated around a series of recurring tropes: drug trafficking and addiction, violence, Black Panthers, and nationalism. If drawing romantic comics for British teenagers was possible from within Franco’s Barcelona, Longarón was also able to “connect” to the African American experience through the growing influence of the United States on Spanish culture beginning in the 1950s. As one of the many “funnies” that appeared in newspapers nationwide, a daily comic strip centered on a black female photographer in the early 1970s could not help but echo or react to the US political context of the time, as reported in the headlines appearing next to it: Black Power as the new wave of the civil rights movement, women’s rights, anti-­ Vietnam War sentiment, the Nixon administration, and the Cold War. Also, the fact that two men, a white American and a Spaniard, should give voice and shape to a black female character suggests the need for an analysis and critique of the cultural “text,” a multilayered one. Considered within its genre conventions, Friday Foster appears to be a product for a teenage and female audience, while the content often made it adult in tone.7 The comic portrayed a black main character in a newspaper with a primarily white readership, lending Lawrence and Longarón’s work an ideological and political role that deserves close attention. In the following pages, I will look at how these different axes – race, gender, national origin, and political narratives of the time – coalesce and collide within what seems to be at first a visual product created purely for entertainment. For some time, academia has considered comics, a sequential art form (McCloud 152–55), as culturally relevant means of conveying ideology that can also project social anxieties and political statements.8 In line with Walter Benjamin’s notion of photography and film in an age of mechanical reproduction, comics could be considered as “emancipated” as well “from its parasitical dependence on ritual” (224), and therefore “a creation with entirely new functions” (225). In terms of comic strips published in newspapers, it is clear that the limited resources on the page – space, image, and word – become oversignifying, since encouraging “the use of stereotype and a ‘closed ideological text’” (McAllister et al. 3). Historically, cultures and groups other than white, male, and Western ones have been absent from comic art, or depicted as inferior, laughable,

218  Alberto Villamandos or dangerous. Blacks, in particular, have suffered in comics, reduced to the stereotype of the brute or savage. Charles Johnson points out in his foreword to Strömberg’s Black Images in the Comics how the white man’s fascination and fear translated into representations of the “Negro” as seldom fully human, “or culturally and intellectually equal” (10), while overemphasizing the physical. For Johnson, the images of black characters in US comics before the 1960s as savages with oversized lips sporting straw skirts “tell us nothing about black people but everything about what white audiences approved of and felt comfortable with in pop culture until the 1950s, when relentless agitation by the NAACP and Civil Rights workers finally made them hugely embarrassing for citizens of a democratic republic” (13; emphasis in original). Created at a turning point of the civil rights era, after the assassination of Dr. King and when Black Power was taking hold in urban cores, Friday Foster represents a striking instance of a pop culture response to a social crisis. Constrained by the location of its enunciation – the newspaper, with its imperatives of commercial profit and “good taste” – ­Friday Foster did not avoid all political commentary, presenting it instead in an understated, indirect way. Its ambivalence between social criticism – racial and social inequality in the USA – and mainstream ideological narratives – the “American dream,” the Cold War – is apparent, adding to the semantic density of a work written and drawn by white – and foreign – liberals, which portrays a professional, independent black woman. How did Lawrence – writing on US soil – and ­Longarón – drawing in Spain – navigate the signifying practices in an era of racial and social crisis? Did Friday Foster overcome the “contradictions of the binary structure of racial stereotyping” (Hall 272)? The visual representation by a Spanish artist, especially of women of color within a pop culture product, is the central subject of this chapter.9 Due to the longevity of the Friday Foster series, I focus on strips that appeared between January 8, 1971, and April 22, 1973, before publication of the comic became irregular and was eventually cancelled. In keeping with the tradition of the “funnies,” the story would develop different plot lines with recurrent characters such as Shawn North, a famous fashion photographer, and Friday, while other plots lasted six to eight weeks. From all the episodes, I consider three in more detail: the beginning of the series, when Friday meets North and becomes a successful photographer; a working trip to Franco’s Spain; and finally, one of the last episodes, this time in Africa when Pan-Africanism was being discussed as a counter-narrative to racial inequality. Since their very beginnings with “The Yellow Kid,” comic strips depicted racial difference in an exaggerated, cartoonish way. As Strömberg’s historical review demonstrates, popular titles, like Tarzan – created in 1929 – included black characters as funny or strong sidekicks without agency, as threatening and almost subhuman savages. In fact, white

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  219 creators simply transferred to the page the same stereotypes reproduced in movies: the peaceful and grateful tom, the motherly and asexual mammy, the slapstick humor driven by the coon, his younger version, the pickaninny, and the dangerous buck. These big-lipped, round-­poppingeyed characters were also linguistically signified as black by the ungrammatical English dialect they spoke, a source of comedy that was also found in minstrel performances.10 Prior to the 1970s, black characters with some degree of agency were scarce in comics. An exception can be found in Jackie Ormes’s Dixie to Harlem. In the late 1930s, Ormes, a black artist, created Torchy Brown, a young, fashionable, independent woman who, after defying her traditional family with humor, moves from the South to work in New York City. Debora E. Whaley sees Torchy Brown as “an important predecessor to” Friday Foster (65).11 After years of black activism during the 1960s, more white artists launched new series of action and adventure strips, like Dateline: Danger! (1968), or The Badge Guys (1971) (Howard 17), trying to represent the “race issue,” or even solve it through ideological signs. Just before Friday Foster appeared, another comic subgenre, superhero comic books, would react to the changing times. Marvel’s response to the integration era was Black Panther, created in 1966 (Whaley 16), while DC “counterattacked” with the Falcon (1969). Later on, Marvel’s Luke Cage (1972), as well as DC’s Green Lantern (1971) and Black Lightning (1977), were added to the superhero pantheon.12 Friday Foster fits into this context, when popular cultural products like daily strips sought to confront or articulate social and political anxieties. As mentioned earlier, at the beginning of his career, Longarón contributed to the Hazañas bélicas series. Very popular from the late 1940s until the early 1970s (Guiral, Del tebeo 182), this comic depicted allmale action scenes from the Second World War and, due to changes within Spain’s foreign policy during the Cold War, American characters evolved from foes to friends. In 1969, Jim Lawrence was looking for an artist to illustrate a new comic featuring a black female character. Born in 1918 in Detroit, Lawrence’s prolific career started in the 1940s with youth magazines, continuing with radio shows, comics, books, and even videogames. He specialized in popular detective and science fiction series for teenagers, in addition to paperback action novels like the 1970s The Dark Angel, with a black female main character in the Blaxploitation fashion.13 When Lawrence’s London agency introduced him to Longarón, writer and artist started collaborating long distance, with months of material produced in advance to avoid missing deadlines and setbacks. In an article in The New Yorker dated March 21, 1970, Lawrence noted that the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate “had been looking for an integrated strip for some time,” after trying some cartoons. Now was the time, according to Lawrence, for a “strip about a gorgeous, hip

220  Alberto Villamandos black chick” (Hiss 34). These words, uniting the emphasis on the body and the sensual to the linguistic effort to emulate “black talk,” describe Friday Foster’s ambivalent discourse of liberal integrationism coming up against the need to make the strip non-threatening to white audiences. If the black man’s body was perceived as a frightening entity, especially to white masculinity, female bodies were seen by society and portrayed by Western artists in conflicted ways: as locations of the sexual abject, racial difference, and unnamable desire.14 When readers first met Friday on January 18, 1970, she was introduced as an attractive young woman working as a “camera-bunny” taking photos of patrons for tips at a jazz venue in black Harlem. That night there is a fashion show featuring African styles worn by all black models. The racial references emphasized in Longarón’s art – hairstyles, garments with “ethnic” patterns, and the urban location with its historical and cultural capital – work as signifying differences. The empowering “Black is beautiful” motto of the time is combined here with its commoditization. Next to the models, Friday, who is also preparing to do her job, is wearing a skintight corset revealing her shoulders and the shape of her torso. Her full lips and big eyes combine with a light skin and small nose, while her hair is long and straightened (January 20, 1970).15 Given the strong cultural connotations of black hair within the Western paradigm of beauty, in which racism and colorism reject curly, “bad” hair along with darker skin as less desirable, Longarón’s graphic portrayal of Friday is significant. The contrast with the fashion models and with other black characters in the comic like her friend Zulu, reveals the conflicting nature of black hair and female bodies in the market of desire, what Cheryl Thompson calls three existing binaries of good/bad hair, the natural/unnatural, and the authentic/unauthentic black (831). Regarding the physical appearance of the protagonist, Longarón pointed out in his interview that his “intention was to stay away from the classic image of African Americans.” The idea for the hair came from the image of a black model in Playboy magazine. Then, Longarón decided that the style did not need to be “too Afro or with a very dark skin,” opting instead for racial features represented by lines instead of the use of ink (Longarón 59). From the outset, Friday’s racial identity is underplayed in contrast to the other black characters. Playboy, with its cultured, liberal, upper-middle-class, white readership, included Black Pride in its pages by marketing the black female body. Friday Foster was echoing the process described by Jean Baudrillard in the 1970s in The Consumer Society, the commoditization of the body through advertising (129). Lawrence’s words when discussing the inspiration for Friday Foster are worth noting. While reading the comic strip section of a newspaper, he realized: “God, here’s a page full of nothing but white faces! … It struck me as very wrong” (Hiss 33). Later, when he saw model Donyale Luna on television, he “was impressed by what she had

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  221 to say about her life” (Hiss 34). The sudden realization of racial inequality, expressed in such candid terms, appears here intertwined with the erotic component that is disavowed, and yet will pervade the comic strip in both text and illustration. The quality of the art, with its realistic linear work in the characters’ portrayals, detailed backgrounds, and sometimes dramatic shadow design, is also influenced by advertising photography, by Afrocentric fashion, and in the case of the protagonist, by images of Donyale Luna.16 However, in Lawrence’s script, the perception of Friday’s beauty, even by the fashion models at Club Senegal, seems to present an obstacle for becoming a professional photographer, while also highlighting her humble personality. The first and longest subplot of the series lasts four months until May 11. It combines the sentimental approach of women’s magazine comics, with some humor and social commentary. At the jazz venue, a couple makes an unlikely appearance – blonde Daphne, a famous fashion model and noted photographer Shawn North’s fiancée, shows up accompanied by Fernando, a Brazilian Latin lover. They venture into Harlem, despite her concerns about safety, to escape the media. Unaware of their identities, Friday photographs them and, hoping for her big chance, visits the offices of She magazine. There, Friday meets the art director, who dismisses the “dashikis and bush hairdos” photographs because of their “limited appeal” for female upper-middle-class white readers (January 24), but, noticing a photo of Daphne and her lover, he suddenly becomes interested. Aubrey, the art director, and the editor of the magazine, Mame Van Cline, conform to genre conventions: his mannerisms and her aquiline features, one the cynical, “confirmed bachelor” sidekick, the other the evil, middle-aged dragon lady, introduce the melodramatic Manichean element that advances the story. Although they often use Shawn’s services for the magazine, they encourage Friday to visit the photographer’s studio with her portfolio in order to spoil his wedding plans. Shawn is presented as an athletic, blonde, square-jawed, all-American type. Friday’s first encounter with him is, however, far from friendly. While Shawn is frantically working in a photo session, the young protagonist falls asleep. Plot changes that made some critics like Strömberg consider Lawrence and Longarón’s creation as a “soap opera” (143) abound: that night Shawn accompanies his fiancée to a party, and then suddenly remembers locking up Friday in his studio. Daphne, overhearing the conversation about an “Afro fashion show portfolio,” rushes to call her Brazilian lover to retrieve the compromising shots, at any cost. While the story unfolds, with the predictable moral balance reinstated, Daphne’s secret and real intentions of advancing her career are revealed. When the stereotypical Latin lover ends up comically in the water, after being punched by an aggrieved Shawn, another aspect becomes clear: Friday is portrayed in this first section as a modern-day Cinderella who

222  Alberto Villamandos can only dream of becoming a professional photographer. In contrast with the rebellious nature of a Blaxploitation heroine – one that calls not only on physical strength but also on sexuality as a weapon – ­Friday relies on her work ethic and the opportunity provided by luck and, more importantly, by a white man. A few days later, when Shawn North arrives in Harlem to photograph its inhabitants’ living conditions, this coincidence not only serves to reunite both characters in an unexpected way, but also permits the “return of the racial” to the story as well as an interesting self-awareness for the authors. When Friday, alerted by a neighbor, goes out into the street, Shawn’s car is surrounded by a crowd of black men, who see the photographer as both an intruder and a criminal target. The subtext of the 1970s obsession with crime in major urban centers is combined with the conflicting nature of the viewer toward the viewed. One of the more aggressive males in the crowd suggests that maybe the white photographer views them as “freaks:” “He comes up here like some big white bwana out to photograph the Jungle tribes!” (March 8).17 After Friday rescues North from a potentially dangerous situation, they converse in a café. He apologizes for not recognizing her when she first approached, and Friday responds that “That’s nothing new, Mr. North” – perhaps referencing Ralph Ellison’s landmark 1952 novel Invisible Man – “As a black writer pointed out, when your skin is dark, you get used to being sort of invisible” (March 10). With Shawn being a photographer, the same way Longarón is an artist and Lawrence a writer, the comic goes beyond the pure, safe entertainment to reflect on the idea of observing minorities and the power of gaze. Friday reveals to Shawn the Western gaze: “The brothers don’t care much for white sightseers dropping up to eyeball the natives” (March 12). However, in spite of Friday’s consciousness that criticizes the man’s approach, she does offer to help. Driving him around in his car, she points out ironically that Harlem “is a state of mind” (March 14), while Shawn takes shots of the streets and the people. Therefore, Friday, as a non-­ threatening character – not marked linguistically by black slang, while elegant and good-looking – becomes the necessary mediator for the white man in a black environment.18 Her ambiguous role – as a race/class “sell out”? as somebody trying to educate him? – dominates if we think that Shawn’s photos may serve as a sympathetic, but distant, acknowledgment of the “race problem” for the white liberal conscience. Shortly thereafter, when Friday shows him the poorest parts of the neighborhood, and they visit a family’s apartment, North seems genuinely surprised. “Wow! And this is America! Let’s go buy ‘em some groceries” (March 17). Shawn, who worked as a photojournalist in Vietnam and also documented Navajo culture for Glance magazine, represents not only the growing role of his profession during the 1960s and the 1970s as a politically charged tool but also the relevance of race in the photographer-subject-readership dynamic. Martin A. Berger, in his book on Civil Rights photography,

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  223 points out how “with great consistency, white media outlets in the North published photographs throughout the 1960s that reduced the complex social dynamics … to easily digested narratives, prominent among them white-on-black violence” in the South (4). Once the next wave of the civil rights movement in the 1970s focused on economic disparities in the North, the idea of the “sacrifices” of activists and black people in general that had been portrayed in these stories were replaced with the uncomfortable notion of inequality at home. Harlem’s blatant poverty strikes Shawn as impossible or unnatural, while the scene is portrayed without addressing systemic causality. And, although he needs Friday’s presence to access those spaces, it is through him that white Glance readers will be able to observe a reality that they avoid in their own cities. The photographer’s self-awareness, when confronted with his subject in Friday Foster, can be taken as a reflection of its creators’ actual experience when they were preparing material for the comic. When ­Longarón arrived in New York to sign his contract, both the artist and the writer visited Harlem and took photos from a cab (Longarón 58). For ­Longarón, coming from “desarrollista” Spain, the neighborhood may have seemed poorer than the rest of the city, but full of life, although people did not like being photographed.19 In spite of this being his first trip to the US, the artist did not seem too surprised by American culture or race issues. Although the project required some research, ­Longarón was well aware of the news and especially the images related to the Civil Rights struggle. As Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego points out, print media in Spain had been giving in-depth reporting on this topic since the mid1960s. Ideologically diverse – although mostly progressive – publications covered racial inequality, profiled Civil Rights leaders, and portrayed anti-black violence and everyday life in places like Harlem in dramatic photojournalism. The magazines’ expression of solidarity toward minorities, linked to discourses of postcoloniality and political liberation in Franco’s Spain, combined with the traditional ­European fascination with blackness. As a result, an “ethnographic gaze” emerged in which the traditional power hierarchy of the white perspective was reaffirmed (Cornejo-Parriego 161). Harlem was often the preferred locus for this ethnographic gaze. Just as in Friday Foster’s original background (for The Chicago T ­ ribune readers), or “Ronde de nuit” (for French and Spanish readers) in ­Longarón’s works, magazines like Triunfo depicted its streets in glossy photo-­ reportages as a site of marginality and poverty in the heart of American capitalism, but also as a site of exoticism and authenticity (Cornejo-­ Parriego 163). 20 Harlem, in the globalized culture of consumerism and mass media that arrived in Spain in the mid-1960s, became, also through Himes’s novels or Blaxploitation cinema, an iconic, almost imaginary place of adventure and exciting danger. In this charged space, Friday Foster becomes a multiple mediator: for Shawn, to access Otherness; for

224  Alberto Villamandos readers, to experience and live vicariously in black culture; and for the creators, to find an interlocutor able to bridge social and racial tensions in the US. From that strip on, Friday begins working as Shawn’s assistant and intermittently as a model. Together they travel the world for Glance – France, Morocco, the Caribbean, Spain – and in the process, she evolves into an ideal representation of the modern, cosmopolitan black woman overcoming race and class limitations. However, it cannot escape us that she holds a subaltern position to Shawn North, whom she still calls “Mr. North.” Moreover, in the adventure and sentimental themed subplots that follow, Friday always becomes the key problem-solver. From a pop star trying to escape from fame (May-July 1970), the importance of environmental issues (July-September 1970), hidden treasures (March-May 1971), to haunted houses (September-October 1972), Friday is the mediator and peacemaker, often sacrificing herself – and her love life – for others. Repeatedly, wealthy, successful, and attractive professional black men approach her, even proposing marriage, but Friday refuses on the basis of her independence as a modern woman. Could it be a newer, hipper, more sexually attractive version of the motherly mammy, emphasized by the presence of her little brother Cleve, who provides comic relief? Angela M. Nelson adapts Herman Gray’s taxonomy for discursive practices used to represent blackness on American television after the 1950s: assimilation/invisibility, pluralist/separate-but-equal, and multiculturalist/diversity. For Nelson, assimilationist discourses pervade mass media from 1954 to 1974, when “social and political issues of the Black presence in American society in particular and racism in general [are treated] as individual problems” (106). During that period, black characters were handled as subjects and not objects, but their social and cultural difference was erased (106). Nelson includes Friday Foster as another manifestation of this focus on “racial integration, peace, harmony, and equality” (107). In Lawrence and Longarón’s comic, through characters like Shawn who are professionally trained to “see,” racial difference is perceived, and even encouraged: in the story told between September and December 1970, Friday meets Alan Abu, the up-and-coming Afrocentric fashion designer. In addition to the clichéd traits – self-centered, demanding, moody, passionate – Abu wants Friday to be his muse: “The world is Soul, baby! It takes an Afro type to really groove in ‘Fro gear!’” (October 26), and Shawn, during the photo session, cannot agree more: “She comes on like an African Venus!” (October 30). As a photographer, Friday captures the gaze, but everything seems to force her to the other side of the lens, as an object. 21 Difference is seen, however, as a sign of the hip, Black Power trend that has achieved a new status within mainstream American culture, assimilated to a cultural capital, and a desirable commodity, in a market now gone global. 22

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  225 The subject of race is more problematic when linked to maleness. While black male figures are scarce in the comic, the ones we do find are usually not young men, nor are they connected either to the Black Panthers or to any stereotypical criminal activity. They are usually successful men – lawyers, businessmen, fiction writers, popular actors – potential candidates for Friday’s attention, but also representative of a “respectability politics” ideology that trusted in the “American dream” narrative of personal responsibility and rewarded hard work. That ideology was far from acknowledging Black Panther activism. Other men of color also appear in the strip: Johnny Mungo, a Native American construction worker, and Tom Gee, an Asian American painter searching for his missing muse. While Friday’s presence and friendship become beacons of solidarity for minorities, they can also be vehicles for ideology. Gee has painted a portrait of Petal Ling out of memory, since he only saw her twice. Friday, taking on the role of sleuth, searches for the young woman who seems to have vanished from Chinatown. She soon discovers that Petal’s possessive Chinese boyfriend Rick keeps her hidden. He threatens Friday in a note with a red dragon saying that “Petal’s no longer available to be exploited as a capitalist sex figure!” (July 4, 1971). Typical and racially charged features of postwar adventure comics – Chinese mafia, exoticism – combine with the 1950s Red Scare, along with the more contemporary issue of women’s rights, but eventually Friday herself “educates” the other minority about the benefits of American society. The source of Rick’s anger seems to be his unemployment and lack of assimilation into the new country. When he and Friday argue about the difficulties both encounter as minorities, she emphasizes the “land of opportunities” narrative and the need for hard – individual – work (August 15). The presence of a minority character to ensure national balance in comics is not rare, especially in the superhero genre. Since September 1969, Captain America had been given a black sidekick, Falcon. His public personality, Sam Wilson, was as a social worker in Harlem. As Matthew J. Costello explains in Secret Identity Crisis, “in his civilian role he frequently confronts the radical Black Power activist Rafe Michel, with whom he also vies for the affection of the beautiful Leila. Meanwhile, he is constantly plagued by the inferiority he feels toward Captain America” (120). Falcon, whose creation stems from the success of Blaxploitation films, becomes, however, an appeasing character to white liberalism in the early 1970s. He fights against Black Nationalism, which, “like communism,” “is equated with Nazism and further undermined as a relevant voice in racial debate” (Costello 121). 23 Topics in identity politics, reduced to a risible anecdote, were often preferable to “hard politics” like the Vietnam War or the nuclear threat, which were absent. Cold War references are linked to a positive view of the “American dream” narrative, and also to adventure, thriller, and

226  Alberto Villamandos even superhero comic books. In Friday Foster, the most significant episode on this subject is introduced in an unexpected way, when after traveling to Morocco for work, the two photographers are sent to Granada, Spain (December 1970 to March 1971), for a secret project. The change of scenery could be a nod to Longarón’s national origin or to Lawrence’s experience as an International Brigades’s volunteer in Spain during the Civil War. 24 In the characters’ only visit to Spain, the authors emphasize the picturesque for the American audience. Instead of Barcelona, Longarón’s hometown, Shawn and Friday arrive in the Sacromonte caves to admire the gypsy performers. We are in the realm of “Spain is different” and the rising status of the country as a world tourist destination, an image promoted by the Ministry of Information and Tourism under Manuel Fraga in the 1970s. As Neal M. Rosendorf concludes, Franco’s diplomacy specifically targeted the US to market Andalusia as a cultural synecdoche for national identity. In spite of the “typicalness” of the scene in the comic, Longarón’s art offers an accurate and realistic view of rural and urban settings in the south of Spain, and the episode itself mirrors the exoticism of Harlem at the beginning of the series, with its discourse of authenticity, marginality, and threat. Longarón, an international artist who routinely worked for British and French markets, felt somehow bonded to Friday Foster’s cultural and social reality (Longarón 58). It is precisely this connection that makes the episode in Spain more remarkable, since writer and artist conceived a mirror experience for Friday Foster. She poses her gaze on the gypsies, the historically most important and marginalized ethnic minority in Spain, and perceives their caves as equivalent to public housing tenements in Harlem (January 3, 1971). Closely related to this idea of marginality is the notion of authenticity, when she can see the “soul” in flamenco culture: “These cats really swing, even if they live in caves!” (January 4, 1971). In an unexpected way, Friday doesn’t just “get” them, but also, by gazing on the Other, she creates a bridge between North American readers and Spain. However, the leisure trip comes to an end when the photographers are recognized by a gypsy working for Korbin, a mysterious and dangerous individual who will later reveal his connections to Soviet Russia and will have Friday kidnapped. The plan is to force Shawn to photograph the mysterious person Glance wanted the couple to meet in Granada, a famous Russian scientist who is fleeing to the West. Here, Longarón’s art acquires a darker, more dramatic style. While Korbin is blackmailing Shawn, Friday is held in a Sacromonte cave by one of the gypsies who, in a stereotypical way, is shown holding a knife. After several action scenes, Shawn and Friday are taken back to the city in Korbin’s car, and Friday is forced to take the scientist’s picture. Sensing danger, she turns the camera on her captors: the camera has an explosive device, and the explosion alerts the Guardia Civil officers who arrest the Soviet agents.

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  227 As in other chapters, Friday is depicted as a well-traveled, cosmopolitan professional, a rare experience for a woman of color from Harlem or Detroit. However, this action-filled subplot in Spain could resemble the female versions of Blaxploitation films, which feature enemies who are not white supremacists or drug dealers in the ghetto but communist agents. 25 Friday, perhaps less consciously than Captain America’s ­Falcon, serves to resolve ideological dissonances between inequality and civil rights in the US as a national, univocal narrative. Her new role as protector of the West and its capitalist society occurs in Franco’s Spain, on an internationalized political stage. The country’s postwar role as bastion against communism, according to the National-Catholic propaganda, provided Franco’s regime with international legitimacy during the Cold War, and the support of the US. It may be paradoxical that the creators of Friday Foster depicted such a peaceful, sympathetic view of official Spain in a folkloric South, and a helpful Guardia Civil. If, as Nelson claims, Friday Foster shares an assimilationist discourse with other products of its time, including the black subject as a sign of racial integration, it does so by giving the character a “regulating” function. In their analysis, White and Fuentez cite Clark’s study on minority portrayals on television and a taxonomy that includes non-recognition, ridicule, regulation, and respect. Regulation takes place when “minority characters are portrayed in positive roles that have some connection with an organization devoted to law and order” (White and Fuentez 76). While Friday’s official job is related to the fashion industry, she embodies an idea of optimism and a system that works, far from “radical politics.” We can find similar elements in Dateline: Danger!, a comic strip based on the television show, I Spy, that ran from 1968 to 1974. Written by John Saunders and drawn by Al McWilliams, it was an action/adventure comic with a white and a black secret agent traveling around the world and fighting, among other targets, “Black extremism.”26 The ideological ambivalence of the comic, showing on one hand an understanding of diversity in the US, while on the other avoiding any systemic criticism, persists until the end of the most consistently published part of the series. Shawn and Friday travel to the Gulf of Guinea rainforest for another project (February-April 1973). At one point, Friday is lost in the forest and attacked by a leopard. Suddenly, a Tarzan-­like figure, a loin-cloth clad, athletic black man defends her, while addressing the animal in Swahili. He is Mwenye Nguvu, a leader of a tribe with the appearance of a superhero and an American accent (March 18, 1973). His real identity, to Friday’s surprise, is actually Slade King, a former football and Olympic athlete, who decided to visit the motherland and became a local king. Now, King believes that he has found his African queen in Friday. The adventures in this section help introduce Pan-­ Africanism and African Nationalism as ideological trends within Black America in the 1970s.

228  Alberto Villamandos After its independence in 1957, Ghana became a historical landmark for black Americans on the political left that Malcolm X famously visited in 1964. Katharina Achramm refers to how “most of the African American expatriates … wanted to contribute to the first independent African state, and they were devoted to making it a grand success—a model to which Black people everywhere could relate” (67–68). This seems to be King’s case, who decided to contribute to the country’s wealth by creating a highly productive and modern farm. However, it is worth noting that the depiction of the solidarity between African ­A mericans and Africans is articulated through the visual tropes of traditional white colonialism. From the very reference to Tarzan – depicting the white man who can tame African nature’s wilderness and become its leader, and one of the first comics to show Africans as voiceless figures – to the idea of the foreigner welcomed by the natives to become their king, Longarón adapts graphically and “quotes” the classical adventure comic-style. King even develops a technologically advanced plantation, without slaves but with, again, voiceless black workers. The message is still the same – backward Africa needs help, education, and equipment from the West to thrive. In this regard, Lawrence and Longarón seem to try to make sense of Pan-Africanism within the limitations of Western discourse about the “dark continent,” while offering it to a heterogeneous audience – white, black, female, and children. Friday Foster, under the appearance of an entertainment product, constitutes a multilayered sign that conveys the liberal idea of assimilation without criticism. The female character becomes a useful tool to signify harmony and balance. Yet, in spite of her attractiveness, no erotic tension seems to develop between her and her white boss. Although they confide in each other, the professional distance, marked by the “Mr.” treatment that Friday uses, persists. Whaley refers to how producers of the television program Batman decided to introduce in 1967 a black Catwoman played by Eartha Kitt. However, “when it came to the sexual relationship between the new [one] and the existing (read ‘White’) Batman, they replaced Catwoman’s sexual innuendo with cunning and mischievous pursuits to avoid representing a holy Bat-abomination, that is, an interracial romance” (76). 27 A breakthrough took place on November 22, 1968, when a famous Star Trek episode included an interracial kiss between Captain James T. Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura. 28 But it wasn’t until 1975 that a married black-white couple was featured on television, in The Jeffersons (Kennedy 129). Although in many aspects a sentimental, soap-opera-like comic, Friday Foster’s romantic story failed to go beyond the conventions that kept miscegenation as a threat to American culture. However, the development of the first positive, modern, independent black female leading character, drawn by a Barcelona artist in Franco’s Spain, became a landmark in US comic strips, especially when compared with the aesthetic quality, ideological conservatism, or lack of depth of many others at the time. It is well worth

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  229 underlining, however, that Friday Foster became the inspiration for a Blaxploitation movie, when comic and film genre would follow very different, if not opposite, paths to representing the black subject in 1970s America.

Notes 1 Pam Grier became the best-known actress in Blaxploitation films and one of the first female action stars in the 1970s with Foxy Brown (1974), in which she performed bold, independent characters, ready to fight her foes. For more info, see Mask. Friday Foster’s comic book, although using the image created by Longarón, had a different writer, Joe Gill, and artist, Jack Sparling. Blaxploitation films were low budget blockbusters in the early 1970s directed by black filmmakers and centered on black, usually male characters fighting against white police and black drug dealers in minority and working-class urban neighborhoods. While they portrayed blacks in roles with a strong sense of agency, critics also noted the overbearing machismo and cartoonish sexualization of both male and female bodies, as if perpetuating racial stereotypes. For more information, see Bogle. 2 In addition to releasing the most famous films, European countries like Italy, with similarities to Spain’s cultural, religious, and colonial background, produced their own version of Blaxploitation films, devoid of the originals’ political charge and redirecting the female sexual exploitation of the subgenre toward soft erotica. Examples are Luigi Scattini’s trilogy La Ragazza della Pelle di Luna (1972), La Ragazza Fuoristrada (1973), and Il Corpo (1974), featuring top Eritrean model Zeudi Araya. See Giuliani Caponetto. 3 After the 1980s, Longarón focused on painting. In 2011 he received the “Gran Premio” for lifetime achievement at the Saló Internacional del Còmic. For the genesis of the series, see Antoni Guiral’s texts in a new version of Hazañas bélicas that, instead of portraying the struggle at the front during the Second World War, focuses on the Spanish Civil War from different perspectives and styles. 4 This was a common practice among Spanish artists during the 1960s and 1970s. For example, Enric Sió and Esteban Maroto lent their skills to various projects aimed at mainstream audiences while focusing their artistic ambitions on more personal works. 5 Pilote also published the story in a special January 1978 issue with the title “Fourre-Tout & Cie.” 6 Chester Himes (1909–1984), who moved to Europe like other black authors such as Richard Wright or James Baldwin, is best known for his “hard boil” detective novels. Himes achieved a great success internationally with the adaptation of the genre to the specific race and class relations in the US. For an analysis of his crime fiction, see Skinner. 7 During the week, Friday Foster was included in the television and radio section of the newspaper, next to short articles on actors and celebrities. 8 Some of the groundbreaking texts focusing on the semantics and politics of comics are by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart. See their Para leer al Pato Donald and Umberto Eco’s Apocalittici e integrati. 9 This evolution in representation can also be linked to the increasing social relevance of photojournalism in the late 1960s, and the globalization of American culture during the Cold War. 10 For Bogle, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), a founding moment for American cinema, introduced all the black “types” that would prevail for decades (10). The story praised Ku Klux Klan, and featured black and white actors in blackface.

230  Alberto Villamandos 11 For more information about Ormes’s career, see Howard. 12 An important addition was DC’s Nubia, the first mainstream black super heroine, in 1973, a spinoff from the Wonder Woman series (Whaley 98). Characterized by her mythological African origin and her “primitivism” signaled by her tiger print bodysuit and banana skirt, Whaley sees Nubia not only as “a sign for and of American colonialism refigured as the territory of a fictionalized Africa, but also a sign for and of the 1970s feminist struggle itself” (103). For more on black superheroes, see Nama. 13 Lawrence wrote a total of 85 young adult novels: among these were 24 of the 33 Tom Swift novels, 15 Hardy Boys, and nine Nancy Drews. In addition to comics, his career also encompassed scripts for television programs like Dallas (Dizer 16). 14 Charmaine A. Nelson sums it up in this way: “For as long as blacks have been accessible to white artists, white artists have taken up black subjects … as exotic ‘other,’, as ‘primitive,’ as whore, as decoration, as luxury object, as spectacle and as a foil against which to measure themselves, always already racially superior” (7). 15 Readers can find issues of the comic in the website project, “The Friday Foster Chronicles,” that is recovering and archiving black authored or themed comics from their beginning, and especially from the 1970s. 16 Under the name Donyale Luna, Peggy Ann Freeman (1945–1979) became one of the first international black models to be featured on the cover of Vogue’s British edition of 1966. 17 According to Longarón, this was the only instance of censorship by the publisher, since originally the artist had drawn Cleve, Friday’s little brother, as an armed young delinquent ready to assault Shawn. The newspaper considered this inappropriate and the drawing was deleted (59–60). 18 An important feature of Friday as a mediator is her skill in code switching between standard American English and black English, or, better said, her capacity to “spice up” a socially acceptable linguistic code with idioms and grammatical forms deemed black. Social and racial language implications are tied here to the notion of the fashionable and the influence of music and television. 19 Franco’s Spain experienced a series of changes during the 1960s – a new generation of “technocrats” in office, a less strict censorship law, foreign investments, thousands of migrants to Northern Europe, millions of tourists every year, a new consumerism, a more extensive education –that revolutionized the economy and social mores, and created the base for the democratic change after the dictator’ death. See Graham and Labanyi. 20 Eduardo Haro Tecglen and Alberto Moravia, among other writers, penned several of these pieces for Triunfo during the 1960s (Cornejo-Parriego 163–64). 21 In the film version, Pam Grier becomes the real protagonist, while Shawn North, as a white character, is reduced to a clumsy secondary figure. It is Friday who solves mysteries with her camera and intelligence. 22 For Edward P. Morgan, “cultural nationalism gravitated toward black ­A frica as the hub of a new pan-African revolution. Like the largely white counterculture, it embodied the expressive side of New Left politics, emphasizing personal liberation and authenticity” (80). The rising status of Black Panthers among white upper class progressives such as composer Leonard Bernstein, became the target of satirists like Tom Wolfe. See his Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970). 23 Other issues related to identity politics, like youth and hippie culture and women’s liberation, also appear in Friday Foster, with a surprisingly conservative or mocking undertone, given the modern representation of the female protagonist. In a story from April to May 1972, She magazine asks Shawn

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  231

24 25

26 27 28

to do a profile of the “angry” leader of a feminist group, and eventually both characters fall in love. When the photographer proposes, the feminist leader hesitates. Friday confronts her for what the protagonist sees as “fear of commitment,” and the feminist ends up fleeing Shawn. Longarón mentions Lawrence’s experience when barely aged 18 he crossed the border at Figueres, and was almost immediately dismissed due to war being in its final stages (60). In spite of their agency and power, these Blaxploitation heroines show a conflicted nature. “On the one hand, each was a high-flung male fantasy: beautiful, alluring, glamorous voluptuaries, as ready and anxious for sex and mayhem as any man. They lived in fantasy worlds—of violence, blood, guns, and gore— which pleased, rather than threatened, male audiences” (Bogle 251). For more information, see Howard’s study on the history of black comic strips. In the film version of Friday Foster, Kitt plays the flamboyant and loud fashion designer, Madam Rena. “Remarkably, however,” Kennedy notes, “the characters were not portrayed as actively wanting to kiss each other; instead they were forced to do so by a villain who … usurped the will of [the Enterprise] crew” (128–29).

Works Cited Achramm, Katharina. African Homecoming: Pan-African Ideology and Contested Heritage. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2010. Baudrillard, Jean. The Consumer Society; Myths and Structures. London: Sage, 1998. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Essays and Reflections. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. Berger, Martin A. Seeing Through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography. Berkeley: U of California P, 2011. Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Continuum, 2001. Cornejo-Parriego, Rosalía. “Black is Beautiful: Cuerpos negros en Triunfo.” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 23.2 (2017): 157–73. Costello, Matthew J. Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America. New York: Continuum, 2009. Dizer, John T. “Victor Appleton’s Nephew: James D. Lawrence and the Syndicate.” Newsboy Jan.–Feb. 1994: 14–16. Dorfman, Ariel, and Armand Mattelart. Para leer al Pato Donald. Havana: Ciencias Sociales, 1974. Eco, Umberto. Apocalittici e integrati. Milano: Bompiani, 1964. Friday Foster. Dir. Arthur Marks. American International Pictures/Orion ­Pictures, 1975. “The Friday Foster Chronicles.” The Museum of Fun Uncut Funk. Web. Gill, Joe, and Jack Sparling. Friday Foster. New York: Dell Comics, 1972. Giuliani Caponetto, Rosetta “Blaxplotation Italian Style: Exhuming and Consuming the Colonial Black Venus in 1970s Cinema in Italy.” Postcolonial Italy. Challenging National Homogeneity. Eds. Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. 191–203.

232  Alberto Villamandos Graham, Helen, and Jo Labanyi, eds. Spanish Cultural Studies: The Struggle for Modernity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Guiral, Antoni. “Boixcar: Un referente.” Nuevas hazañas bélicas. Serie roja. Dos águilas de un tiro. Eds. Hernán Migoya et al. Barcelona: Glénat, 2011. 54–55. ———. Del tebeo al manga: Una historia de los cómics. 1. Los cómics en la prensa diaria: Humor y aventuras. Torroella de Montgrí: Panini, 2007. ———. “Hazañas Bélicas: ¿Una visión más ‘humana’ de la guerra?” Nuevas hazañas bélicas, Serie azul: Unidos en la división. Eds. Hernán Migoya et al. Barcelona: Glénat, 2011. 54–55. Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the Other.” Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Ed. Stuart Hall. London: Sage, 1997. 223–90. Hiss, Anthony. “Friday Foster.” The New Yorker 21 Mar. 1970: 33–34. Howard, Sheena C. “Brief History of the Black Comic Strip: Past and Present.” Howard and Jackson II 11–22. Howard, Sheena C., and Ronald L. Jackson II, eds. Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Johnson, Charles. Foreword. Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History. By Fredrik Strömberg. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2003. 5–18. Kennedy, Randall. Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. Lawrence, Jim, and Jordi Longarón. “Friday Foster.” The Chicago Tribune 18 Jan. 1970. Section 8. 8. ———. 20 Jan. 1970. 2, 18. ———. 24 Jan. 1970. 1, 11. ———. 8 Mar. 1970. 8, 6. ———. 10 Mar. 1970. 1A, 15. ———. 12 Mar. 1970. 3, 19. ———. 14 Mar. 1970. 2, 18. ———. 24 July 1970. 2, 8. ———. 26 Oct. 1970. 2, 19. ———. 30 Oct. 1970. 1A, 15. ———. 3 Jan. 1971. 8, 6. ———. 4 July 1971. 8, 5. ———. 15 Aug. 1971. 8, 4. ———. 18 Mar. 1973. 8, 8. Longarón, Jordi. “Jordi Longarón: La leyenda de Friday Foster.” Interview by David Moreu. Visual 172 (2015): 56–61. Mask, Mia. Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2009. McAllister, Matthew P., et al., eds. “Introducing Comics and Ideology.” Comics and Ideology. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. 1–13. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Mora, Víctor, and Jordi Longarón. “Fourre-Tout & Cie.” Pilote 41 Jan. 1978: 69–80. ———. No importa qué y Cía. Pluma de oro 4. Sabadell: Grafimart Ediciones, 1976. Morgan, Edward P. The 60s Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern ­A merica. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1991.

Imagining Soul from Barcelona  233 Nama, Adifu. Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes. Austin: U of Texas P, 2011. Nelson, Angela M. “Studying Black Comic Strips: Popular Art and Discourses of Race.” Howard and Jackson II 97–110. Nelson, Charmaine A. Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art. New York: Routledge, 2010. Rosendorf, Neal M. Franco Sells Spain to America: Hollywood, Tourism and Public Relations as Postwar Spanish Soft Power. New York: Palgrave ­Macmillan, 2014. Skinner, Robert E. Two Guns from Harlem: The Detective Fiction of Chester Himes. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1989. Strömberg, Fredrik. Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2003. Thompson, Cheryl. “Black Women, Beauty, and Hair as a Matter of Being.” Women’s Studies 38 (2009): 831–56. Truchaud, François, and Jordi Longarón. “Ronde de Nuit.” Pilote 17 Oct. 1975: 4–14. Whaley, Deborah E. Black Women in Sequence: Rethinking Comics, Graphic Novels and Anime. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2015. White, Sylvia E., and Tania Fuentez. “Analysis of Black Images in Comic Strips, 1915–1995.” Newspaper Research Journal 18.1–2 (1997): 72–85. Wolfe, Tom. Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. New York: ­Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970.

11 In Search of Chester Himes in Spain Three Women, Three Landscapes1 María Frías A number of African American artists familiar with Spain’s sociocultural context have established a dialogue with the land and its people that is reflected in some of their work, be it music, literature, or journalism. This is the case with jazz legend Miles Davis, as well as writers Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. Although Chester Himes, who had met both Hughes and Wright and was also a fan of Davis, lived in Spain for almost fifteen years until his death, the country does not seem to have affected him. On the contrary, his years living among people who were still recovering from the trauma of a Civil War (1936–1939), which left deep and painful scars, as well as years of scarcity, appear not to have left a mark on either his literary production or personal life. Even in My Life of Absurdity (1976), the second volume of his autobiography painstakingly written during his time in Spain, he barely mentions the dictatorship (1939–1975) and the transition to democracy. Even though Himes contradicts himself in his perceptions of the few select locals he met, for the most part Spanish men’s backward mentality irritates him while the women’s repressed sexuality both fascinates and repels him. Though socioeconomic deprivation together with the physical and psychological wounds inflicted on the Spanish people would need a long time to heal, this social reality does not seem to touch Himes. However, born and raised a Catholic by a strict mother, he is aware of the suffocating role played by the Church in Franco’s Spain. How does Himes tiptoe through the postwar period and the atrocities of the long dictatorship? In addition to heavy drinking and compulsive writing, he isolates himself in his villa, seeks solace in the splendid view of the Mediterranean from his mirador, and drives his Jaguar at insane speeds. For some locals, Himes’s nouveau riche behavior is both shocking and offensive. His Spanish neighbors ignore that, like other black self-expatriates in Europe, he had openly and angrily complained about the brutal racism and discriminatory practices of Americans, and even preached in favor of a “black bloody revolution,” a questionable discourse that undoubtedly harmed his writing career. In his view, his works were either censored or rejected in the United States for being too sexually explicit or extremely violent. For Himes, there was no doubt

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  235 that racist violence was a chronic and contagious disease; it affected every white American since they were born. Thus, when he could not stand it any longer, he left the USA, but till the end, always traveled with Harlem on his mind. In several interviews, Himes talks about France, his first European stop. He reflects on his biased gaze and apparent indifference to the country that had made him “a celebrity” when he openly confesses: “I didn’t go to see French movies or plays or read French books, newspapers, or about French wars, or politics. I had never really arrived in France, but the Americans did not want me” (Absurdity 333). There is a parallelism between Himes’s blurred view of France and his myopic and disinterested vision of a dictatorial Spain. Or, as Himes puts it, apart from his inconsistencies, maybe he “never really arrived in Spain.” Interestingly, on his trips from France to Spain, a different white lover always accompanied Himes. It is my contention that each woman not only had an impact on his life and work, as well as his perception of the country, but that they also shared connections to the literary world. At the same time, though, they played a subservient role to Himes, remaining relatively silent and silenced – both literally and metaphorically. 2 Overall, we could argue that Himes’s fascination and anxiety regarding Spain depended to a large extent on the woman by his side, his precarious financial situation, the response of American critics, and the rejection by the US and European publishers, as well as his ever-changing writing mood. Despite the distance between Harlem and Franco’s Spain, Himes’s psyche is badly damaged by racism, the American cancer, in his words. In 1962, self-expatriate Himes outlined to Carl Van Vechten his plan to write an autobiography in three volumes, each one dealing with “[his] life with a woman, all three completely different.” Himes sketched them as follows: “The first an American socialite (Boston, Smith College, etc.) married, divorced, three daughters; the second an infantile, immature, very crazy German in her twenties; the third English, good family, in her thirties, a member of the right people” (­Absurdity 252–53). The first woman is Willa Thompson Trierweiler; the second, Regine Fisher; and the third, Lesley Packard. Indeed, all three played a role in Himes’s autobiography, as he traveled with each of them to Spain. First, the writer journeys to Mallorca with Thompson Trierweiler; he returns there later, in the company of Fisher; finally, after several trips to Spain with Packard, they buy property in Moraira (Alicante), where he lived from 1969 until his death on November 12, 1984. 3 He is buried nearby in Benissa. Due to his declining health, in the second volume of his autobiography, Himes covers his first six years in Moraira in roughly thirty pages. Following Zora Neale Hurston’s motto “you have to go there to know there” (Their Eyes 285), I decided to travel to Moraira to become

236  María Frías acquainted with the place and the people that Himes and Packard had met. In the process, I obtained first-hand if sometimes contradictory information about relevant events that took place both during and after Himes’s fifteen years in the vicinity. This essay follows in Himes’s dust tracks on the rocky roads of Franco’s Spain, in the company of the three women.4 Furthermore, I append the transcripts of interviews I conducted with residents of Moraira, both local and expatriate – who had met Himes and Lesley Packard – as well as a selection of photographs to help illustrate his journey and my own search for him in the areas of Teulada-Moraira, Benissa, and Benitatchell.

Willa Thompson Trierweiler [Alva]: The First Woman5 When Himes boarded the Île de France on April 3, 1953, in New York and sailed to Europe, he was still married to African American Jane Lucinda Johnson (Hurt 149–50).6 Little did he know that this voyage would reshape his shattered emotional life and his unsatisfying literary career. Meeting on board Willa Thompson Trierweiler grew into more than a banal “shipboard romance” (Margolis and Fabre 78). Willa, who was in the process of divorcing her abusive European husband, had abandoned their three daughters in Holland. Like Himes, Willa had been deeply hurt. An aspiring writer, she was working on her autobiography, The Golden Chalice.7 When the ship docked at Le Havre, the lovers went their separate ways: Willa, to seek a divorce in Holland; Himes, to Paris, and his soul brothers, among them Richard Wright, the-one-at-atime black writer of the moment.8 For Himes, Paris was not love at first sight – as he had anticipated – instead, “his first weeks were exceedingly dull” despite the hospitality of expatriate African Americans and meetings with intellectuals at the most popular French cafés (Hurt 183). Not surprisingly, when Willa contacted Himes, he agreed to meet. They took refuge in Arcachon, a little French fishing village, where Himes finds that “[Willa] was completely uninhibited, even exploratory, sexually” (Hurt 229). In response to a request from Himes, his friend William C. Haygood sends a detailed letter about life on the island of Mallorca. Haygood, a well-traveled man, praises the island without even mentioning the dictatorial regime: “Living conditions are good … the food is cheap … Entertainment is cheap and life in general is as pleasant as it could be anywhere.” His only complaint is that “Palma is rapidly filling up with the neurotic overflow from the Left Bank” (Hurt 245). However, Himes chooses London because both he and Willa speak English. While London was not his cup of tea either, the couple spent six months in the city working on The Golden Chalice.9 Although for Himes it was “a touching story with an American best seller appeal” (Hurt 265), several publishing houses rejected the manuscript.

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  237 Thus began Himes’s peripatetic life in Europe. Despite his limited travel experience and his ignorance of foreign languages, he embarks on the first of a long list of trips. In the company of an equally brave but heartbroken companion, Himes travels to Mallorca. After a long and uncomfortable journey, the author poetically seems to lay claim to the island’s enchanting landscape: “we saw literally miles of almond trees … they were like fantastic powder puffs of pink and white rotating lazily in the snow-filled sunshine, as beautiful and intricate as Spanish lace; a pure and overwhelming mobile sculpture that I will never forget” (Hurt 275). Earlier, along the same lines, Himes reflects on the affair with his white lover while he depicts his ambivalent feelings toward Spain: “That strange golden sunrise ushered in by that mounting tune, the sea and the mountains, and Alva’s withdrawal, became Spain for me, hurting, bewildering, heartbreakingly beautiful” (Hurt 271). After renting Cala Madona in Pollensa, Himes feels comfortable enough to start writing The End of the Primitive.10 For her part, Willa finds it difficult to adjust to the isolated environment. According to Himes, “Mallorca had aggravated her sense of guilt for deserting her children.” However, as with other women in Himes’s life, she soon “settles into the household chores” (Hurt 283) and proves to be the perfect secretary. While writing in Deyá (Mallorca), Himes pauses to reflect on his perception of Spanish women. He finds them rather pitiful and sexually repressed, though more than willing to be rid of their imposed virginity: “The daughters were well behaved in a Spanish Catholic fashion and very obliging—too obliging. They believe in the Catholic Church and marriage and giving birth. They were soft, lovely, obliging female animals” (Hurt 328).11 In contrast with their constrained sex life, Himes is not shy about discussing his own. He graphically depicts his relations with white women in general, and Willa in particular, seeking to shock his puritan and racist American readers. Thus, referring to his lovemaking in Cala Madona, in the summer of 1954, Himes writes: When I remember how intensely I always desired to make love to Alva [Willa], whether she was gay or melancholy, well or ill, I suspect I have a streak of sadism in me. But it always turned out to be the best cure for whatever ailed her … Perhaps it was the contemplation of living in sin with an inviolable American white woman that incited my sexual desire. (Hurt 282) In terms of their social life, Himes and Willa – both heavy drinkers – meet mostly English and American expatriates. At one party, Willa falls and dislocates her shoulder. Himes uses this accident for his short story “Spanish Gin” (1957) – the only work of fiction that he set in Spain,

238  María Frías specifically in Puerto Pollensa.12 In an interview with Michel Fabre, he admits that he found the writing process easy: “We were so drunk, and it was all so crazy, that I didn’t have to exaggerate much to create an utterly crazy story” (131). Although Himes does not socialize with the locals, he is happy to meet painter Pasqual Roch Minué (1899–1977) who suggests the couple move to Deyá. Himes agrees: “Deyá touched my emotions more than any city, any town, and any village that I have known before or since” (Hurt 293). While Himes mentions in passing that the painter had met poet Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), he ignores Lorca’s cultural relevance and the fact that fascist forces had executed him (Hurt 291).13 Later on in Deyá, both Himes and Willa adjust to the landscape. On one occasion, Himes meets British writer Robert Graves – excentric, arrogant, and a womanizer. He dislikes Graves on sight and becomes absurdly jealous. At a party, Willa is wearing a pink dress that, in Himes’s eyes, “brought out a little of the slut in her” (Hurt 300). For Himes, this is the last straw, and the couple has their first serious fight. In his view, Willa seems excessively comfortable in the company of white men. For a while, the sexually charged relationship takes a new turn. Himes’s interracial literary discourse that, at times, anticipates sociologist Calvin Hernton’s Sex and Racism in America, becomes crude and offensive when referring to Willa. For example, to work on her book, the author “needed to make love to Alva.” However, when he works on his novel, he says, “intercourse will suffice” (Hurt 300). Thus, his own creative process overtakes any emotional position that Willa may occupy as she is relegated to the status of mere sexual object, rather than a loved one, when his own work is going well. The time spent in Deyá turns out to be quite productive, though. First, Himes explores the Spanish publishing houses, convinced that there is a potential market. His French translator Yves Malartic sends copies of the French version of Lonely Crusade/La croisade de Lee Gordon (1947), since “the Spanish read French more easily than they do English” (Hurt 311). Second, with the help of Dexamyl, an antidepressant, Himes finishes The End of a Primitive, his favorite book, which he describes as “a little package of dynamite” (Hurt 311).14 After a series of confrontations with two local men, Himes is forced to leave Deyá in August 1954: “I felt depressed. I hated to say goodbye to Deyá. It was such a beautiful village, pink and perfumed, and despite all of our misfortunes we had been happy there” (Hurt 317). Later, he devotes a whole chapter of his autobiography to the four-month period the couple subsequently spends in Terreno, where he enjoys the location of their house: “from our back door we had a breathtaking view of the Bay of Palma with the sun shining on the rising white walls of the old town” (Hurt 319–20). Himes is also happy with the Sureda family, the property owners, and their four girls, aged nineteen to twenty-two. He

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  239 is convinced that the “very pretty and lively girls,” “not only wanted but needed—and needed it badly—to get married” (Hurt 320). Once again, Himes comments on the sexual repression of Spanish women, and his perception of marriage as sexually liberating for them and their only social goal. For Himes, a confessed womanizer, it seems that, in the midst of a dictatorship, Catholicism is responsible for these young women’s unwanted sexual repression and wasted sexuality, as well as the overarching obsession with female virginity. Thus, a certain Lorquian flavor emerges when Himes describes a family photograph of the Sureda women: “Maria [Antonio Sureda’s wife] and all four daughters were sitting in the garden in front of the house, with the interminable crocheting of bed linen, which occupies Spanish girl children from the time they are born until they are safely married” (Hurt 328). He also criticizes Spanish women’s lack of education and their simple psyches: “Spanish women are extraordinarily loyal and uncomplicated; very few have any formal education; they don’t read, they don’t think, they are all good Catholics, and they marry and have babies” (Hurt 348). However, Himes is completely in awe of the attractive owner of Cala Madona, Doña Catalina Rotger Amengual, and fascinated with her savoir faire and her uninhibited mentality: She was the only true cosmopolitan Spanish Catholic woman I ever came to know; she had traveled extensively … she did not believe for a second that Alva and I were married (in fact she had her reservations about the marital status of the entire English-American colony), but she was immensely sympathetic and a little curious too, perhaps, for they hadn’t had many American black tourists there before, if any. (Hurt 281) In contrast, the presence of the young women and the jovial all-female atmosphere make Willa feel guilty for leaving her motherless daughters behind – she “came to hate Palma” (Hurt 330).15 Hurt and estranged from Willa, Himes decides to leave Palma. Against her will, Willa returns to New York, convinced that Himes is not serious about separating since he depends on her to sell “their book” – hers – in the US. The couple had spent eight bittersweet months on the island of Mallorca.

Regine Fisher [Marlene Beherens]: The Second Woman Though Willa refuses to cut her ties with Himes, the second woman, Regine Fisher, appears in 1957 just as he is becoming a celebrity in France, thanks to a ten-book contract with editor Marcel Duhamel (Série Noire, Gallimard). This new affair (1957–1960) will be tempestuous and toxic.16 A twenty-two year old German drama student, she had been

240  María Frías enjoying the Parisian joie de vivre, and its multiracial and multicultural landscape. Regine is half of Himes’s age, but she is not naïve. In addition, Himes is not the first black American man with whom she has had a sexual relationship. Unlike Willa, Regine has not yet been hurt by life. However, her increasing emotional and sexual dependence on the writer will permanently damage her. Like Willa, and despite her apparent fragility, Regine – well-read in French and German – seems fully qualified to become Himes’s latest perfect secretary, cook, assistant, and sexual partner. Nevertheless, it is not an easy task, especially when Himes’s “fits of raging jealousy” become common (Absurdity 78). In fact, the situation turns tragic when, after failing at her auditions for the Comédie Française and enduring one of Himes’s frightening and violent episodes of jealousy, Regine attempts suicide. When she recovers, the couple resumes their relationship, traveling to Copenhagen and Germany where Regine devotes her time to finding publishers and translators for Himes’s work. With money in his pockets, and placing his two German possessions at the same level, a self-confident Himes boasts: “I had my German woman, my German car. I was making my living from French publishers, and had no reason whatsoever to put foot in America” (Absurdity 144). Tired of cold Denmark and back in Paris, Himes thinks of returning to Spain.17 By October 1957, the couple leaves for Mallorca, traveling in style in Himes’s blue convertible Volkswagen. For Regine, this is her first trip to Spain, while for Himes, every step was filled with memories of Willa. Thus, while Mallorca evokes pleasant memories of the months spent with Willa, Himes now associates the same landscape with darkness, coldness, and anxiety once Regine “takes” Willa’s place. He plans to write a novel about his doomed affair with Willa, based on his stories “Spanish Gin” and “The Pink Dress”. Hence, his real-life adulterous triangles overlap with his fictional ones. Once they settle in, Himes introduces Regine to his (and Willa’s) friends. His pathological jealousy is further exacerbated when he notices that old men were attracted to Regine’s youth, forgetting – as he confesses – that he was thrice her age and could also fit into that category (Absurdity 169). Himes’s lack of enthusiasm is revealed when he emphasizes that “the only thing of consequence [the couple] did in Palma was to buy a two-month old red setter puppy” (Absurdity 168). Nor does Himes make much progress in his work. Obsessed with the idea of fictionalizing his relationship with Willa, he disguises their romance in a detective novel with a Spanish setting, although his French agent Duhamel “wasn’t very happy” about switching Harlem detective stories to “a Spanish locale” (Absurdity 159). In Pollensa, Himes’s sense of melancholy combined with the inclement weather do not help. Summarizing their stay, his bitter words speak for themselves: “We had merely passed some time in the wrong place; we’d been cold and uncomfortable” (Absurdity 177). In a letter to Van Vechten, Himes does not

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  241 mention Regine, referring instead to the “miserable weather,” and confessing that he will have to “get drunk off of this cheap spanish [sic] gin and go to bed.” Things will “look different” in the morning, he hopes. Overall, Himes paints an absolutely dark picture of his unproductive months in Pollensa with Regine: I hadn’t gotten anything from Spain but a dose of absurd jealousy. I had accomplished nothing. I had written nothing. I hadn’t learned anything except how to cook calamares and octopus, which I had acquired a taste for … I was sick of the place and tired of Marlene [Regine] … We had gone there to write and I hadn’t written anything. I hadn’t gotten any inspiration, no ideas, no thoughts. It was not like it had been with Alva. I didn’t feel sorry for Marlene; I didn’t pity her. All she had to do was go home and go to work. (Absurdity 177) After this depressing experience, the Parisian cultural landscape feels like a breath of fresh air: France “was not at all like Mallorca; the people were more alive, more intelligent” (Absurdity 179). In France, a productive period begins for Himes, and, for the first time, his work attracts media attention. This welcome development helps him to reassemble the pieces of his shattered ego: “I became a person [not] to be thrown again” (Absurdity 181). Note, for example, French writer Jean Giono’s often-quoted comment about La Reine des pommes (1958): “I give you all of Hemingway, Dos Passos and Fitzgerald for this Chester Himes” (Absurdity 181). Despite this success, Himes had a serious argument with Regine, and the couple temporarily parted ways.

Lesley Packard [née Eileen Mary Lesley Packard]: The Third Woman [In Spain], Lesley loved to socialize, to meet new and interesting people, and to show her skills as a host. She was the perfect literary host, and she loved doing that part of the job, and lift the burden from Himes who did not enjoy it at all, as Lesley used to say. (Interview with Jo Stott) In April 1959, Lesley Packard, a glamorous and experienced news agent’s assistant, enters Himes’s life.18 Winner of the French Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière (1958), Himes is a Parisian celebrity, and his new lover knows it.19 In her company, Himes undertakes impromptu tours abroad – Milan, Egypt, Greece, New York, and Spain. In Himes’s own words, Lesley is nothing like Willa, a wounded woman, or Regina, a naïve one. In her early thirties, Lesley is independent and self-sufficient. She works part-time for the Time-Life Press Agency, in Paris, where she has been living since 1946 (Pirozek). Himes is instantly

242  María Frías “fascinated”: “She was Irish-English with blue gray eyes and was very good looking,” later adding: “She knew many people [from the Herald Tribune]. She was beautiful and chic and wore fashionable clothes, [and] was well liked and knowledgeable” (Absurdity 186). All these attributes will be immensely useful for Himes’s career and peace of mind. Nonetheless, Regine will remain his intermittent lover for a few more years. Immersed in a self-destructive relationship, yet eager to make the writer’s job easier, Regine remains at Himes’s beck and call. Later on, in his correspondence with Lesley, Himes refers to Regine as “my wife,” but swears that “his greatest hope” is to “be able to effect a permanent cancelation of this business,” since the relationship “is absolutely dead” (Letter to Lesley Packard). The breakup coincides with the demise of Himes’s beloved Volkswagen. It seems that this parallel – woman/ car – works as a metaphor for the couple’s complex and traumatic affair. When Regine finds out about Lesley, she slashes her wrists and is confined to a mental institution. Soon, Himes moves in with Lesley and Regine will disappear from his life. But Himes still does not settle down. By 1965, he boasts of being “the best known black in Paris” and having “caused a sensation” when, after being rejected for years by American publishers, A Case of Rape (1956) is published in France under the title Une affaire de viol in 1963 (Absurdity 291). 20 His finances improve once he starts receiving substantial sums of money from his American publishers. Flying secretly to London, Himes buys a brand new Jaguar. Two years later, the couple heads for Spain for the first time. A quick trip “all the way down the coast to Gibraltar” gave them “a chance to breathe” (Absurdity 337). For Lawrence P. Jackson, this “speedy trip to Spain … is a journey of notable scenic beauty” (463). Himes often complains that they need a permanent residence in France. Malartic describes him as a “snail with [his] home on [his] back,” and Himes could not agree more (Absurdity 343). While Himes’s references to Spanish politics are mere footnotes, he does occasionally season his story with brief mentions to them. Soon after the first trip to Spain with Lesley, he contacts his Spanish publisher Juan Grijalbo and, by early December 1967, they head for Barcelona in the Jaguar to meet Grijalbo and Himes’s Spanish publisher at Plaza & Janés. Himes is quite pleased since Grijalbo provides detailed information about the way censorship works in Franco’s Spain: Sr. Grijalbo was different, he was a well-dressed man with a stomach and he had an interpreter in his office so we could speak. He told me he was not legally allowed to have a business in Spain because he had fought on the loser’s side in the Spanish Civil War, and that my books The Primitive and Pinktoes were not permitted in Spain, although he got in a few for personal use, but The Third Generation could be sold in Spain. (Absurdity 349)

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  243 Less anxious about his future, Himes describes different people and places, and this trip becomes more than just sightseeing. In Barcelona, the couple stays at the Majestic Hotel, an iconic building that still exists today. Grijalbo makes it clear that, despite the existing censorship, Himes’s autobiographical novel The Third Generation might be published in Spain.21 However, Cast the First Stone will be censored since it deals with Himes’s seven years in prison and, in particular, the homoerotic relationships among convicts, a sin condemned by the Catholic Church. 22 As he had in the late 1950s, Himes complains about Spanish roads. Avoiding the old and familiar route, he drives from Madrid to Málaga to find that they are “too narrow and dangerous” for his luxurious Jaguar (Absurdity 349). Early biographers like Fabre, or, more recently, ­Jackson, as well as numerous scholars, such as Williams, refer to Himes’s obsessive devotion to his cars – his Jaguar, in particular. In his correspondence, Himes writes endless pages about the car. This explains his frequent comments on the state of Spanish roads, even though some coastal routes had been improved for tourism. In Fuengirola, the couple rents a house and search in the London Sunday Times advertisements for plots of land in Alicante (Absurdity 350). Jackson mentions that on this memorable exploratory trip, Himes and Lesley see “on the sides of the walls Deutsches Haus” – a welcome sign in German for a real estate agency doing business with “Nazis in hiding” in Franco’s Spain (472). It is no secret that Hitler and Franco met on several occasions and, to a certain extent, became brothers-in-arms. Nor is it a secret that Spain became a safe haven for Nazis after the Second World War. Even now, a walk around the exuberant gardens in Benissa Cemetery reveals numerous engraved plaques and memorials for German citizens who found solace in the Mediterranean while the Spanish population was struggling to come to terms with the trauma of the Civil War. In the middle of December, Himes drives from Fuengirola to Jávea (Alicante). This “seaside village off the main road” fascinates the couple. The Miramar, its “seafront hotel,” is conveniently situated just across from the British real estate agency’s offices, and offers “plentiful and good” meals (Absurdity 351). 23 Concentrating on the regional culinary aspects, Himes mentions that in Venta la Chata “the food was delicious,” too. 24 A hedonist as far as wine and food were concerned, Himes had first tried calamares (squid) on his initial trip to Deya, and thanked painter Roch Minue’s wife for teaching Marlene/ Regine and him “to cook calamares for which [he] was eternally grateful” (Absurdity 168). After much searching, Himes buys two plots of land “with plenty of sun” on the Urbanización Pla del Mar, in the then fishing village of Moraira. Why Moraira? For practical reasons, “chiefly because it was well

244  María Frías planned with paved streets, electricity and water,” as well as meeting his need for isolation and peace of mind since the house would be built “on the side of a very steep and rocky hill, and there were few houses on it at the time” (Absurdity 351). In a letter written to his close friend Williams on December 18, 1968, the writer confesses that the search had been exhausting. In the end, his financial situation forced him to make up his mind: “We spent all last winter running up and down the rocky southern coast of Spain, trying to make up our minds if we wanted to live in Spain and whether we could afford it if we wanted. Finally we bought two plots in an urbanacion [sic] north of Alicante” (Williams and Williams 54). In the same vein, in a 1969 letter to Williams, he complains about “the inconveniences of living in Spain.” He feels trapped: “If it wasn’t that I have to live here, literally, because of the prohibitive cost of living everywhere else, I would not be here. But with what little money I earn I have to live here or live the life of a beatnik” (64). After signing the purchase agreement and while waiting for the Jaguar to be fixed in Gibraltar, the couple spends Christmas Day in Tangier. Although Himes seldom comments on politics, this time he refers to the historical conflict between Spain and the United Kingdom, stating that: “Spain was having one of its periodic controversies with the English about Gibraltar and had stopped all their workers and food supplies from entering Gibraltar and the food and labor shortage was severe” (Absurdity 352). Unlike other African American expatriates who visited and wrote about Spain, siding with the working classes and the liberal intellectuals while criticizing the dictatorial regime, Himes remains silent. 25 Once back in Barcelona, he decides to “park themselves” in Sitges. Himes chooses “park” as a means of underscoring both his love of cars, and his own sense of impermanence. “Why Sitges?” the author wonders. Simply to “pass time until it was warm enough to go back to Paris” at the end of April (Absurdity 253). Despite the magnificent views and the seafront, Himes remains secluded in the apartment trying “desperately to write.” The habitual unequal division of household chores resumes: Himes writes, reads, or rests, while Lesley does “all the marketing and incidental shopping” (Absurdity 354). Back in Paris, Himes and Lesley witness the student protests against the Vietnam War, the May 1968 riots, and the violent confrontation with the police, and decide to seek refuge in Spain. Since the villa in Moraira is still under construction, they remain in Alicante. In September 1968, the couple finds a “small and nice” ninth-floor apartment with a view of the port where they park their tired bodies, until May 1969. Fortunately, Himes’s six months in Alicante are busy and productive. He concentrates on the first volume of his autobiography, The Quality of Hurt, and starts working on Plan B, his detective novel “about a real black revolution” (Absurdity 220). Nevertheless, the writer holds on to his bitterness when he observes that his books are not to be found on

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  245 the stands; not even the Spanish translations, “published by Plaza  & Janés who had bookstands everywhere” (Absurdity 363). However, things brighten up when Himes is interviewed by two renowned African ­A merican scholars. In the first interview with John A. Williams, they tackle a range of topics such as the position of black writers in the mainstream, and racism in the U.S. Williams’s empathy for Himes shows in the title of his article: “My Man Himes: An Interview with Chester Himes.” Himes in turn is quite pleased with the resulting sixty-five-page interview, and especially touched by the introduction: It was clear, bright and warm there [in Alicante], and going down the ramp [we were] conscious once more of the strange sweetness that lingers in the Spanish air, as though the entire nation has been freshly dipped in sherry and cognac. Down on the tarmac we saw Chester and Lesley waving, and I felt a great relief. For Himes is almost sixty now and is not well, although he takes extremely good care of himself, mostly under Lesley’s guidance. (25) In a second interview, conducted by Hoyt W. Fuller, Himes continues to denounce Spanish censorship of his books (10). 26 Overall, this in-depth conversation about African American writers, both at home and abroad, focuses on mutual friends such as Baldwin, Wright, and Ellison, and is interrupted only by the silent presence of Lesley offering refreshments. Coincidentally, in Alicante, Himes sends “A Letter of Protest to His Publishers from Chester Himes in Spain” (1969). Addressed to his editors in New York, it concerns the cover of the paperback edition of his novel Run Man Run. 27 An angry Himes takes pains to demonstrate that his black heroine Linda Lou is a far cry from a “cheap black whore ready and willing to hop into bed with any man who comes along, be he black, white, drunk, diseased, old or schizophrenic.” In his conclusion, Himes suggests that if this “derogatory commentary” is meant to increase book sales, then “the American people are really and truly sick” (98). As for Lesley, while she remains in the shadows, she understands the need to speak Spanish, and begins taking lessons at Alicante’s Berlitz School. The house was finally ready in September 1969. When Himes and Packard embarked on their voluntary exile in Spain, Himes, at sixty-one and seemingly in good health, was respected and celebrated in Europe, still more than in the US. While finishing the second volume of his autobiography was a priority, this turned out to be a Herculean task once his health began to deteriorate. Little by little, as Himes grew frailer, his temper tantrums increased. All these factors combined may explain the brevity of the chapters devoted to the fifteen years in Moraira. In contrast with his autobiography, it is the correspondence with friends like Williams, Van Vechten, and Ishmael Reed, or with editors Jane Jackson and Roslyn Targ, that provides more in-depth

246  María Frías information about Himes’s state of mind and emotions, as well as about his life in Moraira. For the most part, My Life of Absurdity paints a chronology of events that mark a frustrating process of adjustment to the backward Spain of the early 1970s. Only in his personal correspondence and in some interviews does Himes refer tangentially to ­Franco’s dictatorship. For example, Charles Wright is convinced that Himes “loves Spain and the Spanish people and even approves of Franco’s government.” Wright finds Himes’s “reasons” both “logical and hilarious,” but the journalist “refuse[s] to divulge them” (115). Similarly, Ignacio Fontes quotes Himes referring to Franco as “a great man” on two occasions, but, once again, the writer does not discuss any traits demonstrating the dictator’s greatness (106–07). For Jackson, Himes is “profoundly anticommunist” (447), but, ironically, the first time Himes hears of the Spanish Republicans exiled in Mexico is through Hughes who had met young African Americans who joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Furthermore, in 1940, Himes was hired by the Communist Party to collect clothes from wealthy Hollywood residents for the thousands of Spaniards who had fought “on the other side” and had been welcomed by the Mexican government. Like Richard Wright, Himes subtly denounces the members of the Party’s fake brotherhood: “We used to go round the homes of the Hollywood sympathisers [sic]. They would invite you in for a drink, but you would never get past the kitchen” (Jenkins 100). Moreover, Himes and Packard’s arrival in Spain coincides with the incipient tourism boom when the number of foreigners and expatriates – mainly British and German – starts to increase. The couple are among the first to buy in the residential area of Pla del Mar, an exclusive tourist enclave in Moraira, but managed by inexperienced builders. All of these problems distract and irritate Himes who desperately needs peace of mind, is obsessive about his writing schedule, and loses his temper confronting what he considers Spanish laziness. When the couple arrive, they are offered a ninth-floor apartment since the house is still not finished. Himes summarizes the first day as follows: “I became convinced as the day wore on that Moraira was as racist as the American South. From what I had seen up until then, all of Spain was racist …The Spanish were racist and I became quite unpleasant and have never changed” (Absurdity 369). As usual, Himes shares his frustration with some of his closest friends. For instance, in a letter to ­Williams, he confesses: “I might say we’re living in a sort of state of shock … nothing in the house had been finished,” adding: “I am struggling to hold on to my sanity confronted with the Spanish personality.” To conclude: “It is all a Spanish nightmare” (Williams and Williams 107–08). Furthermore, Himes files a lawsuit against the construction company. On receiving this letter and the official complaint, a puzzled Williams inserts the following footnote: “I don’t believe any of Himes’s several

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  247 biographers ever mention this document, which is somewhat like a film script.” “However,” he adds, “this is a good example of Himes on the attack” (Williams and Williams 120). While Himes had serious reasons for his complaints, the delays do not seem to constitute a case of racial discrimination. Instead, many Spanish workers were ill-prepared for the tourism boom. Real estate agents and builders were selling houses faster than expected, and, as a consequence, they failed to meet deadlines. In addition, Himes harshly deplores that there was no cultural life in Moraira: it was “only inhabited by the grubbing natives and vegetating foreigners” (Williams and Williams 123). To compensate, he often drove to more cosmopolitan Altea “because it welcomed artists” (Absurdity 370). Finally, at the end of February 1970, after the six-month Spanish nightmare, the couple moved into their new home, named Casa Griot after Lesley’s Siamese cat. For Himes, 1970 was as productive a year as it was hectic. On the one hand, he completes The Quality of Hurt. On the other, good friends and publishers William and Targ were the first guests to visit Moraira. Himes took them to Benidorm, driving back through Calpe and along “the rugged coast road.” For the first time, he seems happy to have chosen Spain. Their friends “were taken by the country and understood why [they] had bought in Moraira” (Absurdity 378). Following Himes’s trail from Moraira to Benidorm and back fifty years later, I found the coastal road still narrow and hilly, offering the same spectacular views of the sea. Sadly, Himes’s heavenly Benidorm no longer exists. The old fishing village has been turned into a little Manhattan by the Mediterranean, overcrowded with tourists and suffocated by skyscrapers. 28 Himes’s second autobiographical volume, My Life of Absurdity, which concludes in 1970, was painstakingly finished in the spring of 1975. “Always a compulsive letter writer,” as Williams remarks, Himes continues corresponding with his chosen friends (“My Man” 182). Concerned about his failing health as well as the need to finish his autobiography, Himes desperately and candidly writes to Williams, confessing that “he felt like an exile in this isolated miserable part of Spain” (Absurdity 168). In the meantime, as Lesley grew more concerned, they flew to different places abroad and went to the Anglo-American Hospital in Madrid to consult specialists. In constant pain, Himes found it difficult to move around; first he needed a cane, and later he was confined to a wheelchair. Due to his frustration, Himes’s usual violent fits of rage increased significantly. Despite his failing health, Himes does little to conceal his anger against racist Spaniards. To Targ in New York, he writes in 1973: “The Spanish have treated me abominably; they have tried to make me invisible and they have cheated me in every way they can devise. Most white Europeans do the same but the Spanish do it in a way that fills me with contempt” (Letter to Roslyn Targ). Returning to the topic of invisibility, Himes complains that shopkeepers and local residents “do not see [him].” In contrast, he liked France “because everybody and [he] meant

248  María Frías everybody—the concierge as well as the intellectual—respects creative work. They understand writers and help them” (Jackson 393). To illustrate his point, Himes writes: “I get more mail than all the rest of the village [Moraira] together but the post man never speaks to me.” In the same letter, he angrily rejects a contract from a Spanish publisher (for Cast the First Stone and If He Hollers Let Him Go): “I shudder to think what a Spanish publisher could do to them, or to me through them.” In a second letter to Targ on the same date, Himes apologizes for his temper tantrum, but insists that he “will not sell Cast the First Stone to a Spanish publisher for peanuts, not with what the Spanish charge [him] for everything. I will not sell Cast the First Stone to a Spanish publisher” [original emphasis] (Letter to Roslyn Targ). Why, then, does he remain in Moraira? Lesley loves the place and “all people treat her fine.” Besides, he suspects that he “will die soon,” and “want[s] to leave Lesley a place to live and some money to live on.” Along the same lines, his correspondence with Williams expresses his frustrations: Moraira is a “very remote” and “dull” place. Two weeks later Himes thanks Williams for the “fascinating” introduction to the interview, and compares Mallorca to Moraira: “I have forgotten that Spain can smell sweet; it used to smell that way to me too fifteen years ago in Mallorca, but lately I’ve only smelled the rotten odor of caulifower” (Williams and Williams 123; 125). According to Margolis and Fabre, “[Himes’s] antagonism toward the Spanish was in part self-inflicted. He had never learned, or even tried to learn, to speak Spanish, any more than he had tried to learn French during his Paris years” (163). Fortunately, this was not the case for Lesley. However, his failing health also impacted the couple’s everyday life. By 1972, no longer able to drive his Jaguar, the author bought a small Fiat, and encouraged Lesley to learn to drive. Furthermore, worried about her future well-being, he made his will in 1974. As soon as his divorce in absentia from his first wife was finalized in November 1978, the couple married in England (Jackson 496; Margolis and Fabre 172). 29 For writer Côme Ndongo Onono, as well as other members of the black community, both in France and the US, it was but a “mariage d’intérêt” for Lesley (122–23). As Himes’s illness progresses, Lesley sells Casa Griot and has a new house built on the contiguous plot of land they owned. Named after the Siamese cat acquired after Griot’s death, Casa Deros is a single-story spacious house designed to accommodate Himes’s wheelchair. Given Himes’s temper and his increasingly frequent fits of rage, this is not an easy time for Lesley. She writes to Himes’s brother Joseph: The other morning he came into the kitchen and found his usual fruit on a plate, peeled and cut up. He threw all the plates off with his stick, broke everything and then said: “I told you I don’t want

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  249 this.” He has two fruits every morning. But why break up everything? We are on the sixth walking stick at the moment. Similarly, when she tries to assist with his correspondence, Himes screams at her: “He says that it is his business and not mine. I am only accused of taking over” (Margolis and Fabre 171).30 To Ishmael Reed, Lesley writes on February 2, 1981: “He is a true tiger in my opinion and I wouldn’t want him to change into a mouse. When he shouts from time to time, so do I. Such is life. But I don’t like to see him unable to write any more” (Margolis and Fabre 173). Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Himes used a wheelchair for seven years and was confined to bed for a year before his death on November 12, 1984, in Moraira. He was interred the following day at Benissa Cemetery.

Himes’s Funeral at the Benissa Cemetery What I clearly remember about Himes’ funeral is that it was very sad and quick. It was a cloudy, sad and gray day. It started to rain. There was no religious ceremony, as far as I recall. Nobody read anything. (Interview with Eduard Juliá Bayarri) In Spain, both national and local news media echo the writer’s death. Under the title “Del crimen a la literatura,” the news appears on the cover of El País, with Rafael Conte blaming ignorant publishers for missing the opportunity to translate Himes’s “exceptional” autobiography. Salvador Vázquez de Parga praises Himes as “one of the best crime fiction writers” (25). Isabel Llorens quotes Lesley who claims that, despite his long and debilitating disease, “[Himes] was happy [in Moraira]” because “he could see the sea from his bed, and he kept his sense of humor” (“El norteamericano”). The following day, Llorens submits an article in which Lesley’s voice is more prominent: “Mrs. Himes thinks that the so-called sociological early novels were actually very good,” and she plans to sell them in Spain (“La viuda”). She has a full agenda and is collecting all unpublished material before flying to the US soon.31 Llorens laments Mrs. Himes’s loneliness, and criticizes some of the local attitudes. The reporter also describes those who attended the funeral at Benissa Cemetery.32 On the cold, gray, windy, and rainy day that Himes was buried, no more than a dozen people were present at the short ceremony. Four men, including Bayarri, carried Himes’s coffin on their shoulders (see Appendix A). Over a bluish background, and a picture of Chester and Lesley Himes taken in Hyde Park, the memorial plaque reads (Figure 11.1): CHESTER B. HIMES ESCRITOR MISSOURI USA * 1909 MORAIRA * 1984 SU ESPOSA LESLEY

250  María Frías

Figure 11.1  Chester Himes’s headstone at Benissa cemetery. @María Frías

Still today questions linger about why the writer, a fifteen-year resident of Teulada-Moraira, was buried in Benissa, twelve kilometers from his home by the sea.

Himes’s Memorial in Moraira At the official level, I think that the Mayor and the politicians in Moraira do not care about Chester. They do not pay enough attention to what Chester represents. (Interview with Bernat Capó) Despite Himes’s recurrent manifestations of discomfort with Spain, he is the only African American writer to have been honored with a public memorial (Figure 11.2). Inaugurated on June 8, 2003, it is situated in

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  251

Figure 11.2  Chester Himes’ memorial in Moraira. @María Frías

the most privileged of locations – the promenade by Moraira’s castle. The design consists of a huge open book made of marble placed on a stone lectern. On the left-hand page – in Hollywood style – Himes’s hands are engraved, and his signature, in gold, appears below them. Further down, in capital letters, his birthplace (MISSOURI, USA) and final place of residence (MORAIRA) are inscribed. On the right-hand page, there is a picture of a smiling, young, bare-chested, and healthy-­ looking Himes, holding Griot, the Siamese cat. At the top, we read: CHESTER B. HIMES WRITER. At the bottom, the memorial is signed by the designer and the sculptor: “created by R Meindorfer & Paco.”33 Lesley Himes was present at the inaugural ceremony, accompanied by close friends and sponsors of the memorial.34 Without doubt, this memorial commemorates Himes’s literary career as well as his presence in ­Moraira. In a lengthy conversation, Rosalía Meindorfer told me that the location could not have been better. When I objected to the choice of a bare-chested Himes, she argued that it was perfect for two reasons: first, Moraira looks out to the sea, it has warm weather, and there are a lot of tourists; and second, Himes looks in good shape and sexy. Besides, she adds, his widow liked it.

252  María Frías What I have found intriguing in my search for Himes is that although Lesley Packard spent more than twenty-five years with him, he does not say much about her in his autobiography. After his death, it is even harder to find substantial information about her, and her role as guardian of his literary legacy. As for her relative invisibility in My Life of Absurdity, Lesley responds that due to her husband’s declining health she was forced to add to her many tasks, that of a strict editor: “Chester had a hard time finishing it. We got into arguments because I’d take the manuscript back and say, ‘Chester, this wasn’t like that.’ He had me sleeping with someone I didn’t even know.” Furthermore, Lesley is not shy to admit that she was “very good at faking his signature,” that she “[took] over the books,” and corresponded with “very important people” because she “knew exactly what he was going to say” (Ostrowski). Lesley summarizes her years with Himes as “very full, fun and fascinating,” and adds that he “was witty, amusing, and kind to everybody, except for stupid people and racists. He couldn’t stand racists and that’s why he left the United States, though he never stopped loving his country” (Madrid 4). In contrast with Himes’s tirades against dull Spain and the lazy and incompetent Spanish, Lesley soon adjusted to their self-imposed exile. She argues that “the only problem with coming [to Moraira] was that it got to be too comfortable” since, by that time, “[Himes] didn’t have to work” (Ostrowski). Finally, the Amistad Research Foundation obituary stresses “the playful nature of their relationship and highlights Lesley’s seemingly endless capacity for patience and support” (Salinas). Her support never failed Himes but, as his agent and copyright holder, she faced difficult times. Although most of his works were published in Spain in the early 1970s, not all of them have received the attention of critics or readers. Moreover, the two volumes of Himes’s autobiography (La cualidad del sufrimiento [1972], and El absurdo de mi vida [1976]) were not translated until 1988. Himes would have liked their launch during La Semana Negra, held in Gijón (Asturias). Lesley attended the event, as did Juan Madrid, a writer of crime fiction who had visited Himes’s in Moraira (Figure 11.3). Lesley remained in Casa Deros for several more years, before moving to Benitatchell, a nearby town, in 2004. She worked diligently to have Himes’s work translated into various languages. The copyright for subsequent publications appears under her name. When I visited the Public Library in Teulada, I saw numerous translations of Himes’s books. I also noticed his widow’s donation, and hand-written dedications, signed in both English and in Spanish in 2004: “For the Town Hall Library in Teulada. Lesley Himes.” Although Lesley did not remarry, she did have a steady relationship with a member of the British expatriate community. Years later, as her health declined, she moved to an exclusive home for British residents (San Antonio, Benissa)

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  253

Figure 11.3  L  esley Himes at the Semana Negra (Gijón). Published in A Quemarropa, July 1, 1988.

where she died on June 16, 2010. Ironically, she is buried in Chester Himes’s niche, but her name does not appear on the tombstone. That presence in absence might serve as a metaphor for Packard’s role in Himes’s life.

Worry Days Blues We have traveled in Spain with three educated white women who were prominent in Himes’s life and autobiography and who endured Himes’s fits of rage, compulsive and abusive jealousy, and his physical and psychological abuse. Each shared a unique phase in the life of the man, the writer, and the celebrity whose shattered ego suffered the consequences

254  María Frías of racism. All three remained by his side, accepting the role of the perfect personal assistant and, most importantly, loving him. Frequently, too, they fought back, and rarely surrendered. Himes’s vision of Spain is both controversial and contradictory. He is a witness to Franco’s dictatorship but remains mute about fascist Spain. He hears about Lorca, but does not seem to be interested in his work or his fate. On one occasion, Himes participates in a panel of international writers at the Alliance Française in Paris with Spanish writer José María Gironella. Himes does not greet Gironella or introduce himself because, since Gironella spoke in French, he could not understand a single word he said. In his ignorance, Himes wrongly describes the Nationalist writer and Franco supporter as follows: “[­Gironello, sic] had written a book about the Spanish civil war which gave such an unflattering portrait of Franco that he became an international celebrity overnight” (Hurt 165). Overall, we could conclude that, in Spain, Himes does not behave any differently from the way he had in France where he did not even think about the Algerian War (Jackson 368). 35 In a similar vein, when Himes is planning to move to Spain, “he assumed that if he avoided touchy issues” – meaning the Civil War, ­Franco’s dictatorship, or the Catholic Church – “the state police would not pursue him” (Jackson 473). Interestingly, the three women who travel with him seem to adjust to and enjoy the Spanish way of life. They try to learn the language, meet interesting people, socialize with both the locals and the expatriate community, and get drunk on ­Spanish gin – while Himes shows mixed feelings about the locations depending on the lover who accompanies him. As he writes to Van Vechten, the three women often seem to be little more than bodies to Himes and, at least in his eyes, they act like “crutches” rather than individuals in their own right. Even so, they all shared in Himes’s hurt and his life of “absurdity.” It is precisely in the vicinity of Moraira, in the final years of Himes’s life, that ordinary people – all locals who happened to connect with him – discovered the other side of the restless and choleric man: his generosity, sense of humor, and convivial nature. Therefore, it is ironic that the man who abhorred all forms of racism and was repelled by social injustice at home seems to have been indifferent to the crucial years of Franco’s dictatorship.

Notes 1 The in situ research for this essay was made possible, thanks to the generosity of the people of the Teulada-Moraira municipality: the Town Council (Jaume Buigues, Culture Department); the Tourist Office at La Senieta (Maruska); and the Public Library (librarian Maite Blasco). I also want to express my gratitude to the Town Councils of Benitatchell (Quico Llobell

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  255 Marqués, Culture Department) and Benissa (Juani, Culture Department); the third generation of Hotel Miramar’ owners (Xávea); taxi drivers Toni Ivars and Paquito “el joyero” (both sources and explorers); and Pablo of Venta la Chata for his informative tour. This field research was partially funded by the University of A Coruña’s CLEU (Cultures and Literatures from the United States) and the University of Vigo’s Bodies in Transit Research Project. I thank the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans, for providing access to correspondence and visual material from Chester and Lesley Himes’s Papers (CLHP). 2 In My Life of Absurdity, Himes writes: I needed women desperately, not just for sex but safety, to help me control my temper. And I needed women too to help restore my ego, which had taken such a beating in New York. I needed women to comfort me, to wait on me, to cook for me, to keep house for me, to talk to me, to assure me I was not alone. And I needed English-speaking women to translate for me as much as to make love to me for I couldn’t speak the language (31–32). 3 In Teulada-Moraira, 51% of the population are foreigners (mostly British and German). Moraira is a coastal town, while Teulada is located in the interior. 4 I am borrowing here from Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942). 5 Fictional name: Alva Trent Van Olden Barneveldt (Hurt 154). 6 They married on August 13, 1937. According to Himes, his wife deserted him in 1950, but refused to grant him a divorce. 7 In her correspondence, Willa refers, instead, to The Silver Altar (Letter to Himes, December 21, 1954). Her autobiography was published under the title Garden without Flowers (1957). Her literary name is Willa Thompson. 8 Wright’s epithet refers to the discriminatory practices of white publishers. 9 In 1963, Himes writes concerning the royalties a literary agent owes him for “[his] Garden without Flowers” (Williams and Williams 40). For her part, a clearly upset Willa asks Himes to contact their agent in view of his “doubts” about contract details concerning their Silver Altar (Letter to Himes, June 19, 1956). Note that in CLHP Willa’s correspondence appears under Trierweiler. 10 Partly autobiographical, the novel is based on Himes and Vandi Haygood’s scandalous crossing of racial borders, and their adulterous and “torrid affair” (Jackson 198). Haygood died in New York at forty of a drug overdose in 1953, while Himes was in town to visit her. 11 In his controversial Pagan Spain, Wright is also a keen observer of Spanish women’s sexuality. He concludes that despite the sexual coercion exerted by the Church “Spain seemed one vast brothel” (219). 12 “Spanish Gin” was published in French as “Le Gin Espagnol” (1982). 13 Himes might have loved to learn that Lorca was fascinated with Harlem, black culture, and the blues’s soul (Frías 144–47). 14 Published as The Primitive (1955), Himes never accepted the shortening of his original title. 15 However, only a few weeks after her return from Spain, a lonely and nostalgic Willa remembers Himes’s “Harvest of Christmas trees in Palma” (Letter to Himes, December 21, 1954). 16 Publishers urged Himes to disguise his new lover’s identity. Thus, Fisher becomes Marlene Beherens, probably after German-American actress Marlene Dietrich.

256  María Frías 17 According to Margolis and Fabre, “[Himes] didn’t like clean, polite ­Denmark any more than regimented Germany … he preferred the madness and inefficiency of Spain” (104). 18 According to Himes’s biographer, Lesley grew up on a farm in Suffolk, ­England, and “attended boarding schools” (Jackson 393). 19 La Reine des pommes (For Love of Imabelle), published in Spanish under the title Por amor de Imabelle (1980), has been translated into Catalan (Per amor a Imabelle, 1987) and Euskera (Imabelleren Amodioz, 1985) 20 A Case of Rape was finally published in the U.S. in 1980. 21 La tercera generación was published in Spain in 1991. 22 From 1954 to 1970, homosexuality was officially criminalized in Spain by The Vagrancy Act, and after 1970 by the The Social Danger and Rehabilitation Law. 23 The Miramar Hotel is a family business now run by the third generation. 24 Dating from 1825, La Venta la Chata was originally a stagecoach inn and hostel for travelers. 2 5 Richard Wright claimed that traveling to Spain “repelled” him due to ­Franco’s dictatorship (5). 26 Fuller (1923–1981), writer and journalist, left for Europe in 1957. Like Himes, he lived in France and in Mallorca. In his autobiography Journey to Africa (1971), he agrees with Himes and complains about the US discriminatory cultural landscape. 27 Published in Spain as Corre, hombre (1988). 28 The documentary El hombre que embotelló el sol (2016) illustrates these changes. 29 Jackson argues that, compared to Willa or Regine, neither Himes’s first wife (Jane Lucinda) nor Lesley receive much attention in his autobiographies (488–99). 30 Lesley Himes to Joseph and Estelle Himes, July 4, 1977. 31 Lesley Himes donated the papers to the Amistad Research Foundation, Tulane University. 32 For a complete list, see Llorens, “El norteamericano.” Journalist Bernat Capó was the only person present from the literary world. 33 German Baroness Rosalía Meindorfer has lived in Moraira for almost forty years. 34 According to Meindorfer, Sixto García and José Císcar (former Major of Teulada-Moraira) were instrumental in celebrating Himes as a resident of Moraira and an internationally known writer. 35 The following words are very revealing: “I don’t need Spain for my work. I hate Spain. I hate almost every place I have ever lived, except for the place I have created [Harlem]” (Fabre and Skinner 122). 36 Interview conducted on October 4, 2016, at Teulada’s Culture Department, thanks to Jaume Buigues. After a long conversation, we walked to the barber-shop. 37 I was unable to identify these “two black young men.” However, M ­ argolis and Fabre refer to a “paella party” held at the Himes’s unfinished new house, Casa Deros, in Moraira, on August 1981. The guests were “a few black marines from the USS Forrestal” (173). 38 Interview conducted on October 7, 2016, again possible thanks to Buigues. 39 Some interviewers note that Himes spoke with a lisp (Fontes 1980). One of his biographer claims that his speech impediment was due to the first stroke he suffered in 1963 (Sallis 287). 40 Himes lived in California in the early 1940s. He tried to get a job in the Hollywood film industry, but was rejected. His “bitter novel of protest” If

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  257

41 42 43 4 4 45 46 47 48 49

50

He Hollers Let Him Go is based on his working experience in California’s shipyards and war plants (Himes, Hurt 74–75; Margolis and Fabre 48). Himes’s works are peppered with titles and lines from jazz and blues songs such as “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child” and “Too Much Meat and No Potatoes.” Facilitated by Buigues, this conversation took place at Capó’s studio in Benissa on October 3, 2016. Capó is eighty-eight years old, and has been involved in local journalism and cultural affairs throughout his life. Packard is always described as a very elegant and attractive woman, but there is no information about her modeling career. Doctor Femenía was Himes’s personal physician. Note that Capó frequently refers to Himes as Chester, as do most local people. In his introduction to Himes’s The Harlem Cycle, African ­A merican writer and film director Van Peebles describes Lesley as “Chester’s ­ladyfriend-cum-watchdog” (ix). I met Stott in Benitatchell while doing research on Packard. I thank her for authorizing me to use some visual material. See Sollis 327, and Margolis and Fabre 170. Invited to attend the Semana Negra (Gijón, 1988), and present Himes’s two-volume autobiography, Lesley tells journalists that she is working on a book about her life with Himes, and that she has already written eighty pages (Mora). The house is located in Calle Secretari Vicente Pastor. The numbers seven and nine remain on the facade.

Works Cited Capó, Bernat. “Rosas para los Himes.” Bernat Capó: 99 artículos. Alicante: Agua Clara, 2006. 165–66. Chester and Lesley Himes’s Papers (CLHP). Amistad Research Center. Tulane University. Conte, Rafael. “Del crimen a la literatura.” El País 14 Nov. 1984: n.p. Web. El hombre que embotelló el sol. Dir. Óscar Bernàcer. Nakamura Films, 2016. Fabre, Michel. “Chester Himes Direct.” Fabre and Skinner. 125–42. Fabre, Michel, and Robert E. Skinner, eds. Conversations with Chester Himes. Jackson: U of Mississipi P, 1995. Fontes, Ignacio. “Chester Himes, el maestro negro de la novela negra: Yo he sido un delincuente.” Interviú 25 Dec. 1980: 105–07. Frías, María. “Nights of Flamenco and Blues in Spain: From Sorrow Songs to Soleá and Back.” Blackening Europe: The African American Experience. Ed. Heike Raphael-Hernandez. New York: Routledge, 2004. 141–55. Fuller, Hoyt W. “Traveller on the Long, Rough, Lonely, Old Road: An Interview with Chester Himes.” Black World/Negro Digest 21.5 (1972): 4–22; 87–98. Hernton, Calvin. Sex and Racism in America. Garden City: Doubleday & ­Company, 1965. Himes, Chester. “A Letter of Protest to his Publishers from Chester Himes in Spain.” Black World/Negro Digest 18 May 1969: 98. ———. Imabelleren Amodioz. Trans. Jexux Eizagirre. Iruñea: Igela Argitaletxea, 1991. ———. “Le Gin Espagnol.” Le manteau de rêve. Paris: Lieu Commun, 1982. 71–86.

258  María Frías ———. La reine des pommes. Paris: Gallimard, 1999. ———. Letter to Carl Van Vechten. 17 Dec. 1957. CLHP. ———. Letter to Lesley Packard. 28 July 1959. CLHP. ———. Letter to Roslyn Targ. 26 Nov. 1973. CLHP. ———. Lonely Crusade/La croisade de Lee Gordon. New York: Knopf, 1947. ———. My Life of Absurdity. New York: Thunders’s Mouth, 1976. ———. Per amor a Imabelle. Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1987. ———. “Pink Dress.” Unpublished. ———. The Primitive. New York: New American Library, 1956. ———. The Quality of Hurt. New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1971. ———. “Spanish Gin.” The Collected Stories of Chester Himes. Boston: De Capo P, 2000. 396–402. Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on A Road. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1942. ———. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1978. Jackson, Lawrence P. Chester B. Himes. A Biography. New York: Norton, 2017. Jenkins, David. “Profile of Chester Himes.” Fabre and Skinner. 95–102. Llorens, Isabel. “El norteamericano Chester Himes, uno de los grandes de la novela negra, fue enterrado en Benissa (Alicante).” El País 14 Nov. 1984: n.p. Web. ——— “La viuda de Chester Himes considera que su esposo no fue sólo un autor de novelas negras.” El Pais 15 Nov. 1984: n.p. Web. Madrid, Juan. “La última cita.” A Quemarropa 30 June 1988: 4–5. Margolis, Edward, and Michel Fabre, ed. The Several Lives of Chester Himes. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1997. Mora, Rosa. “La Semana Negra rinde homenaje a Chester Himes. La viuda del escritor, presente en Gijón, escribe un libro sobre su marido.” El Pais 2 July 1988: n.p. Web. Onono, Côme Ndongo. Chester Himes: Tragédie et Oralité. Nigeria: ­Publibook, 2007. Ostrowski, Mark. “Lesley Himes. A Life after Chester.” Spike Magazine 1 Aug. 1999: n. p. Web. Pirozek, Sarah. “Obituary Lesley Himes.” The Guardian 7 July 2010: n.p. Web. Salinas, Andrew. In Memoriam Lesley Himes. 2 June 2010. CLHP. Sallis, James. Chester Himes: A Life. New York: Walker, 2000. Thompson, Willa. Garden without Flowers. Boston: Beacon, 1957. Trierweiler, Willa. Letter to Himes. 21 Dec. 1954. CLHP. ———. Letter to Himes. 19 June 1956. CLHP. Van Peebles, Melvin. “The Unconquered.” The Harlem Cycle. Vol. 1. By ­Chester Himes. Edinburgh: Payback, 1997. vii–xv. Vázquez de Parga, Salvador. “Desaparece uno de los más conocidos autores de novela negra.” La Vanguardia 14 Nov. 1984. 25. Williams, John A. “My Man Himes: An Interview with Chester Himes.” ­A mistad: Writing of Black History and Culture 1 (1970): 25–93. Williams, John A., and Lori Williams. Dear Chester, Dear John. Letters between Chester Himes and John A. Williams. Ohio: Wayne State UP, 2008. Wright, Charles. “Don Chester Himes: Evening with an Exile.” Fabre and Skinner. 112–15. Wright, Richard. Pagan Spain. New York: Harper, 1957.

Appendix A

Interviews

Juan Ivars Ronda:36 “Himes Allowed Me, a Barber, to Enter his World.” For many years, I was Chester Himes’s barber in Teulada. He used to call me “mi barbero.” My name is Juan, and I am seventy-eight years old. I opened “Barbería Hermanos Ivars,” when I was in my mid-twenties (around 1965). I worked with my brother, and it was just the two of us. The location was fine - just two minutes from the Town Hall. In those years, it was a very profitable business from the start because I gained lots of foreign customers by word of mouth. Chester Himes was one of them. There were other barbershops in Moraira, near where he lived, but he chose mine. When he first came to my barbershop, I did not know anything about him. I had no idea he was a writer. I just did my job as usual, and he was just one more customer. But this is a small village, and people started talking about a moreno who lived in Moraira, had a beige Jaguar, and was a writer, and only then I thought: “I know him!” It was in the early seventies when the writer started coming to my barbershop. He might be in his early sixties, but he looked much younger. He came at least once a month for many years. Lesley always drove their big car to the door, dropped him off, and rushed to park the car. She walked back to the shop, took a seat, and waited there until he was done. There were two young black men who came with Chester and Lesley, too, and they all sat and waited. 37 Lesley could speak Spanish very well. He only spoke a few words, but we could understand each other. I noticed that Chester was an authoritative person by the way he sometimes talked to Lesley. However, he was not a demanding customer. I was always busy, but he would patiently wait his turn. I remember Chester always asked to have his hair cut very short on the sides, and to have his white beard trimmed. We would not say a word while I was cutting his hair. After I had finished, he took a mirror, checked that everything was as he wanted, and said: “¡Bien!” He always left a good tip – ten pesetas – which was a lot of money back then. Besides, locals never left tips. I think that Chester

260  María Frías trusted me as a barber and soon started communicating with me through signs, one Spanish word here or there, and Lesley helped. At first, I was surprised because I was just a barber, and he was a writer. I kept my distance because I respected him both as a customer and a writer. However, he allowed me to enter his world – a world I knew nothing about. Soon, there was no distance between the barber and the writer. I learned more things about him, and it was Himes who started these conversations (original emphasis). After some time, he told me his working routine: “I talk, and Lesley writes on the typewriter.” He said that he lived in Pla del Mar in Moraira, and that his favorite place was the big terrace (“el mirador”), because he had an amazing view of the sea. I had never been in Pla del Mar, and he invited me to visit, but I did not. I never saw the “mirador.” For a barber, I was quite satisfied with his friendship. One day, he told me he had something for me. Some weeks later, he brought one of his books, El Primitivo – it was signed: “A mi barbero de Teulada, Alicante, España.” I was moved by the dedication because he used to call me “mi barbero.” Coming from my customer, the writer, it is difficult to explain what that gift meant to me. That was the best tip. I took that book as if he had handed me the world. I remember I worked very long hours then, and did not have much free time, but I managed to read the whole book. I had never read anything like that before. The protagonists are lonely people who live very fast, who drink a lot, and who have passionate sex. They are not “hippies” – as we called them – but “bohemians.” I liked the book, but the writer never asked me. I still keep that copy of El Primitivo. It means a lot to me. Later, Chester became sicker. As most barbers, I could read my customers’ faces, and the writer’s was no exception. Besides, now Lesley had to help him walk in. I tried to cheer him up: “You will get better.” “It will pass.” But deep inside, and by looking into his eyes, I knew it would only get worse. One day he stopped coming, and I heard he had started using a wheelchair. I never saw him again. Some people told me he had died. They also told me he was not buried in Teulada, but in Benissa. Why not in Teulada, I wondered. If he had been allowed to choose, he would have chosen Teulada. From what he had told me, he was happy in Moraira. He loved his “mirador,” his villa, the view of the sea … I still cannot understand how the people of Teulada allowed this to happen. Somebody must have convinced Lesley to do so. Perhaps the local authorities or politicians had some interest in having Himes buried in Benissa. Who knows? Perhaps the writer is happier in the promenade in Moraira where his memorial is located. He is now close to the sea. Whenever I go to Moraira I pay a visit to the monument. I will never forget his words: “mi barbero” (Figures 11.4 and 11.5).

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  261

Figure 11.4  Juan Ivars Ronda in his barbershop. @María Frías

Figure 11.5  Juan Ivars Ronda with copy of El Primitivo. @María Frías

262  María Frías

Eduard Juliá Bayarri: “I Am Sorry that Himes Never Showed Any Interest in Spanish Culture.”38 It was by chance that I met Chester Himes and his wife Lesley when they were living in Pla del Mar, 13 [Casa Griot]. It was around 1977. By then, I was also living in Moraira, a small fishing village. We all knew each other. If someone heard about a job somewhere, he would tell his friends. That is how I heard Lesley was looking for a handyman to take care of the house and fix stuff. For me, it was easier to get the job because I could speak English. She personally introduced me to Himes because she knew that I loved literature. Sometimes, it was difficult for me to follow Himes, because he slurred, but we understood each other just right. 39 My job consisted of helping in the garden or the swimming pool, painting the outdoor benches, or making a pathway of little stones. I was familiar with construction work, and whenever they needed me, Lesley would call. Like Himes used to say, I was not perezoso like other workers he criticized. Chester Himes used to complain that Spanish people could not speak English – but he could not speak Spanish either. We first started talking when I told him I knew his country well because I had hitchhiked all over the United States. I remember mentioning the names of the different places that I had visited, like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kansas, North ­Carolina, Arkansas, Oregon, New York, or California, and Himes nodding his head in agreement and saying: “Yes! Yes! I have been there, too” or “Yes! I know that place, too” or “Wait!” Wait! I know California quite well. I worked in California for a while and it was fucking hard work.”40 I noticed that he always smiled when we started talking about my trip to the USA. But we also talked about books and writers: about Kerouac’s On the Road - he liked that novel very much – or authors like Whitman or Capote. I have heard of or read most of them, and Himes seemed quite impressed. Another recurrent topic of conversation was music. He used to name his favorite jazz musicians, like Lester Young, but he had a long list: Charlie Parker, Mingus, Duke Ellington, or Armstrong. All those black musicians went on tour in Paris while he was living there (in the mid-50s and 60s). However, he could not stand country music. He did not like Bob Dylan (who was very popular even in Spain), because he thought that both Dylan and country music sounded “too simple.” We, of course, talked about the blues, but “NO rock!” or “NO country music!” he would shout. I was a musician myself, but never dared to tell him. Instead, I preferred to listen to him talk about black music, black musicians, and singers like Billie Holiday, because he had met incredible artists. Himes was el maestro; I was just a student. We talked during my lunch breaks. He would walk up and down the terrace that was facing

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  263 the sea, or sat on the porch – just the two of us. Lesley would never interfere. She was inside the house. I have very good memories of the time we spent together just sitting there, and talking about books, music, hitchhiking, and writers we loved. After my lunch break was over, I went back to work, and Himes went back to his studio or remained sitting there looking at the sea. I think Himes liked me because I could speak English. I was always on time. I listened to Lesley’s instructions. If Himes once said “No comments about Spanish workers,” he might be right. The “tourist boom” took place in Spain in the late sixties and early seventies. All over ­Moraira and the coast of Alicante, empresarios were building villas and selling them in no time. Lots of English and German people were buying from Calpe to Denia, both by the seaside and in the mountains. I understand Himes’s complaints about lazy and unprofessional builders because some companies and estate agents took advantage of the situation, and hired unskilled people. Customers, like Himes, had the right to complain. Both Himes and his wife Lesley were very demanding people. Having said this, there is something difficult for me to understand. I personally think Himes was a lonely person. He did not have friends, I mean Spanish friends. He used the car – his famous Jaguar – even to go grocery shopping! Furthermore, Himes could not speak Spanish, but he never tried to learn it. In France, he could not speak French. In Spain he could not speak Spanish. I think that his Spanish illiteracy was a big problem because natives could not understand him (not many Spaniards could speak English), and, even worse, they missed the chance to meet the first “moreno” writer who came to live in Moraira – and a famous one at that! It is a shame that, as a writer and intellectual, Himes did not show any interest in learning about Spanish culture either. It is sad because Himes was a very important role model for me then. He went from being a prisoner to becoming a master of detective fiction. He was a delinquent, but he changed his way of life. He came to Europe, and worked hard to become the first African American writer of detective stories. Writing, as a profession, is hard. You need time and energy. You write in solitude. I am saying all this because I like to write and love reading, too. For me, every time I went to work at Chester’s house, I was going to the home of un maestro, and I learned a lot. But I am sorry about Himes’s lack of interest in the art of philology. Personally, I think that if Himes had been literate in Spanish, he would have learned a lot. There was no need for him to drive to Altea, either. I wish he had lived ten years longer! We could have attended lectures; I would have taken him to music concerts (all kinds of music); I would have introduced him to members of local and modern bands; and hang around with painters or other writers so that he could have learned about the richness of our culture – both Spanish and Valencian culture. We are

264  María Frías in the land of folk music and musicians! When Chester was living here, there were Centros Culturales both in Teulada and Benissa. I cannot believe that Himes lived in Moraira for almost fifteen years, and never learned about our bandas and corales. As a writer and a musician myself, that is frustrating, knowing how much he enjoyed both music and literature.41 Some people say Himes was an irascible, bad-tempered, and angry man. However, I have very fond memories of him. In particular, I remember the day he went into his studio, and brought two books out with him: Todos muertos and Algodón viene a Harlem. I had told Himes my favorite book was Por amor de Imabelle, and asked him to sign it for me. He wrote: “To my friend Edouard.” By that time, Himes was starting to use a wheelchair. I could see he was really touched by my request; I even saw tears in his eyes. Soon his health started to deteriorate. He could hardly walk by himself, and Lesley took care of him. I kept working for her at Pla del Mar, 15, until 1986 – two years later, after Himes passed away. Apart from working part-time as a handyman, I had my own news kiosk, BLAU – it means blue in German and Valencian/Catalan. I sold newspapers (both local and international), and books – I sold Himes’s detective novels available in Spanish. Lesley would stop by to buy The ­Herald Tribune, and kept me informed: “He is mad.” “He is screaming and breaking cups and dishes, and then he goes back to himself.” One day, she came very early, told me her husband had just died, and asked me to help her organize the funeral. I asked her: “What can I do?” “Call the Press,” she said, and I called journalists from El País, Levante, and Provincias. What I clearly remember about Himes’s funeral is that it was very sad and quick. It was a cloudy and gray day. It was starting to rain and people were carrying umbrellas. There was no religious ceremony, as far as I recall, and there were about a dozen people. Nobody read anything. Together with Manolo Bru plus two other men, we carried Himes’s coffin to niche number 56. I do remember Capó brought some flowers. Lesley was speechless. It was a respectful, brief, and silent ceremony. Bernat Capó’s version differs from mine. I can only say that there was nobody pushing or “kicking” to make Himes’s coffin fit in the relatively small lot. It was, I insist, a respectful event. Everybody expressed his condolences to Lesley, and we left Benissa’s cemetery. To this day I  cannot understand why, after living his last fifteen years in Moraira, he was not left to rest in peace there.

Bernat Capó (Journalist): “If it Were Not for Lesley, Himes Would Have Been a More Popular Writer in Spain.” 42 I am a journalist. I do not find dates or figures relevant. I am interested in the human factor, and that is why I became intrigued by Himes when

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  265 I first heard he had moved to Moraira. I wrote a couple of pieces about Himes before I actually met him. In one of those articles, I highlighted his fondness for cats, because I had seen a picture of the writer with their Siamese cat Griot. In preparation for those articles, I read his books, and gathered information about his life. I learned he was living in Paris when he met Lesley, who was a model, and they got married.43 He thought about living in Greece, but it did not work out, and that is the reason why he had a house built in Moraira. I also wanted to interview him, but Lesley was extremely protective of Himes’s intimacy. It was thanks to a friend of mine who was working for the Himes as a carpenter that I had a chance to visit them. I remember I went with my friend to Casa Griot in Pla del Mar, to ask for an interview, but Lesley was mad at me. When we were introduced, she refused to talk to me. I told her that I needed her for the translation since Himes could not speak Spanish. She said: “He does not feel well.” I ­insisted: “Should I come back tomorrow?” “No, it is not necessary,” she responded. That is how I figured it out. Lesley did not want anybody to interfere with Himes’s life. As a matter of fact, her only local friend was Doctor Femenía’s wife: blond, lively, and young like Lesley.44 I had two serious arguments with her. This was the first one. Lesley told me she did not like the pieces I had written about Himes. She shouted at me: “You come to our place to interview Chester and you have written about Himes with his cat, but nothing about his works!”45 Now, I had seen the picture somewhere, and thought that scene portrayed a different side of Himes’s personality – a sensitive soul – bearing in mind the type of violent literature he wrote. Lesley would not allow me to do my job. As far as she was concerned, I was not welcome. The second time, years later, I asked Lesley for an interview with Himes. I found him sitting on his wheelchair in Pla del Mar and holding a gun on his knees. Lesley would not allow me to get close to him. Once again, she started shouting at me, but told me that I could have that interview on one condition: she would read and edit the text, and see whether she could authorize me to publish it. I made it very clear that nobody was going to edit my text or Himes’s voice. I had worked and written in Franco’s time, and none of my directors had ever censored my articles. Now, Lesley was asking to edit my conversation with Himes! Going back to my piece on Himes and his cat, I can say that Lesley was the problem. Chester [original emphasis] was Lesley’s cat. She could do anything she wanted with Chester, but nobody, except her, could approach him. Not without her authorization. Chester was under Lesley’s thumb!46 On Himes’s Funeral I attended Himes’s burial in the Benissa cemetery. The workers used some escalator to move him up to the fourth row. The coffin did not

266  María Frías fit in the niche, and the funeral home assistant kicked Himes’s feet to make it fit inside. That is why I say that Himes was buried a patadas. It is not a secret. I have written about it. But the question is: “Why is Chester buried in Benissa?” People say it was because there was no morgue either in Moraira or in Teulada, but the real problem is that Lesley refused to have a wake. She did not want to spend the night with the body of her husband in their house either, as is customary in many countries, Spain included. Lesley insists she does not want to know anything about the coffin: “Take him out!” “Take him out!” she repeats. The only morgue available is in Benissa – but it is far from a modern funeral home. The truth is that Himes’s coffin was locked in a room where Chester’s body is left alone. All these stories about Lesley trying to avoid photographers, to protect Himes’s intimacy – and cover his coffin with a white cloth and chrysanthemums from her garden is just literature. The truth is that Chester spent that night alone, and Lesley could not care less. The burial ceremony was held the following day. It was a terribly cold day in November. I had contacted at least eight local journalists from Alicante, Valencia, and Madrid. All of them were at the funeral, but, unfortunately, not all of them were well informed about the writer. Throughout the ceremony, I could see some tears run down Lesley’s face, or so it seemed. I personally think she was not moved by the loss of her husband. We should not forget that she was a beautiful young woman, twenty years younger than him, tall and blonde, and a model –or looked just like one – and she knew it. Chester was already famous in France when they first met; he was a well-known writer, and Lesley was infatuated with him. It was a relationship of convenience. However, it was Lesley who took care of Chester when he got sick, and she deserves some consideration. After Lesley died, she was put to rest in the same niche. Personally, I think it was Dr. Femenía’s wife’s decision. Cruel as it might sound, Himes is obviously widely known by fans of detective fiction, but if you ask in Moraira, Valencia, or Alicante, people have no idea about him. Even today, his works are not well known yet. It was only on the fifteenth anniversary of his death, in 1999, that an International Conference was organized in Moraira to celebrate his life and works. I remember the American Embassy was informed about the event, and invited to pay homage to Himes’s distinguished literary career. To my surprise, and the organizers’ disappointment, the Embassy neither responded nor sent a representative. Why this silence? Firstly, as I wrote somewhere else, Himes was soon forgotten after his death. Perhaps, for the US Embassy, fifteen years was a long time to remember him, though his novels were still alive in public libraries, bookshops, and publishing houses. Secondly, I personally think it was a disturbing example of racism. Himes was a black writer.

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  267 On Chester Himes’s Memorial As far as I know, the idea for Himes’s Memorial in Moraria came from some people in Alicante. Nobody asked my opinion or informed me about the project. I do know that Rosalía Meindorfer and Paco were involved in the design, but I have never met Rosalía. I was not invited to the inauguration ceremony either. The only thing I know is that they all came to be around Lesley, and get in the picture with her. Frankly, I do like the idea of a memorial for Himes in Moraira – he lived and died there – but I do not like the design. Himes is naked and holding Griot the cat. Instead, there should be the silhouette of a black man, looking at the sea, made of wind and rain-resistant material. What could we do both to keep and restore Himes’s memory? It is difficult to say. For years, I have brought flowers for Chester and Lesley on All Saints’ Day to the Cemetery of Benissa. But that is personal. At the official level, I think that the mayor and the politicians in Moraira do not care about Chester; they do not pay attention to what he represents. I say it openly because I was in charge of the Culture Department for many years in Benissa, and one can see my line of work. I can only say that if it were not for Lesley’s stubbornness, Chester’s literary legacy would still be alive.

Jo Stott: “Lesley Took Good Care of Chester Himes’s Literary Legacy”47 I met Lesley when she was having her house renovated in 2004. She had just moved to Benitatchell from Moraira, and was not happy with her builders. Why did she move from Moraira to Benitachell? I think it was for economic reasons. She mentioned it was very expensive to maintain Pla del Mar with the swimming pool, and the garden, plus the size of the house. Besides, she liked Benitatchell. We saw each other frequently, and she openly talked about Chester and herself. Lesley could tell me the most amazing stories. Once, they were having dinner at an expensive restaurant somewhere in France, and they did not know anybody. They started eating and drinking expensive champagne. When they asked for the bill, they realized they had no money, and, what was worse, they were very drunk. Chester abruptly left the restaurant and told her not to move. Time passed, and Lesley was anxiously waiting for him, until he showed up with hundreds of francs. They paid the bill and left the restaurant. She also told me sad stories like when Chester was in a wheelchair and he could get on her nerves, but I never heard anything negative about him. Chester, too, was absolutely in love with her. They were a very loving couple. Another sad story occurred when Lesley and Chester went to spend some time with

268  María Frías her family in England. They had an argument, and her niece threw a cup of wine over Lesley’s head and face. From then on, they stopped talking to each other.48 Lesley was the type of person that never goes unnoticed. She was always looking elegant and nice. She was glamorous and enjoyed shopping. Clothes were one of the most important things for her. She had a very exclusive wardrobe and would only wear good brands, and quite expensive. She also loved shoes, and I remember she had lots and lots of shoes. Accessories, too, were very important for her. According to Lesley, every piece had to match the clothes she was wearing: makeup, nails, earrings, bracelets, bags, and shoes. She told me I should never wear silver and gold. And she meant it. Even to go to the market or just grocery shopping here, Lesley would be obsessively matching. And she never wore flat shoes – not even when she was wearing jeans or suffering from high blood pressure. Not even when she had problems with her feet, and the doctor told her not to wear high heels. As they say today, she was a fashion victim, and, as far as fashion is concerned, Lesley loved big sun hats. Her friend Baronesa Rosalia de Meindorfer loved them too, and I personally think they competed to see who was wearing the larger one, each in their own style. As for her personality, she had a strong character, was extraordinarily self-confident, and always wanted things her way. For example, she was the kind of person who wants to be in charge and get all the attention. Perhaps that is the reason why she sometimes talked down to people. She was a hard-working woman, too. I know because after she moved to Benitatchell, Lesley spent long hours in her office taking care of Chester’s literary legacy. She had to work and make money. As she used to say, the money from the royalties was “much welcome and necessary.” That is why she traveled everywhere to contact editors, and obtain the rights for translations into so many languages. I personally think she took it seriously and was very good at it. She worked alone, but she had a business mind and could be quite intimidating to prospective buyers. Besides, Lesley was the perfect person to do the job. She had worked at the Herald Tribune in Paris, and had the skills necessary to edit Chester’s books and take care of his correspondence. She could type manuscripts. She could translate from, and speak French, English, and even Spanish. And, most important for her, she loved to socialize, meet new and interesting people, and show her skills as a host. She was the perfect literary host, and loved doing that part of the job, and lift the burden from Himes who did not enjoyed it at all, as Lesley used to say. I also think she was good at it, and well trained to deal with publishers and get the best deals. As you can imagine, after her husband died, this occupation made her life busier and meaningful. What I can say is that money was never a problem

In Search of Chester Himes in Spain  269 for her, although she told me Chester was worried about her future. However, she seemed to have plenty of money and a checking account in Andorra. From time to time, her personal accountant drove all the way from Andorra to Moraira; he stayed at a hotel in Moraira for a couple of days, got Lesley’s accounts organized, and then returned to Andorra. And it was Lesley who paid for it all – travel expenses, accommodation… everything. As for the time Chester and Lesley spent together, from the way Lesley used to talk about Chester – and she talked a lot about him – I am convinced that they were very much in love, and, although they were quite different, they complemented each other. If you entered her office here in her Benitatchell home, there were pictures of Chester, and Chester and Lesley all over the walls in her studio. She really cared for him. As a matter of fact, she wanted everybody to know about Himes’s books. That was Lesley’s priority after Chester died. But Lesley went on with her life when Chester passed away, and kept herself busy. She told me she was working on her autobiography. I saw pages and pages written, and she was taking notes here and there, but once she got sick she could not tend to it.49 Of course, being so attractive and elegant, there were other men after Chester died. Ted shows up in her life when Lesley bought the two houses in Benitatchell, 50 and decided to redecorate the interior and make just one larger house. At that time, Ted was working at a shop in Teulada where he designed kitchens and installed them in homes. First they were just good friends, but later they became lovers. It seems to me that Lesley and Ted’s was a genuine love story. What was Ted like? I would say he was a very simple person – an ordinary man. He was not educated. He was quiet. He would not wear appropriate clothes or fancy clothes. He would just work, socialize with other British people, and spend days with Lesley in Benitatchell. On other occasions, Lesley would go to Benissa, where he lived, and stay with him. It might sound rather frivolous, but one thing I noticed is that she kept herself sexy for herself, and Ted. Considering her age – she was in her seventies – she would still buy terribly expensive, very beautiful, sexy, and matching underwear. That tells you something about her and her self-esteem. In my opinion, one thing that is important to make clear is that Ted was not after Lesley’s money. It is true that both talked about Lesley’s will, but it was Ted who insisted that it should go to her family to avoid problems and misinterpretations. He was there for Lesley, not for her money, period. I did get even closer to Lesley when she started having health problems. First it was her feet (she had surgery), then high blood pressure. As a consequence, she ended up taking too much medication. Little by little, she became disoriented or obsessive. She started deteriorating, becoming more confused – a kind of dementia. She talked constantly about

270  María Frías her health because it upset her. The most terrifying moment was when Ted went to visit Lesley and found her in her room, and there were lots of pills on the floor, and she seemed to be scared of Ted. She would not allow him to get closer to help her. Ted rushed to my place; I went to see her and tried to calm her down. By then she was taking a lot of pills. Ted phoned our common friend Tina, and they called Denia Hospital, and asked for an ambulance. It was terrible! Terrible! For me, when I went to visit Lesley, the most disturbing thing to see was that her wrists were tied to the chair to avoid danger. It was then that, on doctor’s orders, she went to a home for the sick and elderly in Benissa. It was a nice place and very well decorated. It was open to both men and women. When she first heard she was going to be sent to that home, she called me and asked me to help her pack her clothes – boxes and boxes – and her personal belongings. That is, in part, how I came to know so much about her clothes, her likes and dislikes. I also learned a lot about her life. Unfortunately, Lesley stayed at the home for a short period of time, and then she died there. Ted called me and told me the sad news. I called the lady in Benitatchell to help us with the official procedures. When they reached Lesley’s sister in England, the first thing she wanted to know is where Lesley’s stuff was. They told her I was a friend of hers, that Lesley had asked me to pack her belongings, and that they were in a room at the home. “Lock the door of that room and do not allow anybody to go in,” her sister said to the Town Council assistant. I remember the silence – absolute silence. There were very few people at the cemetery in Benissa. Lesley’s family flew from London for the ­f uneral – just her niece and nephew. Tina’s husband and Baronesa Roslyn [Rosalía Meindorfer] were there too. I remember Roslyn was wearing a large black hat. I went with Ted. He was very sad. Nobody said anything. There was no religious ceremony either. Lesley’s niece and nephew were not nice at all. They did not greet us or even say a word. They did not talk to us – Lesley’s friends, or Ted, her manfriend. Nothing. That is not right, I think. They had not behaved well with Lesley in the past, but fought with her and did not treat her right in England. Now, the only thing her family said was: “Lock that room” so that “nobody takes anything.” You could see there was no love from Lesley’s relatives. They were there to take everything from Lesley. Now, they own the house, and they each spend one month in the winter or take a vacation in the summer months. It is sad. I also wonder what has become of Chester’s belongings, books, and pictures that were all over Lesley’s house. As for Ted, it was only four or six months after Lesley passed away that he got sick. He had a bad heart condition. Ted died in Denia Hospital, only a few months after Lesley. There was a funeral, and he was cremated. They rest in peace separately.

Appendix B

Figure 11.6  Chester and Lesley Himes in Moraira. Courtesy of Jo Stott

Figure 11.7  Chester Himes’s first home, “Casa Griot,” in Pla del Mar 13 (Moraira). @María Frías

272  María Frías

Figure 11.8  Venta La Chata (Benissa). @María Frías

Figure 11.9  “Casa Deros,” Pla del Mar 15 (Moraira). @María Frías

Figure 11.10  Chester Himes loved their stay at the Hotel Miramar (Jávea). @María Frías

Figure 11.11  Apartment towers (“Pili y Mili”) in Moraira where the Himes temporarily lived in 1969. @María Frías

Figure 11.12  L esley Himes’s home in Benitatchell. @María Frías

Conclusion Looking Ahead to the Next Chapters Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego

This collection of essays attests to the undeniable array of connections that developed between African Americans and Spaniards over the course of the 20th century. The essays document transatlantic political and cultural processes, as well as transnational movements of both bodies and minds. They analyze dialogues at the material and imaginative levels, examine symbolic and physical cartographies, investigate matters of representation and self-depiction, and assess transnational readership and translations. They raise fundamental questions about memory, visibility, and invisibility. They study the sense of belonging to both national and international communities, explore the legacy of colonialism, and demonstrate the intersectionality of race and gender, two inescapable critical categories. They also confront paradoxes and ambiguities, delving into how we look at each other and the coexistence of solidarity and racism. Furthermore, they explore the interactions between mass  and canonical culture as well as the blurry borders between inspiration and appropriation, while establishing the profound imbrication of politics and culture, and, in particular, the political impact of popular culture. Above all, they focus on the uninterrupted fluidity and mobility between the two communities. However, notwithstanding the breadth and depth of subjects addressed by the contributors, as stated in the introduction, Black USA and Spain is not a comprehensive or definitive exploration of the memories that Spaniards and African Americans shared in the last century. In fact, in reading the essays, one of the main conclusions to be drawn is that much has still been left unsaid. It is therefore befitting to end this study by pointing the way toward intriguing and thought-provoking potential lines of inquiry regarding the relationship between Spain and Afro-USA in the 20th century and the early decades of the 21st century. Given the existence of a vast archive of materials, the intercultural and transnational relations pertaining to the periods discussed in this book certainly warrant further exploration. There are many more memoirs, ­ iguel Delibes’s diaries, and travelogues waiting to be studied, such as M USA y yo (1966), María José Ragué Arias’s California Trip (1971), ­Carmen Laforet’s Mi primer viaje a U.S.A. (1985), Jaime Salinas’s

276  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Travesías (2003), and Pepe Ribas’s Los ‘70 a destajo (2007). Laforet’s memoir, for example, a recollection of her visit to the US in the 1960s, is traversed by references to the racial question. It captures the pervasive racism as well as the author’s strong interest in the civil rights movement. In addition to recognizing her status as a white woman in the US, Laforet also discovers an atmosphere and a degree of poverty that seem strangely familiar and lead her to establish a certain transatlantic parallelism that we have already encountered in María Teresa León’s and Salaria Kea’s autobiographical writings. Focusing on the different liberation movements that emerged in the US in the 1960s and 1970s, Ragué Arias’s and Ribas’s books are particularly relevant for their interest in the Black Panthers, and, in the case of Ribas – the founder of the countercultural magazine Ajoblanco – for the exploration of the underground musical scene. Recognizing, like Santiago Auserón (see Introduction), the role played by US bases on Spanish territory in introducing black American music, Ribas highlights the importance of Radio Morón, the radio station of the American base near Seville, which broadcast the music of flamenco artists such as Diego del Gastor and Juan Talega, as well as of African American performers like Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, and Otis Redding (225). Seville, which for Ribas became the epicenter of Spanish underground music, was clearly multiracial and multiethnic, as the fusion not only of flamenco guitar with soul and rock, but also with the sitar of Indian musician Ravi Shankar, demonstrates (225). At the same time, while texts such as Laforet’s contain numerous references to African Americans, others are conspicuously silent on the subject, a void that equally merits analysis. For example, in reading Zenobia Camprubí’s US diary, where she meticulously records her life with her poet husband, the 1956 Nobel Laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez, it is striking that the only blacks mentioned are domestics working for the couple. While it can be argued that the lack of social interaction with African Americans is not surprising in light of Jim Crow, it is nevertheless puzzling that during the couple’s travels through the South, and especially to sites marked by slavery, such as Monticello, the estate and plantation of President Thomas Jefferson (214), this highly cultured woman belonging to a well-to-do and well-connected American/ Puerto Rican/Spanish family, eschews any references to this institution.1 Both presence and absence require, therefore, further critical reflection, for example, in recent texts such as Elvira Lindo’s Lugares que no quiero compartir con nadie (2013), a personal and sentimental guide to New York, and Noches sin dormir: último invierno en Nueva York (2014), a diary, both inspired by her eleven years of residence in New York City. Similarly, the experiences of African American authors and artists in Spain deserve closer attention, among them, Harlem Renaissance members Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, and Dorothy Peterson. Larsen

Conclusion: Looking Ahead  277 traveled to Europe on a Guggenheim fellowship and, as Thadious Davis reports, was fascinated by the Iberian Peninsula’s Moorish past and the resulting racial mixture (373). Furthermore, she witnessed a crucial historical event – King Alfonso XIII’s forced exile and the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931 – which, in fact, terrified her. In spite of her assertion that “I don’t care if I never see Spain again” (qtd. in Davis 383), she did eventually return with Dorothy Peterson, an actress and former teacher of Spanish in Brooklyn and Harlem. Peterson settled in Spain in the 1950s, moving to Seville and converting to Catholicism (Davis 449). McKay, who traveled across Europe, including Spain, and the former Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, writing the travelogue A Long Way from Home (1937), is another author deserving greater scrutiny. How did McKay, Larsen, and Peterson view Spain, and how, in turn, did Spaniards look at them? Moreover, considering the bonds that several African American authors and performers – most notably Hughes, Robeson, and, as mentioned, McKay (Wilson; Baldwin) – established with the Soviet Union, but also Spanish writers such as María Teresa León, Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernández, and Margarita Nelken (Navarra), this triple dialogic axis of Afro-US, Spain, and the Soviet Union represents another intercultural field of research that would yield captivating results. This is even more compelling if we take into account that some of these US writers and performers, as we have seen, were deeply involved in Spanish politics, especially in the defense of the Republic during the Civil War. The “Soviet Archive of Black America,” to borrow Kate A. Baldwin’s concept, no doubt needs to be examined in connection with “Spain’s Archive of Black America.” The study of the Harlem Renaissance in an international context is indeed far from exhausted. Black USA and Spain has discussed the modest translation efforts of some of its writers in relation to the politics of the time. Continuing interest in this cultural phenomenon has resulted in several recent translations. In 2015, Babelia, the cultural supplement of Spanish newspaper El País, reported on a new set of Castilian versions, among them: Hughes’s Escritos sobre España and Divago mientras vago (I Wonder as I Wander); Larsen’s Arenas movedizas (Quicksand); and James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiografía de un ex hombre de color (The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man) (Seisdedos, “Cuando Harlem”). These translations await critical examination and new perspectives on current transnational readership. While this collection of essays has focused on performers such as ­Josephine Baker in the context of the Jazz Age, it has not explored the presence of this genre or other African American artists active in Spain’s musical scene beyond the 1930s. We have examined Baker’s reception during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, but what about, for instance, the response to Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald’s 1966 joint performance

278  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego in Franco’s Spain? According to Iván Iglesias, jazz represented “a challenge to Francoist biopolitics—-that is, the regime’s official precepts about the body” (131). Similar lines of inquiry into the perception of jazz and its African American performers during the dictatorship, as well as after Franco’s demise in 1975 need further development. 2 At the same time, the fusion of flamenco and jazz attempted by both ­A frican ­A merican and Spanish musicians such as Lionel Hampton, Paco de Lucía, and Camarón de la Isla, or collaboration between artists on both sides of the Atlantic, such as flamenco dancer Joaquín Cortés and soul and R&B singer Alicia Keys at the 2002 Grammy Awards, should foster discussions about dialogue, inspiration, and appropriation. Music will continue to be an extremely fruitful lens through which to view the intercultural exchanges between Spain and Black USA, particularly when it comes to understanding the impact of more recent black musical genres such as hip-hop and rap. What is the relationship between Spanish and African American hip-hop artists? While it poses once again the recurring question of using or drawing on someone else’s culture, it also brings to the forefront the issue of cross-identification of marginalized urban groups. In this regard, the controversy regarding Spain’s new sensation Rosalía, who, although not of Romani descent, sings flamenco fused with trap and other genres, is extremely significant. While becoming a phenomenon, she has also triggered a national debate about the decontextualized appropriation of music originating in subaltern groups. Among the numerous media reports, Sara Rosati’s is particularly worthy of mention. Interviewed for Rosati’s article, Romani professor and activist Araceli Cañadas argues against the acritical and ahistorical seizure of flamenco, a musical genre belonging, in her opinion, to a minority with a long tradition of persecution and discrimination in Spain. What makes this interview especially relevant in the context of our study is that Cañadas concludes her argument paraphrasing James Baldwin’s I Am Not Your Negro, affirming: “We are not your gypsies.” If it is widely acknowledged that, from the perspective of an outsider, Lorca established a parallelism in his poetry between the marginalized status of gypsies in Spain and blacks in the USA—his Romancero gitano (1928) and Poeta en Nueva York (1940) come immediately to mind – it would be of interest to probe the cultural relations of these two marginal communities, now from an insider perspective, by giving voice to members of these groups. On another front, the intersection of race and gender could very well be analyzed paying special attention to the representation of iconic ­A frican American figures in the Spanish media. While former US president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama would be some of the more recent and crucial instances, there are other significant individuals and moments in 20th century history. The year 1992, a year of unprecedented euphoria for Spain, is a case in point. After almost forty years of dictatorship, Spain seized the opportunity presented by three overlapping

Conclusion: Looking Ahead  279 events to represent itself to the world as a modern country: the Seville World Fair, the commemoration of the Fifth Centenary of Spain’s arrival in the New World (euphemistically reformulated in public discourse as “encounter” rather than “discovery’), and, above all, the Barcelona Olympic Games. In this context, the arrival of the predominantly black US Basketball Team – known as the Dream Team for its roster of players of the caliber of Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Scottie Pippen, and Earvin “Magic” Johnson – is certainly etched both in the Spanish and American imagination (Gómez). The relationship between race and sports, and specifically between (certain) sports and black masculinity, has been well established, as has the relationship between sports and black activism. One might recall, for example, the Black Power salute during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, boxer Muhammad Ali’s opposition to the ­Vietnam War, or, more recently, football player Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the playing of the national anthem as a way of protesting racial injustice in the US. In the case of the Barcelona Olympics and the Dream Team, the association of blackness and sports added a new level of discussion due to the fact that, only a few months earlier, Magic Johnson had publicly revealed that he was HIV positive. The extensive discussions, debates, and studies about black masculinity, sexuality, sexual orientation and HIV/AIDS that his announcement generated in the US have yet to be examined within the Spanish context. Finally, as we have seen, Pan-Africanism and a diasporic sense of identity have constituted a defining element of black culture and politics during different historical periods. With the increase in numbers and visibility of Afro-descended Spaniards, what remains to be analyzed is the dialogue, whether at a real or symbolic level, between Spanish members of the ­A frican diaspora and African Americans. The program of the 2018 Conciencia Afro festival held in Madrid is a clear example of Pan-­A fricanism (Figure C.1). A combination of culture, politics, empowerment, and entertainment for all ages, the program featured roundtable discussions, book presentations, music, plays, and films that situate the challenges that Spanish Afro-descendants face in a diasporic framework. The inclusion in the program of the play Ngoan Ntangan, dos mundos que se tocan. (Manoliño Nguema), directed by Gorsy Edu, originally from Equatorial Guinea; a documentary about Martinican Frantz Fanon, one of the most influential post-colonial thinkers, directed by Algerian-born Hassane Mezin; and the film The Watermelon Woman (1996), directed by African American Cheryl Duny, offers a visible manifestation of this diasporic connection. 3 Duny’s film is of particular interest because of the questions it raises regarding stereotypical black female and lesbian representation. In addition, as #Black Lives Matter has grown into a global movement, galvanizing Afro-descendents of different national origins in terms of both solidarity and identification, it is timely to ask what its impact has been in Spain. In fact, Black Lives Matter events were held in Madrid in

280  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego

Figure C.1  Program of the 2018 Conciencia Afro festival.

2014 after the death of African American Eric Garner at the hands of the police (Apuzzo). Footage of these events provides evidence that they became an occasion to protest US police brutality and impunity, but also an opportunity to denounce the discrimination facing blacks in Spain and, as a consequence, to build Pan-African alliances. In this regard, and considering that we are fully immersed in the era of digital and social media, the study of virtual groups and new types of texts must be incorporated into scholarly inquiry regarding transnational groups and allies. Digital communities created around Black Lives Matter Madrid, Conciencia Afro, or Afroféminas (that express themselves through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to name only a few, certainly deserve to be analyzed for their blend of culture, politics, and Pan-Africanism. These examples of unexplored, and far from exhausted areas of study, highlight the richness and multiple dimensions of the intellectual, cultural, social, and political exchanges between Spaniards and African Americans. Black USA and Spain seeks to advance the critical dialogue about the innumerable yet little known conversations in which these two groups engaged throughout the 20th century. Given the proliferation of new communications technologies as well as the possibilities of global collaboration, conversations and connections between these two communities will continue to evolve. Indeed, in the 21st century, African Americans and Spaniards will undoubtedly remain “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

Conclusion: Looking Ahead  281

Notes 1 Camprubí, although later eclipsed and absorbed by her husband’s work and personality, was a prominent intellectual figure in prewar Spain. Shirley Mangini includes her among “las modernas de Madrid,” a group of female intellectuals and artists that fought to improve the cultural and social standing of women. 2 In 2012, Madrid’s National Library organized an exhibit, titled “El ruido alegre,” which presented the history of jazz in Spain. See Seisdedos’s “Spain’s” and Iglesias’s “Jazz and Politics.” 3 Although the title is not provided in the program, the documentary is Fanon, hier, aujourd’hui. Regards croisés (2017). Mezin captures Fanon’s enduring relevance in an international context. The documentary features statements by different activists across the globe, including African American public intellectual Cornel West.

Works Cited Apuzzo, Matt. “Charges Sought in Eric Garner’s Death, but Justice Officials Have Doubts.” New York Times 20 April 2018. Baldwin, Kate A. Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963. Durham: Duke UP, 2002. Campubrí, Zenobia. Diario. 2. Estados Unidos (1939–1950). Ed. and trans. Graciela Palau de Nemes. Madrid: Alianza Editorial/La Editorial, U of Puerto Rico, 1987. Davis, Thadious M. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. A Woman’s Life Unveiled. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1994. Delibes, Miguel. USA y yo. Ed. Fortuna L. Gordon. New York: Odyssey Press, 1970. Fanon, hier, aujourd’hui. Regards croisés. Dir. Hassane Mezin. Algeria/France, 2017. Gómez, Luis. “Único, irrepetible, invencible Dream Team.” El País 26 July 2017. Iglesias, Iván. “Jazz and Politics in Franco’s Spain (1939–1968).” Made in Spain. Studies in Popular Music. Eds. Silvia Martínez and Héctor Fouce. New York: Routledge, 2013. 101–14. ———. “Performing the ‘Anti-Spanish’ Body. Jazz and Biopolitics in the Early Franco Regime (1939–1957).” Jazz and Totalitarianism. Ed. Bruce Johnson. New York: Routledge, 2017. 130–42. Hughes, Langston. Divago mientras vago. Trans. Mariano Peyrou. Madrid: Antonio Machado Libros, 2013. ———. Escritos sobre España. Trans. Javier Lucini and Maribel Cruzado Soria. Madrid: BAAM, 2011. Johnson, James Weldon. Autobiografía de un ex hombre de color. Trans. Pepa Cornejo. Madrid: Señor Lobo Ediciones, 2014. Laforet, Carmen. Mi primer viaje a U.S.A. Madrid: P.P.P Ediciones, 1985. Larsen, Nella. Arenas movedizas. Trans. Pepa Cornejo. Madrid: Señor Lobo Ediciones, 2015. Lewis, David. L. Cuando Harlem estaba de moda. Trans. Javier Lucini. M ­ adrid: BAAM, 2014.

282  Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego Lindo, Elvira. Lugares que no quiero compartir con nadie. Barcelona: Seix ­Barral, 2013. ———. Noches sin dormir: último invierno en Nueva York. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2015. Mangini, Shirley. Las modernas de Madrid. Las grandes intelectuales españolas de la vanguardia. Barcelona: Península, 2001. Navarrra, Andreu. El espejo blanco. Viajeros españoles en la URSS. Madrid: Fórcola, 2016. Ngoan Ntangan, dos mundos que se tocan. (Manoliño Nguema). Dir. Gorsy Edu. Madrid, 2018. Ragué Arias, María José. California Trip. Barcelona: Kairós, 1971. Ribas, Pepe. Los ‘70 a destajo. Ajoblanco y libertad. Barcelona: Destino, 2011. Rosati, Sara. “Ofensa, burla o renovación: lo que piensan los gitanos de ­Rosalía.” El País 12 Nov. 2018. Salinas, Jaime. Travesías. Memorias (1925–1955). Barcelona: Tusquets, 2003. Seisdedos, Iker. “Cuando Harlem era una fiesta.” El País 5 Feb. 2015. ———. “Spain’s Own Jazz History.” El País 2 Dec. 2012. The Watermelon Woman. Dir. Cheryl Duny. USA, 1996. Wilson, Jennifer. “When the Harlem Renaissance Went to Communist ­Moscow.” The New York Times 21 Aug. 2017.

Index

Abraham Lincoln Brigade/Battalion (ALB) 4, 11, 12, 97, 105, 107, 114, 115, 120, 124, 128, 134, 144, 145, 147, 150, 164, 246; Lincolns, The 114, 128; Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) 98, 104, 108–11, 147; see also International Brigades Abyssinian Baptist Church 101, 104, 110 Achramm, Katharina 228 African diaspora 78, 86, 98, 100, 101, 109, 279; Afro-diasporic 7, 158 Africannesss 76, 80, 81, 87 African American brigadiers 6, 12, 13, 98, 101, 126, 128; black brigadiers 11, 12, 101, 107 Africanistas 161 Afro-American, The/Baltimore AfroAmerican 3, 29, 105, 120, 156, 160 Afro-descendants 78, 86, 279 Afroféminas 280 Aguilar Fernández, Paloma 117, 122, 130 Ajoblanco 276 Alain Locke New Negro movement 7, 23; Alain Locke 17; see also Harlem Renaissance and Negro Renaissance Alberti, Rafael 3, 8, 9, 24, 29–31, 38, 39, 46, 48, 67, 105, 277 Alcalá Galiano, Álvaro 78 Aleixandre, Vicente 66, 67 Algerian War 254 Ali, Muhammad 5, 200, 279 Alianza de Intelectuales Antifascistas 29 Allies, The 14, 109, 176, 177, 182, 201 Alonso, Dámaso 66 Alonso, José Ramón 199 Altolaguirre, Manuel 29

Álvarez Chillida, Gonzalo 178, 179, 188 American dream 16, 218, 225 American Medical Bureau (AMB) 11, 115, 116, 120, 121, 130 anti-Americanism 4, 12, 15, 189, 201, 203, 206, 209 anti-colonialism 31 anti-Protestantism 197 anti-Semitism 202 appropriation 159, 275, 278; cultural appropriation 6; racist appropriation 24 Aragon, Louis 30, 38 Armstrong, Louis 5, 262 Arriba 194–200, 202–8, 210 Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH) [Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory] 13, 113, 150; Ley de la Memoria Histórica 13, 150; Recuperation of Historical Memory 142 assimilationist discourse 224, 227 Atlanta Daily World 121 Atlantic Studies 153, 154 Auserón, Santiago 5, 276 authenticity 223, 226 autobiography 3, 74, 117, 129, 234–6, 238, 244, 245, 247, 249, 252, 253, 255–7, 269 Avecilla, Ceferino R. 77, 78, 80, 85 Avello, Gonzalo 85, Axis powers 14, 177, 185, 189 Ayala, Francisco 81, 82, 87 Azpeitúa, Antonio 78, 79 BAAM (Biblioteca Afro Americana Madrid) 150 backward Spain 246

284 Index Baker, George, Father Divine 183, 184 Baker, Josephine 2, 6, 9, 10, 52, 55, 56, 76–8, 80, 82, 84, 85, 87, 277; androgyny 82; banana belt 55, 85; black blonde 84, 85; cross-dressing 82; Mémoires de Josephine Baker 74; La Sirène des Tropiques 81 Baldwin, James 4, 5, 204, 229, 245, 278; “I am Not Your Negro” 278; Notes on Another Country 4; Nothing Personal 4 Baldwin, Kate 1, 156, 162, 165, 170, 277 Balibar, Étienne 199 Balló, Tania 62, 66 Balter, Martin 125, 126 Barsky, Edward 120, 123, 128 Bartmaan, Sarah 80 Baudrillard, Jean 220 Belafonte, Harry 2, 5 Benjamin, Walter 217 Bennett, Herman L. 153 Berger, Martin A. 222 Bernhardt, Sarah 82 Bessie, Alvah 110 Bethune, Mary McLeod 182 Birth of a Nation, The 100, 229 black Catwoman 228 black empowerment 16 black extremism 227 black hair 57, 220 black internationalism 29, 47 “black is beautiful” 76, 200, 220 Black Legend/ leyenda negra 154, 155, 204, 210 Black Lives Matter 279, 280 black victimhood 198; black martyrdom paradigm 15; martyr imagery 198 Black Montmartre 75 Black Muslims 200 Black Nationalism 225 Black Panthers 5, 217, 225, 276; Black Panther (movement) 198 Black Panther (Marvel) 219; Black Panther (film) 18 Black Power 15, 16, 76, 194, 198, 199, 207–9, 217, 218, 224, 225, 279 black-bottom/black-botton 55, 57, 77 blackening 55, 75–7, 85, 154 blackface 8, 25, 47, 61, 91, 229 blackness 8, 14, 16, 57, 65, 74–6, 78, 80, 82, 84, 182, 194, 216, 223, 224, 279

Blanco y Negro 56, 78, 79, 83 Blaxploitation 216, 219, 222–5, 227, 229 boogie-woogie 53 Brasa, Juan 77 Brecht, Bertolt 30 Broeck, Sabine 197 Brown, Elsa Barkley 156, 159, 160, 168 Brown, Rap H. 199 Bruzzi, Stella 141 Bueno, Guy 195–8, 200, 202, 208 Byrne, Albert 120 Café Pombo 25 cake-walk 54 Calvo Sotelo, Joaquín 175, 179, 184–7, 189 Calvo Sotelo, José 186 Camba, Julio 185 Campmany, Jayme 198, 210 Camprubí, Zenobia 18, 276, 281 Cante jondo 23, 26 Cañadas, Araceli 278 Capa, Robert 164 Carmichael, Stokely 199 Carpentier, Alejo 30, 33 Carrillo, Santiago 144 Carrol, Charles 180 Carroll Peter N. 10, 97, 98, 109, 128, 134, 144, 149, 151 Castro, Fidel 209 Catholicism 154, 177, 196, 239, 277; Catholic Church 237, 243, 254; Catholic principles 15, 178, 179, 189 Cendoya 204, 210 censorship 4, 17, 54, 176, 207, 230, 242–5 Cernuda, Luis 9, 30, 66 Césaire, Aimé 153 Chacel, Rosa 9, 52, 60–2, 64–9 Champourcin, Ernestina de 9, 52–66, 68 Charleston (chárleston, charlestón) 54–7, 59, 61, 66, 67, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 86, 87, 90 Chicago Defender 120 Chicago Tribune 16, 216, 223 Christian rhetoric 206; ethnocentric Christian rhetoric 206 Cine-Club/Cineclub 24, 25, 61, 62, 65, 67

Index  285 civil rights 216, 227; Black Civil Rights Movement (CRM) 5, 194–7, 201, 205, 207, 210; Civil Rights Act 207; Civil Rights era 218; Civil rights movement 13, 15, 217, 223, 276; Civil Rights photography 222; US Civil Rights movement 5, 6, 13, 145; Voting Rights Act 207, 208 Cobbs, Walter 122 Cold War 16, 110, 201, 217–19, 225, 227, 229 Colin, Paul 59, 67, 74 collective memory 117, 127; collectivization of memory 12, 122 Collum, Danny D. 104, 105, 110, 114, 128 colonialism; colonial images 9, 77, 81; colonial otherness 76; colonialist paternalism 181; homegrown colonialism 202, 206 commodification 16, 57, 65, 75, 82 communism 16, 30, 78, 88, 177, 227; Communist Party 36, 100, 109, 110, 114, 120, 127, 246 Comrades and Commissars 134 Conciencia Afro 279, 280 Connie’s Inn 53 consumerism 223, 230 Conte, Rafael 249 cosmopolitanism 78, 88, 142; cosmopolitan black woman 224; subaltern cosmopolitanism 158, 162, 165, 169 Costello, Matthew J. 225 Cotton Club 53 counterhistory 142 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 156, 159 cross-gender solidarities 165 cross-racial 164, 165 Cuban Revolution 33, 199, 209 cultural appreciation 6 Cunard, Nancy 121 Dark Continent 105, 228 Darwin, Charles 181 Darwinism 186, 187, 191 Dateline: Danger! 219 Davidson, Robert A. 74–6 Davis, Angela 5 Davis, Miles 234 Dayal, Samir 66, 75, 81 decolonization 200 DeGuzmán, María 154, 155

dehumanization 137, 140 Delgado, Emilio 31, 33–5, 37–9, 45, 48 Desarrollista Spain 223 discrimination 3, 14, 33, 78, 99, 102, 103, 118, 119, 124–6, 150, 153, 176, 177, 179, 182, 187, 189, 197, 202, 207, 208, 247, 278, 280 Domingo, Alfonso 107, 108, 134, 141, 149; Invisible Heroes 11, 13, 107, 134, 135, 141–6, 151 Dos Passos, John 30, 241 “Dream Team” 279 Dreisinger, Baz 181 DuBois, W. E. B. 44, 98, 99, 106; The Souls of Black Folk 44 Edwards, Brent Hayes 47, 89 Edwards, Thyra 121, 125 Ejército de África 161; see also Moroccan army Ellington, Duke 5, 262, 277 Ellison, Ralph 5, 222, 245 embueti 183, 184, 190 epilepsy 78, 81 Equatorial Guinea 14, 15, 86, 164, 178, 204–6, 279 Escalante, Gil de 84, 90 Escoriaza, Teresa de 84 Esenwein, George 10 Esplá, Carlos 85 Ethiopia 11, 98, 99, 101–5, 109, 110, 113, 119, 143, 146, 150, 164, 169 ethnographic gazing 3, 194 European identity 74 European superiority 203, 204; European supremacy 204; exoticism 14, 16, 75, 77, 182, 223, 225, 226 Faber, Sebastian 1, 10, 128 Fabian, Johannes 168, 169 Fabre, Michel 238 Falange 135, 136, 150, 194, 196–8, 201, 202, 205–7, 209, 210; falangist/falangista 5, 12, 15, 134–40, 146, 169, 176 Fanon, Frantz 138, 148, 149, 279, 281 Fascism 11, 30, 98, 99, 101–4, 106, 108, 110, 127, 134, 136, 141, 143, 144, 165, 170; anti-Fascism 29, 161; defascisticization 14 Father Arrupe 197

286 Index Featherstone, David 142, 150, 156, 158, 169; see also Black internationalism and subaltern cosmopolitanism Fenton, Steve 180 Fernandez, James D. 10, 143 Fernández de Miguel, Daniel 176, 177, 197, 209, 210 Ferragut, Juan 57, 80 First International Writers’ Congress 39 First World War 54, 65, 75, 98–100, 118, 145 Fisher, Regine 16, 235, 239, 255 Fitzgerald, Ella 5, 277 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 66, 241 flamenco 156, 163, 167, 170, 226, 276, 278 Flâneur, flâneuse 61. 67 flapper(s) 9, 52, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 83, 86 folksongs 31 Fontes, Ignacio 246, 256 Forever Activists 134 Frade, Fernando 197 Fraga, Manuel 226 Francoism 4, 14, 15, 51, 84, 176–9, 186, 189; Franco’s dictatorship/ Francoist dictatorship 2, 142, 146, 150, 189, 201, 246, 254, 256; Franco’s regime 12, 15, 61, 128, 185, 194, 201, 216, 227 Frank, Waldo 30 Franklyn, Aretha 276 Fray Junípero 88 Friday Foster 15, 16, 216, 217–20, 223, 224, 226–31 Fuerzas Regulares Indígenas 166 Fuller, Hoyt W. 245, 256 Funnies 217, 218 García Berlanga, Luis 207 García Lorca, Federico 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 39, 62, 66, 105, 157, 169, 238, 254, 255, 278; duende 26; Poema del cante jondo 27; Poeta en Nueva York 26, 278; Romancero gitano 29, 39, 47, 278 García Martínez, José María 54, 74, 76 Garvey, Marcus 2, 100, 143, 150; “Back to Africa” 100 Geiser, Carl 122, 123 Geist, Anthony L. 134, 144, 145

Generación del 27/Generation of 27 9, 24, 39 generation of 98 178 Gerassi, John 126, 127, 131 Ghana 200, 228 Giel Roeset, Marga 66 Gil de Biedma, Jaime 4 Gil Pecharromán, Julio 177, 185, 191, 201 Gilman, Sander 85, 90 Gilroy, Paul 153, 168, 169 Giménez Caballero, Ernesto 24, 25 Gironella, José María 254 Gómez de la Serna, Ramón 2, 6, 8, 24–6, 47, 61, 62, 67, 68, 75 González Calleja, Eduardo 54, 66, 86 González Echegaray, Carlos 183 The Good Figth 128 Gordon, Lewis R. 155, 168 Gorky, Maxim 30 Goytisolo, Juan 90 Graham, Helen 161, 165, 170, 230 Great Depression 100, 114, 145, 183 Great Migration 145, 179, 181, 190 Grier, Pam 216, 229, 230 Grijalbo, Juan 242, 243 Guevara, Che 199 Guillén, Jorge 66 Guillén, Nicolás 105 gypsies 167, 226, 278; Romani 278 Hamilton, Ruth Simms 98–100, 109, 110 Haney, Lynn 74 Harlem 3, 6, 8, 14, 16, 17, 23–7, 44, 53, 56, 98, 100, 101, 103–5, 118, 119, 125, 126, 150, 160, 164, 180, 182, 184, 187, 188, 190, 191, 199, 209, 217, 220–3, 225–7, 235, 240, 255, 277 Harlem Renaissance 1, 2, 3, 6–8, 23, 24, 26, 27, 45, 75, 98, 184, 276, 277; see also Alain Locke New Negro movement and Negro Renaissance Haro Tecglen, Eduardo 204, 230 Haygood, William C. 236 Heart of Spain 120 Heliófilo 88 Hemingway, Ernest 10, 98, 127, 145, 241 Heraldo de Madrid 86, 88, 89 Herzog, Tamar 177

Index  287 Heteronormativity: heteronormative 160; heteronormative gaze 159; heteronormative masculinity 157, 162 Hidalgo, Diego 14, 176, 187 Himes, Chester 217, 223, 229, 234–57; A Case of Rape/Une affaire de viol 242, 256; Cast the First Stone 243, 248; My Life of Absurdity 234, 246, 247, 252, 255; The (End of the) Primitive 237, 238, 242, 255; “The Pink Dress” 240; Quality of Hurt, the 244, 247; “Spanish Gin” 237, 240, 255; “Spanish nightmare” 246, 247; The Third Generation 242–3 hip-hop 278 Hispanidad 14, 15, 176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184, 187, 189, 196, 204, 211 Hispanotropicalismo 178, 184, 187 Historical memory 114, 142 Hitler 98, 99, 103, 104, 109, 177, 202, 243 HIV/AIDS 279 homoerotic relationships 243 “hot summer of 1967” 195, 208 Hotel Theresa 209 Howard University 17, 182 Hughes, Langston; “A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia” 162, 165; “Air Raid: Barcelona” 163; “Air Raid over Harlem” 164; “Call of Ethiopia” 101; “Ethiopia Marches On” 101; “I, Too, Sing America” 33, 39; I Wonder as I Wander 13, 155, 164, 277; La Niña de los Peines 156, 163, 167; “Letter from Spain” 105, 161; “Madrid 1937” 163; “Moonlight in Valencia: Civil War” 163; “Negroes in Spain” 165; “Open Letter to the South” 33, 35, 37; The Big Sea 13, 155, 156–61; “Tamara Khanum: Soviet Asia´s Greatest Dancer” 163; “To the Dark Mercedes of ‘El Palacio de Amor’” 159; Turkmenistan 161–3, 167, 168; The Weary Blues 38, 42, 45, 159 Hunter, Oscar 101, 127 Hurston, Zora Neale 17, 235, 255 Hutchins, Evelyn 126, 130 hypocrisy 15, 203, 210 Iberian coloniality 154 Iglesias, Iván 54, 278

in-betweenness 87, 162 International Brigades 11, 113, 114, 120, 134, 136, 140, 144, 145, 149, 160, 165, 170, 209, 226 interracial literary discourse 238 interracial marriage 126, 140, 149 invisibility 17, 224, 247, 252, 275 Jackson, Lawrence P. 242, 243, 246, 248, 254–6 James, C. L. R. 153 Jazz 3, 7, 8, 9, 23–6, 44, 49, 52–6, 60–8, 73, 75–7, 79, 110, 183, 186, 187, 190, 191, 220, 257, 278, 281; Jazz-band/Jazz Band 54, 56, 57, 62–4, 66, 68, 78–80, 90 Jazz Age 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 52, 66, 74–7, 82, 89 Jazz Singer, The 24, 25, 61; Crosland, Alan 24 The Jeffersons 228 Jewishness 85 Jim Crow 33, 44, 98, 99, 107, 109, 127, 146, 160, 161, 276 Jiménez, Juan Ramón. 18, 26, 276 Johnson, Charles 218 Johnson, Earvin “Magic” 279 Johnson, James Weldon 277 Johnson, Jane Lucinda 236 Johnson, Lindon B. 208 Joplin, Scott 66 Jules-Rosette, Benetta 57, 66, 73, 74, 79, 81, 82, 89, 91, 92 Kaepernick, Colin 279 Kea, Salaria 2, 3,11, 12, 101, 102, 104, 106–8, 111, 113; A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain 113, 116, 118; “While Passing Through” 116, 118, 121, 124, 129 Kelley, Robin D.G 101, 103, 110, 114, 115, 122, 126, 127, 143 Kennedy, John F. 207 Kennedy, Robert 207 Kirkpatrick, Susan 56, 61, 62 Koestler, Arthur 162, 167 Korean War 201 Ku Klux Klan 100, 161, 210, 229 Kutzinski, Vera 27, 29, 45–8, 158, 169 La Barraca 30 La Gaceta Literaria 24, 25, 47, 61, 62, 63 Laforet, Carmen 275

288 Index Lahs-Gonzales, Olivia 75, 82, 83 Larsen, Nella 25, 276, 277 Law, Oliver 97, 109, 124, 134, 135, 144, 145, 161, 164 Lawrence, Jim 16, 216–22, 224, 226, 228, 230, 231 Lee, Harper 110 Lejárraga, María 18 León, María Teresa 3, 8, 10, 24, 29, 30, 39, 66, 276, 277 Lewis, David L. 3, 17, 23, 143 Liedtke, Boris N. 201 liminality 13, 87, 158 Limpieza de sangre 153, 169 Linares, Antonio (G.) de 57–60, 76, 82 Lindo, Elvira 276 Llorens, Isabel 249 Longarón, Jordi 16, 216–24, 226, 228–31; Hazañas bélicas 216, 219, 229; No importa qué y Cia 216; “Ronde de nuit” 217 Love, Vaughn 98, 106, 107 loyalists 122, 161, 166, 209 Luna, Donyale 220, 221, 230 Lyceum Club 61, 62, 65 Machado, Antonio 30 madness 78, 81, 184, 256 Maeztu, María 61 Maeztu, Ramiro de 178 mainstream American culture 224 mainstream ideological narratives 218 Malartic, Yves 238, 242 Malcolm X 15, 195, 200, 207, 209, 228 Mallo, Maruja 61, 62, 66, 67 Malraux, André 11 Manfredi Cano, Domingo 12, 134–9, 146–8; Juan el Negro 12, 134, 135, 140, 146 Manso, Margarita 62, 66 map of grievance 156, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164 March on Washington (1963) 5 marginality 223, 226 Marín, Amador 199 Marshall Plan 202, 209 Martín Gaite, Carmen 148, 201 Martin Luther King, Jr. 15, 17, 143, 195, 196, 200, 207 Martín Mena, José Luis 202, 203, 215 Martin-Márquez, Susan 92, 169, 178, 179, 184 Martínez Sierra, Gregorio 18

Martínez, María Elena 153 Marvel 18, 219 masculinity 161, 163, 164, 209; black masculinity 12, 13, 16, 138, 161, 166, 279; hypersexualized black male 138, 139; masculinist paradigms 156, 163, 164; racialized masculinity 166; white masculinity 161, 220; see also heteronormative masculinity mass media 5, 223, 224 May 1968 244 Mayakovsky, Vladimir 28, 30, 49 McCarthy era 104, 108, 110 McDaniels, Eluard Luchell 122 McKay, Claude 2, 17, 98, 99, 276, 277; Banjo 27; Cock-tail negro 27; Home to Harlem 27 McWilliams, Al 227 Meindorfer, Rosalía 251, 256, 267, 268, 270 “Memorandum on the Future of Africa” (W.E.B. DuBois) 99 Méndez, Concha 9, 52, 60–2, 63, 65–7 Middle Passage 44, 157 Miquelarena, Jacinto 185 miscegenation 166, 181, 206, 228 Modernity 8–10, 13, 52, 54–7, 63, 65, 73–6, 78, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89, 153,155, 161,168, 170 Mono Azul, El 29 Montero Alonso, José 6, 86 Montgomery 197, 208 Moors 103, 127, 165, 166 Mora, Víctor 217 moral superiority 12, 137, 195, 197, 201, 205, 206 Moravia, Alberto 230 Moreno Villa, José 26 Morgan, Crawford 104 Morgan, Edward P. 230 Moroccan army 122; Moroccan soldiers 146; see also Ejército de África Moses, Wilson J. 195–7 Mujeres Libres 64 Mundo gráfico 54, 85 Mussolini, Benito 11, 99, 101–4, 109, 113, 119, 143, 145, 164 Myrdal, Gunnar 179 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 100, 110, 119, 182, 218

Index  289 National Catholicism 196; NationalCatholic propaganda 227 nationalists (Francoist) 12, 14, 29, 109, 202 Nazism 14, 170, 176, 182, 189, 225; Nazis 108, 109, 127, 176, 243; Nazi propaganda 176; Nazi racism 188 Ndongo Onono, Côme 248 Negrín, Juan 149 Négritude 7, 23, 75 Negro Committee to Aid Spain 101, 116 Negro problem, the 179 Negro Renaissance 7; see also Harlem Renaissance and Alain Locke New Negro movement Négrophatie 79 negrophilia 25, 75, 79, 90 Nelken, Margarita 10, 79, 82–4, 88, 89, 277 Nelson, Angela M. 224, 227 Nelson, Charmaine A. 230 Nelson, Steve 150 Nerín, Gustau 178, 179, 206 Neruda, Pablo 10, 39 New Masses 31, 34, 47 New Woman 10, 82, 83, 89, 165, New York (City) 130, 175–7, 179, 180, 184–90 New York Amsterdam News 120 The New Yorker 219 New York Times 185, 194, 202 Nkrumah, Kwane 200 North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy 116, 121 Nubia 230 Nueva Cultura 8, 30, 39–43 Octubre 3, 8, 29–36, 39, 47, 48; “Canciones de los negros de Norteamérica” 31 Obama, Barack and Michelle 278 The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade 98, 134 Olympic Games; Mexico (1968) 5; Barcelona (1992) 279 Orwell, George 11, 98 otherness 14, 25, 76, 176, 223 Packard, Lesley 235, 236, 241, 245, 246, 252, 253, 257 Page, Tom 107 Pamplona 10, 74, 86, 88

Pan-African Congress 99, 100, 110 Pan-Africanism 97, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 218, 227, 228, 279, 280 Paris 9, 17, 23, 39, 54, 55, 57, 59, 67–9, 73–7, 81, 84–6, 88, 90, 103, 110 Paris Peace conference 99, 100, 110 pathologize 9, 77 Pavlova, Ana 87, 88, 92 Petersen, Dorothy 25, 276, 277 photo-reportages 223 photojournalism 223 picturesque, the 44, 45, 48, 187, 226 Pieterse, Nederveen Jan 75–7, 81, 82 Pilote 216 Piñar, Blas 210 Pitts, Donald H. 115, 124–6, 130 Pittsburgh Courier 120 Playboy 220 Plenn, Abel 31 Poitier, Sidney 2, 5 Police brutality 15, 195, 206, 208, 280 Poor People’s March on Washington 198 pop culture 218 Powell, Jr. Adam Clayton 98, 99, 110 Prados, Emilio 30, 39 Prensa del Movimiento 194, 207 primitivism 8, 14, 25, 45, 53, 55, 57, 60, 66, 67, 75–7, 81, 86, 139, 178, 182, 187, 188, 230 Primo de Rivera, José Antonio 194, 207 Primo de Rivera, Miguel 9, 54, 66, 85, 113, 277 Protectorate, Morocco 86, 161 Race; race-gender intersectionality 157, 159; race-making 13, 153, 155, 156, 158, 168; racial constructions 74, 76; racial contamination 14, 90, 181; racial difference 2, 14, 180, 181, 187, 218, 220, 224; racial integration 110, 124, 224, 227; racial segregation 52, 109, 179; racialized masculinity 166; racialized womanhood 74, 82 racism 11–13, 23, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 44, 89, 98–100, 102–4, 107, 119, 137, 140, 153, 167, 176, 177, 178, 180, 184, 187, 189, 195, 198, 202, 220, 224, 234, 235, 245, 254, 266, 275, 276; differential racism 199; “scientific racism” 14, 181, 186; scientific theories of race 181

290 Index ragtime 53, 54, 66 Ragué Arias, María José 275 Rainey, Ma/”Ma” 9, 52, 60, 67 Ramos, María C. 18 rap 278 Rasula, Jed 8, 53, 75, 76 Read, Hollis 179 Redondo, Onésimo 205, 210 Reeb, James 197, 208 Reed, Ishamel 245, 249 Regeneracionismo 148 Reid-Pharr, Robert 1, 2, 4, 11, 45, 47, 99, 108, 109, 111, 115, 129, 154, 155, 156, 163, 167, 169, 170 Reitano, Joanne 185 Religious discourse 14, 15, 195 Residencia de señoritas 61 respectability 16, 225 Revue nègre, La 55, 73, 75 Reynolds, Guy 17 Ribas, Pepe 276 Rice, Alan J. 53 Richards, Michael 138, 148 Roaring Twenties 1, 75 Robeson, Paul 40, 105, 110, 126, 135, 147, 277 Roch Minué, Pasqual 238, 243 Rogers, Gayle 27, 44, 47 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 97, 182 Rosalía 278 Rosati, Sara 278 Rose, Phyllis 74, 76, 80, 83 Rosendorf, Neal Moses 201, 202, 226 Roxborough, Elsie 164, 165 Roxy 216 Rucker, Bunny 170 Run Man Run 245 Russian Revolution 100 Salinas, Jaime 275 Salinas, Pedro 9, 66 Salto atrás 182, 184 same-sex eroticism 158 Sampedro Vizcaya, Benita 178 Sánchez Mejías, Ignacio 157 Sánchez Saornil, Lucía 9, 52, 60, 64, 65 Santos, Ángeles 66 Saunders, John 227 Sauvage, Marcel 79 Saz, Agustín del 14, 175–6, 187, 188, 189 Scott, Jonathan 37 Scottsboro trial 100

Second International Congress of Antifascist Writers 110 Second International Writers Congress/Conference, Paris 103, 169 Second Republic 12, 79, 97, 113, 165, 187 Second World War 4, 14, 15, 65, 97, 108, 109, 110, 144, 145, 175, 176, 179–81, 187, 189, 191, 201, 216, 219, 229, 243 Segura, Pedro 175 Selassie, Haile, Emperor 101 selective memory 12, 117 self-expatriates 234 Selma (Movement) 15, 195, 197, 208 Semana Negra, La 252, 253, 257 Sender, Ramón J. 30 Sentís, Mireia 101, 105, 106, 108, 141, 145, 150 Seregni, Alessandro 177 sexual repression 239 Shabazz, Betty 200 shimmy 54, 55, 57, 60, 66 Shuffle Along 55, 73 Siglo Futuro, El 88 Simone, Nina 5 Sinclair, Upton 30 Sinsombrerismo 9, 62, 68; las sinsombrero 52, 56; Las sinsombrero 66 Sistema de castas 154 Smith, Bessie 9, 52, 54, 60, 67 Sol, El 62, 88 social criticism 16, 218 social Danger and Rehabilitation Law 256 soul 216, 224, 226 Souls without Borders 134 southern Christian Leadership Conference 196 Soviet Union 13, 18, 30, 113, 156, 161, 162, 165, 201, 277 Spain in Our Hearts 134 “Spain is different” 205, 226 Spanish avant-garde 2, 6, 8, 23, 24 Spanish Civil War 2, 3, 10, 12, 13, 242, 246, 254, Spanish Republic 8, 24, 39, 104, 105, 106, 109, 113, 115, 121, 125, 129, 134, 143, 147, 151, 166, 277 Spanishness 6, 13, 14, 154, 155, 156, 196

Index  291 stereotypes: about African Americans 27, 44, 47, 74, 81, 85, 146, 183; colonial stereotypes 6, 14, 76, 179–81; racist/racial stereotypes 76, 182, 229; Semitic stereotypes 85 subaltern cosmopolitanism 142, 158, 162, 165, 169; see also Featherstone “Talented tenth” 99 Taro, Gerda 164, 165 Tarzan 218, 227, 228 Tato Cumming, Gaspar 14, 175, 179–84 Torre, Josefina de la 66, 68 Torrent, Jordi 134, 141, 150; see also Invisible Heroes Torres, Sasha 195, 197 tourism 16, 202, 205, 243; tourism boom 246, 247 transgender complicities 168 transracial complicities 168 transracial contagion 10, 79 trap 278 travel writings 14; travel narratives 175, 179, 182, 189; travelogues 2, 6, 14, 17, 175, 179, 182, 183, 185–9, 275, 277 Trierweiler, Willa Thompson 16, 235, 236, 255 Triunfo 5, 204, 223, 230 Tumulte noir, Le 9, 67, 75, 76, 77 Tusell, Javier 201, 207 Tusquets, Esther 4, 5 Ugarte, Michael 135 Ultra 64 ultraism 68 Unamuno, Miguel de 178

Vagrancy Act 256 Valentine 216 Vallejo, César 10 Van Vechten, Carl 45, 235, 240, 245, 254 Vasallo, Jesús 205 Vázquez de Parga, Salvador 249 Venuti, Lawrence 45, 48 Victoire de la vie/Return to life 120 Vienna 187, 73, 80 Vietnam War 194, 198, 217, 225, 244, 279 Villa Paz 108, 120, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128 Viñas, Ernesto 145 Vindicacion Feminista 5 Volunteer for Liberty 105 Walker, Cristal W. 118, 122, 129, 130 Watermelon Woman, The 279 Waters, Ethel 9, 52, 60, 67 Weiner, Milton 121 “white man’s burden” 204 Williams, Eric 153 Williams, John A. 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248 Wright, Charles 246 Wright, Richard 229, 234, 236, 245, 246, 256; Pagan Spain 17, 255 Wyden, Peter 123, 124 Xirgú, Margarita 157 Yates, James 11, 107, 108, 143, 145, 150, 151 Yusta Rodrigo, Mercedes 142 Zambrano, María 66