Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation: Blackness, Afro-Cuban Culture, and Mestizaje in the Prose and Poetry of Nicolas Guillen

The Cuban writer Nicolas Guillen has traditionally been considered a poet of mestizaje, a term that, whilst denoting racial mixture, also refers to a homogenizing nationalist discourse that proclaims the harmonious nature of Cuban identity. Yet, many aspects of Guillen’s work enhance black Cuban and Afro-Cuban identities. Miguel Arnedo-Gomez explores this paradox in Guillen’s pre-Cuban Revolution writings placing them alongside contemporaneous intellectual discourses that feigned adherence to the homogenizing ideology whilst upholding black interests. On the basis of links with these and other 1930s Cuban discourses, Arnedo-Gomez shows Guillen’s work to contain a message of black unity aimed at the black middle classes. Furthermore, against a tendency to seek a single authorial consciousness-be it mulatto or based on a North American construction of blackness-Guillen’s prose and poetry are also characterized as a struggle for a viable identity in a socio-culturally heterogeneous society.