The purpose of this work is to explore some thoughts and ideas
about the African dimension of Hispanidad through literature. The
specific object is the literary creation of Equatorial Guinea, the
only sub-Saharan country with a literature of Spanish expression.
This literature has not received much critical or theoretical attention
in Africa, in Europe, or in America. In Spain, the former colonial
power, this absence is also evident in universities and in secondary
school curricula.
I will first contextualize my work by attempting to define the
concept of Hispanidad from an African and bantú perspective.
Hispanidad has been described as the community of Spanish speaking
countries (and peoples) around the globe. According to this broad
definition, Hispanidad should include countries and populations
in Europe (Spain and Andorra), Hispanic America and North America
(including Spanish speaking communities in the United States), parts
of Asia (such as pockets of Spanish speakers in the Philippines),
and in Africa (Equatorial Guinea and The Sahraoui Democratic Republic).
Guinean scholar and writer Trinidad Morgades Besari (1987)writes:
La Hispanidad es un sentimiento; diría más es una
filosofía, una vía de futuro, un quehacer común
a todos los hispanohablantes. Es una herencia inagotable a la que
siempre habremos de recurrir cuando nos falta el aliento espiritual
para seguir hacia adelante, a pesar de los avatares de esta vida.
Y si consideramos que el mundo en que vivimos hoy, tiene una necesidad
vital de integrarse en grandes unidades políticas, económicas
y culturales, porque la unión hace la fuerza, nosotros, los
guineanos y el resto del mundo de la Hispanidad, comprenderemos
por qué hemos de recurrir a la Hispanidad en busca de valores
que nos lleven a una acción común, a fin de conseguir
realizaciones prácticas y esperanzadoras para un mundo futuro
mejor planificado y organizado (Africa 2000: 39-40)
Along the same lines, Guinean journalist, historian, and author
Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo(1986),observes:
La Hispanidad de ahora mismo no es una propuesta de vuelta a las
brumas de nuestra niñez, tiempo en que fuimos los apéndices
de aquel "imperio" otoñal de selvas tropicales y montañas
nevadas. La Hispanidad de ahora mismo es un engranaje a través
del cual los países y pueblos de esta estirpe común
potenciaremos nuestros valores específicos en el mundo, nos
ayudaremos mutuamente a salir de las dificultades particulares y
nos sabremos siempre unidos a través de la lengua, de la
cultura y de ciertos valores humanísticos, sin que ninguno
pueda sentirse desamparado por orfandad (Africa 2000:3).
Needless to say, this vision transcends simple cultural affinity
and aim for stronger ties at political and economic levels. It is
all the more important to note this, because unlike organizations
like Francophonie, for the former French and Belgian colonies, and
Commonwealth, for the former British colonies, Hispanidad is not
an institutional organization, rather it draws upon Spanish language
as a linguistic and cultural unifier. Despite its integration oriented
perspective, African Hispanicism, has received very little attention
within cultural studies. It is this academic, critical and theoretical
invisibility that has led Guinean poet Ciriaco Bokesa Napo(1996)
to point out that,
Las literaturas africanas todas se expresan en esos idiomas. Ahora
bien, el carácter vinculante del idioma y cultura está
más que estudiado desde el ángulo del inglés,
del francés, y, en menos grado, del portugués. Pero,
lo español, en tierras africanas y de plumas estrictamente
africanas, queda en la memoria de una cita apenas esbozada (Prólogo).
The republic of Equatorial Guinea is located in the Gulf of Guinea,
or Biafra, between Gabon, Cameroon, and Nigeria.
The singularity of Equatorial Guinea is a combination of two elements.
First and foremost is its Bantu heritage, i. e. , its Negro African
dimension, and secondly,its unique situation as the only country
south of the Sahara desert to use Spanish both as an official language,
and as a vehicle of transethnic and transnational cultural expression
and transaction. Trinidad Morgades Besari (1987) writes:
En Guinea Ecuatorial conviven fundamentalmente dos culturas: una
de entronque bantu y otra enraizada en la hispanidad. El humanismo
guineano se nutre del ensamblamiento de estas dos culturas; en ellas
está su fuerza y su futuro esperanzador. Los valores hispánicos
y africanos confluyen para formar el nuevo hombre guineano (Africa
2000: 39).
Consequently, Guinean literature, like other African literary
expressions written in transcontinental languages, is the expression
of two literary traditions: European, i. e. , Spanish in this case,
marked by the strict and rigid norms of scripture, and African,
Bantu, i. e. , Ndowe, Fang, and Bubi to mention a few, characterized
by the more flexible and pragmatic rules of orality. Fernando Lambert
describes this as a phenomenon of textual friction, i. e. , a process
through which the African text ended up incorporating the European
text. In light of the above, I will describe this cultural experience
as "literatura hispano-negroafricana" [Hispanic Negro-African Literature].
However, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo(1986) prefers the appellation Hispanoafricana
[Hispanic African], for he writes:
Guinea es un país a la vez hispánico y africano,
y en esa identidad simbiótica radica su originalidad, su
esencia y la garantía de su autonomía. Al fundirse
los valores de la cultura adquirida, los hispánicos, con
los valores de la cultura heredada, los bantúes -pues todos
los pueblos que componen nuestro Estado pertenecen a la cultura
bantú, lo cual no conviene que se olvide-, se operó
en el espíritu del guineano una transformación importante,
y a nuestro juicio (pues son esas, y no otras, nuestras señas
de identidad, que se ha ido estructurando en una nueva cosmogonía
(. . . ). . . . Hay guineanos que escriben, que pintan, que esculpen;
que trabajan, en definitiva, desde su perspectiva hispanoafricana,
para dotar a su país de ese dinamismo sin el cual el progreso
sería imposible (Africa 2000: 3).
In conceptualizing and contextualizing this project as Hispanic
(Negro)African, my intention is, on the one hand, to distinguish
it from North African Hispanism, or what is left of it, and on the
other hand, to differentiate it, to a certain extent, from the Afro-Hispanic
cultural experience of Latin America, including the Caribbean. In
colonial Spanish Guinea, intellectual life and cultural activities
were limited to the island of Fernando Póo, more specifically,
to the city of Santa Isabel now called Malabo. The only publication
of the time was La Guinea Española, published by
the missionaries of the Inmaculada Corazón de María
at the Seminary of Banapá. La Guinea Española
can be considered as the craddle of African literature written in
Spanish. The first issue appeared in 1903. In addition to articles
on the progress of evangilization, on the state of the colony, and
on agricultural productivity, La Guinea Española
featured sections such as "Página literaria" and "De nuestra
biblioteca africanista" mostly devoted to religious literature.
But first and foremost, the journal, as the motto under the name
read, was "defensor y promotor de los intereses de la colonia".
Therefore, it was a platform for the dissemination of Spain's colonial
ideology in that part of Africa.
In its January 10, 1944 issue, La Guinea Española
organized a literary contest, inviting what it described as "Plumas
coloniales" to send submissions:
Con el presente número, organizamos un concurso artístico
literario que, pensamos proseguir en anos sucesivos para estimular
las muchas plumas coloniales que con prestigio y decoro pueden figurar
al lado de otras firmas metropolitanas y que , no dudamos han de
contribuir a divulgar y exponer aspectos y temas coloniales desconocidos
o parcialmente enfocados
Needless to say that there were no natives among those "plumas
coloniales"; however, natives were invited to send submissions dealing
only with folklore. Three years later, in 1947, La Guinea Española
opened a new section, "Historias y Cuentos", specifically limited
to Guineans:
"Esta nueva sección que hoy comenzamos, un exponente del
pensamiento de nuestros indígenas recogido tradicionalmente
en cuentos, historias, narraciones, refranes y cantos, contribuyendo
de esta suerte aperpetuarlos y a divulgarlos. Además
de nuestra labor personal y la colaboración de los misioneros,
confiamos en los alumnos del Seminario, maestros, colegiales de
la misión, de la Escuela Superior Indígena y catequistas
de nuestras reducciones que nos enviarán el mayor número
posible de "historias" sobre cualquier tema"
This invitation was also restricted to a specific group of people:
students of the missions and seminaries, and teachers, i. e. , a
group of individuals who lived in a controlled and alienated space.
In addition, this initiative was male-oriented and excluded women.
This institutional policy of marginalization would have a detrimental
effect on the emergence of a female body of literature in Equatorial
Guinea. Though the response was massive, those early "works" were,
in fact, a mere transcription and translation into Spanish of the
oral literary corpus of the different ethnic groups of the colony
including the Fang,the ndowe, or the bubi. Moreover, all the texts
were identified by their ethnic origin such as "historieta pamue",
"leyenda bubi", or "cuento ndowe". Without being aware of it, these
Guineans were just following in the footsteps of such authors as
Senegal's Birago Diop, (Contes et légendes d'Afrique noire,1938),Bénin's
Maximilien Quenum, (Légendes
africaines: Côte d'Ivoire, Soudan, Dahomey, 1946),
and the Ivory Coast Bernard Dadie, (Légendes africaines,1953).
During this interaction at the textual level(collecting and transcribing,
and translating), a new cultural product evolved, one which Mineke
Schipper describes as "written orality", while Pius Zirimu prefers
to call it "orature". Intermediaries started manipulating the traditional
texts. They stopped transcribing and translating, and began incorporating,
among other things, some elements pertaining to European literary
tradition. Though the "new" texts still relied heavily on oral tradition,
they nevertheless acquired a more personal touch and a more autonomous
form as Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo (1984) points out:
"(. . . ) Bien pronto, obtuvieron conciencia de la importancia
de su misión, y poco a poco, de modo apenas perceptible,
fueron transformando la pura transcripción, la traducción
en formas de creación autónomas,si bien aún
ligadas intimamente a las fuentes originales"(22).
Since the act of translating from a source text to a target text
is in itself an act of manipulation, therefore this process was
not just limited to the thematic and structural levels. In resorting
to the traditional literary corpus of their respective ethnic groups
for inspiration, the first generation of Guinean writers were pursuing
a double objective. First, they intended to reclaim what Paulin
Hountoundji calls their "Certificate of Humanity", by inserting
an ethnological discourse in their texts through the repetitive
description of their customs, rituals, traditions, and legends.
Secondly, they sought to obliterate the subaltern and marginal structures
in which Spanish colonial discourse had installed them by generating
alternative objects of knowledge about themselves, their history,
and their culture. This writing project is evident, for example,
in the early works of Rafael María Nze's La gallina y
la perdiz (1950), Constantino Ocháa's Biom y los
hombres rudos, Esteban Bualo Bokamba's "Kon, el Blanco"
(1961) y "Le va toco Buwe (Al fin vimos la luz)"(1962)
], Jose Esono's "El topé del leopardo", Francisco
Obiang's "Meyen, Meyene", and Marcelo Asistencia Ndong
Mba's "Mientras la tumba brama en su selvática canción"(1962)
to mention but a few.
In 1953, Leoncio Evita Enoy published what was considered to be
the first novel of Guinean literature: Cuando los combes luchaban(Novela de costumbres
de la Guinea Española. The novel was, as Evita himself
puts it, "una novela etnológica de las costumbres de la tribu
combé en cuyo medio se desarrolla la acción novelesca
en el país del Muni de una época precolonial" (Diálogos. . . 33). Published
in Madrid by the Instituto de Estudios Africanos of the Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, an agency of the
General Franco's regime, the novel was used as a powerful instrument
of propaganda to show the positive results of the civilizing mission
of Spain in sub-Saharan Africa. Since the colonial space was authoritarian,
unidimensional, monolithic, and a repressive environment by nature,
Evita was very aware that he needed to make his discourse "understandable
and acceptable" to the dominant order. This writing strategy misled
censors and Carlos Gonzalez Echegaray who wrote in the prologue:
No deja de ser curioso el hecho de que la novela está pensada
y sentida "en blanco", y sólo cuando la acción se
desarrolla entre indígenas, solamente, en parte, y como un
espectador, el escritor se siente de su raza( Cuando
los combes. . . Prólogo)
In the Preface to the Spanish edition of Rene Maran's Batuala. Verdadera novela de negros(1922),
the first novel published by a black writer on colonial Africa in
Africa, José Mas Laglera, one of the leading Spanish africanists
of the time and translator of the novel, wrote:
"La novela no sólo era de negros, sino que estaba escrita
por un individuo perteneciente a esta raza. El caso me pareció
insólito. Yo no podía concebir que un negro del Congo
tuviese aptitudes de escritor. Sabía que, educándoles
en Europa, llegaban a ser buenos bailarines y que algunos hasta
habían llegado a tocar la trompeta y el violín con
verdadero arte; pero de esto a describir paisajes y estados de almas,
había mucha distancia(. . . ). René Maran tiene de
negro más que el color de la piel"(III).
José Mas Laglera would be echoed thirty years later, in
1953, by Carlos González Echegaray, another Africanist. In
the prologue to Leoncio Evita's Cuando los combes luchaban,
González Echegaray writes:
"Cuando Leoncio Evita me dió a leer su novela y me pidió
que le hiciera un prólogo, no le di mi palabra de escribírselo
hasta que no me convenciera de que se trataba de algo distinto de
los relatos inconexos y absurdos que algunos "morenos" seudointelectuales
escriben(. . . ). Pero mi sorpresa fue en aumento a medida que iba
leyendo, al encontrarme con una obrita francamente
aceptable, y que bien pudiera haber sido escrita por cualquier escritor
novel nacido en nuestra patria"(Prólogo).
It is this perception and representation of Africans, Guineans
in this case, that has led Evita to comment that, "La situación
colonial que prevalecía cuando escribí mi novela,
me dió un gran estímulo para seguir escribiendo y
ampliar mis conocimientos. Personalmente, sentí gran satisfacción
por abrir aquella pequeña brecha en el "dique" del monopolio
de la discriminación intelectual"
Ciriaco Bokesa Napo
describes that period as "la época del temor al blanco cuando
escribir suponía alabarle y quasi marginar cuando ridiculizar
lo autóctono. Otras veces, se escoge lo nativo como noticia
macabra para la metrópoli
" Nearly a decade later,
in 1962, Daniel Jones Mathama published Una lanza por el boabi. Mathama Jones'
novel fervently celebrates the colonial situation, and it is strongly
critical of the natives. It is part of what has been called literature
of consent.
Between 1963 and 1968, during the heyday of the nationalist struggle
for independence,a few Guineans still published in journals such
as La Guinea Española, Poto-Poto, and Bantú.
It is also during this period that a new literary genre appeared
on the cultural scene: poetry. Guinea and Africa are the major themes
of these poets as evidenced by Juan Chema Mijero's "El león
de Africa" (1964), and Francisco Zamora Segorbe's "Lamento
sobre Annobón, belleza
y soledad" (1967), and Ciriaco Bokesa's"Islaverde" (1968), to mention but a few.
Guinean literature has followed a different path from African
literature in French and English, a path also quite different for
that of the special cases of Portuguese and South African literature.
First, guinean literature was late to arrive to the African literary
scene, and second,in Spanish Guinea, literature did not develop
side by side with the nationalist movement for freedom from colonial
rule. Neither the Négritude nor the African Personality movements
had the same echo and impact in Guinea that they had in other parts
of the continent. The Spanish colony was isolated. Linguistically,
Guinea was in a predominantly francophone area, and geopolitically,
Spain's policy of containment, along with tight censorship, kept
Guinea cut off from the rest of the world. Translations of texts
by other African authors or intellectuals were not allowed in the
colony. Consequently, Guinean intellectuals missed two major cultural
events closely associated with the nationalist movement for freedom
such as "Le Premier Congrès des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs"
held at The Sorbonne in Paris in 1956, and the second Congrès
held in Rome in 1959. My provisional conclusion is that there was
not an anti-colonialist literature, i. e. , a committed literature
in the sense it was defined by Léopold Sédar Senghor
at the Congress of Negro Writers at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1956("La
littérature africaine est une littérature engagée").
Guinean journalist and writer Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo(1984) corroborates
this view:
" Los escritores guineanos, como el resto de los africanos, están
poseídos por su realidad circundante, aunque en la primera
etapa casi se apuntaba en una sola dirección, y, en rigor,
no se puede hablar de una literatura anticolonialista en Guinea
Ecuatorial(. . . ).
por más que en algunas obras se describa algún exceso(28).
A few years later, when Guinean intellectuals came in direct and
open contact with the remnants of the Negritude movement, some of
them, like Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, expressed apprehension because
they felt Négritude no longer addressed issues relevant to
the new post-independent reality. In his poem Cántico
(1984), Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo writes:
Yo quiero ser poeta
para cantar a Africa
Yo no quiero ser poeta
para glosar lo negro
Yo no quiero ser poeta así(92)
A few years later, Donato Ndongo would further distance himself
from the Négritude movement:
(. . . ) sencillamente no había en el alma del guineano
esa necesidad de un resurgimiento cultural al modo de la explosión
de la Négritude, que se pondría los cimientos del
nacionalismo cultural y político en el Africa subsahariana
.
Here lies what seems to be a contradiction because Las tinieblas
de tu memoria negra, the title of Donato Ndongo's first novel,
comes from a poem by Leopold Sédar Senghor, one of the founding
fathers of the Negritude movement.
On October 12, 1968, Equatorial Guinea gained its independence
from Spain, nearly ten years after most sub-Saharan countries. The
independence of most sub-Saharan possessions in the early 1960s,
and the ensuing establishment of new institutional structures, had
stimulated the emergence of a new political and cultural discourse
described as National Project. The African Post-colonial reality
had become the site for the emergence of national literatures and
of what has been described as post-colonial discourses.
In March 1969,less than five months after his election to the
Presidency, Francisco Macías Nguema denounced a coup attempt,
declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, abolished
political and social debate by banning all political parties, instituted
a one-party rule, appointed himself Commander-in-Chief of the Armed
Forces, and proclaimed himself President for life. Macías
embraced the post-colonial African discourse of the time, known
as African Authenticity, that Swiss historian Max Liniger-Goumaz
described, in some cases as afro-fascism. Liniger-Goumaz
called the Guinean version Nguemismo. Originally, the
African discourse of authenticity as a nationalist discourse stood
as a critique and alternative to Western hegemony. Unfortunately,
it deviated from its original purpose and took a very demagogic
course. In some countries it became the instrument of neo-colonialism,
or turned into a dictatorship in others. Eventually it only benefited
the ruling minority and failed to achieve political and economic
independence. In the case of Equatorial Guinea, the colonial force
was replaced with a new ethnic-based and ultimately exploitative
force. Instead of liberation after decolonization , the new nation
replicated the old colonial system of oppression and structures.
President Francisco Macías Nguema established an ethnic dictatorship
supported by the Fang-Esangui, his ethnic group also known as the
Clan of Mongomo, Nguema's home province. Throughout his rule(1969-1979),
Macías dealt brutally with opponents, civilians and militarymen
who were not members of his clan. Nguemismo, as an ethnic
hegemonic discourse, was manipulated and instrumentalized as a mobilizing
force that symbolized "national unity" against re-colonization and
neo-colonialism. It sought to institutionalize itself in order to
achieve hegemony and legitimation through violent practices. As
a new post-independent nationalist discourse, Nguemismo
also engaged in the task of rewriting the National History(Traditional
and Contemporary) by falsifying it. As part of that discourse Macias
Nguema declared himself:
- Gran Maestro de educación, ciencia, cultura de la república
de Guinea Ecuatorial.
- Unico líder y héroe nacional
- Padre de la revolución y fundador del estado guineano
- Responsable supremo de los destinos históricos de nuestra
nación
- Primer nombre sagrado y revolucionario de Guinea Ecuatorial
- Padre de todos los niños revolucionarios
- Dios creó a Guinea Ecuatorial gracias a Macías,
y sin Macías no hay Guinea"
The goal of Nguemismo was to achieve total control of
the public and economic spaces, and to render the rest of the social
actors invisible by stripping them of their political culture. Guinea
became a monoethnic state. In other words, the nguemismo "fanguicized"
the Guinean post-colonial reality by establishing what Ngugi Wa
Thiong'o calls the "Culture of Silence and Fear". The borders of
the country were closed and freedom of movement of the citizenry
was restricted. Guinea became "una gran jaula" [a big cage],i. e.
, a huge concentration camp. This is how the narrator in El párroco de Niefang(1996) by
Joaquín Mbomio Bacheng, describes that space:
"Salir con una barca a alta mar era considerado por el régimen
de Macias como un acto de subversión que atentaba contra
la seguridad del Estado. Por eso se mandó destruir todas
las embarcaciones desde Mbonda hasta Río Campo y desde Cuche
hasta Corisco. Nada podía navegar. Se prohibía a toda
la población del Litoral el acceso a su propio espacio marítimo"(37).
Throughout the Nguemismo, books and other publications
were banned, private correspondence was examined, and foreign press
was prohibited. Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo (1990)dubs that period the
"años del silencio":
(. . . ) no hubo ninguna manifestación literaria dentro
de Guinea Ecuatorial, por la sencilla razón de que se perseguía
a todo el mundo, fundamentalmente a aquellos que pudiéramos
llamar intelectuales, y el simple hecho de hablar español
era castigado con la cárcel. No digamos escribir: muchos
guineanos murieron porque en cualquier registro domiciliario se
les encontró apuntes en español. . . De modo que las
únicas manifestaciones literarias de Guinea Ecuatorial durante
aquel período se produjeron en el exilio"
Printed material became a lethal weapon that played and was used
against those who generated it: writers. Exile and silence became
part of the post-independent Guinean reality. In the meantime, thousands
of kilometers away in Spain, the discourse of resistance began to
take shape. But it was a semi-clandestine and marginal discursive
practice. On January 30, 1971, the Spanish government declared Equatorial
Guinea "Materia reservada", and a total blackout was imposed on
all news about Equatorial Guinea. Organized opposition to Macias
regime was either restricted or in some cases, prohibited. This
regulation stayed in effect until August 14, 1974. Produced in these
precarious conditions, the discourse of the Guinean diaspora became
a subculture which was disseminated through an underground and marginal
circuit. It failed to reach the Guinean diaspora in Spain as well
as the Spanish public. Nevertheless, that marginality was instrumentalized
into a site of resistance.
This is the context within which we must place the anonymous poem
El cinco de marzo which appeared in El Molifugue informa (7 septembre 1977),
a bulletin published by one of the several organizations of the
Guinean diaspora. The poem commemorates the violent appropriation
of the Guinean reality by the nguemismo:
Cual primer llanto al nacer
las primeras lágrimas por mi tierra
EL CINCO DE MARZO
Las primeras muertes injustas,
el aborto de mi alegría,
EL CINCO DE MARZO
El desprecio por mi pueblo
y un dictador sanguinario
los crímenes y horrores,
EL CINCO DE MARZO
Los huérfanos de una patria
murió la ley y la justicia
el hombre perdió valor,
EL CINCO DE MARZO
Guinean literature in exile relied mainly on poetry as a discursive
platform of resistance, and revolved around two main themes: nostalgia
that some of these writers described as "orfandad de tierra", and
the traumatic experience of displacement. The theme of "orfandad
de tierra" was characterized by nostalgic evocation of Equatorial
Guinea as a remote and prohibited space; however, most of the poems
idealize the country through vivid descriptions of its vegetation,
beaches, rivers, and climate, i. e. , a geographical space that
the displaced Guinean could easily identify. This can be found in
Juan Balboa Boneke's Nostalgia Rebolana (1987):
Con la seca y la lluviosa,
con la fresca brisa matutina
Quiero viajar
para bañarme en tus raíces
y llenar de amor y hermandad tu entorno
Rebola(29).
Pedro Cristino Bueriberi Bokesa's Nostalgia de mi tierra(1984)
:
Tierra mía, tierra mía!
Qué lejos estás de mí!
Mis ojos, suaves, anhelan
fieles tu verde verdí.
Los pájaros ya no cantan
Ya no se oye su clarín(56).
The second thematic area of this counterdiscourse explores exile
not only as an experience of dislocation and fragmentation, but
also as a process of cultural, political, linguistic, and economic
deterritorialization. Poet and novelist Juan Balboa Boneke expressed
the anguish of not belonging in ¿Dónde estás
Guinea?, a book difficult to categorize because it contains
poetry and prose:
"¿Quién soy yo? Se me ha arrancado de lo que era
mi realidad, mi existencia, mi cultura (. . . ). Ni soy de aquí,
ni soy de allá. Y cuando me descubro a mí mismo resulta
que para mis hermanos (mi pueblo), soy un extraño. Sigo sintiéndome
extraño en esta sociedad porque no acabo de sentirme comprendido,
porque no acabo de comprender(Boneke 1982: 11). "
This sentiment is echoed by Francisco Zamora Loboch in Prisionero
de la Gran Vía(1984):
Si supieras
que tengo la garganta enmohecida
porque no puedo salirme a las plazas
y ensayar mis gritos de guerra.
Que no puedo pasearme por las grandes vías,
el torso desnudo, desafiando al invierno
y enseñando mis tatuajes,
a los niños de esta ciudad(131)
This discourse reflects and denunces the violent and traumatic
nature of Nguemismo which engaged in a process of systematic
degradation and destruction of the Guinean body. In Epitafio(1984),
one of his rare poems Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo writes:
Un tiro certero. . .
Ya nada,
Nada más
Que un cadáver
Muerto. Tierra
Fue un hombre(92).
And Anacleto Oló Mibuy's A un joven fusilado en Santa
Isabel (1984):
Voy con esta luz de rimas
dejando flores estériles
en las burbujas de sangre,
y poniendo, piadoso
en cada carne de tu cuerpo destrozado
las letras muertas de tu libertad(116).
In some cases, the discourse of the Guinean diaspora used an aggressive
language calling for the elimination of the despot as in
Francisco Zamora's Vamos a matar al tirano(1984):
Madre:
Dáme esa vieja lanza
Que usó el padre
Y el padre del padre
Tráeme mi arco nuevo
Y el carcaj repleto de flechas
Que parto a matar al tirano
Mira mis ojos
Observa mi descripción
Pertenezco a un pueblo de revueltas
Observa mi hechura
de escaramuzas y levantamientos
Mi pulso no temblará(130).
It also incited insurrection as in Anacleto Oló Mibuy's
La voz de los oprimidos (1984):
Mis poesías serán leídas un día debajo
de mis árboles,
sin techos ni barnices de aire.
Muertos y vivos de corazón arañado de cualquier
negra injusticia, mis poesías llamarán a la resurrección
con la voz de los que no la tuvieron
con la voz de los oprimidos(118).
There were also a few texts in prose. But for Nueva narrativa guineana,a collection
of four short stories published, "con el fin de recaudar fondos
para uno de los movimientos políticos de resistencia antimaciísta",
according to Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, most of the texts of this period
were essays. Nueva narrativa.
. . includes four short stories: Francisco Abeso's La travesía,
Francisco Zamora's Bea, Donato Ndongo's El sueño,
and Maplal Loboch's La última carta del Padre Fulgencio
Abad. The other non-literary works include: Donato Ndongo Bidyogo's
Historia y tragedia de Guinea Ecuatorial
(1977), Juan Balboa Boneke's Donde estás Guinea(1978), and
Eugenio Nkogo Ondo's La condición humana(1985). Raquel
Ilonbe's Ceiba(1978) is the only text by a woman
published during that period. Born Raquel del Pozo Epita from a
Spanish father and a Guinean mother, she was taken to Spain when
she was one year old, and lived there most of her life. Her experience
of Guinea and the Guinean reality is quite limited. She is the first
female author of Guinean literature.
On August 3, 1979, Francisco Macías regime was overthrown
by a military coup described as "el golpe de libertad" led by his
own nephew, Colonel Teodoro Obiang Nguema. It was a time of hope.
Juan Balboa Boneke(1987) celebrated what he thought would be the
dawn of a new era with a poem entitled "Tres de agosto 1979":
Y florecieron las sonrisas,
y la brisa de esperanza
que refrescó los hogares
camino de un futuro
triunfal aún por imaginar(48)
During the 1980s while "los espíritus se estaban serenando",
as Donato Ndongo-Bidyoyo then put it, Equatorial Guinea engaged
in a process of reconstructing and redefining a viable and inclusive
national project. On June 6, 1982, during an award ceremony for
national and international artists and intellectuals held at the
Estadio de la Paz in Malabo, the President, Colonel Teodoro Obiang
Nguema stated that:
La cultura debe ser considerada en mi Gobierno como prioridad
absoluta, ya que sin ella el pueblo de Guinea Ecuatorial no podría
asumir positivamente el proceso de la Reconstrucción y Reconciliación
Nacional
Whether by coincidence or not, there was a spectacular upsurge
of cultural activities, a real cultural renaissance.
A two-tier and more or less simultaneous process took place in
two different and distant locations: Equatorial Guinea and Spain.
The first cycle originated in Spain, and coincided with the new
democratic process after General Franco's death. The Guinean diaspora
living in the Peninsula enjoyed more freedom of movement and expression.
Within this context that the first writings of the Guinean diaspora
began to appear in the early 1980s. One such texts was Raquel Ilonbé's
Leyendas guineanas(1981), a collection
of traditional stories from different Guinean ethnic groups collected
by the author throughout Equatorial Guinea "in search of her roots"
as she put it. Raquel Ilonbe dedicated Leyendas guineanas " a todos los niños
guineanos y a los de los cinco continentes". These words seemed
to indicate a very promising future not only in the field of children's
literature in Equatorial Guinea, but also in the recovery of oral
tradition. Then followed two books of poetry both by Juan Balboa
Boneke: O'Boriba(El exiliado)(1982) y
Susurros y Pensamientos comentados: Desde mi vidriera(1983).
These reflect on his decade-long exile. In 1984, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo
published Antología
de la literatura guineana, the first comprehensive attempt
to give a textual overview of Guinean literature from the colonial
period to what French journalist Gilbert Wassermann calls "la première
indépendance" ["the first independence"]. In 1985, the Ediciones
de la UNED(Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia) in Madrid
published Ekomo
by María Nsue Angüe. Ekomo is the first novel by a female
writer in Guinean literature. The novel gives a fresh, genuine,
profound, and different perspective on the condition of women among
the Fang ethnic group. It is also the first attempt to give alternative
images and representations of fang women by a fang woman. In 1987,
Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo published his first novel: Las
tinieblas de tu memoria negra which is the first volume of
a trilogy whose second part, Los
poderes de la tempestad, appeared ten years later in 1997.
While in Las tinieblas
Donato Ndongo explores the colonial situation through the innocent
eyes of a child growing up in an alienated space, in Los poderes. . . he examines the Guinean
reality under the nguemismo which he calls "los años de desgobierno
de Macías". Though both texts use autobiography as a narrative
platform, Donato Ndongo denies he does so, for, he says it is,
un ejercicio catártico, una doble interiorización,
tendente a exorcizar los "demonios" acumulados a lo largo de la
existencia del pueblo guineano: las supersticiones, el colonialismo,
el racismo inherente a la acción colonizadora y el que provoca,
como reacción, en los colonizados(. . . ). En el caso concreto
de Las tinieblas. . . , no se puede hablar de una autobiografía
en su sentido estricto. En todo caso, sería la "autobiografía"
de la sociedad guineana actual. . .
The second center of the cultural renaissance was the Centro Cultural
Hispano-Guineano in Malabo. Founded in 1982, the mission of the
Centro Cultural was " la activación de la vida cultural,
artística, folklórica, educativa de nuestro país",
i. e. , to promote and disseminate Guinean and hispanic culture
in Equatorial Guinea and abroad. In addition to establishing an
editing and publishing arm, Ediciones del Centro Cultural Hispano-Guineano,
the Centro Cultural also houses the largest library of the country,
and publishes two journals: Africa 2000 and El Patio.
Ediciones del Centro Cultural has established several publication
series called "colección" in order to accommodate the different
intellectual interests that emerged in the wake of its ever growing
activities. The "Colección Poesía" has released several
anthologies and poetry books including Juan Balboa Boneke's Sueños
en mi selva(1987); Ciriaco Bokesa Napo's Voces de espumas(1987), Juan-Tomás
Avila Laurel's Poemas (1994), Jerónimo Rope
Bomabá's Album poético (1995), and more
recently Juan-Tomás Avila Laurel's Historia íntima de la humanidad(1999);
the "Colección Relatos" started in 1994, includes to date
Maximiliano Ncogo's Adjá-Adjá y otros relatos
(1994). The "Colección Narrativa" is the largest one so far,
but I will just mention two titles, the first and the seventh. Iñigo
de Aranzadi's El tambor opens this series. An Africanist
and former colonial officer in Spanish Guinea, Arazandi collected
this story by means of interviews with a Fang story teller in 1959.
What makes Aranzadi's text different and interesting is that it
is a bilingual edition: there is a Spanish translation, a phonetic
version, and the original version in Fang. The book contains a lot
of colorful illustrations that makes it attractive to children.
Arazandi touches a very critical point in African literature: language,
but whose language and which one? The seventh text in this collection
"narrativa" is Joaquín Mbomio's El párroco de Niefang (1996).
The "Colección Ensayos" is more diverse, for it accommodates
different disciplines. And finally, the "Colección Litertura
popular" the last born, whose first text is Rusia
se va a Asamse(1998) by Juan-Tomás Avila Laurel.
Africa 2000 and El Patio have acquainted the
Guinean public with writers whose works appeared while they were
in exile. Africa 2000 and El Patio have also served
as a launching pad for young and novice writers from the mid-1980s
onward.
The Centro Cultural sponsored two very important cultural events
in the 1980s: the "I Congreso Internacional Hispánico-Africano"
held in Bata (Continental Guinea), June 4 -8, 1984 with the participation
of 80 delegates representing 18 countries, as well as international
and religious organizations, and also the "Coloquio Internacional
de Hispanistas" held in the capital, Malabo, Febrero 16-23, 1985
with representatives from 10 countries including Germany, Poland,
Spain, and from Africa, Senegal, Cameroon, Gabon to mention but
a few.
Finally, I would like to point out that neither the Spanish cycle
nor that of the Centro Cultural have concluded yet. During a short
period in the 1980s, the government of Teodoro Obiang tried to control
the production of cultural discourse in Guinea by creating the shortlived
ediciones Guinea which edited a few books before closing. I will
only mention two titles. The first one is a book by President Teodoro
Obiang himself Guinea Ecuatorial, país joven,
a long essay on his program of national reconciliation and reconstruction;
the other is Juan Balboa Boneke's first and only novel, El reencuentro. El retorno del exiliado(1985)
in which the author reflects on the process of national reconciliation.
Most Guinean intellectuals opted to turn their back to this platform.
In the 1990s, Equato-Guinean literature kept growing despite setbacks
in the political life of the country. Some authors started exploring
alternative and new discursive platforms such as drama/theater.
Though there are very few writers who have ventured into this field,
those who did have realized that theater's is far-reaching capacity
makes it an effective means to explore the Guinean post-independence.
Trinidad Morgades Besari's Antigona, Juan-Tomas Avila
Laurel's Los hombres domésticos, and Pancracio Etogo
Mitogo's El hombre y la costumbre are part of this burgeoning
literary trend. Closely related to the former process, is the emergence
of a new generation of writers. Most of them were children during
Nguemismo, and unlike the previous generation, they started
their literary career in Equatorial Guinea. They form what poet
Anacleto Oló Mibuy describes as "nueva narrativa nacional"
or "nuevo costumbrismo nacional" in prose. They use a new style
and focus on the immediate reality of the "second independence",
and to paraphrase Gilbert Wasserman with its contradictions made
of repression, lack of freedom, hardships, broken promises, corruption,
and a country immersed in a deep economic crisis.
This difficult and precarious economic, political, and cultural
environment drove the few Guinean intellectuals and professionals
like poet Juan Balboa Boneke and Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo back into
exile. They had returned home after the "Golpe de libertad" in order
to participate in the process of national reconciliation and reconstruction,
but had to flee to save their lives. Closer to us in Vermont, another
Guinean writer, poet and playwright Gerardo Behori Sipi, not only
had to leave hastily, but to leave behind most of his writings.
In a letter he sent me shortly after he fled the country for his
second exile, Juan Balboa Boneke wrote:
Por aquí las cosas no van bien. En el proceso de democratización
de mi país, hemos fracasado. Las elecciones multipartidistas
del 21 de noviembre(1997) constituyeron un gran fraude por parte
del Gobierno. Hubo y sigue habiendo represión, torturas,
y muertes (son 11 muertos ya). Salí del Gobierno y abandoné
la política
For those who had no other choice but to remain in the country,
two attitudes can be pointed out. There are those like poet Ciriaco
Bokesa Napo who chose self-censorship and silence as a strategy
of resistance and denunciation; and there are others, like Maximiliano
Ncogo in Adjá-Adjá
y otros relatos, who use humourous situations to expose the
ills of what Juan Balboa Boneke calls the "obiangnguemismo". In
closing, let me quote Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo(1998) :
La literatura hispanoafricana(. . . ) está llamada a ser
el tercer vértice del eje afro-hispano-americano, que configura
hoy la geografía lingüística de nuestro idioma
común. A poco que se estimule, cumplirá su papel en
la tarea de revitalizar la lengua y cultura en español, que
ya no pueden ser comprendidas si las desgajáramos del aporte
negro, como demuestran las obras de Nicolás Guillén,
Manuel Zapata Olivella, Adalberto Ortiz o Nicomedes Santacruz (Mundo
Negro:9).
Morgan State University
Baltimore, Maryland
Notes
1). La Guinea Española, núm. 1165, 10 de
enero de 1944.
2). La Guinea Española, núm. 1236, 10 de
enero de 1947: 13.
3). "Entrevista a Leoncio Evita," Diálogos con Guinea, 33.
4). Ciriaco Bokesa Napo. Diálogos con Guinea, 104.
5). Estudio introductorio de Cuando los combes luchaban(2ª
edición). Malabo: Ediciones del CCHG, 1996.
6). Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo. Historia y tragedia de Guinea Ecuatorial.
Madrid: Editorial Cambio16, 1977: 213-14.
7). Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo. Letter to M'Bare N'Gom from Malabo,
Equatorial Guinea dated on October 22, 1990.
8). "Cinco de marzo", El Molifugue informa, núm.
7 (Sept 1977): Sección Recuerdo y poesía.
9). Teodoro Obiang quoted by Leandro Mbomio, "Africa 2000 en las
ondas," Africa 2000(1990): 11.
10). "Entrevista a Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo," Diálogos con Guinea, 73-74.Guinea,
73-74.
11). Juan Balboa Boneke. Letter to M'Bare N'Gom from Paterna, Valencia
dated on February 12, 1994.
Works cited
Balboa Boneke, Juan. Letter to M'Bare N'Gom from Paterna, Valencia,
dated February, 1994.
. Sueños en mi
selva. Antología poética. Malabo: Ediciones
del Centro Cultural Hispano-Guineano, 1987.
. Juan Balboa Boneke, ¿Dónde estás Guinea?,
Palma de Mallorca, Agrupación Hispana de Escritores, 1982.
Bokesa Napo, Ciriaco. "Prólogo" de Diálogos con Guinea. Panorama de la
literatura guineoecuatoriana de expresión castellana a través
de sus protagonistas. (M'Bare N'Gom). Madrid: Ediciones Labrys
54, 1996.
Evita Enoy, Leoncio.
Cuando los combes luchaban. Novela de costumbres de la Guinea Española.
Madrid: CSIC, 1953.
La Guinea Española, número 1165, 10 de
enero de 1944.
, año XLII, número 1236, 10 de enero de 1947: 13-15.
Mas Laglera, José. Prólogo. Renato Maran.
Batuala. Verdadera novela
de negros. Madrid: V. H. Sanz Calleja editores e impresores,
1922.
Mbomio, Leandro. "Africa 2000 en las ondas," Africa 2000,
año V, época II, número 12 (1990): 11-13.
Morgades Besari, Trinidad. "Guinea Ecuatorial y la hispanidad,"
Africa 2000, año II, época II, número
1(1987): 39-41.
Ndongo-Bidyogo, Donato. Antología de la literatura guineana.
Madrid: Editorial Nacional, 1984.
. Historia y tragedia
de Guinea Ecuatorial. Madrid: Editorial Cambio 16, 1977.
. "Hispanidad" Africa 2000, Año III, época
II, Núm. 6(1986):3
. "Literatura hispanoafricana," Mundo Negro (Enero 1998):
9.
Ngom Faye, Mbare. Diálogos
con Guinea. Panorama de la literatura guineoecuatoriana de expresión
castellana a través de sus protagonistas. Madrid:
Labrys 54, 1996.
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. "The Culture of Silence and Fear".
South (May 1984):
37-38.