Caribbean Quarterly

A Journal of Caribbean Culture

ISSN: 0008-6495 (Print) 2470-6302 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcbq20

The Use of African Folklore in Hispanic Literature

Miriam DeCosta

To cite this article: Miriam DeCosta (1977) The Use of African Folklore in Hispanic Literature,
Caribbean Quarterly, 23:1, 22-30, DOI: 10.1080/00086495.1977.11671910

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.1977.11671910

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22

THE USE OF AFRICAN FOLKLORE IN HISPANIC LITERATURE

One of the primary contributions of Afro-Hispanic literature to the development of

an indigenista or native culture in the New World is the introduction of African
folklore into Caribbean and South American literature. The confluence of the two
cultures - African and Hispanic- began much earlier, however, with the conquest of
Christian Spain by Islamic Moors and with the expansion of the African slave trade on
the Iberian Peninsula in the sixteenth century. As early as the ninth century, Ziryab, a
poet who became known as the "Black Nightingale", introduced East African customs
to the court of Abd al-Rahman Ill; he taught the Moors to eat asparagus, to use cut
glass tableware and to wear their hair in a fringe. 1 More distinctively African customs
entered the Peninsula during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period of great
literary productivity which paralleled the culmination of the slave trade. Spanish
writers, such as Cervantes, Andres de Claramonte, Lope de Rueda and Ximenez de
Enciso, allude to African songs, dances and customs in their works. Femando Ortiz
singles out, for example, the use of African theatrical forms, including the mojiganga
and the buluhi on the Castilian stage, 2 while Jose L. Franco identifies black Guinean
dances such as the gurujd, gurumbe, paracumbe, yeye, and barambeque in seven-
teenth-century Spain. 3
In analyzing African folkloric elements in Caribbean and South American literature,
it is necessary, first, to identify the social and literary elements which comprise that
folklore, secondly, to trace the evolution of the folk tradition while underscoring the
relationship between the study of African folklore and its use in creative writing, and,
fmally to examine the ways in which African folklore is incorporated into Hispanic
literature. According to Franco, the word folklore was first used in 1846 by Ambrosio
Merton, the pseudonym of William J. Thomas, for a collection of narrations of "the
manners, customs, observations, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc. of the past." 4 It
is practical, for the purposes of analysis, to group folkloric elements into three major
categories: (1) customs, that is, all of the physical and tangible activities which relate
to the quotidian life of the people, including the use of dance, song, food, drink, dress,
games and ceremonies associated with birth, love, marriage and death; (2) beliefs or
the intangible, spiritual ideas inherent in the superstitions, religious practices, mytho-
logy and sacred rituals of the people; and (3) the oral tradition which includes the
language and literature of the folk.
The study of Afro-Cuban folklore preceded the emergence of Negrism, a Cuban
literary movement, by about two decades. In 1906, the ethno-musicologist, historian
and linguist, Femando Ortiz, published Los negros brujos (The Black Sorcerors), and
began a systematic and scientific examination of Afro-Cuban customs and beliefs. His
 23
major works include The Dances and the Theater of Blacks in Cuban Folklore, The
Africanity of Folkloric Music in Cuba, Black Slaves, The Instruments of Afro-Cuban
Music and A Glossary of Afro-negrisms; he also analyzed the art, literature and religion
of Black Cubans in a series of published articles. Undoubtedly, the work of Ortiz
kindled interest in the Afro..Cuban folk tradition and provided material (themes,
images, archetypes) for creative writers who began publishing their poems and short
stories in the late twenties.
Between 1930 and 1960 many anthropologists and sociologists continued the work
of Ortiz and began collecting the songs, tales and legends of neo-African people.
Ildefonso Pereda Valdes, 5 Horacio Jorge Becco, 6 and Jose Luis Lanuza 7 published
anonymous work songs, tribal hymns, street songs, chants and litanies (many in the
original African languages), while writers such as Romulo Lachatanere, 8 Ram6n
Guirao, 9 and Lydia Cabrera reproduced the African folk tales, legends and short
stories which abounded in Cuba. Of the latter group, Lydia Cabrera has been the most
prolific. She has published three collections of short stories; a book about the secret
AbakOa· society; a study of Afro-Cuban religion called El monte; Anago, a lucumi or
Yoruba dictionary; Proverbs of Old Black Men; a work on precious stones entitled
Otan lyebiye, as well as numerous articles on the Yorubas.
In tracing the evolution of Afro-Hispanic folk literature, one can discern three
distinct periods: (1) the first, which lasted from about 1550 to 1750 and which
coincided with the apogee of slavery, might be called the bozal period, (2) the period
of mestizaje, from about 1750 to 1900, when the Spanish and African cultures merged
to form a new and peculiarly American fold tradition, and (3) the negrista period of
the twentieth century, when non-folk artists imitated and often caricatured the folk
tradition. The bozales were Africans, newly arrived in the Americas, who retained their
native tongues and customs, and who could speak Spanish only with difficulty.
Because the bozales had a highly developed oral tradition, but did not have a recorded
history or a written literature, relatively little is known about their customs and
beliefs. There are infrequent references to their songs, dances and beliefs in the chron-
icles and travelogues of European and crioUo writers. Some of the bozal tradition also
survived into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when much of the material was
collected and recorded by folklorists. Examples include the "Rezo de Mayombero," a
liturgical song of eighteenth-century Cuban slaves; "A Song to Iroko [a sacred tree]";
and "A Song to Lower the Sack" [a working song] . In these early lyrics, the African
language predominates, although there are often intercalated phrases in a dialectal
Spanish. Lydia Cabrera includes in her Refranes de negros viejos proverbs such as
these
He who is son of Oggun [god of war] does not flee from
battle.
Who has seen the bones of the kangame [the ant]?
When death blows, the strongest man flies like a leaf.
The tortoise swims in the middle of the river, but
always returns to the bank.
which came directly from the African continent. Guirao also collected African stories
24
and legends in his Cuentos Y I..eyendas. Some of these include "The Legend of lcu
[Death]"; "The Story of the Deer and the Turtle", a Carabi tale; "The Dance of the
Owl" from the Congo; and a Yoruba story entitled "The Tiger, the Monkey and the
Deer".

The bozal oral literary tradition was primitive; that is to say, it was devoid of the
literary sophistication, including complex structures, thematic profusion, three--
dimensional characterizations; highly connotative figurative language, and manipula-
tion of verbal symbols, which characterize the works of learned writers. However, it is
an extremely rich literature - lyrical, subtle, suggestive - grounded in an African
philosophy which affirms the wholeness of life. There is no distinction in the African
frame of reference between the spiritual and physical realms, between animate and
inanimate existence, between the human, animal and plant worlds, or between man
and the divinity, because their gods are anthropomorphic. Indeed, to appreciate this
literature, one must understand the significance of animism (the materialization of the
divinities or the belief that men, animals and plants are inhabited by souls which may
exist in a separate state), totemism ( a system of distinguishing families or clans in a
tribe by the totem, an object which has a blood relationship to a specific family
group), ritualism {devotion to prescribed ritual forms in worship), and atavism (a
recurrence of ancestral forms).

The period of mestizaje was characterized by the integration of African and Spanish
folklore, and the creation of a neo-African culture. Emblematic of this syncretism are
two supernatural creatures, the giiije of Cuba and the tunda of Ecuador. Both of these
creatures are derived from African folklore, but they are American by name and
habitat and by their appearance in twentieth-century Afro-Hispanic literature. The
prototype of the gilije might be the African boli or nia, enchanted beings, ghosts or
genies who lived in the water and the forests.10 In "The Legend of the Guije", Guirao
describes the creature as a "fantastic being that has its home in the Yayabo
River ... It has the shape of a fish ... the head of a Negro and the tail of a fish." 11 As
described by the poet Nicohis Guillen in the "Ballad of the Giiije," it is a black dwarf
with a huge stomach, short, twisted legs and long straight ears.

The tunda, according to the Ecuadorian poet and novelist, Adalberto Ortiz, also has
an African origin; it is similar to the Bantu creature, the quimbungo. 12 In the folklore
of Esmeraldas, the coastal province of Ecuador that was settled by shipwrecked slaves,
the Tunda is a hermaphrodite who assumes the shape of a beautiful woman to lure
children into the jungle where she bewitches them. This supernatural creature is the
subject of a short story and two poems by Ortiz,l3 a long narrative poem by Nelson
Estupiftim Bass, 14 as well as a poem by Thomas Garcla Perez, who describes her as,

a horrible, deformed black woman with enormous lips, and an animal's foot
shaped like a grinder. Because of her hybrid nature, she cannot have children and
this is the reason that - to satisfy her maternal instinct - she steals little black
children, especially cry-babies and brats; she carries them to her lair of thorns,
and there, with her diabolic magic and tapao [a regional dish made out of dried
meat and bananas] of prawns, she drives them mad, she intunds them! 5
 25
There are many other examples of mestizaje in Hispanic culture. Two of the most
complex are the syncretism of Spanish Catholicism and African religion into santeria, a
Cuban religion similar to Haitian Voodoo; and the assimilation of Spanish secret
societies or cofradias and African naciones or tribes into organizations of rumigos.
Naiiiguismo was a form of witchcraft which originated among the secret societies
between 1834 and 1836 to perform traditional African rites and to offer mutual
protection to members.
The twentieth-century negrista tradition is the least authentic of the three, because
it did not emanate from the folk; instead, it developed out of certain historical, social
and literary movements which emerged at the beginning of the century. Although
many Black poets, including Pilar Barrios and Virginia Brindis de Salas of Uruguay.
Orlando Tenorio Cuero of Ecuador and Heldas Martim Gongora of Colombia,
seldom incorporated folk motifs into their works for a variety of aesthetic or ideolo-
gical reasons, most of the poets of the Negrist movement used the themes, archetypes,
language and the mise en scene of Afro-Hispanic life. The following list, which is not
intended to be comprehensive, suggests the diversity, the chronology and the geo-
graphic distribution of folk elements.

I CUSTOMS

A. Dances:
19th-century Cuba - yuka, caja, mula, cachimbo, mani, zapateo, tumbandera
(Montejo)
20th-century Cuba - columbia, guaguanco, conga (Arozarena); bembe (Aroza-
rena and Radillo); comparsa (Arozarena, Pichardo Moya, Ballagas, Alvaro de
Villa); rumba (Tallet, Guillen, et al); papalote (Ballagas); chambela (Hernandez
Ecuador- bambuco, caramba, mambo, bomba, conga (Ortiz)
Peru - zapateo, agua'e nieve, alcatraz, festejo, marinera, sana, tondero (Santa Cruz)
Panama - cumbia (Korsi)

B. Songs:
Ecuador - el Andariele, la Caderona, la Caramba, el Torbellino, el Bambuco,
Caramba, Agualarga Aguacorta, bolero, rowing songs (Ortiz)
Peru - zaiia, alcatraz, palmero, Agua'e nieve, socabon, panalivio (Santa Cruz)

C. Musical Instruments:
Ecuador - cununo, tumba, timba (Estupinim); guasa, marimba bongo, maraco
(Ortiz)
Peru - cajon, manchay, tamborete, sexteto (Santa Cruz)
Cuba- marimbula, clave tres (Arazarena); bongo guitarra, clave, cajbn, palos, mara-
ca, botija, contrabajo, cometin, tambora, tambor de mora (Valdes-Cruz)
19th-century Cuba -marlmbula, organo, acordebn, timbal giiiros (Montejo)
26
D. Drinks:
Ecuador- mampunga, Agua'e Kananga (Ortiz)
Peru - Chicha, tisana, cachina, c1aro
Puerto Rico - guarapillo (Marques)

E. Food:
Peru - carapulca, tamales, mazamorra, bienmesabe,
champu (Santa Cruz)
Venezuela- Curacao cooking: arepa, stobat, cal8s,
sopita, buiiuelos (Dfaz Sanchez),
Puerto Rico- fritangas (Marques)
19th-century Cuba - harina amala, calalu, quimbombo,
guenguere masango, ochinchin - food of Ochi.m,
ecru de frijoles de carita- food of Obatala (Montejo}

F. Dress
Peru- caracoles (Santa Cruz)
Cuba- majagua (Valdes-Cruz), esquifacion (Arozarena)

G. Games:
19th-century Cuba- tejo, botija, galleta, baraja (Montejo)
Peru - lingo, Siete Cuatro (Santa Cruz)

H. Folk Types:
Cuba - mama Ine, Carida, papa Montero, Che Encarnacion,
la negra Pancha, Vito Manue, la negra Tomasa, Maria Sabel,
Marfa Belen Chacon
Puerto Rico- mama Romualda, Bemabe Quirindongo, la vieja
Guanl

I. African Tribes:
Ecuador- mandinga (EstupiiHm); conga, bantu, yoruba
(Ortiz)
Peru-angola congo, nago (Santa Cruz)
19th-century Cuba - congo, lucurnl, mandinga, ganga, carabali
(Montejo)

J. Ceremonies:
candombe, velorio, baquine, comparsa

ll.BEUEFS
A. African Gods:
Cuba- Ogtin, Chang6, Orumbila, Yemaya (Arozarena)
Acue (Valdes-C ruz)
Ecuador- Oxala, Chango (Ortiz)
Peru - Chang6, Ochlin, Ekue, Obatab. (Santa Cruz)
 27
B. Religion:
Cuba- ecobia, ecobios, ekines, letras, ororo, siete
filere, iiaiiigo ceremonies (Arozarena)

C. Priests:
Cuba- Bab~u Aye (Arozarena)
Peru - Ocamba (Santa Cruz)

D. Witchcraft:
Cuba- chichereku - devil/man, oche - idol,
santeria, Fabas- sorcerer (Montejo ); embO, enkiko (Arozarena)
Ecuador- Macumba- witchcraft, macumbero- sorcerer,
vereju or berejU- Bantu word for "devil" (Ortiz)
Peru- references to evil doers, signs and cures (Santa Cruz),
indio-brujo, manchay-punto
Venezuela- Mandinga- devil, faculto- sorcerer (Diaz Sanchez)
Puerto Rico - fetiches, brujo, sangre del sacrificio
totem tambor sacramental, vodu zombi (Pales Matos)

Ill. ORAL TRADITION

A. Folk Sayings:
Peru- "Francica, bota frifr6," "AI que de inga no le
toque," "Chicha de terranove," (Santa Cruz)
Cuba- "Guasa, columbia," "Ae, ae," (Arozarena)

B. Africanisms:
Cuba- ororo, tebere, ocamba, monina, ibana, (Arozarena)

C. Tales:
Venezuela - the stories of Anita, "stories of devils and visions, " which
started with formulae: "You don't have to believe this if you don't want
to ... " and "No matter what people say ... " Her stories dealt with creatures
of the other world, such as souls in torment or demons. Stories included: (1)
"The Man with his Head in his Hand," (2) "Shall I Come Down or Not?",
"The Hobbled Mule," "The Little Cart," "The Lady Hangman" and "The
Souls in Purgatory." (Diaz Sanchez) 16
The writers who incorporate Afro-Hispanic folk elements into their work can be
placed into three categories. First, there was a group of writers, primarily white
Cubans and Puerto Ricans such as Jose Tallet, Felipe Pichardo Moya, Alejo Carpentier,
and Luis Pales Matos who used folklore to create a mythic, unreal and magic ambient
in which Antillian island and African jungle merged. Theirs is a fabulous land of
serpents, sacrificial fires and totems where savages fall prostrate before Ecue and
Chang6, chanting:
Oh, papa Abasi
Oh, papa Boco!
These writers use Afro-Hispanic folklore, much as Alejo Carpentier uses history, to
28
create a dramatic and spectacular world of "magic reamm;" they are not concerned
with a realistic portrayal of folk life or with the communication of poetic and
dramatic truths.

A second group of poets and novelists such as Ram6n Guirao, Adalberto Ortiz and
Emilio Ballagas have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the depths and cor&
plexities of folk life, but it is a view that is shaped by literature. They were heavily
influenced by literary "isms" such as Romanticism, Costumbrism, Realism and
Modernism, and the customs, rituals and scenes which they portray emerge from
books and not from life. Illustrative of this phenomenon is Adalberto Ortiz' ex plan~
tion of his interest in Afro-Ecuadorian culture. On his return to Esmeraldas after the
completion of his education, he recalls:

My cabin mate ... had given me the Anthology of Black American Poetry by
Emilio Ballagas. When I fmished reading it, I was overwhelmed with the negroid
rhythms that were stirring in my own blood without my knowing it~ 7

He continues: "When I arrived in Esmeraldas, I again observed the 'marimba dances'

and lived the folklore of my people." The verb observed separates the writer spatially
from his subject, but, more important, it marks the psychological distance between the
"I" of the poet and the "you" of the people. Ortiz thus articulates a separation which
is social, based on an hierarchic class/caste system, racial (because the poet identifies
himself as a mulatto in opposition to the Black masses), and educational (the learned
in contrast to the illiterate). Further, he does not say that he lived the life, but the
folklore, of his people, removing himself from the flesh and blood plane of reality to a
kind of abstract, illusory projection of that reality not unlike the fictional realm in
which Don Quijote lived and moved and had his being. Because this folklore had a
literary origin, its purpose was ornamental and not functional; it embellished a work
by creating a mood or a setting, by localizing a particular action or activity, or by
images. The folkloric elements assume a grotesque picturesqueness which distorts and
debases Afro-Hispanic culture.

A third group of writers - Marcelino Arozarena of Cuba, Nicomedes Santa Cruz of

Peru and Ramon Dlaz Sanchez of Venezuela- combine an almost scholarly interest in
folklore with a very subjective appreciation of their African heritage. Arozarena and
Santa Cruz are the most authentic of this group, because they are able to convey the
wholeness of Black folk life, to maintain intact the African cultural tradition with its
dependence on rhythm, rite and ritual, and to use folkloric elements in a functional
way. Arozarena's thirteen-page "Vocabulario" reveals that the poet has studied and
analyzed Afro-Cuban folklore in great depth, and that he understands and appreciates
Yoruba customs, Nafiigo ritual, African languages, and Abakua symbolism, as well as
Spanish, particularly Andalusian, folklore. His knowledge is partially derivative, the
result of intensive reading and investigation; he cites, for example, Ortiz' The Dances
and Theatre of Negroes in Cuban Folklore, Garcla ·Blanco's El Folklore Andaluz and
Cimorra's .FJ. canto Jondo. 18

Santa Cruz also has lengthy notes which not only defme, but also explain in great
 29

detail the origin and history of certain Black Peruvian customs. He notes that the saiia
(or the zaiia) is a dance derived from the Angolan lundu, which was transformed into
an irreverent song and orgiastic dance in the village of Miraflores de Zana in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries} 9 The section of his Decimas entitled "Folklore"
contains twenty-six poems with such titles as "Black Rhythms of Peru", "I'm Going to
Sing a Palmero" and "The Wake of a Black Creole" which describe the total life of a
people - their African origins, their songs and dances, and their aspirations and dis-
appointments. There is also a strong identification of the poet with his people; he says,
for example, in one poem ''My grandmother arrived from Africa dressed in snails'
shells", and in another he exclaims, "And if my color is black, being what I am makes
me happy". He spe~ of the slaves who came from Timbuctoo and Mozambique to
sing songs like the caiia, the solear, the lundu and the temporera, as well as to dance
the marinera, and he perhaps sums up the significance of this Afro-Hispanic culture
when he writes:
The customs of old Black people,
who suffered a thousand disillusionments
for so many years,
leave a vivid irnage. 20

MIRIAM DeCOSTA

FOOTNOTES

1. Janheinz Jahn, Neo-African Literature: A History of Black Writing (New York, 1968) p. 30.
2. Fernando Ortiz' Prologue to Rafael Marquina's "El negro en el teatro espanol antes de Lope
de Vega," Ultra IV, p. 554.
3. Jose L. Franco, Folklore criollo y afrocubano (Havana, 1959), P. 8.

4. Ibid., p. 9.
5. Antologia de la poesia negra americana (Montevideo, 1953); Cancionero popular uruguayo
(Montevideo, 194 7); and La guitarra de Ios negros (Montevideo).
6. Negros y morenos en el Cancionero Rioplatense (Buenos Aires, 1953).
7. Cancionero de negros, "Coplas y cantares ugentinos (Buenos Aires, 1952).
8. Ob, mio Yemay'! cuentos (Havana, 1932).
9. Cuentos y leyendas negros de Cuba (Havana, 1942).
10. Juan Pablo Sojo, Temas y apuntes afro-venezolanos (Caracas, 1943), p. 29.
11. Guirao, O.entos, p. 75.
30
12. Adalberto Ortiz, La entundada (Quito, 1971), p. 12.
13. La entundada, pp. 5-12 and El animal herido (Quito, 1959), pp. 35 and 38.
14. Timarln y Cuabu: cuademo de poesia para el pueblo (Quito, 1956), pp. 59-68.
15. Julio Estupilllln Tello, El negro en Esmeraldas (Quito, 1967), p. 159.
16. Ramdn Diaz Sanchez, Cumboto, trans. by John Upton (Austin, Texas, 1969), pp. 58-60.
17. El animal herido, p. 7.
18. Marcelino Arozarena, Cancion negra sin color (Havana, 1966), pp. 58, 62 and 63.
19. Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Decimas (Lima, 1971), p. 384.
20. Ibid., p. 44.