THE NEW ATLANTIS
The ultimate Caribbean archipelago

ANTONIO BENÍTEZ-ROJO

Translated by James E. Maraniss

In these times, when the maps of nations are continually remade and new delegations are flags shuffled in the United Nations, it is almost obligatory to think about political geography. What will the world be like in the next century? Surely it will differ from what it is today. Some states will pull apart, and others will join together. This is nothing new, but the principle by which borders are made and unmade may be different this time. To judge from current appearances, it will no longer be ideology and politics that give coherence to a state, but historical and cultural affinities within the economic unit. Everything indicates that the coming years will be characterized by the tendency of multinational states to separate into nation-states or to shape themselves as federated republics. In parallel fashion, as with the integrative process that one sees now mainly in Europe, the different regions of the globe will go on finding advanced forms of association and collaboration. And so the countries of the world will separate in one way and come together quickly in another.

This process has been dealt with abundantly in the press. But I want to concentrate on a certain part of the world that, because of its territorial smallness, is generally forgotten by futurologists and the great architects of globalisation: the Antilles. In an era of quantification, it makes sense to look at the cluster of features that this region offers to present-day geography before we travel to the future. What demographic and territorial importance does the Antillean archipelago have? Its population occupies 218,708 square kilometers and its projected to number 36, 449,000 by the year 2000. Politically, it is remarkably pluralistic: for example, Cuba defines itself as a "unitary and socialist" republic, Dominica as an island "commonwealth’ governed by constitutional monarchy within the British Commonwealth, the Dominican Republic as a "multiparty republic," Martinique as an "overseas department of France," the Netherlands Antilles as a "nonmetropolitan territory of the Netherlands," Puerto Rico as a "free associated state," and Saint Kitts-Nevis as a "federated republic"; the Virgin Islands comprise a British dependency and a "nonincorporated territory of the United States." The region’s linguistic pluralism is also notable: not oonly Dutch, English, French and Spanish but also Chinese and Hindi are spoken there, as well as different creole dialects, among them Haitian Creole, Jamaican, and Papiamento. This diversity bespeaks the archipelago’s ethnic fragmentation, to which the peoples of four continents have contributed socially and culturally.

In spite of this fragmentation, there arose in the twentieth century a cultural discourse that broke the old colonial conception of the Antilles as a group of islands irreconcilably divided into linguistic blocs by recognizing certain patterns that repeated themselves within the archipelago. Advancing this discourse were, among others, Jean-Stéphen Alexis, Emilio Ballagas, Kamau Brathwaite, Lydia Cabrera, Alejo Carpentier, Aimé Césaire, Nicolas Guillén, C.L.R. James, Fernando Ortiz, Luis Palés Matos, Jean Price-Mars, and Jacques Roumain. In the beginning it centered on the important impact of the African diaspora on the different island cultures and societies, defining concepts such as négritude, transculturation, mestizaje, and magic realism. But more recently the referential base of this discourse has expanded to include continental territories with Caribbean coasts, as well as to study the entire sociocultural phenomenon of the area from the point of view of the creole or creolization. This new notion refers not just to the meeting of African and European peoples in the region; it also embraces the contributions of others, primarily Native Americans and Asians. The idea of the Caribbean as an area with its own distinctive characteristics has not only become known throughout the world but also given rise to many historical, economic, sociological, and literary works, among others those of Juan Bosch, Franklin W. Knight, Sidney Mintz, Artuto Morales Carrión, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, and Eric Williams. Initiatives have been undertaken to achieve economic cooperation, such as the Caribbean Free Trade Association and, later, the Caribbean Community and Common Market. To foster artistic expression, the Caribbean Festival of the Creative Arts was organized. In short, Antillean discourse has expanded to become Caribbean discourse, and it is widening still further to include points of connection to much the rest of the world. This global perspective can be observed in such works of literary and cultural analysis, published between 1983 and 1998 as Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant’s In Praise of Creoleness; Michael Dash’s Other America; Edouard Glissant’s Poétique de la relation; Wilson Harris’s Womb of Space; and my own Repeating Island.

From this all-too-rapid survey, it is easy to conclude that Antillean cultural discourse, in spite of its relative newness, has shown a clear tendency to expand. But how will it develop in the twenty-first century? I want to address in particular the practical effects of regional collaboration withi n the ongoing process of globalization and to analyze the relationship that the Antilles will have to the other islands of the subtropical and tropical Atlantic. As all of these islands together have no collective name, I will call them the New Atlantis, the ultimate archipelago.

Much has been written about those islands, but I know of no work that has studied them in depth as a group, that is, from the perspective of the historical, socioeconomic, and cultural links within the vast territory that includes Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, the Azores, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bioko (formerly Fernando Póo), the British Virgin Islands, the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, the Madiera Islands, Martinique, Monserrat, the Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Saint Helena and Ascension, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadine, San Andrés u Providencia, São Torné and Príncipe, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Virgin Islands of the United States. These islands together measure some 270,000 square kilometers, more or less the size of Italy; their population, some 44 million, exceeds that of Spain; and their population density, 163 people per square kilometer, is the same as Switzerland’s. In short, the New Atlantis presents itself to us as a sizable archipelago.

Rather than try to define the similarities and differences among these islands, which could be done only through detailed comparative analysis, I want to propose a few general alignments to guide the development of a disciplinary discourse for a comprehensive study of this ocean territory. Once such a discourse has been established, it may not be strange to find that the different states and communities that coexist in this area of the Atlantic but hardly know one another should move toward some form of integration. The economic, political, and sociocultural advantages would be enormous, especially in the long run. The sources of energy that will succeed oil, gas, and nuclear fission are the sun and the sea, whose availability on these islands is as great as anywhere in the world. The islands of the Atlantic will be coveted again, not for their mercantile significance, as during the formation of empires, but for their energy. What were slave colonies in the past and are tourist resorts in the present may become power plants in high demand from all regions of the globe.

In any event, some kind of archipelagic association will be desirable. Why not begin with tourism, a major survey of wealth on the great majority of the islands? Their mild winters, warm waters and breezes, and palm-lined beaches are common features of interest in and of themselves. Moreover, their fishing and agriculture, together with newer avenues of commercial export, such as undersea mining, could serve as the basis of economic integration. I have already mentioned the Caribbean Festival of the Creative Arts, from which starting point it would be easy to organize other music and dance festivals, art exhibitions, and meetings of artists and intellectuals. In September 1997 the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, located in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, held the international exposition "Islas," followed by a symposium on the theme of insularity. Why should similar symposia not be organized throughout the New Atlantis, for the benefit of all its constituent populations?

Yes, we New Atlanteans are distant from one another, but not so distant as New York is from Honolulu, where one and the same flag flies. Yes, we speak different languages, but in this age linguistic barriers are no longer insurmountable. Europe, for one, has overcome them. The Caribbean, which would round out the extreme southeast of the New Atlantis and among whose islands integration has already occurred, is another case in point. Caribbean studies, which seem to attract more and more interest both in and outside the Antilles, began as a scholarly discipline only a couple of decades ago. Until then it was not widely recognized that places colonized by Danes, Dutchmen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Portuguese, Spaniards and Swedes might have much in common, and yet it is obvious today that they do. One may well conclude that the New Atlantis is not just a possible but a probable form of association.

It is not by chance that I propose to call this island region the New Atlantis, for there is nothing like a founding myth to consolidate an identity, and Plato’s myth of Atlantis fits like a glove. Whether or not the archipelago claims it in the future, it may still be ours. No other territorial myth outdoes it in prestige or in poetic resonance.

Of all the disciplinary discourses, those belonging to the natural sciences, archaeology, and history contribute the most of the search for roots in a common past. If the governments of our islands have one fruitful enterprise before them, it is to provide funds for botanical and zoological studies, archaeological excavations, and research on colonial documents in the world’s archives. One must remember that our flora and fauna have enriched the world’s diet and augmented its medical resources, and our native species, from the draco to the iguana, have enlarged its understanding of nature. When colonized by European powers, our aboriginal populations all had Neolithic cultures, and by studying these cultures comparatively, one might reach conclusions that hold for all such cultures: their contributions to contemporary humanity, for example, beginning with toponymy and ending with cornmeal and tobacco. Although these cultures no longer exist and have nothing to do ethnically with many of us, their genetic legacy is still alive in some of our populations. For the purposes of a genealogical-nationalist discourse, they are we, and to them we owe the legitimacy of our roots on the New Atlantis.

I turn now to history, and here I envision a magisterial book, still to be written, of course, and divisible into long thematic chapters. Parts of our islands were populated by aborigines, and parts were uninhabited at the time of their discovery by Europeans. In the first chapter of our common history, we would observe that conquest and colonization, throughout the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, were astonishingly similar regardless of the nations that carried them out. In the beginning there was mutual incomprehension between conqueror and conquered. On certain islands the Europeans were taken to be gods, and on others the natives were thought to have no souls. Once these religious aspects had been addressed, the islanders fought the invaders tooth and nail until the cannon, the harquebus, the pike, and the sword prevailed. The conquered were enslaved or shared out or made vassals; many died from European punishments or sicknesses; and those who did not were baptized, given the names of saints, and made subjects of a foreign empire – second-class subjects, for although they survived the abrupt transition from the Stone Age to the Renaissance, a leap of seven thousand years in a single generation, they were never forgiven for not grasping Western lifestyles and ways of understanding.

The second chapter of the history of the New Atlantis would deal with the organization of colonial life, and it, too, would present surprising similarities: the exploitation of natural resources; the construction of towns with stone houses; the incursion of foreign institutions and colonists; the introduction of foreign livestock and crops; and the implanting of a colonial bureaucracy. The third chapter would describe the beginnings of Atlantic commerce: Iberian mercantile monopolies vis-à-vis Dutch, English, and French; the legal and illegal traffic in African slaves; and the development of the plantation. Then the different types of plantations would be taken up, particularly sugar plantations. Their spread would be followed from the year 1452, when they were brought, in succession from Sicily tot he Madieras; to the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Canaries, whence Columbus introduced them to Hispaniola; to Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba; and later, to Trinidad, Barbados, and the rest of the Lesser Antilles. Naturally, the fewer natives and the more plantation owners there were, the greater the importation of African slaves.

Eventually, the slave trade had vast sociocultural consequences, to be explored in the fifth chapter, because the fourth chapter would deal with maritime privateering, and piracy. From the Azores to Saint Helena and Ascension, our islands served as key military positions for the European powers and frequently as booty – and even as bases of operations – for corsairs and buccaneers. In their waters themost notable captains and admirals of the world fought: from Menédez de Avilés and the Marqués de Santa Cruz to Drake, Hawkins, Hein, Le Clerc, Morgan, Nelson, Rodney, and Soucouf. The islands’ role in the military and commercial expansion of Europe was crucial. Our coasts and bays not only provided space for the development of the Atlantic economy but also provided for its protection. A list of old castles, forts, and walls that still loom over our ports, from the Azores to Saint Helena, is enough to impress one with the military threats that surrounded us for four centuries. But another plague menaced us, too: piracy. If not for our islands, the history of privateering and piracy would not go beyond a twenty-page pamphlet, and Treasure Island and Captain Blood would never have been written. This chapter might end with Napolean’s last defeat and his exile on Saint Helena, although I myself would take it all the way to the so-called Spanish-American War, obviously a war of plunder, the kind of war that comes nearest to piracy.

The fifth chapter, as I said, would be dedicated to our peripheral societies, including the springing up of local cultures and smuggling as an economic alternative. This chapter could extend to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, by which time the majority of the islands had developed creole cultures and dour local pride and a sense of belonging had spread among their populations. The chapter would speak of the great political, economic, technological, social, and ethnic differences that always separated the island societies from their metropolises or administrative centers. In themselves, these differences were neither good nor bad; for us however, they were never good because of our status as second-class colonies and provinces. While mercantile accumulation and industrial revolution took place in the metropolises, our archipelago saw only sugar plantation, contraband, grapevines, tobacco, indigo, coffee, coconuts, bananas, and other fruit – the staples of an economy that continues today, albeit with the support of hotels and restaurants for tourists.
I now move on to the theme of culture. It is not imprudent to say that "French" culture does not exist, although I would not recommend that it be shouted in the Place de la Concorde or on the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe. What we call French or Spanish or English culture is not a homogeneous blend but a heterogeneous system of regional, national, and local cultures that differ among themselves so greatly that even in France as in Spain an din the so-called United Kingdom, there are separatist movements. I say this to defend the heterogeneity that the cultural system of the New Atlantis must have. Nonetheless, I hasten to add that within the disorder of this heterogeneity differences will repeat themselves from one island to another giving the archipelago a strange cultural coherence that will be understandable when we note that the culture brought to the island territory by the first colonizers, whoever they may have been, underwent changes that made it unique. These changes happened because of the meeting of cultural agents from different sources on each of the islands.

I take for example Cuba, the island I know best. If we say that Cuban culture is the product of the contributions of aborigines, Spaniards, and Africans, we are telling the truth but only half of it, for there remain the particularities of Cuban culture vis-à-vis the cultures of Tenerife, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, where there were also aborigines, Spanish colonizers, and African slaves. On Cuba, unlike the other Greater Antilles, there were three aboriginal TRIBAL systems, one from Central America and two from the Guianas. Furthermore, we say "Spaniards" without noting that there has never been a single Spanish nation but several, a fact recognized only recently by the central government. Cuba received a good sampling of its people: Andalusians, Aragonese, Astorians, Basques, Castilians, Extremedurans, Galienans, and also many Canarians, indeed, Cuban literature was founded not by a Cuban but by a native of Grand Canary, Silvestre de Balboa. In Cuba – and of course in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – these nationalities were never separated by region, as they had been in Spain. Thus from the earliest days Cuba fostered an Iberian-based cultural syneretism that had never existed on the Peninsula.

Something similar can be said of the African contribution to Cuban culture. In present day Cuba we recognize components of Bantu, Efik, and Yoruba cultures, which, on coming into contact with Europeans ones, produced the habanera, the danzón, the son, the conga, the rumba, the bolero cubano, the mambo, the cha-cha, salsa, and so-called Latin jazz, as well as the music of Amadeo Roldán and Alejandro García Caturla, the poetry of Guillén and Ballagas, and the pictorial art of Wilfredo Lam. In Puerto Rico the number of slaves was not as great, and so the African influence there was smaller. But Puerto Rico witnessed a Corsican immigration that never happened in Cuba, while the latter, for its part, saw an appreciable influx of Chinese, Frenchmen, and Yucatecans. So Cuba, and every other archipelagic island, has its own cultural history to relate. Yet in spite of this fragmentation, all of the island cultural systems have one feature in common: their Atlantic complexity.

The next chapter of the history of the New Atlantis would deal with the archipelago’s extremely complex political history and the struggle of its peoples to rise socially. It would depict all of the rebellions and revolutions; all of the interventions, occupations, and changes of flags; all of the acts of popular resistance to military and nonmilitary dictatorships; and it would offer a critical vision of the incomplete process of decolonization that began after World War II, as well as touch on the appearance of a few forms of nationalism in our islands.

The penultimate chapter would show the old relations that exist among our peoples, as well as their sociocultural impact. Of particular interest are the Canarian emigration to the Caribbean and its contribution to the rural folk music of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Of great importance is the Cuban exile of refugees from the Haitian revolution. Musicians from the old Saint Dominigue brought Santiago de Cuba the music that became known there – and still known – as tumba francesa and cocoyé; they also introduced the rhythmic unit called the cinquillo, which influenced Cuban country dance as much as the habanera did. Later, of course, came the participation of Puerto Rican and Dominican patriots in Cuba’s independence movement, from Eugenio María de Hostos and Ramón Emerterio Betances to Máximo Gómez, who was general in chief of the revolutionary forces.

I would devote the last chapter of the history of the New Atlantis to a description, on both a personal and an institutional level, of our connections with the rest of the world. The case of Simón Bolívar is instructive. In the first place, there is the so-called Jamaica Letter, a document written in the Caribbean, which is without a doubt the deepest and finest reflection on the struggle for independence. But on a practical level, there is the assistance offered by Haiti and, above all, the advice of its president, Alexandre Pétion, to the effect that the war could not be won without liberating the slaves.

Another interesting episode involved the schooner Amistad, commandeered in Cuban waters in 1839 by the slaves it was transporting. After many days the Amistad reached Long Island, where it was captured by the United States Coast Guard. The long and complicated trail that followed nearly ruptured diplomatic relations between Spain and the United States. Public opinion favored the removal of the slaves to their African homeland, which is what finally occurred. Thanks to this famous case, the first antislavery societies were organized in the United States, and American abolitionism began to take form. The Amistad case was so historically significant that in preparation for the U.S. bicentennial a replica of the ship was built to take its place alongside others of national importance.

The valuable contributions of Arthur Schomberg, Claude McKay, and Marcus Garvey to the African American movement in the United States also come to mind as topics for this chapter. Perhaps literary figures should be included with them, from Alonso Ramírez, whose misfortunes were edited by Sigüenza y Góngora, all the way to the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. Now that I think about it, this chapter might be so extensive that it should be published independently – a sort of Who’s Who dedicated to those who have contributed, through their discoveries, creativity, or celebrity, to the sciences, scholarship, politics, social betterment, the arts, literature, entertainment, and sports, from Damaso Pérez Prado, the mambo king, to Daniel Santos, the restless anacobero; from Kid Gavilán, creator to the bolo punch, to Félix B. Cañet, author of El derecho de nacer and founder of the Latin American soap opera.

Finally, I want to touch on an aspect that at once unifies us and differentiates us from other societies, that oscillates between the psychological and the anthropological: our condition as islanders. The eternal seascape has made us look outward, toward the horizon. It has turned us into an extrovert people, smiling and generous to the stranger. Surely this is nothing new; thousands of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans have noted it in their travel books. But within us there is something more difficult to see: a secret sadness, shared rarely – the product, I believe of our microcosmic isolation, of our solitude in the midst of so much sun and so many tourists. It is a shipwrecked impatience, in fact, which has always pushed us to abandon the islands for other, ampler, richer, more populous lands, for scientific and technological capitals where we think that things of capital importance happen. In time we become disenchanted, and our nostalgia for sea and breeze comes back, for modest cathedrals, for colonial facades and rusty cannons, for palm trees and carnaval.

Sometimes, sadly, we die without going back. The fact is that, in order not to exile ourselves, we need the idea of belonging to a very large native land, the concept that we are not sailing alone. We need the certainty that our individuality has indeed produced part of a grand collective history and culture. We need to know that, as peoples of the sea, we are unique and our horizon reaches far beyond sight.

(back)