President of the Regional Council
The first Congress of Caribbean Writers was held in November 2008, on the initiative of the Regional Council of Guadeloupe. It was a major cultural event, in light of not only the number but also the calibre of writers hailing from all parts of the Greater Caribbean – French-speaking, Creole-speaking, English-speaking, Spanish-speaking and Dutch-speaking – gathered for the occasion. This first Congress was an opportunity to take stock of the different schools of thought and trends in literary sensibilities, which had a lasting effect, throughout the 20th century, on Caribbean literary output. We all know that Caribbean literatures have been internationally acclaimed. What better proof of this recognition than the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was successively awarded to Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez –there is no doubt that he is one of us, since he himself claims to have been influenced by the same historical and social identity markers – to Guadeloupe’s Saint-John Perse, to Saint-Lucia’s Derek Walcott and to Trinidad and Tobago’s V.S. Naipaul.
Furthermore, this first Congress was held under the distinguished patronage of Derek Walcott. It gave us the opportunity to pay tribute to Aimé Césaire, as this year’s edition will allow us to celebrate the memory of the late Edouard Glissant. Nonetheless, it gives us great pleasure to have in our midst the esteemed Cuban writer, Roberto Fernandez Retamar – poet, historian, essayist and President of the prestigious La Casa de las Américas – as the honorary President of the Association of Caribbean Writers, within the framework of this second Congress.
The regional authority over which I have the honour of presiding places great importance in culture and aims to elevate Guadeloupe into a centre for fruitful exchanges. On the occasion of the second Congress, for which we have gathered in this month of April 2011, I have decided to create a Grand Literary Prize, which will be awarded to an outstanding work of Caribbean literature. This prize for Caribbean literature, which is being bestowed by the Regional Council of Guadeloupe, is therefore meant to foreshadow the creation of a Grand Literary Prize by the Association of Caribbean Writers, as foreseen by the first Congress, to be conferred at the third Congress in 2013.
To the numerous partners who have lent their support to this initiative, I express my heartfelt gratitude. I would also like to thank all of you – writers, academics, teachers and researchers, journalists – who, through your very presence, are enhancing the various work sessions and other events programmed on our agenda.
Victorin LUREL
President of the Regional Council, Member of Parliament for Guadeloupe
Honorary President of the Association of Caribbean Writers
The land that would eventually be called the Caribbean have been slow to be called so.
The English called it the West Indies, and the others, the Antilles.
Even in the twentieth century, Martinican Edouard Glissant, whom I’ll speak about later, published his classical “Discours Antillais/Antillean Discourse” But the name Caribbean eventually prevailed. And while some may argue, the Caribbean area includes not only the Antilles but also areas of continental countries overlooking the Caribbean Sea or related to it. And the Wider Caribbean, which is neither a linguistic nor political set unit, retains distinctive common or very similar features that enable one to refer to it as an entity.
Carifesta actually started in reference only to English-speaking countries, then incorporated the rest of the Caribbean and then was hosted in Cuba. Similarly the “Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde” in the early stage focused on the French Caribbean area and French-language, but the Board will soon meet in Cuba, which is in fact why the Caribbean Writers Congress held in Guadeloupe has included writers from various parts of the Caribbean.
Being kindly invited to chair this event is for me one of the major distinctions I have been awarded. I understand that as a specific recognition to the work performed for decades by La Casa de Las Americas and specifically its Centre for Caribbean Studies masterly shepherded by Yolanda Wood. This task has been and still is to bring closer most valuable writers, for which it is nearly a common place to coin Latin America and the Caribbean for.
Guadeloupe and Cuba belong to both communities, which is why both of us, as part of the Caribbean people, we are particularly sensitive to what unites us.
Caribbean events have been well known, since the wrongly named Discovery, the first arrival of Europeans in the area for over half a millennium, the subsequent establishment of plantations that characterized the region, implying the presence of numerous African slaves ( Rex Nettleford reminded us of “The African connection” between us) and then Asians, who united to the European descendents have helped make the whole become a world crossroads, the Haitian exploit that culminated in 1804 with the first independence of our America; the original anti-imperialist movement, Jose Marti’s brain-child, and claimed by the Cuban Revolution today; great utopias that shaped the twentieth century, such as the return of blacks to Africa advocated by Marcus Garvey and the proclamation of Negritude by Aime Cesaire, lessons from Fidel Castro, Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara. In strictly literary works, such as those recently included in The Oxford Anthology of Caribbean Verse, a rich and complex task that has received several distinctive even global prizes; the appropriation by the Caribbean of the character of Caliban in The Tempest through George Lamming, Cesaire, and Kamau Braithwaite, and many, many others.
It is impossible in so few lines to summarize a task so vast. I will end, as I announced, with Glissant. His verses, stories, essays, criticism are examples of what's best, produced by the Caribbean, and it has been well recognized by the entire planet. It would have been wonderful to have him among us at this conference where we will woefully miss him.
I will conclude with a notorious confession. I developed a friendship with Glissant, called affectionately Edú, in 1960 in Paris, when I was a diplomat from the then resplendent Cuban Revolution. We saw each other frequently, and together, we even designed a Review of Latin American culture to be published in Paris, and for which I sought support from Alejo Carpentier, greatly admired by both Glissant and myself. During our vivid meetings, Glissant would help me to understand what we may call the Caribbean specifics: The Caribbean has in itself specificities that do not separate it from Latin America, but that definitely distinguish it from it and anywhere else. Today more than half a century after the beginning of this relationship, I am honored to again recognize my debt to the unforgettable friend.
Havana, February 23, 2011.
Special guest of the Association of Caribbean Writers
La littérature dominicaine part des formes grammaticales de la littérature espagnole introduites dans l’ile par les premiers colonisateurs. C’est à partir du XIXème siècle que nous pouvons parler d’une littérature dominicaine avec des accents du métissage. A partir du roman El Montero / Le Rabatteur, de Pedro Francisco Bonò, publié à Paris, la vision du métis apparait à travers la vie de ce personnage rural, comme un résultat des dévastations d’Osorio (1605-1606), montrant ainsi des aspects significatifs de la vie du chasseur du bétail sauvage et acolyte des propriétaires terriens coloniaux. La société dominicaine, avec une forte prédominance des mulâtres, est reflétée dans la littérature du XX siècle, où des auteurs comme Tomás Hernández Franco, avec son poème Yelidà, abordent le sujet du mélange racial et du métissage. Etant donné les confrontations dominico–haïtiennes, des déclamateurs comme Juan Antonio Alix, et des poètes “cultes” comme Rubens Suro, proposent une poésie qui montre en détail leur position en tant que cultivateurs de la thématique. Dans les années 37 38, le romancier Freddy Prestol Castillo écrit El Masacre se Pasa a Pie / Le Massacre on le traverse à pied, roman qui décrit la tuerie ordonnée à la frontière dominico-haïtienne sous les ordres du dictateur Trujillo, œuvre publiée après la mort du tyran. Dans une autre littérature, tels que certains contes de Ramón Lacay Polanco, Ramón Marrero Aristy, Néstor Caro, et auparavant Sócrates Nolasco, le sujet afro-antillais est déjà présent, et par conséquent, la religion africaine et ses variantes, également.
Concernant la thématique du métissage dans nos romans Biografía Difusa de Sombra Castañeda, (Vie e mort d’un Aprenti Sorcier) y El Hombre del Acordeón, (L’ Homme a la acordeón), nous avons développé des aspects socioculturels des croyances métissées et dans le cas su dernier roman, la caractéristique culturelle du dit “rayano”, personnage frontalier qui caractérise un mélange vivant de la relation dominico-haïtienne, où des aspects remarquables des deux cultures fusionnent pour donner forme à des personnes biculturelles-. Le roman intitulé Negrito / Petit Nègre, de Claudio Soriano, retrace une longue histoire depuis l’esclavage jusqu’au présent, de la manière dont le noir est traité dans la culture dominicaine, et dans le roman de Carlos Esteban Deive intitulé Viento Negro, Bosque del Caimán / Vent noir, Foret du Caïman, où sont abordés les effets de la Révolution Française et la partie française de Saint Domingue et la partie du Santo Domingo espagnol. La thématique du métissage apparait dans son dernier roman El Festín de los Generales / Le Festin des Généraux. En évoquant brièvement ces aspects d’une littérature qui se situe entre l’Histoire et l’Anthropologie, qui essaye de se rapprocher davantage du monde caribéen dans beaucoup de ses partialités, nous insistons, tel que nous l’avons fait à d’autres occasions, sur la gestion d’une maison d’édition caribéenne au moins trilingue, nous permettant de nous connaitre, si vous me permettez d’utiliser ce mot. Les traductions isolées ne nous montrent pas la richesse de nos sujets, nos arts, nos cultures, nos modèles de métissage, enfin de nos mœurs et de nos racines. J’aimerais proposer ici une réunion, un nouveau comité pour l’expansion et la sélection annuelle d’au moins un roman de chaque pays caribéen, en vue de sa traduction et de sa divulgation. Cela représente encore si peu de tout ce que nous pouvons faire.